Chapter 6

The people of Taylan, even after a few hours had passed, were still anxious about Arisella's fate.

The young beauty who by official right is the lady of the entire town, the one who led them out of a seemingly dead end and the only one with the power of prophecy among them all has fallen ill, and everyone who treated her like an idol is very worried, thinking of a way to make Lucelle give them information.

That woman was known for being stubborn in strange places, and they understood she wouldn't help them deal with their worries unless she saw fit—and why would she? Lucelle wasn't a psychologist (they exist here) but an alchemist specializing in medicine for physical ailments… the town's mental health wasn't her responsibility.

She preferred to be by the side of the woman she considered her sister rather than satisfy her need for information about what was happening. They understood, but couldn't help but feel a little upset about it. Some could only remain in the vicinity of the clinic, waiting for something to happen.

And then it happened; all their worries about the fate of their prophetess disappeared when they saw Arisella running out of Lucelle's clinic at high speed as if nothing had happened to her.

Happy to see her healthy, several of her acquaintances and some particularly brave people approached her to talk to her and ask how she was, only for Arisella to quickly say, “Excuse me, I have something to do,” as she ran away as if she were running away from something.

The townspeople didn't want to cause any trouble and left her alone when she asked them to. Still, they were a little puzzled and curious about the strange expression on her beautiful face when she finally climbed into a small carriage.

Was it disgust, fear, or shame? None of them could say for sure, but they realized something bad had happened.

Soon, Arisella's lover ran out, frantically looking around, and finally saw Arisella leaving in a black carriage. He was about to shout her name when he felt a chill.

He immediately and instinctively turned around to return to Lucelle's clinic, but a "friendly" hand grabbed his shoulder. He turned around stiffly, and behind him were several people with cold expressions.

"Could you explain to us what just happened?"

Lucelle had to go out and explain what happened so that her oppa wouldn't get beaten up for the obvious misunderstanding, but the news that John Asher was such a bad kisser that Arisella ran away from him quickly spread throughout the town like wildfire...

Lucelle clearly didn't care about sharing her Oppa's little mistake and John could only cry, resentful and grateful at the same time...

♦♦♦♦

Arisella, who had quickly left Lucelle's clinic to escape John, the "biggest kisser of the year," was determined to get as far away from the scene of the embarrassing incident as possible, hurriedly searching for a carriage to take her back to her beloved "little" mansion while doing her best to deal with the townspeople who wanted to check on her.

Finally, Arisella managed to find a cheap carriage that would take her to the outskirts of the town where her estate was located, passing through the large black iron fence that surrounded it and entering inside.

Arisella's estate was the size and width of one hectare, with a large garden of vegetables similar to tomatoes and some carrots that was cared for by several gardeners, who upon noticing her arrival stopped and happily greeted their young man.

On the site, one could find a rather beautiful mansion whose size the few trees surrounding it, about 15 meters, could not rival.

The mansion itself was a very villa-like structure with a well-planned room layout, an irregular floor plan, and a high basement. The building is relatively ornate, with large windows, an attic, and four balconies.

On the first floor are the building's entrances, windows of various shapes, and two terraces: one for guests and the other where the gardeners tended some flowers. The masonry is made of alternating blue and white bricks. The second floor has a white half-timbered facade backed by ornamental bricks and features several pediments and decorative loggias, with a third terrace directly connected to Arisella's room.

And for your information, this beautiful building that only took 7 days to complete became popularly known as the 'Bluen Mansion', much to Arisella's embarrassment.

It was impressive... or rather impossible that it only took a week to build this mansion from the perspective of the inhabitants of Earth. However, the supernatural power of professions like {Architect} and {Builder}, as well as the joy and fervor of the townspeople toward the prophetess who appeared after so many years, made it possible.

After greeting both the gardeners and her personal chauffeur, who smiled bitterly at her with a calmer demeanor, Arisella stepped out of the rented carriage and approached the gates of her mansion, entering inside and being greeted by the sight of a beautiful interior hall and maids cleaning.

It seemed like her housekeeper was doing a good job taking care of the place.

……

……….

………….

………………

You might be wondering... What's going on? Why doesn't Arisella just have a mansion, but also a housekeeper, maids, a chauffeur, and gardeners? Why does a supposedly commoner seem to be living like a young noblewoman in what's supposed to be a small rural village? Why are her maids all women?

