Chapter 121.1

"You're the one who set up the noise devices in the castle, aren't you?"

Raul said, tilting his head in a cat-like gesture.

"I thought you were a peer pretending to be a lady, but I don't think that's the case. If you were fake, the Crown Prince's surveillance of me wouldn't be so serious."

"..."

"Hey. That's the type of trap I hate the most."

For a hunter, it was of the utmost importance to eliminate any sign of life during the hunt. Naturally, they felt the need to avoid making loud noises.

Of course, Raul's judgment of Reece as a "competitor" was not out of line.

"Were you the one who broke into the castle yesterday afternoon?"

Raul shrugged in response.

"I don't understand. I have no knowledge of such a fellow."

"The maids saw a figure. He came in through the window and disappeared without a sound."

"Oh, I see. It might be me, or it could be a totally false accusation. I wonder which it is."

Raul laughed, his lips curving in annoyance along with his bantering tone.

"You're so cute."

He slipped down a branch and stood in front of Rishe noiselessly.

In the shadow of the tree, out of sight of Harriet and the others at the bottom of the hill, his red eyes fixed on her.

"I want you to be my wife, not the Crown Prince's."

"Stop joking around, let's get down to business."

"Don't keep joking. I just wanted to see you."

The man uttered, spitting out a line that he didn't really mean by any stretch of the imagination.

"My name is Raul, which means 'wolf leading to help' in my country's language."

(I know that his name, his ostensible country of origin, are all lies, but...)

Still, the nostalgic sound of the name reminded Rishe of the past.

For the fifth time in her life, she met a group of people who called themselves "hunters" in a corner of the forest in the Sigwell Kingdom.

It was there that Reece had encountered a badly injured Raul and treated him with her knowledge in medicine.

[I owe you my life, benefactor. If you have nowhere to go, you can stay here for a while.]

It was a very light-hearted way of saying that the hut was home to a dozen or so hunters, all of whom were good-natured people.

Rishe spent some time there and was taught how to use a bow while healing Raul.

Once she had learned a thing or two, Raul took her into the forest.

[...Yeah, you've got good instincts. I'm going to teach you for real, so why don't you try a little harder?]

And so Rishe's life as a hunter commenced.

Life in the forest was interesting, and animal ecology was fascinating. She predicted the weather by the flight of insects and birds, guessed the behavior of beasts by their footprints, and hunted with her own gimmicks.

There were times when she had waited for hours in the forest with her bow poised over her prey without moving an inch.

Her fingers even went numb when she lay on her stomach on the snow in the frigid cold, waiting for her prey. Even so, if she shivered or gnash her teeth, the noise would attract attention to her.

Although she was improving her archery skills while earning her daily bread, she was aware that Raul and his company were not ordinary "hunters".

The first time she was told of this was when she went hunting in a certain territory by order of the Sigwell royal family.

[――In short, we're intelligence agents posing as hunters.]

Raul informed her that time, sitting down on a tree branch.

[We might as well wear hunters' skin as a disguise for espionage. Under the guise of a 'hunting expedition,' we can freely go around the country and inspect the territories of the nobles without any discomfort. Don't you agree?]

The information Raul had told her was almost exactly what she had imagined.

[So we can examine the evidence for signs of corruption and tax cheats without alarming anybody.]

[Yep. Well, there are times when we get lost in the woods while hunting and "accidentally" trespass into other countries.]