I Shall Steal the Heroine for Free! Did I Just Utter the Forbidden Word…?
I let out a long sigh. “Haa…”
“Your Majesty, I too was quite shocked.”
“Indeed, Loclaire…”
‘Wait, why are you two shocked?!’ There has to be a reason. A reason!
“Father…? Is something wrong?”
Kalian pinched the bridge of his nose without a word.
“Daughter, do you know where Gray Garden is?”
“Indeed, Your Highness. Might there be a particular reason you must go to Gray Garden?”
Of course there is! The original story didn’t give me the heroine’s information, but it’s handing me the chance to snatch her up for free! Still, I couldn’t exactly say that out loud.
‘What’s a good excuse… Ah!’ A perfect pretext had just popped into my head.
“There’s someone I need to meet there… My friend is waiting for me…!”
“W-when in the world did you make a friend?!”
Tsk. I hadn’t thought that far ahead.
I had no choice but to weave a plausible lie using Kalian’s usual tyrannical tendencies.
“My friend’s mother actually used to work in the imperial palace, but Father drove her out…!”
“I-if you had told me sooner, I wouldn’t have driven her away!”
It seemed the number of servants Kalian had expelled was rather high.
My convincing lie made Kalian’s pupils tremble violently. I decided to sprinkle on even more seasoning here.
‘If you don’t commit to a lie like this, it just ends up half-baked.’
“A letter arrived the other day… It said that the mother who was thrown out of the palace became so depressed she couldn’t work anymore… That she was struggling so much… suffering so terribly…”
“H-hurk…! P-prepare at once! Since this is my fault as well, I shall go with you!”
The Treasure Map of Connections
📍 Contains: Location of the heroine only
🎁 Note: No other information provided
The Treasure Map of Connections didn’t contain any information about the heroine. Only her location was marked. I would have to run around on my own two feet to find her, and I absolutely could not bring Kalian along. No, I must not bring him under any circumstances!
“Father! If the person who made her mother suffer like that shows up in person, what will my friend think?! You should just stay here and take care of your work!”
“H-how can you say something so cruel…!”
Before long, Kalian collapsed to the floor.
“So you’re giving me permission? To go to Gray Garden.”
Kalian swept his hair back and let out a heavy sigh.
“I permit it… However, you must go with Loclaire and the soldiers she leads. Gray Garden is a dangerous place.”
First gateway cleared. As a reward, I gave Kalian a big hug.
‘There’s no better reward for a daughter-obsessed father.’
“Thank you, Father! I’ll definitely bring my friend back!”
Kalian hugged me even tighter.
“You must return safely… Loclaire, I entrust her to you. If even the slightest scratch appears on my daughter… I will not forgive you, even if you are my friend.”
“Yes, Your Majesty! Should any lowly creatures dare approach, I will sever their wrists without hesitation so they cannot lay a single finger on Her Highness.”
“Thanks to you, one of my worries has been lifted.”
She says such brutal things with a straight face. Why does it feel like she and Kalian are cut from the same cloth? It seemed the intellectual I thought Loclaire was wasn’t actually that far from being an intellectual at all.
Less than an hour later, a carriage bearing the imperial crest was prepared. Loclaire also brought three heavily armed escort knights. They might look like mere grunts, but underestimating the Barshain Empire would be a grave mistake. From the flow of their aura, all three were one stage below Loclaire—at the so-called expert level. I wasn’t entirely sure about the combat strength of characters in this novel, but in most stories, a single expert swordsman could handle fifty to a hundred regular soldiers without a scratch. I could tell Kalian had gone to great lengths for me.
“Today we shall safely escort Her Highness! Feel free to call us grunts or nobodies!”
“Mm, I shall entrust myself to you.”
Still, I couldn’t very well call them nobodies, so I asked for their names.
“For the sake of my dignity as well, tell me your names.”
“I am called Karl!”
“I am Dias!”
“I’m Jack!”
If their names had been long, I would have shortened them, but fortunately that wasn’t necessary.
“What splendid names. I shall remember them.”
Dias immediately dropped to one knee and drew his sword.
