The Demon Lord's Bride (BL)
Chapter 126: Don’t let yourself be probed when you’re in the middle of probing

Chapter 126: Don’t let yourself be probed when you’re in the middle of probing

So, with the bait taken, the elf finally agreed to work there, for me. Not that he had much choice in the first place.

I had wondered why this floor had a living space when it was supposed to be research chambers, but it seemed to be prepared by Natha for this exact situation.

"You can’t go out anyway, so just stay here and work on something until winter," the Lord decreed, and the elf was only slightly grumbling this time while signing his new contract--or rather...a debt waiver.

The name signed in the contract was Eziliebrien...or something, and obviously, he didn’t put down his tribe’s name since he was exiled anyway. But he insisted to be called Izzi and nothing else, so despite tradition and whatnot, we would call him that.

I kind of feel like he probably got exiled for more reason than creating a blasphemous weapon.

In that case, except for the fact that he couldn’t go out, this shouldn’t be a bad situation for him anyway. He didn’t have to run, didn’t have to be concerned about food, and could experiment all he liked, with materials that came from my money. Err...from Natha’s money, actually. But yeah.

Before that, though, he had to make me some bullet casings first.

"You really put purified mana in here?" he was still fascinated with the bullet even after Natha had gone back to the Lord’s office. "Why haven’t I thought about this before..."

"Probably because you never met a druid before?" Lesta, who had decided it was a good time to ditch work and stayed behind, shrugged while snacking on my cookies with Jade.

"I’ve met Druid before!"

"But not the ’Royal’ one," Eruha chimed in, looking up from my report book about those other books he told me to read.

At this, the elf stuttered. "Well, n-no...but--wait, you’re a Royal?!"

He turned to look at me, wide-eyed, almost dropped the bullet to the floor. Not that they would explode...I think.

"I have royal bloodline...presumably," I answered with a shrug.

"Shit!" he started to curse, only to clamp his mouth with his palm. He then proceeded to look at me carefully, and asked in a quiet tone. "Uhh...should I call you like...Your Highness or something?"

"No? It’s not like the kingdom still exists," I shook my head. "Just call me normally."

He made a face that was certainly confused as to what pertained to normal, and Eruha gave him enlightenment. "It’s ’Young Master’, Elf."

"Ugh...that sounds weird," Izzi, who didn’t seem to like any formal arrangement of anything, shuddered at probably the thought of calling me that every day.

Hmm...if he was really a reincarnator or something like that, it would probably feel weird having to call everyone with titles, suddenly. It was like how it was for me when demons suddenly bowed their head politely because I was Natha’s bride. Thankfully, being called ’Young Master’ was something I was used to in my previous life, so it wasn’t that jarring.

But...it was also possible that he was just the kind that was rebellious and free-spirited from the start, so...who knew, we shall see.

I watched him make a face of great contemplation before finally muttering in hesitation. "...boss?"

"Sure," I shrugged.

"How crude," Eruha commented with a clicking tongue.

"It’s good enough," I told him and made it final. I didn’t really mind or care what he called me, honestly, as long as he didn’t call me ’Val’ and invite Natha’s wrath. Besides, there were more important things to do than argue about what to call me. "So, can you make it with the material that we have? Or should I make some special order?"

"No, everything’s good. I still have my mold, so I just need to calibrate it here," the elf shook his head and finally took a seat for the first time that day, after carefully putting the bullet on the table between us. "Making the casing is not a problem, but...Boss?"

"Mm?"

He tapped on the table and asked carefully, lowering the volume of his voice. "Have you tried the bullet before?"

Why did he ask that as if it was something scandalous?

"No, I wanted to wait until I have a spare casing, in case it won’t work."

"It will!" he replied instantly, slamming his fist on the table. No, he wasn’t angry, just excited. But it made Jade jump in surprise and toppled off the biscuit jar, so the space had to be filled with loud angry chirping for a while.

Izzi cleared his throat awkwardly as Lesta held the angry bird from pecking the heck out of the elf. "I mean...at least the bullet is. But I think we need to modify the formation on the revolver for a bit," he looked around the meeting room then, "Where is it?"

