DAR Vol. 6 Chapter 22 Part 6

“I’m happy my precious little sister is so beautiful. Maybe the food in that country suited you?”

As if tracing a line, Emilia’s fingertips slid from Cornelia’s shoulder down to her upper arm. She was only being touched by family, yet a chill ran down Cornelia’s back.

“Um, Big Sis…”

Cornelia looked around at the servants for help, but they only wore gentle smiles, and it didn’t seem like any of them would stop her. This was Emilia’s estate, and the staff were entirely on her side. Whatever happened, they would honor their mistress’s will.

“I’ll knead out the muscles that have stiffened from traveling. I have an excellent moisturizer made from seaweed, the one that helps with fatigue recovery. If we use it, you’ll feel better, and your skin will feel even nicer.”

“No, I couldn’t possibly trouble you like that, Big Sis. And you already said my skin is beautiful, so that’s more than enough!”

Cornelia tried to climb down from the platform to escape Emilia’s hands.

Emilia didn’t give her the chance, catching her by the upper arm.

It was only a small movement, but both Cornelia and Emilia were highly skilled in martial arts. Even Cornelia’s attempt to slip away, and Emilia’s timing in seizing her arm, was a refined contest of reading and counter-reading.

“Am I not good enough?”

“…N-No, that isn’t what I meant…”

Cornelia’s cheeks tightened in awkward discomfort, while Emilia wore a calm, confident smile that was so strikingly handsome that, if she weren’t family, you might have fallen for it.

“Then should I go call that young alchemist?”

“Huh?”

Cornelia froze at the unexpected suggestion.

She hadn’t expected Roa’s name to come up here. Seeing Cornelia’s bewildered face, Emilia turned a radiant smile on her.

“‘Please don’t take away his freedom!’ huh. When was the last time I saw you that desperate, Coney? You must be really like that boy.”

Those were the words Cornelia had flung at Emilia before they entered the royal capital.

“That was just…in the moment…”

Back then, Cornelia had thought Emilia came to take Roa away on the Queen’s orders. Dietrich’s words pushed her into blurting it out, and part of her had hoped that since Emilia was family and doted on her, she might be persuaded.

Now that she thought about it, she was mortified at how desperately she’d pleaded over something she’d completely misread.

Cornelia looked away from Emilia’s teasing gaze.

“Huh?”

The instant she averted her eyes, Cornelia’s body lifted lightly and the cloth she’d been wrapped in was removed.

“Let’s talk while we soak.”

Before she knew it, Cornelia was in Emilia’s arms.

Cornelia being lifted and the cloth being taken, none of it was magic. Emilia had simply done it with a speed too fast to follow.

Cornelia’s bloodline was poor at emission-type magic. They had plenty of mana, yet couldn’t assemble spell formulas properly.

In exchange, they excelled at magic that acted within the body, such as Body Reinforcement Magic, and by applying it with precision they could move with blinding quickness and produce strength that even burly men couldn’t match.

Even among that lineage, Emilia’s ability stood out as extraordinary, allowing her to move in ways that felt almost inhuman.

Emilia carried Cornelia in her arms and stepped into the bath. After lowering herself into the hot water, she seated Cornelia on her lap.

Only the slow, curling steam of the hot spring wrapped around them.

“Um, Big Sis…this position is…”

“What’s wrong with putting my cute little sister on my lap?”

“Cute… I’m already 22.”

“You’re 3 years younger than me. My cute little sister.”

Cornelia protested, but Emilia refused to budge.

“…Now then. Let’s talk about that boy.”

After letting Cornelia sit on her lap in an indescribably awkward silence for a while, Emilia finally broached the subject.

“First, about the order I was given: I wasn’t lying about what I told you there. Receiving Dietrich and keeping watch on him—that much is true. However, I’ve confirmed there’s a separate squad as well. There’s a chance they’re the ones tasked with the duty you’re afraid of.”

“Huh?”

Roa, his familiars, and Kristoff knew there was another unit, but because the carriage was different, Cornelia hadn’t. Startled, she shifted, but Emilia supported her firmly, and she didn’t slip from her lap.

“But relax. The Queen isn’t that bad of a person. After her own freedom, she values other people’s freedom above all else. Even if it’s for the sake of the country, she shouldn’t do anything cruel.”

“But…”

These were the words of a sister Cornelia trusted and of a knight of the Royal Guard Knights, someone closest to the Queen. Cornelia knew she should believe her, and yet her reply came out hesitant, as if she couldn’t accept it.

