The Way To Protect The Female Lead’S Older Brother [EN]: Chapter 56

How to Protect the Heroine’s Older Brother – Episode 56

* * *

“So, it’s the Veratium of Yellow.”

Shortly after, a sound like rushing water filled the air outside.

I carefully peeked through the curtains.

People were emerging from a carriage.

The second group to arrive after us was the Veratium family of Yellow. Lant Agriche was approaching to greet them.

From observing Lant Agriche for nearly three years using the poison butterflies, it seemed his closest relationship was with the Veratium family of Yellow.

It wasn’t unusual for families to interact, but their interactions with Veratium were particularly frequent.

So, I had been watching them closely. But Lant remained consistent and didn’t do anything that would easily expose him.

Well, it wasn’t as if I had no idea what he was up to.

Recalling the contents of , Lant was interested in the puppetry techniques of the Veratium family of Yellow.

The Veratium’s dolls were different from the dolls Maria played with.

Maria simply treated people she liked as if they were dolls, but Veratium used puppetry to create elaborate dolls that seemed truly alive.

That was why Lant was interested in Veratium’s dolls.

I guess he wanted to have powerful soldiers who wouldn’t feel fear or pain…

Isn’t that just the kind of thought that suits a greedy villain?

However, Noel, the head of Veratium and one of the male leads of the novel, only exploited Lant and betrayed him later.

He joined forces with the corrupted Sylvia and eventually brought down Agriche.

Moreover, Noel, as depicted in the novel, was quite lazy and not interested in things like doll soldiers, as Lant had hoped.

So, as things stood now, it seemed unlikely that Veratium would interfere with my future plans.

Of course, I still planned to keep an eye on them in case something happened.

I watched a little longer, but the person who seemed to be the head of Veratium didn’t get out of the carriage. Perhaps he was planning to skip the meeting this year, just like last year.

In the novel, he was a character who created his own kingdom within Veratium and rarely ventured out.

I glanced down at Lant Agriche and then closed the curtain again.

* * *

From that evening, a grand banquet was held in the castle of Yggdrasil.

As always, wherever you go, large-scale gatherings like this always involve drinking and feasting.

But I didn’t attend.

Lant readily agreed when I said I needed to focus on controlling the poison butterflies.

But the truth was, I didn’t go to the party for that reason. It was simply because banquets were boring.

“Sis, are you really not going down to the banquet hall?”

“I’ll only attend on the last day.”

I had sensed movement outside the door for a while, but I just ignored it.

After I showed up at the banquet hall on the first day last year, people kept hovering around me like this until the end of the gathering.

This time, I had been holed up in my room from the start, but the same thing was happening as last year.

Maybe these people were attendees from last year or those who had heard stories from them.

They can’t even approach when I show my face, but they always bother me like this.

“Jeremy, you should go down and mingle with the others.”

I put down the teacup I was holding and encouraged Jeremy.

Jeremy was sprawled on the sofa next to me, having devoured all the tea snacks that came with the tea.

Then he flopped onto his side, looking bored.

“It’s no fun without you, Sis.”

Tearing the tissue I gave him to wipe his hands into pieces, he looked like an eight-year-old, not an eighteen-year-old.

“And I went down a little while ago and met the other guys, but they were all boring.”

Maybe he would think differently if he met the male leads of the novel…

But it seemed they hadn’t arrived yet, so it was no wonder Jeremy was bored.

I agreed with him that the people down there were uninteresting.

Currently, people from other families except for the Fedelian family of Blue had arrived.

But none of them were key figures from .

There were three male leads in the novel.

Orca of the Hyperion family of White, Lyzak of the Gastor family of Red, and Noel of the Veratium family of Yellow were the ones.

Well, Jeremy, who belonged to the Agriche family of Black in the novel, played an important role in his own way.

But he was a villain character who met a miserable end, so let’s exclude him from the male leads for now.

Anyway, they each had unique personalities befitting the male leads.

And as the main characters of the novel, they were very valuable, and it was difficult for a supporting villain character like me to even catch a glimpse of them.

The only person I saw at this gathering last year was Lyzak from the Gastor family of Red.

The others didn’t attend the meeting last year and it was unclear whether they would come here this year.

After all, in the novel, Sylvia became involved with the male leads because she went to find them herself to find her brother’s whereabouts.

Anyway, the only person I personally confirmed was Lyzak Gastor.

To put it simply, he was definitely like a male lead from a novel.

With red hair and purple eyes, Lyzak was a handsome man with tanned skin that exuded a wild aura.

His features were striking and his presence was quite intense. He was the only person who maintained his composure in front of my beauty among the people who attended the gathering last year.

Of course, he paused reflexively when he saw me and widened his eyes, but at least he didn’t make a foolish expression like the others around him.

He quickly regained his senses among the group and then frowned and walked past me with heavy steps.

I knew from the novel that Lyzak had a phobia of women [misogyny].

So, I roughly guessed where his great displeasure that day came from.

Lyzak left Yggdrasil that very night. It was a very quick departure, as if I was the reason.

Because of his upright personality, I speculated that he couldn’t admit that he was swayed by a woman.

“I was a little curious about the head of Veratium because he’s our age. He didn’t attend last year, so I thought he would come this time?”

“That’s what I heard.”

Noel, the head of Veratium mentioned earlier, was the youngest among the current generation of heads. He was also the only one of the three male leads in the novel who was not a successor.

He attended the gatherings almost once every two or three years. According to my informant, I should be able to see his face this time…

Since there was no cute-looking man with orange hair and green eyes as described in the novel among the people getting out of the carriage earlier, he might just be planning to skip this year as well.

On the other hand, Orca of the Hyperion family of White had never shown his face at the gatherings so far.

As a person with the nickname ‘White Beast Master,’ he was very interested in magical creatures.

So, I heard that he was always chasing the habitats of unique magical creatures that become active every winter, always prioritizing that over the gatherings.

“Jeremy, should I have dinner prepared here if you’re hungry?”

“Yeah! I’ll go tell them.”

He could just pull the string to call a servant, but Jeremy got up from his seat and headed for the door. It was clear that he was annoyed by the presence that had been lingering in front of the room.

Jeremy opened the door just enough for him to slip through so that I wouldn’t be exposed to the outside.

After that, it was noisy outside for a while.

But before long, Jeremy came back into the room with a much lighter face.

“Ah, I forgot to tell them to bring the food.”

“Let’s just call someone in.”

It was clear that Jeremy’s purpose in going outside wasn’t food.

Seeing this, he had only gotten older, but other than that, nothing much had changed from before.

I decided to turn a blind eye to it and pulled the string to call someone.