Passive Charm
Charm skill: passive.
“You idiot of a brother.”
Amelia wiped the blood from her face and looked at Kairon.
“You knew that past existed, and still you grieved for the First Prince’s death?”
“Back then… even Brother couldn’t defy a royal decree…”
Kairon defended himself, his voice thick with tears.
“The First Prince was, from the very beginning… No. Never mind. You’re better off not knowing.”
Amelia started to say something more to him, then stopped and focused on wiping away the blood.
“Wait—a succubus?”
When I asked, Kairon and Amelia both nodded at once.
“Yes. A succubus. That’s why the royal family calls Kairon a demon.”
Amelia seemed ready to speak for him until he settled.
“In the old days, even if people called her a demon, she was still the king’s concubine. No one dared point fingers. But after Father cast my brother out, well—this is what became of him.”
She shrugged and pointed at Kairon’s helmet.
“Is it true that his face enchants people?”
“Who knows. Whether it’s because my brother’s face is simply that fine, or because it really is a succubus’s power—I couldn’t say. That women trailed after him is a fact, though.”
The son of a succubus.
So the charm skill was passive, then.
As Amelia said, it might not be a demonic authority at all—just an overwhelming handsomeness. But that would amount to a charm skill all the same.
Those kinds of devastating beauties seemed to exist in the real world, too.
Either way, that handsome face of his had unintentionally enchanted even the king’s concubines.
He wasn’t blond, he didn’t tan, and he was no punk—but still.
He claimed it hadn’t been deliberate.
When it came to stealing women, maybe Kairon was the original after all.
“What a magnificent father. Even if it was the lust of his prime, to even think of bedding a demon…”
“Your Highness.”
I stopped her, not quite believing my ears.
“I’m praising him. It’s thanks to that robust constitution that he’s still living so long, isn’t it?”
She had a point. The king had long since outstripped the average lifespan.
Kairon and Amelia were siblings, but by age alone Kairon was old enough to be her father.
The king was more like a grandfather.
Even if Amelia was the last of seven princesses—the baby of the family—the gap was far too wide.
If Kairon had been the eldest, it might have made sense. As the Fourth Prince, the age difference was absurd.
Whether he had only ever seen and eaten the finest things, the king was still alive and well, free of any major illness.
He meant to pass the throne to a child now, yet there wasn’t even a rumor that he was old or ailing.
Maybe he simply wanted to rest.
“Father was in his prime, and she was said to be exceptionally strong even among succubi. Strong enough to bring down even a pure-hearted holy knight.”
“Huh.”
That succubus…
Somehow, she sounded like a succubus I knew.
Which would mean that, back then, I had… with Kairon’s mother…
Ugh.
Even for me, that was a bit… No.
No—wait.
Thinking it through again, there was no law saying only one such succubus could exist in this world.
Besides, Amelia hadn’t said whether the woman was still alive or already dead.
A king angry enough at that bloodline to cast Kairon out might well have hunted her down and killed her too.
As for that ending, I would neither unlock it nor lock it. Leave it alone.
Open ending.
“I heard her nickname was the Holy Knight Hunter.”
“……”
“Hasgard. Are we really free to be talking about this right now? You acted as if my brother’s story could be set aside, and then you stuffed rather a lot of important information into it.”
“Ah—you’re right. Let’s just say they lived long and happily ever after and leave it there.”
“Fine. My brother seems to have calmed down now, anyway.”
Amelia tapped Kairon’s helmet a couple of times—a signal to get up.
The gesture looked rough on the surface, but strangely, whenever she handled Kairon, affection came through.
Born the youngest of the royal children, Amelia must have memories of Kairon’s kindness and love.
Perhaps even more than Rebecca had.
That was why, when Kairon was driven out, she had sought him in secret and helped him—ready even to lose her ring for it.
No one could dislike a heart as soft as Kairon’s.
His true weapon might not be the charm skill at all, but that heart of his.
That was the real passive skill.
And that same Kairon had become a pawn of the Death God Cult to bring Amelia back.
He had killed his brother knights. He had killed Blash.
Was the clearest water the easiest to stain with a single drop of black ink?