“You all are involved too deeply with Dietrich. He’s someone who became a prince as the price for his crimes… an existence made into the Queen’s toy, so to speak. A pierrot meant to be played with. Being treated unfairly is practically his role.”

“…”

Cornelia knew Dietrich used to lead a gang of delinquents, piling wrongdoing upon wrongdoing. She’d heard the rumors, and Kristoff—who’d been one of Dietrich’s companions back then—had told her the stories countless times.

And if the personality that surfaced when Dietrich was drunk, or when he truly snapped, was said to be the very Dietrich of that era, Cornelia could easily imagine how vicious he must have been.

Dietrich was captured by the Queen at the end of those misdeeds. Cornelia didn’t know the details of how it happened, but the result was that he became the Queen’s adopted son. Apparently, if he hadn’t been adopted, he might have faced execution.

“If you stay near him, you’ll only ever see the Queen’s sadistic side. So it’s only natural you’d think she’s the kind of person who’d do anything to satisfy her desires.”

“…”

“But think about it. She rules this country. You know she wouldn’t treat an innocent person unjustly, don’t you? Even her habit of adopting many children was not, in the first place, to make them into playthings. It was meant to ensure capable people weren’t treated unfairly.”

The Queen was unmarried, with no biological children. In their place, she had many adopted children.

And those adoptees were a motley assortment; different kinds of people, taken in for different reasons.

It apparently began with the Queen temporarily adopting talented individuals so they could act freely, unbound by status.

But from time to time, the Queen’s personal “favorites” began to mingle among them. When she found someone she personally considered interesting, she would adopt them as a way of making it publicly understood that they were hers.

Dietrich, naturally, was one of those “favorites.”

And among them, he was especially cherished.

Apparently, she found it entertaining how he resisted without fear, and how he tried to run.

“But I’ve seen her humiliate our leader… Prince Dietrich…again and again, and put him through things that should have killed him…”

“But he isn’t dead, and he still has all his limbs, doesn’t he? Coney, if Dietrich does something that goes too far, you scold him and knock him flying, don’t you? It’s not much different. The scale is simply larger.”

“That’s…”

It was true. Whenever Dietrich did something stupid, Cornelia herself would punch him or kick him away. If Emilia said it was essentially the same, Cornelia had little choice but to concede.

“Coney. Won’t you trust your big sister, and the ruler of this country, at least a little?”

“Yes…”

Even as Cornelia answered, she still looked down, unconvinced. Seeing that, Emilia gently stroked Cornelia’s head.

“Besides, I don’t think that separate squad was assigned to the boy. This is only my guess, but I think they’re watching the Gryphon.”

“The Gryphon?”

“I heard that Gryphon ran away from the hero party, Crack of Dawn. Information is restricted, but there’s talk going around that the Subjugation Collar’s effect may be weak on certain magic beasts. And especially, if a Gryphon has escaped once, there’s no reason to assume it won’t escape again. I think being monitored is only natural.”

“That…is true…”

Knowing the real circumstances, Cornelia couldn’t say anything more.

It was certainly more natural to assume they were wary of the Gryphon than to assume they were trying to take Roa away.

Not only was the effect not weak, the Subjugation Collar had no effect at all on Uncle Gry or the twin magic wolves, Roo and Phi. Apparently, wearing it only caused a faintly unpleasant sensation.

But there was no way Cornelia could tell anyone that, so the official story was that Uncle Gry and the others had become familiars through the Subjugation Collar.

In truth, Uncle Gry and the twins were only following Roa of their own will.

Even the collars around their necks were fakes, made to closely resemble Subjugation Collars.

The only people who knew that were those who could hear their “voices.” Even if Emilia was trustworthy, Cornelia couldn’t tell her.

“A few years back, there was an incident where a port was attacked by magic beasts, wasn’t there? Supposedly that was a Gryphon’s doing. The Queen’s only gotten skittish because of it.”

Right…that did happen, Cornelia thought hazily, her mind a little fogged. The hot spring had warmed her through, and she was starting to feel lightheaded. Her thoughts wouldn’t come together.

With her body warmed, her wariness loosened, and before Cornelia realized it, she was leaning her weight into Emilia.

She even began to find it pleasant; the way Emilia stroked her as if cherishing her.

𑁋

After running into the Sword Saint on the beach, Roa, the twin magic wolves Roo and Phi, and Kristoff also returned from the shore.

The rooms they would be staying in were ready.

