His eyes scanned across the ballroom hall from the corner as he silently observed the interactions among the demon nobles in the hall, wondering what they could be thinking right now.
Everything around them, including the cuisine, the wine, and the utensils were of the highest caliber, however, by Armin's recommendations, most of the nobles here were below average.
He had largely invited nobles in a similar situation as them so the Korver family would largely stand out amongst the lot. However, the real reason for his suggestion was to include a selection from the list of nobles given to him by Numbers.
Despite the organization being mostly based in the northern part of the continent, its influence amongst the nobles in the Floato Region was quite impressive. However, most of the noble families associated with them were of rather low ranks, forcing Armin to think up a suitable reason for inviting them without being suspicious.
As there was surely going to be backlash from his plan here today, he needed the Korver family to serve as his scapegoat. Hence, having noble families who would willingly point the finger at Saleo was a must.
Armin was well aware of Saleo's superiority complex as most nobles tend to have. He knew he looked down on other races especially Dark elves that had once been enslaved to the nobles and planned to capitalize on that.
It didn't matter if he had changed his mind after meeting the emissary as his plan was already in motion.
That's why, Armin could not help but wonder what these nobles thought of this event.
Were they simply excited to make the acquaintance of the emissary because of her beauty?
Or did they come here for the possibility of forging a relationship with the new Darknar family?
There were also some rather high-ranking nobles here so perhaps they were more interested in forming an alliance with each other than meeting the emissary.
For the high-ranking noble families present, this may have been the perfect opportunity to attract weaker families under them. Because of that, this gathering was a gigantic feeding ground for them and may be the only reason why they had accepted the Korver family's invitation.
This dinner party was a place where hungry whales would lure the small fishes into their mouths and devour them.
So the question was, would the small fry be eaten without them ever noticing? Or would they realize something and skilfully disengage? Or perhaps ― would there be nobles filled with desire who would turn their tables on their would-be devourers?
After studying this scene for nearly an hour, Armin concluded that there were no nobles here that would pose a problem to his plans, as long as they got what they wanted, they wouldn't care to investigate further the downfall of the Korver family.
After all, to them, that would be one less family to worry about. As for the wrath of the new Darknar family, Armin didn't believe they had the leeway to declare war on the Floato Region when they were already surrounded by the Great Five.
Indeed, this was the reason Armin was so confident. It didn't matter if the Dark elf was the wife of their Demon Lord, a demon like that would no doubt have hundreds of wives, as such, losing one, shouldn't be that much of a big deal to him.
This was why, he couldn't just give up on his desires.
The only thing he needed to worry about was offending the pride of the Darknar family so some compensation had to be made and that would be the destruction of the Korver family.
Sending the head of Saleo along with several more of his officials should be enough to settle the issue. Of course, there would be some numerical compensation but that would be the Jaxith family's problem.
Armin already had plans of cutting his territory off from the Floato Region so it didn't matter how the Jaxith family reacted to this.
They would be too distracted by their own impending doom to care about a lowly Viscount family like his.
Then, it's about time, no?
It had been an hour and a half since the ball started, so it was the appointed time.
Armin's true objective was only beginning.
―It was frightening.
His previous gloomy demeanor that drive people away vanished as if it had been nothing more than a lie.
It was about time for the emissary to take a break after speaking with so many people consecutively so he needed to act now. If he wanted the blame to be placed on the Korver family, she needed to go missing during this ball not afterward.
There was no explanation for allowing the emissary from another region to go missing in one's territory whilst the blame can be shifted off if it happened afterward.
Even if Saleo's mind was scanned and showed his innocence, he would still be forced to take responsibility in order to appease the other region.
Armin straightened his outfit and walked casually through the hall towards the emissary and Saleo who had just finished talking with a noble.
Like clockwork, one of the servers walked by as he arrived before them and Armin stopped him and took two glasses of wine from his tray.
One of the glasses held a deep blue-colored liquid that gave a sweet scent and faint alcoholic odor. This was one of the most expensive blue wines in the world and Armin casually handed it over to the emissary with a straight face.
The second glass held a normal red wine and Armin handed that over to Saleo. He had specially chosen that wine for its textured and gentle flavor which was perfect for this scenario.
"Greetings Lady Rain and Earl Saleo. After all that talking I'm sure you both must be tired."
"Lord Armin, it's nice to see you again, I should thank you for your help the other day."
The face of the lovely emissary, "Rain" turned her flawless smile in his direction and greeted him without any hesitation. Normally, most nobles would pretend not to recognize him for a moment before proceeding to rudely address him.
This only goes to show just how superior Dark Elf women were to Demonesses.
