The Evil Emperor's Fragile Heart

Prince Liam really did seem to be determined to get close to Mana by any means necessary. He turned up again when it was time for dinner to invite Mana for a candle light dinner with him.

Unfortunately for Prince Liam, not only was Raven sticking to his little fiancée like glue, the royal families of three countries – the Emerald Kingdom, the Obsidian Kingdom and the Sapphire Kingdom – surrounded Mana and Raven like worker bees gathering to their queen and poor Prince Liam was pushed out and ended up sitting three tables away instead.

He could only grit his teeth in frustration and decide that he would try again in the middle of the night. Surely all these people won't stay in Princess Mana's room all night? And if Prince Liam sneaked into Princess Mana's room in the middle of the night and stayed there until the morning until someone else discovered them – wouldn't that just be perfect? No self respecting prince from any country would want to continue their engagement with Princess Mana after that, right? And even if Prince Raven didn't want to break the engagement because of this, King Corvus and Crown Princess Pica would definitely not be able to tolerate something like this.

However, when Prince Liam tried to break into Princess Mana's room in the middle of the night, what was waiting for him was a dual attack of heavenly thunder and flames of hell – the former from King Corvus and the latter from Grandpa. Both old men had especially come over to Mana's room and set up these powerful defence mechanisms to protect her, since the four children had told the adults about what had happened in the evening with Prince Liam trying to chase Mana.

The adults had been angry and disgusted, of course. King Jaren even wanted to go and throttle Prince Liam to death right away, but it was the two little dragons who finally managed to calm him down, and then General Aquila said, "Jaren, just let Uncle Corvus and your father in law handle it. Don't you see that they are itching to flex their muscles?"

"Absolutely," King Corvus said with a smirk on his face which looked a bit like Raven's smile when he was up to no good. "After all, that fool is targeting the precious future grand daughter in law of my family, and this is a direct insult to the royal family of the Obsidian Kingdom. As the reigning monarch of the Obsidian Kingdom as well as the grandfather of our little Raven, I must take action!"

"Indeed," Grandpa said. "Not only is this fool eyeing my dear granddaughter, as someone who shares blood with such shameless creatures, I must help purge such scum and protect our little Mana!"

Thus, after dinner, all of them had gathered in Mana's room to set up various defensive arrays – which ended up being nineteen layers of barriers and then the outermost layer was set up to attack any intruders with a dual attack of heavenly fire and flames of hell – a combined spell set up by King Corvus and Grandpa.

And the funniest thing was that Mana wasn't even in the room. She had happily gone off with Raven to stay with him, since Raven was too scared to leave her alone in her room.

No one objected to this, of course, and the adults also set up defensive arrays in Raven's room for the two children.

Thus, Prince Liam was successfully defeated when he tried to creep into Mana's room in the middle of the night, and he had to run back to Zed after being struck by thunder and almost being burnt to death. He looked comical with a black face and his hair standing upright as if electrocuted when he found his new master. His minions didn't fare any better, even though they managed to put up defensive shields. After all, heavenly thunder and flames of hell could penetrate through even the most powerful defensive shields, let alone the meagre ones that was known to those trained in the Amber Kingdom, since their magic was primarily focussed on offense and not defence.

Zed laughed for a long time before he healed Prince Liam and his lackeys, and Prince Liam was bubbling with anger when he returned to his own chambers. He decided that he would skip going to Princess Mana's room for a bit and let her develop a false sense of security, and then, when she was not paying attention, he would grab hold of her and teach her a lesson, as well as fulfil his objective.

Too bad that Prince Liam ended up being the unwitting first experimental subject for the tracking device instead.

Raven, Bella, Jules, Mana and Fox collectively came up with the idea of modifying the listening devices that they had developed earlier and try and make that into a tracking device. Vanilla hung around them to make sure that the five geniuses didn't end up losing track of where they were – after all, they were still in enemy territory and they needed to be careful.

Raven sneakily introduced a self destruct function in all the experimental pieces that they produced.

The first three exploded spontaneously, causing Prince Liam quite a fright each time, since he thought that this was some sort of residual defensive magic that had marked him when he went to sneak into Mana's room.

Meanwhile, Princess Astra had successfully obtained all the permits and investment money and security arrangements for the business deal with Mana and Raven, and they had handed over one bottle of the love potion, and assured her that they had already written to the renowned Poison Expert Naver and the next doses would be sent directly to Princess Astra in the Amber Kingdom, disguised as expensive wine from the Pearl Kingdom.

This made Astra think that perhaps the renowned Poison Expert Naver was a citizen of the Pearl Kingdom – but she didn't dare to enquire more or cause trouble, because she needed this regular supply of love potion more than anything else.

Other than Prince Liam's constantly foiled attempts to get to Mana, their stay at the Amber Kingdom was short and peaceful.

In any case, the group was there simply to attend the engagement banquet, and no one created a ruckus at the event. Astra and Mars dressed up beautifully and showed off their affections publicly, and the guests from the other kingdoms raised a toast to the couple and gave them their greetings and gifts.

Zed didn't show his face at all, and the tracking device couldn't be perfected, either. However, the good thing was that the spontaneous explosions randomly occurring on his person was an effective deterrent for Prince Liam, and he went to complain to his father King Orion on the day of the engagement banquet that he would not be able to continue his persistent efforts to woo Princess Mana because she was being fiercely protected by King Corvus and Grandpa, who was the former Duke of Flames and someone even King Orion was afraid of.

King Orion didn't want to create too much trouble, especially since all the attacks they had prepared along the way for this group of visitors had been failing repeatedly – this was beyond his expectations. Even though King Orion knew that he would not be able to get rid of them completely with such traps, he had at least expected that he would be able to cause some damage – but, instead of causing any damage to the intended targets, King Orion and the current Flame Duke, who was the younger brother of the former Duke of Flames, had been humiliated by that dirty, stinky water bubble that had burst in court the other day.

King Orion realised that he had underestimated his enemies. He had probably used the parameters of the Pearl Kingdom to judge the other kingdoms as well, and he had not realised that King Corvus and the former Duke of Flames were still so powerful, despite their advanced age!

So, with great regret, King Orion decided that it was time for them to beat a strategic retreat for now, and make some better plans for the future.

However, as soon as the guests left, King Orion was hit with another headache – his son and heir, Crown Prince Mars – was again behaving like a lovestruck fool after his engagement, and mooning over Princess Astra once again. And to make things worse, he suddenly smelled of cow dung and horse urine so badly that it became impossible to breathe next to him!

And no one knew how Princess Astra managed it, but she somehow made Crown Prince Mars of the Amber Kingdom drink that foul smelling and horrid tasting concoction without diluting it – and the only saving grace was that this happened after the engagement banquet, so not too many people got to know how badly Crown Prince Mars of the Amber Kingdom stank for days afterwards.