Each of them was assigned a room in the Marquis’s detached annex, and what had been prepared for Roa and his familiars was an austere but generously spacious chamber. Even with Uncle Gry and the twins inside, it didn’t feel cramped.

Perhaps it was a room meant to house a large number of noble servants. The construction was solid, and there were multiple beds and chairs inside, but they’d been pushed neatly against the walls, so nothing felt in the way.

“Uncle Gry, about earlier…”

<I’m going to sleep.>

With magic, Uncle Gry drew several beds together into one spot, made himself a sleeping platform he could climb onto, and went right to sleep, refusing to entertain objections. He didn’t even give Roa the time to ask about what happened with the Sword Saint.

“Come on, Uncle Gry…”

When Roa tried to speak again, he felt mana spreading outward.

It was faint and thin, barely noticeable even to Roa, who was used to Uncle Gry’s mana.

“…Detection?”

Roa tilted his head at that outward flow.

Normally, Uncle Gry used detection magic with such a weak amount of mana that not just ordinary people, but even mages and alchemists sensitive to mana couldn’t perceive it. Yet what Roa was sensing now, while still “weak,” was strong enough that he could tell it was being used.

If there was any reason to raise it to that level, it would be when deploying the spell over a wide area.

Realizing that, Roa stopped trying to talk to him.

Uncle Gry was pretending to sleep while running a large-scale detection spell. The reason was obvious, ensuring Roa and the others were safe.

And the act of “sleeping” was likely because it let him concentrate without being distracted by his surroundings. In a place they’d never been before, Uncle Gry was doing things his own way to secure their safety.

Once Roa understood that, he couldn’t very well interrupt him over something trivial.

And thinking back, the defensive magic that seemed to have protected Roa from the Sword Saint’s strike on the beach was probably the same sort of thing, done to keep him safe. Roa still wondered what kind of magic it had been, but it wasn’t as if he needed an answer for things to function.

Uncle Gry always did everything he could to protect Roa.

Roa started to feel like blaming him just because he couldn’t identify the spell would be missing the point.

“…Uncle Gry, I’m going to take a quick look around this building.”

I’ll leave him alone. Having come to that conclusion, Roa quietly left the room.

A little while later…

<Mmph. That sleepyhead is naked in the bath, bickering with that rough old geezer. Same as always, that idiot. And that loudmouth woman is being carried around by that handsome woman like a baby. Look at that slack, sloppy face she doesn’t usually make. She’s gone soft. From now on, I’ll call her the baby woman!!>

With his eyes still closed, Uncle Gry kept grinning to himself as he muttered on and on. It looked less like he was securing their safety with detection, and more like he was just peeping to collect leverage.

Roa, who’d left the room, had no way of knowing that Uncle Gry was engaging in such vulgar behavior…

𑁋

<Kristoff is selfish!>

<Asking Roo and Phi for favors is a thousand years too early!>

“A thousand years? I’d be dead by then…”

An unusual trio, Kristoff and the twin magic wolves Roo and Phi, walked along the edge of the Marquis’s vast garden.

Kristoff had returned to the Marquis’s estate with Roa once, but soon after, he asked Roa to lend him the twins and headed out.

<Roo is generous, so I’ll forgive you!>

<Phi is kind too, so I’ll listen to your request, but!>

<I want meat!>

<Phi likes meat too, the expensive livestock kind.>

“Fine, fine. I’ll buy some when we go into town.”

After leaving with the twins, Kristoff had made a certain request of them.

As payment, the twins casually demanded livestock meat. If he refused, Kristoff suspected there would be harsh punishment later, out of Roa’s sight, so he reluctantly agreed.

Incidentally, among Nostalgia’s members, only Kristoff had been given a room in the annex, like Roa and Coralde. Dietrich, Cornelia, and Bernhart were prepared rooms in the Marquis’s main residence in the royal capital.

This wasn’t because Kristoff was being singled out. It was simply the result of Kristoff politely but firmly declining.

Kristoff did hold the status of a knight, and his rank was knight baronet, but he was still a commoner-born knight in the end. He couldn’t bear the idea of living in the main residence while servants attended to him, so he fled with every ounce of effort he had.

Besides, knights were, by nature, protectors. Unless someone of a hereditary noble house, a baron or higher, was accompanying them, they didn’t have the right to enter a marquis’s main residence.

Dietrich, being royalty, was present this time, but Kristoff insisted it was wrong for him personally to be entertained as a guest in the main residence, and his argument ultimately carried.

Cornelia was also a knight baronet, but she couldn’t escape, since she was a marquis’s daughter’s blood-related younger sister. After Kristoff insisted on staying in the annex, Dietrich and Cornelia gave him icy looks that might as well have said traitor.

