It was your standard day in the Empire. Birds were chirping, the city was bustling, and the carts and carriages carried on with their trails. Anyone would see this as just another day in the capital. Where the morning breeze gently takes the noise of the people along its merry path.

 

But today wasn't just a normal day. It's when history began to be made.

 

"Where is she off again this time?" A poor knight lamented his situation in a dimly lit room filled with accessories, jewelry, and dresses. "The Duchess is gonna hang me if this keeps going on." His dismay was audible from the way he exhaled his breath.

 

"Don't worry, Asher. it's not like she can't take care of herself." A maid came from behind him, carrying a broom and pan. "Now get back, I have to clean my lady's room."

 

"Teresa?" he mentioned. He stepped out of her way, but he couldn't help but feel like something was amiss. "You helped her out this time, didn't you?"

 

The maid froze on the spot.

 

"By the goddess, Teresa," he grumbled. "You'll get both of us in trouble."

 

"Ehehehe." She tilted her head and tried to squeeze her way out of this one with her excuses. "But she looked so sad though~"

 

"Oh, c'mon, you're her personal maid, you should know her tricks by now." He scolded the poor girl, who simply hung her head down as she endured it all.

 

"I'm sorry, hick." She teared up.

 

"Ugh." No matter the situation, even a guard as strict as Asher can't remain harsh in front of a crying lady. "It's fine, let's just look for her in the city."

 

"Hick— o–okay." The crying girl nodded her head and agreed, and the knight fell his back on the wall and looked out the open window.

 

"Where the hell could she have gone?" 

 

If you were beginning to wonder the same thoughts as his, let's pan over to the city, where a beautiful brown-skinned girl dressed in such plain-looking clothes ran around in excitement. Her black hair dragged behind her as she made her way across crowds to sightsee and experience the common life. 

 

"Ahhh, what a breath of fresh air." She squealed to herself as she finished a bunch of skewered meat on her hand, with some sauce still left in her lip. "Compared to that suffocating place, I can relax here."

 

This girl was Lady Alejandra Ramirez, daughter of Duchess Roselia Ramirez and Duke Joseph Ramirez. They held their land in the eastern Duchy, a place teeming with life as it was directly connected to the river and sea. That allowed its people to live a life of farming and fishing and has become a major trading connection to the imperial family. 

 

The Ramirez House, officially referred to as the Golden Tiger of the Empire, is one of the most influential and powerful houses in the nation. This is due to their massive trade connections, access to the largest ports, and their exorbitant amount of treasures and riches.

 

There are such days when the entire Ramirez family will visit the capital for a month or two as a way of establishing future connections and forming new contracts with business partners in the main city. It has become a long-standing tradition in the family for the next head to learn the ways of businessmaking and politics during such times.

 

However, the nineteen-year-old heir, who is set to inherit the family's fortune and business, is currently out frolicking in the city streets and hanging out with the commoners. For such high nobility, this would seem absurd, but not to our Lady.

 

She is by far not like any normal noble in the Empire. Absurd would quite literally underestimate the trouble the lady had caused for her poor parents.

 

Albeit a troublemaker who has embarrassed her family's reputation many times, she has been considered a prodigy by her own father and his advisors. She displayed accurate and proper discipline when it came to engaging in business, she was fierce to her prey but gentle to her allies. She was smart and decisive with every plan she fostered.

 

So why would a young heiress like her be doing something outside of her golden walls and eating some coal-grilled chicken at some random stand in the capital's city? 

 

No one would be able to explain it as well.

 

"Ah jeez." She shook around her pouch, but only three gold coins had fallen to her palms. "I'm broke."

 

She was not.

 

"I'll be living in the streets now, I guess."

 

She was not.

 

"I'll have to make my money by working at some inn or something."

 

She definitely was not.

 

"Aaaaah." She groaned and fell onto the concrete. "Man, this life is great, but I wish I had more money."

 

And by sheer luck or manifestation of her words, a call from the devil could be heard around her vicinity.

