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The next day after I had met with Eva.

“… So you’re saying that the day of succession is a week from now?”
“Yes, my lady.”
“Alright, then. I’ll get prepared for that.”
“Understood. I hope you will keep familiarizing yourself with the etiquette lessons I’ve taught you‌.”
“Of course.”

After that, the butler bowed his head and left the room.

“Phew.”

I finally let out a sigh of relief.

“Oh no~ Ellie, what are you going to do~ Will you really be able to master all those etiquette lessons within one week?”

Katalina looked more anxious than me as she worried about my progress.

“Don’t worry.”
“Are you confident about it then?”
“Nope.”

Katalina’s optimistic expression quickly teared up once she heard my pessimistic reply.

“Is keeping etiquette really that important?”
“Mmh… Well, it’s not like it’s the law, but you must meet the queen yourself, and there will be many noble families from all standings attending. I guess you wouldn’t need to be so formal for lower-class nobles, but… Ah!”
“Hm?”

Katalina slapped her knee as if she remembered something in the middle of her speech. I of course looked at Katalina with a curious expression.

“Yes, that’s it! Since the title you will receive is that of Duke, most people will introduce themselves to you. In that case, after their greeting to you is over, all you need to do is do the same thing they did to you back at them. Of course, there’s a difference between the greetings that men do to women, so you just need to know that difference, and the only person you must formally introduce yourself to would be no one else but the queen, so you won’t need to worry about anything else. Well, there are the Princes and also another Duke, but they’re at the same age as you and they would introduce themselves to you first, so it wouldn’t really matter.”
“That sounds like a relief to my ears. But since it’s a banquet, wouldn’t there be dancing and dining?”
“Well, you’re right.”
“It sounds like you have an idea, though.”

I stared hard at Katalina’s lips, hoping that she would have a brilliant answer.

“Yep, it’s simple. You just need to not eat the meals provided and starve, and for dancing you just say your body isn’t feeling well so you can’t dance.”

Well, it is a good idea, but…

“It sounds like I’m going to be labeled as very irresponsible.”
“If you don’t want to do that, then memorize all the etiquettes.”
“I’ll just keep silent and do as you say then.”

She was right; I had no other choice anyway¹.

“Don’t worry too much. Since if we go together, I’ll cover you on most of the basics anyway.”

What I’m worried about is that there could be situations that call for etiquettes outside of the basic stuff.

“Wait, why are you looking so annoyed? Ellie, are you going alone? You won’t need me at all?”
“No, I definitely need you.”

I knew that she was setting up a trap, but I had to give into it anyway.

“Now now, there’s only one week left until then, so let’s worry about those kinds of things later and for now let’s connect to Blue Sky.”

It was slightly annoying that she brushed the problem aside and casually stepped inside the capsule because the problem would not affect her directly. I didn’t have any great idea of how to avoid learning the etiquette no matter how much I thought about it, and I wanted to shake off the build up of anxiety about the future, so I connected to the game as well.

When I think about it, I always connected to the game to feel the thrill and the sense of anxiety, it was actually the first time I was connecting in order to escape from it.

There was a time in the past where I would rather die than to connect to the game…

I swallowed back the bitter memory into the back of my mind and laid my body inside the capsule.

As the location I arrive at when connected is at the bedroom of the sky castle, the surroundings that are completely familiar to me comes into view. Katalina must have also connected and arrived at the Lord’s room inside the castle of Liverpool.

“Let’s stock up on potions first.”

Whenever we hunted together, we would be too exhausted by the end of the hunt that we would both immediately disconnect from the game. Which meant that we were used to making some preparations before setting out to hunt once again.

If it was like in the past, I would have ‌just filled up with potions and perhaps a single return scroll, but it was different now. There was about a month’s worth of potions stocked up at the nearby storage, and various scrolls.

I’ve never gone there even once, but I wonder just how many items and gold is ‌in the safe? I felt I should at least try to go there once, but now was not the time.

-Ellie, there’s urgent news.

A whisper suddenly arrived from Katalina.

-What’s the problem?

