Night World Players

Chapter 104: Rust, Read Me a Story (Two in One)

The heavy rain poured down, shrouding the royal city outside the palace in misty rain, making it difficult to see clearly.

The world is silent, with only the roar of storms remaining.

Rast stood between the thrones, watching the rain falling heavily outside the palace.

There was no such thing as floor-to-ceiling windows in this palace located in the center of the royal city.

But the raindrops from outside were flying in, but they froze in the dim light of the palace and could not move forward any further.

Even though the rain was pouring down, the throne remained spotless.

A week had passed since he disguised himself and sneaked into the royal city of Paradise and arrived at the palace.

Ever since the near-death experience when they first met, the queen of the underworld seemed to have given up the idea of blessing Rast and turning him into an immortal dead man to stay with her forever.

Instead, he settled for the next best thing and made him his personal attendant.

It was as if she could only feel at ease if she kept Rast within her sight and could see him at all times.

This feeling is hard to describe... It's like a child catching a beautiful butterfly in the wild, and initially wants to make it into an exquisite specimen to freeze the beauty forever.

After being stopped by his parents, he put the butterfly in a plastic box and carried it with him at all times. He even secretly took it out to take a look at it from time to time during class, for fear that the butterfly would die.

Rast is the butterfly and Helen is the insect catcher.

"fruit"

An icy blue trail suddenly appeared in mid-air.

Then it converged into two characters, slowly jumping in front of Last's eyes.

The moment he saw the words, Rast stood up quickly.

His wrist moved slightly.

The silver knife flashed in the air, drew a pale curve, and cut the fruits that had already been washed and brought in from outside the palace by other maids.

shhhhh--

Fresh fruits and vegetables were cut into appropriate sizes and dropped onto the ceramic plate like pearls falling on a jade plate.

There is no need to decorate them, as they will be arranged into a beautiful fruit plate the moment they land.

Rast picked up two ceramic plates filled with fruits, put skewers on them, and skillfully brought them to the throne.

It seemed as if he had been waiting for a long time.

A white hand immediately picked up the skewer, stuck it into an orange, and put it into its mouth.

Although the Queen of the Underworld has a slender figure, she eats the fruit very quickly, with a spirit of sweeping away everything in her sight.

Helen sat leaning on the blue throne, flipping through the fairy tale book on her lap with one hand, and flipping through the fruit plate with a stick in the other hand.

In just a few minutes of rising and falling, most of the fruits disappeared.

When the skewer was about to pierce the last piece of fruit, Helen's fair hand suddenly paused.

She moved her eyes away from the fairy tale book between her knees and looked at the empty fruit plate and the last piece of fruit... A trace of reluctance flashed in her dark purple eyes, and she put the stick back into the ceramic plate.

Then, she gently pushed the fruit plate with only the last piece of fruit left in Rast's direction.

So, this is left to me?

Rast looked at the only small piece of fruit left in the fruit plate and couldn't help but think to himself.

I am really becoming more and more like a little pet being fed.

But to some extent, this is not wrong.

After all, for the vast majority of residents in the paradise... their existence itself is maintained by Helen in front of them.

The entire paradise exists because of her.

And those residents who were blessed were, to some extent, nothing more than "specimens" collected by the Queen of the Underworld.

Of course, as a personal attendant, Rast naturally had no right to refuse the king's gift.

He picked up the apple slice that was cut into small pieces, put it into his mouth, and felt the sweet juice spreading in his mouth.

There were no such things as refrigerators in this era, at least not in the royal city of this paradise.

But the frozen dusk that enveloped the palace seemed to have the effect of freezing time, making the decay of fresh fruits extremely slow, and the preservation effect was even better than refrigeration.

After eating the fruit, Helen became lazy again, leaning back on the throne, and continued to flip through the fairy tale book spread between her knees.

And Rast simply packed up the ceramic plates and took them to the back to wash.

……

Over the past week, the relationship between Rast and Her Majesty the Queen has developed into a relatively stable state.

Last gradually adapted to his job as a personal waiter in the palace. During his three hundred years in Deep Blue Harbor, he had cosplayed as a butler in a noble mansion and was not unfamiliar with this profession.

Even the head maid who had served Her Majesty the Queen for a long time could not find any flaws in his performance, and her original disgust after learning that Rast was a man dressed as a woman was weakened a lot.

And Helen also got used to Rast's presence.

This new butler could always do many things that other maids could not do, such as bringing a fruit plate with a stick so that one would not have to dirty one's hands when eating the fruit, and before going to bed every night, Rast would hand her a cup of warm milk.

These are insignificant details to the Queen of the Underworld. As the mistress of the underworld and the powerful one who controls the rules of death, she has ten thousand ways to keep her hands from getting dirty.

But it was these small details that made her and Rast become closer...

In just one week, Helen had become familiar with Rast's existence, even more familiar with him than the head maid who had been with her for many years.

This kind of relationship is very subtle. It has only been a week since they first met, but it seems like they have been together for many years.

The tacit understanding between them no longer requires words. With just a simple word, Rast can understand that Her Majesty the Queen wants to eat fruit, and when Her Majesty the Queen eats the fruit, she will specially leave a piece for Rast.

With the sound of water rushing down, Rast put the washed dishes aside.

After spending some time together, he gradually discovered that the character of Helen, the Queen of the Underworld, was actually different from what he and Shadow Servant had guessed through intelligence.

He originally thought that as the ruler of a country and an immortal who had lived from the Golden Age to the Cataclysm, he should have a similar personality to Cecil, the leader of the Shore Guardians, and be an extremely cunning and unpredictable person.

