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Chapter 19 Act 3: Adaptation

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Author: Starving Wind Original Source: Joara Word Count: 3926 characters
Translator: Anonymouss English Source: Re:Library Word Count: 2516 words
Editor(s): Silva

A refreshing morning thanks to a comfortable night’s sleep.

After completing my walk around the mansion like yesterday, I realized that the inside of the mansion was busier than when I first arrived.

And there was a man who was directing all of the chaos, the butler.

“Quickly, quickly!”

While yelling out the usual words that Koreans say due to their impatient nature, all the people running around to and fro inside the mansion truly looked like a hurricane of activity was happening before my eyes.

“Looks like things are quite busy.”
“Ah! My lady, did you have a nice walk?”

He quickly stopped his ordering about and turned to greet me, while pulling out a handkerchief to wipe away the sweat forming on his forehead. His age may be catching up to him, as just walking around the mansion seemed to be tiring him out.

“Please don’t overexert yourself. You are at that age after all.”
“Sob… To think that my lady would be so kind to a lowly old man like me. Please don’t worry, I am still plenty healthy!”

The butler looked very moved by my words and tried to hit his chest with a fist to look manly, but it didn’t look convincing at all.

“Actually, what’s the reason for all this hustle and bustle?”
“Goodness. I should have mentioned to you first… My apologies, my lady.”
“It’s fine. Please just tell me.”
“They say that today Lady Katalina shall be visiting. To think that she would suddenly barge in here without any forewarning, how very rude of her.”

The butler’s complaint was pretty justified. Even if you know each other, to visit another household first thing in the morning is quite a rude thing to do.

You’d usually invite them for lunch or dinner. It’s even ruder when they’re visiting when you haven’t even considered inviting them to begin with. For the butler who always prefers to strictly adhere to rules and traditions, it may have upset him quite a lot.

It seems that Katalina saying the day before that she will be visiting wasn’t just an empty promise.

“My lady. You’re not planning to greet them while wearing that, are you?”

As the butler quickly turned his sharp eyes towards me, ready to vent his anger out on me instead, I quickly shook my hands side to side.

“Of course not. I was thinking of changing after taking a shower.”
“I believe you will. Oh yes! I’ll send the clothing you should wear after the shower to Sara.”

I felt a bit uneasy hearing that, but I didn’t want to cause any more hassle, so I gave a dry answer back to him, after which I went back to my room.

Even while heading to my room, maids and cleaners were everywhere trying to clean. It reminded me of back when I was in the army where the sudden visitation of the general would make us all scramble to make sure everything was clean and proper1.

“I’m sure they’re cursing me under their breath.”

Since I’m part of the reason why they’re busy after all. I was able to deduce their inner thoughts without too much trouble. Well, the majority of them would still just blame the butler or Katalina instead.

“Ugh… I wonder when I’ll adapt to taking showers…”

Once again, I went into the bathroom and did all kinds of crazy maneuvers to make sure that I don’t look at my own body or be conscious of it while I washed. After finishing the crazy routine, I sat and started to dry my hair in my bedroom.

Since the planned clothing I was supposed to wear still didn’t arrive yet, I sat there drying my hair with a dryer for what seemed like an eternity with a towel around my body, as I booted up the desktop computer.

In the past, my hair wouldn’t even take two minutes to be dried completely, but my current hair was so long and full of volume that it seemed to never completely dry off. Combing took forever as well.

“Ow!”

While combing through my hair roughly, the comb pulled on a tangled strand and sent a prickling pain in my head. As I learned that I should be combing my hair more gently, I opened up the ‘Hello Blue Sky’ website.

‘Merlin’s Staff. The biggest news in the world of Blue Sky.’

The main headline that covered the front page was as I suspected. Just as I was going to the auctioning part of the website to cancel my auction offer, I saw that there were 390,000 comments on the auction as well as 500 individual bids put up. The fact that I also received several hundreds of direct messages as well amused me.

Though I am not too surprised by the number of comments and messages, the 500 individual bidding numbers were quite higher than I expected. I started to look through the comments section which was heated up.

