Chapter 18 - Confirmation

Lucius woke up late in the afternoon. Elizabeth had gone out of bed earlier and wasn't present in the room.

He then got out of the bed and found himself buck naked.

'Ah, last night was definitely a wild one. Am I actually in love with her for real? Or is it all just pure lust?'

Suddenly, the door to his room opened.

He got confused because he definitely told all his servants to knock first and ask for permission.

But it was just Elizabeth.

Her face immediately turned red when she saw him standing naked.

"A-ah, y-you're still naked, L-Lucius."

"Of course, I just got out of the bed after all."

When he saw her face, everything suddenly seemed shinier and ephemeral.

'Fuck, no way. It's actually true. I can't back out of this anymore huh? Well, I guess it is what it is.'

"Lucius? Hello? Were you not listening?"

"Ah, I was lost in thought. What were you saying?"

"Mother wants to see you."

"Hmmm, tell her to wait for a bit. I'll be taking a bath first."

"S-sure."

Elizabeth imagined him taking a bath, and she felt that it was too lewd for reason.

"Mmh??!"

Seeing her in a daze, Lucius took the chance and kissed her lips. It was short, but it was impactful.

Her face turned red, but when she saw Lucius' flushed cheeks, her feeling of embarassment turned into something warm.

"Now we're a real married couple. Are you happy now?"

He said that while furrowing his brows, suppressing his smile with his hand. He didn't want to admit it, but he thought that love wasn't so bad after all. The kiss made him feel like he was high on drugs.

But the thought of it immediately disappeared when he remembered his past experience with love.

From his parents' divorce chock-full of conflict, to his multiple failures with finding a partner, and finally to a certain case of betrayal that finalized his hate towards love.

'I hope that this will last until death. Because I don't think I'll ever do this romance shit ever again if that thing happens again.'

"I-I want to take a bath with you."

His thoughts were broken by Elizabeth's exclaim.

"Didn't you already take one?"

"I did, but I just want to spend time with you."

"Heh, fine. Let's take a bath together."

Not long afterwards, inside of the bathroom connected to his bedroom, Lucius and Elizabeth were currently entering a huge bath.

They were just done from washing themselves with soap. Entering the bath, the hot water felt soothing to their bodies.

"Why are you sitting that far away?"

Lucius asked Elizabeth.

Even though it was her idea to take a bath with him, she was still not used to being this close with Lucius, so her mental stamina was draining faster than usual.

To save it from further decrease, she decided to distance herself a bit from Lucius' body.

"Kyaah?"

"What?"

She didn't realize that Lucius had shifted closer to her. Now, their sides were touching each other.

"Wasn't this what you wanted?"

"...."

She was dead silent, so he took it as a yes from her.

"Hmm?"

He felt her head on his shoulder. She was now leaning her head on it.

He saw that she had a satisfied smile on her face.

The bath water was hot. Nevertheless, he still felt a tingly warm sensation caused by her act.

He raised his other hand to pat her head, and she looked up towards his face.

Her beautiful face, jade green eyes, long elven ears, plump red lips, and red luscious hair looked too inviting for his eyes.

"Hyaah!?"

As a result, he didn't hold back and lifted her up to make her sit on his lap while facing him.

Her flushed cheeks made him audibly gulp.

His face soon moved closer to hers, and then he began with a light smooch on her lips. She accepted it and did a light smooch on his lips as well.

Embracing each other's bodies, they both kissed each other multiple times.

An intense tongue action soon ensued, and this made them both feel ecstatic.

They both never thought that a kiss would feel this good, especially since they've done it multiple times just last night.

After all, this was the first time that they kissed without any other intentions.

In the previous night, they were fully taken over by their lust. But right now, they were only enjoying quality time with each other's mouths.

Time flew by, and it was now time to get out of the bath. They were staying in there for too long, so their fingers became very wrinkled.

They wiped each other's bodies with their towels. The atmosphere turned fluffy, and Elizabeth couldn't help but see Lucius smiling in a genuine way for the first time.

He was currently wiping her wet hair with a towel.

Her mouth opened in awe due to the sight. As far as she could remember, he never smiled genuinely. His smiles were always either in a mocking way or in a forced business smile way. Even his supposed kind smiles were always dry.

She couldn't resist letting out a chuckle when she imagined him looking like a happy child.

"Pfft!"

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing, nothing."

She said so while wiping a tiny droplet of tear that managed to escape her eyes.

"Come on, let's hurry up. Mother is waiting for us after all."

"But weren't you the one who wanted to join me?"

"Hush, just hurry up. I'll catch up with you soon. You knowI take a long time to dress up."

She said in a wide smile.

****

After his bathing session with Elizabeth, Lucius immediately went to see his mother-in-law.

"So Mother-in-law, why did you want to meet up?"

"I'm telling you again, just call me Mom. Anyway, I heard about you establishing an academy."

"Yup, are you interested in it?"

"It merely piqued my curiousity. What exactly does 'Science' mean?"

"Ah, of course you're not familiar with the word. Science is a systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation, experimentation, and the testing of theories against the evidence obtained."

"So is it just studying the intricacies of the world itself?"

"In a nutshell, yes. It's a very important study that will revolutionalize everything."

"Hmmm, but don't we already know how the world works? Magic explains it all. So why does this so-called science exist? Is it a human thing?"

"Well, no. Even the humans in this world don't know of it."

"So you just made it up?"

"Of course not. It's something that has existed for a long long time."

"I don't get it."

Her expression was that of doubt.

"Hahaha, of course you don't. Just wait until tomorrow, I'll be making an announcement for everything I've planned."

"Hmmm, I'll be waiting then. By the way, you look extra shiny and handsome today, fufu."

