Chapter 108
Chapter 108
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 108
Chapter Title: Shadows in Disguise
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"Bervert? That always gentle smile of hers is so memorable."
"That kid's got a reputation for listening well to others. She'll make you spill all your secrets, they say."
"She's sweet and demure, and her looks are subtly alluring. No wonder she's so popular."
The fragile, immature Bervert. The young, innocent girl.
Her fluffy brown hair and angelic smile.
Her soft voice and kind words.
How could anyone know?
Her true nature.
"Keep sending the assassins steadily. Bribe the waitress at that inn to get strands of their hair."
The smile that seemed incapable of harming anyone had vanished. Her brows furrowed slightly, her lips twisted.
The church's informant nodded at Bervert's words.
"The potions we smuggled out to corner Gadia anyway. Putting them back would just be wasteful, right?"
So she planned to use them thriftily to torment them.
Let's see how they like sleepless nights filled with fear and terror.
That wastrel Adelian had been confirmed powerless, so there was no need to hesitate in attacking.
Anyone would break eventually if attacked repeatedly by people who looked just like their family and comrades.
Even if they kept someone by their side 24 hours a day, could a person live like that forever?
Target the moments when any one of Adelian's group was briefly separated.
At first, they might brush it off and kill without a second thought.
Even a fake Gadia—who might be his real sister—had been subjected to near-death terror or violence by that trash.
But could they never slip up with luck on their side, accidentally killing the real one or starting to suspect the real as fake?
No need to rely solely on potions. Find someone with a similar build and height, dye their hair, and have them loiter nearby occasionally—wouldn't that sow doubt?
Doubt eats away at a person bit by bit. With good fortune, it might drive them completely mad.
"That's what thrills me."
Bervert murmured with a smile, biting into a cherry with her front teeth.
"Ruining someone's life because of me. Controlling them like that."
That was why she was meticulously destroying Gadia.
If some fool got in the way, she'd have to torment them too. Right?
"Keep sending them steadily. Whenever they start to forget, send people disguised as his acquaintances. It's fine if some are really sloppy."
Mixing in truly identical fakes dosed with doppelganger potion and obvious fakes at random would amplify their mental fatigue.
She crunched down on the firm cherry with her front teeth, red juice trickling down her lips like blood.
Bervert held the crushed, juiced cherry in her mouth and licked her stained red lips like a snake.
* * *
"That one just passed by over there again. How many times is this now?"
―Luna senior, this is your fourth time.
I took the chalkboard Leaf handed me and read it. Luna four times, Zero twice, Leaf twice, Rachel three times. It's even funnier that Kane has zero.
"I'm back. What were you all talking about?"
Luna, who had gone to the jeweler to pick up the dice I ordered, tilted her head and asked.
Rachel, with her interlaced hands behind her head, grumbled as she opened her mouth.
"Just now, a girl with pink hair and rabbit ears passed by over there."
Want to know the funny part?
Those rabbit ears were standing straight up.
Rachel whispered to Luna like she was sharing a ghost story, and Luna flinched, clutching her drop earrings with both hands.
"Again... it was me again?"
"And on top of that, something that pissed me off even more happened."
Rachel's eyes blazed with fury as she ground her molars.
"The one imitating me was a guy."
Since Rachel was tall, it was hard to find a tall woman on short notice...
They put a red wig on a slender man and had him wander around.
Visually, it looked similar enough that a normal person might have been completely fooled.
In that case, they might have cowered like protagonists in a ghost story, too scared to even go outside.
"Heh heh... I'll smash them. Using a man in disguise, of all things?"
"They must think I'm a pushover... It won't end like last time."
―So, Administrator, you're saying physical elimination is off-limits?
I slowly smiled as I looked at the three of them.
With people like these around me, why would I ever be scared?
"That's not the important thing right now."
I took the dice Luna had brought from her, gazing at Luna, Leaf, and Rachel, all brimming with eagerness to crush the enemy.
"The showdown's just a few days away. You haven't forgotten, have you?"
Luna and Leaf nodded at my words, while Rachel slyly averted her eyes.
I handed the dice back to Luna. Getting familiar with these dice over the next few days was key.
They were made of jewels and precious metals, extravagantly ornate with exquisite craftsmanship, so if I gave them to Dmitri, that show-off would surely use them.
Of course, he'd have to check first if I'd planted any magical traps.
But I planned to win with something far simpler than magic.
Degurruk—
"What do you think?"
Back at the inn, I rolled the dice across the table several times and asked Luna. Her pink eyes met mine.
"Hmm, the sound is different, yeah."
"Right?"
If it were just for matching pairs, I would've used diamonds and sapphires for the dice faces instead of rubies and sapphires.
But the key was that the gems forming the dice faces had to differ, so I excluded rubies since they were essentially the same mineral, just different colors.
The reason I specifically requested the faces to protrude ever so slightly—not flush or inset—was crucial.
The instant the die's face touches the table.
That split-second sound that ordinary people couldn't hear.
The sound of the die's face hitting the bottom.
Even with one die, it'd be hard to discern just by sound.
But gambling dice come in pairs.
Shake them in the cup, place it down, and as they roll around inside until they finally stop.
If you could distinguish the sound of contact with the bottom in that instant, then theoretically, a game with protruding faces offered an absolute winning strategy.
