Farucci’s Mansion.
Prophet was sleeping on a bed. Out of consideration for her body’s health and growth, she would spend an hour sleeping every day in the afternoon.
Whenever she sleeps, she would repeat the same dream. In that dream, she was surrounded by gray mist. A woman that she was extremely familiar with would always appear in the dream with a ridiculing smile. She would repeat to her ‘How much longer are you going to wait?’
She had the same dream today...
But, that nightmare did not affect Prophet. Still in her bed, she opened her eyes, turned her head around and looked at the clock on the wall.
The clock indicated that it was four in the afternoon. The clock’s second hand had just passed the number twelve.
An hour long sleep, not one second more, not one second less. Her sleep time was as accurate as the clock on the wall.
Prophet sat up from her bed...
The room provided to her in the Farucci’s Mansion was very luxurious. It was so luxurious that Prophet, with her small build, needed to exert quite some effort to crawl from the head of the bed to the foot of the bed.
Prophet got down from the excessively large bed and walked to the vanity table to casually tidy up her long light-golden hair.
Then, with great effort, she picked up a chair and carried it to the door. Standing on the chair, she removed an originium crystal hanging above the door.
She placed the originium crystal there as a warning signal.
Even though the third prince had explained to Prophet that the humans of Norland no longer view demons with hostility and hatred, Prophet was still on her guard while inside a human city.
This was especially true in a place like the Farucci’s Mansion with elves, humans and demons, three races all under the same roof.
Should anyone enter her room without permission, the originium crystal will emit a signal.
Right after removing the originium crystal, Prophet heard music coming from below.
The art form of music was extremely rare in the Demon Realm. According to Prophet’s knowledge, only the Duke of Blood and his bored vampire subordinates would be interested in music.
Because of that, Prophet’s knowledge of music was limited to only the vampires’ pipe organs’ high pitch sounds enough to cause one’s blood to run cold.
Although Prophet was not interested in music, the room she’s in was not particularly soundproof. Because of that, she couldn’t help herself from hearing the musical composition coming from below.
If she didn’t know who it was playing music below, Prophet might go downstairs to protest the music for being too loud.
Unfortunately, Prophet knew very well who it was that’s playing the piano downstairs... one of the Four Dukes of the Demon Realm, the Duke of Bones!
If she was to go downstairs and interrupt the Duke of Bones’ music performance, that irritable Lich Overlord could very possibly turn her into a Chaos Demon barbeque. Just by hearing that name, one could imagine that it was not some sort of delicious meat dish.
Suddenly, the relaxing piano turned frantic. Prophet had never heard of such a strange musical style before. The very next moment, a young woman’s voice entered Prophet’s ears with the music.
Even though the rhythm of the music sounded a bit strange, the spirit-lifting music still managed to dispel the drowsiness away from Prophet’s mind.
“What... absurdity.”
Hearing the accompanying music and the singing voice in perfect harmony, a single thought appeared in Prophet’s mind — absurdity.
The reason for that was because the person singing the song to the Duke of Bones’ music was not a banshee. Instead... it was an elf!
The elves that revered life and nature would always hold utmost disgust for the undeads.
But, the situation at hand was completely different from Prophet’s expectations. That Blackwood Elf not only became friends with the Duke of Bones renowned for her irritable nature, they became so close that they were able to argue with each other.
Adding on this afternoon’s incident, Prophet had received multiple critical shocks to her system of values and beliefs. Because of that, she also began to disregard her prior thoughts and habits.
As the music played by her ears, Prophet’s expression remained unchanged. She pushed open the door to her room.
Prophet needed to go and wake up her four apprentices. Their biological clocks were not as punctual as hers.
She arrived at the door of her first apprentice’s room and knocked on it. There was no response. Standing on tiptoe, she decided to turn the door knob.
After opening the door, she saw that... there was no one inside.
She closed the door and went about her way to the rooms of her other three apprentices. After repeating the same process, she reached a verdict... her students did not spend the valuable afternoon to rest.
What might they be doing instead...? Studying?
If they were still in the Demon Realm, Prophet might have believed her apprentices to be hard-working enough to study instead of resting. She had even heard from His Highness Joshua that ‘The way for the Demon Realm to rise in power is through learning.’
Generally, that phrase worked pretty well with her four apprentices. But, after they arrived in Norland, they seemed to have forgotten about their duty.
Prophet started walking toward the theater room in Farucci’s Mansion.
The original owner of the mansion was an artist fond of stage plays. As such, the mansion’s theater stage was no smaller than the Weissenasche Theater’s screening theater rooms.
Sure enough, after Prophet pushed open the door of the theater room, she saw her four apprentices sitting at the frontmost row discussing something.
“There’s no good singers among the contestants today.”
“Even yesterday, only Miss Luvita and... that nun from the Nation of the Holy Church were well-received.”
“That’s why, we should just go and listen to Miss Luvita’s practices! She’s singing at the center of the garden right now.”
“But... the person performing the musical accompaniment for Miss Luvita is the Duke of Bones...”
As Prophet quietly listened to her four students’ conversation, she turned to look at the theater’s projection screen.
World’s Singers... The competition held in Norland by the Demon Realm’s Third Prince.
It was a... singing competition. Prophet was unable to comprehend exactly what could be enjoyable about a competition like that.
Instead of sitting here and watching commoners sing, Prophet would rather return to the Demon Realm and catch those mutated water elementals to study their behavior.
But, since waking up today, it seemed like everyone were discussing that competition.
“Teach...teacher!”
The four apprentices noticed the sudden arrival of their teacher. They immediately stood up in fear.
“Sit back down.”
Prophet said indifferently. The four students looked at each other before sitting back down.
Prophet also found a seat and sat down. She raised her head to look at the projection.
The person being shown in the projection was a man dressed like a mercenary. He was holding a voice amplification originium crystal and shouting into it.
As Prophet heard the roars echoing through the entire theater, her brows frowned slightly...
She was truly unable to appreciate such a rough style of music. But, to her surprise, this mercenary-looking fellow seemed to have received quite many votes. There were already over five thousand votes.
Sure enough, were the esthetics of Norland’s humans completely ruined?
“Teacher! We’ll... return to our rooms right away...” One of Prophet’s students noticed the ‘displeasure’ on Prophet’s face and thought that she was angry at them for goofing off.
“Sit.”
Prophet repeated the command she gave earlier. Then, she continued to watch the mercenary’s performance.
While watching, she asked the question in her heart, “Tell me, exactly what is enjoyable about a competition like this?”