  • Is it really true that it’s only been a day since this was put up on auction?
  • If it does sell, then it’s already reached the all-time highest price for an item to be sold in an auction. And there’s still 6 days left on it, I wonder how much higher it will go.
  • It’s no different than winning a lottery…
  • Even the foreign country servers are keeping their eyes on our server. The TV network is also having a 24-hour coverage on the auction as well.
  • Aren’t they getting a 5% cut of the price as commission for putting up the auction item? They’d be rich even if they take just 5% of that price.
  • They’re profiting way too much off this!
  • Auction sites are like that. Directly making a trade is still the best in terms of personal profit.

There were many other endless amounts of comments besides those, but reading that it had already reached the highest-priced item to be ever sold on the website, I quickly moved to the location of the page where it showed the top bidding price.

The bids were lined up from top bidders and below.

  1. BSD – (900 million Euro)
  2. SRGDD – (850 million Euro)
  3. RPG – (800 million Euro)
  4. SAWE – (780 million Euro)
  5. KINGS – (700 million Euro)

900 million Euro. I wasn’t completely adapted to understanding just how much Euro was when converted to Korean currency, but it was around 1 trillion Won. One trillion Won. With that kind of money, you may not be able to buy a whole large island nation, but at least you’d be able to afford to live your entire life without any care on a deserted island somewhere2.

And yet that was the price that this single item was calling for… I once again felt the realization just how Blue Sky may have transcended just being a videogame to people.

On top of that, the problem was that the price was still rising. Even I was having a hard time estimating just how much the price would go up by the end of the 7 days it will be up for. I remembered Katalina saying that it may even reach one billion euros, and now I believe her. It may just be a matter of time before it reaches that point. I’m sure even she may not have predicted it to be this high already.

Although I was curious about just how high the bidding will go without caring much about the actual money I would be receiving, but to continue this auction of this item would just be giving insult to those bidders even more at the end.

Bidding is an extremely taxing thing to do for the people who buy and sell, in a mental sense.

[Would you like to cancel the auction?] 

I canceled the auction without any hesitation and paid for the 10% of the starting price of the auction I’ve put in for the cancellation. Although the website may have lost a huge potential profit, they still were able to salvage at least 10 million off of me so the sting might be lessened.

Knock knock.

I heard the sound of knocking just in time and turned off the power of the desktop computer. It seemed that the guest that I was waiting for has arrived.

“My lady. I’ve brought the clothing for you to wear.”
“Come in.”

With the sound of the door clicking open, Sara walked into the room with a number of neatly folded garments and laid them out on the table.

I mindlessly flipped through the clothing without making any reaction.

“…”

Then looked at Sara with a dumbfounded expression without a word.

“Are they not to your liking?”

I barely stopped myself from yelling out ‘Of course!’ to her, but realized that what had happened to me was not her fault at all, so I tried my best to calm my nerves and replied with the most relaxed attitude possible.

“Yeah. It looks a little too extravagant and uncomfortable.”
“Is that so? That’s strange, it looks okay to me…”

That’s right. For a woman. These were perfectly fine for women to wear and show off. From the point of a woman…

“But if they’re not to your liking, then it’s a shame. Everyone, please come in.”

Sara turned to the door she came in and spoke. I turned to the door as well wondering what kind of situation this is, to which a number of maids came strolling in each with a bundle of clothing in their arms.

Immediately, the table was filled with a variety of clothing. Every single one of them was extravagant and gaudy.

“The butler had said that you must choose one of these no matter what!”

I realized before Sara even spoke that the butler’s intention was specifically that. In the end, I frowned deeply as I looked around the number of dresses, and picked out the easiest to wear dress, though it was still extremely gaudy when comparing to normal clothing that average people wear.

“Wow, you look so beautiful!”

That’s right. It would be great if she was saying how handsome I was looking instead though.

“You look very beautiful, my lady.”

Ugh, that’s not a compliment to me!

