Chapter 80: 21st Floor: Irene
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 80: 21st Floor: Irene
"Hm? What is it, Pichina?"
Looks like this trial's character is Pichina Ibenstein.
She looked at me and asked, her face a picture of innocence. It was a face untouched by the world, pure and pristine.
Her harmless expression and womanly curves seemed to stir a protective instinct.
Damn it... She's so different from the Irene I know. How am I supposed to give her a womb punch now?
How could I possibly strike a woman who looked so delicate and pure? Besides, she was the one I was supposed to be escorting on this mission.
If the mission failed and I survived, I would be forcibly ejected from the Tower. I could then retry, but the reward grade would be lowered by one level.
In the case of a retry, I could leave the Tower, train more, and then attempt it again. Of course, the chances of getting the same trial were extremely slim.
In any case, my petty desire for revenge wasn't strong enough to risk a lower reward grade.
And it wasn't like I hated Irene enough to kill her; I just wanted to hit her once and torment her a little.
"Ah, it's nothing, Lady Irene."
"Hm? What's wrong? You don't seem like yourself today. Are you sick?"
Completely oblivious to the fact that I had just been contemplating destroying her womb, she approached me innocently and placed a hand on my forehead.
I had called her Irene just to be sure, and as expected, it was the same psycho sex master Irene I knew.
This is what Irene was like?
Judging by my plain knightess attire, I seemed to be some sort of escort knight, yet she looked genuinely worried about me. The way she addressed me wasn't like a superior talking down to a subordinate, but like one person speaking to another.
And most importantly...
Her face was radiant.
She really is pretty...
She was dazzling enough to make my heart skip a beat. It wasn't just her looks, but also the deep cleavage visible through her dress...
"Ah, it's nothing... I was just lost in thought for a moment."
"Really? That's a surprise, you spacing out~"
She gave me a sly, bewitching smile, her eyes fixed on me.
Wow...
If I were a man, that fatal smile would have been enough to make me confess my love on the spot.
Hoo... Get a grip. There's no need to take revenge on her when she doesn't know anything, but I can't afford to develop useless affection either.
Come to think of it, hadn't I fallen for Diana on the 21st floor in my past life and suffered for it? I absolutely could not get emotionally invested in the characters inside the Tower.
First, I need to gather information.
Fortunately, there was no attack in the carriage.
Irene's residence was the imperial villa.
After getting out of the carriage, we passed through tight security and entered Irene's palace.
Damn this unhelpful Tower. Would it kill them to give me a memory transfer?
I had to figure out for myself what this body's original owner did, where she lived, everything.
In my past life, I had acquired the [Memory Transfer] trait on the 12th floor, which allowed me to conveniently receive a portion of a character's memories in possession-type trials.
That trait was as common and versatile as the [Inventory] trait, but for some reason, this life had only given me strange, perverted traits.
First, I need to assess the situation.
I told Irene I had some business to attend to and slipped away.
I asked someone who looked like a handmaiden to fetch a document from my desk in my office, then tailed her to find out where my office was.
From there, things proceeded smoothly.
Letters and books.
I quickly absorbed all the information I could find—diaries, maps, duty rosters.
As expected, this body's name was Pichina Ibenstein. It was probably a different name originally, modified by the Tower's administrator.
She was said to be the youngest daughter of a minor baronetcy, a genius of hard work who had shown a talent for martial arts and risen to become the princess's escort knight.
And my protection target, Irene.
Her full name was Irene Astria de Celoria.
She was none other than the second princess of the Arcadia Empire.
And in two weeks, she was to be married to the crown prince of the Luxendark Kingdom to the southeast.
A political marriage?
I had a strong feeling that something would happen either during the journey or right before it.
But this trial is a bit strange.
Usually, trials that recreated the past involved missions to reverse a past failure.
The objective should have been something like, "Irene is fated to die, so save her." But in the original history, didn't Irene live on to become the empress?
It would make sense if the original escort knight was more skilled than me, but... I really didn't know. I'd have to wait for something to happen to find out.
