Your Majesty, Dinner Is Ready. - Chapter 141

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 141: C-rank Dungeon – Southern Continent Expedition (2)
I couldn’t see anything ahead.
A blindfold covered my eyes as I was dragged along.
My hands were bound behind my back with handcuffs, and chains connected to both ankles—loose enough to barely walk.
“Move faster.”
Crack!
The sailor guiding me seized the chain attached to an iron collar around my neck and yanked.
A force no fragile Half-Elf Socialite could resist.
“Oops.”
My body lurched forward, leaving me no choice but to lean against the sailor’s muscular back.
With my limbs bound, I had to remain still for a moment.
“…Get off me.”
“Why must you be so cold? It hurts my feelings.”
“Please stop your chatter. A slave shouldn’t talk so much.”
He grumbled but didn’t raise a hand against me.
His appearance was fierce, yet his nature was gentle.
I found myself captivated by this charm that defied all expectations.
“If I survive this, I’ll establish a society of people who admire you. As its chairwoman, I’ll collect every single hair from your head, your fingernails, toenails, sweat, tears, and saliva—and treasure them all.”
“……”
The sailor, occasionally capable of dignified silence, continued walking without a word.
Splash!
The sound of waves crashing recklessly against the hull pierced my ears.
I could faintly hear the spiteful howl of wind and rain.
“Sailor.”
“No.”
“How do you know what I’m about to say before I’ve said it?”
“You’ve repeated that same request eight times already.”
“I gave up on that one—you refused so coldly.”
I tapped my bound hands against my waist as I asked, “Does every other ship have a ‘prayer room’ in the hold like this?”
“……”

The sailor stopped walking for a moment.
“…How did you know we’re heading to the prayer room when your eyes are covered?”
“The world shows us things even when we cannot see them.”
《Look at me proving the competence of my Eye That Pierces Truth! It’s a Rank-4 ability, but still :)》
The sailor, quiet until now, resumed moving.
“You said you’re a Socialite, right?”
He was attempting small talk while feigning indifference—rather transparently, too.
Love isn’t one-directional.
Once you cross that bridge, the other person can’t help but react, for better or worse.
That’s why Sin: Lust was a Secret Art that didn’t enchant the user into fascination but instead concentrated the target’s interest entirely upon them.
– Now you’ll never notice my sister exists.
I sent a telepathic message to my quietly hidden ally: [Great, we’re friends now!] Then I opened my mouth.
“That’s right. A cute Half-Elf Socialite.”
“…Cute, my ass.”
A hint of warmth seeped into the voice that had maintained distance throughout.
It wasn’t a delusion born from desperate infatuation.
Though I couldn’t read others’ hearts, my time working under Chief Choi had made me uncannily perceptive about the subtle emotions buried in people’s words and actions.
“A Half-Elf serving some evil god—I can guess why easily enough. You probably had no choice but to become a Socialite as a child, forced into it by your deranged kinfolk and their ‘Puritan’ nonsense.”
The Sea Elf sailor’s voice carried a chill of contempt, infused with the spirit of the ocean.
“My child was a Half-Elf too. My husband was human.”
“If she resembled you, I’m sure she had a healthy constitution free from chronic illness.”
“…She would have. If the Impurity Slaughter Corps hadn’t cursed her.”
Rumble!
A deep, resonant thunder—the kind that would please Her Majesty—pierced through the sturdy, well-insulated hull and reached my ears.
“I’ll do anything to save my daughter. I’m sorry.”
“……”
My ability to see through others’ true feelings falls drastically short.
No wonder Yunji had seriously advised me: “When you don’t understand, just say nothing. Don’t smile—it might look scary.”
But still.
In a situation where everything was this clear, even I could transform into an empathy machine capable of considering another’s feelings.
“I understand.”
I walked carefully, hampered by the leg shackles, and offered a smile.
“Please don’t feel guilty on my account. I’m accustomed to being treated roughly.”
“…No. You won’t be fine.”
A voice heavy with tangled, conflicting emotions reached me weakly.
“You’re going to suffer things so terrible you’ll think death would be a mercy.”
“Sailor, I am a servant of Lidni.”
“Who?”
“Someone from the distant past who swallowed seven World Trees whole.”
“Ah, that evil god. Still hasn’t perished, then.”
《:(》
“My mind contains nearly all the world’s information. I even know why this ship is passing through waters beset by rough waves and violent storms right now.”
