1. Patron Anais (2)
1. Patron Anais (2)
Viscountess Bergson's manor served as the Prologue Stage in TT3.
After foiling Wonderstein's schemes twice—in TT1 and TT2—the heroes got wind of monster sightings in a certain region and set out to investigate. That was how the story opened.
The Viscountess Bergson's domain.
By then, the whole territory already carried a grim, unsettled atmosphere.
Villages had thrown up barricades and were recruiting soldiers to guard against monster incursions.
—Ah, you're the famous heroes. Welcome.
—Yes. The rumors of monsters are true.
—The monsters are coming from our lord's manor. The place has been completely overrun. As for the lord... I fear....
Viscountess Bergson was one of the countless victims who met a miserable end after crossing paths with Wonderstein. By the time you visited in TT3, you'd find the manor's residents turned into monsters, with the viscountess herself serving as the boss.
—Ah, I was deceived. Deceived by that demon!
A woman weeping tears of blood, crying out in bitter lament.
Piecing together the journals left behind in the manor revealed that Viscountess Bergson had once been a sponsor of the Monster Circus Troupe. Wonderstein had cured the viscountess's illness, and in return secured her patronage.
But a pact with a demon always hides a trap.
In exchange for healing, he planted a monster seed inside her body.
That seed was what erupted during TT3.
That, of course, was a story set several years in the future.
Right now the viscountess was still bedridden with her illness.
And I was on my way to secure her sponsorship.
I hadn't done anything to her yet. Not a thing.
"Follow me, please."
Our escort was the manor's elderly butler, a man who had served House Bergson for decades.
I knew him.
He turned up in the game too.
As a ghost, admittedly....
—It is my doing! I brought that demon into this manor! Claiming he would cure Her Ladyship's illness....
He cursed himself for introducing Wonderstein to his mistress, and pleaded with the heroes to put down the monster she had become, so she might at last find peace.
Seeing him hale and whole, from Wonderstein's own vantage, felt rather eerie.
Clatter, clatter—
Inside the carriage bound for the manor, the silence was stifling.
Ella kept her lips pressed firmly together and stared out the window. She was sticking to her policy of wanting nothing to do with me outside official business.
Ella.
The Monster Circus Troupe's Deputy Leader.
I knew practically nothing about her. She was a character who never appeared anywhere in TTT.
On the off chance she'd appeared under a different name, I studied her features more closely.
Black hair cropped short.
Sixteen years old, wasn't she?
Her birthday hadn't passed yet by international age reckoning, so by Korean standards that made her a second-year high schooler.
The roundness of her face gave her a cute impression, younger than her actual years.
She wore a crimson tailcoat with gold curved epaulettes fastened at the shoulders, a white blouse underneath, and a black ribbon tied at the collar.
Below, a black skirt, white stockings that reached her calves, and brown leather shoes.
What are you looking at.
She mouthed the words at me as she glared.
Decidedly unfriendly.
What exactly had happened between us?
Recalling the "circumstances" of the other troupe members—the Red-Blood Ogre, Spider Woman, Skeleton Clown, the bandaged man, the triplets—whatever Ella had endured, it clearly hadn't been pleasant.
Besides, nobody who crossed paths with Wonderstein in TTT ever came out the better for it.
I tapped a silver ornament on the handle of my cane.
No matter how hard I racked my memory, nothing surfaced about Ella.
I'd simply keep observing her for now.
Right now, she wasn't the priority.
* Sub Quest — Patron
: This circus troupe requires sponsorship.
Objective
: Secure patronage from Viscountess Bergson.
Success Reward
: [Devolut +5]
Failure Penalty
: None.
A sub-quest, then.
Did that mean I actually had a choice?
Then again, a prequel normally forces you to follow the events exactly as they played out in the main story.
Was I supposed to plant the monster seed inside the viscountess just like in the original?
I mulled it over briefly and shook my head.
Even TT1 and TT2 had offered branching choices in their sub-quests.
Save a character or abandon them. Spare someone or kill them.
The player's decisions influenced parts of the ending.
When the sequels came out, there'd be occasional hints about what became of various side characters—but those fates remained fixed regardless of what the player chose in the prior game.
In other words, by the nature of the genre, you could leave the innocent to suffer or spare a villain and enjoy a different ending, but there was still a set "canon."
Which, put another way, meant it didn't matter what I chose here.
I wasn't obliged to act exactly as things had played out when I watched it in TTT.