Or had a chain of unjust accusations finally burst the dam, and every emotion he had been holding back to the limit come flooding out?
I didn’t know.
I knew only one thing: the Kairon of now was different from the Kairon of then.
Even that fox might have become one of the Five Lanterns of the Death God Cult for someone she wanted to bring back.
Not that I particularly cared.
Tap… tap…
The rain was finally easing off.
At the same hour, in Akikira’s infirmary, Rebecca opened her eyes.
“…Rebecca?”
As Rebecca pushed herself up, the damp cloth that had been resting on her forehead slipped off with a soft flop.
Akikira gathered her medical tools and hurried over to support her.
“Rebecca, can you see all right? How do you feel?”
“Yes. I’m fine.”
“Thank goodness… Rebecca. Do you know who I am?”
“I know.”
Rebecca looked down at the magic sword laid neatly beside her, as if it had been sleeping there with her.
“Nurse Akikira.”
I looked at the ring I had taken from the fox, then flicked a coin into the air.
Effect: Rank-up of the Luck stat
“Heads.”
The coin spun and spun in the air before I caught it cleanly on the back of my hand.
Heads.
I tossed it a few more times after that. Most of the results came out the way I wanted.
But even testing at a fifty-fifty chance, without a prior sample it was hard to be sure of anything.
I would only know whether my luck had truly risen once I hit a decisive moment that required it.
“Daywin… there’s something I want to say…”
“There’s still more…?”
The moment Kairon started fumbling for words, I grew wary—if he got going, dawn might actually break before he finished.
“Thank you.”
But all he had wanted to say was three syllables.
“Amelia… Rebecca… all of it… is thanks to you.”
“Don’t give it a second thought. I’m only doing what I have to do.”
“From now on… no matter what happens… I swear I’ll help you. I swear it.”
He glanced around as if searching for something to offer as surety for the oath.
But he was no longer a prince, no longer a villain—no longer anything at all.
“I swear it… on my life…”
So he staked himself.
“Yes.”
I nodded slowly.
“It’s more than I deserve, but I’ll accept it.”
“…Thank you.”
He moved his head in time with mine.
Clank.
“This is out of nowhere, but about that helmet—what do you do when you eat?”
“I hear that… a lot.”
A soft laugh sounded from inside Kairon’s helmet.
“I can take it off……”
“Ah.”
“I just… don’t. Whether I meant to or not… I did enchant His Majesty’s women. That’s the truth……”
“Hasgard. Don’t try to understand what’s going on in my brother’s head. You’ll only frustrate yourself.”
“…I was about to give up anyway.”
“So what do you intend to do now? The core of the Death God Cult is dead, but the Magic Tower is a complete mess.”
“There’s something I need to look into.”
“Look into?”
“Yes. Didn’t the fox blab everything to Your Highness? That there was a larger backer behind this than just the First Prince.”
“Mm. He did. He spouted off as he pleased, thinking I was about to die.”
“It will be one of the great lords. There aren’t many people who can deal with the royal family’s eldest son on those terms. More importantly, the Death God Cult already knew about it.”
“A great lord, you say…”
“The First Prince and his backer both wanted to transplant magic and swordsmanship through the experiments.”
And the Tower Master wouldn’t have been coerced into it.
Simply as a mage, as a scholar, as a researcher—
he would have wanted to prove it.
“They wanted a method that could carve a strong man’s experience and knowledge straight into the body—without study, without investing time and effort.”
In other words, they had been developing a way to transplant the contents of a book into the mind without actually reading it.
And not some thin fairy tale—a legal code.
Eight thousand spells and sword techniques.
“They even succeeded. But.”
I continued as we descended the stairs.
“Someone had to be sacrificed.”
The First Prince, the great lord, the Tower Master, and even the Death God Cult.
To achieve their goals, the orphans—Rebecca among them—and the mages of the Magic Tower had all had to die without ever knowing why.
“I think this is an opportunity.”
I kept descending, collecting clues as I went.
“No matter how much power a great lord has to choose the next king, ignoring the royal authority of the king they chose is the same as denying their own power. Siphoning the Magic Tower’s talent for private gain is no different from embezzling the king’s property.”
We arrived at the eighth floor.