"Can you do it?"
"It won't be perfect, but if I can just do better than young master Dmitri, that should be enough."
Luna smiled as she rolled the dice repeatedly. She seemed to have figured it out.
"You know, I always think this, but you're a real bastard."
Who starts something thinking it'll actually work?
Rachel picked up one rolling die and spun it around, saying as much.
"That bad, huh?"
When I grinned and asked back, Rachel bared her teeth in a villainous smirk just like me.
"Of course. Trying to win with some cheap trick no one else thought of, huh?"
I wore a satisfied expression at Rachel's praise, born from her own gambling losses.
"A total villain. Making a rabbitkin aura user with great hearing play dice, or pitting a golem with perfect memory against memory games."
"So doesn't that make card games worth looking forward to?"
After all, she's a dragon.
Rachel, who had been grinning at my pointed gaze, slowly lowered the corner of her mouth.
"That one... I'll win fair and square with my own power!"
"Lose, and you're volunteering. Do whatever Dmitri says without complaint, giving it your all."
"My race is my power too."
With Dmitri's temper already scratched raw, she'd be terrified of what he'd demand.
"I'm back."
"Oh, welcome, welc—ugh!"
There was a presence behind me, and soon Rachel covered her own eyes with one hand and Leaf's with the other.
My back felt strangely brighter, yet simultaneously chilled as if ice had been placed there.
"Luna."
"Y-Yes, young master..."
And even Luna was looking down...
"There's... someone behind my back?"
After taking a deep breath at Luna's cautious nod, I slowly turned my head.
"Ugh."
Blinding.
That beauty salon really delivers!
Kane stood there emanating chill like his mood had plummeted, practically glowing, while Zero stood beside him covering her mouth with one hand.
"Zero, hand down."
"Ah! That's too much. I was holding it in so hard."
Zero lowered her hand with a big laugh, and Rachel burst into open laughter too.
"...Rachel, out to the backyard."
"Kyahaha! Kya! Nooo!"
Even as Kane narrowed his brows and grabbed her collar—something she'd normally leap at joyfully—Rachel collapsed to the floor clutching her stomach.
"Listen, today the beauty salon's madam tried to seal Kane senior away forever with a sealing artifact, of all things."
"Last time you knocked out everyone working there, and this time you almost got sealed, Kane."
Lately, rumors were spreading about an incubus prowling the capital.
Why? Because the moment Kane forgot his perception-lowering badge and made eye contact, people fainted.
I listened to his adventure tale of smashing the sealing artifact, wrecking the salon, and barely escaping, then shouted out one crucial fact.
"Then we can't send you to the beauty salon anymore?"
"Ah. Don't worry about that."
Zero smiled kindly at me and pulled a few strands of purple hair from her pocket.
"I got a bit from the fainted madam."
Zero can consume it!
I immediately wrote out a green juice immunity pass on the spot as a reward, and Rachel, wiping tears from laughing so hard, opened her mouth.
"Come to think of it, I keep hearing Luna or Zero mention green juice. What's that?"
Oh, right. Last time was the friendly game to welcome Leaf, when we made them drink it as a penalty.
When Zero learned from Gamur and Bahadi, came back from the airship with Leaf, and we all gathered—Zero got hooked on one candy and drank, while Leaf tasted it and collapsed.
Good times.
I rested my chin on my hand, looked at Rachel, and asked in a gentle voice.
"Curious?"
"Eh? Ack. No, absolutely not. Not curious. I'll just forget about it."
Rachel jumped from her seat like a startled cat at my smile, but Zero and Luna approached with serene, Buddha-like smiles, grabbed her arms and shoulders from both sides, and sat her down.
"You know, it might be a good motivator to really win that card game... What do you think?"
"I'm for it."
―Me too, Administrator.
Seeing Kane and Leaf answer my out-of-nowhere question instantly confirmed it was a solid idea.
"Bankrupt player drinks green juice."
I pulled out Valbus's card dealer artifact and candies from my subspace, and everyone took their seats on their own.
"What's... what's with this atmosphere!"
Rachel alone looked around anxiously, not getting it, but started receiving her cards anyway.
And then.
"Ugh, I shouldn't have gone all-in!"
I approached Rachel, who wailed while shaking an empty candy bottle, holding the green juice I'd prepared in advance.
"Congrats. Drink this, and you're truly one of us."
Once everyone drinks green juice and bonds over the agony, we can even distort their memories that way.
Pfo, pfoof.
Rachel shook her head at the bubbles popping with weird sounds, refusing, but a penalty was a penalty.
"It's good for the body."
"We admit that."
"Rachel junior. It really is good... for the body."
―Though the reason is unknown.
Staring down the green juice amid everyone's reactions, Rachel roughly grabbed the cup.
"Sheesh. What's the big deal? It's just juice with a nasty smell, right?"
Rachel glared at the green juice as if to burn it with her eyes, then downed it in one gulp.
Oh, bold.
And then.
"Gaaahhh!"
She died gloriously.
She toppled backward, clawing at her throat.
"What is this! Mana's surging through my body!"
Why is it good for the body?! she screamed, rolling on the floor dry-heaving. I grinned at her.
"Lose to Dmitri, and it's two glasses."
"I'll kill him, Dmitri!"
This raised our odds of victory even higher.