Why Do You Only Hurt Me When You Meet Me
“You’re saying you’re bringing Garza here...? Why all of a sudden, now? Just a moment ago, you said this wasn’t the time for that....”
Marquis Iorid looked genuinely puzzled. It was only natural—one moment the border count had been telling him to focus on the battle, and the next he was suddenly throwing himself into the matter of the youngest son with unusual fervor.
“Something has come up. More importantly, is it possible? This may be our chance to treat the third young master quickly.”
“Treat my youngest boy....”
The marquis’s eyes wavered at those words.
“But bringing Garza here is going to be difficult. Unless there’s a spatial-transfer scroll lying around our house, that is. But we don’t have a single one right now.”
“Not even one? Really? Not a single teleport scroll in the master of the Mage Tower’s house?”
“I said we don’t have any, didn’t I! Not only my house—there isn’t any stock left in the Mage Tower either. Her Majesty requisitioned everything just a little while ago. If you don’t believe me, go complain to the Queen.”
The marquis raised his voice in frustration.
Scrolls were precious magical items that allowed even those who weren’t mages to use spells. Among them, scrolls inscribed with advanced magic such as spatial transfer were treated as vital strategic assets, and in times of war or anything approaching it, they could be seized by royal decree.
“These days we don’t even have time to conduct magical research at the tower. Every other day there’s another order to craft and surrender more scrolls. Honestly....”
Of course, they weren’t simply taken without compensation; the crown paid handsomely. But from the Mage Tower’s point of view, it was still enough to make them bleed. Making a scroll demanded an enormous amount of mana, labor, and effort.
“I understand. Then it can’t be helped.”
Just to be sure, Ho-yeong had checked the Ring of Truth, but the marquis hadn’t lied.
Well, of course the old man’s the one in the most urgent position. No way a teleport scroll is more valuable to him than his beloved son. Still, damn, the Queen really is terrifying. If she tells them to hand things over, they all hand them over? Huh. Wait—hold on. There was that method. If I do this right, it’ll be a two-for-one—no, a three-for-one deal!
With Daisy’s face flashing through his mind, Ho-yeong hastily came up with a Plan B.
“Marquis, then how about using the Iorid family heirloom?”
He pointed at the ring hanging from Marquis Iorid’s staff. It was fitted with an excellent spatial-transfer spell that could move large numbers of people and supplies over a vast distance in a single cast.
“You said it can be used for round trips, so it should be perfectly possible for you and me to go to the capital together right now. I’ll cover all the mana stones needed to activate it.”
He spilled advanced-grade mana stones from a sack in a glittering cascade. They were a gift from the angels, given in reward for driving off the Fog Hog without retreating in Rainpa.
“I can certainly use it now, yes... but what do you intend to do afterward?”
“What do you mean? We come back here, of course.”
“This ring requires cooldown after it’s been used once. If it were only you and me moving, the cooldown would be shorter, but even so, it would still take more than seven hours.”
The problem the marquis pointed out was the cooldown.
“Didn’t you say there were only about nine hours left to find those elves? That’s cutting it awfully close, isn’t it?”
“Don’t worry about the cooldown. I can handle that.”
“You? And how exactly...?”
“Trust me.”
Ho-yeong’s firm promise was enough to convince the marquis, but there was someone else who remained unconvinced.
“Border Count, I am disappointed. Is it really appropriate to leave such an important mission and go to the capital for private reasons? We should know exactly what you’re discussing with Marquis Iorid.”
“If treating the marquis’s youngest son can provide the fundamental solution to this crisis, then I should do it. That is the path the angels subtly showed us.”
To a Demis Ezef who was rare and disappointed after a long time, Ho-yeong gave the simplest explanation he could.
“...If I’m being extremely generous, I can allow bringing the marquis’s third son here. But if His Majesty learns that you sneaked in and out of the marquis’s manor like a rat, won’t he be furious?”
“A rat? A rat, you say. Sir Demis, how can you say such a thing...!”
“Marquis, do you not understand His Majesty’s temperament? If he hears of this, he’ll think you abandoned your immediate duty and ran off. What good will it do to invent excuses later?”
“Now, now, calm down, Marquis. And you too, Vice-Commander.”
After calming the furious marquis and Demis, Ho-yeong offered a suitable compromise.
“Let’s go to the palace first. You should come with us too, Vice-Commander. As you said earlier, this is an important matter, so it would be best to report it to His Majesty quickly. While we’re at it, we can also ask for permission regarding the marquis’s third son. What do you think?”
After a moment of grim-faced consideration, Demis gave a heavy nod.
“Very well. If it is a report before an audience with His Majesty, then so be it.”
“I have no objection.”
Ability level increased! The level of the passive skill Communion's skill tree branch Negotiation has risen from level 2 to level 3.
“The people going are Marquis and me, plus the Vice-Commander. We’ll be back as quickly as possible, so everyone else should keep preparing for battle. Now then, Marquis, let’s go at once.”
“Indeed.”
Just as Marquis Iorid lifted his staff—
“I’m coming too.”
Peach stepped forward with a face cold as ice.
“Peach. I’m truly grateful for what you said earlier, but I don’t think this is the place for you to step in.”
Ho-yeong tried to gently talk her down, but Peach passed right by her master and stood before the marquis.
“Hmph. I don’t think the marquis would agree with that.”
“Huh? What do you mean by th—”
“Right, Marquis I-o-r-i-d.”
Peach’s gaze, as she turned to glare at the marquis, was sharper than a Karoum blade.
W-what is this...? This killing intent...
