Chapter 63: Tea Time
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As the gate opened, a guard received him and let him into the mansion. He was taken into a dining room area with a fancy table for various dishes.

Compared to the type of table, he’d been expecting in a mansion like this, it was rather short. Only a few meters in length and width. After being seated at a short-table maids began to set out with dishes and fancy treats.

It seemed like he’d been taken into a special part of the mansion meant to receive guests.

All in all, it would have been the picture perfect scene similar to a noble treating a guest to tea. Except for one key detail, the outfits of the people around him.

The servants, and more specifically, the maids serving his tea, had uniforms that barely covered any skin. The maids’ outfits seemed to be designed with the sole thought of creating a uniform that covered as little skin as possible while still being recognizable as a maid uniform.

When Stanley asked them about woman he spoke to on the wall, the maids informed him she was getting changed.

After waiting what seemed to be forever, the female doppelganger he rescued from the dungeon arrived. She’d changed into a dress flimsy enough to be comparably to the maids, although it was flimsy for another reason entirely.

Her dress had long strips of cloth removed to showcase her stomach’s skin and medium breasts and seemed as if the dress could fall off her at any moment.

While her outfit certainly covered more skin than the maid’s outfit, it didn’t cover the important parts as well as the maid outfit did. After comparing the two, Stanley was unsure whether it could be considered more modest.

Overall, the situation was odd… and Stanley did his best to avoid staring anything inappropriate.

The flimsily dressed maids made and subsequently poured tea into an oriental glass teacups for both of them and after they finished setting up the table, bowed and left the room.

“Have some of the tea. It’s some of the highest quality available.” The woman across from him invited, picking up her own teacup and have a long sip. In the process, parts of her flimsy dress fell and revealed her bare shoulder.

To focus his attention away from her revealing outfit, Stanley stared at the warm tea in front of him.

Stanley didn’t particularly enjoy tea, but he drank it all the same. It was far easier to focus on the taste of tea than on whatever was happening on the other end of the table.

A few minutes into the meal, she stopped drinking tea and introducing herself in a formal fashion. “Now then, shall we introduce ourselves properly? My name is Elisabeth von Ire.”

“Stanley…” Stanley instinctively replied, before realizing his short introduction could be considered rude after her formal introduction and he continued speaking in a more formal fashion, “Stanley Cooper. Nice to meet you, Elisabeth.”

Compared to before, Stanley felt uncertain about whether he would be able to convince the doppelgangers to leave. They had clearly set up a base here long ago and from his brief tour around it, they didn’t seem to have any intention to leave it.

Regardless, he had to try.

“Stanley Cooper… You’re a very interesting person, you know?” Elisabeth teased although her tone seemed indicate it was only partially praise.

Attempted to allay his own suspicions, Stanley replied in a similar tone. “You’re very interesting yourself, Elisabeth.”

“No… I’m not nearly as interesting as you are. Did you know I planned to dosing the tea with aphrodisiac?” She shameless admitted, causing a shiver to run down Stanley spine.

Stanley looked down at the tea subconsciously before pushing it away not planning on having another sip, before he caught her wording. “Planned on? So you didn’t end up doing that?”

“Nope, I was forced to gave up on that plan… but that’s the interesting thing.” Elisabeth explained, “Once I began to plan poisoning you, around twenty different completely unrelated events stopped me. Almost as if the entire universe began fighting against me. In the end, I was forced to give up because every aphrodisiac in my supply ended up completely ruined. Can you believe it?”

Sweat poured down Stanley’s brow, before he sent a silent word of thanks to the narrator for his interference.

“After that, I became suspicious and planned on using sleeping drugs. Yet, a similar thing happened and I was forced to give up on that plan too.” Elisabeth admitted causally.

Stanley, in the meanwhile, was beginning to feel regretful about his optimistic thoughts earlier. Regardless of whether he’d saved her life, she clearly had no plan on repaying her debt to him.

No, in her mind, that might have been a twisted way of repaying her debt.

“In the end, not even a mild sedative ended up in the tea…” Elisabeth concluded with a dissatisfied expression on her face as she continuously played with her dress, revealing more skin the longer the conversation went on.

Stanley stayed focused on the problem at hand rather than her increasingly revealing outfit and asked. “I see… but, why are you telling me this?”

“As I said, you’re an interesting person.” Elisabeth repeated as though it was the answer to Stanley’s question.

Stanley realized he wasn’t dealing with someone entirely sane and adjusted his mentality. Regardless of Elisabeth’s sanity, his goal hadn’t changed. He needed to convince the doppelgangers to leave the city and avoid the upcoming fight.

A flash of light passed through Elisabeth’s eyes as she observed Stanley and she inquired, “You reaction shows that this is the first you’ve heard of this. So, I’m curious… How exactly did you manage to stop me without being aware of what I was doing?”

With this sentence, Stanley felt like he finally understood why Elisabeth was telling him about her deeds. Elisabeth wanted to know whether he was aware of her plot beforehand by observing his reaction.

