At her mansion, Anastasia bit her lip after receiving the news earlier, her eyes filled with confusion and regret.
"Crusch not only withdrew from the royal candidacy but also joined Emilia's camp. Why is this happening?!"
When she interacted with Ayanokouji some time ago, she didn't expect the other party to approach her. However, after the other party demonstrated some unique and highly advanced production technologies, Anastasia saw this as an unparalleled business opportunity, so she agreed to collaborate with him.
In the last regression, Ayanokouji had gained many supporters. Along with his meeting with Crusch, Anastasia had the idea of forming an alliance with him, but rather than directly proposing an alliance, she sought to provoke conflict between Crusch's and Emilia's camps.
But in this regression, Ayanokouji took the initiative to approach Anastasia first. At that time, he had not yet fully begun his plan to win over the nobility, and there had been no interaction with Crusch, so Anastasia did not act. Although she was slightly concerned about his minor actions during their meeting, she did not take the Emilia camp seriously at all.
When she met Ayanokouji this time, Anastasia realized the value of his technology. Even though they established a collaboration, she considered when to incorporate him into her camp. Without Ayanokouji, the Emilia camp would be nothing.
If that didn't work, and if the Emilia camp gradually grew in the future, Anastasia could also use some tricks to suppress them by exploiting her market monopoly.
But she never imagined that in just over a week, Ayanokouji would allow the power of the Emilia camp to grow so much.
He even managed to turn her biggest enemy, Crusch, into his subordinate.
Anastasia was not pleased to lose one of her biggest competitors, but she gained another more threatening enemy.
If she had known this, she would never have cooperated with him. It was equivalent to handing over her workshops and business support to the other party for nothing, and now that the other party had the support of the Karsten family, Anastasia couldn't afford to breach the cooperation agreement.
If she breached the agreement, she would lose almost the entire market in the royal capital as long as the Karsten family exerted pressure there. Moreover, a crucial criterion for measuring a merchant is whether they can be trusted. If a merchant breaches a cooperation agreement, once the news spreads, it will affect the trade activities of the chamber of commerce.
For the first time in her business career, Anastasia felt regret in her heart.
❀❀❀
"What method did Ayanokouji use?"
At the Barielle residence, Al, who was wearing a helmet, spoke with some concern: "Milady, Ayanokouji is an existence that cannot be ignored."
"It doesn't matter, they are just ordinary people." Priscilla said indifferently, "The world revolves around me, and the throne is mine, but..."
After finishing her sentence, she paused for a moment and slightly raised her eyebrows: "I think this person named Ayanokouji is somewhat special."
❰❱SKY SCREEN❰❱
The scene changed. At this moment, Ayanokouji was bringing Crusch, Felix, and Wilhelm back to the mansion.
Now, Crusch was his subordinate. He helped Wilhelm achieve his long-held desire, so Wilhelm would be loyal to Ayanokouji. Although Felix had shown hostility towards him before, because of Crusch, at the very least, he would never do anything that disobeyed him.
But Ayanokouji also knew that it wouldn't be easy to fully absorb the entire Karsten family.
Within the Karsten family, those who were truly loyal to Crusch might not be fully convinced, not to mention that there were still members of the family who were skeptical of Crusch. After she pledged her loyalty to him, those people were bound to make some small moves.
And those people would need to be eliminated.
Ayanokouji had already thought of a way in his mind—let Elsa kill them, make it look like an accident, or fabricate evidence to make them bear the blame.
But this would take time, so he wasn't in a hurry.
He quickly assigned some tasks to Crusch, such as using the Karsten family's influence to establish relationships with more nobles, and asking Crusch to prepare sufficient manpower and equipment.
All of this was to prepare himself for future business development. Now that he had acquired Anastasia's workshops and business foundation, he would use the existing network of contacts.
At that time, Ayanokouji could use better and cheaper products to monopolize and drive Anastasia out of the market.
Next, he could also use the Karsten family's financial resources to influence market prices. Previously, because Crusch had accumulated a large amount of metal products, the price of iron and steel in the royal capital had soared. So after seeing his purification technology, Anastasia would definitely expand her production line and produce metals in a short time.
Although the market would eventually stabilize, Anastasia could make a lot of money during this period.
But the situation was different now. Now that the White Whale had been successfully slain, those weapons were worthless. Ayanokouji could reassemble those iron tools and return them to the market to raise their prices for a certain period, and Anastasia would surely suffer significant losses.
He could even imagine that Anastasia must be feeling very regretful right now.
"Understood." After hearing Ayanokouji's instructions, Crusch bowed respectfully, "Additionally, killing the White Whale is something worth celebrating. Ayanokouji-sama, may I ask if you would like us to hold a celebration party?"
