The Capital of Gallia (16)
The room was swallowed in pitch-black darkness. Through the gap of the open window, faint moonlight and a biting winter wind slipped inside.
“The wind is cold,” Jina murmured. Her light purple hair fluttered in the breeze. She didn’t entirely dislike the chill that stole the warmth from her body. It cooled her feverishly heated mind.
Aria Lameld.
That girl filled her with disgust and loathing she could barely endure. After receiving all of Ronin’s affection, how dare she flirt with that greenhorn who called himself the Hero? And Ronin—Ronin was just as bad. What did he see in that lowly bitch that made him so obsessed? She could do it better. So much better.
Jina clenched her fist. Her nails dug into her palm until droplets of blood welled up. Slowly, she unclenched it.
“Revenge can wait until after I save you. They say even ten years isn’t too late for a gentleman’s vengeance.”
Still, her heart grew impatient. How could she not want to tear everything apart?
“Isn’t that right, Ronin?”
She still wore the nun’s habit even though she was no longer a nun—because it was tied to him. Wearing it made his words, his scent, his image feel vivid again. The only thing that could fill this emptiness. The only thing that could paint her colorless world in vivid, vibrant hues.
Ronin Edrick. Only you can do it. It has always been only you.
“It’s fine. I can save you.”
The hazy violet of Jina’s irises suddenly sharpened as they fixed on an object. Today she had received the item she commissioned from Daipol. Well… could it truly be called an item? It had the shape of a physical object, at least.
A spear drenched in blood-red hue.
Before leaving Daipol, she had materialized her own power and entrusted it to him.
“……The Spear of Regeneration and Reincarnation.”
Who would have imagined she would hold this in her hands again? She had thrown it away once. She had never intended to look for it. Never intended to take it back. It had been a worthless power she planned to leave behind.
“Even if you try to turn away, even if you pretend otherwise, humans inevitably reach for it again when they grow desperate.”
In that case, she was an excellent human. Even though her species was not human, her tendencies had become utterly, unmistakably human.
No one could have predicted it. That she—who had once overseen slaughter as the Demon King’s subordinate—would fall so far.
She swept her side hair back and let out a hollow smile.
“How ridiculous.”
She lifted the spear with its grandiose name and stabbed it into the preserved hand of Bishop Ronin.
Shluk.
The blood-red spear that pierced his hand melted away like sugar, or perhaps like salt. The melted crimson liquid was steadily absorbed into Bishop Ronin’s hand. It was a bizarre sight. And somewhere, deeply unsettling.
This was the only way. The only way to bring him back. The power she had once dismissed as unnecessary, meaningless. If that power could save him, how could she possibly refuse it?
“I will save you. Even if you hate me for it.”
Would he like becoming a demon? She didn’t know. But she didn’t want to let him go. He was the jewel she had finally found in this barren world. Only you make my stagnant heart beat again. You bring vitality into this stale, repetitive, utterly boring world.
“So please… make Jina happy again.”
She was a demon. Jina was a demon. One who had lived an eternity. One of the Demon King’s direct subordinates. The demon of regeneration and reincarnation. Yet also a wandering demon who had left the Demon King’s side.
Zicard Naderuka.
Staring at Ronin’s arm, she rose from her seat. She had not obtained this spear for free. There was a corresponding request attached to it.
The assassination of the Second Prince, Leon de Gallia.
“A promise is a promise. I can’t ignore it.”
Jina moved. Since her target was inside the royal palace, she would have to go there herself. It wasn’t difficult. Killing people was something she had done until she grew sick of it.
Shadows wrapped around her body. The return of the once-forgotten Violet Night.
Aria had imagined all sorts of things about the secret passage inside the royal palace. What kind of mechanisms would it have? What grandeur? But what she found brought her immense disappointment.
A secret passage? How very secretive indeed.
‘It’s just a sewer.’
Expectation always led to betrayal. Aria thought the phrase sounded familiar as she climbed out of the drain and walked through the royal garden. Perhaps because it was a winter night, the garden was relatively quiet.
