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

Chapter 400: Chapter-400

The door to the study remained shut, and for a moment the room was filled only with the quiet rustle of pages and the faint sound of the wind pressing against the windows. Elara stood near the desk, one hand resting lightly on the edge of a report she had not yet finished reading, her expression as unreadable as ever.

Then, from behind the tall bookshelf near the far wall, a figure slowly stepped out.

Demerti.

He looked mildly annoyed, as though he had been hiding there far longer than he had intended. His gaze slid first to Elara, then toward the window she had been standing by a moment ago, and finally back to her again. His face did not change much, but the faint twitch at the corner of his mouth gave away enough to suggest that he had already lost whatever argument he had been preparing to make.

Elara turned her head slightly, glanced out of the window once more, and said in an even tone, "Come to think of it, it looks like I won the bet."

Demerti closed his eyes for a brief moment and exhaled through his nose. He looked like a man who had just realized that the world had once again decided to be inconvenient in a way that only Elara could predict.

Then, with obvious reluctance, he said nothing.

Instead, he reached into his coat, took out a small pouch of gold, and placed it into her hand.

Elara accepted it without hesitation.

The pouch was not particularly heavy, but she weighed it briefly in her palm anyway, as if assessing whether it justified the expense of having to listen to Demerti complain later. It did. At the very least, it was one month of Demerti’s salary, and free money was never wasted.

Especially not by someone who understood economics as efficiently as Elara did.

The matter of the bet had begun during the year the system vanished.

At the time, no one had expected its disappearance to be permanent. Not even Demerti, though he had pretended otherwise with the confidence of someone who wanted very much to believe in the comforting certainty of an ending.

It had all started in a room much like this one, with the two of them standing near the same window, looking out over the palace grounds while the empire moved beneath them in the ordinary rhythm of paperwork, guards, messengers, and ritual silence.

Back then, Elara had shown no concern when the system had abruptly gone missing.

No alarm.

No panic.

No visible curiosity either.

That had unsettled Demerti more than he liked to admit.

He had looked at her then and asked, "Why are you so calm and collected?"

Elara had not even turned to face him fully before answering. "Because I already know why it disappeared."

That made him pause.

He had frowned. "You know?"

"Yes."

"How?"

Elara had given him the same flat look she gave to problems she considered unnecessarily obvious. "Because of the war."

Demerti had been silent for a moment, trying to follow the logic.

Then Elara had continued, "The system is not gone for good. It only stepped back because this phase did not require it."

Demerti had looked skeptical. "That sounded very certain."

"It is."

"Why are you so sure?"

Elara had turned slightly toward him, one hand resting on the windowsill, her face calm as ever. "Because things like that do not simply vanish without reason. If it has truly left, then it is because some condition changed. And if that condition changes again, it will return."

Demerti had crossed his arms. "You make it sound like it is alive."

Elara had answered without any visible emotion, "It probably is."

He had stared at her for a while after that, unsure whether she was being serious, sarcastic, or merely factual in her usual unsettling way.

Then he had said, "I still think the system looked noble."

That had earned him a long, still look.

"Noble?" Elara repeated.

"Yes. The way it spoke. The way it behaved. It looked like something important."

Elara had considered that for a moment, then said, "If you think nobility is the same as truth, you are much easier to deceive than I thought."

Demerti had bristled. "That is not what I meant."

"It rarely is."

He had frowned deeper, unwilling to let the matter go. "You’re really saying it was not a good thing?"

"I am saying," Elara had replied, "that it is not the kind of thing you should trust simply because it presents itself politely."

That answer had only confused him more.

And so the argument had continued.

Demerti had insisted that the system was probably gone for good. He had believed that, once Elara was emperor, the strange interference from the outside would stop. There would be no more messages, no more sudden appearances, no more cosmic interruptions from a goddess with questionable priorities.

Elara had disagreed immediately.

Then, in the same calm tone she used to discuss supply routes and military movements, she had said, "If I do something big enough, shocking enough, or inconvenient enough, the system will return."

Demerti had laughed at that. "That is impossible."

"It is not."

"How could you know that?"

"Because it is predictable."

He had stared at her for another long moment, then said, "Fine. Then let us make a bet."

Elara had raised an eyebrow.

"If you are so sure," Demerti had said, "then prove it. If the system comes back within eight years, I lose. If it does not, you lose."

Elara had not hesitated. "Agreed."

He had looked at her with open suspicion. "You accepted too quickly."

"I already know the outcome."

That had annoyed him, which was likely why he had doubled down.

"Then let the loser pay the winner one month’s salary."

Elara had simply nodded.

Demerti had been pleased with that arrangement for one very specific reason: one month of Elara’s salary was absurdly large.

Not because she was a king in the usual sense, but because she handled far too many duties, managed far too many systems, and had accumulated more wealth than a normal noble could dream of. One month of her salary would have been enough to let a commoner live comfortably for a long time, or at least allow Demerti to rest without financial worry for several generations if he was careful.

He had thought he was being clever.

He had thought he was taking easy money from someone who was overconfident.

Instead, Elara had only watched him sign the bet with that same indifferent expression, as though she already knew he was walking willingly into defeat.

And then the years passed.

The system never returned.

For a while, Demerti had grown smug about that.

He had started believing that perhaps Elara had simply guessed wrong this time. Perhaps even she could be mistaken. Perhaps the strange cosmic interference that had once surrounded her was truly gone now that she had become emperor and the world had settled into a more stable pattern.

Then everything changed.

The day Elara did something enormous—something that reached beyond court politics, beyond the palace, beyond the ordinary reach of public rumor—the system appeared again.