Heroine On Strike

He made a deep smile and ran back to the sack that he threw away. The knights remembered he had been dragging it here because of its weight and ran ahead of Luide to bring it over to Ella. Ella was surprised by these quick-witted knights, who were quite different from the slow-witted knights from the other day, and Vylun smiled proudly.

While Ella chuckled at Vylun, Luide, who waddled over to the sack, waddled back slower than the knights to her. Then he said, “Take a look, milady.”

He had the proud look of a man who was bragging about his great feat as he opened the sack to show Ella. But what was inside the sack were lumps of rocks with light purple and green colors mixed about.

All the knights couldn’t hide their dumbfounded expressions while looking at Luide, who proudly looked at these common rocks that were all over the mountain or forest. The knights who carried this heavy sack even glared at him for wasting their energy for nothing. But Luide didn’t seem bothered at all.

“It was just as you said, milady. The Maddison was successful in bringing in raw ores with their greed, but they didn’t have the skills in crafting jewelry and were in a dilemma. They had piles of raw ores in their storage,” said Luide.

“And the jewel crafter that Toiken promised still didn’t come?”

Luide made displayed an interesting smile and nodded at Ella’s question. “Yes, milady. And he’ll never come.”

“Good. You’ve done a great job. Maybe I should send a gift to Count Tolin for sending you to me.”

Ella made a satisfied smile, grabbed one of the rugged ores, threw it in the air, and caught it. It wasn’t a gesture a noble lady would do, but all the knights who knew her from her young and reckless days were all used to it and weren’t surprised. But they had questions.

“What is that?” Vylun asked in their place.

At that, Ella made ever so bright a smile and looked back at Vylun. She seemed glad that she could speak to someone of this exciting news, but she looked around and closed her mouth. Even if they were inside the storage, they were too close to the entrance. Not only that, even if these knights were her family’s knights, she didn’t trust that they would 100 percent be on her side.

“We should talk inside,” said Ella.

At her suggestion, Ella, Vylun, Smila, and Luide all went to Luide’s office on the third floor of the storage. There was a table inside the giant office in the center of the big storage, and Luide’s sack was placed on top of it. Ella then took an ore with a diameter of about one inch out and placed it in front of Vylun.

“It’s an amethyst ore.”

“Is that true?” Vylun asked while holding up the ore toward the sunlight curiously. But it only looked like a rock with a unique color.

Unlike other gemstones that are transparent toward the light, even if this was an ore, it was too opaque. It was hard to believe that this stone could be turned into that famous amethyst.

“Yes. House of Mellin smuggled these ores from the Toiken Empire, keeping them within the empire by paying a lot of money, so it’s true. And you won’t get to see the amethyst that way. You have to cut it in half. Here, cut this way.”

Vylun looked doubtful but took a dagger out from his belt per Ella’s advice. He didn’t know anything about gemstones, but he knew that gem prices were correlated with their size. Thinking that this gemstone was Ella’s, it made him hard to cut it in half.

So instead, Vylun wielded aura over the point of his dagger and cut the corner of the ore. The ore, which could only be cut with very special skills, was sliced so easily as if it was tofu. Then from the cut surface, the purple gem quartz was revealed. Everyone’s eyes focused on the quartz within.

“Wow, is this how an amethyst looks?”

“I didn’t expect such a thing would be inside that ugly stone.”