But in fact, Her Majesty the Queen's mental age is at most around 17 or 18 years old, or maybe even younger.

As the ruler of the underworld who was born to house the relics of the god of death, Helen was indeed born powerful and spent a long time in the underworld.

But her life experience can only be described as pitifully poor.

In this era, there is no such convenient thing as the Internet or electronic devices.

Therefore, the palace shrouded in dusk in the center of the royal city and the maids who served her... were Helen's whole world.

Because of the need to maintain the existence of the underworld, she had never been to the world outside of Paradise - she even had few opportunities to leave the palace and look around her own country.

In most cases, Helen could only take advantage of the opportunity to bestow blessings on the people and look at the scenery of the royal city from afar on the high platform where everyone was paying attention.

She is the queen of this underworld, so no matter whether it is the maids serving her in the palace or other subjects, they all behave respectfully when they meet her.

But because of this, Helen's worldview is broken.

She didn't know what the real world was like, let alone what ordinary life was or what the life of an ordinary person was.

Every night and every day, she stayed in this closed little world, reading those fairy tale books that had been read many times.

Through the boring lines of words in the fairy tale book, imagine the magnificent scenery of the real world.

Fantasizing about the ebb and flow of the tides and the blooming and falling of flowers.

Fantasizing about the changing of sun and moon and the rotation of seasons.

That's why Helen believed that the power that allowed Rast to stay with her forever... was not a curse that stripped away life, but a blessing and gift.

Because these are her true thoughts that come from the bottom of her heart based on her incomplete experience and morbid and distorted values.

She really believed that she was doing this for Rast's own good - but since Rast himself didn't want to do it, she had no choice but to stop.

Strictly speaking, in today's world where people have access to the Internet, even middle school students aged thirteen or fourteen are more mature mentally than Helen.

Because the online information they access through the Internet and smart terminals... is already a fantasy world that Helen has never been exposed to.

"This is really... a type of customer I've never served before."

Rast put the washed dishes in the wooden cabinet and spoke silently to himself.

For Rast, this is an extremely rare blind spot in knowledge.

After all, although he has extremely rich experience as a gigolo, the clients who would go to that kind of hotel to seek gigolo services are relatively mature at least in terms of mental age.

Therefore, even if he is a perfect gigolo with a 100% customer approval rate, he has never had the experience of serving a customer like Helen, who has a very young mental age and extremely incomplete world view and values.

Everything that Luster said during their first conversation a week ago should have planted a seed in Helen's heart.

In time, this seed should be able to flourish and develop into a towering tree.

but--

Compared to Last's purpose, it was still too slow.

Her Majesty the Queen has lived in this palace for hundreds of years, facing the unchanging scenery.

Her perception of time is different from that of normal people. If she lets it develop naturally, it may take several years for the seed that Last planted in her heart to sprout.

But it was obviously impossible for Last to wait for Helen here for several more years. As a night traveler, whether he could survive in the night world for several years was not the point... Even the Shore Watchers could not wait for him that long.

According to Cecil's tone -

The turning point of the incident should not be far away.

Therefore, what Last has to do now is to catalyze the growth of the seed in Helen's heart.

In this way, I can achieve the purpose of my trip.

Fortunately, he had other members of the Shore Guard team to assist him.

As his mind raced, Last saw an ice-blue character quietly appear in the air in front of him.

"Come"

If you are an ordinary person, you might be confused by this word "come" which has no beginning or end.

However, after spending some time together, Rast has already figured out the temperament of the Queen he serves.

She is the type who would rather be lazy than work hard, and would rather use two words than solve a problem if one can.

The word "come" is the other party calling you to come over.

Thinking of this, Rast quickly returned to the throne room.

On the throne, the girl with long ice-blue hair seemed a little tired.

She leaned one hand on the armrest to hold up her face, her dark purple eyes slightly closed.

She pointed to the fairy tale book spread out between her knees, and a character appeared in the air.

"read"

This is, Her Majesty wants me to read a story to her?

Last walked forward and picked up the fairy tale book that had just been read a few pages from between the knees of the girl with long ice-blue hair.

The fairy tale book looked a little old, and one could clearly see the white marks from being frequently folded.

But this fairy tale book seems to be well cared for by its owner. Although it is so old, it is very clean, without any dust or stains.

The few damaged parts of the pages were repaired with ice-blue silk thread. This seemed to be some kind of power that Helen possessed and then materialized into a physical entity.

Rast opened the fairy tale book. The cover of the book seemed to depict the hero and heroine of the story.

A young knight holding a silver sword, and a witch-like heroine shrouded in shadows and dark mist.

Above the drawing is the title of the fairy tale book:

Silver Wing Chronicles

What a retro title.

Obviously, in the real world, the novels popular among students of Fanxing University have evolved into the versions of "the dog is eaten after the rabbit is dead", "broken engagement", "Dragon King's son-in-law" and "Return of the God of War".

Rast complained in his mind.

He once asked the head maid about the origin of these fairy tale books, but even the head maid who was blessed with immortality by Helen and had a long career did not know the answer.

She just had a vague guess -

This seems to be a gift left to Helen by her mother, the former queen of the underworld who had passed away a hundred years ago.

A relic from the Golden Age of the Sixth Epoch, before the Cataclysm.

Rast stroked the book with his fingers, feeling its rather rough texture.

Then he began to read in a calm tone.

"The story begins in the town of Atuo in the west of the continent, where a young man dreams of becoming a knight..."

(End of this chapter)