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

Chapter 401: Chapter-401

Demerti had not even seen the full event yet when he had felt the atmosphere shift.

The room had gone strange.

The air had tightened.

And then, as if some higher authority had been waiting for the exact threshold of disaster, the system had returned.

Demerti had stood there in complete silence for several seconds before finally muttering, "You were right about him, your highness."

Elara, unsurprised, had only shrugged one shoulder.

"I am not wrong in this case."

That was what made it worse.

Not her victory.

Not the money.

Not even the fact that she had predicted it exactly.

It was the calm way she accepted the outcome, as though the return of the system had been no more remarkable than a routine administrative report.

Demerti had glanced toward the wall and then back at her. His expression was complicated now, part irritation, part disbelief, and part reluctant admiration.

"So," he said slowly, "you mean the goddess and the system are not good things?"

Elara looked at him for a long moment, then gave a faint, flat smile that barely altered her face.

"Do you really think a pie falls from the sky without a reason?"

Demerti blinked.

The answer was so like Elara that it almost felt insulting.

She continued, still in that even tone, "If something appears too conveniently, too perfectly, or too dramatically, then there is usually a cost hidden underneath it. People only notice the gift. They rarely ask why it was given."

Demerti looked away, thoughtful now.

"And you think the system was a cost?"

"I think," Elara said, "that it was a tool. Maybe also a warning. Maybe even a leash, depending on who was holding the other end."

He was quiet after that.

Elara turned the pouch of gold over once more in her hand and then slipped it away with the ease of someone who had no emotional attachment to victory but understood the importance of taking what was owed.

Demerti watched her and said, "You really have no fear of saying things like that, do you?"

"No."

"Even if the goddess can hear you?"

Elara looked out of the window again. "Then she should listen more carefully."

That answer, as always, left him with nothing to say.

The room settled into silence once more.

Outside, the palace moved on. Guards changed position. Servants crossed the courtyards. Somewhere far below, life continued in the ordinary way that always seemed to ignore the scale of the things happening above it.

Demerti finally sighed and leaned back against the bookshelf he had emerged from earlier.

"You make it sound like everything is a calculation," he said.

"It is."

"Even gods?"

"Especially gods."

Demerti gave her a sideways glance. "You really are impossible."

Elara’s response was immediate and dry. "And yet you still lost the bet."

That was enough to silence him again.

And in the end, that was how it always went with Elara.

She did not argue to win. She did not lecture to inspire. She simply stated what she knew, waited for reality to prove itself, and then collected the results with the same calm efficiency she applied to everything else.

The system had returned.

The goddess had moved again.

And Elara, as always, had seen it coming long before anyone else.

Demerti looked at Elara for a moment before asking, "So, Your Highness, what should we do now?"

Elara lifted her gaze from the documents on her desk and answered in a flat voice, "First, stop calling me ’Your Highness,’ ’Your Majesty,’ or any other nonsense title you think of. Just call me by my name. How many times have I told you that?"

Demerti looked back at her and replied in a serious tone, "I can’t do that, Your Highness."

Elara’s eyes narrowed slightly. "It is an order."

Demerti did not move an inch. "Even if it is your order."

That made her pause for a second, though her expression did not change. Then she said, "Everyone else calls me by that, and I want you to as well."

Demerti gave her a long, resigned look, clearly not intending to give in. Elara clicked her tongue softly, leaned back in her study chair, and let out a long breath.

"Well," she said, "it is not like I can fight whatever that thing is right now. I do not even know what it is."

Demerti frowned at that. "But you just provoked the system. Or whatever that thing is that you keep calling a system. I do not think you should be so careless right now."

Elara looked at him with the same calm, unreadable expression she always wore when she was thinking through a problem. "I am not warning it or provoking it for no reason. I only wanted to see its reaction."

Demerti frowned deeper. "And what did you learn?"

Elara rested one elbow on the arm of the chair and looked toward the side, her tone still level. "That this fool is splitting itself in two. The goddess, or whatever she really is, is the one behind it."

Demerti sighed heavily. "You really are not scared, are you? What if that goddess is listening to you from somewhere nearby?"

Elara looked at him for a brief moment before answering. "If this so-called goddess could truly hear me whenever she wished, do you think she would have allowed me to leave until now?"

Demerti froze.

That made sense.

And he knew it.

He looked away for a moment, then back at her. "So what are we going to do now?"

Elara turned her gaze toward the window for a second, then back to him. "First, we need to understand what was in that place. The one where I and Knight heard those sounds. The place that collapsed in seconds."

She folded one hand over the other, thinking aloud now in the same measured tone she used for everything else.

"I think it might be a mana core. Or something connected to mana."

Demerti’s brows drew together. "Do you not think something dangerous could be hidden there?"

Elara gave a small shake of her head.

"First," she said, "if there had been something truly dangerous there, the beast knight would have noticed it."

Demerti did not interrupt.

Elara continued, "If something stronger, more violent, more murderous, or even just more dangerous than you could stand directly in front of someone, their body would already be reacting to it. Their instincts would be warning them. Their senses would be telling them to back away."

She looked at him directly.

"But that did not happen. So I do not think whatever is there is a living thing."

Demerti remained silent, but his expression showed that he was still unconvinced.

Elara noticed, of course, but went on anyway.

"I think whatever is buried there is powerful, yes. Useful, probably. But not alive."

Demerti hesitated for a moment before asking, "Then what about the voice? The sound we heard?"

Elara’s gaze stayed steady. "It may have been pre-recorded. Or something similar."

Demerti blinked. "Pre-recorded?"

She glanced at him as though the explanation should be obvious. "A stored voice. A repeated message. Something left behind to be heard later."

Demerti was still processing that when Elara added, "I checked the imperial study records. There used to be a mana cave in that exact place. A mana mine, actually."

His expression changed slightly at that.

"It collapsed," Elara continued, "because people could not extract much from it. One day it simply gave way."

Demerti folded his arms. "Then maybe it really was just abandoned."