Proving My Worth (1)
"So you've finally lost your mind, have you?"
That was the very first thing out of Grandpa's mouth after hearing my story — a question about whether I was still sane.
To be fair, he had a point. After all, I'd just suggested calling the Second Prince the Idiot Prince to his face.
Any ordinary person would have been dragged to the guillotine for insulting royalty without a second thought.
But I was hardly an ordinary person, was I? The girl known as Lucy Aln had been pulling stunts like this long before now.
She'd called the reigning King livestock to his face, branded the First Prince — the most likely heir to the throne — a gloomy stalker, and poked at the Third Prince's deepest insecurities by pitying him of all things.
And yet, after every single one of those incidents, Lucy — I — was still standing here. Not only had my head remained attached to my shoulders, I'd flaunted my face openly in front of halls packed with nobility.
So what difference would it make now if I called the Second Prince an idiot prince?
Sure, his gaze would turn poisonous. And since the man in question was the Idiot Prince, he might resort to dirty tricks to get revenge on whoever humiliated him.
But how would that be any different from the situation I was already in? Even if I pretended not to know the Second Prince existed, his underlings were going to mess with me anyway.
"...Hm, girl. I follow the reasoning, but being watched by his lackeys and being personally hated by the Second Prince are two entirely different breeds of trouble."
'Are they, though?'
"They are. The scrutiny directed at you right now stays beneath the surface — none of them can risk their master finding out. But if you earn the Second Prince's hatred, the game changes entirely."
'Meaning they'd have no reason to keep it subtle.'
Hmm. I see. So I'd figured that wiping out the Second Prince's goodwill toward me would make the scrutiny vanish too, but it might actually make things more of a headache instead.
This is why amateurs shouldn't dabble in politics.
I'd thrown the idea out half on a whim, so the moment Grandpa pushed back, I was ready to drop it. But Grandpa, it turned out, was not.
"...No. Wait. The girl standing before me is too valuable a talent to give up on just yet."
'Grandpa?'
"Hold on a moment. Let me think this through."
As if something had sparked in his mind, he began muttering to himself, and before long he routed a few questions through me and on to Karia.
"Ask her whether the First Prince's claim to succession is truly secure."
"And the Second Prince's faction — how large is it?"
"Has the Second Prince ever once beaten the First Prince at anything?"
After several rounds of questions and answers, Grandpa surfaced from his daydream and spoke, a hint of laughter coloring his voice.
"I retract my earlier statement. Your idea may actually be rather good. Very well. Go ahead and call the man an Idiot Prince."
'...Weren't you just saying it was a terrible idea?'
"I misjudged because I'd forgotten one simple fact."
'Which is?'
"That you, girl, have become someone with whom making enemies carries no cost whatsoever."
The day after Grandpa laid out his plan, I summoned the people closest to me.
To explain what I was about to do.
The plan itself was simple enough: hammer the words Idiot Prince into the Second Prince's face in a public, official setting.
Pulling a stunt like that would cause an enormous uproar, and they'd all demand explanations — so I'd called them together in advance.
I gathered everyone into a private room and tried to lay out my plan, but the whole thing started creaking from the very first sentence.
The instant I announced I intended to call the Second Prince the Idiot Prince, the room erupted.
"...Hold on. Lucy Aln. Is what I just heard actually true?"
Arthur pressed his knuckles hard into the furrow between his brows, as if his head were splitting.
'Yes. Completely true.'
"You keep going on about how pitiful I am — did you finally decide your own ears deserve pity too? Don't worry. This time the Pitiful Prince's ears worked just fine."
"You truly mean to call my brother the Idiot Prince?! Do you have a thought in your head or don't you?!"
Arthur's shout echoed around the room.
Thank goodness for the soundproofing enchantment keeping his voice from leaking outside. Otherwise the whole hall would have heard.
Honestly, how could a prince be so careless?
"...I share the sentiment, Lady Aln. Could you not, please, address those above you by their proper names?"
Joey finally collected herself after Arthur's outburst and spoke up in a wavering voice.
Ordinarily I'd bend over backward for a request from my favorite character — but this one was simply impossible. As long as the Mesugaki skill remained, I couldn't call anyone anything by my own choice.
"Everyone, please calm down. I'm sure the Lady has thought this through."
The only person keeping her composure in all this chaos was Phoebe. Her take was simple: let's trust Lucy for now.
It wasn't hard to guess why she'd say that.
She knew I was the Apostle of the Chief God. Seeing me babble something this insane, she'd probably concluded that the Loser Chief God had delivered some revelation or other.
Unfortunately, the Loser Chief God hadn't said a word to me this time — but I wasn't about to explain that.
How was I supposed to confess that I'd come up with this lunatic scheme entirely on my own? Far easier and far more convenient to dump all the blame on the Loser Chief God.
And honestly, it wasn't like it was entirely unfair to him. If he'd just tuned the Mesugaki skill ages ago, I'd never have had to make a resolution like this in the first place!
By fault ratio, that's nine parts him, one part me!
...Okay, maybe that's pushing my conscience a bit. Should I make it seven to three?
