A Tsar Bomba Dropped into the Republic's High Society
Klein, Shrine Maiden of the Heavenly Mandate Cult.
By the standards of a modern cult, she would have ranked among the senior executives.
She occupied a position where no one but the cult leader could lay a finger on her, and yet she lived so hard it was as if she had never heard of rest. When boredom struck, she picked fights with the imperial coalition and gnawed away at their strength. She prowled the night like a ghost, standing in as the cult leader's herald. Catch a colleague slacking, and she took the whip to them without mercy.
So the cult leader, the Heavenly Mandate King, was especially fond of Klein. Then again, what executive doesn't love an employee who cuts into her own rest to keep working?
But as with anyone who lives that hard, the moment a plan she had been preparing fell to pieces, her fury shot straight to the crown of her head. The instant she realized the scheme to overturn Rostov had gone to ruin, Klein very nearly carved an innocent citizen into pieces. Parmenia, sent to manage the affair, was nowhere to be seen—not so much as the tip of her nose. Klein had left her alone for a while because she was struggling, and of course this was the result.
The boiling anger subsided quickly, though. A certainty had settled in her: the one who had made this mess was Lupin.
"Of all people, it's Big Sis Lupin again?"
Why had Klein ever taken up a peculiar blade known as the Sabok Sword? She had already handled countless cold weapons, and every time she mastered them so quickly that she rose to a level on par with a Master. Once no weapon was fun anymore, she naturally reached for something stranger—a weapon other people would never choose.
She could tell which weapon had been used from the cut face of a corpse alone. A severance that looked perfectly clean, for instance, might still leave three hair-fine parallel lines along the cross-section. Those lines came from grooves Klein had deliberately left when she honed Lupin's sword with the Sabok Sword. A mark only Klein could recognize.
"If it's like this, what am I even supposed to report to the Heavenly Mandate King?"
Lupin was a talent who suited the cult all too well. Klein had known it from the moment they first met. An ordinary person might sense nothing more than a baleful killing intent, but Klein—closing in on Grade 10, the very summit of Master—could not possibly miss it. Whenever Lupin's patience reached its limit and detonated, a monstrous energy seeped from the depths behind her pupils: a wave of emotion closer to madness and chaos than to anger.
"Yeah. Better to just paper over it. Hehe."
Lupin was a person with virtually no peripheral vision. Fix her gaze on a goal, and no matter what happened around her, she had no interest. That goal seemed to be treasure chests, but if Klein wanted to be certain, she would have to investigate further. She would have done so long ago, if only Yegor weren't glued to Lupin's side. That sharp-eyed man got on her nerves something fierce.
"Guess I'll have to start by figuring out how to pry that annoying big brother off her."
If she couldn't peel Yegor away, snatching Lupin out by herself was also an option. To manage that, though, the Heavenly Mandate King's visit to the Empire was essential. And if she meant to move him—the cult's greatest fighting power—Klein would have to prepare a report that was certain and perfect.
"The Black Dragon Assault Corps can just be produced again anyway..."
What if she let Lupin run even wilder, even at the cost of shaving away some of their strength? Perhaps then the Heavenly Mandate King would take an interest. There was, however, one thing Klein had overlooked. The person meant to oversee the mass production of the test subjects and the Black Dragon Assault Corps was absent.
"Anyway. Where on earth did Parmenia run off to?"
The woman who had been the cult's scientist was, somewhere on the continent at this very moment, evolving into a mad dog.
The moment Dmitry, Speaker of the National Assembly, received word that the cult's threat within the capital had vanished, he moved to set a meeting with Lupin at once. He had liked her from the first impression, and she had solved the problem before he could even assign her a proper mission. How could he not covet her?
Tasili's unyielding stance, however, pushed the appointment a full two weeks back. That was how worried she was about Lupin's ignorance of etiquette. It wasn't that Dmitry failed to understand. He himself had daughters of a similar age, so he was fine with it—but the Prime Minister would certainly see things differently.
With no other choice, Dmitry sent the etiquette instructor who had taught his own daughter. That woman was Kakavita. She had guided many of the Republic's young ladies through their debuts in high society and was, in practice, the middle-aged woman who currently set the tone of the Republic's social world.
"A pleasure to meet you, Miss Lupin. Please, call me Kakavita."
"Hello. I'm Lupin..."
Horn-rimmed glasses. Hair wound into a tight bun. A wide-brimmed hat. A long dress that fell in a broad drape. She was the governess-noblewoman who appeared, just when you had forgotten her, in every work depicting the Belle Époque. On first impression alone, Lupin couldn't help but tense. The woman looked strict to the bone.
But that was Lupin's mistake alone. After they exchanged greetings, Kakavita—who had been quietly taking her measure—let out a shriek and flailed, for all the world like a teenage girl who no longer knew what to do with herself.
"It is truly an honor to be teaching you, Miss Lupin. I couldn't sleep a wink last night, you know..."
"Huh?"
"Rumors are spreading all through high society right now. An incredible guest is coming to the Rurikovich family. A woman—a capable person who solved the Republic's problem in a single stroke. That sort of rumor."
