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“Junior, you dare?!”
“You—!”
The rest of their enraged indignation died in their throat when the elders saw the crimson-haired girl leisurely take off her mask, revealing a very familiar, beautifully smiling face.
Obviously, they weren’t stunned by how gorgeous she was.
“E-E-E-E…” The old man who had just called her ‘junior’ sputtered for almost a full minute before he managed to regain some control of his tongue. “E-Emilia?!”𝒪𝒱𝓁xt.𝒸𝑶𝐌
The crimson-haired girl chuckled. “I don’t think we’re on a first-name basis, are we?”
Despite her lighthearted tone, none of the elders of the Nightingale clan found the situation amusing.
After all, the girl in front of them was Emilia White, the Empress of Blue Dawn, and the little princess of the White Deer Corporation. No matter how they thought about it, she… was definitely not supposed to be here.
Not to mention the fact that the Gray Wolfe and White Deer Corporations were ‘adversaries’, but there was also the fact that Carmen as a whole was currently ‘off limits’ to high-profile foreigners who weren’t already inside its borders.
While the talks of deporting potential ‘problem factors’ such as Samantha White were still ongoing, was it possible that the government would allow someone like Emilia in? Absolutely not!
The only way she could have been here now was if she had entered Carmen’s borders before the situation deteriorated, but that also didn’t make any sense. After all, there was no news of the Empress of Blue Dawn arriving in their country previously, right?
All of this could only mean that this crazy little bitch had somehow smuggled herself in! And that… was definitely not a good thing.
Just being in the same room as this girl terrified them to the core.
It wasn’t that they feared her ‘strength’, though they had to admit that if the rumors were true, she was at least decently good for an outsider. Be that as it may, however, there was simply no way for any outsider to defeat a trained and prepared Nightingale in a fair fight.
No, what really scared them wasn’t really Emilia herself, but being ‘associated’ with her.
Their Nightingale clan was suffering enough as it was, and just thinking about the government somehow discovering their ‘collusion’ and its consequences was enough to completely horrify the elders.
In the best case, they would be ‘exiled’ and become free from the country’s chains, but the elders knew that the likelihood of that being the case was the same as that of the girl in front of them being able to fly and shoot lasers out of her eyes.
With their luck right now, maybe they would be directly labeled as traitors and ‘neutralized’ using heavy weaponry instead, regardless of the price that the country had to pay.
Even if some of them managed to escape and get revenge later, it wouldn’t change the fact that most of their legacy would be lost.
Needless to say, as the ones who had put their Nightingale clan in this situation, the intentions of the twins were definitely not good either, and the elders could only fume when they thought about this betrayal.
Unfortunately, now that they were here, it was already too late.
Looking at their grim ‘ready to die for the clan’ expressions, Emilia couldn’t help but giggle. “Why are you being so serious? I’m here to help you out, not wipe you out of existence, you know?”
The elders barely resisted the urge to refute her angrily with ‘as if you could!’, and the one leading the group took a deep breath to calm himself before frowning.
He’d wanted to ask Ginny and Jasper what was going on at first in some vain hope of this being a misunderstanding, but after looking at how they seemed to give way to Emilia so subserviently, he had an ominous premonition that he wouldn’t like their response.
Maybe… the two of them were already ensnared by this girl, and they’d all been underestimating this ‘witch’ all this time. If she already had both the White Deer Corporation and more than half of the Gray Wolfe under her thumb… just what was she planning to do now?
Terrified by his own thoughts, the elder quickly shook his head in denial before forcibly calming himself down and facing the crimson-haired girl. “Young lady, let’s not beat around the bush. If you have something to say, just say it.”
The others also nodded, and Emilia finally put away her smile to lean back lazily on her chair.
“It’s simple, really. Maybe some of you already know, but I’m someone who finds pleasure in punishing the unjust, and Blue Dawn’s stock has long since run out. So, I happened to notice Carmen, which is quite ‘rich’ in this aspect.”
The elders almost gaped at her ridiculous words, but they had no idea that the ‘worst’ was yet to come.
Emilia sighed. “Unfortunately, although I can easily wipe the floor with the scumbags, the government here won’t let me help their people at all, and I hate leaving things half-baked, if you know what I mean.” She smiled. “So I had this idea… since I can’t make an apple tree bear oranges anyway, why not just uproot it and start over?”
The elders stared at each other in horror as they realized what she might mean by ‘Apples’ and ‘Oranges’, and a few even pointed their fingers at Emilia in disbelief.
The crimson-haired beauty seemed oblivious to their thoughts, however, and continued her ‘monologue’ with a smile. “Since I have to ‘reuse’ the ‘soil’ after uprooting this rotten tree, I didn’t want to cause too much damage while getting rid of it. And surprise, surprise! You know what I found?”
She grinned. “There were a whole lot of worms already eating away at its trunk! Wouldn’t it be killing two birds with one stone if I just used them to hollow it out first?”
As if afraid they wouldn’t ‘understand’, Emilia even gave them a pointed look while mentioning the so-called worms.
The elders could no longer sit still, and a few of them immediately jumped up in a rage.
Even if their Nightingale clan had now fallen on hard times, there was no way they could tolerate being ridiculed like this by a junior who was barely old enough to be weaned off her mother’s milk!
“What audacity!”
“It looks like you’ve been spoiled too much, and someone needs to teach you a lesson!”
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