My name is Luna Cloudhell, the first princess of the Frostlands. Although I am a princess of a country I have a similar lifestyle to a poor baron in either the Empire or the Kingdom.

I am sitting at the dining room table with the rest of the royal family, my family. There's my dear father, the king sitting at the head of the table, my mother died a few years ago due to illness so I now sit beside him.

There is also my little brother at the table, he's only 4 years old so he is being assisted by the maid standing next to him. He struggles to bite into the hard bread that's provided so needs help having it broken up.

Yes, that is what's for dinner today for the royal family of the Frostlands, hard bread and gruel. Better than starving I guess.

The country is really just a single mining city, like the name suggests the city is located in a cold all-year-round mountainous area. There is very limited space and bad weather for farming and therefore they used to import all the food in exchange for ores they mined.

This worked fine and the small country was quite wealthy but once the dragons took over the cursed forest and the forest became infested with monsters it became harder and harder to get food.

The merchants stopped coming after it became too expensive to hire enough guards to make the journey through the forest. The royal family eventually had to offer their own military forces to the merchants to get at least some food into the country but the situation is still dire.

With the recent beast surge, the military had been needed to defend the city against the beasts, and with the beasts covering all possible trade routes the already starving country was left to eat the rations saved.

No fresh meat or vegetables have entered the city for over a month that even the royal family had nothing left to eat but moldy hard bread and gruel.

The doors to the dining room opened up and an elderly butler entered the room. Despite being the royal family we had very little money left so those still working in this castle were doing it almost for free at this point.

“My king sorry to interrupt your family mealtime but an important person is wishing an audience”

This sounds bad, as far as I know, father has not received any messages of an important envoy on their way...

“Don't worry father you stay here, I'll go greet the guest” I give a bow to my father and leave with the butler to the audience hall.

After entering the hall and sitting down on a ‘throne but was really just a seat taken from the dining room, we had no money for a real nice throne after all.

Before me is an absolutely stunning woman with long black hair, jade-like beauty, and pink-colored pupils. She was wearing a black dress with white flowers on it and two closed pink-colored fans were strapped to her waist, were those her weapons?

“Greeting, I am the first princess of the Frostlands, Luna Cloudhell.” I give a slight nod to the stranger and she returns the greetings “My name is Alice and I have come on behalf of my country, Eden to discuss a potential trade”

Eden? I have never heard of such a country on this continent, “Where is Eden located if you don’t mind the question miss Alice”

“It's located in the center of the cursed forest, princess” the mysterious woman replied.

I highly doubt anyone is living in such a dangerous place… “What do you wish to trade for then”

“Quite simple really, my country can produce a lot of food, way more than we could ever need...”

I instinctively put on a face of disgust at such a declaration before the princess of a starving nation

“... therefore I have come to offer a trade of food for mana stones, princess”

“Eh?” I am genuinely confused. Mana stones are the most common ore to be mined. It's even more common than tin or copper. To trade something as valuable as food for such a worthless material is truly strange. She must be up to something.

“Although this deal would be very ideal for my country I must visit Eden before making a final decision, I judge that’s fine for you miss Alice?”

“It would be our pleasure to accommodate the princess in our lands,” she says and makes a slight bow

“As a sign of our future partnership I wish to offer a gift, could you lead me to a storage room?”

I find her request a bit odd but even if the chance of this Eden country being a lie I should lose nothing to humor her request

“Very well follow me I shall lead you”

The two girls enter a large cellar in the bottom of the castle, it used to be filled with weapons, armor, and food until everything was sold to try and keep the family afloat.

Luna was a bit worried about showing such weakness of her family to another country but this was the only storeroom they had. “You can leave the gift in here, although I don’t see you carrying anything?” Luna inquiries to the weird guest.

The girl shows a mischievous grin and points at the ring on her finger. At first glance, it's nothing special but upon further inspection “A storage ring!?”

“Hehe, you like it, princess? I got it as a reward on the 90th floor of a dungeon”

What kind of monster is this girl? Very few make it that far into a dungeon let alone kill the boss within a minute to receive a reward.

Although neither Alice nor Xia knew this, to get a reward for killing a dungeon boss they either have to solo kill the boss or defeat it as a party within a single minute.

This means Alice was either in a very strong party that could defeat a 90th floor boss in 1 minute or the less likely option that she could solo it. (Although that's exactly what happened.)

The ring on Alice’s finger glowed white to show the activation of magic and the storage room filled up with food, mainly grain but some vegetables and meat were present too!

“This is a little gift from my country, hope to have a good relationship in the future”

Luna on the other hand was about to cry, she hadn’t seen such fresh-looking food for months, and not only that she had just witnessed someone using such a rare artifact

“Alice I hope we can become friends in the future!”

“Haha sure princess, would be my honor. If you are to be my friend though you will need to meet with my friend Xia”

“Who is Xia?”

“The king of Eden, he’s quite far from a normal person so it might take some getting used to but I'm sure we can all be friends!”

What a weird girl, comes to a frozen country through a dangerous forest all alone with no guards, has a storage ring, one of the rarest artifacts and the dream of any merchant to own but not only that she claims to be friends with a strange king?

Letting out a sigh “I must tell father about this…”

The strange girl just let out a giggle in response.

XKARNATION

Chapter release may slow down a little for the next week as I have university coursework due soon, thanks to everyone for reading and I hope you will stick with the story