Walking through the streets of Pilzno never felt so easy, now that the serious weight got lifted from my belt. Since no place was free from poachers, I held the small box tightly in my fist as I walked towards the town's magistrate.

Without any surprise, both Elia and the rest of my people were already waiting at one of the benches set around the entire plaza, under the shade thrown by the sizeable, gothic-looking building.

"It took you a while, what happened?"

Stepping forward, Al asked only to be pushed back by Elia as she dashed towards me and hugged me tightly.

"Don't scare me like that!'

Pretty dumbfounded, I had no idea what happened nor what should I say. Taking a stroll through the city was pretty normal activity, so how could it lead making Elia worry?

"Yyy… What happened?"

Unable to formulate any reasonable logical connection between what happened, what was happening and their reaction to my arrival, I could only repeat unconsciously Al's question, while accepting Elia's hug and embracing her on my own.

"You told one hour, but we all thought you will take a few minutes at most! Do you know how worried I was that my family found you and discovered the truth?"

Before it was my comprehension that received a fatal hit, now it was my pride. Instead of worrying about me, she was worried about her own profit, tightly bound to me at this moment! While out entire relationship was fake from the very beginning, those few moments that we shared so far continued to eat away at my consciousness, slowly turning my perception of this silly girl from asset to be used, into a potential partner.

"It seems that you forgot about one thing."

After taking a deep breath and exhaling it slowly to calm myself down, I pushed this unpleasant feeling away from my mind, before moving my hands behind my back as I wanted to look like those Chinese scholars, seniors and elder uncles when they wanted to present their superiority over someone else. But while this sort of action that I read about multiple times in most of the eastern novels I found back in the future, my moves were simply aimed at opening the box I held without revealing its content and grabbing the ring directly with my left hand.

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"Forgot? Nah, I think everything is going as planned, except for some guy showing up way later than he should, isn't it?"

Exhaling once again, as if her answer was so stupid to make me feel helpless, I moved my hands to the front, grabbing Elia's right palm with my right hand, and covertly putting the ring on her third finger. While back in the shop, I thought about making a small ceremony out of it, but with how we were supposed to be together for a while, I wasn't so sure whether it would be the right thing to do. After all, neither one of us knew whether we would end up marrying each other or not, and if we end up together in the future, this moment would be one of the greatest memories of Elia's life!

While I still pondered over this choice when approaching the magistrate, after Elia explained her worries, all the doubts disappeared from my mind. I guess I was simply stupid for expecting anything more from this relationship. Give and take, that's what we agreed upon at first, and that's the full extent of how far we would go.

"How do you want to pose a pair of lovebirds without a ring?"

Not even bothering to watch her reaction when she would see how insane this ring was, I turned around and approached the doors on the magistrate. Initially, my head was full of dark thoughts from revenge, through sadness and at the indifference ending, this quick rollercoaster of emotions helped me to clear my thoughts and push all the useless matters aside.

Pushing the doors open, I looked back, only to see Elia starting at the ring on her finger with a blank expression on her face, while both Al, Elemo and her own companions just stood there as if frozen in place, not sure how to respond.

"Are you going to waste the entire day there? My adventure already pushed us a bit off schedule, come on."

Even though I had this strange feeling of silly revenge when breaking the moment for Elia, I managed to suffocate this feeling before its hints could appear on my face. We came here to do business, so we had to focus on it!

With the doors already open, I simply walked in and marched through the short corridor before arriving at a long counter, with a small gate right beside it, blocking the entrance deeper into the building.

"How can I help you, sir?"

Sitting behind the expensive, dark wood table, was a local secretary of sorts, tasked with both registering all the visitors and leading them to the respective departments where their task would be fulfilled.

"I came here to have a talk with the city mayor."

As I said to my companions before, there was no point in wasting time on any small games now. Every minute we spent in this city increased the chances of someone accidentally spotting and recognising Elia or her men, creating a risk Elia's family learning about us.

Even though I doubted they could do anything real to hinder my plans at this point, it was always better to remain the element of surprise, be it at battles or during this kind of schemes that we were now trying to implement.

"And who might you be, sir, to request the meeting directly with the mayor?"

There was no way that this secretary or whatever this kind of position was called in the current age, would allow any random noble to just visit one of the busiest and most important changes in the entire city. With how a great majority of nobility in OCmmonwealth were as rich as your everyday commoner, just flaunting one's title wasn't enough to warrant the meeting!

"Mike from Tarnow, of the crest Leliwa with the company."