The day before setting out to search for Dodo Island, another piece of good news arrived. The green yuanbao potted plant Liszt's grandmother had given him for his birthday had finally produced an Elf Bug.
After the contract was formed.
It became Liszt's thirty-eighth Elf Bug.
So far, counting the elves contracted by A Ke, he possessed one Great Elf, six Little Elves, and forty-three Elf Bugs. His estate was now vast; he was long past the shabby poverty of his early days in Flower Town. Compared to certain Counts with shallow foundations, he was no worse off.
Thinking back to Meiopal's birthday banquet, he had met Lady Martha Fleabane, the widow of the Count of Diagonal Island.
When she had said that he could obtain a Little Elf simply by staying at her Daisy Castle for a while, he had nearly been swayed.
"Back then, I was tormented over a single Little Elf. Now I have so many elves... so why does my heart still feel tormented?" He had thought he could simply overlook Daisy Castle's invitation, only to discover that he still could not let go of that Little Elf.
Stay for a while and get a Little Elf—what in the world could be a better bargain than that!
Lady Martha's image would also occasionally surface in his mind: a noblewoman around thirty, dignified in bearing and noble in temperament, with an unconcealable charm lingering between her brows and eyes. One could imagine that in the full bloom of her youth, she must have been an eight-out-of-ten beauty at the very least.
Unfortunately, after Meiopal's birthday banquet, he had never seen Lady Martha again.
Nor had they exchanged contact information.
Though he did not correspond with Lady Martha regularly, Liszt had always maintained regular correspondence with the Long-Yam