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Before Princess Andrea finished the Cookies on her plate, Edward had already repaired the Glass Door. It was only a simple Shaping Technique. The reason the captain of the knights had failed to kick the Glass Door to pieces was that Edward had used the principles of bulletproof glass from his Previous Life: the glass, loaded with plenty of lead, was divided into three layers and bonded together with two layers of resin in between. Glass was cheap to him, but that resin had cost a fortune. His current alchemy still could not synthesize complex organic compounds. He had bought tree gum and refined the resin himself using methods from his Previous Life.

When the Princess finished the Cookies on her plate, she saw Alice returning while pinning down the Silver Hair pastor. The guard who had ridden back at full speed to fetch the money had returned as well.

Andrea took the Money Bag and solemnly handed it to Edward.

"Mr. Smith, this is a small token of my sincerity in requesting the Divine Sword. Please accept it. I know this sum is not even one ten-thousandth of the Divine Sword's value, but it represents my heartfelt gratitude. On behalf of my father and the Duchy, I thank you for your generosity."

"You're too kind. I never intended to ask for so much money in the first place. For this sword to find the owner most suited to it is a tremendous blessing."

Edward had only ever seen this much money when he took out a mortgage to buy a house in his Previous Life. More precisely, he had only seen that amount on paper; the money had barely passed through his account before it was gone. Then he still had thirty years of mortgage payments ahead of him. Come to think of it, he had not even finished paying it off before crossing over. How could that compare to this life's carefree comfort? He had a house and a car—wait, no car yet. He could just make one tomorrow.

This bag of Gold Coins weighed over a hundred pounds. There was no doubt it contained 1,000 Gold Coins. It felt wonderfully heavy in his hands.

"Then I'll gladly accept."

Edward stored the Gold Coins in his Spatial Ring, thoroughly satisfied with this win-win deal. Even his earlier reluctance vanished. He turned and pulled over the Suitcase he had prepared long ago—the very one he had used when returning to his homeland before.

"I've packed up this Battle Skirt and Battle Armor for you. I've already adjusted the armor's size with the Shaping Technique. I couldn't alter the skirt, but the original Design Drawings and the Address of the tailor shop that made it are inside. You can send someone to have the tailor alter it after you return, or have a new fitted set made."

As he spoke, Edward took out the altered Knight's Cuirass for the Princess to inspect. Being the considerate person he was, he had enlarged the chest size. He had also taken it upon himself to change the original cross pattern on the cuirass into a Soaring Eagle—the Ornament of the White Hawk Duchy Emblem.

With Edward's experience from his Previous Life, one glance was enough to tell him it should be a 36D, using European and American sizing rather than those undersized island-nation measurements. It gave Edward the strange sensation of making props for cosplayers in his Previous Life. He felt deeply gratified. Too bad he had never learned photography... Ahem, he was getting off track.

The Princess nodded in satisfaction, her gaze plainly saying, You know what you're doing.

Meanwhile, the Baby-faced Pastor gave Edward the look one reserved for a lecherous pervert. It made the Young Alchemist somewhat uncomfortable.

Fortunately, the Princess's group did not linger. They politely bid farewell to the shopkeeper, boarded the Duke's Mansion Carriage that had accompanied them, and departed.

Before they left, Edward also presented several exquisitely packaged boxes of Cookies as thanks for such a VIP Local Tyrant customer. This made the Princess even more pleased with the shopkeeper.

The carriage was not the Princess's personal blue-and-white carriage with its lavish golden trim, but an ordinary Duke's Mansion Carriage. After all, the thoughtful captain of the knights did not want the Princess to cause some citywide scandal on the first day of her return to the Duchy.

And this time, the captain of the knights made an exception and did not ride horseback, instead squeezing into the carriage with the other three.

At first, none of the four people in the carriage spoke. Princess Andrea held the longsword in her arms and gazed at the splendid sunset on the horizon, her eyes curved in crescents and a lovely upward tilt resting at the corners of her lips.

