Divine Barbarian, Commencing
"H-His Highness the Princess?"
The ministers recoiled in shock.
They'd been wondering what lunatic barbarian had barged straight through the Imperial Guard — and then the princess, whom everyone had assumed dead, came bursting out from behind him.
Wearing a fur coat smeared vividly with blood, no less.
"…Annette?"
Of all the faces in the room, the First Prince's was the most entertaining to look at.
It was the face of a man watching a chessboard he'd already won get flipped over on the table.
In a word, he looked genuinely pissed.
Of course, that expression vanished almost instantly.
Perhaps Caric had been the only one to catch it.
And so one pair of eyes regarded Annette with shock and confusion.
Another pair, with fury and irritation.
Yet another, with naked interest.
But she did not shrink an inch under the gazes stabbing at her from every direction.
On the contrary, she seemed to blaze so brilliantly she swallowed those gazes whole.
"Th-that's that homely princess?"
Someone, bless them, delivered their promised line.
Caric smirked inwardly.
Even so, he kept pace and followed Annette in.
Annette pushed straight through the ministers lined up on either side and arrived before the Emperor.
The Emperor's expression was hard to read.
It was a blend of I knew these bastards would pull something like this and You're that confident, are you?
Of course, even that lasted only a flicker.
"Imperial Guard, sheathe your swords. These are guests whom I summoned myself… guests of a somewhat impatient disposition."
At those words, the Imperial Guard sheathed the swords they'd drawn for form's sake.
The ministers' agitation settled quickly.
They too had sensed it.
It was the Emperor's staging all along. What is he plotting this time?
Wrapped in that misunderstanding, the Emperor spoke.
"A raucous return indeed. I pray you have not interrupted this council merely to throw a tantrum."
His voice was deliberately cold.
Annette was not intimidated in the slightest.
"The honor is mine to see you again, Your Majesty."
She answered with a smile, as though she'd just received a warm welcome — sinking into a flawless curtsy while she did it.
"It would have been lovely if I'd merely come to throw a tantrum, instead of bringing evidence of treason."
"Treason, you say."
The Emperor rested his chin on his hand.
"I trust you understand the weight of the words coming out of your mouth."
"I understand it very well. Because someone's hound just tried to bite me."
Annette's gaze swung toward the First Prince.
The First Prince maintained his composure with astonishing acting skill.
But the muscles beneath his eyes twitched and trembled.
"Count Crowell. He attacked me."
At Annette's declaration, a murmur rippled through the ministers.
Crowell, the butcher of nobles.
Vanguard of the Purge, the First Prince's hound.
It was not a name one could ever toss out lightly.
Caric spoke up amid the restless stirring.
"I brought the evidence. In its entirety."
He dumped the corpse he'd stored in his subspace onto the floor.
The body of Count Crowell, Imperial Count, went rolling across the ground like so much garbage.
"Heup!"
The ministers sucked in their breath.
The corpse had been flung down without warning.
A horrific wound gaped across its forehead.
Caric, showing off, seized the corpse by the nape and lifted it up with one hand.
Remarkably, the dead man's face was untouched.
Intact enough that anyone could see exactly who he was.
A brief silence fell.
Then those who recognized the face screamed.
"Th-that's—!"
"Count Crowell! That's Count Crowell!"
The moment the corpse's identity was confirmed, the council chamber hurtled into uncontrollable chaos.
"Good gods, are my eyes failing me? That hound of a Count? Dead?"
"Goddammit. What in the hell is this."
As a few of the weak-stomached ministers gagged and heaved, others fixed their attention on the state of the body itself.
Aside from the forehead, not a single wound.
It was bizarre.
The author of this death was Crowell.
A hedonistic murderer who had stood closest to the rank of Sword Master.
Even granting him Master, could one man alone produce a result like this?
Every gaze in the room turned to the Emperor.
The only man capable of fielding two or more Masters at once.
This was obviously all the Emperor's scheme!
How absurd.
The most stunned person in the room was, in fact, the Emperor himself.
He too was looking at Crowell's corpse for the very first time.