"Ah, I was thinking the same," I took out a small box that I used to put the revolver in from my storage ring. I pull out the velvet covering on the base along with the revolver I had just assembled not long ago. "Here, I disassemble it a bit some time ago, and I think at this point, we can add..."

And then, the time that I was supposed to be used as a study session with Eruha changed into a discussion to improve the revolver. We huddled over the revolver and talk about the output energy level and kinetic augmentation and whatnot.

Thanks to Lesta, though, I didn’t have to suffer having jealous Jade hovering around me, since the little bird was playing around with the demon while I was busy designing new spell formation with Izzi.

I felt sorry for Eruha, but while I was focusing on this, I completely forgot about him. He did say he didn’t mind and told me to just continued, while he was scribbling things in my report book. It was only later than I knew he was making advanced test questions for my homework, which sucked--’didn’t mind’ my ass.

Anyway, in the middle of our discussion, Izzi suddenly looked up to stare at me and asked. "Are you sure...you never use firearms before?"

"No," I replied truthfully. But the elf didn’t seem to be convinced since the golden eyes narrowed dubiously. But it was true--how could I ever use guns before? Grandpa did, and his subordinates, but I wasn’t allowed near one even before I got hospitalized. "...my troops weren’t given mana cannon support, so..."

I tried to add more with Valmeier’s perspective, and the golden eyes finally shifted back to the revolver instead of fixating on me. "Hmm...It’s just that...you seem quite knowledgeable about this."

Uh-oh.

Oh crap. Wait, I wouldn’t get found out now, right? I should be the one to probe his background, not the other way around! Before I knew exactly whether he came from another world, or was just an avant-garde whimsical genius inventor, I couldn’t let him know about my identity.

Especially not with Lesta and Eruha still here.

So, drawing as much acting prowess as I could, which I did not professionally possess, I responded calmly and nonchalantly. "Is that so?" I tried to make it sound like I was just handling some common praise. "I did some research when I found your invention though," which wasn’t a lie too, and I brought another actor while at it. "Jade asked me if this thing can turn big into a cannon once after we read some books, it was fun."

[Fun! But small cannon no fun, can’t turn big like Jade!]

"Jade was disappointed because it can’t grow big," I told them.

"It’s never supposed to be!" the elf grumbled. "It’s supposed to be good on its own..."

"You know...it’s not such a bad idea," Lesta commented, looking at Jade and proceeding to pat the little bird, who looked back at him in a mix of confusion and smugness. "I shall take a note."

It sounded like a passing thought, but if it was Lesta who said it, we could bet that he was actually serious about considering the development of size-changing cannon.

To this day, I actually had no idea what Lesta’s job desk was exactly in Natha’s household. Arta told me Lesta’s job was to do whatever Natha wanted him to do, but wasn’t that a given to any subordinate? I kind of heard he was also in charge of external communications or whatever, like...foreign affairs? Eruha told me Lesta was the one who fetch him from the Pride realm--was that why they were so...close? When I asked him, however, Eruha only jokingly said that Lesta’s job was to be his personal blood bag.

That being said, the other demons seemed to look for him a lot, even though he seemed to have too much free time on his hands. So I asked Natha one day, and he simply said Lesta was his right-hand man--err...right-hand demon?

So...yeah, I bet one of the floors in this building would be dedicated to developing this size-changing cannon sooner or later.

Well, not my problem. I still had a gun to be made.

"I have to say you have good understanding about how this things works, Boss. You know exactly what I wanted to achieve with this," the elf waved the revolver in the end. "I thought I’d be the only one to..." he stopped, and then sighed, probably lamenting about how he got chased out of his hometown.

"It’s because our Young Master has a broad mind," Erupa commented from the side, and I raised my brow at him.

Do I?

"A human-druid hybrid that agreed to become a Demon Lord’s bride?" the elf let out a hearty laugh. "I think ’broad mind’ is an understatement."

"Hey!" I glared at him.

"What? I never said it’s bad," he shrugged, and gave me an impish, mischievous smirk.

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