The Late-Night Guest
After savoring the luxury of slowly tasting the imperial chef’s finest barbecue—meat so tender it melted in my mouth, something I could never have dreamed of back on Mt. Ksir—I spent a long time talking with Serena about all sorts of things.
Serena’s greatest lingering doubt had been whether I might be one of Bryden’s people. But after what had happened earlier, that suspicion seemed to have vanished completely. She asked me in detail exactly how much I knew, and I answered by vaguely skirting around the parts I’d learned from the game.
Normally she might have remained suspicious even after hearing me out, but after watching me overpower the Crown Prince’s guards right in front of her and openly defy him, Serena now extended her trust to me without hesitation.
When she heard my hypothesis—which was really the correct answer in disguise—Serena clutched her forehead and finally confessed.
Even though we were still in the period before the game’s main story, the relationship between the two half-siblings had already gone beyond being worse than strangers—it was practically that of mortal enemies.
On the surface it might look like nothing more than Bryden keeping Serena in check and nitpicking at her, but behind the scenes he was already working to seriously undermine her reputation and wouldn’t hesitate to assassinate her. Serena, for her part, had sensed the murder attempts and was mobilizing every resource in her information network to catch Bryden’s tail and expose him first.
That was how she had ended up wandering the streets under recognition-obscuring magic and running into me last time.
Both sides were fiercely maneuvering underwater to sink the other, but the one currently holding an overwhelming advantage was Crown Prince Bryden. After all, as the legitimate eldest son of the late Empress, his claim to the throne was superior, and because he was significantly older than Serena, he had simply been active for much longer.
Unlike Serena, who tried not to cross certain lines, Bryden was the kind of bastard who would use any means necessary to keep her in check.
A sharp glare from Serena pierced me. I subtly avoided her eyes.
“Ahem. How truly regrettable.”
“You’re the cause of it and you call it regrettable?! Anyway… For the sake of the people who suffered because they served me—especially those who died—I will definitely expose that man’s true face. I don’t care about becoming emperor myself, but I must prevent a wretch like him from taking the throne, for the sake of this country!”
Once Serena realized my guesses had come almost perfectly close to the truth, that I had solid grounds for them, and that she couldn’t refute any of it, she stopped hiding her true feelings. Of course, for me they weren’t guesses at all—I was simply speaking from foreknowledge of the future.
Even as she bared her heart, Serena didn’t forget to scold me.
“But it looks like you won’t be able to stay as my guard for long.”
“Why not?”
“You openly mocked the Crown Prince and subdued his guards by force. Of course he’ll be wary of you now. He’ll pull every dirty trick against you, just like he did with my previous guards. Endless assassination attempts will follow. He himself is worthless, but… the ones who gather under him hoping to snatch up scraps are quite strong.”
Well, competent subordinates do tend to flock to an incompetent tyrant. Still, I shook my head and brushed off her concern.
“If that’s all it is, don’t worry. I’m strong, after all.”
“That’s not the problem! Besides the guards you saw, that man has countless followers! Both inside this palace and throughout the city beyond it! Do you have any idea how large his faction is? There are endless people doing illegal work, and you’ll be living a life where you never know when, where, or who will come after you!”
…Wasn’t that basically everyday life?
Watching Serena fret over something so trivial and pointless, I let out a small laugh.
“Princess, did you hear where I came from?”
“Huh? Sir Luke said you trained on Mt. Ksir… Of course, anyone who trained on that mountain must have skill, but this isn’t about skill! You won’t know whether the food is poisoned, when an ambush will come, or when a poisoned needle will fly at you! It’ll be a life where you can’t even stretch your legs and sleep properly anywhere?!”
“Princess, have you ever tried eating grilled goblin balls?”
Serena suddenly looked as if half her soul had fled her body.
“Wh… what…?”
“I have. On Mt. Ksir I lived for thirty days with nothing but a single knife. There was nothing to eat, and I couldn’t risk eating unknown mushrooms. The only things around were monsters, so I had to live a truly primitive, savage existence. And it wasn’t just goblin balls. I ate Baphomet tongues and even smoked centaur-cock sausage.”
Serena’s face twisted like she was about to vomit. Yeah, even in hindsight it had been a truly disgusting stretch of days that would have sent even Bear Grylls running for the hills in horror.
“When the sun sets on Mt. Ksir, all sorts of bizarre creatures come crawling out to roam the mountain. Some will hear even a slightly loud breath and come running to devour you. Others will catch your scent and swarm if you simply stay still. Falling asleep at night on that mountain was basically laying out a feast and inviting them to eat you.”
I lightly shared a few tearless tales from Mt. Ksir.
