The Wild Card (3)
Gehwa-joses-gigwat Volt — hand-picked as a key operative for the operation to take down McHart with Lilith's help — had been given a mana signal device of his own, since he was meant to be the centerpiece of the plan and needed to receive Lilith's rally signal the moment it went out. At present, however, he hadn't so much as noticed the signal she'd sent.
Because a certain imperial prince had barged in out of nowhere, Volt no longer had the spare attention to spare his mana signal device a single glance — let alone anything else.
"Prince Antonio. Please, don't jump to misunderstandings."
"A misunderstanding, is it. That's what everyone usually says."
"I beg your pardon?"
"When I heard that Miss Agnes had joined your party after that day, I tried my best not to let it weigh on my heart. Aptitude for the sword and for magic has nothing to do with one's sex, after all — so I told myself it was only natural that my fiancée, who will become the greatest mage in the land, would belong to the party of a man called the Hero."
"...Who ever said anything about being your fiancée?"
Agnes's muttered aside — they aren't even engaged yet — reached his ears, but Volt had no room in his head to process even that.
The prince had his sword drawn and leveled at him, radiating a distinctly dangerous aura, and Volt was nursing a very bad feeling about where this was headed.
"I'm also aware that your party has been the subject of rather unflattering rumors. Word has it that nearly every woman in it has fallen for you and fluttered about at your heels."
"That's where the misunderstanding begins, Prince Antonio."
"Does it? Your romantic exploits with the women around you are remarkably colorful for someone innocent. A saintess of the Aurelian Church bound to preserve her purity until the Demon King is vanquished. An elf of the Forest of the World Tree, famous for her pride. And even Lady Seraphine, the so-called Moon Shadow Princess. A man who can wrap the imperial family itself around his finger — surely a mere daughter of a viscount's house was never beyond his powers of seduction."
"...Please don't twist this into something it isn't. And for the record, I never seduced anyone."
"Whether you seduced them or they simply attached themselves to you hardly matters. What matters is that you laid a hand on my fiancée. ...To the point of bringing her here as your partner, to a gathering steeped in such dishonorable purpose."
Volt wanted to scream at the injustice of it all, yet Antonio's suspicion wasn't entirely unreasonable. At gatherings of this sort — noble social functions held anonymously, with the host's identity concealed, apart from the regular palace events and birthday banquets held across the provinces — the purpose was almost always an impure one.
Even if Agnes had come alone (impossible, since she hadn't been invited), Antonio had planned to attend anyway and drag her back out. The news that she had instead arrived at a noble social gathering with a partner at her side was more than enough to send him into a fury.
Attending such an event with a partner in tow normally meant one thing: you were scouting for someone to spend the night with — or someone to trade away.
Giving the matter every possible benefit of the doubt, if the man truly loved Agnes and her alone for the rest of his life, then no matter how princely Antonio was, he had no right to stand between them. But the one thing Antonio would never, ever forgive was a man who shoved her into the lecherous den of trash aristocrat brats like so much livestock.
...The truth was that Volt and Agnes had come to this party for an entirely different purpose than anything Antonio imagined, but Antonio knew nothing of that purpose. He'd simply heard a tip from his half-brother McHart, slipped in on a hunch, spotted Agnes, and thrown himself at the Hero without a second thought for the consequences.
This is bad. Antonio's never been fielded as a combat unit, so I don't know his patterns at all...
He had no time to waste on the man when Lilith's mana signal could arrive at any moment. But ignoring him wasn't an option either — not with this many eyes on him. Walking out of the banquet hall now was just as impossible.
The best available option was to finish this sudden duel with Antonio as quickly as possible and slip away in the confusion, but Volt's gut told him even that wouldn't come easy.
Volt's entire playthrough of this world rested on Lil-geol-chang's guides and the knowledge gleaned from a single, unrepeatable play of the game. He had progressed along the canonical route of Lil-geol-chang's final playthrough, grown strong in the canonical way, and handled every unavoidable battle by recalling how he'd played it the first time.
For characters he'd frequently piloted in-game or faced as enemies, he knew the counters cold — which was a large part of why he'd posted such excellent results in the Swordsmanship Department against Ethan, Nathalie, and Caraham. But knowledge drawn from experience also meant that for anyone he'd never fought, he had no idea how to counter them at all.
Within the game Luminor Academy, Antonio's presence had always been marginal. As the late-born prince edged out of the succession struggle, he simply didn't rank.
It wasn't that Volt had never crossed paths with him in-game, but Antonio had never amounted to more than one of the imperial family characters who temporarily lent a hand during the event where Seraphine was kidnapped.
His stats were too middling to justify a permanent party slot, so Volt barely remembered ever using him — and even in actual battles, rather than pointlessly throwing him into the front line, he'd left him parked in the back and let the other characters do the fighting.
He's probably weak. Probably... but still.
Fighting an opponent whose exact strength you didn't know was always nerve-wracking. Worse, this world was no longer the Luminor Academy he knew — it was a world that Lil-geol-chang herself had twisted, running amok and bending several events off their rails.
He couldn't afford to assume the prince would fight at the same level as his in-game counterpart. The plain truth was that Volt wanted to avoid this fight entirely.
