Chapter 46 [Couple's Interaction]
"Ha, I captured this piece!" Mela exclaimed excitedly.
On the ground, there were several vertical or horizontal lines that formed a simple chessboard, with about a dozen wooden chess pieces of different shapes placed in the square grid.
Mela sat on a low stool, with several similar chess pieces scattered haphazardly around her feet. These were pieces that Lex had deliberately let her capture when he was teaching her how to play chess.
"Wrong, you can't move like that in wargames."
Lex, sitting opposite Mela, shook his head and moved the piece Mela had just placed back to its original position, but did not directly tell her the correct way to move the pieces.
He had already explained the rules to Mela once, but she was so eager to start that she didn't seem to remember what he had said at all.
Seeing that Lex remained silent, seemingly determined to let her do it herself, Mela pondered for a while, then picked up the chessboard again and touched the piece belonging to Lex diagonally above her, tentatively asking, "How about this?"
“Then this piece is yours,” Lex said, undoubtedly affirming Mela’s decision.
Mela happily took back the chess piece that belonged to Lex and put it in the pile of chess pieces at her feet.
Even Mela sometimes gets bored staying cooped up in the house all day.
So Mela removed the book from her face, reached out and stopped Lex, who happened to be passing by, and asked him if he had any entertainment to pass the time.
This really stumped Lex, who remained silent for a long time, a rare occurrence for him.
"Really? Don't you have anything else to do in the palace besides holding balls all day long?" Mela asked, somewhat surprised.
Staying in the palace must be so boring.
“The palace is indeed a boring place, not as comfortable as the Dark Forest. But…” Lex finally remembered a pastime he occasionally used with Fernando to pass the time.
That is playing chess.
To play chess, you first need a chessboard and chess pieces.
Forget about the chessboard; you can just draw it on the ground with a twig and that will do.
But the chess pieces are indispensable.
To this end, Lex took out a knife and began practicing with the wood day after day, trying to carve a decent chess piece from memory.
Mela stared at the Lex carving with curiosity, asking, "What's that raised part on top?"
Lex: "...This is a horse."
He looked at the chess piece in his hand with a puzzled expression. Did it not look right?
"So this is the knight?" Mela's gaze shifted to another chess piece that had already been carved. Although Lex's craftsmanship was certainly not as good as that of a real carpenter, among these rough designs, the knight holding a sword was the most lifelike one he had carved.
"Won't there be King's Chess and Queen's Chess next?" Mela guessed casually.
Lex looked at Mela in surprise. "You guessed right."
"How did you guess that?"
"Is it that hard to guess? Above the soldiers are the knights, above the knights are the nobles, and above the nobles are, of course, the king and queen."
Lex nodded approvingly, but said, "There are no noble pieces."
"Huh? Why?" Mela asked, puzzled.
"If I had to give a reason, it would probably be that the person who created the chess pieces deliberately omitted the role of nobles. Otherwise, how could such a chessboard possibly accommodate so many people?" Lex pondered.
You can't fill every square with pieces, otherwise how can you move?
Well, Mela nodded thoughtfully, a reason that was neither wrong nor surprising.
Next, Lex spent a lot of time and finally managed to gather a complete set of pieces. He then arranged the pieces and began to explain the rules to Mela.
After listening for a while, Mela reached out her hand to Lex.
"What's wrong?" Lex asked curiously.
"My legs are numb from squatting, give me a hand," Mela said softly.
Lex: "..."
He had no choice but to act as a human crutch, letting Mela support him as he stood there for a while to recover, until he finally regained his freedom of movement.
However, to prevent a similar incident from happening again, Lex made two more low stools.
This isn't a job that requires meticulous craftsmanship. Basically, you just need to carve out a wooden board, remove the splinters, and then attach the four legs.
Therefore, Lex was able to do it very quickly.
However, Silas kept jumping around on the side, trying to disturb Lex's work. "Lex! Can you make me a new perch? This time I want it to be made of spruce, and I want to tie some flowers to the rope."
"Wasn't your old one perfectly fine? I didn't see anything wrong with it. Why do you suddenly want Lex to make you a new perch?" Mela restrained Silas to prevent it from accidentally running into the knife's tip.
“But that perch has been used for so many years, I’d like to get a new one,” Silas said, glancing at Mela’s expression.
The old perch was originally a branch it picked up itself, and it begged Mela to help it trim away the twigs, carefully clean out the splinters, apply a layer of wax, and then wrap it with a rope and hang it up.
Now that it's starting to get bored with the old and crave the new, it's hard to say Mela won't be happy.
"You knew I'd be upset, yet you still brought it up? You did it on purpose, didn't you?" Mela raised an eyebrow, staring at Silas with a half-smile.
I never expected that Silas would also go astray, and would deliberately try to test her with his words.
Although Silas was openly harassing Lex, he was actually deliberately saying things to Mela to test her attitude.
If Mela's expression turns sour, it can immediately change its mind and say no. Lex can do it or not, it doesn't care.
"Waaah." Seeing that Mela had seen through his scheme, Silas wished he could shrink into a ball and try to act pitiful.