No one knew what this person called Lupin looked like, but the name itself had already spread through the entire Republic. It was Dmitry's strategy. By announcing that a powerhouse had appeared on the nobles' side, he was quietly laying down a warning, nudging the citizens to hold back from radical action. Lupin, of course, had no idea any such thing had happened. To be suddenly welcomed and treated like a celebrity—she had no choice but to be thrown off.
"Ahaha. Um... yeah, well... haha."
But Lupin was hopelessly weak to recognition and praise. The questions that had begun to rise were buried at once beneath a swell of elation and vanished. Kakavita went on, looking thoroughly delighted.
"In any case, it is an honor to meet you like this. Have you chosen a dress to wear to the social party?"
"Like I'd have something like that."
"I suppose not. I've yet to see a female martial artist who actually keeps a proper party dress. I thought this might happen, so I prepared a few. Would you like to try them on?"
"Um. This wasn't just supposed to be lessons...?"
"In the end, a dress is essential if you're to attend a party. You can't go in what you're wearing now."
Fussy entrance requirements, in any case—a noble trick for screening out the riffraff. From the start, Lupin had wondered why a certificate of commendation had to be handed over at a party. It was Dmitry's ploy to display that the hero called Lupin sat within the Rurikovich family's sphere of influence. Not that Lupin had any way of knowing that.
"And etiquette, by its nature, is eight parts the outfit and the way one carries oneself in it."
"Is that so?"
"Yes. The form changes with the era, but a dress is no different from the formal uniform women wear when they attend an official function. Etiquette is, at heart, the tacit agreement of properly dressed nobles, and a matter of saving face, isn't it?"
As an adventurer, Lupin currently had no problems at all. Shorts, or clothes that clung to the skin—say they were for violent activity, and most people simply nodded and accepted it. In fact, the standard uniform of the imperial knights was much the same: the lower garment was cut like riding clothes that stuck to the skin. Red and Blue, whom she had met before, had been dressed exactly so.
"If I don't wear a dress, do Master and His Grace the Grand Duke get cursed out? Like, 'Where'd you drag in this mannerless bitch?'"
Lupin had put it so strongly that Kakavita was the one left startled.
"I-it isn't that bad! Someone might be made uncomfortable, that's all. They might say the Rurikovich family gave you unusual special treatment..."
Hearing that, how could Lupin not smack her own forehead? To think the professionally offended existed in this era too!
"Then I'll wear one. Hand me something decent."
To Lupin, Tasili was no different from her one and only god. If she didn't wear a dress, her master would be cursed out? That, she could hardly endure. And it wasn't as if Lupin were the sort to shackle herself to the anti-corset cause and foam at the mouth at the mere sight of a skirt. She had no particular reason to dig in her heels and refuse.
Kakavita's face brightened, and she clapped her hands. The closed door at the rear swung open, and young ladies came pouring out alongside racks hung with several dresses.
What. What is this.
Startled, Lupin rose from her chair before she knew it.
"This is your first time being properly dressed up, isn't it, Miss Lupin?"
"Yeah. Well..."
"I thought it would take a great many hands, so to save time I called in plenty of reinforcements. You're receiving a certificate of commendation from the Prime Minister. We can hardly do a sloppy job."
So she said—but even granting that, there were far too many people. Still, rumors about Lupin were swirling about like hero tales, and Kakavita preened that she had broken into a nervous sweat just choosing whom to bring.
"Everyone was so curious after hearing of your martial exploits. Even then, I whittled them down to a quarter of a quarter before bringing them."
"This many?!"
Elysium sat roughly a hundred to two hundred years apart from the era Lupin had lived in before she transmigrated. It was an age that stressed traditional gender roles. Even so, there were female martial artists who showed a talent for aura and planted their flag early in a male-centered society, and they were precisely what countless women admired and envied. Lupin, not content with even that, had achieved a merit so great that the Prime Minister himself would commend her. With the Rurikovich family backing her besides, any young lady who heard the news had no choice but to throw herself into the work. Leave your mark on her once now, and you might be chosen by Lupin and watch your life unfold. Even if not, you could treasure it as a lifetime achievement: I was the one who washed Lady Lupin's feet.
"I brought only the skilled ones, but if anything makes you uncomfortable, please tell me at once."
Lupin's body curled in on itself. This was the first time she had been wedged into a press of so many women.
"Everyone, maintain your dignity! No groping her as you please! If Miss Lupin is uncomfortable, I will have you removed at once!"
"Yes!"
"Yes, ma'am!"
Swept along inside the clamoring crowd, Lupin had a thought.
If I let something slip, somebody's head comes off, doesn't it?
But she had no time to worry. Dozens of hands flew at her. They were far gentler than the brutish hands of the two women who had shoved her into a mimic, and yet goosebumps rose over her whole body of their own accord.
"Eek. Ah. No. Hold on. Not there. No!"
A moment later Lupin's hand shot forward as if fired and caught one covetous hand that had seized a firm buttock.
"Out. This one's out!"