The Hero’s party had arrived at the palace after trudging through a sewer that assaulted their noses with a piercing stench and swarmed with repulsive insects. The air inside the sewer had been murky and damp. The path was stained here and there with filth and wastewater, and in places it was horribly sticky. It was so unclean that staying there for a long time would inevitably ruin one’s health. Infiltrating through such a place required considerable endurance.
The mere thought of it made nausea rise in her throat, so Aria took a deep breath. The clean air of the garden seemed to push out the polluted air clinging to her lungs. She wasn’t exaggerating—it really felt like she might survive.
No matter how she thought about it, calling a sewer a “secret passage” seemed strange. ‘Wouldn’t it be better to just go through the main gate instead of passing through a place like that?’ Azazel had grumbled exactly that, and Aria completely agreed.
Thankfully, the Saintess and the mage could simply use Purification to completely erase any filth even after rolling around in a pit of sewage. If not for that, the stench would have lingered on them all day, earning them dirty looks—or perhaps even ropes—from everyone in the palace.
Aria suddenly felt suspicious. Had Ashtain, Leon, and Edelis known this would happen and still chosen this route? If she and Azazel hadn’t been there, the stench alone would have drawn massive suspicion.
When she stared at Leon with a puzzled gaze, he answered as if he had read her thoughts.
“Don’t we have a Saintess and a mage right here? I figured it was worth trying.”
“I see.”
“I trusted Lady Aria and Lady Azazel completely.”
Trust? Such smooth words. Aria thought the prince was utterly shameless. Azazel seemed to share the sentiment, because a sharp jab flew from her lips.
“How very honored I am, Your Highness.”
Edelis lowered her head and continued.
“……Lady Azazel, I would appreciate it if you refrained from mocking His Highness.”
Thanks to Edelis’s strong sense of chivalry, Azazel couldn’t grumble any further. She could have kept sniping if she wanted, but she wasn’t so tactless as to deliberately ruin the mood.
While purifying the filth on her clothes, Aria asked,
“Even after purifying, I still feel gross. Was there really no other way?”
At Aria’s complaint, Ashtain—who had been walking through the garden—gave a bitter smile.
“Sorry, Aria. This way probably caused the least noise.”
At Ain’s apology, Aria closed her mouth, which had been open in dissatisfaction.
“……I guess it couldn’t be helped.”
In truth, the reason both Aria and Azazel were so full of complaints wasn’t just the sewer itself. It was because they had encountered the king-sized cockroaches that lived there and ended up fighting a full-scale battle. One might ask what was so hard about that, but as mentioned earlier, these were no ordinary cockroaches. They had the modifier “king-sized” attached.
Cockroaches whose adult bodies reached 1.5 meters in length. When they stood up, they were almost as tall as Azazel. Now imagine a whole swarm of them. It was impossible not to feel like it was absolute bullshit.
And killing them was even worse. She could somehow endure the legs snapping and flying off, or the squelching bodily fluids splattering everywhere. What she truly couldn’t endure was the fact that the shattered corpses of the cockroaches kept moving. Even after their brains were destroyed, their nervous systems were still alive, so the severed legs would twitch and wriggle. The sight was truly…….
It was the perfect scene to plant a brand-new trauma in Aria, who had already endured every kind of horrible thing imaginable.
Despite all these big and small problems, the Hero’s party had safely reached the royal palace. Now, if they could just find the real Leon, most of their problems would be resolved. There was nothing particularly worrying. After all, the “Leon” they were looking for was right beside them. Since the person they were searching for was himself, he should be able to guess his own whereabouts easily.
They crossed the garden and entered the interior of the palace. Come to think of it, hadn’t someone said there was a truth hidden within the palace? If they were lucky, they might uncover what that truth was.
“Greetings, Your Highness Leon.”
While walking down the royal corridor, a neatly dressed knight greeted Leon.
“Sir Lutar. Are you returning from training?”
Leon wore a perfectly relaxed expression, showing no concern about being caught.
