Chapter 558: Chapter-558
"No! No, absolutely not!" the System shrieked, rapidly shaking its head, its tail wrapping around its own belly in defense. "It was a glitch! A translation error in my vocabulary database! You are the most benevolent, perfectly rational, and flawlessly sane Host in the entire multiverse!"
"Mmhmm," Heena hummed coldly.
"I swear it on my core code!" the lion cried, tears of blue light literally streaming down its holographic face. "Please don’t format me! You are a brilliant military strategist! You are a goddess of war! You are—"
Heena unceremoniously dropped the lion.
The System hit the floorboards with a soft thump, immediately scrambling backward and pressing its back against the leg of the wooden desk, panting heavily.
After the scuffle and playing around with the cowardly lion, Heena finally sat down at her vanity to get ready for the Imperial Banquet.
She did not do the normal, elaborate dress-up of the capital’s noblewomen. When royal banquets occurred, the ladies of the civil court competed to wear the most beautifully draped, brightly colored, and heavily embroidered dresses imaginable.
Heena, however, dressed like a general.
If one looked closely, there was actually very little difference between her silhouette and Samuel’s. She wore tailored, flexible black pants underneath her robes, completely ignoring the restrictive skirts that noblewomen favored. She tied her long, dark hair up into a severe, practical bun, securing it with a single, unadorned ribbon instead of heavy gold hairpins. The only real difference was how flawlessly the robes fit her sharp, feminine curves.
And then there was the color.
Since she was in the mood to play a brilliant, infuriating joke on the court, Heena bypassed the Vanguard’s traditional crimson and black. Instead, she threw on a magnificent, flowing robe the exact color of pale champagne, layered sharply over her black inner garments.
The System, sitting on the edge of the vanity desk, twitched its glowing blue tail nervously.
"Host, you do know, right?" the lion pointed out hesitantly. "The royal family always wears gold and red to these banquets. You are wearing a shade dangerously close to imperial gold."
Heena simply shrugged, adjusting her cuffs. "Well, gold is the royal family’s exclusive color, yes. But no one ever made a law saying red is exclusively theirs. Plenty of the other officials and madams will be wearing red. And anyway, this isn’t gold. It’s champagne."
The lion deadpanned. "Host... you just want to cause a commotion, don’t you?"
Heena looked at the lion through the bronze mirror, a wicked smirk crossing her face. "Of course I would."
With her outfit settled, Heena turned to the absolute bane of her existence: her makeup.
Specifically, the ancient, primitive ink blocks they used for mascara and eyeliner. God, she hated it. It was the one thing in this world that made her genuinely contemplate opening her own cosmetics brand just to save herself the headache.
She picked up the thin bamboo brush, dipped it in the dark pigment, and leaned close to the mirror.
Smudge.
Heena let out a frustrated sigh and grabbed a wet cloth to wipe the mistake away. But the ancient pigment smeared aggressively across her cheekbone. When she pulled the cloth away, the dark circle around her eye made her look like she had just taken a brutal left hook to the face.
She looked exactly like a panda.
The System took one look at her face and absolutely lost it.
"Pfft—hahaha!" the glowing blue lion rolled onto its back on the vanity, clutching its stomach with its paws as it roared with laughter. "Panda! Panda Host! Hahaha!"
Heena slowly turned her head, fixing the laughing lion with a terrifying, absolute death glare.
Two minutes later.
The System was no longer laughing. It was sitting completely still, looking deeply humiliated. Somehow, despite being a multidimensional holographic entity, Heena had managed to forcibly scribble ridiculously dramatic, uneven eyeliner and thick mascara all over the glowing lion’s face.
Ignoring the pouting lion, Heena tried again.
Slip.
The line went crooked, sparking absolute rage in her chest. The look was completely destroyed.
"Ugh!" Heena snapped, violently throwing the bamboo brush directly onto the floor.
She took a deep, calming breath, wiped her eye completely clean, and picked up a fresh brush. "This is the last time," she muttered to herself, her eyes narrowing in fierce concentration. "I just want to get this over with."
She applied the brush to her eyelid.
Flawless. A perfect, razor-sharp wing that beautifully accentuated her fox-like eyes.
She blinked, staring into the bronze mirror in genuine surprise, and then leaned back to admire the result. "Wow," she murmured, turning her head slightly. "Who is this beautiful, devastatingly gorgeous woman?"
Next was the lips. She didn’t need heavy rouge; her natural lips were already a striking, flushed red. Instead, she grabbed a small pot of transparent, medicinal gloss and applied a thin layer. The gloss caught the lantern light instantly. Her lips looked incredibly soft, shiny, and utterly irresistible—juicy and dangerously tasty.
Seeing how devastatingly beautiful she looked, Heena’s ancient, culturally ingrained superstitions immediately kicked in.
She quickly turned her head away from the mirror and started aggressively spitting into the air.
"Pa! Pa! Pa! Pa!"
"God, no," Heena muttered, waving her hands around to disperse the imaginary bad luck. "Keep the evil eyes away from me."
She quickly dabbed a tiny speck of black kajal onto her fingertip and pressed it directly into the skin behind her right ear—the ultimate, foolproof ward against jealousy and the evil eye.
"Perfect," Heena sighed in relief, dusting off her hands. "Now I will not get any evil eye tonight."
Sitting on the vanity with its ridiculously drawn-on eyeliner, the System just stared at her. The glowing lion was entirely used to this incredibly weird, chaotic scene by now.
It looked at the black dot behind her ear and couldn’t help but sigh internally.
’Yeah, right,’ the System thought to itself, shaking its head. ’You won’t get an evil eye. You’ll just get stabbed in the back, or poisoned by the Emperor’s tea, or have your head flown completely off your shoulders.’
But the lion wisely decided to keep that thought to itself.
Heena grabbed her ceremonial dagger, securing it firmly to the belt of her champagne robes. She gave the mirror one last, devastatingly sharp smile, completely ready to go crash an imperial banquet.
The evening had finally settled over the capital. The sun had completely dipped below the horizon, replaced by a deep, velvety indigo sky. Across the Vanguard estate, the servants were already lighting the glowing paper lanterns, casting a warm, golden hue over the stone pathways.
Heena stepped out of her pavilion, the cool night breeze catching the edges of her champagne-colored robe.
As she walked down the steps, two figures entered her courtyard from opposite directions.
From the left came Samuel. The obnoxious, neon-green silks from earlier were nowhere to be seen. Instead, he had opted for a sharp, impeccably tailored black silk robe with subtle silver embroidery. His dark hair was styled perfectly, and under the dim lantern light, his sharp jawline and predatory eyes made him look absolutely, devastatingly hot.
Heena’s breath caught in her throat for a fraction of a second. She quickly composed herself, forcefully tearing her eyes away from her villainous fake husband.
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