“…….”
The sea route from the Eastern Continent to the Southern Continent should pass through the Windless Zone—ordinarily far too calm, a problem in itself.
That was how it was supposed to be.
Whoooosh.
As rain and wind threw their temperamental tantrum, the ship tilted slightly.
The sailor caught me before I fell.
“Thank you. You’re very kind.”
“…Let me ask you just one thing.”
“Would you like me to tell you what I find most shameful about myself?”
“Why did you volunteer, knowing what you’d face? How could you….”
Now his voice carried pity as well.
Perhaps he was superimposing the image of his own daughter—also a Half-Elf—onto me.
I shook the handcuffs and leg shackles constraining my limbs lightly as I answered.
“If I didn’t volunteer, wouldn’t others be sacrificed instead? Even if they are all heinous criminals, they at least deserve the right to die with some dignity.”
“…Why would you willingly suffer for those wretches?”
“Because Saint Seraphina would have done the same.”
《Seraphina would surely have made the same choice as you, but her fundamental reason would have been entirely different…》
“…Ha, haha.”
The sailor let out a faint, helpless laugh.
A sign that the walls around his heart were slowly crumbling.
I seized the moment and spoke quickly.
“Please marry me.”
“I told you I already have a daughter….”
“I have long desired polygamy.”
“…….”
The sailor, who had hesitated without responding to my words, soon moved forward.
How long did we walk after that?
“We’re here.”
As we reached a place emanating a strange odor, the sailor stopped me.
Knock, knock.
“I’ve brought her, Captain.”
No answer came back.
But as if it was a familiar situation, the sailor opened the door without waiting and led me inside.
Then a foul stench hit my nose hard.
“…I’ll take a look.”
“No, please don’t leave me here.”
“S-stay back.”
After the Sea Elf Sailor, who had coldly brushed off my grasp, faded from my senses.
“Lift your head.”
A voice frigid enough to make one’s ears sting issued a command.
Jinsil pierced through the blindfold obscuring my vision and displayed the text.
《’Solmiran’s Hammer’ Captain Kiathe (human, 42 years old). Not just an ordinary captain! A loathsome lord of the deep sea, a Socialite serving Nadeus’Saphr. I’m about to hate this filthy sewage.》
Crackle!
He immediately expressed his disgust and commanded me to burn it away with lightning.
But I couldn’t turn the captain employed by expedition leader Brinya into a charred Socialite.
Since the words came from one who might as well rule this ship, I obediently did as commanded.
“…You’ve brought something impressive indeed. A Half-Elf? What elf’s bloodline runs through you?”
“A Sun Elf.”
“A Half-Elf born as a Socialite! Now that’s entertaining. Meterd must be watching you with bated breath.”
Captain Kiathe, chuckling darkly, dragged me along before collapsing onto the deck with crude violence.
Right before my face, a reek so vile it burned my nostrils.
“Are you shoving my face into a toilet? Is that your particular taste?”
“Don’t play dumb. You’re a Socialite too, so you understand the situation well enough, don’t you? I didn’t seek out a slave just to satisfy some crude sexual appetite.”
Crack-crack-crack!
At his words dismissing such base desire, Sue’je’s fury swelled even louder than before.
“You shall conduct religious practice for Lord Nadeu’saf, so remain still and offer no resistance.”
That loathsome lord of the deep.
A fallen tide and a foul storm’s dark god.
Nadeu’saf.
What this exalted one desired as religious practice was to suffocate the clean-seeming in foul water.
In these modern times of dwindling believers, even partial defilement of the body sufficed for recognition—though a Socialite bearing the abnormal state [Fanatic] was not on intimate terms with “partial.”
“I do hope you endure for a long while.”
The cold breath that escaped Captain Kiathe’s lips brushed against the side of my face.
“If you perish too swiftly, the exalted one shall be disappointed.”
Splash!
Kiathe plunged my head beneath the foul water.
The instant I was engulfed in that filthy brine.
The wind and rain outside, the lightning, the crash of waves—all ceased at once, and a voice of indescribable strangeness began to reverberate in my ears.
【Accept the corruption.】
【Hope shall be drowned and dreams shall perish.】
【The deep awaits you.】
Foul seawater rises within my mind.
That unfathomably distant one dwelling in the abyss.
The voice of one who wishes to defile all the world begins to erode my consciousness.
“……!”
Then came the vertiginous grip of suffocation and the stench.
