Harbinger of Realization
"You filthy piece of trash."
A sharp woman's voice rang through the private chamber.
"How dare you lay a hand on her?"
The Hero's head snapped around. For someone to hurl such curses straight at him — a man whose renown as the strongest on the continent was beyond dispute — what kind of lunatic was this?
The only person who had ever been so insolent toward him was Akael. The owner of this voice seemed an even greater scoundrel. But what actually filled his turned gaze was…
"A woman…?"
And not just any woman. Clean, cascading white hair and gemstone eyes the color of aquamarine. Below that, full breasts and a body of sweeping curves. Even the red fresh flower perched atop her head felt harmonious; he rather liked it.
That the woman he had so abruptly come face-to-face with possessed beauty enough to rival the Imperial Princess — famed as the empire's greatest beauty — left Lucas briefly stunned as he stared at the white-haired woman. Then he shook his head. Pretty or not, if she had the nerve to provoke him, he had no intention of treating her kindly.
"How did you get in here? No — do you even know who I am?"
At the Hero's thoroughly arrogant manner, the woman's expression crumpled. What did it matter whether he was a Hero or a god? What mattered was that this damned piece of garbage had been molesting her mother.
Thud!
A front kick loaded with monstrous force slammed into Lucas's chest. Hero or not, the impact was no ordinary thing — he punched through the wardrobe and flew several hundred meters.
Piel stripped off the coat she was wearing and covered her mother's bare skin. Then she lifted her eyes toward the direction the Hero had been flung. Right now she needed to either cripple that bastard or kill him outright. Only one of those two would cool her blood.
"P-Piel…?"
"Mother, I'm sorry… we'll talk in a little while."
The moment Piel had seen the white flower on her hairpin turn red, she had come running. Before leaving the Bayorn household, she had fitted this ordinary-looking pin with a tracking function — and thank the heavens she had.
Beneath her mother's trembling forearms, blue bruises bloomed thickly. Whether the Hero molesting her had failed to control his strength, or whether he had simply been tormenting her, Piel could not say. What she knew for certain was that facing her mother's grief-stricken expression made rage surge up her throat.
You fucking bastard…!
Unable to contain her fury, Piel launched herself through the breached wall like an arrow loosed at full draw. Outside, the man was sprawled on the ground with casual indifference. The instant she saw him, she struck again with her fist.
Thud!
It was a bare fist that smashed into his face, yet the roar that followed sounded like a blunt weapon coming down. Lucas rolled once more across the lawn from the dizzying impact, then spat a warning.
"Hey, why the hell are you throwing punches out of nowhere? You looking to die?"
"Ha! Funny — I was just wondering who the one who ought to die is."
"Hoo. I don't go easy just because you're a woman, you know."
"Who asked you to go easy, you piece of shit?"
"Got a filthy mouth on you, bitch?"
"Still a hundred times better than having a filthy crotch like yours."
"What? For fuck's sake…"
Unlike the meek noble young ladies he was used to, she refused to lose a single word. At the sheer excess of her insolence, Lucas's face slowly hardened. From his position, the situation was absurd enough.
He had been in the middle of an important moment — tasting the woman he desired — when some complete stranger of a girl had crashed in, sabotaged it, and started spewing curses. If her face hadn't been pretty, he would have killed her on the spot.
"Do you know who I am? You're being awfully rude without a second thought."
"I don't know much, but I know you're the trash Hero. And that you're very close to the woman you were molesting."
"What? Are you friends with Darin?"
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"Huh?"
"She is Mandarin Bayern. My birth mother."
"…?"
At the unexpected bombshell, Lucas's expression went blank. The claim felt so wildly out of place that he failed to process it for a long while, until—
"What did you say?"
—he asked again.
"The woman you were harassing is my mother!"
To Piel it was the most obvious fact in the world, so she answered without the slightest hesitation.
But even after hearing that confident reply, Lucas's puzzled look did not clear. Darin's daughter? Did that mean Darin and Akael had already had a child together? But for that, she looked a little too old…
"How old are you…?"
"Why the hell are you suddenly asking my age? Twenty, you bastard."