The Baby-faced Pastor and the Beautiful Girl Mage had already made up. Together, they noisily shared the Cookies from the box. As she ate with relish, the girl mage occasionally took out a water flask from her Spatial Ring and drank from it.

Only Reinhardt wore a dark expression as he looked at the Princess admiring the sunset, seeming to want to speak but holding himself back.

The Princess withdrew her gaze, met the captain of the knights' eyes, and asked curiously, "Reinhardt, if you have something to say, just ask. There are no outsiders here."

"Princess, that Smith is dangerous. Why didn't you let me Take action and restrain him? Even if a Sub-Divine Artifact is difficult to make, as long as he was in our hands..."

"Stop, Reinhardt. Have you ever heard of an Alchemist who could create a Sub-Divine Artifact while still at the Apprentice rank?"

"No. Legends say those capable of creating Sub-Divine Artifacts are all figures at the level of Great Magisters," the captain of the knights said with a shake of his head.

"No, there was one," the Baby-faced Pastor mumbled, swallowing the Cookies stuffed in his mouth.

"The Prophet who wrote our church's scriptures. The Oracle Great Sage. The Mud Slab he inscribed when he was twelve is still enshrined in the Franz Oracle Cathedral on Middle Earth. It is one of our church's holy relics."

"You see, he might be some ancient monster playing at worldly life. If you dared to Take action, perhaps our White Hawk Duchy could be erased from the map. Or he might be a Prophet still walking among us."

The Knight Princess looked teasingly at her loyal captain of the knights, then turned to Elwin and asked, "What do the scriptures tell us about how to treat a Prophet?"

Elwin took a drink of the water Alice had brought out, cleared his throat, and solemnly recited, "You shall heed his prophecies, for they are blessings bestowed by God.

"You shall be grateful for his gifts, for they are grace bestowed by God.

"Wherever he travels, the people shall greet him with Dan Shi Hu Jiang.

"When he arrives at a capital, the King shall throw open the Central Gate..." (I made the above up.)

"Think back, Reinhardt. When you and I both revealed the strength of Great Knights, did that Alchemist Apprentice ever show the slightest fear?

"His manner suggested that he truly regarded us as equals. It was neither the attitude of Citizens toward nobles nor that of lower-ranked professionals toward higher-ranked ones. It was simply the attitude of an ordinary shopkeeper toward wealthy customers.

"Even taking the worst-case scenario, suppose that guy is neither an ancient monster nor a Prophet. His confidence tells me that even if you took action against him, he was certain he could keep all of us inside that shop, then evade the city guards and escape without a trace."

Reinhardt's face darkened even further. A few dry words squeezed from his throat. "So?"

"So, when dealing with someone who possesses either strength or potential, turning him into one of our own is the best choice.

"If he is not an ancient monster, that is. I'm considering whether marrying Alice to him would be a good option."

As she said this, Andrea looked teasingly at the Baby-faced Pastor. The pastor's face immediately became as uncomfortable as if he were constipated, and he turned away to avoid the Princess's gaze.

Alice, meanwhile, was wholly focused on eating Cookies. Having just heard her female cousin mention her, she asked curiously, "What about me? What does this have to do with me?"

"Oh, nothing. Just pretend you didn't hear that. Alice, let me ask you something. What do you think of Manager Smith's appearance? What impression do you have of him?"

"He's okay. He's quite pleasant to look at. But the skirts he makes are so pretty, and his pastries are delicious too. I've never seen an Alchemist so neglectful of his proper work. One day, I absolutely have to ask him to design a skirt suitable for a Mage."

The Baby-faced Pastor covered his face and turned his head to the side.

Yet a glimmer of life bloomed across the handsome captain of the knights' gloomily overcast face, and he repeatedly nodded in agreement.

The scheming Princess merely gazed at the sunset on the horizon and smiled without a word...