Reborn as the Psycho Villainess Who Ate Her Slave Beasts' Contracts

Chapter 396: Chapter-396

Her eyes narrowed slightly.

"I cannot even feel emotions properly. Do you think people wouldn’t notice that?"

Then she continued, voice still calm and detached.

"Fourth, even if I were still serving as emperor and doing everything your storytelling demands, do you realize how illogical it is? Why should I need to be emperor at all costs just because I was born a princess?"

She gave the system another flat look.

"And do you really think it’s that easy? Just because some story says the princess meets a man, falls in love, and gets married? What if I die in childbirth? Do you know how dangerous childbirth is?"

Elara’s words left the system silent for a moment.

Then it gave a long, helpless sigh. "You always do this. You always turn the neat little script into an argument."

"I’m not arguing," Elara said flatly. "I’m correcting stupidity."

That earned her another weary look. "The God of All said you were impossible."

"She is welcome to write a more logical story next time."

The system rubbed its forehead. "You do realize that being reborn as the princess was supposed to be a grand chance at romance, destiny, and a perfect future, right?"

Elara stared at it in complete disbelief. "You keep saying that like it is reasonable."

"It is the usual path."

"Then the usual path is inefficient."

That shut it up for half a second.

Elara continued, her tone unchanged. "If I became emperor, I would have to handle administration, politics, military matters, agriculture, taxation, disaster response, and half a dozen other things. If I married, I would have to consider compatibility, succession, childbirth risks, public expectations, and whether the other person could actually survive my lifestyle. That is not a romance. That is a logistical problem."

The system blinked at her. "You make everything sound miserable."

"It is not miserable. It is work."

"And you really don’t care about love at all?"

Elara looked at it for a moment, then answered with perfect calm. "I care about results."

That was apparently the wrong answer, because the system made a face like it had just seen a tragedy.

"Then what are you even supposed to do?" it asked.

Elara glanced away, expression still flat. "Live. Manage what must be managed. Keep people alive. Avoid unnecessary complications. That is enough."

The system stared at her as if she had just rewritten the meaning of the world.

And maybe, in a way, she had.

Elara had never been a princess in the way stories liked to imagine. She was not waiting to be saved. She was not longing for a prince. She was a ruler who knew the cost of everything, and who had no interest in being forced into a destiny designed by someone who had never once carried the weight of it.

The system seemed to realize that too.

It sighed again, much quieter this time. "You’re impossible."

Elara gave a small, emotionless nod. "I know."

Then she turned back to the matter that had brought her here in the first place, as if the entire conversation had been nothing more than a brief interruption.

And that, somehow, made the system even more frustrated.

The system stared at her for a long moment, then crossed its arms. "Fine. If you refuse the obvious path, then what exactly do you want?"

Elara did not answer immediately. Her eyes were fixed on the room ahead, on the details that had first made her suspicious. The air was too still, the mana too uneven, the people too careful in the way they avoided certain corners of the building.

That was the real issue.

Not destiny.

Not romance.

Something was wrong here.

"I came here for a reason," she said at last. "Something does not fit."

The system frowned. "That’s it?"

"That is enough."

It opened its mouth, then shut it again.

Elara stepped forward, her expression unchanged. "You keep talking as if stories are supposed to follow a fixed pattern. But reality does not care about patterns. If this place is hiding something, I will find it. If it is dangerous, I will remove it. If it is only a mistake, I will document it and move on."

The system gave her a tired look. "You really don’t have any interest in being the heroine of a proper story, do you?"

"No."

"Not even a little?"

"No."

That answer was final enough to kill the subject.

So the system changed tactics.

"Then what about the people around you? Your kingdom, your king, your companions, all of that?"

Elara’s gaze moved briefly, as if she were considering the question in the same detached way she considered reports and battle maps.

"They matter because they are part of the structure," she said. "Samuel is a competent king. The kingdom functions. My companions are useful. That is sufficient."

The system winced. "You say things like that as if you’re talking about furniture."

"I am being precise."

"You’re being frightening."

"I am being honest."

For a moment, neither of them spoke.

Then the system exhaled and muttered, "The God of All is going to hate this."

Elara gave a small, flat glance in its direction. "That is not my problem."

And with that, she turned toward the disturbance she had come to investigate, the one thing in the room that still refused to make sense.

Whatever was wrong here, she was done waiting for it to explain itself.

Elara stepped away from the conversation as if it had already served its purpose.

The system watched her for a moment, clearly waiting for her to continue arguing, or to ask something else, or at least to react in a way that made sense to whatever story it had imagined for her. But Elara gave it nothing. Her attention had already shifted to the room itself, to the subtle wrongness that had bothered her from the beginning.

The air was still.

Too still.

Not the peaceful kind that came after a storm or before sleep, but the kind that felt forced, as if something had pressed a hand over the world and told it not to breathe.

Elara stopped near the center of the chamber and looked around with narrow, unreadable eyes.

There were people here. Several of them.

Servants stood near the far wall with lowered heads. A pair of attendants were pretending to organize documents that did not need organizing. One man had been standing by the door for too long without moving, which meant he was either a guard or trying very hard to look like one. None of them spoke. None of them met her gaze for more than a second.

That in itself would not have been strange.

What was strange was how carefully they avoided the same corner of the room.

Elara looked there.

A desk stood against the wall, covered in papers, seals, and a few ordinary objects meant to make the room appear functional. It looked unimportant at first glance. That was likely why someone had placed it there. People tended to hide things by putting ordinary objects around them and hoping nobody would notice the shape of the absence.

Elara noticed.

"Move the desk," she said.

No one reacted.