Netori: Stealing The Hero's Party!

Chapter 405 The World Revolves The Same - Part 3

"Say Grace..." Crossing her legs while sitting on the ivory throne to an empty assembly hall, Mono leaned to the side and rested her head on the back of her hand. Glancing at Grace from the edge of her eyes, she held her stare for a few moments before speaking up again. "Why did you break Aperion?"

Unfazed by the question, Grace wondered whether she should come clean or keep up the secret with a lie. However, the flicker of hesitance in her gaze had already given Mono her desired answer. Lifting her head, the iron queen crossed her legs the other way, then with a deep sigh she shifted her head from the back of her left hand to the right.

"What have you and Shamisha been planning behind my back exactly?" She asked, throwing Shamisha's name into the mix as a shot in the dark.

However, unable to catch on, Grace figured that the secret was already known to her master. Thus, looking to the front at the empty council hall, she stretched her hand forward and began explaining the rationale behind her action.

"Why do you think this hall sits empty?" Feeling Mono's eyes on her again, Grace began walking down the ivory steps. The sounds of her heels echoed in the empty hall, further emphasizing her point. Reaching the very bottom of the stairs, she continued walking a few more steps before turning around with her hands rising upwards. "Answer me, why do you believe they fear you so much?"

"Because I'm competent," Mono answered without hesitation.

Hearing that answer, Grace's expression completely dropped.

"That and the fact that you got twenty thousand people killed in a span of a month through sheer harsh labor," a light frown appeared on Mono's eyebrow, she wasn't sure why Grace would bring that up as some grand evidence.

"Not people criminal slaves, that's what they were," still staring at her creation with her head resting on the back of her hand, Mono lacked any interest in continuing the conversation further. "Just tell me what you two had planned Grace, I'm not mad–but I need to know if I can trust you till or would you be stabbing me in the back like Aurora."

The goddess hummed through Mono's lips before replying.

"The city of progress of absurdity needs time to adjust, you can't be a brute hulking through everything and expect the others to conform like water," the tension between Grace and Mono had even the goddess concerned. "No more slaughter of slaves, no more do whatever you want! When I chose you expected a level-headed genuine, not someone who'd bash their head into a wall expecting to make it fall!"

Mono squinted at what felt to her like mockery. She wanted to retort, she really did. She wanted to yell how she was not chosen but rather the goddess simply failed to kill her and was left with no choice but to hold her end of the deal. But alas, even in her disgruntled state of mind, she could taste a trickle of reason sprinkled throughout her words.

"I'll talk to Shamisha and Grace later about this directly, so just get out of my head now," Mono heaved, still bothered by the goddess' bossy nature, but couldn't do much about it at the moment.

"I'm watching you, don't make me regret my choice..." Parting with those words, Elenaris left the iron queen with much to mull over.

From better treatment of the slaves to reeling in her upgrades, and although it frustrated her to admit it, even she knew that her approach was detrimental in the long term. A true artist of her craft and a human who saw her race above the others, she simply chose to ignore those warnings–thinking everything would go as planned just because of who she was.

'Time to prepare an apology for Grace, I suppose...' Dreading the satisfied expression on Grace that she would soon have to witness, Mono wanted the apology to be done with and the same went for her talk with Shamisha.

Sinking in a chair with a sigh, the iron queen–even if just for a moment returned to her human state of mind.

'I need a boyfriend...' Having no reproductive parts, not even the genital slit, Mono's frustration wasn't just because of the stress from work.