“To think you would remember the name of one as lowly as I… This Dias shall become Your Highness’s sword!”
I’d only met him five minutes ago and I was already gaining a loyal follower this easily? Having one was better than having none, and above all, his skill was at the expert level—the highest peak an ordinary person could reach. In a small, weak nation, he would have been qualified to serve as the leader or vice-leader of the royal knight order, yet here he was kneeling before me, declaring he would become my loyal subject.
Kalian was watching the scene as well.
“Sob… Daughter, you must return safely! If you come back injured, Father won’t eat with our daughter for a while!”
Shouldn’t it usually be “forever” in situations like this? I waved at the worried Kalian and climbed into the carriage.
“Father! Then I shall be off!”
And so the heroine-capturing party consisting of me, Loclaire, Karl, Dias, and Jack was complete.
. . .
Two hours had passed since we set off by carriage toward Gray Garden.
“Haaam… How dull.”
I had hoped for a carriage with a limousine-like interior, but inside there was only a chair. There was nothing to do but stare out the window at the outside world. For a modern person addicted to dopamine, it was an unbearable level of boredom. Just as I was nodding off from drowsiness—
“Your Highness, I have prepared a quiz. Would you like to try it?”
Loclaire spoke up, perhaps noticing how bored I was.
“Go ahead and ask one. I am confident I can answer them all.”
Loclaire fell silent at my confident demeanor.
‘She’s probably thinking up a question she believes I absolutely cannot answer.’
After a brief silence, the corners of Loclaire’s mouth twitched as she spoke.
“The last words a beer left before dying… What do you think they were?”
“Are you mocking me right now? Isn’t that just a rumor?”
Loclaire finally couldn’t hold it in and burst into laughter.
“Pfft, pffft… I-I’m sorry… I showed an unsightly display… Pfft!”
If she found it funny, that was good enough. I didn’t find it funny at all, though.
“Well, I am not entirely ignorant about quizzes either, so I shall give you one as well.”
Would the person who once thoroughly read a collection of dad jokes be able to come up with a funnier quiz than Loclaire?
‘It’s as easy as lying down and eating rice cakes while brushing my teeth.’
I opened the Grandpa Kim Hong-bae’s Son’s 100 Dad Joke Collection that lay dormant in my mind.
“What happens when a sword turns serious?”
“Hmm…”
Loclaire spent a full ten minutes with a deeply contemplative expression. I wondered if she really needed to take it so seriously, but since she seemed to be enjoying herself, I waited.
Finally, after the long silence, Loclaire spoke.
“…I do not know. What is the answer?”
You spent ten minutes thinking and still couldn’t get it? Maybe because she’d spent her whole life only holding a sword, her head wasn’t made for studying.
“It turns black, of course.”
“……”
It was a fairly high-class B-grade dad joke I had prepared, yet Loclaire’s reaction was completely different from what I expected. That was because Loclaire, who had been utterly defeated by dad jokes, was now staring at me with a completely blank face.
“…Was it not funny?”
Loclaire’s shoulders shook as she vigorously waved her hands.
“Pfft… Pwahaha! I-I’m sorry…!”
A thin line of red blood was trickling from the corner of Loclaire’s mouth. Before long she had even begun slapping her own cheeks. Having grown fond of her reaction, I showered her with even more dad jokes. Every time I told one, Loclaire would slap her own cheek while laughing.
Eventually, Loclaire’s face swelled up so much she could barely speak properly.
“Sh-shorry… (I-I’m sorry…)”
“…That’s enough. It will naturally go back to normal after some time. As long as you enjoyed it, that’s fine.”
“Y-Your Highnesh…! (Y-Your Highness!)”
Loclaire buried her face in my stomach and sobbed. While I was gently patting her head—
The carriage’s vibrations gradually slowed. By the time the shaking had completely stopped, Dias opened the door.
“Your Highness, we have arrived at Gray Garden… but why does Sir Loclaire’s face look like that?”
The three escort knights were desperately trying to hold back their laughter at Loclaire’s rather comical appearance.
“…It has nothing to do with me. If you are truly curious, ask the person herself.”