"Prince Antonio, I have no particular wish to cross blades with you. And as for everything you seem to believe about me — I can explain it all later."
"...Later. And when exactly would that be?"
"Once tonight has passed, presumably—"
"By then it will be far too late. After my fiancée has been defiled by your unseemly hands."
"......"
"I'm not the sort to demand virginity from my future wife, mind you. But I have no intention of letting her suffer something she'll regret for the rest of her days — least of all when I have the power to prevent it."
"Haaah..."
"...Tsk."
Volt let out a long, weary sigh, and behind him came the small, cutting sound of Agnes clicking her tongue at the prince.
Antonio had yet to realize that the act he believed he was performing for Agnes's sake was, in real time, draining his standing in her estimation drop by drop.
And if this farce caused something to happen to Lilith — if something irreversible came to pass — then it was probably safe to say that Antonio would never, in this lifetime, have a chance of winning her love.
Meanwhile the pink-haired priestess watching the scene could hardly contain herself, her eyes darting back and forth between prince and Hero. Serista, it turned out, was the only person remaining in the banquet hall who had noticed Lilith's rally signal.
According to plan, the moment the signal arrived, she herself would cast the Blessing of Concealment, or Agnes would use stealth magic, and the two of them would slip out of the hall.
But with every eye in the room fixed on them, Agnes couldn't possibly use stealth magic now, and even the Blessing of Concealment — burying oneself in the crowd to erase one's presence — would have precious little effect under this much scrutiny.
What was she supposed to do in a situation like this? As Serista stamped her feet in helpless anguish, what finally entered her field of vision was Volt, who, after much agonizing, had at last drawn his sword from its scabbard.
Shiiiing—
"There we go. A man settles things with the blade — as it should be."
"That's a rather sexist remark, Your Highness."
His favorability with the red mage was already scraped down to bedrock, but that one line shaved off another whole fistful.
I don't know if I can pull this off, but somehow, I have to subdue him without killing him. Ideally, knock him out and end it there...
If his hand slipped and he actually killed a prince, then beyond the storyline careening off its rails, his very activities as the Hero would be strangled by countless restrictions. If Antonio had been tainted by the demonkin's influence like McHart, killing him would at least leave room for justification — but the prince standing before him right now was nothing more than a fool blinded by love.
Yet if he hoarded his strength out of excessive caution and took an injury himself, that would defeat the whole purpose — and if, worst case, he lost, his and Agnes's feet would be nailed to this place without hope of escape.
In that case, Lilith, left to face McHart in single combat, would vanish without a trace tonight — and a few months from now, some nameless corpse would turn up somewhere.
...She was his oldest friend from their old world, and someone he'd built up a genuine rapport with in the community besides. That one outcome, above all others, Volt could never permit.
Knock him out, and while every eye is locked on the prince, slip away — stealth magic or the Blessing of Concealment, whichever. ...And if we cross blades once and I judge it's too dangerous to hold back, then I choose Lil-geol-chang's side.
If he could only save one of them, that was the right call.
So thinking, Volt's sword hurtled toward Prince Antonio — and in the very instant Antonio's blade swung up to meet it—
THWACK!
CRACK!
WHAM!!
"Ughaaaahh!!"
—a sound that two swords clashing could absolutely never have produced erupted from Prince Antonio's flank.
THUD!!
"Gh—khagh...!"
"Wh... what...?"
A beat behind the situation, Volt froze his sword mid-swing and turned his gaze toward the fallen prince and an unidentified intruder.
Meanwhile, the mysterious woman who had barged into the duel unannounced and driven a flying kick into a prince's ribs was bellowing the name of the man she'd just felled, her voice thick with what sounded like fury.
"ANTONIOOOO!!!"
She had laid hands on the imperial body and crashed a sacred duel involving a member of the imperial family — by any observer's measure, a capital offense, plainly and simply. And yet not a single soul present could bring themselves to reproach the woman who had kicked Antonio to the ground.
Because she, too, who had subdued the prince mid-standoff with a single flying kick, was imperial blood of the same vein.
And not just any imperial — one a full rank above Antonio in the line of succession.
"Sera...?"
"ANTONIOOOO!! What on earth do you think you're DOING?! Drawing a naked blade and brandishing it at a noble social gathering — are you in your RIGHT mind?!"
"Khh... S-Sera, big si—?"
"Oh, suddenly you had plans this evening, suddenly you had to rush out of the palace...!! Honestly, of all people I thought at least you, Antonio, had turned out to be a halfway decent child...!!"
Shrieking in a register utterly unlike Seraphin as she grilled her younger brother, she drew every noble eye in the banquet hall — and from that spectacle, so unlike her usual polished self, Volt was able to read her intent.
He had no idea how Seraphin had known to come, but whatever the case, what she was doing right now was gathering every gaze in the hall onto herself.
Unwilling to let slip an opportunity that would never come twice, Volt moved at once to join up with Serista and Ethan, cast the Blessing of Concealment, and get clear of the scene when—
...Wait. Where's Ethan?
Young Lord Ethan, you see... slipped out of the banquet hall during the commotion a little while ago...
Of everyone remaining in the hall, Serista had been the only one who noticed Lilith's mana signal and stayed put.
Ethan — the very first to catch Lilith's rally signal — was long gone from the banquet hall already.