What's all this about? Does seeing the future really make you an aristocrat?

The reason for all this was actually more than just being a prophetess, as Arisella was one of the "daughters" of a legendary figure, at least according to the popular history of this world.

Throughout the Terra Empire, there was a deeply held belief that all prophetesses were descended from a single woman; she would be the progenitor of this lineage that was etched deep within their souls.

That woman would be Angelina Swhalter, the only prophetess of the Age of Chaos who served the Alliance of the Big 5 before the founding of the Empire, and the one who enabled numerous victories against demons and evil spirits in those chaotic times.

Although this was not confirmed and it was widely accepted that prophetesses were naturally incapable of giving birth, it was still significant enough that a law was passed declaring that each prophetess would be given the status of 'seminoble' and a noble title declaring them women of illustrious lineage; although these titles could not be inherited by any children they might adopt in the future.

What is Arisella's title? Well, as a prophetess of the lowest rank, her title was 'Baroness,' the lowest rank of nobility.

It is worth mentioning that although he is called that, his authority is not the same as that of a real Baron, but nevertheless, a “real” Baron certainly cannot compare in terms of popularity.

As such, it could be said that Arisella was both a commoner and a noblewoman, which earned her her own small estate; which could become larger if the extent of her soul were discovered. Of course, given her current northern status, that would only end in early tragedy for her compared to what awaited her according to the novel.

Incidentally, the highest title a prophetess of her rank could achieve here is that of a marquise, as duchess is a "sacred title" destined for the wife of a sovereign. It must be said that Arisella covets none of these things.

Arisella entered the mansion and was greeted with a bow by the maids, looking around the interior with a strange smile that puzzled those who watched her. Finally, upon reaching her room, Arisella softly closed the door and threw herself indecently onto the bed, hugging her pillow as she said with some disgust.

"I can't believe John came and kissed me like that... I understand you were worried, but... why was my first kiss almost like one I'd get from a dog?" She waved her hands furiously and then shook her head. "No, Arisella, it's not his fault, it was the excitement of the moment... although that's why my discomfort reached a critical point regarding our relationship..."

She couldn't help but shudder as she remembered that kiss, which had felt like a violation of her personality. Memories of a man or not, she was certain no one would like to be kissed like that. And if such a person existed... she honestly didn't want to meet him.

Sighing sadly, many questions ran through Arisella's head. Of course, they all had to do with her past, not as Amael, but as Arisella.

She couldn't remember anything beyond that year, and although her memories were slowly returning, she felt strangely uncomfortable because her skirt gave access to those memories.

"Hey, cloud moron, are you there?" She spoke loudly into the air, receiving no response. She sighed as she rolled her eyes, once again certain that her virtual assistant from the system wasn't being much help. She rubbed her forehead with a disgruntled expression and tired-looking eyes.

I'll think about what I have to do later...my head hurts.

She, who was a little depressed, lay lazily reclined on a king-size four-poster bed with blue sheets, with a pile of stuffed animals beside her for company.

Each of these plushies was shaped like popular magical beasts that countless girls across the Empire would love for their adorable design, all arranged in a semicircular row starting with the smallest and ending with the largest.

This interesting collection of stuffed animals was housed within an elegantly designed room, one that ordinary commoners would never see in their lives unless they became servants. However, being filled with bunny and butterfly accessories, it seemed particularly childish.

Still, it could truly be considered a luxurious room worthy of a noble girl, with a large dark brown wooden door as its entrance.

Its size was unnecessarily large for a single person's room, and inside one could find a bookshelf, pictures of horned rabbits, a huge wardrobe for clothes, as well as a lot of other luxurious furniture with squirrel stems and a beautiful mirror with a floral design in its frame, hanging on the wall.

The nightstand near the bed had a beautiful white bell with a picture of a beautiful blue bird circling in the air inside a dark circle, as well as a stuffed lion and a cute family photo.

It was truly a room for a lover of beautiful things… But if you ignored all that, you would realize that everything in this room bordered on perfection.

The beauty of the space itself, the large windows that flood the room with light, the aforementioned four-poster bed, and, of course, its privileged semicircular terrace where its owner often relaxes, gardening and sipping tea...

It was a beautiful room that, along with the entire mansion, was built thanks to the tireless and passionate efforts of the Taylan people.

