≪•◦ ❈ ◦•≫
"Plans are established by counsel; by wise guidance wage war." —Proverbs 28:10
≪•◦ ❈ ◦•≫
LANTANA kept on visiting the twins at the falls during her free time to ease her boredom. Most of the time, they would be telling her stories from their realm. Sometimes, they would just be there in silence, admiring the nature that God had created.
Though she could see the celestial spirits that lingered around their place, they said they couldn't even feel any spark of mana inside her body which made her young girl's dream evaporate in the air. As a result, her delusion of spending her time to practice on how to use her newly gained power never came to start.
Maybe she was just really too hopeful.
The only good thing that happened back then was that she wasn't scolded by the duke despite her disappearing for almost the whole day.
Lantana sighed heavily.
'I guess being in a fantasy-filled world doesn't guarantee a person's magical power,' Lantana thought as she went out of her room to unwind.
As soon as the door closed, she saw the head butler who was about to knock.
"My lady, the dresses that you bought the last time you went out are already here. The mother and daughter pair brought them here earlier! They told me to contact them immediately if there are any problems with the clothes and the sizing," the head butler named Reuben said to her in an enthusiastic tone which also affected her gloomy mood.
Her ears perked up as she felt her eyes sparkled in delight to the point that she even forgot about the matter in the Blue Mountain Forest. Well? Her long awaited clothes were finally there!
"Where are they? Where are they?" Lantana asked as if a little kid who was told about a surprise prepared for her.
The butler chuckled at her reaction before he gestured his hand as he looked behind. Her eyes immediately spotted the location where he was looking and felt her eyes shone even brighter after seeing the dresses arranged respectively.
"Would you like to try on the dresses, my lady?" Emily, who was beside her, asked with the same sparkle in her eyes while anticipating Lantana's response.
However, she was tired and a little sweaty after working out so she was not really in the mood to wear such pretty clothes with her current state. She was too afraid to ruin the clothes that were as if made by the hands of a god.
"Not at this moment, Emily. Ask someone to arrange them all in my room. I'll take a bath first before trying them out. After that, ask the butler to visit the baroness's store, pay all their remaining debts, and make sure to make them sign a contract under my name that would indicate that they are mine," she said with a large grin on her lips.
"Huh? I apologize for the rudeness, my lady, but what do you mean by your last words?" confused, the butler said.
"I want them to officially work for me as my exclusive designers and dressmakers."
Reuben's jaw dropped as soon as he heard her reply.
"If you want their clothes, can't you just order them to make you something, my lady? Must you really have to hire them exclusively? Not that I am saying this to disagree with your choice of maker since the last exclusive dressmaker of the duchy resigned long ago, but I am just really getting confused at what you're getting at," Emily said in confusion.
Lantana chuckled sweetly as she quickly took a glance outside.
"If I want to get something, I will get it. I want them, I'll get them. Aside from that, I also want to start a clothing business with them. So… What do you think? Of course I'll get them too," Lantana said to Emily with a cheeky smile that made the latter gasp and had her eyes widened.
Before she could say another word, Lantana already made her way back to her room, leaping in joy because of her newly arrived dresses.
When she got there, she immediately went straight to the bathroom and soaked herself with warm water inside the bathtub that was exclaiming just how rich the duchy was—since it was made of gold with small diamonds coating it. With a satisfied smile on her lips, she laid her back on the bathtub that she filled with bubbly liquid soap.
The first time that she entered the bathroom herself, she felt her eyes almost protrude and formed a heart shape upon seeing how the whole place was built. The whole bathroom could make her live well for a lifetime even without working her ass off. The whole place was made with gold as if gold was nothing but a common material in building a normal bathroom. And as if gold was not enough, it was even decorated with other sparkly stones aside from diamonds that made her naturally greedy self salivate such as rubies, emeralds and turquoise.
Duh? She felt like she did not live very poorly in her past life but while living Penelope's life, it felt as if she was constantly being slapped by the truth that… She was definitely a rat. Hah. Thank God for letting her live a new life. She would definitely not waste her second chance. She would not live her life so dedicated at work again like in the past since with the duchy's state, even after dying, the money of the duchy would continue to flow. Unless they did something to the royal family, nothing would change.
Speaking of her past, she suddenly wondered, would a person need to die first before transmigrating? She suddenly felt curious if that snake happened to hop into her current world too. However, she didn't have a memory of her killing him so, he was still probably being a creep somewhere around Earth… Right?
Dang. Somehow, she suddenly felt an ominous feeling inside her. In the first place, why did she have to remember that snake if it's just nothing? Ever since in the past, her gut feeling was never wrong.
"My lady, are you alright?" Lantana heard Emily say as she knocked on the bathroom door.
She woke up from her anxiety as soon as she heard Emily's concern.
Right. Her current life was very different from the past. He could be there too but that didn't mean that they would really meet. Even if it was true, that didn't mean that they would know each other. And if ever her gut was wrong, that would only mean that the snake was still living his life on Earth.
That being the case, she shouldn't really worry about it anymore. Everything in the past should be left in the past in order to move forward. If he really happened to exist in the same world with her and she knew about it, well, too bad for him then. Her father was one the highest men in their world. For now, she should cease her worries for tomorrow and cherish her day.
"By the way, Emily, tell the butler to let my father know about this decision of mine, alright?"
"Yes, my lady!"
AFTER taking such a long bath, she went out of the bathroom wearing a pink bathrobe while drying her long hair with a towel. As soon as she lifted her head, she was welcomed by Emily and the sparkling dresses which made her heart jump in excitement.
"Are all my orders taken care of?" she asked in an innocent tone.
During her first day there, there were usually maids helping her to take a bath. However, that spooked her to the core. Because of that, during the next few baths, she made it so that no one would help her take a bath anymore. Duh? Who would feel glad to have a lot of people see their whole body?
"My lady, what do you want to wear?" Emily asked why sorting out the dresses and gowns.
Lantana smiled meaningfully.
"Get me the sexiest dress. I'll try to seduce some trained knights who could be a part of my own order."
With a dropped jaw and a pale face, Emily turned to look at Lantana as if she had seen a ghost.
Lantana chuckled as if she heard a funny joke.
"What's with that look, Emily? Of course, I'm just kidding."
'Of course not.'
If she really wanted to ease her anxieties even just by little so that she would worry no more, she should start by taking the first step of what she was currently capable of doing. She just realized that there was no sense of worrying about something that she couldn't really control or bound to happen so why should she still waste her time worrying? Since that was already the case, she should do what she could do right now to stop her useless feelings.
In the present, her first step was to create a strong group of knights who could be her own to protect her if ever there was a sudden attack that occurred since as of now, her focus was to lose weight and regain her old, fit and sexy physical body to make it able to move the way she wanted to. Since she was a failure in magic, that was the only thing she could do currently.
She was just really hoping that her old partner wasn't transmigrated and without mana since she would really die if he did given that she became so weak.
Lantana already had a plan brewing. Since she had scanned some of the faces of the knights with Emily—whom she presumed to be newbies since they looked less than the group from Penelope's memory—she thought that if she was to gather her own troupe, at least she should place a lot of strong eye-candies to make her stay enjoyable and exciting. Aside from that, she was guessing that the knights who were deeply rooted in the duchy were not with the handsome knights that time, so now, she decided to bring the matter up to her father.
As soon as she picked a dress suited for her mood, Lantana wore it with the help of Emily and mentally prepared herself for the battle that she was about to cross.