I cannot breathe.
And yet the foul reek pours in unimpeded.
An irrational torment—robbed of breath while the stench forces itself deep into my senses.
Splash!
After what felt like nearly ten minutes of my body thrashing wildly, I was yanked back out into the air.
“How does it feel?”
Kiathe, still gripping my hair, let out a vacant chuckle before speaking.
“…You’re smiling?”
“Whew, how dizzying. Quite the novel experience.”
“And your mind remains intact…?”
Should one’s head remain submerged for long in the foul water generated by that loathsome Socialite of the deep, the mind itself becomes defiled.
Unlike the days of his full power, complete corruption now requires at least three days of submersion, yet even minutes of brief drowning ought to inflict at least minimal contamination—so the normal course would proceed.
Provided the victim possessed no Secret Art of mental defense whatsoever.
“Ahahaha! Have you still not grasped it?”
Gasping for breath, I made no attempt to restrain the laughter that kept spilling from my lips.
“I am a form cherished and beloved by the exalted one.”
[Rigid Thunderstrike].
A Tier 5 Secret Art of the Unclean Merchant.
Fundamentally, it renders the body a conduit for lightning, and grants a certain degree of resistance against direct mental attacks—not mere abnormal states.
“No matter how filthy the sea becomes, it can never defile the merchant’s domain.”
“…If once is not enough, then repeat it several times.”
Kiathe shoved my head back into the foul water, and after a time, withdrew it once more.
He repeated this five times in succession, pressing me repeatedly with mental corruption, suffocation, and vile reek.
“Ahahaha, hahahaha!”
Each time, laughter thundered from my lips with tremendous force.
This is what life is.
This is joy itself.
The very reason I could never cease my expeditions.
“…Perhaps I didn’t bring the right one after all. Perhaps I simply chose wrong.”
Kiathe muttered in a daze.
He had apparently come to realize that I was unsuitable as a subject for religious practice devoted to the exalted one, for his grip upon my hair had begun to weaken.
“Kiathe. Do you still not feel it?”
“…Feel what.”
In truth, even without the Rigid Thunderstrike, my mind wouldn’t have been corrupted in any meaningful way.
【 …Would you be willing to serve one so profound?】
At some point, the voice urging depravity that came through the sewage had grown cautious.
“Nadeusaph already regards me as a more valuable intellect than you are.”
With the trait Zealot, I am never broken by a Socialite’s mental assault.
For I receive the love of all the evil gods in full measure.
“…How absurd!”
Kiathe hurled my body roughly to the ground.
Was he already trying to end this game of pretense?
Perhaps happiness truly is nothing but a phantom beyond one’s grasp.
“The Deep One favors you more than me?”
Clang.
The sharp, distinctive ring of steel.
“Then I’ll offer you as a living sacrifice—he’ll be pleased with that.”
“I’m sure he will be.”
In fact, Zealot has a hidden effect: when one becomes a sacrifice, the evil god’s satisfaction reaches its maximum.
Becoming an offering wouldn’t be such a terrible experience, I suppose.
But if the Nadeusaph in this Dungeon were anything like the real one, I had no desire to throw myself at the mercy of that false god.
“Don’t blame your fate too harshly. Others will soon follow where you go.”
Kiathe climbed atop my body.
The position was far too shameful, and I felt heat rise to my face as I spoke with care.
“…Sister, you may come out now.”
Crack!
The moment the words left my lips, a dull, heavy impact exploded from directly above.
A tremendous crash followed—something shattering and splintering beyond repair.
……
Presently, Rosalia removed the blindfold that had covered her eyes and looked down at me.
I met her crimson gaze and spoke.
“I wasn’t enjoying myself. I was waiting for Nadeusaph to acknowledge my existence.”
……
“Yes, I understand. There was a small element of personal desire involved as well.”
Bang!
Rosalia shook her head slightly, shattered both the handcuffs and leg shackles, and produced the Golden Spirit Band from the shadows, handing it to me.
“Thank you. You’re the best, sister.”
As I removed the slave outfit and changed into the Sky Invader from Radiant Faith, Kiathe was dragged before me.
His face was swollen and puffed.
“Kiathe. You’ve certainly experienced a thorough faith practice thanks to me, haven’t you?”
I bent at the waist slowly and met his gaze.
“Now then, I believe it’s my turn to practice my faith.”
A confused man.
In precisely the manner Okayle prefers.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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