"Yes." Ayanokouji nodded, "I leave it to you to prepare for this event. Invite the knights and those officials as well."
He didn't think that killing the White Whale was something worth celebrating. He felt it was something the kingdom should have done. However, for him, such an occasion could gather enough information, and he could see how the attitudes of those nobles would change after the Karsten family pledged their loyalty to him.
"I'm back!"
The door suddenly opened, and Emilia returned to the mansion carrying several bags, "Ayanokouji, I'm back! Betty, I bought snacks!"
The bags Emilia held were filled with snacks she had bought from the street. She had noticed earlier that Beatrice seemed to like these snacks very much, so she bought a lot of them.
After Ayanokouji took over the workshop from Anastasia, he asked Emilia to handle the handover procedures. Today, she returned to the mansion after taking care of those matters.
Just after placing the snacks on the table, Emilia noticed Crusch was about to leave. Their purple and yellow eyes met, and the smile on Emilia's face slightly froze.
At that moment, Emilia's heart was filled with questions. She didn't know why Crusch was there, and she couldn't help but have all sorts of random thoughts in her mind.
"Welcome back, Emilia-sama." Crusch greeted Emilia, and Emilia realized that she had momentarily neglected her manners.
"Hello, Crusch-sama!" Emilia quickly replied.
She realized that what Crusch had just done was the etiquette of a subordinate to a superior, and Felix and Wilhelm also bowed very respectfully.
This made Emilia even more confused.
"From now on, Emilia-sama, just call me by my first name." Crusch smiled at Emilia, "Now, there are still some things we need to take care of, so please forgive us for leaving."
And after Crusch and the others left, Emilia still hadn't recovered from her dazed state.
Crusch had just acted as if she were her subordinate.
"What's going on?" Emilia asked, with a confused expression on her face.
"Don't you understand? That girl has now pledged her loyalty to Ayanokouji."
As Beatrice spoke, she had unknowingly made her way to the table, skillfully taking snacks out of the bag and popping them into her mouth.
"That's right, Emilia." Ayanokouji nodded, "Now Crusch has renounced her qualifications as a royal candidate and has pledged her loyalty to us."
He then explained to her about the crusade against the White Whale, though he omitted the part where he orchestrated the event, instead linking it to coincidence.
After hearing this, Emilia couldn't believe it, and even thought Ayanokouji was lying to her.
She widened her eyes, staring at Ayanokouji's face. It was impossible for an ordinary person to remain expressionless after telling such an outrageous lie—at least in Emilia's case, no one could do it.
"Really..."
She still felt the situation was somewhat unreal, as if she were dreaming. Although she was a bit slow, she also understood that Crusch had withdrawn from the royal candidacy and joined her.
"Ayanokouji-sama can handle everything so well."
Rem, who was sweeping the floor, suddenly gave a thumbs up and said to Emilia.
"Emilia, you've worked hard too. Let's rest for a bit. We'll be preparing shortly. There's an important banquet we need to attend tonight." Ayanokouji said.
Beatrice quickly ran over to Ayanokouji with a few bags of snacks in her hands: "Open your mouth."
"Huh?"
Ayanokouji didn't know what she was going to do, but he still opened his mouth.
Then, Beatrice shoved a handful of snacks into his mouth.
"It's impolite to watch Betty eat alone all the time."
Beatrice sat on the sofa, then took some snacks and started eating them on her own, but she couldn't help but glance at Ayanokouji.
"But Betty, people can easily choke."
It took Ayanokouji quite some time to chew and swallow the food in his mouth, but objectively speaking, the snacks tasted good. He had never tasted them before. He had always believed that as long as food could provide people with enough energy and nutrition, taste wasn't something to be too concerned about.
"If you can choke, then it's useless." Beatrice pouted, her legs swinging like a pendulum. "Come on, open your mouth!"
❀❀❀
"Damn it, Ayanokouji, how do you manage to catch the attention of little girls? I'm so jealous!"
Inside Class D, Ike Kanji threw an arm around Ayanokouji's shoulders and spoke in a tone full of envy, completely ignoring the disgusted expressions of the girls.
"That's a legal little girl straight out of an anime. I'm so jealous! Please, teach me!"
"Sorry, it seems you have an unnecessary misunderstanding about me."
Ayanokouji responded without any expression.
"Even though the person in that video has a certain charm, it's not me."
He looked around, and many of the people nearby were already giving Ike disgusted looks. If this continued, he worried it might affect him as well.
"Sorry, I need to go to the restroom."
He found an excuse to distance himself from Ike and headed towards the restroom outside the classroom.
And right at the corner of the corridor, a shadowy figure approached quickly.