After memorizing the duty roster, I stuck close to Irene again.
I didn't need to change my personality or way of speaking. The Tower wasn't cruel enough to demand that I change and act out a role, so I just had to behave naturally.
There were two weeks until she departed for the foreign country.
I need to gather as much information as I can before then.
Plus, I had tens of thousands of netizen detectives on my side.
Escort duty wasn't a 24/7 job. Of course, I was aware of the assassination risk, but in normal circumstances, there was no need for close-quarters protection.
And once we were inside the imperial palace, the duty naturally passed to the Imperial Guard, so I should have had a lot of free time, but...
Stop wandering around so much, you bitch!
As if trying to enjoy a lifetime's worth of fun in two weeks, her schedule was jam-packed with all sorts of social activities and outings.
"Pichina! You have to try this strawberry cake! It's so good!!!"
"Ah, no, I'm fine..."
She loved strawberry cake.
"Wow... what's that? It looks amazing!"
She would also buy unidentifiable street food, her eyes widening in surprise as if it were the most delicious thing she'd ever tasted.
Once, she chased after a cat and ruined her dress, which finally prompted a handmaiden to say something.
"Your Highness... Please, maintain your dignity..."
Like she's gonna listen...
I had already told her so many times my ears were bleeding, but she would just say:
[It's fine. What could possibly happen here? Besides, if there's any danger, Pichina will protect me, right? Hehe...]
She would say that with a silly laugh.
In the end, the handmaidens she was close with tried to stop her, but even they couldn't bring themselves to be harsh with her, knowing she would be leaving soon.
Tea parties with other noble ladies were a given, but she also went shopping for clothes and accessories and even went to the marketplace to experience commoner life. She did all sorts of crazy shit.
Looking at her like this, she just seems like a heavenly girl...
She was like a clueless noble girl who just made you want to flick her on the forehead.
After digging a little deeper, I found out she wasn't being married off to some old man, but to a handsome crown prince she had gotten along with during her time at the Imperial Academy. It seemed she didn't have a single worry in the world.
Although the princess's wild antics were eating into my precious investigation time, a different question was growing larger in my mind.
Just what the hell happened to turn this innocent girl into that psychopathic pervert bitch?
*
The night of the fourth day.
I had just returned from another long day of wandering around outside, catering to Irene's whims. When a pretty girl walks around giggling foolishly, it's only natural for pests to be drawn to her.
Of course, none of them were a threat to Irene or me. The trial hadn't even really begun yet.
And now, it was time for me and my viewers.
I had been given a private room, so I could communicate with them freely.
"Did you find anything?"
I had asked the viewers to gather information on Irene. Even if the same trial never appeared twice, there had to be records of her in the history books of her home planet.
The Arcadia Empire on the fourth planet was an empire that had lasted for thousands of years, one that even I knew a fair bit about.
- Hmmm...
- We found something, but
- idk
- There are surprisingly few records
- Was it censored?
The viewers had confidently told me to trust them, but in the end, they couldn't find any crucial information.
The records of Irene before she became empress.
The records of her childhood and her journey to meet her fiancé merely stated that she had left for a distant foreign land to marry him.
Ultimately, all they found were records from after she became empress.
There was a ten-year gap, and there were no records of what Irene had been doing during that time.
"I'll grant manager permissions to the data organizer for a moment, so please, take your time and tell us what happened after that."
Dottamuk: Yes, I will speak.
Why is that bastard so competent...?
Anyway, he began his report.
The events that transpired after she became empress were more shocking than I had anticipated.
Irene had returned ten years after leaving for her marriage, killed all her relatives, and ascended to the throne.
Naturally, the high nobility and the citizens of the empire rebelled, plunging the empire into a civil war that lasted for eight years.
The victor, of course, was Irene. She mercilessly killed all the high nobles and even hunted down their blood relatives to exterminate them completely.
Her madness didn't end there. Immediately after the civil war, she invaded neighboring countries and unified the continent in just five years.
"Hmm... She's a crazy bitch."
What was surprising was that she had apparently accomplished all of this mostly through her 'personal martial prowess.'