Unfortunately, it was no longer a chick; it was so heavy that it could crush Mela's shoulders, greatly diminishing the effectiveness of its pitiful act.
Mela tossed Silas aside, warning it to stop trying to cause trouble; she was now just waiting for Lex to hurry up and make the stool so they could start playing chess together.
Silas covered his head with his wings, looking rather dejected, and his attitude became much more obedient.
Today, Mela finally sat down opposite Lex. The chessboard was drawn by Lex in an empty space earlier, and the pieces were also set up in advance.
"These pieces have a rock-paper-scissors relationship," Lex explained to Mela, briefly outlining the rules between the pieces.
In other words, the Queen can defeat the King and Pawn, but can be defeated by the Knight; the King can defeat the Knight, but can be defeated by the Pawn; and the Knight can naturally defeat the Pawn.
"It sounds like the King's Chess is pretty useless." Mela fiddled with the King's Chess in her hand, since it could only eliminate one type of piece.
Lex smiled. "So, for the sake of fairness, the creators of the pieces stipulated that the Knights have the most pieces."
Once the King clears out the opponent's Knights first, the King will be in an invincible position.
“Let’s play a game first.” Mela eagerly picked up her king piece and immediately took down one of Lex’s knight pieces.
This is very much in line with Mela's personality; she has always been brave and bold.
Lex remembers the first time he played chess with Fernando. After hearing the rules explained, the first piece he moved was the pawn.
The number of war pieces on the board is naturally the second largest, and they are only used to scout ahead. Even if they are captured, they will not have a significant impact on the subsequent game.
“Your Highness is very cautious,” Fernando praised Lex, and unsurprisingly, took out the chess pieces that Lex had offered.
Now, Lex has taken the knight chess set that Mela had offered him.
As expected, Mela lost the first game.
He didn't even last fifteen minutes against Lex.
"Again."
This time, Mela followed Lex's previous move and attacked Klex's pieces first.
Imitating others' moves is a hurdle that every beginner must overcome.
Since it's an imitation of the opponent, the opponent can easily figure out why they made this move.
Therefore, Mela lost again very quickly.
She pursed her lips, a fierce, defiant fire igniting in her eyes. "Again!"
Lex, as she wished, rearranged the chessboard.
*
The eastern part of the kingdom, the territory of Furhorst.
A gray-haired, blue-eyed man sat in his study. On the table in front of him was a glass chessboard, with chess pieces made of various gemstones arranged on it. The queen chess piece moved forward one step, but unknowingly found itself surrounded by two knight chess pieces.
Suddenly, there was a knock on the study door.
"Please come in," the man said gently.
Then a knight in armor entered, beaming with joy, and reported to him, "Your Excellency, the price of grain has stabilized and has now returned to the level of June. In fact, it was thanks to your willingness to provide a large amount of grain and sell it at low prices to major grain merchants that this drought prevented more innocent people from dying."
The man raised his hand to stop him. “Overen, there’s no need to praise me too much. This is what I should do. Even though I am no longer the prime minister of the kingdom, I cannot sit idly by and watch people suffer.”
"Your Excellency, you certainly possess such noble character, but Queen Elijah, in order to elevate her brother to the throne, fabricated a crime against you, forcing you to return to your territory and become an idle nobleman once again."
When this matter was brought up, Overen was clearly indignant on Fernando's behalf.
"Besides, she clearly knew that there was drought and poor harvests in various places, but she deliberately hoarded grain in advance and sold it at high prices when the disaster occurred, causing many families to be ruined and people to die. If His Highness the Crown Prince were still alive, he would definitely not have allowed her to do this."
“Overen,” Fernando called out to him again.
Even though his tone didn't become particularly harsh, it successfully made the tall and imposing Overen shrink back in embarrassment.
"I apologize, sir, I misspoke just now."
Unexpectedly, Fernando gently shook his head, "You are not wrong to miss Prince Lex. I also miss the days when we played chess together."
Fernanki stared intently at the chess pieces on the board, then suddenly smiled nostalgically. "If Prince Lex were playing this game, he certainly wouldn't have made such a self-destructive move that would hurt the enemy a thousand while harming himself eight hundred."
"Back then, the old King VII deliberately controlled the number of slaves that the lords could control in order to weaken their power. Unfortunately, after three months, most of the accumulation of a hundred years was lost in one fell swoop. The ashes on the ground are about to be rekindled."
"What did you say?" Overen looked up in confusion, puzzled. He hadn't heard what the Marquis had said.
"It's nothing." Fernando smiled gently. The traces of time had gently left a few shallow wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, but they did not diminish his handsomeness at all. On the contrary, they made his face even more charming.
Even now, Fernando still attracts many young women in their prime.
"Alright, now that you've finished talking, you can go and take care of other things," said Fernando.
Overen nodded in agreement and quickly left.
And so the large study returned to silence.
Fernando looked at the fresh lilies in the vase and suddenly remembered something. "Ah, Lilyles's birthday is coming up soon."
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