Advancement Quest (9)
Have you ever watched a drama or movie where the protagonist charges forward without any plan and immediately lands in serious trouble? I’ll be honest—I’ve always been the type who really hated those kinds of protagonists. No matter what you’re trying to accomplish, shouldn’t the first step be understanding the situation? It’s the logical move, and it pays off in the long run.
But… yeah. My apologies, dear protagonists. Turns out it’s not that easy when you’re the one doing it.
“Who the hell are you?! How dare you set foot here! Release that filthy hand at once!”
The witch of a woman screamed the moment she saw me, her eyes rolling with fury. Anyone listening would think I was the kidnapper.
“Heh heh heh. If you’re so worried about the child, why were you about to throw her into the pond? It’s romance when you do it, but a crime when someone else does it? That’s one hell of an artistic double standard.”
“Guards! Where are the guards?! Save the princess at once!”
Guards? I’d looked around on my way here and hadn’t seen a single person, but—
Whoosh!
Thud!
I instinctively jerked my head to the side. A spear whistled through the exact spot where my skull had been a moment earlier.
Dozens of knights in ornate, antique armor, their faces hidden behind helmets and visors, had surrounded the edge of the pond at some point. They had us completely cut off.
“Oh, I see. The moment an outsider is recognized, the world naturally spawns appropriate countermeasures. The unconscious mind is fascinating.”
The stone beside me offered its calm observations without a hint of tension. I couldn’t believe its nerve.
“Thanks for the commentary, but aren’t you being a little too relaxed about this?”
“Well, you see—”
Whoosh!
Splash!
Another thrown spear shot straight through the stone’s position. It passed right through without causing any damage.
“—as you can see, I’m perfectly safe in this situation. Besides, I’m not even sure what I am right now, so I don’t feel any particular fear. You’d better watch your back, though. Ah, my mistake—you’re already dodging. If my advice is distracting, just say the word and I’ll stop.”
The urge to tell it to shut up clashed with the fact that the advice was actually helpful. The result was a truly spectacular mess of emotions.
More importantly, I was still holding the princess, you idiots. Didn’t they know the basics of a hostage situation? Why were they throwing spears instead of trying to negotiate? Their thought process was exactly like Ligret’s!
“What the hell are you doing?!”
Oh, Mother! I knew she seemed unhinged, but blood is still thicker than water—
“You can’t even catch a single assassin?! And you call yourselves knights?!”
“That’s not the issue here! Worry about your daughter getting caught in the crossfire first, you lunatic!”
“Lyla! Just hold on a little longer!”
This was hopeless. No one was listening.
The only exit was the bridge now occupied by the knights. I considered taking the witch as a second hostage for about one second before abandoning the idea and leaping toward the opposite side of the pond.
I poured every ounce of ice magic I could into the surface. A thin layer of frost formed. Without hesitation, I stepped onto it.
The makeshift platform wobbled and swayed dangerously with every step, but that very instability stopped the guards from following me. One wrong step and they’d be taking the express route straight to the bottom with a loud crack and splash.
Leaving behind the witch’s screams and the clatter of armored boots, I thought to myself:
Now what?
Thankfully, no ninja dropped from the ceiling to skewer my head with a shuriken while claiming “plausibility doesn’t matter in a dream.” The guards, despite their merciless attacks, moved with a strange sluggishness. They felt… incompetent.
The empire’s elite forces led by Uncle Callios or battle-crazed Dietrich would never have been this sloppy. If they had, I would’ve already been captured, thrown in a dungeon, or separated from my head.
I wasn’t sure if the knights who once guarded this palace had genuinely been this weak, or if their incompetence was another product of someone’s distorted perception—like the maids. If it was the latter, that “someone” viewed the people protecting them as beings with both insufficient loyalty and subpar skill, the kind who would swing weapons at a princess without hesitation. That was… difficult to comment on.
We were currently in a small room inside the palace. I’d tried to escape outside entirely, but failed. While I was lost in thought, reviewing my plans and considering my next move, I suddenly realized one person had been unusually quiet.
Who? The princess, of course. She was watching me with anxious eyes.
“Uh… hello?”
“……”
No response. She might as well have been a corpse. No, this wasn’t the time for jokes.
“Lady Lyla? Do you recognize me? I’m Chrome Midas.”
“…Chrome. Midas.”
“Yes, that’s me! Do you remember?!”
Finally, we were getting somewhere!
“……Sir Midas. Even if you kidnap me, I have no value. My father won’t help me.”
Sir Midas? The unusual title made my heart flutter—for about half a second.
“No, no, no. I think there’s been a misunderstanding. I am absolutely not a kidnapper!”
