Reincarnated Hero System - Chapter 1212 - 1212: ‘Thorn Rose’

As Rosaline sat and took a sip of her wine, her eyes seemed to sparkle a bit, and she spoke with a soft chuckle.

“Oh wow. I was told you might know a lot about me, but even my wine preferences?”

“Oh, please. I don’t know that much. It was just a lucky guess,” Evan replied after taking a sip himself.

“Personally, I prefer strawberries, and the grape wine glass just happened to be near the strawberries,” he added with a shrug.

Evan sat beside her on the steel bench, leaning back as he finished half his glass before setting it down.

“Lucky guess, huh? That I can believe. But I doubt the other things you do know are all lucky guesses.”

When Rosaline said this, Evan, glancing as the Aelum Kingdom’s Fourth Princess stepped into the garden, responded,

“Of course, they aren’t guesses. You’re the famous ‘Thorn Rose,’ after all. There’s not an adventurer worth their salt who wouldn’t want to know everything they could about you.”

The mention of the title drew a soft, resigned sigh from the woman, and she shook her head lightly.

“Please, don’t remind me of that nickname,” she muttered with a faintly weary tone.

Evan chuckled at this, glancing at her in the corner of his vision as he replied, “But it’s your own fault the nickname stuck, isn’t it? You’re the one who chose to wear a mask with a rose motif, and then you went around using a weapon that generated flaming magic thorns. You were practically begging people to give you that name.”

“My choice of mask aside, how on Aidos could you possibly be so certain I was the one behind it? I don’t recall removing it even once until the day I stopped adventuring.”

The woman seemed genuinely curious about how Evan had known she was the famed ‘Thorn Rose,’ but he only sipped his wine without answering.

It could already be inferred from their conversation, but the woman he was speaking to, Rosaline, was a record-breaking adventurer of considerable fame.

In the span of a single year, she had climbed all the Ranks of the Guild, advancing from F all the way to XX, and immediately after achieving the Special Rank, she abruptly quit adventuring entirely, never to be seen in the business again.

She almost seemed like a myth, but the tangible and verifiable records of the number of quests she’d completed, the powerful monsters she’d defeated, and the dungeons she’d conquered solo were all proof that she was a real person.

Alas, no one had known the face behind the mask since she had never once publicly removed it during the year she spent adventuring, but Evan had identified her at a glance, even though he shouldn’t have even been ten at the time she had been active.

While Evan spoke with her, a few people noticed them in the corner, but with Evan’s concealment skill active, the number who did was minimal, limited to Living Legends and above.

Some of those Legends considered approaching when they realised one of the figures in that secluded garden corner was Evan, but few made it far, as a single glance from either Evan or Rosaline made them reconsider.

One didn’t live long enough to reach their level without learning to trust their instincts.

Eliza, who had grown weary of the noble ladies and daughters of Regional Chiefs trying to ingratiate themselves to form ties with Evan, the continent’s rising star, also noticed him speaking with Rosaline.

Unlike most of the Living Legends who had been deterred by Evan’s side glances, she didn’t stop, but just as she stepped toward them, Kuro materialised from her shadow, assuming his humanoid form, which he rarely used, and grabbed her hand to stop her.

[Don’t.]

“Huh?”

Eliza turned to the spirit with a confused expression, but Kuro, his gaze fixed on Rosaline, shook his head silently.

[That woman. Something’s off about her. Don’t go there.]

Kuro’s unusual reaction made Eliza glance at Rosaline with narrowed eyes, but the other woman only waved at her with a calm smile upon noticing her stare, then returned her focus to Evan, appearing completely unbothered.

◇　◇　◇

“Your fiancée is cute,” Rosaline said suddenly, making Evan blink in surprise.

He turned and saw Eliza looking in their direction, then adopted a proud expression.

“Of course, she is. Cutest in the world.”

His absolute confidence made Rosaline chuckle lightly, and she waved toward Eliza before returning her gaze to Evan and asking,

“You were saying something about being surprised to see me here?”

At the sound of her soft, bell-like voice, Evan, who had been about to turn to Eliza, immediately refocused on Rosaline and repeated his earlier question.

“Yes. I’m surprised you decided to show up here. What made you choose to make the trip?”

“I’ve been away from the Alpha Continent for a long while, so I decided to come over and see what’s going on here.”

“And now that you did, what do you think?” Evan asked, an eyebrow raised lightly.

Rosaline glanced around the garden, scanning the groups of guests, and after making a 270-degree turn, she finally replied,

“I have to admit, I’m surprised.”

Her voice remained as calm as ever, betraying no hint of the surprise she spoke of.

“Rizass becoming a Transcendent aside, the Heroes are all much stronger than I thought they’d be. But the most surprising of the lot is most definitely you, Mr Evan.”