What in the world is this man?
The Emperor shot Caric a look of sheer incomprehension.
Truthfully, his defeat of Valerion had already defied all reason.
A peak Expert was a strategic asset so rare that even nations counted themselves lucky to possess one.
In modern terms, roughly a nuclear submarine.
And now a barbarian with no aura whatsoever had beaten an Expert?
That was like saying a scuba diver had cracked open a nuclear submarine with a bare-knuckle haymaker.
Suppose the first time really had been a miracle of astronomical luck.
But twice?
And he'd killed Crowell in a single blow?
"Ha."
The Emperor couldn't suppress a bitter laugh.
Long experience had taught him something.
Certain beings could never be measured by the yardstick of common sense.
Among those the Emperor had met with his own eyes, the Sword Saint had been one. Perhaps Caric was another such creature.
"It seems you were an even greater marvel than I gave you credit for."
At the Emperor's words, the color drained from several ministers' faces.
That sounded suspiciously like a declaration that this had not been his orders.
Only then did they slowly begin to grasp it.
That this absurd situation was, in fact, the actual situation.
"I assumed you'd barely survived a desperate brawl. And instead Crowell is lying here without a mark on his face."
"Who on earth brawls with a dog?"
"No one. Quite. Then he truly was nothing more than that to you, was he?"
The Emperor stared long and hard at Caric.
The look in his eyes had grown a shade deeper than yesterday's.
But the pleasantries ended there.
Resting his chin on his hand once more, he returned to the matter at hand.
"Now then, Annette, and your ally Caric. What exactly is it that the two of you claim?"
Annette stepped forward again.
"Count Crowell attempted to assassinate me. It is highly probable he acted on someone's orders."
"Is a corpse your only evidence?"
"I will submit a tracking compass and a contract for a human hunt."
The Emperor reviewed the evidence and gave a slow nod.
"This is enough to call it a dog biting its master's quarry. First Prince — what say you?"
All attention in the chamber converged on the First Prince.
The First Prince showed no trace of panic.
"I agree as well."
He spoke with a perfectly transparent blankness.
Only through the cracks leaked anger and a faint trace of shame.
He looked precisely like a man put in a wretched spot by an underling whose loyalty had simply overflowed.
It was extremely realistic, restrained acting.
"So Crowell has finally crossed the line."
The First Prince wore an expression of exquisite anguish.
"He was my blade. A very sharp one, at that. In service of His Majesty and myself, he cut down many a corrupt and treacherous soul."
"…"
"During the Purge he charged ahead of everyone into the most dangerous work. And so… it seems he could not bear the peace that followed."
The First Prince looked at Annette.
"It appears he believed that harming you was the same as serving me. I'm sorry. The fault is entirely mine."
For all his words, it was, quite literally, a perfect severing of the tail.
The chamber sank into a suffocating silence.
The nobles naturally believed almost none of the First Prince's excuse.
Would Crowell, mad as he was, have unilaterally decided to assassinate the princess?
But the First Prince was the man closest to the next throne.
When someone that powerful came out and said this much, there was no need to make waves.
Certainly not for a princess with zero political backing.
Above all, the Emperor's true intentions were unclear.
Of course, one person in this room couldn't have cared less about any of that.
"What a masterful performance."
Clap. Clap. Clap.
Caric spoke as he applauded.
"Bravo! Superb acting chops. That kind of restraint is far harder to pull off than hamming it up."
He nodded and went on.
"I'm telling you, you were born into the wrong world. You should've been an actor."
Every gaze turned to Caric.
They couldn't follow the details, but it was unmistakably mockery.
"I almost got swept along myself, honestly. If it weren't for that sewer-stench bastard standing next to you, that is."
Caric's finger pointed at the man beside the First Prince.
There sat one of the First Prince's most trusted confidants — the Minister of the Interior.
"You there! What nonsense is this!"
Though he'd been singled out out of nowhere, the man showed not a flicker of alarm.
"A rootless barbarian dares wag his tongue so freely!"
Instead, as if he'd been handed a gift of an opportunity, he bellowed at the top of his lungs.