If anything, my actions were closer to a prince on a white horse, weren’t they? Wasn’t this the part where the rescued girl’s eyes sparkled and she fell in love? Kidnapper? What kind of slander was that?
“But if we’re only judging by your actions, it does look like a kidnapping, doesn’t it?”
“You shut your mouth!”
“You’re being awfully loud. You’ll get caught.”
Wow, this stone really knew how to get under someone’s skin. It was created from the memories of a noble person like me—how had it turned out so twisted?
And the princess was no better. The Lyla I knew would have already unleashed ten or more mid-tier or high-tier spells on anyone trying to kidnap her, then debated whether to fire one more. Yet this girl had been grabbed by a stranger and dragged away without offering any real resistance. Even now, with guards nearby, she could have screamed and put me in immediate danger, but she showed no sign of doing so.
Was she just lethargic? Lacking confidence? Or had she simply given up and decided to let fate decide?
It was incredibly disorienting to see someone who normally radiated charisma acting like this. Or perhaps my knowledge was the problem. The Lyla I remembered had already grown into her power. This version was clearly still a child. She was at an age where she was emotionally immature, and even if only half of her mother’s outrageous behavior was real, it would have been more than enough to scar a young mind. Becoming timid was perfectly understandable.
As I wondered how to handle this, a single black butterfly fluttered into the corner of my vision. I stared at it, puzzled. The butterfly flew straight into the wall—and the moment it touched the surface, the wall transformed into a large door.
There was no explanation, yet I understood instinctively. That was the exit from this place.
Professor Psyche could probably end this nightmare instantly if she wanted to. The fact that she chose to show me a door instead was essentially giving me a choice. If I couldn’t find an answer, I could simply give up on the awakening and leave.
I scratched my head for a moment, then turned away from the door and met the princess’s eyes.
“This might be hard for you to understand right now, but I am absolutely not your enemy, Lady Lyla. I’m not a kidnapper, either.”
She simply stared at me silently.
“Is there anything you want? I’m a merchant. I can get you almost anything.”
“……”
“Jewelry, dresses, high-quality hair dye…”
I saw her flinch, but I continued as if I hadn’t noticed.
“A special mask that can silence the maids who spend their days gossiping, or attribute stones that can blow away those incompetent, unknightly soldiers… not grenades, of course.”
Or, I paused for a moment before adding,
“—I can even prepare a burning cauldron to give that witch of a mother who doesn’t care about her daughter and only pushes her own agenda a taste of something hot.”
“Don’t you dare touch my mother!!”
For the first time, the princess raised her voice. The intensity in her eyes as she glared at me was so fierce it was hard to believe she was the same person who had been acting vague and listless until now.
“Oh? But she looked like she was tormenting you, Princess. If she experiences something painful, maybe she’ll reflect and treat you more kindly?”
“You don’t know anything! Stop speaking as if you understand! Mother has spent most of her life trapped here! She only has Grandmother’s memories to rely on! How could you torment someone like that any further?!”
“Hmm. That doesn’t give her the right to take it out on others. Besides, if we don’t do something about her, you’ll continue to suffer, won’t you? Other people’s circumstances don’t matter to me. My own comfort comes first.”
“I don’t want that! If you try to harm my mother—”
“If I try to harm her?”
Boom. The air trembled.
As if responding to her will, the mana drifting through nature surged like a wave.
“I, Lyla Everblaze Barhart, will stop you!”
Whoa. The air was practically crackling. This wasn’t just a declaration of intent—if we fought here, I really might lose my head. Yes. This was the princess I knew.
Despite all the commotion, the surrounding soldiers didn’t burst in. Of course they didn’t. The main character was having her awakening moment. Background characters couldn’t possibly interfere.
“Very well! Then I won’t lay a hand on the witch… I mean, on Lady Lyla’s mother. However, I have my own stubbornness. I can’t simply walk away empty-handed like this.”
I flicked a small stone upward with my finger, caught it, and showed it to her.
“This is an attribute stone. It contains a mid-tier spell called ‘Crystal.’ It’s a specially modified version, so I can detonate it whenever I send the signal.”
A lie. If modification were that convenient, I would have used it far more effectively long ago.
“Before I first appeared before you, Princess, I planted these all over the palace.”
Another lie. I hadn’t had time for any such terrorist preparations.
“This room and the pond in the center might be safe. But I wonder about the rest of the palace?”
The question was whether the princess—or the “something” clinging to her—would believe my bluff in this world built from their perceptions.
Her face turned deathly pale. In a panic, she reached out to me.
“Stop it!”
“—This place feels a bit cramped. Let’s move somewhere more open and refreshing, shall we?”
The moment I snapped my fingers—
────────────!
An explosion far louder than anything before swallowed the entire area.