“So I had to skin the monsters I killed, wear their hides as masks over my face, and breathe with extreme caution. To keep them from smelling me, I had to cover my entire body in monster excrement. Only after sunrise could I find a relatively safer spot, drink from the river, wash myself, and take a short nap—but even then, if I slept too deeply I’d wake up with something gnawing on my liver, so I could never rest for long. Compared to that, what about this place?”
With tears flowing in my heart, I spread my arms and gazed at the imperial palace. No need to eat grilled goblin balls. Three stable meals every day. A proper shower room. No requirement to live covered head to toe in monster dung just to stay hidden. On top of that, a high salary, meal allowance, housing provided—though I hadn’t received it yet—and even a private villa with its own beach! It was literally paradise on earth! How beautiful this place was!
“Khuk…”
Serena watched me shed tears in front of the very place that filled me with loyalty to the imperial family and asked in a worried voice.
“Um… are you really all right?”
“Ahem… Of course I’m all right. Perfectly fine. Anyway, what I’m saying is that no matter what kind of interference or even assassination attempts come my way, they’re nothing compared to the hardships and ordeals I’ve already survived. So, Princess, you truly don’t need to worry about me at all.”
“But I don’t want to watch another person get assassinated because of me. That’s a separate issue from losing the only guard left to protect me.”
In the game she had been the root of all the trouble, yet what a kind-hearted princess she was. I shook my head vigorously.
“You don’t need to worry about that either. As unimpressive as I may look, I’m actually quite strong.”
“‘Quite strong’? And among the subordinates that man employs, there are quite a few who are genuinely powerful. Do you think the guards before you weren’t confident? They all ended up assassinated. Even His Majesty ordered a full investigation out of concern for my safety, but they couldn’t even catch the tail. Those people aren’t ordinary in skill.”
Bryden might be incompetent and depraved, but he was clever when it came to dirty work. He would have set everything up thoroughly so he wouldn’t be implicated. From the game’s depiction, the Emperor had vaguely sensed the possibility, but his affection for his child was too great, and because Bryden was the only child from his late legitimate wife, he kept trying to believe in him and couldn’t bring himself to draw the sword.
But I had no reason to consider such circumstances, nor was I stupid enough to simply take the hits.
“Whether something is ordinary skill or not is always relative.”
No matter how good they were, could they possibly be as horrible as the monsters roaming Mt. Ksir at midnight? Or as horrible as the crazy old man who would charge at me shirtless with a wooden bat, shouting that I needed to build my strength?
And the chance to reach that conclusion came just two days later. How considerate.
Two days later, deep in the night when everyone should have been asleep.
Thanks to my life on Mt. Ksir, I was extremely sensitive to changes in the surrounding mana. The moment I felt the air shift, I opened only my eyes while still lying in bed.
In truth I could sense the change in mana flow without opening my eyes, but seeing it made it easier to process. The slowly creeping shape of the mana seeping in from outside the window and down the hallway was all too familiar.
Sleep spores.
On Mt. Ksir there had been a monster called a man-eating spore that would instantly paralyze its prey’s five senses, put them to sleep, and then leisurely feast. The mana pattern of the spores it scattered was exactly like this. It was a degraded version with pathetically weak effects compared to the real thing, but when even most monsters on Mt. Ksir would fall asleep in a single second if hit by the genuine article, this much was more than enough to knock out a human.
The mere fact that something like this had appeared inside the imperial palace was already abnormal.
A moment later, my door opened without the slightest sound. Someone slipped inside without a single footstep.
To be this silent, the intruder clearly had considerable skill. Unfortunately, while sound could be blocked, it was impossible to erase the mana a living person possessed. The simple act of taking a step caused subtle shifts in the surrounding mana; when the person carried as much mana as this intruder, the change was even more pronounced.
Using copied aura or magic would have given me away instantly, so I simply adjusted the surrounding mana to create a barrier that prevented the sleep- and paralysis-inducing spores from reaching my body.
Since the intruder couldn’t see mana, he naturally assumed I had been affected and crept closer in complete silence. Even with my eyes closed, I could feel exactly how he moved and what he was doing through the changes in the surrounding mana.
He drew a dagger hidden in his clothes and aimed straight for my throat, and—
Crunch—!
“...!”
His arm was caught in my grip midway through the strike, and the assassination failed. The assassin, whose entire body was wrapped in black cloth with only his eyes exposed, clearly hadn’t imagined I would counter—let alone open my eyes. His eyes flooded with shock.
“You moved this quickly? Were you really that impatient? I can already guess who sent you and why, but…”
Crack!
I squeezed his wrist with enough force to shatter it and grinned.
“Let’s start by seeing what this so-called ordinary skill of yours looks like.”