As I continued stocking up on potions into my inventory, I asked what it was.

-The ‘Shining’ guild and ‘Chaos’ guild are fighting each other!
-Is that so? Then that doesn’t really have much to do with you, right?

Battles between guilds happen so often that it would ‌be weird if there wasn’t any battle between guilds, even for a single day. So I couldn’t figure out why she’s so surprised by the news.

-You…! Do you even know that those two guilds are within the top 8 guilds in the server?
-Of course I don’t.

Only then was I able to somewhat understand Katalina’s surprise. If I compare this news to what happens in Korean servers, it would be like the Phoenix guild battling with the Reaper guild.

-Ugh, I shouldn’t even bother telling you.
-But if it’s between the top 8 guilds, isn’t it normal for battles to occur? I don’t think it’s something we… I mean, you should be concerned with.
-That’s right, battles occur often‌. But this is a different battle than the average siege battles.
-A different battle?
-An all-out war.

I nodded my head. This was definitely big news. It wasn’t just a battle at the border, but ‌a full-on war that both sides would put all their resources in. They would spare nothing, whether it’s firepower, finance, manpower or strength in waging this war.

Even the wars between average mid-sized guilds go on for an awfully long time and horrible all around. Meaning that if the two guilds within the top 8 guilds of the server are having an all-out war with each other, the impact will be massive throughout the server.

-What was the reason?
-I’m not sure about the specifics since I only learned about it now. But it probably is because of war over interests and rights. They already had a bad relationship with each other already and often had siege battles here and there, but I didn’t think it would be this bad.
-So have you thought about how you and your Volcano guild will deal with this?
-Well, we’re worried‌. It would be difficult for us to involve ourselves in the war, since it would attract more guilds to the war‌. We’ll just have to get ready for an impending war soon.
-Alright.
-In any case, Ellie, you saved the Liverpool Castle location, right? I’ll open up the teleportation circle, so can you come over here?
-Alright.

As opposed to teleportation circles to residences, even if you have teleportation circles to places like a castle saved, you cannot teleport there freely unless you’re part of the guild or one owner of the guild. That’s why Katalina is saying that she’ll open up the teleportation circle for me.

Finally, I arrived within the castle walls of the Volcano guild’s castle, exchanged greetings with guild members and went to the office where Katalina was waiting.

I assumed that everyone would wait there, but there were only Katalina and an informant officer who was waiting inside the office.

“Good morning, Miss Artoria.”
“Yes, nice to see you.”

The only thing I knew about him was that he was in the position of an informant officer, but I thought calling him by his position would be awkward, so I avoided calling him by anything. He soon realized the mistake he made and looked apologetic.

“Goodness, I’ve forgotten to introduce myself to you. I am ‘Minerva’, the information bureau adviser for the Volcano guild.”
“Wait, your name is Minerva?”

To my knowledge, what I knew about the name Minerva was that it was the name of the goddess of Wisdom in a certain mythology. It didn’t quite match his appearance since he clearly looked like a male user.

“Haha. It just ended up that way, as I was thinking of an ID to use. It’s my daughter’s name‌².”
“Aha, I see. Forgive me if I sounded rude just then.”

My actions were slightly rude as well. It didn’t matter what ID that a user has, you should respect their privacy and don’t suddenly question why they’ve chosen it.

“No, it’s fine.”
“Now now, let’s leave the greetings there.”

Seeing as how the conversation may go on too long, Katalina interfered in the conversation. I didn’t really have anything else to add to the conversation, but Minerva looked ‌disappointed‌.

“Could you brief us on the current situation?”
“Yes, guild master. The guild master of Shining guild Lucas has declared an all-out war against Chaos guild, which would begin at 9 PM today. The guild master of Chaos, Wine has accepted the declaration. Therefore, in 7 hours, across the whole of the Blue Sky game area, an ‘Infinite PK’ rule will be established between the two guilds and a battle will begin everywhere except within ‘Safe Zones’.”

1. Robinxen: Or you know…you could just come clean about having just recovered from a major injury?
2. Robinxen: I have….so many questions!