The Saintess's Trap
The knight’s puzzled question drew every eye in the waiting room straight to Damian.
Damian, who had been spouting nonsense, curled the corners of his mouth into a mischievous grin, clearly delighted.
“Oops. I forgot the name for a second there.”
The knight’s face hardened as he sensed something unnatural in the man’s far-from-normal demeanor.
Anyone who wasn’t a fool could tell.
The person standing before him was not the Damian he knew.
“You—!”
The knight who had spoken to Damian hurriedly stepped back and reached for his sword.
But he never got the chance to draw it.
A knight named Parman had already closed in from the side and seized his arm.
“Sir Parman?”
The startled knight’s voice echoed through the waiting room. Sensing they could no longer stand by, the other knights drew their weapons and assumed combat stances, eyeing Damian and Parman warily.
“Stop messing around. Do you want to ruin the mission?”
“Come on, people make mistakes.”
“When the mistakes keep piling up, it starts to feel intentional.”
“Fine, fine. I’ll just erase it. You and your old-man attitude…”
While the atmosphere around them grew thick with tension, Damian and Parman’s conversation remained strangely casual.
“You two are imposters! Reveal yourselves!”
“What have you done to the real Damian and Parman!”
The waiting knights drew their swords and encircled the pair, pressing them hard.
The moment their cover was blown during an infiltration, the mission was essentially over.
Yet the two imposters’ relaxed attitudes kept the knights from feeling any relief.
“Huh?”
But that lasted only a moment.
With a soft scrape, every knight who had drawn their blade slid their swords back into their sheaths in perfect unison, then silently returned to their seats.
They all shook their heads as if clearing cobwebs.
“Did I doze off? My head feels fuzzy.”
“You too? Same here. Must be the fatigue.”
For some reason, none of them remembered what had just happened.
Though they had somehow avoided the crisis in that bizarre situation, Parman glared at Damian and scolded him.
“You tend to put too much blind faith in your own abilities.”
“Isn’t it fine to trust them at this level? No matter what I do, I can just flip everyone’s memories and make it like it never happened.”
Even as Damian clapped his hands with a gleeful chuckle, no one paid him any attention anymore.
It was as if the two of them weren’t even in the room.
Parman felt something stroke his cheek and shot Damian a murderous glare.
It was a clear warning.
“Okay, okay.”
Damian wiped the smile from his face and clicked his tongue.
He had decided there was nothing to gain by provoking the man further.
“Besides, Geist has no offensive power. Aren’t you overreacting?”
At Damian’s grumbling, Parman snorted and took the seat in front of him.
This castle is constantly visited by archmages, aura masters, and high-ranking archbishops. No matter how stealthy Geist is as a mental-type spirit, there are plenty of people here who can detect it.
The voice rang directly inside his head rather than through his eardrums.
Just in case, Parman had used a telepathy artifact to convey his thoughts.
Damian waved his hand dismissively, fed up with Parman’s caution—using telepathy to read the room and criticize his carelessness.
We could wipe out every human in this castle if we wanted. What’s the problem?
Despite his words, Damian’s telepathic reply carried a hint of challenge.
The problem is that it won’t be that easy.
“What?”
Parman slowly turned his head and scanned their surroundings.
As expected, thanks to Damian’s mental-type spirit Geist, no one was paying them any attention.
We’ve infiltrated many places before, but have we ever had this much trouble getting close to the target?
Not never, but…
No, never to this extent.
Really?
Yes. Marquis Lawrence is a meticulous man. He only allows designated personnel into his private residence, and even if a guard is on familiar terms with him, he personally inspects them at set times. If we were to be inspected by him, are you confident we wouldn’t get caught?
“Hmm…”
Whether they would be caught or not depended entirely on how the inspection was conducted.
Yet Damian’s reaction suggested he wouldn’t mind even if they were discovered.
If we get caught, we just flip their memories. If that doesn’t work, we kill them.
It was a radical but highly effective solution.
However, Parman could not agree with that approach.
Don’t forget. Our target isn’t Marquis Lawrence—it’s the girl named Ibril. There’s no need to increase the risk unnecessarily. There’s still far more to Marquis Lawrence than what the public knows.
Why are you so worried today?
At Damian’s mocking tone, Parman shook his head.
In the end, to heighten Damian’s vigilance, he brought up something unexpected.
Before we infiltrated the lord’s castle, I observed Marquis Lawrence from a distance.
And? Did you sense something extraordinary?
No, not that.
Then?
Our eyes met.
“Huh?”
Damian had expected some grand revelation, but when he learned it was simply because their eyes had met, he looked utterly dumbfounded.
I make eye contact with hundreds of people every day?
It’s not like that.
But as Parman continued, Damian’s brow furrowed deeply.
It was the look of someone who had found exactly what he was searching for. That sticky smile directed at me… you wouldn’t understand unless you experienced it.
…Isn’t it just a coincidence?
I hope so. But I can’t seem to forget that look in his eyes.
Only then did Damian understand Parman’s reaction.
Of course, it was likely an overreaction, but in this line of work, one could never completely dismiss intuition.
Never mind. I think I was being overly sensitive.
Still, I’ll be as careful as you said.
Thanks to that, Damian had become a little more cautious, so Parman’s plan could be considered a success.
They shook off the unnecessary emotions and waited for the right moment.
-Wiiiiiiing!
“It’s time!”
A short while later, the moment they had been waiting for finally arrived.
* * *
-Intruders detected in the east wing!
“Deploy immediately!”
The intruder alert sounded from the situation room, and the waiting team leader ordered deployment. Twenty knights, including Damian and Parman, hurriedly left the waiting room.