 

"Try your luck and win some big money right here!" A random vagrant said. "Bet something, and if you win, you'll get your money's worth thrown right back at you."

 

Interested, she walked over as a crowd slowly formed around the conspirators. Their scam was simple. it was a deck of cards, and all you had to do was guess the correct suit. It seemed simple to win at first. After all, it's one in four chances to draw one suit over the right?

 

But it's stupid to trust the dealer.

 

Even the dumbest of dumbasses would know this.

 

"I BET 3 GOLD!" and she was one of them. 

 

"Good choice, miss." The vagrant seemed especially surprised at the high bet for his first victim. "Let's see how lucky you are, eh!?"

 

The man shuffled the deck, then laid them all out evenly on the table. He then picked one of the cards and hid it away. "Now, miss, pick one of the cards and state your suit before flipping it over," he explained.

 

"What about that other card?" The lady had to ask, after all, if she was going to get scammed., she'd rather not make it obvious.

 

"It's just a way of putting situations in our favor, after all." The dealer winked. "We gotta make some money, don't we?"

 

"Alright then." She believed them completely. "CLUBS!!!" She shouted with such confidence that even the scammers felt like she was right for a split second, but alas.

 

"Ah." Her voice trailed off. It was a five of hearts.

 

"I'll be taking your three gold coins then, Miss," he snickered.

 

"No way!" Our naive lady decided to refuse and hold her ground. "You clearly cheated." She did in fact not know this and was merely being a sore loser. "I refuse to hand my money to a cheater."

 

"But you bet it, Missus, whether you like it or not, you'll have to pay us." His face turned sour, and he was clearly losing his patience.

 

Alejandra wasn't merely saying this because she was a sore loser; she had in fact lost the money she had bet because she couldn't find it in her pockets.

 

'I got pickpocketed.' Was the thought running through her mind, and she was crying deeply inside.

 

"I will not do so until you've proven yourself not to be cheating." She spoke boldly, but the vagrant simply shook his head. 

 

"Guess we'll just take it by force then." He clicked his tongue, and two large guys brandishing swords came from behind him.

 

"Uhh… ahh." The lady panicked before bolting her ass out of there. "BYE!"

 

"GET HER!" The dealer screamed, and the giants ran after her.

 

"UWAAAA, I ONLY WANTED TO HAVE FUN!" She cried. "ASHER!!! TERI!!! HELP!!!" She pleaded to no avail.

 

She ran and bumped into many crowds as the two crooks chased after her. She was panicking as she couched and snuck her way around the crowd. 

 

"Over here." A voice whispered and held out their hand from inside a window.

 

"Where is she?" A gruntled voice spoke behind her.

 

The daughter of the Duchess had decided that it was better to jump in a window with a stranger than get squashed into a pulp.

 

She took the hand, and she was pulled inside. Her common clothes caught onto a nail, ripping the fabric and tearing into her dress. She crashed into the person who pulled her with a thump.

 

Her head landed on something soft, and she pushed herself up from the floor to realize who she had just landed on. It was a girl with crimson red hair, she had light freckles on her nose, and her lips were dainty and pink. The girl wore a dress that looked like it was made up of sewn-together pieces of carpet and cloth.

 

Her frame was small, but she felt soft to the touch, and she smelled really good too. Alejandra blushed to herself after she realized that thought. She immediately jumped up and cleared her throat before addressing the girl, who was still lying on the dirty ground.

 

"Thanks, I'm... Taylor." She reached out her hand to help the red hair up. "Yours?"

 

"Maddison." Her voice was adorable. The perfect blend between gentle and kind but also fierce and ambitious. "And no problem, those guys tend to trick people like you now and then." Somehow, the name seemed familiar to Alejandra, like she had heard it from somewhere before.

 

"Trick?"

 

"Huh?" She seemed confused. "Didn't you already know they cheated you?"

 

"THEY DID!?"

 

The red-haired Maddison looked baffled at the airheadedness of Alejandra, or, in this case, as she had aptly named herself, Taylor.