If he had continued to calmly drink the tea or hadn’t been particularly surprised by her words, it would have meant he was aware of it beforehand and was confident there was no poison in it. Having confidence that there was no poison in the tea would mean that Stanley took deliberate actions to stop her.

Yet… Stanley was clearly unaware of the situation. Thus, the question changed to how he managed to stop her whilst remaining unaware.

Brushing off her question, he responded in a joking manner, “What can I say? Maybe I’m just that lucky.”

Elisabeth countered before taking a sip of the tea, “The number of coincidences goes beyond mere luck. I’ll figure out how you did it eventually.”

“While you think about that, I have my own question.” Stanley stated before continuing with his question. “Can you order the doppelgangers to leave the city?”

Hearing my question, Elisabeth’s eyes flashed in an inquisitive light, “Yes, about that… I am curious, how did you figure out doppelgangers were in the city? You were aware certainly aware of it while we were in the palace.”

“I must’ve heard it from someone.” Stanley replied, attempting to deflect the question.

“My... I must be touching on something important to receive such a blatant lie. Do you think that we would be unaware if someone was spreading around the rumor that there were doppelgangers in the city?” Elisabeth remarked as she absentmindedly played with her frilly clothes.

Stanley felt frustrated as he heard her make deductions. Elisabeth had masterfully deflected his question and seemed to be rapidly learning about him with every word said.

What makes the situation worse is that she dodged his question and making him still unaware of whether she can order the doppelganger to leave the city. If she’s unable to, Stanley’s completely wasting his time talking with her.

“You don’t have an information gathering ability or you would’ve been aware of the poison… Yet, somehow you managed to learn that doppelgangers were in the area.” Elisabeth pondered aloud, while slipping off the other shoulder of her dress and watching Stanley’s reaction.

Her dress was barely clinging to her body and because of her meddling throughout the conversation, the parts it did cover weren’t covered particularly well.

Stanley once again turned head away to prevent a sudden ‘accident’ where all her entire dress fell off. This was no time to play around. While his clone might be buying time, war could break out any second.

“Enough, are you able to order the other doppelgangers to leave the city? Or not?” Stanley demanded unwilling to continue wasting time with her if she refused to answer.

“I'm certainly able to, but… why would I?” Elisabeth answered finally provided a clear response.

Stanley retorted, “If you don’t, a war will break out soon. We need to have the doppelgangers evacuate to prevent unnecessary death.”

“You seem mistaken about something. We aren’t leaving our city. If you want to prevent war so badly, go stop your intelligent races from attacking us.” Elisabeth blatantly stated, clearly dismissive of any potential threat from a war.

Stanley said in disbelief, “Why does it matter? You won’t even leave the city to prevent unnecessary death? To prevent an unnecessary war?”

“Why the HELL should we leave our city!” Elisabeth shouted completely furious this time. “Do you have the slightest idea what it took to build a city like this? How long it took to even get permission to build it?”

“That…” Stanley staggered unprepared for her outburst.

“Of course, you don’t! Instead, you come here with a half-hearted plan to threaten others and save your own people. Ignoring the history, death, and sacrifice of others.” Elisabeth yelled, before calming down slighting and asserting, “No more. We let you people stay here when you first arrived… but, if you come to attack us, we’ll defend ourselves and our city.”

Doppelgangers built this city?

“Sorry… I didn’t know.” Stanley apologized.

Elisabeth scornfully stated, “You didn’t care… I am no longer in the mood to entertain guests, someone will escort you out.” Before pulling up the shoulders of her dress and stepping out.

A few minutes later, one of the maid servants escorted him out of the mansion.

After being kick out of the mansion and sitting on the street beside it, Stanley felt overwhelmed.

He had no idea what to do. It seemed impossible to stop people from attacking doppelgangers, yet it similarly seemed impossible to asking doppelgangers to leave a city they themselves build.

From a doppelganger’s point of view, regular people were entirely in the wrong.

From a regular person’s point of view, doppelgangers are monsters that should be exterminated and an easily target for revenge on the bad things that have happened to them in the city.

After realizing the motivations of both sides, Stanley understood that neither would be willing to give up casually.

Moving back toward the palace, Stanley decided to see exactly what people had planned. Best case scenario is that people had banded together under one leader that he could explain the situation to. If that happens and they listen, it’s possible to prevent people from attacking doppelgangers.

When he ran into a group of unfamiliar people on the way back to palace though, something unexpected occurred.

“There he is!” A man called out.

“Get him!” A feminine voice joined.

[Stanley was force to run away from the group of people. Blissfully unaware that, while Stanley had been enjoying himself at the doppelganger compound, his clone had been rescuing doppelgangers around the city and attracted the ire of many people in the process.]

What?

Briefly watching the situation, Stanley realized the people charge toward him and that the narrator wasn’t kidding, they seemed extremely angry.

Turning around, he sighed to himself before beginning to run away from the chasing group.

Wonderful… so much for explaining the situation to preventing war from breaking out.

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