What had been prepared for Kristoff was a guard room, the kind knights sometimes stayed in. He was sharing it with the Coralde Trading Company’s people, excluding Coralde himself.

<This tree!>

The twins pointed with their snouts at a single enormous tree just inside the edge of the estate grounds. Aside from being huge, it was an ordinary-looking tree you could find anywhere.

<We already noticed them! The mice leader is here.>

<They probably won’t get killed.>

<No hostility. Probably won’t get killed!>

<Whatever.>

<Our job is to bring you here, anyway.>

The twins spoke with genuine indifference. When it came to handling Nostalgia’s members, the twins were even more harsh than Uncle Gry.

Kristoff’s request was for them to take him to the people his familiars had called “mice,” those who had been hiding and watching.

When he asked, if possible, to be brought to the leader of that group, the twins led him to this tree.

Even standing right beside it, Kristoff couldn’t sense so much as a human presence. It didn’t seem like anyone could possibly be hiding there.

<Okay, we’re going back to Roa!>

<Bye-bye! Can’t wait for the meat!>

Without leaving room for argument, the twins trotted off. Watching them go, Kristoff gave a wry smile at how crudely he’d been handled.

“All right. You know who I am, yeah? I’ve got a few things I want to ask.”

Kristoff addressed the tree, assuming the hidden party was the same kind of royal intelligence operative as himself.

At the same time, a figure dropped down from above the branches.

“…Seriously, I layered a bunch of spells and stayed hidden, too…”

Muttering as he scratched his head was a man who was small but sturdily built. He had a gentle, approachable face, with a faintly monkey-like impression.

“Prince Karlheinz!”

Recognizing him, Kristoff blurted it out in surprise, then hurriedly dropped to one knee and bowed.

Prince Karlheinz.

Like Dietrich, he was someone the Queen had adopted, but Karlheinz had become a prince from a commoner because his abilities were valued. He excelled at covert action and served as one of the Queen’s spies.

Officially, he belonged to the knight order, but he and the group under him moved almost exclusively on the Queen’s direct orders.

Kristoff, though now positioned as Dietrich’s party member and caretaker, had originally been part of the knight order’s intelligence side. Since they did similar work, he’d known Karlheinz for some time.

They’d even shared drinks after missions.

“Ah, it’s fine, it’s fine. It’s just us here, you know?”

With an easy tone and a fluttering wave of his hand, Karlheinz prompted him to raise his head.

“Still, those wolves are cheating. The Queen told me, but seriously, they’re absurd. Nobody, not even a magic beast, has ever found me before. Ahh, so the bet’s on me losing, huh. Guess I’m getting my prized wine taken.”

“A bet?”

Kristoff cocked his head.

“A bet on whether I’d get found. The Queen told me I’d be discovered right away, so she said to have you pass along a message when it happened. I had some confidence, so I talked back like, no way, that won’t happen, but… yeah, I got found. There goes my treasured wine.”

“…Right.”

Kristoff answered absentmindedly while his thoughts churned.

If the Queen said he’d be found quickly, then she must have already gauged the twins’ abilities, or perhaps the Gryphon’s. Kristoff had been sending reports ever since he met Roa, but when it came to the familiars’ capabilities, he’d deliberately kept it restrained, describing them as no more than an ordinary Gryphon and ordinary magic wolves.

Which meant the Queen had investigated by her own methods.

How had she managed to dig into them when they were in another country?

Wondering how much she truly knew made Kristoff uneasy enough that he stopped thinking about it.

“Anyway, the message is, ‘If the people after Roa and the Gryphon start messing around, it’ll turn into a major disaster, so I’m having these kids keep watch. I won’t let them interfere with your sightseeing, so don’t worry.’ That’s it.”

Karlheinz delivered the Queen’s words in an exaggerated falsetto, adopting a jokingly feminine tone for the quotation.

People after Roa and the Gryphon… It wasn’t impossible.

Roa was a gifted alchemist, and the Gryphon was a powerful magic beast. Roa’s value was naturally high, and if you could acquire a Gryphon alive, it would be an incredible asset. Even killing it would yield the finest materials.

And if the Gryphon was in a state where, thanks to the Subjugation Collar, it supposedly couldn’t attack without its tamer, Roa, giving the command, then it was only natural that predators would see opportunity.

