“My, my. Sir Mark. What brings you here all alone?” asked Countess Setin.

Sir Mark, who is a member of the Royal Guard, often came together with the palace maids, who were running errands as their escort. He was the lowest in rank, so he was often called for such mundane tasks. But today, he was out alone on Morde Street.

“Do you happen to know where Lady Constance is headed to?”

Mark walked over to Countess Setin, who he befriended while visiting the street often with the other maids. The Countess became curious as it seemed this man was the person Ella mentioned.

“Well, she did mention that she’s planning to visit the library at the Sirkeed corner. But she also said she’ll be stopping by other places, so I’m not too sure where she is headed now.”

Mark shook his head with a bright smile as she explained with an apologetic look. Her reply was better than the answer to his question on where Ella was heading right now. He thanked her and ran off while the Countess shook her head from behind.

‘He believed it so easily,’ thought the Countess, who felt dumb for preparing her skills from her younger days in case Mark didn’t believe her. She was able to fulfill one of Ella’s requests with ease, but it was a bit disappointing. Then, she shook it off and was about to return to her shop when she stopped and turned in the direction where Ella disappeared.

‘With all this false information, where did she really go?’?The Countess regretted not asking her true destination and returned to her shop.

***

Ella’s real destination that everyone was curious about was the slums. She wanted to confirm what has been on her mind ever since she brought up the keyword “drought” over the surface. Not only that, she was also very curious about this while she read the novel.

The streets that her carriage traveled on were ones maintained for nobles, so it wasn’t possible to see the reality of the city. She knew that the city had a sewage system, but she wanted to know how well and to what extent the system was installed.

“I have to check the slums,” Ella reminded herself of her goal as she headed toward the slums.

In the novel, the plague takes place right after the drought. It wasn’t a strange turn of events, so such an event could always take place after a natural disaster. However, the way the characters in this novel dealt with the plague was peculiar.

‘The protagonist would usually go ahead and care about hygiene when there’s a plague. But this novel was different. Why?’

Ranhee couldn’t understand their behavior as that was her expectation. The characters only searched for the “thing” that caused the plague. The plague began at the slums, and they only searched for the “thing” while people were dying.

Isn’t this too much? Even though people at that time might not have known the importance of cleanliness, too many people died.

Those kinds of comments were pouring out after the book’s story on the plague was released. It was natural for people to react that way as they thought about hygiene when the plague appeared. But characters in the novel repeatedly acted in such a way even after that.

‘There must be a reason for that.’

The reality of this place was different from when she read the novel. The world that seemed vague was actually more detailed and more stable than she thought. So, she had to find out why they acted that way before the same thing happened again. However, she didn’t want to cause trouble with the wrong choice of words. As the daughter of a wealthy noble family, Ella didn’t know much about the slums, but she didn’t want to hand over the concern regarding the plague to Evan, who seemed to have his hands full from the drought already.

‘He might pass out by working too hard.’?She didn’t want to tell him when she could deal with it without his help. Ella already knew what caused the plague anyway, so she only needed to find the exact spot where it started.

“But just in case. Also, his answer could be vague, and I might be late getting to it.”

Ella wanted to find what caused the plague before it started, but there was never certainty on how things would unfold. This visit also wasn’t planned either. That’s why she decided to check the slums by herself to prepare for an unforeseen event.

‘They should have sewerage so it might be like the Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong. That would be nice.’

Ella had such anticipation in her mind as she slowly walked with the horse and whistled. Then she commented, “Whoa.”

The streets were much cleaner than she had imagined. Like the Harlem of New York, which had turned into a tourist spot, it was surely a slum, but it resembled nothing like one. There was no trash or feces visible from the sight of these slums. But the streets weren’t the only spotless thing. Although the people’s clothes weren’t all that great, they were clean. People looked nourished as well.

‘What’s going on in this world?’?With this question, she was flooded with information, and she could barely make out what it meant. She then let out a laugh and looked at the clean town.

Marquis Tuchizen’s work, which emphasized hygiene as he worked hard on the capital that left many achievements from 400 years ago, didn’t match his time. Ella knew right away who the man was. A foreigner.

“Wait. Hold on a second.”

Ella stopped her horse immediately as she needed more time. Earth didn’t think about hygiene 400 years ago. If so, where did Marquis Tuchizen come from 400 years ago? She thought maybe he was also from a different world like Clara. This also meant that there were other worlds with advanced civilizations like Earth. Because the word “hygiene” existed, his world was definitely different from Clara’s as well.

With thoughts that were difficult to bear, Ella silently screamed and put her head down. Then she covered her ears. Her head became stuffy. The information that Luciella had interpreted that an intelligent man from Tuchizen existed meant very differently to Ranhee. The world had gotten so large. She didn’t want to know it was this massive.

‘Can’t we just end it with Earth and the world of the novel?’

She ranted while pressing on her temple, but Ella’s intelligent brain quickly enlarged her world. It now seemed better to forget about things happening here and regard them as something written from the author’s imagination. There were too many stories happening that weren’t even in the novel.