Even Ho-yeong, and perhaps the soul of Joren Tamer himself, seemed to flinch. Neither of them had ever seen her expression like this before.
“...Young Lord Tamer, please bring your maid—no, your attendant—with you as well.”
The marquis answered in a crawling voice.
“Whatever it is, would you mind explaining the details in Kainea?”
“That would probably be best.”
“In that case, let us hurry.”
Following Demis’s unexpectedly flexible judgment, the four of them gathered in the open ground and prepared for spatial transfer.
“Бж∫∂∇∀⇔ЪД!”
The marquis chanted a spell no non-mage could understand.
“йЯψξλĦøŁŒ⊙ÆЦ!”
The jade ring hanging from the staff floated up toward the sky. Buzzing with vibration, it gradually widened its circumference until it was large enough to fit an ordinary house inside.
Oh, fascinating. So this is the maximum range?
Once fully opened, the ring soon began to shrink again, its trembling slowing until it settled to the size of the ground on which the four stood.
“Close your eyes.”
Jade light poured inward from within the ring’s edge.
As mana around them swirled through the ring like a raging current, Ho-yeong thought,
Huh? Isn’t this similar to the way Lucy Perhela used teleportation? When that bitch jumped away herself, and when the giant troll corpse disappeared, wasn’t it something like this? Come to think of it, the item she uses and the one the old marquis is using now are both ring-shaped, aren’t they?
Before he could ask the marquis anything, he was swallowed by the waterfall of light.
* * *
Demis Ezef walked briskly ahead.
It was partly to secure a swift audience with the king, but it was also his own way of sparing the others from having to hear the story between the marquis and Peach.
“Wh-what? Peach, so you used to work at Marquis Iorid’s house?!”
“Yes, Master.”
Only then did Ho-yeong begin to grasp the rough outline of the situation.
My life has been nothing but being cast aside. When I was little, I was abandoned by the people who gave birth to me. When I came of age and started working at a noble house, I was cast out for refusing to sleep with someone. And before I even became an adult, the country threw me away too, telling me I had come of age and had to leave the orphanage.
The noble house Peach had spoken of in Darckovo Village was this very House Iorid.
“Um, th-that... may I ask who made that request for your favors?”
Even as he hurried his steps, Ho-yeong stole a sidelong glance at the marquis’s face. The old mage’s expression had tightened into a pained, conflicted mask.
No way, right? Surely not? Old man?
“Ah, of course, if you don’t want to say, Peach, you don’t have to.”
Ho-yeong sincerely hoped the culprit wasn’t the marquis himself, but from the look of it, it didn’t seem likely to be Kristian or Keiji either.
“It was the person we’re about to go see.”
“Hm? What do you mean by that...?”
“Young Master Garza Iorid, the marquis’s third son and youngest boy.”
“Ah. Ahh.... I see. I’m sorry, Peach. I had no idea. I never imagined something like that had happened at the marquis’s house....”
It was a relief in one sense, but at the same time, Ho-yeong felt deeply unsettled.
“Why should you be sorry, Master? The one who should be sorry is the marquis there. I can understand not keeping a proper handle on a delinquent son. He’s probably so busy wearing all those hats—Mage Tower lord, senior of the noble council, and who knows what else. Even I, who worked day and night, could hardly ever get a chance to see him. It’s not unusual for a noble young master to lay hands on a maid, either. And Garza, well, he wasn’t in his right mind, so I can forgive that much.”
Peach wore a faint smile, but her eyes were not smiling at all.
“I thought at least the marquis, as my employer, would apologize properly... Though I suppose I should be grateful he tossed me a sack of silver coins? Not that it was because he pitied me, of course. But I can never forgive Lady Iorid. It wasn’t enough that she expelled me out of fear that the scandal would spread—she had to slander me as some filthy woman on top of it. Thanks to her threats all over the place, I ended up unable to work for any mage family at all. Not that I ever wanted to serve families like that again.”
Ho-yeong shook his head.
That’s seriously fucked up.
The marquis spoke up heavily.
“...I’m sorry. Truly. I’ll apologize in place of my late wife.”
“Lady Iorid has passed away?”
“Yes... she went to the River Saints just a little while ago, after wearing herself thin worrying over Garza.”
Ho-yeong had worried Peach might make some crude remark about karma or serve up a dead-parent joke, but thankfully nothing of the sort happened. She only let the false smile fall and released a short sigh.
“Hmm... For now, I am your employer, Master, so I’ll dare to meddle. First, I think it’s fair to say the marquis is being sincere in his apology. Peach, what do you think?”
Seeing the clear light of the Ring of Truth, Peach puckered her lips to one side.
“...Fine. I’ll accept the marquis’s apology. But as a girl, I still don’t like it~ Restoring the mana of a delinquent like Young Master Garza—won’t he just run wild even more?”
“Mm... Could you please forgive him for this old man’s sake?”
“Oh, come now. How could a lowly housemaid like me possibly have the right to forgive or not forgive the marquis? Besides, this isn’t my doing in the first place—it’s my master’s. So it’s not up to me to permit or refuse, is it? Don’t worry, Marquis. On the other hand, I am a little grateful.”
“Grateful? What do you mean?”
“Thanks to you, Marquis, even a kitchen drudge like me gets to see the royal palace, don’t I? So it’s something to be thankful for.”
“...What must this old man do before your anger subsides?”
At this troublesome situation, Ho-yeong scratched the back of his head.
If Edification is used on Garza Iorid, his mana can be restored. However, Peach’s edification level will drop significantly in that case.