Chapter 360: An Unexpected Request from the Emperor of Eldia

THUMP!

For a few seconds, the only sound in the room was the rustle of pages landing one after another on Aria's back. The last one landed on her head.

"Need some help?" Yuki asked, an amused smile on her face.

"...No," Aria mumbled into the carpet.

Mark decided to leave those thoughts for later. After all, there was no point in going around in circles over something that might never happen.

He'd think about it when he was alone and had a cooler head.

Mark got up from his chair, walked around the table, and held out his hand to Aria.

She lifted her face from the carpet. Her forehead and the tip of her nose were bright red, and one of the sheets of paper was still stuck in her hair.

Aria looked at him for a second with her lips pressed together, and in the end she took his hand and let him pull her up.

As soon as she was on her feet, she plucked the paper out of her hair, smoothed her clothes, and started gathering the papers from the floor in a hurry, trying to project a dignity she no longer had any way of recovering.

Yuki didn't move from her chair. She merely nudged one of the sheets that had fallen near her toward Aria with the tip of her foot.

"Are you okay?" Mark asked, helping her pick up the rest of the papers. "That was a pretty nasty fall."

"Yes, yes... I only hurt my pride."

"So, what's this good news?"

"That's precisely why I was late, Master," Aria replied as she took a seat. "Something unexpected happened this morning."

Mark sat back down and let her continue.

While Aria had been on her way to the meeting room, one of the guards had intercepted her to tell her that the ambassador from Eldia had just arrived at the palace unannounced.

Since she had been the one receiving official visitors for months now, she'd had to attend to him personally before coming.

The visit, however, wasn't routine.

The ambassador carried a message from Emperor Joseph himself, who was requesting to meet with Mark in person again, as urgently as possible.

"What about?"

"That's the strangest part, Master. Not even the ambassador knows," Aria replied with a shrug. "According to him, he was only ordered to deliver the message and return with an answer."

But Aria, of course, had no intention of letting him leave with a simple "it's urgent."

She had spent over an hour trying to find out what was going on, at first the easy way.

First with kindness, pouring him wine and asking about his journey.

Then with less kindness, letting drop how fragile trade agreements between two kingdoms could become when one side started keeping secrets.

But she had gotten nothing out of him.

And in the end she had concluded that the man was telling the truth.

He was sitting in the palace of the Death Emperor, surrounded by non-humans and sweating buckets.

If he had known anything, he would have blurted it out right away just so he could leave as soon as possible.

The news left Mark thoughtful.

His relationship with Joseph had always been strange. The emperor had never been disrespectful to him and had, in fact, been cordial at every one of their meetings.

The problem was that he also didn't bother much to hide his contempt for non-humans, and that irritated Mark, especially considering that several of his wives belonged precisely to those races.

But Mark wasn't naive enough to believe all that cordiality was sincere.

Joseph clearly showed him respect because it suited him.

And for a man that calculating to send his ambassador to request a meeting so urgently, over a matter so delicate he hadn't even entrusted it to his own messenger, couldn't mean anything good.

Either Joseph had a very big problem, or he was about to become Mark's problem.

Probably both.

"And that's supposed to be the good news?" Mark asked, somewhat confused.

"Not for him," Aria replied with a smile. "For us, yes."

"Why?"

"Because he's desperate, Master. And a desperate person is willing to give far more than he normally would."

"And what do you want to get out of him?"

"What you asked me for. Information about the other reincarnated."

Mark understood instantly where she was going.

Ever since he had returned, he had asked Aria to gather any information she could find about other reincarnated people.

Names, rumors, people with absurd powers or heroes who had appeared out of nowhere.

Anything that would help him locate them.

The problem was that all her sources were in the south, and the south had barely any contact with the human kingdoms in the center of the continent.

What happened beyond the Great Forest reached them late, distorted, or not at all.

But Eldia was one of the seven human kingdoms.

Joseph had spies, ambassadors, and contacts in the other six kingdoms, and probably in the Church as well.

If any reincarnated person had drawn attention in some corner of the continent, Joseph had most likely heard something about it at the very least.

"And even if he doesn't know anything, he's still useful to us," Aria continued. "He can investigate. Joseph is the one who needs something from you, so doing that work for us can be part of the deal."

Mark looked at her in silence before smiling.

"Good work, Aria."

He ruffled her hair slightly, and within seconds, the self-assured administrator disappeared.

Aria lowered her gaze and clutched the papers to her chest so hard she ended up crumpling some of them.

"I-it's nothing, Master," she said, looking away. "I only did my job."

But her voice trembled with emotion, and the corners of her lips kept curling upward no matter how hard she tried to stop them.

"Then I'll leave it in your hands," Mark said. "Organize the meeting however you see fit."

Aria took a second to react.

"Me?" she asked, surprised. "The whole meeting?"

"Can you think of anyone better to do it?"

"No! I mean, yes! I mean..." Aria shook her head and straightened up, the crumpled papers pressed to her chest. "Leave it to me, Master! I won't let you down!"

And without waiting for a reply, she turned on her heel and shot toward the door.

But when she already had her hand on the handle, she stopped dead and turned around again.

"Oh, I almost forgot! Queen Luna asked me to tell you she wants you to join her for breakfast."

"Now?"

"Yes, she told me this morning before the ambassador arrived." Aria cleared her throat. "And I quote: 'Tell my darling that if he doesn't come have breakfast with me, I'm coming to find him, and he won't like it.'"

That sounded exactly like Luna.

And the moment he heard the word breakfast, Mark realized he hadn't eaten anything since he'd gotten up.

His stomach took care of reminding him with a growl that could be heard throughout the room.

"Yeah, I'm actually starving," he said, getting to his feet.

Then he looked at Yuki.

"Coming?"

"It'll be a pleasure, Master," she replied, lowering her legs from the table and standing up.