"Phoebe. Lady Aln is not someone who deliberates before she acts."
"Exactly! What thinking is there to think! This brat called me— no. Wait. Do you actually have a plan?"
"Your Highness?"
The one silver lining amid all this confusion was that my track record since arriving at Soul Academy wasn't bad.
I had always proven myself through results.
Whether I'd meant to or not.
"Think about it, Joey. Has anything Lucy Aln set in motion ever ended badly?"
"...When you put it that way, no."
"I think we can afford to hear the whole plan out before judging it."
With my track record plus Phoebe's advocacy, even Arthur and Joey grudgingly shifted into a let's-listen-first stance.
Seeing that, I took a breath and opened my mouth again.
'It's not as if I'm doing this for no reason...'
"Nobody calls an idiot prince an idiot prince for nothing. I'm sick of that dumb pervert clinging to me, and now his lackeys are getting in my way too."
At that, Joey and Arthur both nodded, as if something finally clicked.
Given the positions those two occupied, word that the Second Prince had taken an interest in me had probably reached them already.
"It's true that from little brother's standpoint, you're an exceptionally attractive prize, Lucy. The symbolism alone — having defeated eldest brother — is enormous."
"And word has spread far and wide that Phoebe and I are devoted to you, Lady Aln. He'd assume that winning you over might open a path to the two of us as well."
What those two described matched Grandpa's explanation exactly.
Right now, I was an almost irresistibly tempting target for the Second Prince.
As I'd explained any number of times before, the succession was, for all practical purposes, already the First Prince's.
The legitimacy of being the eldest. Overwhelming ability that anyone who'd laid eyes on the First Prince couldn't help but acknowledge. A rock-solid faction backing him.
Not a single one of those pillars had a crack in it — so where, exactly, was an opening for the Second Prince?
The nobility weren't fools either. They knew that throwing in with the Second Prince's faction offered terrible odds.
If the Second Prince had ever managed even a single victory over the First Prince in anything, the calculus might have shifted slightly — but it had been proven, over and over, that the Second Prince simply fell short of his brother across the board.
Because reality looked like this, the Second Prince's faction remained small. How many people were willing to bet their lives on a gamble with almost no chance of paying out?
Families tied to the Second Prince's maternal line. Houses locked in bitter feud with the First Prince's core faction. Idiots gambling everything on one desperate stroke. Outside of groups like those, nobody seriously considered siding with him.
And then there was me.
The symbolism of winning a duel the First Prince himself had proposed. The backing of House Aln, called the Shield of the Kingdom. The advantage of close ties with House Patran, the Saintess of the Church of the Chief God, and the next Sword Saint in the making.
A person carrying all of that — me — was a talent the Second Prince absolutely had to get his hands on.
If he could draw someone like me into his faction, he could conceivably turn a losing battle around entirely.
After walking me through all of this yesterday evening, Grandpa had chuckled, thoroughly amused.
"That man would do anything to reel you in now! Word gets out that one of his own lackeys hassled you, and he might just have the man's head off by morning!"
This was a completely different situation from when the Second Prince had first extended his hand. On paper, he outranked me — but in substance, the dynamic had flipped: he was the one chasing, and I was the one considering.
Simply put: I was now the one holding the leverage, and the Second Prince was the one begging. Which meant that whether I called him Idiot Prince or anything else under the sun, all he could do was fidget anxiously and grin and bear it.
"Frankly, if you wanted to exploit this, you could flay him to the bone and still have meat left on that one."
'I don't need anything like that.'
Most of the things I actually wanted weren't the kind of things that status or power could buy.
So even if I ended up able to work the Second Prince like a puppet, he'd just be one more useless inconvenience.
"What you want is simply for the Second Prince to stop being a nuisance. Am I right?"
'Exactly.'
"Then it's simple."
And so Grandpa laid out the plan.
Make him walk on eggshells around me.
Make him believe that one wrong move wouldn't just push me further away — it might land me squarely in the First Prince's grasp.
First keep the status quo intact, then let him come courting, inch by careful inch.
"Freeze the board at a draw. Humiliate the Second Prince exactly the way you humiliated the First Prince. Not out of spite — simply to show him what kind of person you are."
At the end of every explanation, what Grandpa had proposed was a contest: a dungeon-clearing competition held at the Academy.
The battlefield most favorable to me.
The one place where I — a certified rotten-water veteran of Soul Academy — could guarantee I would never lose.
"The Second Prince will be utterly unable to refuse."
So there I stood, reciting Grandpa's plan word for word before my friends — and the room fell into dead silence.
What? Why is everyone making that face?
Why are Joey and Arthur looking at me like I've grown a second head? And why is Phoebe nodding away with a smile on her face?
This is a good reaction, right? Right?
I'm not Karia — I can't read emotions off faces alone! Somebody use words!
Just as the silence was starting to weigh on me and I found myself glancing nervously around the room, Frey — who had been goofing off this entire time — suddenly spoke up.
"Hey. Lucy."
'Yes?'
"What is it, dummy swordsman."
"Why is the Idiot Prince an Idiot Prince?"
...You're asking me that now?