Chapter 172
Chapter 172
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: Ace
Chapter: 172
Chapter Title: My Favorite Word is "If"
-----------------------------------------------------------------
I looked at Seren and asked,
“How did you know?”
“Breathing and presence. This guy smashed the wall, and he wasn’t under attack or being chased by anyone. There was no one beyond the dust cloud.”
Right on cue, the dust settled, confirming that Seren was spot on.
No one was behind the broken wall.
Seren turned the question back on me.
“And you?”
“I know Sir Keian’s muscles well. There’s a build to him that can’t be hidden even under a suit.”
I nudged the fallen puppet Keian with my toe.
“This thing’s pectorals were a mess.”
“……”
Of course, beyond that, I’d also spotted the concrete dust on Keian’s gloves, realized the blood on his head hadn’t come from a wound……
And above all, I was certain that the Iron-Blooded Collector named Keian would never panic over something like this.
In short, the puppet was sloppy in every way.
‘Makes sense?’
I’d heard it takes considerable time to make even one puppet.
They wouldn’t have had time to perfectly mimic Keian’s personality.
Which meant……
The trap set in this mansion was likely thrown together in a hurry. Just like this Keian puppet.
For now, I had no idea if that was good or bad.
“There’s a staircase over there.”
Evan spoke up.
Beyond the wall the Keian puppet had smashed through was an open space with stairs leading upward.
What an absurd, half-assed entrance.
I was dumbfounded but kept a straight face as I said,
“Let’s head up for now.”
I took the lead.
The stairs were unusually narrow, so I took them two at a time and opened my mouth.
“How many floors does this building have in total?”
Caron, walking right behind me, replied.
“From the outside, it looked like four stories.”
“Then the princess is probably on the fourth floor or the roof.”
“Is there a reason for that?”
“Just a hunch.”
“……”
Noticing Caron’s slight hesitation, I kindly explained.
“A guy who went to the trouble of setting up traps like this wouldn’t suddenly greet us on the second floor out of nowhere. He’s probably watching us climb the mansion like some pervert, just like the dean who built the Tower of Trials.”
The stairs ended right then……
And at the far end of a wide room sat the princess.
“Hello.”
“……”
The back of my head prickled a little, but I maintained a serious expression through superhuman patience.
The room had an odd layout—less a room and more like a lounge.
“……”
At the far end of the long space stood a desk and a single chair, where the princess sat.
Behind her was an enormous window, beyond which a blood-red night sky and crimson moon hung.
Bathed in that inevitable scarlet glow, the princess was enjoying tea time while cradling some blackberry-or-deathberry-or-whatever doll.
If that was staged, she was one hell of a director.
If it was genuine, she was just plain insane.
Keeping my expression hardened, I said,
“Not exactly hello-worthy, Your Highness. Or should I say, former Highness? Come to think of it, what was your name again?”
“Perist Scarlett.”
Seren, standing behind me, supplied the name with a sigh.
I nodded and said,
“Got it. Perist, I’m dying to know what the hell possessed you to start all this mess. Got a grudge against the Imperial Family? Or some reason you had to join hands with the Dark Cult?”
“Ah. Should I start there?”
The princess, who’d been smirking faintly, lifted her teacup.
Something about the sight irritated me, so I flicked my fingers, wrapped in energy.
*Twang.* A fireball formed at my fingertips and shot toward the princess… but it passed right through her, fizzling out pathetically.
“Uh……”
Mir let out a dazed sound, but it wasn’t exactly unexpected for me.
From the start, the princess before us had struck me as some kind of apparition.
Her real body was probably on the fourth floor, the roof, or somewhere else… and this was just a projection of her image for us to see.
The princess took a delicate sip of tea and smiled gracefully.
“That’s hardly gentlemanly, Ruan Bednicker.”
“In the Bednicker Family, this is gentlemanly.”
Hurling fireballs on sight at cultists.
The Iron-Blooded Duke would’ve given a thumbs-up to the scene.
‘Hm.’
But if he learned his son was actually the High Priest… he’d probably flip that thumb right back down.
“Why start all this?”
While I was lost in pointless thoughts, the princess elegantly sipped her tea and spoke.
“My favorite word is ‘if.’”
“What?”
“I love the possibilities it holds.”
What nonsense was this lunatic spouting now?
“For example, how about this? The continent’s greatest ranger, Hyde Woodjack, isn’t human.”
“……”
Caron’s eyebrow twitched.
The princess pressed on regardless.
“Seren Goodspring is actually a man. Mir Giant isn’t a giant. Evan Helvin is a traitor.”
The princess’s scarlet eyes turned to me.
My subjective take, but they seemed a shade darker than Glenn’s.
“Ruan Bednicker was a cultist all along…… Hm. Too far-fetched? A Bednicker being a cultist.”
“……”
I asked as she giggled.
“What’s your point?”
She placed a hand on her chest and declared,
“I’m a genius.”
Well, la-di-da.
“And beautiful, with noble blood to boot. Get it? Looks, intellect, status. Just one gets you most of what you want, and I was born with all three.”
“……”
Mir stared at her with a blank face.
He looked like he couldn’t make heads or tails of it.
Truth be told, so was I—but it wasn’t surprising.
If her thinking made sense, I wouldn’t have called her a lunatic in the first place.
“Most predictable things are boring. That’s how human brains are wired, big or small. You end up chasing novelty……”
“Don’t some people hate change?”
“That’s just old folks. Regrettably, I’m still too young for that.”
The princess muttered with a bored look.
“My life’s had zero twists. So I tried my first act of rebellion.”
“If becoming a cultist is just rebellion, I can’t imagine what you’ll do when real puberty hits.”
Maybe stage a coup or something.
“I’m not asking for understanding. Explaining myself is just a bit of fun. I was curious what future heroes would think of the princess plotting the Demon King’s descent.”