I could understand that.
The Irene I met in my book was a formidable opponent whose victory I couldn't guarantee even if I fought her in my past life.
But in the end, I couldn't find any information about what would happen to her in this trial.
However, I did find a small clue.
"The fact that she went out of her way to come back and slaughter her own family makes it highly likely that it was an inside job."
But I didn't know the reason.
The current emperor of the Arcadia Empire was Irene's father, who was still going strong at sixty, so there was no reason for Irene to be involved in any court intrigue.
The emperor had reached the rank of Swordmaster and was expected to live to at least a hundred, so it was more likely the crown prince would die before him.
Besides, not only was Irene uninterested in power, but she was also being married off to another country, wasn't she?
Someone wants to kill Irene. But there are too few suspects.
Usually, the problem was having too many suspects to narrow down, but Irene had too few enemies.
The noble ladies she hung out with didn't seem like they were engaged in court intrigue; they just seemed like close friends having fun.
For friends of a princess, their statuses were all rather modest...
They always met up to eat strawberry cake first, then giggled while talking about boys. It seemed they had become friends simply because they shared the same hobbies and interests.
"I don't know. There are still about ten days left, so let's observe some more."
Actually, there was one last resort.
Irene's subspace.
Using the <Irene's Female Body Training Secret Manual>, I could directly enter Irene's subspace and ask her what happened in the past.
But, if I go in there...
Setting aside whether it was okay to enter while inside the Tower, would Irene really tell me willingly?
It was highly likely that the rape couple would jump me, saying they'd tell me if I let them fuck me.
Right, let's save that as a last resort... I don't have a schedule tomorrow, so I'll have to go out and investigate myself.
"By the way, if any of you have a theory, feel free to share it. Or a solution would be great too."
It would be great if I could get something out of their collective intelligence. It was time for me to benefit from my viewers.
- Maybe the crown prince she's engaged to is a psycho? Maybe you have to stop the marriage.
- I think someone's just purely jealous of her.
- Isn't it possible one of the princes is secretly in love with Irene?
- Hmmm...
- Why not just try teaching her swordsmanship? She seems to have insane talent.
- Just kidnap her yourself lol
- Yeah, if you kidnap her before the assassins do, she'll be safe lol
- fr, a preemptive kidnapping sounds good
Kidnapping is a bit...
Just as I was communicating with the viewers and getting their opinions, I heard the sound of multiple people walking outside.
Irene and her handmaidens?
Thump, thump, thump! Bang!
My door flew open, and in walked Irene and her retinue of handmaidens.
"Huh...? W-wait a minute. What is this?"
She was dressed like an adventurer in leather clothes.
"Pichina~ What are you doing? Let's go, hurry!"
Where the hell are you going at this hour, you crazy bitch...
I almost cursed out loud but managed to hold it back and ask politely.
"Where on earth are you planning to go at this hour...?"
"Where do you think?! I told you last week, don't you remember? Don't tell me you forgot?"
She puffed out her cheeks and pretended to pout, as if asking how I could forget something so important.
"Hmph!"
Haaah...
Of course I didn't remember. I wasn't here last week.
"And... where did you say we were going?"
"The gambling den! Not one of those luxury places for nobles, but a dark, intense, back-alley gambling den where real slashing techniques are on full display!!"
"What...? You're mad. Who on earth put such an idea in your..."
"Pichinaaa!! What are you doing~~?! Hurry uuuup~~!!"
Ah......
Irene started acting all cutesy, grabbing my hand and trying to drag me somewhere. I hadn't actually moved an inch, but I felt like I was being dragged away by force.
"Haaah... Are we really going?"
"Yes, but let's change your clothes first!"
It seemed she had already discussed it with the handmaidens, as she had even prepared an outfit for me.
"Um... I am an escort knight, you know..."
An outfit similar to hers was handed to me.
I have a bad feeling about this...
I glanced at the handmaidens standing behind her.
Aren't they going to stop this?
I didn't know if I was being overly sensitive or if all the women here had a death wish.