She turned back to him as she spoke, her pupilless eyes scanning him from head to toe.

“The look of surprise on my associates’—” she paused, raising a finger to her chin and adopting a pensive expression as she muttered to herself.

“Can I call him an associate? Technically, I work for him, so he’s my Boss, right?”

Rosaline directed the question to Evan, who chuckled before replying,

“Yes, you certainly are. What a filial daughter you are, paying off your parents’ debt.”

Hearing Evan’s words about her parents’ debt, Rosaline sighed softly and shook her head.

“Fortunately, or unfortunately, my parents both owed a debt and swore an oath to fulfil it. Absolutely unfortunately, it was a blood oath, and it ended up transferring to me, their only blood daughter.”

Rosaline sighed yet again, and hearing this, Evan leaned in slightly and asked,

“So, what I’m hearing is that you don’t fancy working for your boss. Not on good terms, so to speak.”

The woman blinked at his words, then took a moment to consider before replying,

“Can’t say anything about the good terms part, but I won’t deny that if my parents didn’t owe him a debt, I wouldn’t listen to him more than half the time.”

“Now that’s information even I was unsure of,” Evan replied, prompting her to shoot him an inquisitive glance.

“You were unsure, but you did know,” she said, and Evan raised his hands in mock surrender without a word.

He then reached out and took her empty glass, calling a passing waiter and exchanging their empty glasses for two full ones.

As he extended the glass filled with bright red liquid toward her, he asked,

“Why don’t you try the strawberries this time?”

“I’m not averse to trying new things, I suppose,” she answered.

With that, she took the glass, and after a sip, her eyes brightened slightly.

“Oh, they’re nice,” she remarked.

This earned a proud smile from Evan, who immediately responded,

“Of course. Strawberries are the best.”

“So strawberries are your favourite?” Rosaline asked after noticing Evan’s expression, and he nodded silently.

“Now I’m one step closer to evening the scales of our knowledge of one another.”

Evan chuckled at her remark, and she laughed softly in return before turning her gaze toward the centre of the garden, the dance floor’s centre, where Laurene and David were currently.

“Kolvar’s boy is now even stronger than his elder sisters. The looks on their faces when they realised this must have been quite the sight.”

As she said this, she shifted her gaze from David to the most imposing presence in all of Tarse, David’s father, Kolvar.

“His power has grown quite a bit,” she muttered.

For a moment, the glassy shine in her eyes dimmed, and noticing this instantly, Evan spoke up.

“Don’t do anything foolish.”

The shine returned as she looked back at him, tilting her head with genuine confusion, and seeing this, Evan continued,

“Kolvar is just the start of your problems.”

“Start? Ah? You mean the Glass Dragon? And you, I suppose. Don’t worry, I only came to look around like I said earlier. My days of being a battle junkie are long behind me.”

Rosaline’s expression carried a faint touch of nostalgia as she said this, while Evan simply laughed.

“I know you’re very whimsical,” he said. “So I can’t be sure you won’t suddenly decide to test your mettle against Kolvar.”

“Oh, please. I may be whimsical, but my whims never lead to insanity.”

Her lips curled slightly as she said this, giving her a mildly childish expression that somehow suited her, but Evan looked away and spoke calmly.

“That’s information that still needs to be confirmed.”

“What other confirmation could you need besides my word?”

Rosaline’s question came from a place of genuine curiosity, and in response, Evan, in his usual joking tone, said,

“I’m going to have to review your track record for the last two decades before that.”

“Track records? Do you want them by e-mail or post?” she asked, playing along with his joke.

“Post is fine. Oak Avenue Manor. Gerfast P.O Box 5633.”

“Post it is, then. Just a moment to write that down.”

To Evan’s mild surprise, Rosaline pulled a phone from her dress pocket, opened the notes app, and typed the address he’d just given her.

“You’re actually writing it down?”

His surprise slipped into his tone, and noticing it, Rosaline looked at him with a matter-of-fact expression.

“Of course. I can’t have any false assumptions about my character circulating.”

She seemed so serious that Evan was briefly taken aback, but he quickly recovered and returned to his usual attitude.

“Very well, then. I’ll be expecting your post.”

Evan then got up and walked to the nearest buffet, taking two plates and filling them with small cakes and other snacks.

While he was away, several people tried to approach him, but once he finished selecting the treats, he used Blink to return to the bench.

Handing one of the plates to Rosaline, he said, “I really think both of us would get along.”

“Thank you,” she said, accepting the plate and the small fork he provided, before responding to his remark.

“I think so too. Unfortunately, you don’t seem very fond of my boss,” she said.

Taking a bite of one of the cakes on her plate, she smiled in satisfaction before adding, “And it’s strange. You’ve never even met him, as far as I know.”