 

"So you were bluffing?" Maddison laughed and grabbed a chair before sitting down. She glanced at the lady up and down before placing her fingers on her chin and coming to a conclusion. "You aren't from around here, are you?"

 

Taylor panicked, and she played with her hair. "Yeah, I just wanted to visit the capital once."

 

"Where are you from, then?"

 

Taylor felt physical pain from lying to someone who had just helped her. "East, I guess. I travel, so I don't really have a place." Taylor looked at the pretty girl as she brushed some hair to the back of her ear. The girl was far too beautiful for someone living as a poor commoner in the city. 

 

Our lady nearly turned red as the hair of her benefactor. She shook her head, trying to erase the thoughts. What was this feeling? This was new. It felt like a calling, or maybe fate.

 

What was she thinking? She only got saved once, and now she's feeling this way, like some kind of fairy tale princess.

 

'Puhlease, I'm too old for that'. That was what she was thinking to herself before the red hair turned her head up to look at her with a smile. In which case the lady had melted on the spot.

 

"I see." Maddison leaned on her seat and brought up a piece of paper enthusiastically. "Here!"

 

"What's this?"

 

"It's a notice."

 

"For what?"

 

"Payment."

 

"Huh!?"

 

"I saved you, remember?" The red-haired girl now looked quite terrifying all of a sudden, her pretty aura disappeared and her mischievous air surfaced. "I assume you're pretty well off, considering you travel a lot." She smirked, and Taylor gulped. That girl's smile was enticing and alluring, but she couldn't be pulled in by her charms.

 

"I didn't know your services had a condition," Taylor argued.

 

"Every service is paid by the provided value of that which is given to and received by the customer," Maddison states, spinning her finger in the air. "I don't expect much since I only pulled you away, but dear old me, I just want a bit of cash to live the next day, you know?"

 

"Quite sly of you." The lady raised her eyebrows and proudly composed her body. "Is this your tactic to save people and extort them?"

 

"If it works, it works. You do what you gotta do." She smiled and opened her palm, ready to receive her compensation.

 

"Fine," Taylor sighed. Her smarts had certainly eluded her today, as she just acted as stupid as a knife in a gunfight. "I'll remember your name and speak to you tomorrow."

 

Her response was cut off by someone blasting the door open. It was the two giants, and they carried their large ass swords with them. "There she is!" They said, gold in their eyes.

 

"Fuck." Taylor fell to the floor as the force of the crash knocked her down.

 

"Oi." Suddenly a menacing and bloodthirsty aura emanated from behind her, enough to even make the two giant guys behind her flinch. "I just paid for that fucking door." Maddison's voice was calm, and that was terrifying.

 

"Crap, it's Maddison." One of the giants spoke. "Our bad, ma'am. We didn't know you were striking a deal with us."

 

"Shut up," she snapped, and the two men closed their mouths instantly. "You said you were willing to pay up, right?" She addressed the lady.

 

"Uhh yeah."

 

"If I punish these two right here, would you pay me more?"

 

"Just get them arrested." The daughter of the Duchess clenched her fists in anxiety. She had remembered why the name Maddison seemed familiar now.

 

"Deal."

 

"MA'AM!?" The two men panicked and looked at Maddison as if she were insane. Then, out of fear and anger, one of them raised his sword at the lady and tried to swing down.

 

But then his arm bent in a direction it shouldn't be able to go. The giant screamed in pain, and the other immediately laid his head down until his forehead touched the ground. Her green eyes focused on me and sent shivers down my spine.

 

"It's you, right?" Alejandra chuckled nervously. "Maddison, the Red Witch, is an eighteen-year-old leader of the underworld."

 

She smiled. "I didn't expect the cute daughter of Duke Ramirez to be so informed." She snapped her fingers, and the giant's arm twisted tighter until...

 

Crack.

 

It blew up into a shower of blood that splattered across the room and the witch's drab dress. "Yes, I guess that's indeed what they call me. Now about that payment, what do you say we turn this ordeal into more of a contract, my lady?" Her smile was indeed beautiful, even as her cheeks were adorned in crimson-colored blood.