“Crystal clear. You’re spinning a long yarn about going stir-crazy from boredom.”
When I summed it up, the princess shrugged.
“That’s how the criminal’s mindset works.”
“So you were waiting here to explain how crazy you are?”
“That too, but I also wanted to tell you the win condition. Kill me and beat the Demon King or whatever? Wrong.”
“Wrong how?”
“Kill me, and it’s over. Your victory.”
“……”
Did that mean we didn’t have to face the Demon King under the blood moon?
I had no clue how to even fight a moon in the sky, so that tracked……
But in a situation like this, if things suddenly turned in our favor, suspicion came first.
Caron asked in a skeptical tone,
“And then what?”
“Then?”
“After we win. Can we all return to reality, no one left behind?”
The princess replied with a disinterested face.
“Well… probably? Regrettably, I’ve never really thought about what happens after I lose.”
“……”
She didn’t seem the type to ponder her own death.
A slightly familiar reaction to me. Most mercenaries reacted the same.
It was common among those who’d never formed special bonds in the world……
People without family, lovers, or friends lived for the day’s coin—eating, drinking, whoring—and mocked those saving for the future as idiots.
Somehow, seeing an imperial royal share the mindset of third-rate mercs felt profoundly meaningful.
“Anyway, that’s all I have to say. I’ll be waiting on the fourth floor. Curious how many of you will make it up. Farewell.”
The moment the princess took another sip, her form vanished in an instant.
*Crunch!*
Right after, a sound like a massive tree crashing rang out, and the floor heaved violently.
Wondering what now, I looked back to see a massive puppet emerging from the shattered floor.
“Th-that’s……!”
“That’s the one.”
I knew instantly what it was.
The puppet that had chased Yeongdo on the first floor had appeared.
The moment I laid eyes on it, I understood why those who’d seen it struggled to describe its appearance.
*Crack, crunch……*
Its ominous, full-moon-like bulk rose steadily, thick and large enough to fill the entire lounge.
Mashing four trolls from the Jewel Mountains into clay might yield that size.
As described, the puppet consisted only of a head and torso……
Its neck area dipped inward enough to distinguish the two.
Not that it made it any less huge and pudgy.
“That thing……”
Seren murmured.
Did she know it?
No time to ask.
The fully risen puppet gave a slight hop and charged at us, closing the distance.
*Boom! Boom! Boom!*
Its obese body thundering forward with an angry face was, honestly, nightmare fuel.
“Run!”
Rarely in sync, Evan and Caron shouted together.
I followed their lead, kicking open a door to the left and bolting.
Sprinting down a hallway slightly narrower than the first floor’s, I asked,
“Why run? Can’t we just fight?”
“It’s insanely tough! We all attacked together and couldn’t even scratch it!”
Is that so?
It was advice from those who’d tangled with it first, so common sense said follow…… but I’m the type who has to taste it himself to know shit from miso. I skidded to a halt.
“Huh?”
“Bro?”
Ignoring the flustered juniors, I circulated my internal energy.
Its freakish looks made it hard to gauge durability at a glance.
Time to stab it for real and see.
*Grip.*
I tensed my thigh muscles and coated my soles in energy.
I thrust my flame-wrapped fist straight ahead.
*Boom!*
“……!”
The explosion halted the roly-poly puppet in its tracks.
*Crack……*
The cracking sound made even the fleeing juniors stop.
“Got it?”
“…….”
The moment Evan said that, I had a feeling my attack hadn’t landed properly.
No real basis—just a hunch.
*Crunch-crunch-crunch!*
Cracks spread from the puppet’s abdomen like shattered ice across its whole body, porcelain shards exploding everywhere.
And beneath the puppet, a new one emerged.
“…Matryoshka.”
Seren muttered, then snapped to and yelled,
“Run!”
I was already moving before she finished.
I whipped around and sprinted.
“It’s faster now!”
“One shell broke, so it’s smaller! That means quicker!”
“Then keep breaking it!”
“That’s not easy!”
All eyes turned to me at my shout.
“I swung and realized—there are at least a hundred layers inside that thing.”
“…You’re joking, right?”
I wished I was……
I’d probed its interior with the energy on my fist, so it was near certain.
At least a hundred layers.
The exact number? Have to smash it myself.
‘It’s not a damn croissant.’
Would it chase us to the third floor?
Racing down the wide hall, I scanned around.
Unlike the first floor, doors dotted the walls here and there—but no leisure to check rooms leisurely, of course.
If a room was a dead end, we’d be cornered and forced into a deathmatch with the roly-poly puppet.
No choice but to keep sprinting the hall… until I spotted a collapsed floor.
“That’s……”
“Yeah.”
The traces of where the puppet first emerged.
“We’re back where we started. Hallway must be circular.”
“So what now?”
“……”
Killing the puppet was possible.
But we’d barely cleared the second floor? No idea what waited above, so I needed to conserve energy.
With that tough outer shell, breaking it a hundred times to silence it completely? No clue how much energy that’d take.
No helping it—I turned to Seren.
“Seren, can you freeze it?”
“I’ll try.”
Still running, Seren extended her palm backward.
Cold energy swirled from her forearm, engulfing her arm like a vortex, then erupted from her palm in a storm of frost.
*Whoooosh-crack!*
Stronger than before?
Seren’s growth was no joke. Even from outside the range, my spine chilled.
The blast of blizzard-like cold engulfed the roly-poly puppet entirely.
*Crackle-crackle-crack!*
White frost coated its massive body, freezing it solid.
Evan said,
“Did it work?”
The instant he spoke, a *crunch* sounded, ice shattering as the puppet thundered after us again.
I glared at Evan.
“You’d look better with your mouth shut.”
“…Sorry.”