This was the first time someone had called him handsome, so he made a double take on her. While he wasn't ugly or unappealing in terms of his face, most people would agree that he was above average at best.

He knew that elves had high beauty standards, that's one of the few reasons why Evangeline had an affair with Gorgon decades ago, because he was that handsome. So when she called him handsome, he genuinely felt confused.

'Was that just an empty compliment or something?'

"Me? Handsome? No way."

"How come? You look even more handsome than yesterday."

"Really?"

"Of course, do you think your Mother-in-law would ever lie to you?"

"Yup."

"How harsh."

She playfully made a sad act.

"Mother-in-law, I'll see you later."

"Fufu, of course. I'll see you later as well. Also, please tell Elizabeth to come see me too. I told her earlier to come see me with you, but it seems that she forgot."

"Okay."

After seeing off his mother-in-law, he immediately went to his room.

He saw that Elizabeth had simply went to sleep on his bed. She seemed tired, so he chose to not wake her up even though she was sleeping while still only wearing her bath robe.

'So that was a lie. I guess she's still tired from last night.'

Moving on from the matter, Lucius looked at his face on the big mirror inside of his room.

He began to manipulate his brain to bring up every single instance of him dressing up in front of the mirror.

Every single memory for the past year that had him looking at his own face in the mirror was brought up to his attention.

He then began compiling them by date and time, from old to recent.

Then, he played all the frames of memory inside of his head, as if they were a single timelapse video.

He found that the change was super subtle and gradual. So subtle that even he himself, who had developed photographic memory due to his modified brain, had not noticed.

'So it started after that time, huh?'

The time he referred to was the time when he spilled his true self to Elizabeth. It was at this point that marked the start of him developing feelings for her.

It's a given fact that people will tend to become more attractive when they fall in love due to raging hormones, but this much was too extreme.

If his previous state of attractiveness was on a scale of around 7 out of 10, his current state was almost approaching a 9 out of 10.

The 10 in this scale merely represents the maximum attractiveness that a person could have with their unique facial features.

In other words, he was only reaching his full potential.

But to even do this, a person would need to strike gold with their genetics and on top of that, they need years of maximum growth. Lucius on the other hand, had achieved it in only a few months.

'No way, did I subconsciously made the nanobots alter my own body? Oh wait, maybe I did. After centuries of not caring about my own looks, I am now suddenly caring about it due to having feelings for Elizabeth.'

He then went to grab the black slab of solid nanobots that he often used.

He reached his hand on to it, and fully absorbed it into his body.

Using his mind alone, he instructed the nanobots to do a check on his entire body.

From top to bottom, from the biggest to the smallest structure.

What he concluded was true. The nanobots had even altered his genetics to keep the change permanent.

He managed to stop the process completely due to not wanting to be even more handsome.

'Being even more handsome than this would just attract unwanted trouble. Also, it doesn't matter anymore since I've already confirmed my feelings with Elizabeth. Wait, doesn't this mean that she became even more attracted to me due to me becoming more handsome?'

Releasing the nanobots from his body back to the slab form and leaving a tiny amount of them in his body as usual, he shifted his gaze over to the sleeping Elizabeth and went over to her.

He mischievously poked her nose multiple times until she woke up.

While yawning and rubbing her sleepy eyes, she noticed that it was Lucius.

"Hoaaahhmm, Lucius? What's up?"

"You said you were going to take a long time to dress up and that I should go first."

"Ohh, that. Sorry, the bed just looked too inviting. When I laid down, I lost myself to the comfort and fell asleep, hoaaahhmm...."

Elizabeth explained while stretching her body. Her boobs almost escaped her bath robe during this.

"Your mother asked for the both of us to see her, but since you didn't show up, she ended up just talking about my academy."

"Sorry, hoaaaahhmm. I guess I'm still too tired. Could you bring me my clothes over there?"

She pointed to the neatly folded clothes that the maids prepared for her. They were laying on the bathroom counter.

The bathroom doors were still wide open, signalling that she immediately went to sleep on the bed after Lucius had left.

"Here."

"Thanks."

She was now acting more comfortable in front of Lucius. She could never act this way when Lucius was still acting cold towards her.

"Elizabeth, can I ask you something?"

"Sure, what is it?"

"You didn't fall in love with me due to my looks, right?"

"Of course not. I had already fallen for you back when I taught you the common tongue. And when you showed me your true character, it sort of broke my view on you as a person. At that time, I realized that my love was merely superficial."

"Huh? So when did you actually fall for me?"

"Hmmm, I think it was during the time you spent with me researching those prosthetic limbs from your world."

Although it was just a daily short discussion, the two of them had exchanged a lot of things, and it cemented her love for him.

"But I didn't do anything substantial, right?"

"You did. You taught me that the world was much more than magic. You unlocked a whole new world for me. All those amazing new knowledge that you taught me was truly eye-opening. The people in this world would try to keep it to themselves if they had your knowledge. But you didn't. Over time, I realized that I didn't believe in magic anymore. Me who studied magic extensively for decades, me who desperately tried bringing it back, me who was fanatical about the world of magic. You completely removed that part from me, just by teaching me about science. Even if your personality is chaotic at times, you're still not that bad of a person in front of my eyes. You're yourself, and I love you."

Quietness ensued for a few seconds, and Lucius decided to break it.

"So you didn't fall for me again just because of my looks?"

Lucius knew that bringing this up would ruin the serious mood, but he didn't care.

"Hmmm? Your looks? That also contributed, I guess. But you weren't always this handsome, right? I noticed that your face became a lot more handsome these days, but even if you were to go back to how you used to look, I wouldn't give a damn about it and would still fall for you like I did before."

"Shit, I love you too Elizabeth."

"Hey!! Don't swear when saying that you love me."

She jokingly added.