Anime Magic Card Era

Chapter 136: Chapter 135: A Couples’ Set Meal!

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"City Lord, Lady Lilith and Luke have gone out."

Crack.

At the Ashenvale City Lord’s Mansion, Victor Ashford, mid-review of a stack of documents, received the steward’s report and reflexively clenched his right hand, snapping the pen he was holding clean in half. Ink sprayed in every direction, a fair amount of it landing on him, leaving him looking distinctly disheveled.

Victor had no attention to spare for any of that right now. "Lady Lilith and Luke went out? Do we know what they intend to do?"

Why didn’t Luke say a single word to me before going out?! That kid is hopelessly unreliable. Or did Lilith decide on a whim, and he didn’t get the chance to warn me?

Victor was, he had to admit, starting to panic a little.

How in the world would I know?! The steward ranted furiously in the privacy of his own head at Victor’s question, but on the surface he merely pondered for a few seconds before venturing a guess. "At this hour, they’re most likely out for dinner."

"That does seem plausible." Victor found the steward’s guess reasonably credible. The hour was approaching dusk, squarely within dinner territory. "Regardless. Whatever Lady Lilith and Luke are out to do, no one is to disturb them. Do you understand my meaning?"

"Completely." The steward nodded with conviction.

As Victor’s confidant, and one of the vanishingly few people in the know, he understood with perfect clarity exactly what manner of terrifying time bomb the present Ashenvale was harboring.

For the sake of Ashenvale’s continued peace, the previous night, every Card Master of the Mansion and the Card Master Association had mobilized through the dark hours in a joint operation, and in the span of a single night had scoured the entire city from the inside out. The speed and decisiveness of the action ranked as the most ruthless the city had seen in decades.

Never mind the people who got arrested; even the Card Masters and guards doing the arresting wore expressions of total bewilderment. In all their years in Ashenvale, this was the first time the Mansion and the Association had joined hands on an operation of this scale.

Still, presented with such a rare, openly sanctioned opportunity to move against the rats lurking in Ashenvale’s shadows, the Mansion’s and Association’s enforcers had not been gentle about it, thrashing their targets until the wailing for mothers and fathers echoed down the streets.

"Master, is there anything in particular you’d like to eat?"

On the street, Luke registered the gazes flicking their way from every direction, along with the rising murmur of whispers.

There was no helping it. Even with the bewitching aura concealed through her particular method, Lilith’s looks remained at the absolute apex.

Add the lethal combination of white hair and crimson eyes, and back in his past life, she could have simply stood in place and passed for an anime character made flesh. She wouldn’t even have needed a costume. Set foot in a convention hall, and she’d have been the focal point of the entire venue; everyone else, however hard they tried, could only eat dust in her wake.

That was an innate advantage. And not just any innate advantage, but the born-strongest kind.

Even in the Magic Card Civilization, where handsome men and beautiful women gathered thick on the ground, the number of people who could surpass Lilith on looks was vanishingly small. In the whole of Ashenvale, there wasn’t a single one.

"I’ve no particular demands in that department. You decide." Lilith shook her head, her gaze drifting across the streetscape with unhurried interest.

Since ascending to the Undying Realm, it had been a very long time since she’d wandered through a city like this, the way an ordinary person might. Both the title of Region Governor and the status of an Undying Realm Card Master pressed down too heavily on everyone around her.

And even without those titles, she’d still have ended up in exactly the present situation. Where her own face was concerned, Lilith had never lacked confidence.

She wasn’t especially fixated on the attention one way or the other, but neither did she care to be pointed at and gawked at like a monkey on display.

"In that case, let’s keep it simple and head back after." With Lilith’s answer in hand, Luke changed direction, leading her toward a recently opened restaurant.

Someone had recommended the place to him before. The food was supposed to be excellent, and more importantly, it had private rooms.

Truthfully, Luke had no desire to eat a meal under the forceful spectatorship of countless pairs of eyes either.

"Welcome!" The greeter at the entrance took in Luke and Lilith, her face arranging itself into a professional smile, though inwardly she was reeling. She’d received her share of customers, but a pair with looks at this celestial tier was a first.

The woman did look a touch older, but these days, an older-woman romance was practically a selling point of its own.

These two are absolutely a couple. In that moment, the greeter believed in her own intuition with rock-solid conviction.

"A private room, please," said Luke, entirely unaware that the two of them had just been categorized as a couple. "Oh, and if it’s possible, could you assign female servers to handle our meal?"

At Luke’s words, something flickered across Lilith’s expression, but she didn’t open her mouth to object. Sitting in a private room genuinely would be more comfortable than the main hall.

She’d been the one to propose coming out for a walk, yes, but that in no way contradicted the fact that Lilith disliked being gawked at. People were simply contradictory creatures, and not even an Undying Realm powerhouse was immune to that.

"Understood!" The greeter wore an expression that said I get it, I completely get it, which left Luke baffled.

Hold on. I just asked for a private room. What exactly do you "get"? And what is with that look in your eyes?

It was Luke’s turn to be confused. Only after he’d led Lilith along behind the greeter and arrived at the room itself did he finally grasp what that leave-everything-to-me expression of hers had actually meant.

He’d wanted a private room so they could eat a quiet meal in peace. The greeter, helpful soul that she was, had escorted the two of them straight into a couples’ room, its lighting dimmed to a soft glow, the whole space engineered for an atmosphere of maximal, unmistakable intimacy.

At the sight of it, Luke very nearly sprayed a mouthful of old blood across the floor.

Emergency. I’ve brought the teacher I met yesterday to a couples’ set meal, and the critical detail is that she’s the one-beneath-one, above-ten-thousand Governor of an entire Region, fully capable of scattering my ashes to the wind at any moment of her choosing. Is there any saving this situation?

There is not. Just wait for death.

"Please have a seat, you two. I’ll arrange for a server right away." The greeter, apparently oblivious to the resentment in Luke’s eyes, dropped the line with cheerful decisiveness, turned, closed the door, and departed, leaving Luke and Lilith staring at each other across the dim little room.

"Ahem. Master, I genuinely did not anticipate this." Luke looked thoroughly helpless. If he’d known, he’d have chosen to eat in the main hall instead.

No. Correction. If he’d known, nothing on this earth could have compelled him to bring Lilith here in the first place. Who puts couples’ rooms in a restaurant like this anyway?!

"It’s no matter." Lilith found the situation about equally amusing and absurd herself. A Governor of an entire Region, and here she was, done in by one perfectly ordinary greeter.

But she genuinely didn’t mind much, and even ventured a small joke of her own.

"Come to think of it, this is my first time dining in an establishment of this nature. And my companion turns out to be my own student, no less."

How to put it? As experiences went, this one really was rather novel.