They literally moved piles of construction materials with sweaty but smiling faces, and many village professionals worked their hearts out to reduce the construction time to an incredible degree. To this day, Arisella expressed gratitude and a feeling of "Are they crazy?" whenever she thought about it.

And in that room created with such care and decorated to its owner's taste, Arisella was at that moment staring at the ceiling in silence.

At that moment, Arisella was in a daze, tightly hugging a large teddy bear to her plump breasts as she pondered the chattering cloud's words.

That guy suddenly started talking about being able to analyze the status of other characters... Isn't that very useful?

She could even glean information from unknown extras that would help her cope with the upcoming events. And yet, before she could even consider asking anything, the cloud started spouting a bunch of nonsense about power outages and literally vanished into thin air.

He even mentioned that he had other duties, but he just walked away without saying anything other than that he was going to sleep or something.

What were those features? How useful could they be? What could I gain from them? Why didn't he tell her he had those features in the first place?

Since it's a system that helps you deal with the challenges another world presents, isn't it natural for it to first explain its functions? It's one thing for Arisella to forget about it because she was so confused by the whole thing and worried about the future events of the novel, but instead of taking the initiative to explain what it's for in the first place, the cloud pressures her to explain the most important plot of this world.

Now that I think about it, wasn't he supposed to know beforehand? Didn't God give him that explanation? It's not possible that he was lazy and threw this system and this assistant at him just like that, right?

"Stupid cloud, I'm so curious about the answer!" Arisella grumbled to herself as she hugged the poor stuffed animal tighter. If it were a living being, it would have already suffocated under her abundant possessions.

TOC TOC

Suddenly, Arisella heard someone knocking on her bedroom door. From the way he knocked, she easily recognized the other person, and with a sigh, she sat up and said, "You may come in, Leonora."

With her permission, the double wooden doors opened, and the housekeeper who managed the entire Bluen Mansion entered. The older woman seemed strict, but when she looked at Arisella, there was an almost imperceptible affection, like that of a grandmother looking at her beloved grandchildren.

"What's wrong, Leonora? Did something important happen at the mansion that requires my attention?" He raised his head and looked at her, asking curiously.

From the way she was sitting on the bed, both hands in her lap as she looked at Leonora with calm eyes and a smile, she seemed the perfect image of a noblewoman… if you ignored the army of stuffed animals behind her, of course.

Approaching the bed, the housekeeper curtsied as she shook her head. "Nothing major happened that you need worry about, my lady. I came to inform you that Mistress Alica came to visit. She seemed quite worried and anxious, insisting that I come see her quickly."

"My aunt?" Arisella's composure had briefly broken upon learning about her relative, but she quickly recovered. In any case, she expected that her two adoptive mothers would sooner or later find out what was happening in the village, so all she had to do was calm the more sensitive of the two.

"...Tell her to come to my room, anyway I have something private to talk to her about... wait, it would be better if you guided her here, so she doesn't get lost again" Arisella almost laughed when she remembered that this year Alica foolishly got lost in the mansion's hallways while saying that.

How bad does your sense of direction have to be for something like this to happen in a mansion that doesn't compare in size to that of royal nobles?

That was what she thought, she didn't know that the average noble mansions in the north were as big as hers.

"As I ordered," Leonora bowed again and left the room.

♦♦♦♦

Getting out of bed and standing up, Arisella raised her left arm and looked at the silver bracelet she was wearing, focusing her aether on it and saying in a low voice:

[Launch: Teapot, tea bag]

Obeying her words, the bracelet released a small light from the red orb at its center, which gathered in front of Arisella into a sphere of light. Within that sphere, space itself distorted, and two objects appeared out of thin air in just three seconds: an iron teapot and a small bag embroidered with leaves of different colors.

Arisella calmly placed both hands inside the magic sphere, took out the teapot and her bag, and then opened the glass doors to step out onto her terrace, where a multitude of different flowers adorned every corner, while the sphere dispersed in a beautiful light show.

There was what looked like a round tea table made of local black oak and two wooden chairs in the center, and Arisella took one of them to sit on. She placed the teapot and bag on the table and took out from the latter what looked like square tea bags, which had a piece of string with a paper tag on each end.

Arisella then took two saucers from the table, placed the two tea bags on them, and poured the water from the kettle, which unexpectedly boiled, into each of the glasses with the amount she considered appropriate, before finally letting them settle.