Cure the viscountess's illness or don't. Win her sponsorship or fail. The world would keep turning either way.
I could even disband the circus right here and vanish into the mountains to live off hunting. The system only required one thing: "survive" until the opening of TT1.
That said, I had no intention of actually dropping everything and bolting.
Sticking to the quests gave me a decisive advantage in leveraging my foreknowledge—and, more pressingly, they came with rewards.
By the time I'd worked through this logic, the carriage was nearly at the manor.
***
Anais Bergson.
Only daughter of Jeral, Viscount Bergson. Two years prior, upon her father's passing, she inherited his title and his entire fortune.
The title itself brought little more than a modest estate in southern Charlotia and a tidy manor, but her inheritance also included vast liquid wealth.
Jeral had been the owner of a major trading company.
His extraordinary foresight had placed investments across diverse fields, yielding staggering returns.
He was a titan of finance—so prominent that the bank in Vegas kept a permanent representative even to a backwater country estate like this one.
So colossal was the inheritance that settling matters of succession had required dozens of lawyers and accountants.
But all that money had never been able to buy Anais a life of comfort.
She suffered from an incurable illness.
—Hiss, hiss.
The sound of rushing air was ceaseless.
In one corner of the room sat a machine the size of a small calf.
It pumped air continuously through sharp metal tubes embedded in her back.
A high-pressure oxygen supply was fed through a mask that covered her mouth and nose.
A respirator built from the pinnacle of modern magical engineering.
She'd been tethered to it since the age of four.
The only time she could remove the mask was for the few minutes needed to wash.
Otherwise she wore it constantly.
Eating was nearly impossible.
She could manage a sip of water, at most.
A nutritional solution was fed through a separate tube in her back, supplied at exorbitant cost by the Alchemy Guild in Castille.
Her food expenses were comparable to eating matsutake mushrooms at every meal.
—Hiss, hiss.
It grated on her, more so today than usual.
Anais set the documents she'd been reviewing down on the table. Towering stacks of thick paper already covered the table beside them.
She was exhausted just looking at them.
She ground her knuckles against her temple.
The fortune her father left behind was immense—but it was the sort that required considerable diligence and exceptional judgment to sustain.
Day after day, processing the endless stream of documents that arrived at the manor, and then processing some more....
Her head throbbed.
Had Anais been the scion of an ordinary noble house, she'd have hired professional managers and left operations to them.
She could have lived in luxury, content with a monthly stipend.
But she'd grown up watching her father work right beside her.
By the time her penmanship became steady, she was already handling some of his affairs.
Even after her father's death, she managed to preserve the reputation Viscount Bergson had enjoyed in the business world.
No—once she assumed the chair, the company grew even more rapidly.
—Hiss, hiss.
She was renowned as a prodigy of the business world.
From childhood she devoured texts that left scholars floundering. She could parse the latest papers fresh out of the academy, distill their key points, and predict which fields were poised for breakthroughs—predictions that all proved correct.
—You'll manage splendidly. You'll succeed even more than I did. My daughter is a genius!
Her father's doting voice echoed in her ears.
In her younger years those words had been a pillar of strength.
Yes. I'm a genius. How many six-year-olds can propose an improvement to a mining operation's cash flow?
But as time wore on, she came to feel it.
Her father's encouragement had been less a boast and more a consolation.
What good was spending billions, living in a lavish manor, receiving treatment like royalty?
She couldn't step outside freely. Couldn't enjoy a good meal.
If she could tear off this suffocating respirator and simply breathe on her own, Anais would gladly discard all her prestige and success.
Damned body—unable to draw breath even for a moment without the aid of a machine weighing several dozen kilograms.
That was why she poured massive sums year after year into medical research and the advancement of magitech.
If she could cure her illness—or even just switch to a more tolerable breathing apparatus....
If only that could happen, she could slip free of this stifling manor and travel freely, see the world with her own eyes....
—Hiss, hiss.
Knock, knock.
A servant rapped at the door.
"My Lady, a guest has arrived."
She could guess who it was.
The butler had said he would be bringing a wandering magician today—someone who, he speculated, might know something about her illness.
His dogged devotion aside, she expected nothing from this visitor.
Ever since her father's lifetime, types like this had been tiresomely regular callers. Most were swindlers hoping to fleece a few coins from the viscount.
Charlatans who passed off shallow sleight-of-hand as great sorcery.
She'd snapped at him more than once, but the butler never quite gave up hope. Every time he went out on an errand, he'd drag back some cure-all peddler or a "miracle mage" who'd supposedly made a cripple walk.
