Shota's Isekai NTR Adventure

After settling this matter, it wasn't as if we would be heading to the Dark Forest right away.

It had taken some time to convince the duke and we had arrived in the afternoon instead of the morning.

So it was decided that we would be heading to the Dark Forest in the morning rather than heading out in the middle of the night.

That gave us time to get more familiar with the duke's family.

The fourth prince and I both had the same idea about this Duke Nergiante, so we both knew that it would be better for us to get closer to the duke's family with this opportunity that we had been given. This would without a doubt help us in the future when we made our move against Duke Nergiante.

One thing that caught my eye was…

While I was talking to the duke, the duchess, and his son, the fourth prince was talking to the daughter of the duke.

The daughter of the duke didn't seem interested in the fourth prince at first, but slowly he broke the ice with her and they seemed like they were having quite the good conversation.

With the way that the two of them talked to each other, it really seemed like they would be a good match for each other.

Not to mention, I could see from the fourth prince's eyes that he was genuinely enjoying his conversation with the duke's daughter rather than just faking it. I had gotten quite good at seeing how he faked talking to noble girls after visiting all those kingdoms with him.

It seemed that this was not one of those cases where he was faking it.

A faint smile appeared on my lips when I saw this since I knew the worries that Angela and the king had about the fourth prince.

Even with how old he was, he had never shown any interest in the opposite gender.

They had even been worried that he swung the other way, which was why they had been trying to push an engagement on the fourth prince now that things had settled. However, the fourth prince had rejected everything that they brought his way, so that matter had been benched for now.

But it seemed that he had quite the good relationship with the duke's daughter.

Alicia Nergiante, she was the daughter of Duke Nergiante.

When I asked about her, these two doting parents were more than happy to brag about her.

It seemed that she was quite the outgoing and knowledgeable girl, who was also very responsible to the point where she was even able to help her father with governing their territory.

This seemed like a perfect kind of wife for someone like the fourth prince.

But I found that there was a problem.

I had already known about this, but I had ignored it since this was their matter and not mine.

It was something that they should handle by themselves, so I had been avoiding it.

But I couldn't as she was the one that came to me this time.

Shadow Five was clearly unhappy about how close the fourth prince and the duke's daughter seemed, so she approached me to ask for a favour. I was certainly surprised since I never thought that she would ask me this kind of favour, but…

It seemed like it would be good for the fourth prince if I went along with it.

It definitely wasn't because I found it interesting or anything like that.

When we went to dinner, I introduced another person.

"This is Yvonne, a diplomat who works for our kingdom. She was busy with other matters this afternoon, so she wasn't able to join us before this."

It was a beautiful pink haired girl in a sleek red dress that fit her well even though she was a bit lacking when it came to curves.

When the fourth prince saw her, he couldn't help slightly knitting his brows.

That was because the one that I had just introduced was Shadow Five.

The favour that she asked of me was for me to bring her to dinner with the duke's family.

The duke and his family didn't find this strange at all, rather they even welcomed it. The fact that I was suddenly bringing out this diplomat meant that we were open to creating deeper relations with their dukedom.

I had clearly come with a purpose, so I couldn't be considered a diplomat here to build deeper relations.

But it was different for someone that specially came for that.

So she was allowed to join the dinner and even sat down beside the fourth prince.

The fourth prince looked at Shadow Five with a questioning look, but she deflected it to me.

I could hear her say, "The duke said that we need someone to play the role of diplomat to build a deeper relationship with the Nergiante Dukedom, so I volunteered to play that role."

The fourth prince looked at me with a glare after Shadow Five sold me out like that, but the only thing that I could do was go along with this.

After Shadow Five had finished deflecting this blame to me, she said, "It seems that your highness was getting quite close with the duke's daughter. Could this be considered a plan to approach the duke through her?"

The fourth prince was surprised to hear this, but he said, "It isn't like that at all. I'm just genuinely building a relationship with them."

Shadow Five looked a bit displeased when she heard this.

To my surprise, the fourth prince said, "It isn't what you think. This is a purely professional business."

There was no need for the fourth prince to say something like this, but he had said it in the end as if he was clarifying something.

I had thought that they weren't that close, but it seemed that I might have been wrong.

If that was the case…

Perhaps there was spring blossoming for the fourth prince after all.