The barely visible color of the crushed leaves in each of the bags was red for Arisella's small cup and green for the large one she placed near the empty chair. She quickly placed two saucers over each drink to prevent the loss of essential oils and active ingredients, and immediately returned the teapot to her space bracelet.

After finishing all that, Arisella simply waited quietly for the tea to be ready while her Aunt Alica arrived, occasionally glancing at the distant horizon...

––What the hell was Arisella doing? Why would she be making tea for two people without a second thought while Alica, who was worried sick about her, could faint at any moment from her anxiety?

Actually, the reason for all these actions is quite simple.

Arisella didn't think it was a good idea to lie lazily in bed when Alica entered the room, as it might reinforce any image she had of her nonexistent illness even without her doing anything, thus increasing her anxiety.

Especially since in this world, sleeping or going to bed in the middle of the day if you're not sick is frowned upon, whether among commoners or nobility. The Arisella of the past always avoided doing those kinds of frowned-upon things as much as possible, so it wouldn't be surprising if she only did it if she was suffering from a real illness.

To make it easier to convince her that he was in good health, presenting a casual image like drinking tea would help ease her worries and allow them to slowly start a calm conversation where the misunderstanding could be resolved over tea and a laugh.

In short, it could be said that Arisella was trying to convey the hidden message of "I'm fine, as healthy as a Doran's hen!" to Alica without having to explain things too much. At least, this was the best she could come up with to quickly resolve the matter.

After all, what good would it do if he nervously told Alica, "A-Auntie, I'm fine..." while lying in bed? Isn't that the same as making you believe something is seriously wrong? Especially with that airhead of hers, Arisella couldn't risk doing something so idiotic without getting strange thoughts.

It would only complicate things further.

Why did Arisella use a teapot the way she did? Why did it only contain boiling water, instead of the tea it was originally designed to serve?

That's because that's how a teapot is supposed to be used, at least in this world, and that's Amael's fault.

Amael Parker was never interested in drinking tea or learning anything about it. That's why, when he wrote his first novel, he made the mistake of turning teapots into mere containers for hot water rather than infusions, and he never bothered to fix it, not even in his second novel.

As such, thanks to that, there's now a whole world where it's common sense to use teapots as vessels for heating water for things that have nothing specifically to do with tea, and if you were to tell an Earthling that a teapot is only used to brew infusions inside it, rather than boil water, they'd probably look at you like you were a freak.

It should be added that Amael also created many strange aristocratic rules and other baffling elements in this otherworldly society that would definitely make more than one Earthling hang their head in confusion.

Oh no... That would be a topic for another occasion.

Arisella waited calmly for her visitor for about five minutes before another knock came at the door. After giving Leonora permission once more, the double doors opened, and this time it was two women who entered her room.

Accompanying the housekeeper was a tall, beautiful woman, dressed in a black and white clerical gown.

She was a rather attractive woman, with crimson hair and green eyes, whose sensual hips and perky bottom were not at all hidden by the "holy" clothing she wore, but rather emphasized them.

In fact, as one would expect from a follower of Aphrodite, the clothes they wear are often quite visually stimulating: so much so that someone ignorant enough might mistake them for harlots rather than servants of a primordial god.

A large white circle, with a cross at the bottom; the symbol of Aphrodite could be seen woven into the center of her dress.

The only disappointing thing about her, at first glance, was her breasts, which were the size of a fist. It's a bit funny considering that the vast majority of Aphrodite's clerics have breasts as large as Arisella's.

As soon as she finished her work, Leonora immediately left the room with a bow and left them alone, and when the erotic woman looked at Arisella, her large, anxious, trembling eyes quickly became watery and she approached her with hurried steps.

—Aunt Alica, what's going on now? Why do you look like you're about to cry? Do you want to talk about it with me over tea?

Arisella acted seemingly ignorant of the situation as she asked with a worried expression, but the other party didn't respond to her words as he silently inched closer to her.

Finally, Alica stopped in front of Arisella.

He looked at her for a few seconds, creating an awkward atmosphere between them... and then immediately knelt down and threw himself at Arisella's abundant breasts while crying out through tears:

"Uwaaa, my beloved Arisella is still alive!"

"When did I die!?" Arisella screamed in total disbelief.

Of all the things that could have gone through this woman's mind, did this have to be it?

Arisella's little tricks went out the window, as she didn't expect her aunt to go from thinking "She's sick!" to "Nooo, she died!" in a flash, rendering them useless.