I decided to treat Loclaire as if I didn’t know her. Escorted by Dias, I stepped down from the carriage and looked around, unable to hide my shock. That was because the surroundings were filled with things that could barely even be called houses—crudely made from mud.
People groaning in pain, others whose bodies had already gone cold with flies swarming over them, and even people wielding sharp shards of glass as they fought over food.
“W-what in the world is this place?!”
“Pardon? This is Gray Garden. It is a place no one from Barshain could possibly not know.”
‘You idiots, I’m Korean!’
As I stood there in a daze for a while, I felt people slowly creeping closer from all around. And then it happened.
“H-hand over everything you’ve got…!”
“Just kill them and take it!”
One person came running with a fist-sized rock, and another charged at me holding a shard of glass. The two who had closed in right before my eyes tried to swing their weapons at me, but—
-Thud.
“Aaaaargh!”
Loclaire had sliced off their wrists in an instant.
“We will protect Her Highness.”
‘It would have looked plenty cool if she had just stayed silent and pointed her sword at them…’
Two severed wrists. Two people rolling on the ground, screaming in agony. And finally, Loclaire standing over them with an expressionless face, watching them warily. The vagrants hesitated, no longer daring to approach.
“Make way! You lowly scum are not worthy of even looking upon her!”
The moment the words left his mouth, Jack infused his sword with an incomplete aura. The moment the vagrants saw the color of his blade change, they all scrambled away in a panic.
“I-it’s a sword master! Run!”
“We’ll all die if we fight back!”
Wait… Jack was only an expert-level knight. Well, if they wanted to misunderstand on their own, it was convenient for us.
Once Gray Garden grew quiet, not a single vagrant could be seen. Except for the two still writhing on the ground with their wrists cut off, that is.
I walked toward the people rolling on the floor.
“Y-Your Highness! It’s dangerous!”
“It is fine.”
I lightly waved my hand, then stared directly at the vagrant who had charged at me first. With a look that said I could crush someone like him like a bug.
“How dare a vulgar wretch like you attempt to strike an imperial princess?”
“I-I’m sorry! If I had known you were the princess, I never would have done it…!”
Wow, listen to this guy’s way of speaking. He just casually admitted that he would have killed me if I hadn’t been a princess? This was the first time I had felt this angry since possessing this body. My face flushed red with rage.
“So what you’re saying is that if I had not been a princess, it would have been fine to kill me?”
“T-that’s not what I—”
“Shut your mouth. Just sharing the same space with you is disgusting.”
I nodded toward the escort knights who were watching from behind. It was meant to be an order to throw them somewhere out of sight… but Karl suddenly drew his sword from its sheath.
“H-hiiik…! P-please, at least spare my life!”
“His Majesty said that anyone who dares touch the princess may cut off their head without mercy.”
‘When the hell did Kalian ever say that?! I told you to cut off their wrists, not take their lives!’
Seeing that he was about to swing at any moment, I hurriedly spoke up.
“Karl, that is enough. It seems you misunderstood my meaning. I meant for you to throw them somewhere out of sight.”
Karl’s pupils dilated sharply. Then his shoulders trembled as tears flowed from his eyes.
“Ahh… To think you would show mercy even to such a vulgar creature…! This lowly sword shall serve Your Highness!”
Following Karl’s lead, Jack also knelt before me.
“This Jack shall also serve Your Highness!”
While I was feeling extremely flustered, Loclaire cleared her throat.
“The three of you, throw those things somewhere and come back.”
“…Loclaire, do not speak for a while.”
“Eh? Why?!”
Are you seriously asking that?! Can’t you see my shoulders shaking right now?! Honestly, listening to Loclaire’s muffled pronunciation with her swollen cheeks was far more entertaining than these dad jokes. It was like how a comedian who wins with their face is funnier than one who wins with wordplay.
“Now, once the three of them return, let us go find my acquaintance.”
“Yes, Your Highness!”
“Did I not tell you not to speak?!”
Do you have any idea how frustrating it is that I can’t laugh freely because of Tyrant’s Dignity?!