"Twenty…?"
Lucas had roughly estimated Darin's age in the twenties. He had never properly checked, but a woman who looked, at the absolute highest, like a mid-to-late teenager did not seem likely to have left her twenties behind.
And Akael's age was exactly twenty-three. So how could a daughter of his be twenty? Artifacts that crossed time existed, but the only one of those was the Clock of Fate he himself possessed — and even he had barely ever used it.
"Hmm. As far as I know, Darin is still unmarried."
"Don't speak my mother's name with that filthy mouth. And she is already a married woman."
"A married woman? Did Darin get married the moment she was born?"
"What the hell have you been babbling about this whole time? Are Heroes selected for being lunatics?"
With a soft whirr, Lucas opened his subspace and drew out an artifact — the same one that had once determined whether Darin was a virgin and whether she had been raped.
"Say it again. Darin is your birth mother?"
Thud!
The criminal bastard's continued blank-faced questioning only stoked her temper. Piel drove successive punches into the Hero's solar plexus and face, then shouted:
"I already said yes, you rapist bastard!"
Beep!
The moment Piel roared at him, the artifact flared with green light — the opposite result from when he had used it with Darin. The claim he had dismissed as a nasty joke from some girl had been the truth.
"What the hell is this? Haa…"
Even while openly accepting the punches of the woman famed for her monstrous strength in the Bayorn family, the Hero did not shed a single drop of nosebleed. He merely rubbed his jaw and continued reasoning. The reason he had gotten angry just now was irritation, not pain.
"Wait. You look a little familiar…"
"What, you fucker?"
Thud! Thud!
Watching the face of the girl who was huffing and slamming her fists into his abdomen, he thought of the most infuriating person in the world.
Hold on. This girl has white hair and blue eyes too. Exactly like Akael.
The barbarian who had once been a party member and this girl shared a great many similarities. As far as he knew, white hair and blue eyes were the hallmarks of the Bayorn family. The late Viscount of Bayorn — Akael's father — had been the same.
"…Wait."
If this girl truly was Darin's daughter, and if that was to make any sense at all, then Darin had to be the wife of the Viscount of Bayorn — not Akael's wife.
But Darin was raped by Akael. That would mean she had sex with her own biological son, which doesn't make any sense…
More than that, if that were true, Darin's age would have to be at least forty, or close to it. And she looked like that? An ordinary human woman with no special abilities? It was absurd.
The more he thought, the more he reasoned, the deeper the identity of the woman called Darin sank into a labyrinth.
Asking her directly will be the surest way.
Lucas decided to return to the private chamber. The presence of the white-haired girl in front of him — Darin's daughter or whatever she was — was both irritating and intriguing, but it could not compare to his curiosity about Darin.
Just as he tried to ignore the white-haired girl and turn on his heel—
Fwoosh!
A flame javelin radiating fierce heat skimmed past his face.
"What do you think you're doing?"
"Where do you think you're going?"
"To your mother."
"You think I'll just let you?"
"…Haa."
The girl's excessive tenacity made Lucas's temper rise. Should he just kill her? No — she was rather delicious-looking, though…
Of course, from a daughter's perspective, watching someone try to fuck her mother would be enough to make her angry. But that was none of his business. The Hero wanted to resolve his curiosity at once and mix bodies with Darin. He had meant to let it go for today, but recalling the bare body of Darin he had just seen made it impossible to restrain his lust.
"Get lost while I'm still being nice. I don't want to waste any more time. Though, well — you're pretty enough yourself, so I'll fuck you later."
"In your dreams."
"…You've been spitting curses this whole time. You'd better start speaking more politely. I can tell roughly that you're a mage and that you're fairly strong, but I am the Hero. Strongest of humanity, got it?"
Had her guts spilled out of her belly? Some girl he had never even heard of, just because she could use a little magic, had nothing left in her eyes.
But Piel only sneered and kept goading the Hero. He was a monster beyond imagination, yes — but she had not shown her full power either.
"Scared?"
Looking at the girl who provoked him without pause, Lucas realized something.
If he did not crush this girl first, getting to Darin was going to be difficult.