"Do you defy His Majesty's magnanimity? Arrogant and insolent! If you know shame, apologize this instant and get out of this sacred hall!"
He was a man with a genuinely fearsome presence.
But Caric felt nothing.
He yawned lazily and asked,
"Was that all you had to say?"
Caric strode step by step toward the Minister of the Interior and the First Prince.
"From now on, raise your hand before you speak. I need to hold my breath. By the way — how does your breath reek all the way over here?"
"Why you…!"
"I actually know why. You ate something strange too, just like her. Only for exactly the opposite purpose. And you called it a 'blessing.'"
Killing intent laced through Caric's presence as it surged outward.
His aura pressed down on the room as though it had physical weight.
A heavy silence swallowed the council chamber.
Several ministers frantically shot glances at the Imperial Guard.
But by the Emperor's standing order issued before the session, the guardsmen — hands resting on their hilts, sweat beading down their faces — did not move.
Caric stopped directly in front of the Minister of the Interior.
The shadow cast by his surreal bulk swallowed the old minister whole.
Under Caric's downward gaze, the minister's legs began to shake.
Then, suddenly, the pressure pinning the minister down turned its head with a snap.
Toward the target it had been after from the very beginning.
Gleaming eyes fixed on the First Prince's face.
"It was you, wasn't it?"
Caric smiled a skin-crawling smile.
"You're the one who fed something strange to this poor old man?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
The First Prince said flatly.
"If you have something to say, say it plainly."
"Great poker face. Truly destined to be a cosmic acting legend in your next life."
Caric clenched and unclenched his fist.
"You figure you'll slip out of this clean, same as always, right? You think I've got nothing I can actually do right now."
Caric glared dead into the First Prince's eyes.
"Because you people think the only thing a barbarian knows how to do is threaten and throw punches."
And then —
"You're right. That's all I do."
Caric's shoulder blurred.
CRUNCH!
The minister's head burst apart.
A single strike at point-blank range, delivered at the speed of a blink.
The Imperial Guard didn't even manage to react.
Blood and flesh splattered across the First Prince's expressionless face.
The First Prince slowly turned his head to the side.
The wrinkled head that had been there a moment ago was gone.
Above the vacant neck, only Caric's enormous fist remained.
Thud.
The Minister of the Interior's corpse crumpled to the floor.
"AAAARGH!"
"Murder! It's murder!"
The faint of heart screamed.
The Imperial Guard wasted no time drawing their swords.
Only the Emperor, seated on his throne, let his eyes gleam coldly.
Just as the chaos was about to detonate —
"Annetteeeee!"
Caric's booming voice rolled through the chamber.
In an instant, the room fell quiet.
"Radiance."
"Yes."
Annette immediately loosed Radiance onto the Minister of the Interior.
His body was enveloped in sacred light.
It was the kind of light that made even onlookers feel an inexplicable holiness.
But the reaction of the minister, believed dead, was different.
His body began to shudder faintly.
As though he couldn't bear a tickle — no, as though he couldn't bear something far past a tickle, something utterly revolting.
"Guhrrrk."
Tentacles began sprouting from his neck.
The demon of the Heretic Cult, which had hidden itself flawlessly in the sight of countless knights and mages, was revealing its true form.
"Wh-what is that thing."
"A demon! It's a heretic!"
Amid the bloodless, white-faced crowd, Caric and Annette's eyes met.
There was no need to exchange a single word.
Annette stretched out her hand toward Caric.
FWOOSH!
Radiance descended upon Caric's body.
White light began streaming off him like heat haze.
A divine aura settled over his eyes.
Power overflowed.
Caric, now a divine barbarian, advanced on the Minister of the Interior.
"KIIIIIEE!"
At some point the thing had swapped its head for a writhing bundle of tentacles.
Guardsmen who approached were struck by the tentacles and sent flying into the far wall.
But there was not an ounce of hesitation in Caric's stride.
"Stay calm, you fragile empire folk."
He rolled his holy fist into a tight ball.
"I'll sort this one out for you."