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The sound of children's laughter filled the streets, and the sweet scent of caramel permeated the air. The town's atmosphere was bustling with activity and I was basking in all its excitement. Finally arriving at the scene, the footman parked the carriage right beside an empty spot and rushed to open my carriage door.

Meanwhile, Sir Klein went to tie up his horse at an open stable. It was nearby from where we were so he told us to wait while he went to do so .

As I took the footman's hand to step off the carriage, Marise quickly pulled my hood up to cover my hair. Ah! I had almost forgotten that I was supposed to be incognito while I was here. A duke's daughter is nothing short of a walking target, a hundred thousand— no, possibly a million, diamonds worth of ransom.

Not to mention, Evangeline wasn't just anyone, she was someone well known in high society. 

"My lady, you have to be careful," Sir Klein appeared from out of nowhere. He quickly stepped in front of me to cover my appearance from any straying eyes. Luckily, the streets we were in was more or less deserted so no one actually caught a glimpse of me before my hood was pulled up.

I scratched my cheek sheepishly and gave an apologetic smile. Walking around with the two of them by my side, this time much more careful with my actions, I couldn't help but have a constant grin plastered on my face. All around me, I saw wooden stalls lined with fantastical wares and delicious food.

A florist over there!

A cosmetic shop over here!

A stall selling pastries the shaped of ducklings?

Oh my! This was going to be a great day of shopping!

"Aren't you forgetting what you came here for?" a rough cough interrupted my awe. My straw-weaved sling bag rustled with movement before a tiny feathery head popped up, and Nova was looking at me with a scowl.

"Eh— right, of course, I remember," I looked away. His face bore the expression of someone disbelieving in my words. 

Ugh. Fine! After we get your stupid bird feed, I'm gonna enjoy myself around the marketplace. I don't care how much you complain!

"Marise, where do we find the bamboo seeds?"

"Over in the import store, my lady"

The four of us, with Nova safely hidden in my bag, made our way to the store according to Marise's directions. Both Marise and I wore a cloak over our heads, while Sir Klein wore his knight armor and a blue cape. The townsfolk consisted mainly of commoners so, they all turned their eyes away whenever they saw him walking past. 

"What's this?" I stopped in front of a particular shop. It was on the way to the import store and caught my wandering eye. It looked a little rundown; the wooden sign was close to falling apart, the windows were tinted black and cracked at some parts, and not to mention it had a gloomy aura around it. If I didn't know better, I would have thought that it was an abandoned shop.

"That's not a place for my lady to step foot in. Let's be on our—"

"It's an alchemy store"

"SIR KLEIN!"

Sir Klein cut off Marise's words. Good ol' straight-to-the-point Dmitri Klein. You can always count on him to tell you truth whenever you ask for it, provided you're not an enemy, of course. I let out a small laugh, watching Marise's eyes roll in anger.

"An alchemy store?" 

"My lady, wait—"

"Yes. There are a few alchemy stores in the kingdom, and this being one of the very few. But, not everyone views alchemy as a good thing. Some, most especially, noble mages even refers to it as a weakling's crutch"

I cocked my head to the side. I knew about alchemy only because Evangeline herself used alchemy items like teleportation scrolls and mana enhancement potions. Aside from the male leads, a majority of noble mages have egos twice the size of their heads. They refuse to use support items in fear of being looked down upon. For a noble mage, it is better to die than to be seen as weak. 

In contrast, commoner mages do not have the luxury to hold on to their egos since it's likely that their families' livelihood depends on their job as a mage. That is why commoner mages sometimes uses alchemy items to help them survive a battle.

Surprisingly, despite being a noble mage herself, Evangeline wasn't the type to discriminate based on status. If something or someone is useful to her, she'll accept it without reservations. Hence, why she uses alchemy items and made Marise her personal maid, despite her orphan origins. I guess you could say it's one of the few good points she has?

Although her choices contributed to her already low reputation, I couldn't help but question whether she's a natural airhead or she just doesn't care for her reputation.

"I want to take a look inside," my eyes focused on the storefront.

Marise shook her head viciously. She was determined to keep me away from the store in fear of someone seeing us. But since my reputation had already been tainted by the original owner for the past 17 years, it doesn't matter to me either way. My goal was not to save face—it's to save this world from its impending doom.

Despite Marise's heavy protest, Sir Klein simply sighed and told me to make it quick. Nova had already fallen asleep, so at least he wasn't complaining about my pitstop, not that whatever he would have said would have stopped me anyways.

Jingle!

The bell rang as we entered through the front door.

My eyes immediately rounded. Unlike the awful outer appearance, the interior was completely different. The room was filled with natural sunlight, vines and wooden shelves. Different colored liquids filled the bottles of various sizes; some purple, some blue, some even emitting a faint pulsing glow. In one corner, there was a shelf filled top to bottom with books and in another corner, a glass drawer lined with herbs of all shapes and sizes.

"Wow! How beautiful!" I gasped, my fingers touching the glass bottles delicately. Marise also blinked in surprise at the sight before her, while Sir Klein simply looked nonchalant. Maybe he had been to an alchemy store before. 

I split from the other two, making my way to the colorful items on the right-hand side. Since we were in an enclosed room, Sir Klein didn't have to act like sticky rice. Marise also couldn't help but look around, falling straight into a web of curiosity.

I jumped from one section to another, wondering whether I should buy anything with the huge spending allowance I was given this morning. 

In my euphoric shopping mood as I was browsing around, my cloth bracelet had somehow caught onto a branch sticking out from the walls, causing it to unravel and drop to the floor. As soon as I realised the smooth material left my wrist, one thing led to another and my feet had accidentally kicked it underneath one of the shelves.

"Oops!"

I dropped to my hands and knees quickly. I had to take it out before anyone else could discover the mark on my wrist, but mainly it was because I didn't want Marise to notice that I was doing something unladylike again.

What's that?

My eyes landed on something else that caught my attention. Right next to my cloth bracelet, something else was there, something that sparkled even though it was in a very dim environment. I stretched my hands out to reach for it, thankful that I was in the body of someone with very slim arms. I grabbed onto both my bracelet and the item, the cool material pressed upon my skin, and took it out.

Unfortunately, I'd forgotten that one of the upper shelves above me was slightly pulled out so it was actually hovering right above my head.

BAM!

"OW!"

The top of my head smacked hard against the wooden material. The loud noise caught the attention of my two servants, who quickly turned their heads towards me.

"My lady!" they both cried out.

"Is that you again, Li? Argh! How many times do I have to tell you that we don't have what you're looking fo—"

All the ruckus we made caught someone else's attention too. From the other side of a counter where a door led to a back room, a man who looked to be in his mid-twenties came out stomping his feet, his voice tinged with annoyance. He had a long, light pink hair, which was quite an unusual but, pretty hair color, and brown eyes. A thin, white robe was tied loosely around his waist, similar to how a yukata looks like in my world. I knew instantly that he was the shop owner, based on the strong, intimidating aura he emanated.

I didn't think there'd be anyone else with this level of good looks other than the main characters and yet, here I stand face to face with someone who defied my hypothesis. If I didn't know anything about this novel, I might have even confused him to be one of the main characters.  

Who the hell is this man?

While I was busy studying him silently, his mouth curved into an 'o' shape.

"Who the hell are you?"

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