“The First Prince must have moved like a field commander after securing one of the great lords’ votes. But now the First Prince is dead, and the great lord has committed treason. That one vote—this is our chance to take it.”
“And how exactly do you plan to do that?”
At Amelia’s question, I produced the matchbox the Magic Tower mage had been holding.
A familiar magical tool.
Had that shopkeeper been a bigger player than I thought?
And there was a mark where a single red match had been used.
“Just a conversation, shall we say.”
After that—the first floor.
And below that.
We went down into the basement.
From there, Kairon took the lead.
Following him, we found a laboratory hidden in a sealed-off space.
When we reached the lab, cluttered with all manner of unrecognizable equipment, Kairon’s expression twisted with pain.
I left him behind and searched for evidence.
Soon I found several documents.
Research records, a few reports—and from the dead mage’s pocket, a diary.
In the other pocket, another matchbox.
This one bore the marks of many matches used.
“It seems there were mages with a conscience left after all.”
The diary was filled with the mage’s doubts and misgivings.
But turning whistleblower would have cost him his life, so he had only scribbled them down alone in his journal.
“Neither the First Prince’s name nor the great lord’s is written here—but this is enough.”
I used the Ring of Disguise and transformed into the diary’s owner.
And then—
Fsssh—
I struck a match.
The flame wavered for a moment, and the figure on the other side gradually appeared.
The one on the black side.
“Why are you only contacting me now!”
The moment the connection formed, a scolding roared through from the other end.
“Do you even know what the situation is?”
So the matchbox from the dead mage’s pocket really was a direct line to the one who ordered the experiments.
The one from the eighth floor seemed to have been used for a distress signal, but the underground researchers’ matchbox was linked to the experiment’s stakeholders.
“Don’t worry. The distress signal seems to have been a mistake. The Magic Tower is fine. The underground laboratory as well, of course.”
“Hah… hahh… That’s a relief… What idiot made a mistake like that…”
“But after this incident, the Magic Tower may come under surveillance. So I’m closing the laboratory and planning to burn the materials…”
“B-burn them?”
“There’s no other way. Well then—that’s all.”
“W-wait!”
Just as expected, the other side seized me.
“Then what happens to the experiment materials?”
“I already told you. I’m going to burn them all.”
“You can’t. That’s over ten years of work. I won’t let it turn to ash like this…”
“But the royal family will be sending people soon.”
“Move the materials in secret. I don’t care what becomes of the laboratory. I haven’t even gotten to use those research results yet. Damn that brat… Why did he have to go and die on his own…”
“Move them—where?”
“C-can you do it? I’ll set a meeting place. You’ll meet my man there.”
“I can’t do that. I won’t move unless my safety is guaranteed. How do I know you won’t just kill me there and take the materials?”
“Tch… Then I’ll have them delivered…”
“Are you saying that knowing the couriers are all mages? The moment they hand over the materials, they’ll know exactly what kind of research it is. Just give up on the research data, Grand Duke Cassian.”
A short while earlier, I had asked Amelia to narrow down which great lords might have been behind something like this.
Cassian, Marc, and Keln.
I had simply called out one of the three at random.
“Cassian, you say.”
“Were you not His Grace Grand Duke Cassian?”
“Ah—no. Cassian is correct.”
“Then I’ll look for Grand Duke Cassian’s agent. If I visit the territory…”
“N-no! That—anything but that…”
“Is that not possible? My condition is that I hand over the research materials inside Your Grace’s territory—and in a place with plenty of people.”
The voice beyond the flame had no choice.
Either reveal his own name—
or watch another great lord receive the evidence of his crimes.
“A-all right. Then… meet me here.”
After that, the old voice named a place.
It might well have been a private holding far from the main territory.
I wouldn’t know a place like that—
but Amelia would.
Of course I know. Memorizing the state of the great houses is part of a princess’s duties.
When I looked back at Amelia—the Amelia who had once said something like that—she shaped a word with her lips.
Keln.
“…I see.”
“Hm?”
Ssshh—
I released the ring’s effect.
“A pleasure. Grand Duke Keln.”
The match’s flame lit my true face.
“Y-you’re the Seventh Princess’s…”
“Shall we talk for a moment.”