Since the east wing of Marquis Lawrence’s castle housed the lord’s office and bedroom, the knights sprinting down the corridor looked extremely urgent.
But only Parman and Damian were thinking something entirely different.
Just as planned.
The current intruder situation was an operation designed to let the waiting team they belonged to penetrate deep into the lord’s castle.
“The intruders are five expert-level assassins armed with force daggers! His Lordship and his guards are currently engaged with them!”
“Damn it! Force daggers?!”
Force daggers referred to force swords developed specifically for assassins.
Unlike regular force swords, they couldn’t perform long-range attacks, but they were cheaper and displayed comparable power at close range, making them a favorite among high-ranking assassins.
Naturally, ordinary knights without vanguards would find them extremely difficult to handle.
“The east wing waiting team should already be there! We’ll support them and cut off the assassins’ escape route!”
While the support team’s attention was entirely focused on the lord—
The target is staying in the last room at the end of the east wing near the lord’s office.
Damian and Parman slipped away from the group.
However, the knights under the influence of the mental-type spirit treated the two as if they didn’t exist and paid them no mind.
The soldiers guarding the perimeter tilted their heads at the pair’s sudden behavior.
But since the other waiting knights remained silent, the soldiers simply assumed it was part of some operation and didn’t think much of it.
Damian curled his lips in satisfaction, while Parman breathed a huge sigh of relief that everything was proceeding without a hitch.
-Kwaaaang! Kwaang!
They passed the lord’s office where the intruders were noisily fighting and reached their destination.
-Bang!
The girl whose name was being mentioned everywhere as a saintess candidate, riding on the popularity of Adrian Lawrence—Ibril Barnet.
She stood in the corner of the room with a terrified expression, accompanied by only two female guards.
“What is this? Sir Damian, Sir Parman. Aren’t you part of the waiting team? Why are you here instead of protecting His Lordship?”
“We heard that the holy knights had withdrawn and that security here was insufficient. So we came to provide support.”
However, Ibril’s guards did not take Parman’s words at face value.
They summoned their aura and equipped their vanguard gear.
“Within the castle, no one may approach Lady Ibril except those designated by His Lordship. Her additional escort force will arrive shortly, so you may leave.”
They were quite capable guards.
Even in the middle of a crisis, they maintained such sharp judgment.
In the end, Parman let out a sigh and drew his sword.
The aura blade that formed along its edge gleamed.
“An aura blade?”
“Y-you bastards are the assassins!”
An aura master in this situation? The two vanguard guards protecting Ibril swallowed dryly.
No matter how excellent vanguard equipment was, it was impossible for just two of them to defeat an aura master.
Moreover, they couldn’t ignore the existence of Damian, who stood behind Parman wearing an unpleasant smile.
Parman, aura blade drawn, leaped forward, and the two guards desperately swung their force swords.
-Clang!
But a sudden, crushing headache washed over them, and strength drained from their legs.
Forced to their knees by an unknown power, their attacks came to nothing.
“Ugh!”
Thanks to that, Ibril was left completely exposed before the aura blade.
“Lady Ibril!”
“No!”
The force armor had helped them resist the spirit’s mental attack, but it was too late to block the aura blade.
-Kwaaaang!
“W-what?”
Yet what happened next was completely unexpected.
“Ugh!”
Ibril, who had been an ordinary girl until recently and was now a saintess candidate…
Not only had she dodged an aura master’s strike, but she had also driven a slender fist into the enemy’s side with a body blow.
Everyone wore stunned expressions.
Damian, Ibril’s two guards—everyone.
But the one who had taken the hit, Parman, gritted his teeth and shouted.
“It was a trap! This isn’t the real one!”
At Parman’s cry, Ibril pulled a longsword from the folds of her voluminous skirt.
“Ah…”
A pure white aura blade formed along the sword, and Ibril’s figure blurred as if being erased by a rubber.
“Your Excellency Count Klein!”
The name the guard knights shouted in reverence.
It was none other than Adrian’s companion and the sixth aura master of the kingdom.
Arsia Klein.
“Did the plan leak?”
“More like they noticed it.”
Then the balcony door connected to the room opened, and another figure appeared.
It was Adrian, who should have been under attack by the intruders.
“Our eyes met, remember?”
“……”
When Adrian smiled and adjusted his glasses, both Parman and Damian bit their lips.
But it didn’t last long. Cracks appeared on Damian’s face, and he burst into loud laughter.
“These guys really thought they had won.”
Just like Arsia had done earlier, the appearances of the two intruders began to change.
“Can’t be helped. Let’s go with the second plan, Gregory.”
“Looks like we have to, Auguste.”
A man who looked like the color black given human form, and a clown whose eyes and mouth corners were torn long with visible madness.
Those were the true appearances of Parman and Damian.
“No one who has seen our real faces has lived to tell the tale. Sadly, it seems hell will descend upon this place today.”
The black-clad man’s declaration-like statement.
At the same time, an explosive aura incomparable to before erupted from them, and the man who had been disguised as Damian summoned a blood-red spirit that looked like a ghost.
Faced with the enemies’ transformed appearances, Adrian and Arsia should have been flustered, yet…
“Whoa, that’s seriously cool. What do you think, Arsia?”
“Chuuni syndrome.”
The two of them watched with expressions as if they were enjoying a movie, openly showing interest.
Was this the composure of the strong?
Unfortunately, among all those who had shown such an attitude before, not a single one had survived their grasp.
“Gregory Hayden. Auguste Knox.”
“W-what?”
“I didn’t know the organization that only appeared in fairy tales actually existed. Isn’t that right, Blue Moon?”
“……”
But Adrian’s following words made the two confident men flinch in shock.