"The guest the butler brought, I take it?"
"Ah, no. The butler has yet to return. Sir Pierre is here."
"My uncle?"
"Yes. He's waiting in the drawing room."
Anais's expression brightened.
Pierre was a co-founder of the trading company—and Jeral's sworn brother.
Unlike the cold, conservative Jeral, he had a taste for risk and adventure.
Since childhood, Anais had called him uncle and followed him fondly. Confined to the manor with only books for company, she loved his witty stories and the tales of the wider world he brought her.
Delighted, she abandoned her work and headed for the drawing room.
Right—
She'd grab a few documents to show him on the way.
Attendants pushed the wheeled machine behind her as she walked.
"Anya, it's been far too long!"
Pierre, who'd been enjoying his tea in the drawing room, rose with a beaming smile when his darling niece entered.
"Three months."
"Oh-ho, has it really been that long?"
The two shared a brief embrace.
A flicker of concern crossed Pierre's face as he studied her complexion.
Anais resembled her mother and had grown into a striking beauty.
But her illness ravaged not only her health—it devoured her looks as well.
Skin so pale the veins showed through.
A frame so wasted it appeared fragile enough to break.
Worst of all were the metal tubes embedded in her back, and the mask that hissed air over her mouth. It obscured a fair face. Even the finest clothes could never drape properly.
Pity dripped openly from Pierre's eyes.
"You look even paler."
"Work has piled up."
"Work? Surely the major matters for this quarter have already been settled?"
"It's the Caribbean investment from before."
Pierre's face scrunched.
"Wasn't that matter already resolved?"
"I found the reports unsatisfactory. You know how I am—I can't rest until I've verified everything personally."
"Ah. Yes, you've always been like that...."
For a split second, the worried uncle vanished from his expression, replaced by a faint shade of irritation.
But Anais, busy flipping through the folder she'd brought, didn't catch the change.
"I knew you'd overwork yourself, so I specifically told them to send only the summaries. Well? Did you find a problem?"
"Yes. I've spotted some suspicious details."
Once the topic shifted to business, a cold gleam entered Anais's eyes.
In moments like this she was neither the young Viscountess Bergson nor the sickly Anais.
She was a hard-nosed merchant, through and through.
Methodically, she enumerated the irregularities she had uncovered in the business proposal.
Occasionally she produced a document directly to illustrate exactly what was wrong.
The more Pierre listened to her explanation, the darker his expression grew.
"You're saying the Florand Branch has colluded with pirates?"
"Fixed shipments of goods were being routed through a specific sea lane under the guise of transit fees. I suspect those supplies found their way to the Pirate Island freeport."
"Pirate Island... tracing funds there is impossible."
"Among the shipments disguised as transit fees were specialized alchemical substances. One of the freeport chieftains holds an exclusive monopoly on that trade. Incidentally, the island we'd marked for investment belongs to that chieftain's primary business partner—a baron."
Pierre pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed at the cold sweat on his brow. Perspiring whenever he was worried or tense was a lifelong habit.
"To put it bluntly, you're saying our money is funding pirates?"
"The Florand Branch needs to be audited."
"Understood. I'll investigate from here."
Pierre practically snatched the documents from Anais's hands.
She looked faintly startled by his manner.
He improvised an explanation, quickly.
"This is mortifying.... Nothing like this happened when your father was still alive. Brother Jeral's authority was simply too immense. But first the accounting fraud last year, and now this. It's... it's further proof that I truly can't match his capabilities."
After Jeral's death, the atmosphere inside the Bergson Trading Company had grown chaotic.
Problems, large and small, sprouted constantly.
But Anais wasn't brazen enough to lay all of that at her uncle's feet.
"The fault lies with me. I'm the chairwoman, yet I'm holed up in a country manor. Do you really expect internal order to hold?"
"You're doing splendidly, Anya. The company's profits have soared thanks to you."
"But a company's business doesn't run on documents and numbers alone. Someone has to visit the field and meet people face to face. I know perfectly well the only reason we've managed to hold things together this far is because you've been running yourself ragged. So please, don't be too hard on yourself."
She had a reputation for a scathing tongue and cutting arrogance—traits born of a youth spent confined to the manor, which had stunted her social development.
Yet, with those she let in, she tended to rely on them with an almost childlike naivete.
Pierre pretended to compose himself at his niece's reassurance, but inwardly, he was coolly and quietly sharpening his knife.