The Ambush (3)
The Fourth Prince, McHart Paris Valtoria.
He was the only member of Seraphin's bloodline entangled with the demonkin, which made him something of a mole within the Demon Lord's army. In the original storyline, he didn't fight his first battle until roughly Part Four — which was another way of saying he was strong enough that he only showed his true combat power in the latter half of the story.
...And I didn't want to bring this up before the fight had even begun, but he was not an opponent a mere maid like Lilith could defeat alone.
It wasn't just that I couldn't beat him "right now" — McHart was the kind of enemy you needed late-game-Hero-tier stats to overcome. For Lilith to reach that level, it would take until roughly the end of Part Five. In level terms, that was around sixty or seventy, meaning that factoring in my current level, I was only about a quarter of the way there.
So busy fussing over Agnes and Prince Antonio's little drama that I never saw the hornet's nest I'd already poked myself.
My attention had been so fixed on the two of them drifting away from the original story that I'd failed to prepare for the danger closing in on me personally. I had no excuses.
If I'd known he would come at me like this, I would have swallowed my embarrassment and asked Ethan to escort me as far as the magic department building for the foreseeable future — at least until McHart lost interest in me. Because his unique ability, Inner Darkness, was a mental prison that could only hold one victim at a time. If you wanted to be pedantic about it, it was an assassination-specialized power.
He probably killed Prince Philipson and the First Imperial Consort with this same ability, too.
The power itself was tailored for assassination to begin with, and for someone like McHart, who could wander the imperial palace freely, murdering royals would have been an easy affair.
If McHart's mood happened to swing the right way, he might release me from this space unharmed — but as I just noted, this was a man who'd had a hand in the deaths of his own stepmother and half-siblings. A creature who considered the life of some minor nobleman's daughter like me no more significant than a fly's wasn't about to show mercy.
Aside from that, the only other escape routes were cutting or shattering the space itself with master-tier swordsmanship or magic. Naturally, I qualified for neither, which meant breaking out on my own was impossible.
...And if all else fails, I could just kill whoever cast this mental magic in the first place.
"Hm, fascinating. Most girls who end up in here usually tremble in terror, or scream their heads off."
"...And what of it, you piece of shit."
"You're different from those girls, though. Not even scared, and no noisy whining, either."
I ran the simulation of slitting the throat of McHart — who was grinning ear to ear right in front of me — through my head a dozen times over.
Drawing the dagger at my waist to shove it against his neck was too large a motion; he'd counter it easily. Pulling the one hidden inside my skirt would be faster, but even so, killing him with a blade would take the kind of blinding speed only the Hero or Nathalie could manage — or else I'd have to lull him into such total carelessness that he'd offer up his vitals on a platter.
Countering with magic was out, too — my offensive power was insufficient, and a large-scale spell like Mana Blast would obviously be interrupted the moment I even attempted the casting sequence. On top of that, my remaining skill points were nowhere near enough to buy anything that could solve this situation.
As I stood there in that suffocating standoff, unable to hide my tension, watching him warily, McHart's glinting eyes went quiet and fixed on me. And in that instant, goosebumps crawled up my skin under that repulsive gaze, and the profanity burst out of my mouth on its own.
"What are you smirking at, you fucking bastard?"
"I've thought this before — you really are quite the ill-mannered young lady, aren't you? Didn't your etiquette tutor ever teach you any better?"
"You've got the gall to lecture me? Your own mother's an empty-headed hag, so are you out there devouring half-wit women like you're unwrapping gift boxes?"
"Ch-khm..."
"What are you choking on, asshole? With a face as ugly as sin, too."
"Pfft — ahahahahaha...! Yes! It's been a long time since I've gotten a reaction like this. Truly refreshing — I love it, ahahaha..."
...Look at this loser pretending to be cool about it.
Well, I suppose being called ugly would be a joke from where he's standing. After all, the very reason he'd gotten involved in killing the First Imperial Consort and the Crown Prince was to hide that hideous face of his.
Unlike everyone else, I knew what lay beneath that greasy fake face, so I also knew exactly why the bastard strutted around preening like he did.
He'd always had low self-esteem about his looks, so the moment he learned a "become handsome" magic, he went around abusing it however he pleased. To be precise, it wasn't magic that made him handsome so much as a wide-area perception-debilitating spell that made people see his face as handsome.
Whether my jab about his hideous face had wounded his pride, McHart leaned his face in even closer to mine.
"Will you say it again for me? My face is what, exact—"
"FUCK! Won't you get that ass-ugly mug out of my face?!"
"......"
"Did your mother even eat the seaweed soup after birthing a bastard like you? The Third Consort must have the stomach of an iron god."
"...I don't know what seaweed soup is, but I do understand that you're insulting me and my mother."
"You should be able to figure that much out with a goblin's brain. Or is your mother the goblin, and that pitiful scrap of intelligence is all she had to pass down? How impressive, bragging over absolutely nothing."
"......"
As I deliberately needled him about his appearance, McHart began sending small flickers of a hostile gaze my way.
Even that subtle shift in the atmosphere was enough for me to grasp immediately that things were not going well for me.
"So you weren't cursing just to catch my interest, then. At first I took you for a girl trying a novel new approach with me."