“Yes, I am. But didn’t Your Highness say you had business today? What brings you wandering around at this hour…… and who might these people be? I don’t believe I’ve seen them before?”
The party had not covered their faces—except for Edelis. The reason only Edelis hid her face was simple. It would be strange for “her,” who had left the palace for certain reasons, to suddenly appear.
In any case, it seemed the “real body” had some business at this late hour. What kind of business would that be in the middle of the night?
While thinking several things internally, Leon responded without any awkwardness.
“The Hero’s party came looking for me. What else?”
“The Hero, you say.”
The knight’s gaze turned toward the group behind him.
“No matter how busy I am, I wanted to guide them through the palace myself.”
“I see.”
The Second Prince’s favoritism toward the Hero was well-known even within the palace. Therefore, Knight Lutar felt no particular suspicion from the conversation. He exchanged a few more words with Leon before departing.
Only then did a sigh of relief escape from Aria.
“Wasn’t that a bit too reckless, Your Highness Leon?”
“In a place where dozens of sly snakes live inside people’s bellies, you can’t survive without a certain amount of recklessness. I think this much is appropriate. Besides, since we weren’t caught, isn’t that what matters, Lady Aria?”
Aria had nothing to say in response. It wasn’t her place to casually comment on the cold and cruel world of the royal family.
“I have no rebuttal.”
“We don’t have much time. We need to move quickly.”
Perhaps because he viewed this as a short-term operation, Leon chose to walk boldly through the palace rather than sneak around. His actions showed no hesitation. But if he was going to act so openly, why had they bothered sneaking in through that disgusting sewer in the first place?
Azazel, looking dumbfounded, raised one eyebrow and asked,
“Your Highness, you’re surprisingly the type to act on a whim?”
“Depending on the situation, yes. But right now, this is a rational course of action.”
“Rational?”
“Lady Azazel, how do you think a prince who cowers inside his own home would look?”
“……It would look suspicious.”
“Exactly. The main gate is under the ‘real body’s’ influence, so inspection is difficult. But once we’re inside, what problem could there be? Besides, distinguishing a doppelganger isn’t that easy to begin with.”
He really had quite the nerve. Was this the kind of person who could get along with Ashtain? Come to think of it, both Aria—who got along well with Ashtain—and Leon were rather peculiar characters. Azazel made a face that suggested she more or less understood.
The fact that she didn’t consider herself peculiar only proved how severely lacking she was in self-awareness.
Whether Azazel felt that way or not, Ashtain asked in a cool tone about their next move.
“Will we wait in a room? Or go looking?”
“The ‘real body’ doesn’t know we’re in the palace yet. It would be better to go look for him.”
On the surface he seemed relaxed, but time was not on their side. If the fact that Leon’s doppelganger was running around reached the ears of the many “predators” within the palace, it could easily spark complicated political problems.
“We’re pressed for time. Do you have any idea where you might be?”
“Under normal circumstances I would, but unfortunately I have no idea what ‘business’ I would have at this late hour.”
Ashtain let out a light sigh.
“So in the end, we have no choice but to search everywhere?”
It was, bluntly put, inefficient. The royal palace was like a complicated maze. Passages were deliberately twisted to prepare for outside invasions, making it an unpleasant place to search for someone. Even for someone familiar with the palace’s layout, searching for a person across such a vast space without any clues was no easy task.
The moment the party fell into contemplation, the silent Edelis raised her hand.
Leon asked, “What is it, Sir Edelis?”
“……There is a place that comes to mind.”
It was welcome news.
“Lead the way.”
“However, it is uncertain. If I am wrong, the loss of time will be considerable.”
Leon chuckled.
“Does that matter? I trust you, who has watched ‘me’ from closer than anyone else.”
The words “I trust you.” For the Second Prince—who trusted no one—those were incredibly difficult words to say. Both Ashtain and Edelis knew that well. Yet Leon spoke again, paying no mind to their gazes.
“I believe in you.”
If there was one thing they didn’t know, it was that those words came very easily when it was Edelis alone. Because Leon trusted his knight without the slightest doubt.