forli

So, last time someone proposed that I should open a discord for this novel to help with my various issues. It sounds better than annoying my readers by constantly complaining in the actual story.

But I don't really know much about how to set it up, if anyone can/wants to help me I would appreciate it.

Anyway, for now, I finally managed to finish writing this chapter, it's really been the most difficult one yet.

So that was the man who has been keeping the demon wasteland in check all this time. I just barely remembered to use appraisal on him before he left.

{Race: Human, Class: Mage, Element: Wind/Water, Level: 375}

I cannot tell for sure unless I see more of his magic, but that wind magic I felt seemed very advanced. His level is lower than Kalroth's, and yet I get the feeling that the old man would have easily won had he needed to fight him.

Well, he still feels weak if I compare him to Vilde.

"Hey, Luna! I already took care of Zerana."

"Oh, thank you Xania."

The other day, Arana gave me some threads infused with light magic in case I needed to keep Zerana in check. Since she's made it clear that we cannot trust her to behave, I told Xania to tie her up somewhere, she seemed strangely happy about it.

"Hehe, you should have seen her face when the mud splashed all over her."

"Uh... Where exactly did you tie her?"

Xania and Zerana seem to be very close. They are always yelling at each other and never miss an opportunity for a prank.

Before we can continue that conversation, Nera comes back running.

"Luna! Prince Sette is almost here, you need to get ready."

"Prince Who- Oh! The second prince of the Magnel kingdom! The one I'm supposed to meet today!"

Fortunately, I remembered who he was just in time. Nera was about to get annoyed with me again.

"Just make sure to behave as I taught you and you will be fine."

"Yes, of course..."

Nera seems to really like all of that 'proper etiquette' stuff, but it's just too boring to me, and I'm never able to focus on things I find boring. I cannot let her know that I got distracted by a butterfly when she was giving me that lesson earlier... Well, I'm sure I'll be able to improvise.

"Where is he now?"

"Getting closer to the west gate."

"Alright, let's take a look."

'Black gate'

I prepared some small magic circles in various hidden places. The black gates I can open with them are too tiny to be noticed but still allows me to see and hear through them.

There are a lot of people that appear to be knights, are they bodyguards? Well, I should appraise anyone that comes here anyway, you never know when one of them will have 'witch' as race and 'wind' as element.

{Race: Human, Class: Soldier, Element: Earth, Level: 112}
{Race: Human, Class: Guardian, Element: Light, Level: 106}
{Race: Human, Class: Warrior, Element: Earth, Level: 127}

"Most of these people are barely above level 100, isn't that too weak to be protecting a prince?"

"Above level 100 is not weak, what are you talking about? The knights that used to guard me were also around that level."

"But there are a bunch of people above 250 around here and they were really easy to beat."

"Those are the strongest in the demon wasteland. I think that your sense of scale has gotten a bit twisted after only interacting with strong people..."

There's a young man dressed in expensive-looking clothes that doesn't seem to be a knight.

"Hey Nera, is that the prince?"

"I've never seen him before, but he probably is."

{Race: Human, Class: Bard, Element: Earth, Level: 17}

"He's only level 17, I thought that all mature humans were level 20 as a base even if they have never trained."

"Yeah, I've never done any fighting and even I'm level 23... Maybe that's part of the reason why everyone who's met him has such a low opinion of him."

"A low opinion? I wonder why that is?"

As soon as I ask that, he turns to say something to one of his guards.

"Ugh, we still have the stink from when we crossed the gray demon territory earlier. I guess people who play with corpses all the time wouldn't care about hygiene."

"Your highness, someone could hear you say that."

"So what? The gray demons are too dumb to even know what hygiene is."

"I'm going to rip off that nose if it bothers him so much." Xania is trying to aim a spell through that tiny gate, but Nera is holding her back.

"You said that you were going to behave! Don't attack our guest over something so petty!"

"Still, the smell of fish from that time we went to the Agua kingdom was even worse. It's no wonder that even that idiot princess took the chance to leave that dump as fast as she could."

"Let me strangle him, just a little."

"Didn't you just say to not get angry over petty things?!"

And now Xania is the one holding Nera back.

Mmm, something is wrong, what are the odds that he would coincidentally say the precise things that would make the people that just happened to be watching at this precise time angry? I have a bad feeling about this...

"Prince Sette, you need to be more careful. We are in a very dangerous place."

"You don't need to tell me to be careful, I always watch my every step wherever I go."

*Splosh*

And now he just stepped into a puddle just after saying that.

"Kya!"

Ah, that puddle was actually slime. I believe her name was Drepe, I guess that she needed to watch the visitors too, being a spy seems like a tough job.

"What's this?! Let me go!"

"I-I'm trying!"

After flailing around in a panic he got completely stuck in the slime. It looks like it might be difficult to separate them.

"What are you all doing?! Can't you see that I'm being attacked?!"

"But your highness... That looks more like you are attacking her."

"Agh! Let me go or I'll use this 'magic torch'!"

"No! If you set my slime on fire it's going to-"

*BANG*

Woah! I wasn't expecting it to explode. It wasn't a strong explosion, but it still managed to send him into a nearby empty barrel. His guards are now struggling to get him unstuck while Drepe is picking up all the pieces of slime that she lost just now.

Mmm, something feels seriously wrong with this whole situation. First, he says some stuff that makes the people listening angry at him, and then he proceeds to make a fool of himself. It's almost as if... as if...

"Man, that guy is a total clown." Xania finishes my thought for me.

"That's it! That's why I was having such a strong bad feeling... "

"Eh?"

"A clown is coming this way! I need to hide before he finds me!"