"What horseshit. You should swallow axe-to-the-head thoughts like that and keep them inside where they belong."
"If you were just some girl throwing out vulgar swears to half-heartedly amuse me, I would have ended this right here... but I've changed my mind."
"What does your change of heart have to do with m—"
-Crunch!
"...You. Become my woman."
"You son of a bi—!"
A faint glow around McHart lit the space, and from the darkness beyond it, a black hand shot out and seized one of my wrists. At the same moment, two more hands erupted from the floor and pinned my legs in place.
With me bound completely in place, escape impossible, McHart leaned his face toward me once more.
"Let go of me, you filthy bastard!"
"Come to think of it, I may have given you a slight misunderstanding."
"...What?"
"Let me rephrase. You — become my wife."
"......"
"It's not a position just anyone can obtain, you know? Did you think the chance to become an imperial prince's consort comes knocking for everybody? And a consort of me — the peerless beauty Prince McHart, no less — well, the competition is especially fierce."
"...Bullshit."
"But I like you, so I'll make a special exception and take you as my first wife. Whether there'll be a second or not, who can say — but either way, it's hardly a bad deal for you..."
-Spit. THWACK!
"Eat shit and die, you fucking piece of trash."
Where does he get off, flirting at a woman who's already taken?
Okay, thinking about it, I wasn't exactly taken, but still — humanity could drop dead en masse and that particular son of a bitch would still be a hard pass for me.
The very idea of marrying a man was enough to make me gag, and marrying that — a mole for the demonkin, of all people?
There was a very good reason for it: if I got tangled up with him at this stage of the story and dragged down to ruin together, I'd be so aggrieved I wouldn't sleep a wink.
-Drip.
"Ha! Haha! Ahahahahahah!! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"
My spit was running down between his eyes, and McHart didn't care one bit — he just started cackling like a genuine madman.
With both my legs and my right arm bound, I used my one free hand — my left — to secretly shift my grip to the blade strapped beneath my skirt.
"It's really not a bad offer. Show me only a promise to marry me — and proof of it — and I'll release you from here and pretend every rudeness you've committed up until now never happened."
"...The rudeness here is all yours, you cock-gobbling bastard."
"You can't escape this place under your own power anyway. I probed a little, since you were being so insolent — you're not even Expert-tier yet, let alone Master, are you?"
"......"
"All you need is one little promise. A promise to marry me and become my first wife — and as proof, leave a kiss on my lips. Simple, isn't it?"
"...Is eating ass the latest fashion at the imperial palace these days? Because that mouth of yours is shitting nonstop."
"...Well, I don't much mind a shy young lady, either."
"FUCK! Will you get that face AWAY from me?! FUCK OFF!!"
With those words, McHart silently pressed his lips toward me, toward my bound body — legs and one arm pinned fast.
Watching that nausea-inducing face draw closer and closer to mine, I waited for him to approach with every ounce of patience I had left.
...All the while spewing every curse in the book, making sure he believed, right up until the very last moment, that I was nothing but a helpless little maid.
The instant his lips came within a hair's breadth of mine, I swung without hesitation — the silver blade in my left hand arcing for the nape of his neck — and I felt something catch, firmly, against the dagger in my grip.
The sensation of the blade splitting skin, tearing through muscle, driving home.
-Shunk!
...One thing to regret, though: the blade had buried itself somewhere other than the nape of his neck.
-Drip. Drip...
"My, my..."
"You fucking bastard..."
"...Shy, and dangerous and violent on top of it. What a young lady you are."
McHart had blocked my blade's trajectory with his right forearm a split second before it reached his nape. So instead of his throat, my dagger had only carved a gash across his forearm.
"I wondered if you'd ever drop the killing intent right up to the end — who'd have thought you'd refuse to give up and swing your sword even in this situation?"
"Insane. You're actually insane..."
"They say gorgeous mushrooms are poisonous — it's a good thing I was careful before taking a bite."
It was no joke — that strike had been thrown with the full intention of killing him.
If I couldn't kill him, I couldn't escape this space on my own anyway, so I'd figured I might as well take him down with me and get out that way.
Beyond that, killing him here would make progressing through the main story far smoother in countless ways down the line — and as the Demon Lord's army's mole, his death would throw the demonkin's plans into disarray.
Sure, I'd be executed afterward for the crime of killing royalty. But if I was going to die regardless, I figured dying in a mutual-destruction blaze with this bastard beat the alternative.
In the moment when my desperate attempt had been swatted away so pathetically, just as grief and fury began to swell up in my chest — the darkness wrapping around McHart and me suddenly ebbed away, and the scenery of the academy came back into view.
"Regrettably, we'll have to end things here for today. I'd have loved to play with you longer, but you've made me bleed rather a lot."
"...What?"
"Until next time, my shy little poison mushroom."
-Snap. Clatter...
"......"
He yanked the silver dagger out of his forearm, tossed it carelessly onto the ground, and walked off toward the church as if nothing at all had happened.
At that shameless retreating back, all the strength drained out of me. I couldn't even chase him — I simply collapsed where I stood.
-Thud.
"Ha... haha... ha..."
...For a good long while, I guess I'd better make sure I'm never walking anywhere without Ethan or Agnes at my side.