The Variable (2)
Late in the evening, the dagger I had drawn from my dress caught the light spilling out from the annex palace and flashed brightly.
It went without saying that I had no intention of facing the bastard armed with a single dagger. After all, there was nothing to gain from squaring off with him one-on-one in this situation.
A simple threat to keep him from closing the distance would be enough. Now that I had sent the signal, time was on my side.
"What's this, a dagger? Planning to stab my hand again and run off like last time?"
"I'll definitely stab something. Just not your hand this time—your throat."
"You sure about that? Lèse-majesté against the imperial family is a capital crime. The moment you commit it, you'd be lucky if a simple execution was the worst that happened. Wouldn't it be wiser to crawl into my engagement instead?"
"Oh, spare me the bullshit. You're out here sweet-talking girls about fiancées and whatnot, and you've got a truckload of women you've used and tossed aside. I'd rather just kill you and kill myself than crawl between a dog's legs like that."
"Truck...? What dialect is that? In any case, it's quite fascinating that you know such things. The way you were wary of my power and countered it last time, too—I wonder how exactly you've come to know all this."
"……."
"Fascinating woman, indeed. Perhaps this time I can keep you around to play with for a long while."
Mana bloomed up around Mac-Hart. Since he wasn't letting it escalate into full demonic energy, it seemed he was at least mindful of our location inside the annex palace.
That thought had just flickered through my mind when his body came hurtling toward me.
—Tatak!
"Hah!"
Mac-Hart closed the distance in a single breath using mana-empowered footwork, and the way he thrust his hand out at me without warning made it clear he intended to grab my arm and drag me back into that mindscape of his from before.
He was baring his defenseless arm and neck to me practically begging to be cut—and for an instant, I could almost see the line drawn between his jaw and shoulder.
—Pwat!
I fought down the burning urge to swing right then and end it in one stroke, instead launching myself skyward on the natural agility of Lilith's body.
The moment I pushed my hand in to bury my dagger in that exposed throat, he would seize me and drag me into his mental world for good. I couldn't afford to let a reckless lust for a quick kill botch everything.
—Tatak!
—Pwat!
—Tatatak!
—Pbak!
And so for a good ten-odd seconds, Mac-Hart and I traded chase and pursuit across the rear garden of the annex palace without exchanging a single word.
He moved with mana-accelerated physical prowess; I relied on nothing but the raw bodily conditioning I'd drilled into Lilith all this time.
Sei's wind magic would have been a godsend in a situation like this, but alas, the two spirits were waiting for me outside the annex palace.
It was an unavoidable consequence of the mana-detection arrays we'd installed around the imperial palace and the annex after the last attack on the palace. Two spirits whose very existence was magic incarnate could not be brought inside those detection arrays.
Even in this fight, I wasn't spending a single drop of mana—evading purely on physical ability alone. Unlike Mac-Hart over there, who was burning through mana with abandon as he came at me.
The reason Mac-Hart alone could use mana inside the same annex palace was simple: as an imperial prince, his mana was registered with the detection arrays so that it wouldn't trigger them.
I'll admit it stung, groveling on the ground all by myself just to slip past his advances—but if it's so unfair, then he should have been born an imperial prince.
"And here you were ranting about stabbing me with a sword, yet the moment things get up close and personal, all you do is run. I take it that talk of lèse-majesté frightened you after all?"
"With a face like that shoved right up in mine, running is the natural response. Humans are blessed with keen crisis instincts, you see. Avoiding ugly-ass bastards is encoded in our very genes."
"Hmm, you really are to my taste. A woman ought to have some spirit to her. Ever since I've had this face, none of them ever think to resist—it gets so tedious. Though, calling it a sickening face is a bit rich coming from you, don't you think?"
"I'm not talking about that reeking leather shell. I mean the real mug buried under that fake face, you idiot."
"……."
"Oh, sorry. My bad—it's rude to call an idiot an idiot, isn't it? That was harsh of me."
"...I don't know who's been feeding you information, but I really do need to make you mine."
—Khak! Ptui!
Let him try, if he can. I spat that sentiment-laden glob of phlegm right along his charging path, and the sight of him slamming to a halt mid-pursuit, flustered, was honestly hilarious.
"Like a goddamn baby. So much for me not being a petty little brat—the mighty prince can't even handle a bit of spit."
"...Something filthy flew at my face and I dodged it. What's the problem? Your taunting doesn't even carry a shred of persuasiveness anymore."
"You call the spit of the girl who's about to be your fiancée filthy—spit from a mouth you claimed for a fiancée? And besides, isn't your actual fiancée's mouth far filthier? I hear her slurping off some other man's cock in the washroom carried all the way to the banquet hall."