"No... Wait... Just wait a second! That's not the type of clown I meant."

"A clown is a clown. And from all the strange coincidences that we just witnessed, his clown factor must be particularly strong. We need to do something before it's too late!"

"What the hell is a 'clown factor'? And too late for what?"

"I'm not sure, he might do something like... Release a bunch of multicolored balloons in the castle!"

"He's not going to do that, and who cares if he does?! Why are you so afraid of clowns anyway? You are several times stronger than that guy and all of his guards combined!"

"Being strong is not going to help if he takes out one of those clown horns and starts honking at me..."

"HE'S NOT GOING TO DO THAT!!!"

This is bad, Xania doesn't believe me and is only getting angrier the more I try to explain... I guess that it's common for people to be in denial in the face of an impending disaster.

"Nera, you believe me right?"

"Uh... But I thought that you were only afraid of literal clowns, not figurative ones. I don't think that this is such a big deal..."

"Not a big deal?! What if he has one of those fake flowers that splash water at people?!"

"He doesn't have anything like that! Stop being stupid already!!!"

Now even Nera is getting mad... There's no other choice, I need to show them some solid proof.

I do not have any pies in my storage... I guess a cream puff will have to do. Still, a pie would work better. I should see about getting a few cream pies after this, you know, for emergencies.

"Nera, let's do a test. Take this and throw it against that wall."

"How many cream puffs do you have to be willing to waste them like this?"

Ugh... I wouldn't be asking her to do this if I had a choice... This is a necessary sacrifice.

"Just throw it, please."

"Ok, whatever."

The moment Nera throws the cream puff, something strange happens. First, her aim slips, and the pastry's trajectory leads it to the door instead of the wall, and then...

"Why is there so much noise in here? What is goi-"

...the prince opens the door to our room and gets his face covered in cream.

"..."

"..."

We stare at each other for a moment, and then...

"AAAAAAH!!!"

"AAAAAAAAAAAH!!!"

*Bang*

Fortunately, he decided to retreat and closed the door with a slam.

"Luna... You are way too big to hide behind me."

"You're right, I should hide behind Xania next time, she's a bit taller."

"I don't think she's tall enough either, and that's not really the problem here."

"Yes, now that you have seen how strong his clown factor is, do you realize what the problem is?"

"Eh... I don't know..."

"Didn't you feel as if there was a force that got you to throw the cream puff at his face?"

"Now that you mention it..."

"Hey, tell the truth, you actually aimed for the door, right?"

"I didn't, and even if I did, what are the odds that he would open the door at that precise moment?"

"S-so you think that he really has a 'clown factor' that caused all of this?"

"N-no, there's no way..."

Xania and Nera are starting to sound a bit nervous.

"No, that's impossible! It makes no sense! It must have been all just a coincidence!"

"That's right! It was a coincidence after all!"

Oh, they still refuse to accept the truth, I don't know what else I can do to convince them.

Xania scratches her head. "With all of this nonsense, I forgot that I was supposed to be mad at him. Why would they send someone like that as a diplomat? You were supposed to be something like royalty, right? Do you have any ideas?"

"What do you mean 'something like'... I don't know what those people are thinking. Considering his personality and Luna's reputation, I don't know how they can be expecting him to make it out of here alive... Maybe they thought that this visit was too dangerous and decided to send the least useful member of their royalty. Or perhaps they just want to get rid of him and let Luna be the one responsible. But the implications of that would be pretty bad for us, if they are not afraid of angering her they must be thinking that she's planning to attack them anyway..."

"Woah! Do you really think that his own family would want to kill him?!"

"Ah! No! No! I don't really know them after all! I was just doing some baseless speculation, I'm not accusing anyone of anything!"

Even if it was just a guess, she might not be far off the mark. At least it seems likely that his family does not appreciate him very much.

"I see... I was wrong."

"Eh?"

"I was also rejected by my family because of some traits I didn't choose to have, and I of all people should know better than to judge someone because of a bad first impression. Nobody should be rejected so completely, even if they are a clown!"

"Luna..."

"Well, you have to admit that it was a really bad first impression."

"Even so I cannot accept it... I cannot accept that they would send him to die just because everyone is afraid of him!"

""YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE THAT'S AFRAID OF HIM!!!""

Amazing! They both said the exact same thing at the exact same time without any practice.

"So, you say that the people from his country would not expect him to come back alive because of my reputation? Which means that, if he does, they will realize that my reputation must be wrong!"

"Well, not necessarily."

So I have to conquer my fears to prove that I should not be feared either...

Well, all I have to do is make sure that the prince safely completes his visit to the demon wasteland and then goes back home unharmed. How difficult could that be?

forli

A long time ago, I thought that it would be interesting to reverse the usual dynamics by making Luna be irrationally afraid of someone else because of some personal fear of hers. I was afraid that the whole thing would feel like it came out of nowhere, so I introduced the idea of her being afraid of clowns back in chapter 55, even if I still didn't know how I would end up using it later. But it turns out that the introduction was what ended up feeling like it came out of nowhere, and that chapter ended up feeling really forced and contrived.

Now I'm finally using it, but I don't even know if there's anyone who wanted the clown thing to come back. And this chapter ended up also feeling forced no matter how I tried to write it.

And there's also the fact that I'm introducing an 'annoying' character, a type that is written so poorly in so many stories and I personally dislike. I don't know if I was able to write it in a good way, it's bad when the readers are the ones who get annoyed, and it would be particularly bad for this character since I'm planning to do some other stuff with him.

There was also the part where one group of people was watching another group and I had so much trouble trying to make it clear what was going on without pointing out who was saying every single sentence.

Anyway, at least this is done now, sorry for everything.