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

Chapter 424: Chapter-424

She then let out a small sigh, her eyes dropping from his face down to his hands. "Besides, you should really look at someone who clearly hates omelettes."

Julian froze. He looked down at his plate. He had been eating the omelette out of pure habit, but it was absolutely true—he utterly hated them. Because of his royal upbringing, he had been taught from childhood that he had to finish everything on his plate without complaining, so he always forced it down. No one in his entire life, not even his own family, had ever guessed his secret aversion.

He swallowed hard, looking back up at her. "And why do you think so, my lady?"

Elara looked at his stunned face, and a tiny, rare smile touched her lips.

"Well," she said softly, "you can just say that I am quite perceptive."

With that, Elara methodically wiped her hands and her mouth with the linen cloth, setting it down neatly on the table before standing up.

Seeing her prepare to leave, Julian spoke up, his voice echoing across the long, empty distance between them. "Why does it matter?"

Elara paused, her vacant eyes locking onto him. "Excuse me?"

Julian leaned forward, staring at her across the white tablecloth. "Why does it matter if I like omelettes or not? Out of everything, why is that something you felt you needed to tell me?"

Instead of answering right away, Elara looked at him, her tone becoming completely serious. "Why do you not like omelettes?"

Julian looked at her like she had completely lost her mind. He threw his hands up slightly in frustration. "I just don’t like it! That’s it!"

Elara tilted her head slightly, a thoughtful expression appearing on her face. "But don’t a lot of people like omelettes? Like, isn’t it objectively good?"

"Because I don’t!" Julian snapped back, exasperated. "And I don’t care what other people like or what they think is good!"

Elara stared at his heated face for a second, and then her expression smoothed out. "That’s it. You just got your answer, my lord."

Julian blinked, completely thrown off. "Excuse me?"

Elara looked at him, her flat voice suddenly carrying a fierce, unyielding weight as she laid out her final logic.

"Just like how you do not like omelettes, I don’t like being the emperor," she said, her words cutting cleanly through the quiet room. "Just like there is no deep reason for you to hate a simple dish, there is no grand reason for me to not want to be the emperor. And just like how everyone else loves omelettes, but you don’t—it is the exact same for the throne. Other people dream of being the emperor, but I simply do not."

Julian sat frozen in his chair, his mouth slightly open as the sheer, simple truth of her words hit him. She didn’t have a hidden trauma, a secret plot, or a complex political motive for stepping down. She just genuinely, fundamentally did not want it.

Before he could even process the answer, Elara turned on her heel and walked out of the dining room, leaving him alone with his half-eaten plate and the realization that she was far more unpredictable than he could ever calculate.

The heavy silence of the dining room rushed back in the moment the doors clicked shut behind her.

Julian sat frozen at the far end of the long banquet table, his hand still hovering near his fork. He looked down at the cold, half-eaten omelette on his plate, and then looked across the vast expanse of the white tablecloth toward the empty chair where Elara had just been standing.

For months, his father’s advisors, the northern diplomats, and the domestic ministers had spent countless hours trying to psychoanalyze the Empress Regent. They had drafted entire reports guessing her hidden motives, assuming her abdication was a complex chess move to root out enemies or a temporary retreat before she grabbed even more power.

But there was no grand conspiracy. There was no deep, tragic secret.

*She just doesn’t like it.*

A sudden, sharp chuckle escaped Julian’s lips—a mix of a disbelieving huff and a genuine, surprised laugh. He leaned back in his chair, running a hand through his spun-silver hair, his ice-blue eyes staring up at the painted ceiling. The sheer, blunt simplicity of her logic was completely staggering. To the rest of the world, the imperial throne was the absolute peak of human ambition; to Elara, it was just a tedious, poorly optimized menu option she had decided to remove from her daily routine.

He looked back at his plate and pushed it away with a sigh. She had figured out his lifelong food aversion in a single breakfast just by watching the subtle tension in his posture, using the data to deliver a flawless, undeniable metaphorical defeat.

"Perceptive," he muttered to himself, shaking his head. "That’s an understatement."

Meanwhile, Elara walked down the sunlit corridor of the main palace wing, her steps picking up their usual, steady, mechanical rhythm. The static in her mind was entirely gone, replaced by the satisfying sensation of a completed baseline evaluation.

Her interaction with Julian had been highly productive. By utilizing a simple, comparative data point—his biological aversion to egg dishes—she had successfully conveyed a complex personal metric that his emotional vocabulary had previously refused to accept. He now possessed the accurate parameter for her abdication. The probability of him asking redundant questions about her past political choices had dropped by an estimated eighty-five percent.

As she turned the corner leading toward the administrative offices, a large, dark shadow shifted against the marble wall.

Mahir was leaning against a pillar, his arms crossed tightly over his chest, his high-ranking training uniform impeccably clean. The moment the sound of her boots reached his ears, they perked upward instantly, his golden eyes locking onto her face with a heavy, intense focus. His tail gave a single, slow sweep against the stone behind him—not with the frantic rage of a rival, but with the quiet, disciplined restraint of a protector waiting for his baseline update.

"The Northern prince remained at the table, Master," Mahir reported, his deep, rough voice dropping quietly into the empty hallway. He had been monitoring the perimeter of the dining sector as part of his routine cohort coordination. "He appears to be experiencing a state of cognitive confusion, but his hostility metrics have not increased."

"He is processing a factual correction," Elara replied, not slowing her pace as Mahir automatically fell into step two paces behind her right shoulder, his massive frame a silent, comforting barrier against the rest of the palace. "The interaction was successful. His behavioral patterns should show a higher degree of compliance moving forward."

"Good," Mahir grumbled, a low, satisfied rumble vibrating deep in his chest. His tail settled into a steady, calm line behind his calf. "As long as he stays in his coordinate and stops trying to crowd your space."

"He understands his boundaries now, Mahir," Elara stated flatly, her eyes fixed firmly on the heavy oak doors of her private office ahead. "The board is stable."

She pushed the door open, stepping back into the familiar, quiet sanctuary of her desk, where the remaining ten percent of the empire’s work was waiting for her signature. She didn’t feel a rush of triumph, and she didn’t feel a lingering sense of amusement. But as she picked up her fresh quill and dipped it into the ink, she decided that the morning’s expenditure of resource had been entirely acceptable. The prince was fitting into his cage, the council was quiet, and her mind was perfectly, beautifully silent.