Seeing her flustered expression, I smiled. "So, you do have things you fear. I thought the more people outside, the more excited you'd get!"
I pulled down my hood, revealing my fiery red hair and my handsome face, full of the vigor of 17 years of youth.
"Lady Ariel, you are 16 this year, aren't you?"
"Yes. Last year, before my 15th birthday, I fled here. I didn't have a birthday banquet in the country. This way, I managed to lull my brother into complacency, preventing him from sending people to stop me before I crossed the border."
"Oh? Then I must give you a belated 15th birthday gift!" I directly lifted her head with my hand, making her look straight at me. She probably guessed what I was about to do. After gazing into my eyes for a moment, she closed them.
This must be the third pair of lips I've kissed today, right? I'm starting to feel like a scumbag.
To avoid making Ariel wait too long, my head also leaned down. Without the eagerness of Doris or the intensity of Eris, the kiss with Ariel was the most normal one, tongues and saliva intertwining.
Perhaps this is what kissing between normal boyfriend and girlfriend was like in my past life?
I don't know if it's a reflex of this body or if all men are the same, but every time we exchanged saliva, my hand would involuntarily wander over the other person's body. Ariel's figure could indeed only be described as well-proportioned.
It was the kind of figure women in my past life especially envied, and while men could only appreciate the beauty on her body, they couldn't feel lust.
After a brief moment of tenderness, my hand was caught and pulled away from the place I couldn't let go of.
"You didn't come back this time just to take advantage of me, did you?" Although Ariel didn't leave my embrace, she didn't seem emotionally stirred by having her first kiss stolen just now.
She is someone whose IQ surpasses her EQ. Although she has feelings, love, and hate, she is not swayed by them; she can always analyze matters with the most rational thinking.
Such a person is formidable, and also terrifying.
"I came back this time to see you and bring you an assistant. Also, I was afraid that if I didn't show up for too long, you would think I tricked you into coming here!"
"Hmph, weren't you?" Ariel squirmed slightly in my arms, but lacking the strength to break free, she could only remain in my embrace and say,
"From the first day I arrived in Sharia, I kept inquiring about Armored Dragon King Perugius, but I gained nothing. Everyone—including the lord, the school teachers, classmates, and the commoners outside—not a single person had any intelligence on Perugius. He is simply not here. You were lying to me."
I tightened my hold to prevent her from struggling and said gently:
"I never said you could meet Armored Dragon King Perugius here. Don't move, listen to me first. Isn't the location of Armored Dragon King Perugius obvious enough?" I pointed my finger toward the sky!
"You mean the Sky Fortress Chaos Breaker?"
I gently patted her full, upturned area.
"Yes, he has always been on the Sky Fortress Chaos Breaker and never left. So, you absolutely cannot meet him in this city. However, you have the destiny to meet him in this city. Perhaps it will be through a certain person, or a certain event. As long as you stay here, you have a chance to meet him, but if you leave here, you will never have that chance. Do you understand? So, don't intentionally search for him. Just act like the disgraced princess who fled the country because your brother was hunting you. Act normally, as you should, such as winning over nobles, investing in promising talents to serve you, and so on. Follow your own script. Just pretend you never heard me say you could meet Perugius. Understood?"
Ariel looked like she understood something but not quite, nodding slightly in a daze.
"I will give you one final time limit. You will definitely meet Perugius before news of your brother's coronation spreads. If you hear that your brother is about to ascend the throne, but you still haven't met Perugius, I, Daolin Prodia Grellat, swear here and now that I will personally fly you over the skies of Ars and use a King-level magic to threaten your brother into abdicating the throne to you. How about that? Am I not great? Don't you have more confidence in me now?"
Ariel finally lay docilely in my arms, no longer grabbing my wandering hand.
"I don't need you to use magic to threaten my brother into abdicating. If that happens, I will have no prestige in the country. Not a single noble will obey my orders, and my brother and the nobles under him will surely submit feigning loyalty only to plot an assassination attempt later. In that case, I might as well not be the King! Indeed, you are right. Right now, without Perugius's support, I have no chance of winning. Staying in the country is the same—just a matter of dying sooner or later. It's a good thing that even though I'm far from the center of power in Sharia now, most of my Guardian Knights have survived."
Seeing Ariel analyze the current situation so quickly, I truly admired her wisdom. In this timeline, due to me, a large portion of her retainers survived. This also resulted in her not being as determined to claim the throne as she might have been. If Perugius never appeared in the end, she probably wouldn't risk death to return to Ars to fight for the throne. I wonder if this is a good thing. But I think Orsted won't let her give up so easily, so I'm probably overthinking it.
Speaking of which, I remember reading in the jobless novel that the Human God cannot control people like Ariel. Does that mean even his Future Sight cannot clearly see Ariel's future?
This is just a hypothesis that cannot be verified.
After spending some tender moments with Ariel, I brought up the purpose of my visit.
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