When the Mad Emperor Suddenly Becomes Sweet

25

Now, try to break loose.” Every morning, Archer grabbed Freya’s waist or her arm.

“Why are you doing this every morning? How am I supposed to beat you, Archer?” But due to repeated training, after not being able to move in his grasp, she’d now learned some skills such as kicking his shin, biting his wrist, or hitting his chin with her head. She succeeded in hitting Archer’s chin with her elbow today as well.

“Ouch, why do I have to keep parenting?” Archer asked while rubbing his chin, sounding as if he were in pain.

Freya put her hands on her hips and spoke. “Archer, I know I’m in your debt, but it’s not parenting, you know?”

Archer pretended not to hear as she pointed that out. At first, it had seemed like Archer was doing her a favor by taking her in, but after spending some time together, it wasn’t only that. Freya had started doing all kinds of things after staying at his tent. First and foremost, she’d begun cleaning because the blanket he’d thrown to her the first night had smelled like rotten cheese. At the time, she’d thought that even the orphanage wasn’t that bad.

Much to her disgust, Freya had then seen leftover chicken bones, hardened cheese, and rotten fruit all mixed up in his bed. She’d found a brush to get rid of the old food and had then washed the filthy blanket, hanging it in the sun to dry. There was no way his skin disease would get better when he slept on a bed like this, and to top it off, he didn’t even wash up properly.

“If I didn’t tell you this, then these damn fleas might have eaten you up!” Freya exclaimed.

“Fine, fine. I’ll admit that,” Archer replied.

After Freya nagged for a while, she called Archer once she’d gathered all the clothes and put them in the laundry basket. “Since I brought it up, let’s go to the riverbank together. I’ll wash your back.”

Archer pretended not to hear her and started cleaning his boots with his large body bent over. As he barely washed his face for three days, he was trying his best not to be dragged out of the tent by her.

“Come now, Archer,” Freya continued to nag.

“But I did that three days ago. The skin of my back will rip off at this rate!” Archer’s complaining didn’t do anything to dissuade her. In the end, Freya took him by the hand and had to drag him down to the riverbank. Showing defeat, he took off his shirt and protested, “But I’m clean.”

Archer bowed down as Freya ordered him to put his hands on the muddy bank of the river, and he complained bitterly as she poured water over his back without hesitating. Since they were in the north, the water was as cold as ice at midday. Archer shook his back and made a huge fuss. “It’s freezing! I will die before I get fleas!”

“Archer, you know you’re making a big fuss, right?” Freya rolled up her sleeves and started scrubbing his back.

“What am I, a horse? A cow? Isn’t this the brush you use to clean the tent?”

“Archer, do you think getting clean will be achieved by washing once or twice?” After roughly scraping off the dead skin and pouring water over him several times, Archer’s back was shining.

“I’ve picked up a pain in the neck, I tell you.” Archer sat on a warm rock, feeling completely exhausted, and sighed heavily.

Freya chuckled to herself as she looked at the defeated expression on the bear-sized man’s face. Shaking her head, she roughly washed Archer’s shirt and hit it with a bat to get rid of the dead skin. Her shoulders, wrist, and fingers tingled as she viciously swung the bat.

“Freya, I must be off first. I’ll take the basket back with me.” Archer lifted the basket full of laundry that she’d washed and disappeared up the hill.

Finding a patch of grass, Freya sat down for a while and basked in the warmth of the sun. While she stared at the flowing river, she was startled by the sound of a twig snapping, and she called out, “Archer?” She turned around as she spoke and gasped in surprise, “Sir Lucius?”

When Lucius returned to the barracks, a maid hurriedly helped him to remove the heavy armor. As he stood on the luxurious carpet, he saw the bloodstains on it. And Lucius put his hand on his forehead when he saw a red dot spreading across it. “Isn’t it funny that the smell of blood is this disgusting?” He swung the sword for survival but knew well that didn’t justify what he’d done. “But mother, I will gladly become a fiend,” he’d told her. Lucius had no intention of giving anything to Hart and Milady.

When Lucius showed up in comfortable pants and a shirt, someone showed up and asked him, “Sir Lucius, is it your headache again?”

“Damn it. Give me the medicine.” Lucius drank the green potion Herro brought and frowned as it seemed the medicine was very bitter. “It’s such a horrible taste that I want to kill the person who made it!” He said coldly while wiping his mouth. The servant beside him screamed and ran out of the tent.

Herro sighed as he saw the servant running away, “Your Highness, how many was that now?”

“Does that matter when I have such a killer headache?” Lucius responded in frustration because he’d been suffering from severe headaches for several years. “I wonder when it will get better.”

“It’s not something you should be saying.” Herro waved his hands when he heard Lucius’s aggressive response. “Oh, it’s just a shame that only I get to witness this.”

“Shut up,” Lucius snapped.

Herro shook his head as he looked at Lucius, who was never really warm to anyone. “Anyway, why did you do that?” Herro hadn’t seen it himself, but he knew about the situation as he’d heard about it from the guard knight, Gemini, and he wondered what had gotten into the prince. On the battlefield, Lucius was deadly, but he wasn’t usually like that to a commoner. He heard it was a small, weak-looking boy.

“Ah, those eyes,” Lucius said as he threw the vial across the floor.

“I see that you didn’t like his eyes, of course.” Herro was reminded of Lucius, who had never complimented anyone before, and shook his head.

Lucius didn’t want to agree with Herro and didn’t bother correcting him. Why did I do such a thing?

He could vividly picture the trembling shoulders and the lips that had stuff on them. She’d looked happy to see him, and he hadn’t seen anyone look at him like that recently. What a useless thought. Lucius shook his head as he paced up and down the tent. He then decided to shift his focus to wiping out the enemy, “Herro, call Gemini. We have to discuss the next tactic.”

Herro often felt treated like a servant, and he whined, “You do remember that I’m a grand wizard, sire?”

“Shut up, Herro!” Lucius shouted aggressively. Herro bit his tongue for fear of reacting to his temper and barely bowed when he left the tent in a huff.