"...Shut your mouth. What could you possibly know about Eveline. She is not someone you get to defile."
Just like in the original story, I'd prodded his berserk switch and he came lunging at me in a rage. So the gutter rats really do lick each other and tear each other's hair out.
But pushing him any harder might put my life in danger before my companions arrived, so I deliberately reined it back, keeping the talk about his fiancée at just enough intensity to keep him on edge.
'Seriously though, when the hell are they coming...?'
It had been roughly a minute since I'd started this game of tag with Mac-Hart. Even if all four of them couldn't make it, at least one of them should have shown their faces in this annex garden by now—and yet I sensed absolutely no sign of anyone approaching.
Given the scene I'd kicked up and bolted from, Ethan would need some extra time, but the other three had had more than enough opportunity to cook up an excuse and slip away.
Agnes and Serista in particular could wield concealment magic on top of the Blessing of Obscurity—the moment they confirmed the signal, they should have been closing in by now. So why on earth were they so late?
Just as an indescribable unease was beginning to smolder in my chest, Mac-Hart looked at me as if he could read my expression, wearing a sickly grin.
"You keep glancing toward the banquet hall corridor? Almost like you're waiting for someone."
"...Give me a break. Quit the delusions."
"I have a rough idea who you're stalling time for, but I'm afraid you'd best give up on that."
"...What?"
"Don't tell me you actually believed I came to collect you without any preparations at all? Did you really never stop to consider that it might be too good to be true?"
...He has to be lying. There was no way the idea that I'd laid a trap and was lying in wait had actually formed in Mac-Hart's head.
And even if it had, he'd have no reason to willingly walk into my trap. If he did walk into it, it could only be a situation that benefited him—no matter how many fighting men Mac-Hart had scraped together, taking on the Hero, a high-ranking priestess, a mana tank, and a Sword Expert wielding dual blades was a story that simply didn't add up.
"...Bullshit. What a generous leap of imagination you've made."
"It's obvious from the way you're fleeing for your life without using a single drop of mana. If you use mana while running, the imperial guards will come running here—and that's the last thing you want, isn't it?"
"...Yeah. Because if the guards show up, I can't take your head."
"You say that, yet all you've done this whole time is run. And deliberately staying within this exact spot, no less. I've been humoring you because your desperate sprinting was good for a laugh, but judging by your stamina, you're just about at your limit."
"……."
"By now the banquet hall must be in quite an uproar. If you were pouring out mana to call the Hero or the Saintess waiting in there, I'm afraid it's already too late."
"...I have, no, idea, what, you're, talking about."
Son of a bitch. There was no way he'd actually figured it out, was there? That this whole thing was a trap to lure him out?
That he'd known from the start about the plan I'd built—staging that absurd magic duel with Agnes back at the academy, and then just now cooking up that ridiculous lovers'-quarrel brawl with Ethan in the banquet hall—just to engineer this very situation?
As I rolled my eyes frantically, unable to hide my flustered reaction to his words, Mac-Hart wore a mocking expression and brought up a most unexpected person.
"The little group you assembled to spring your trap on me today included one rather amusing young lady."
"……."
"Agnes, was it? That short little thing."
"...You filthy son of a bitch...! If you so much as laid a finger on Agnes...!"
"Calm down, now, calm. She's a pretty little thing, I'll grant you, but I'm hardly a pedophile. You think a man engaged to Eveline would develop an interest in some half-grown runt like her?"
"……."
"Though it seems my younger brother doesn't share that opinion. I can't imagine what he sees in that stumpy little brat, the way he carries on about her."
Unfortunately, the me of that moment failed to grasp Mac-Hart's meaning right away.
I couldn't yet imagine what the 'variable' hatched from Mac-Hart's skull was doing in the banquet hall at that very moment.
Around the time Lilith and Mac-Hart had begun their standoff in the rear garden—inside the banquet hall.
The Hero Gehwa-joses-gigwat, having received Lilith's mana signal, remained pinned at the heart of the banquet hall, unable even to confirm whether the signal had truly been sent.
In truth, even if he had checked at the right moment and confirmed it properly, the outcome likely wouldn't have changed much.
At a gathering where every participant of the nobles' exchange had their eyes fixed on him, it was simply no longer a situation where Gehwa-joses-gigwat could slip away unnoticed without drawing anyone's gaze.
"Draw your sword, Gehwa-joses-gigwat Volt."
"No, Your Highness, please. That is all a misunderstanding—"
"Today, at this exchange, with this very sword, I shall retrieve my fiancée, who attends as your partner."
Antonio Robert Valtoria, Fifth Prince of the Argentia Empire.
Because this was the appearance of a variable that neither Lilith, nor Gehwa-joses-gigwat, nor anyone else had foreseen.