The villainess will survive!

Part 22: Reporting at the Royal Palace

"Roselyn Villinie, enter." A voice echoed across the large room. 

The floors were marbled, and the walls were painted golden. In the center, there was a staircase, topped with a red curtain, leading to a throne. 

There was a crowd of nobles or merchants having to do with the south on both sides of the room, listening.

And in the middle and on top of the stairs, sat the King and Queen.

"Roselyn Villinie, presenting information about the drought." I knelt before them. 

"Please do." The Queen raised her hand. 

"There has been a lot of drought in the south lately. I was worried for our people, so I made the decision to investigate this situation." 

A hologram of a map appeared behind me, with the places containing drought coloured red. 

"As you can see, there is a certain river running through the places marked red. There are some branches of this river as well." 

I pointed a long blue line. There were indeed some other lines connected to it. 

"We decided to go to this village, hence there was the most drought here." 

The map closed in on a certain spot, which was the town we investigated.

"We decided it had something to do with the river running through it, and when we arrived there, we found a lot of pink flowers." 

I held a glass container up, which contained pink flowers inside. 

"These flowers have immense beauty, and anybody catching sight of them would be captivated by these flowers." 

"I don't see how these are supposed to really pretty. Please explain." The Kind looked down at me.

"If seen through a layer of glass, the beauty fades. This is the reason I put them in a glass container." 

That's right. The reason why Lottie didn't feel like they were pretty was because she was wearing glasses. 

"But the problem is, the flower can only produce this illusion with a lot of mana." 

A person handed me a vase filled with water. 

"Please, put those glasses we handed out, Your Majesties. I would immensely regret having someone as high as you to be captivated by fake beauty." 

The monarchs immediately put on glasses, found beside them.

I also put on glasses.

I slowly removed the glass container's lid, and gently placed the pink flowers in the vase filled with water. 

A magnifier was put above the vase, projecting what it looked like on a white screen. 

The King and Queen diverted their attention to that screen. 

We started to wait.

The water in the vase slowly started to go down. 

The people in the room seemed shocked.

Soon, there was no water left. 

"As you can see, this certain flower absorbs water, and quite a lot of it to maintain their captivating beauty." 

When we went to the restaurant, the worker was scolded for not watering the flower. But in truth, he did. It was the water that disappeared. 

"Because of this, there has been a lot of drought in the south. But these flowers can only survive in waters that don't flow so fast, or the flower will be washed away."