Leon's POV
Main Hall of floor 6
The teams started arriving one by one, With the prince and his noble antarauge, arriving first.
And when Angelica and her team arrived she did not like what she saw taking place between the Prince and Marie, hence the drama taking place, a few feat in front of me.
"I keep telling you to learn your place, but it seems you won't listen!" Angelica shrieked. Her voice seethed with anger as it echoed through caverns.
Everyone glanced over to see Angelica confronting Marie, apparently fussing over the Prince's superficial injuries. Our professor was still too flustered, and intimidated by Angelica's ducal lineage to intervene.
Marie, meanwhile, ducked behind the prince's back again as if for protection.
Now this one? She is calculating.
"Angelica, enough," Prince Julius said.
Angelica turned to him. "Your Highness, are you truly going to indulge her?"
Marie stayed behind the prince, her eyes cast down at her feet. She pinched the fabric of his sleeve between her fingers, playing up the cute and innocent angle.
"Your Highness, I…" She hesitated. "I just wanted to heal you. You can refuse me if it inconveniences you. I don't mind."
Angelica was as quick to anger as she had been in the game.
She flew off the handle at the drop of a hat. Well, she was the protagonist's rival, essentially the villainess of the game. The developers probably designed her to be a short-tempered beauty who brandished the power of Nobility.
"That girl, Marie. Doesn't something seem strange about her?" I asked.
Olivia gave the question some thought. "Well, she's been getting bullied worse than me lately. Everyone's been whispering about how she's the daughter of a viscount but dreadfully poor."
Viscounts were a step above barons, but as with barons, their higher status didn't necessarily equate to wealth.
The size of a lord's holdings wasn't always proportionate to the title they held. Many viscounts had formerly held larger territories and greater riches only to have it stolen away by taxation.
Nevertheless, they retained their nobility even when they lacked the regional strength necessary to replenish their riches.
Even now, the other nobles with us sympathized with Angelica.
"It's crazy that she'd cling to the prince like that in front of his fiancée."
"I've seen her getting cozy with other guys, too."
"Unbelievable."
I gaped. Holy shit. Marie was trying to supplant the protagonist!
"Enough!" Prince Julius bellowed.
Everyone stopped talking at once.
Angelica was shocked. "Y-Your Highness?"
Jilk, who normally looked gentle and kind, suddenly stepped forward. He placed himself in front of the prince, holding out his right arm as if to block the prince and Marie from Angelica. "Please don't trouble the prince any further."
"Trouble him?" Angelica echoed in disbelief. "You're accusing me of troubling him? I'm doing this for him!"
Greg stood nearby with his spear cocked on his shoulder as always. His eyes narrowed in annoyance as he snapped, "That attitude, that's the problem.
Don't drag your outside relationship with him into the academy. Seeing you flaunt it just pisses me off."
Ironically, as they were the heirs of powerful nobles, no one else could voice a word of protest.
After a beat of silence, the prince turned to the professor. "I apologize.
We'll be teaming up with Marie. I don't care how you pair up everyone else."
Frazzled, the professor just nodded several times as they said, "Y-yes, of course!"
Angelica simply gawked at the exchange, dumbfounded.
I was the only one who thought to glance at Marie. She was smirking.
And with that were on our way out of the dungeon.
Olivia yanked out a mineral embedded into the wall. It seemed to be magi-steel.
"Found one!" Olivia beamed. She brushed sweat from her face, leaving streaks of dirt on her nose and forehead.
"Good job," I said. "This'll put us at one hundred Dia, plus all the monster cores we got it will net us a couple thousand."
Dia and dil were the in-game currency. One dia was about the equivalent of one 1 cent in my old world (USD) .
Other forms of currency existed, too, such as gold and silver, but I hadn't really seen much of them since this world already used bills and coins.
Olivia scanned the area.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"No, it's just…I wonder why things like this happen in dungeons. It seems a bit strange, doesn't it?"
Couldn't say I minded having someone else questioning these ever-flippant game mechanics, but looking for intricate logical explanations wasn't going to get her anywhere.
"Strange, indeed," I muttered. "Let's get going."
"H-hold on a minute! Aren't you a little curious, Leon?"
I sighed. "Not really, no."
She deflated at my lack of interest. "So cold, when I was at the temple training to control my grace I was told, that the dungeons were how the Darkness stay roated to our realm, and that the monster that come out are meant to spread its influence,"
A little curious now, I asked
"So is that why the monster cores first go to the temple for purification? To remove the water essence of darkness in them,"
"Yes that's why, and after the influence is removed from the the cores work as good power containers for mana."
The two of us had wound up taking the lead for the group as we continued our talk about dungeons.