The maids didn’t seem to be noticing that my expression was getting more terrible every passing moment. All of them talked feverishly about how wonderful I looked in the white slim dress that I changed into, including Sara.

“Hmm, I think it would be best for you to wear a light layer of makeup as well.”

A maid that wasn’t even a dedicated make-up artist came up to me and opened up a bag filled with what seemed like 50 thousand different makeup products, and started to powder up my face without even waiting for me to allow her.

If it’s light makeup I’ve done it several times back in my life as a male3, but it was the first time I was actually having proper make-up done to my face, so I couldn’t do anything but sit there with a stiff expression as she continued putting on makeup.

“Your skin is so smooth.”
“Your eyes are so beautiful too.”

The maid endlessly dished compliments towards me as her deft hands moved quickly to put on more makeup, which further increased my annoyance that I was trying desperately to keep down.

I couldn’t dare hurt her feelings when she’s completely working so hard for me and is probably speaking genuinely. In the end, the words I wanted to spit out at those smiling faces beaming at me were forcefully pushed back down my throat.

‘Damn it, damn it.’

Why bother cursing to yourself in your head at this point?

“It’s all done!”

After pulling away the cloth that was put on me to prevent any makeup from getting on my clothes, she yelled out triumphantly.

“Actually, isn’t makeup usually done before I wear clothes?”

Yes, this is a trivial question. They won’t question me about that.

“Ahh! Well, it’s because my lady is much calmer and quiet than at any other time. I thought that I may never get a chance like this again so I decided to go forward with it right away.”

“…”

So the original Elizabeth also hated having makeup put on her? I was glad that I was able to have a good proper reason to stop them from putting makeup on me in the future.

“Hmm. But since it’s a dress and everything, I’ll have to wear heels…”
“Heels?”

Thanks to my tall height for a woman of 170cm, I was able to avoid having to wear any heels that are crazy tall. While feeling the sense of imbalance on my feet for the first time in my life, I wobbled slightly as I stepped up to the full body mirror.

“Mmmh…”

I couldn’t help but let out a sound of pondering to myself. This is actually quite amazing. I had already thought myself as someone beautiful thanks to the slender neckline and everything, but my beauty was once again brought to shine brightly even though the makeup was only lightly put on. If I was purely Elizabeth in body and mind I wouldn’t have been able to objectively criticize my own face, but since I hadn’t adapted to my face which became Elizabeth’s, I was able to make fair and objective criticisms.

But the fact that I had lost my sense of composure even when looking at the face with fair and objective eyes showed just how much beauty I had. Of course, it wasn’t just my face either. The slim-fitting dress accentuated the curvature of my body in every place, showing my voluminous chest area while sliding downwards to my slim and curvy hip, astounding me with how perfect the symmetry is. On top of that, the jewels that are decorated on the dress here and there were all in the perfect place for aesthetics, further enhancing the look. It showed a simple, yet elegant image. The skirt went down low enough to touch the floor yet didn’t drag along with it, going perfectly with the overall design of simplicity, elegance, and innocence.

If I could be a little bit hyperbolic, I may have called myself a goddess if I had wings on my back.

“Wow, I don’t think anyone would argue against you in being the most beautiful lady in the world now that you’ve dressed up like this.”

But the truth is that whether she’s being sincere or not, I wasn’t happy about it at all. After pulling my gaze away from the mirror, I saw Sara coming towards me. I then saw the object that was being held in her two hands being brought forth.

“… What’s that in your hand?”

I asked curiously about the two objects in her hands.

Author’s note:
That’s strange… I should be writing a lot more about the video game and so on, yet this part is going on really long, lol…4



 

Footnotes:

  1. Lilith: I know this. It is horrible.
    Silva: Poor you, I’ve never experienced what it’s like to be in an army camp
    Robinxen: I went to a normal camp for a couple of days once! Yay me!
  2. Lilith: Ah the good life
  3. Lilith: I can only imagine he was goth for some reason
  4. Robinxen note: I have a migraine. No British remarks this chapter. Might edit some in tomorrow if it goes.
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