But contrary to their expectations, Uncle Gry wasn’t being controlled by the Subjugation Collar. If he were attacked, he would retaliate without waiting for Roa’s instructions, and more than that, he would likely eliminate the threat the moment he sensed danger.

If Roa was in jeopardy, he would unleash violence so excessive it could easily wipe out an entire city. A major disaster was all but guaranteed.

After all, that Gryphon regarded anyone who wasn’t Roa as little more than trash…

Yet if the Queen understood that much, then she must have grasped Uncle Gry’s temperament as well.

Just how much did she know, really…?

Dietrich was left speechless by what could be inferred from that short message.

“Well, that’s that, then. I’m heading back to my assignment!”

“Ah, yes!”

Having delivered the message, Karlheinz must have decided his role was done. He spoke as if the matter were settled.

On Kristoff’s side, he’d learned their intentions, so his goal was achieved.

And with Karlheinz, Kristoff knew what kind of man he was. Unless you made an enemy of him, he tended to act peaceably, so even being watched shouldn’t pose a problem.

“Oh, right. About Shiana, the one you were trying to woo, I hear she’s getting married soon. Since you’re stuck dealing with Dietrich and all, you probably let her slip away. Well, good luck!”

“Wha, what? How do you know that!? N-No, it’s not like we’re like that!”

“Bye now.”

Laughing at Kristoff’s flustered panic, Karlheinz vanished as if he’d melted into the scenery. He’d likely erased both his presence and his form with magic. Kristoff could no longer tell where he was.

Had he been mocked? Kristoff’s face burned bright red with embarrassment.

How had Karlheinz found out about the woman Kristoff had liked until shortly before setting out with Dietrich?

In intelligence work, you end up cultivating a web of informants and gathering petty details, but even so, you wouldn’t go collecting information on a small fry like Kristoff. It seemed far more likely Karlheinz had simply learned it by chance.

But if that were true, then it meant Kristoff’s romantic affairs were circulating widely enough to reach Karlheinz’s ears.

That couldn’t be right.

…He desperately hoped it wasn’t.

Kristoff found himself more preoccupied with Karlheinz’s parting words than with the information he’d actually come to learn.

𑁋

There were others who had been listening to that conversation between Kristoff and Karlheinz from a short distance away.

<Hey, we want that, don’t we?>

<Karlheinz is nice, huh?>

It was the twin magic wolves, Roo and Phi.

While pretending to leave, the two of them slipped into a nearby thicket and listened closely to every word. Their technique was superb, so much so that neither man—both intelligence specialists—noticed them at all. Perhaps it was the magic wolves’ hunting instincts at work.

The twins had been eavesdropping the whole time, but they had no interest in what was being said. What interested them was Karlheinz himself.

<He has a lot of mana, doesn’t he?>

<Way more than Bernhart the mage. If we train him, it’ll probably grow even more!>

They hadn’t realized it while Karlheinz was concealed by magic, but the moment he showed himself, they noticed his mana was unusually abundant for a human. That, more than anything, caught their attention.

<Do all the ‘mice’ have lots of mana?>

<I hope so.>

Hidden behind the bushes, they wagged their tails with eager anticipation.

“Mice” referred to all of Karlheinz’s subordinates lurking around the Marquis’s estate.

<Dietrich is useless, after all.>

<With Dietrich’s mana, he can’t do anything.>

<Let’s hunt them in secret!>

<Stamp them and turn them into lackeys!>

Their eyes glittered with the thrill of the hunt, and one of them licked their lips. Karlheinz and his companions had already become prey in the twins’ minds.

And that very night, an incident occurred in which Karlheinz and the men watching the Marquis’s estate had their consciousness reaped in an instant.

None of them saw the culprit. None of them even understood what had been done to them. They simply blacked out, and when they came to, they were laid out on a stretch of beach a little way off.

They’d been arranged in neat rows, and on each of their necks was a burn mark shaped like a dog’s pawprint.

They were terrified.

To be marked like that meant their throats could have been taken at any moment.

Every one of those burns lay directly over the carotid artery, and they’d been treated with shoddy healing potions.

Because of that, the wounds healed only halfway, leaving them like old scars.

And since they were positioned over the carotid artery, they couldn’t simply cut the skin open again and heal it properly without risking something far worse. To fix them would require a Supreme Grade magic recovery potion capable of curing old scars.

But there was no chance of obtaining something that rare.

From that day on, they began wrapping scarves around their necks.

In time, the sight of those scarves fluttering in the wind became a hallmark of this kingdom’s capable spies, an image people admired and aspired to.

Only the people involved knew it was actually a badge of humiliation.