Armin thought but before he could reply, Saleo interjected as he took the glass of red wine from him.
"Oh Armin, I didn't see you connecting with the other nobles at all. Were you just standing in the corner this entire time? Come on now."
Armin chuckled and smiled wryly as he observed Rain accept the drink from the corner of his eyes. He didn't care about the suddenly self-conscious Saleo, who had let the attention he was getting go to his head but he couldn't show that in front of the emissary as he decided to fake a smile.
"Ha... ha... something like that."
"See... I knew it. You're too much of a loner. You should get out there and make some connections to help your family out of its current predicament. It would be a shame if all my efforts to help you go to waste because you're shy."
Although it seemed as though Saleo was giving him advice, Armin was aware of this personality trait of his. Apparently, Saleo was the type that always felt the need to show off when he was in the presence of a beautiful lady.
Still, his current attitude was a bit off as Armin hadn't expected him to be this abrasive about it. He was usually the one to act classy and elegant while spewing some nonsense on how great and generous he was, yet it seems something had made him agitated.
Still, this was not something that was beyond his expectations as Armin already expected such comments from him so he simply ignored it as he turned to face the emissary.
With the most beautiful smile on her face, she seems to twirl the drink inside her glass around for a moment as her expression shifted for a moment before returning to normal and then, it happened.
The moment he had been waiting all night for, the emissary took a sip from the wine that had been infused with a concentrated dosage of Blue Powder.
Armin had been carefully watching the emissary the entire night from the sideline. He had seen her drink a few times during the night as it would be incredibly rude for the invited guest in such a grand event to not take the refreshments offered by the host.
Each of the few glasses of wine she drank from was laced with trace amounts of Blue Powder to first disable any auto resistances in preparation for this.
"You were right Lord Armin. I am indeed a bit tired. I should probably take a little break back in the waiting room. If you'll excuse me, Earl Korver."
"Umm... Ah please, I'll have your maid escort you there. She'll take care of you for the time being."
Hearing the emissary's words, Saleo was caught off guard for a moment but immediately recovered as he escorted her to where the maid that had escorted her here was standing and asked her to look after the emissary while she rest back in the waiting room.
Armin smiled. So far everything was going as planned so all he needed to do now was make himself visible to s few nobles not under the thumb of Numbers for insurance. He wasn't the type that like to leave anything to chance so he had to deal with the grueling task of social interactions with this worthless bunch.
Time went on like this as Armin noticed the Numbers' staffs disappear from the hall slowly. Most of the nobles here were still waiting on the emissary's return but it had been about an hour now since she went to take a break.
Saleo seemed stressed and anxious as the nobles kept going to him and requesting for the emissary to return. It had gotten to the point that he decided to send another maid in to check up on her, something that could be considered rude in noble society but as she was the star of the show, it couldn't be avoided.
From a corner, Armin gleefully watched as the whole event unfold. The maid came back claiming the emissary had gone missing and everyone became so panicked, they didn't even question the disappearance of the maid that had accompanied her earlier.
'Such fools.'
It didn't take long for more and more nobles to start asking questions and Saleo going in himself to see what had happened.
To the point where the idiots concluded the new Darknar family was just too uncivilized to understand noble culture and she had rudely left without a proper farewell.
Of course, there was some opposition to this idea as some believed the Korver family had disrespected the emissary which forced her to leave before they could finish speaking to her.
This sparked all sorts of conversations about what the Korver family had done to anger the emissary to make her leave so abruptly. Many of the high-ranking nobles even went as far as accusing the host, Saleo himself of making a move on the emissary which was a grave offense.
Talks of the Korver family harming the emissary had even surfaced but everyone was soon calmed down by the representative from a Duke household. As there was no proof of anything, none of them held the authority to search the Earl's estate so they simply had to be patient until they made confirmation of the state of the emissary before reporting this to the Jaxith family.
'What a bunch of buffoons... This is going better than expected.'
After all that, the noble simply went back to the party as a few of them began to take their leave. None of them had even bothered to confirm the state of the emissary by simply investigating the state of her knight escort stationed outside.
Naturally, this only made things easier for Armin as only a sponsor, he didn't need to wait till the end of the party to leave as he bade his farewell to the dejected Saleo and left his mansion before the Royal Knights outside would sense something is wrong and lock down this entire mansion to find the person they had been assigned to protect.
The entire Floato Region was about to be rocked by the time the Jaxith family discovered the disappearance of the emissary but the time they would need for their investigation was more than enough for him.
This 𝓬ontent is taken from f(r)eeweb(n)ovel.𝒄𝒐𝙢