65. A Beaming School Trip
65. A Beaming School Trip
The Empire was vast, and its enemies were many.
And dealing with those countless scattered foes one by one was a thoroughly exhausting affair, even for the Empire.
If only they came solely from the east, troops could be dispatched there. If they started rebellions only in the south, a Hero could be sent there.
But when cultists struck from the east, terrorists from the south, demonic beasts from the north, and other races from the west all at once, even the Empire grew weary.
On top of that, if rot set in from within, the Empire's collapse would be inevitable.
Therefore, the royal study of kingship passed down since the First Emperor meticulously detailed methods to at least avoid crumbling from the inside.
And one of those was to toss out a single royal as bait, managing the risk by keeping it at a controllable level.
*
"Oh my. Why are you looking at me with that expression?"
"You vicious bitch. You've been deceiving us for five years."
"Deceiving? This was merely management. Keeping you all at a level I could control, for the Empire's sake."
"That's the same thing. You've always intended to purge us, haven't you."
"Purge? Please do not use such a violent term. If you had not harbored treasonous thoughts, you and I would have maintained a good relationship until the moment His Highness Leon stepped down. If I had to compare this situation to something... yes. Shall we call it pruning?"
At her nonchalant attitude, blood rushed to the Marquis's face, and a spear materialized in his hand.
Following the Marquis, weapons appeared in the hands of the other nobles, too.
However corrupt they were, a noble was still a noble.
They possessed enough military force to maintain power over countless people.
No, given they had plotted treason, one could even say they were fairly confident in their strength.
Yet despite the many weapons aimed at her, her demeanor didn't change.
"Oh my. Since I'm not taking the drugs willingly, do you mean to force-feed me like this?"
"..."
"Or perhaps, if I willingly shovel the drugs into my mouth... no, this doesn't feel like an atmosphere where I'd be forgiven."
Mana gathered at the tips of their weapons.
At a level just enough to cripple, not kill.
Of course, a direct hit in the wrong spot would send one to the grave, but they weren't in a position to worry about such things now.
In this hair-trigger standoff, Zeke stood as if shielding her from the nobles.
Having concluded that reaching her required taking down Zeke first, they raised their weapons' output a little more.
That was their fatal mistake.
"A philosopher once asked."
- 'There was a jester whose skill at puppetry had reached an art form. He attained a state where his hands were the puppet, and the puppet was his hands. Upon hearing this, a question arose in me. If, then, the puppet came to control the man, could anyone tell the difference between the two?'
"I'd like to hear your opinions on this question."
Red threads caught on Pia's fingers.
And threads of the same color caught on the napes of everyone in the banquet hall.
The threads stretched high into the sky and were severed midway.
By the time the nobles sensed something wrong with this spectacle, Pia's fingers had already begun to move.
Rattle, rattle.
The external pressure trying to control their bodies and the resistance fighting that control interlocked, making their weapons rattle.
As sword points and arrowheads turned toward the people beside them, or toward themselves, their trembling grew worse.
"You demonic bitch!!!"
To mask his terror, one of the nobles squeezed out his voice.
But all that returned was a merciless sneer.
"The choice to aim that mana at me was entirely yours, wasn't it?"
At her attitude, as if saying they wouldn't have had reason to be this afraid had they not charged their weapons with mana, the nobles shut their mouths.
More precisely, their mouths were shut for them.
"Now, then. Shall we begin the highlight of tonight’s banquet? [Curtain Call]."
*
Amidst the screams and roars of the crowd, a woman walked between them, her heels clicking all the while.
She was a conductor, a director, and a spectator.
Blood scattered like flower petals as those who had been sharing drinks moments ago killed one another.
Countless weapons performed the most brutal concerto in the world, following the conductor's hands.
Yet among them were weapons that defied the conductor's control.
A prime example would be a blind-fired arrow.
But the seasoned conductor had prepared even for that.
Her stalwart bodyguard batted away blind attacks with his massive steel armor.
"Thank you, Zeke."
- Aaaagh!
- Darling, why?!
- Son! What are you doing?!
- Brother! Stop it!!
Screams and the sounds of cold steel formed a harmony as the concerto reached its climax, and as the encore finally approached, the conductor murmured softly.
"Quartet."
Four nobles remained.
He was a great wizard who had lived through countless battles.
They split into two pairs and aimed their weapons at each other.
"Duet."
Two remained.
Once again, they aimed their weapons at each other.
These two were once comrades who stood back-to-back in the Sanctuary.
Schlk.
As the Marquis's spear pierced his comrade's chest, the comrade collapsed with a face contorted in horror.
"Solo."
The Marquis staggered to his feet.
She approached the final survivor to congratulate him.
He was already in a daze, as if unable to believe he had butchered his family with his own hands, but denied even the freedom to collapse, the Marquis could only greet the princess standing rigidly at attention.
"Hello? Can you hear me?"
"..."
"The shock must be immense. Since you drugged even your own son to use as a puppet, I assumed there was no affection, but it seems you had some after all, didn't you?"
"..."
"Ah, or perhaps you merely served as the cultists' drug pipeline, and your son came into contact with it by accident?"
"..."
"Hmm. How boring."
The truth, it seemed, would remain forever unknown.
Repeating this to herself, she turned her back on the Marquis.
A voice came from the mouth of the Marquis she’d thought broken.
"... Are you pleased?"
"Pardon? What do you mean by that, all of a sudden?"
"I asked whether you are pleased to have disposed of us like this after we humiliated you for five years."
"A foolish question. You seem to be asking if I'm currently feeling catharsis, but isn't catharsis only possible when one bears a grudge? I am the one who set you on this stage for the past five years, so where in that would I have room to bear a grudge?"
"Indeed... it was a foolish question... It was wrong from the start. The moment I came to offer you patronage, no, it had gone wrong even before that. Hahaha..."
The Marquis laughed hollowly.
Hahahahaha.
His dry laughter grew steadily wilder.
Heuhahahahaha!!!
By the time his dry laughter became a shrieking cackle, the Marquis’s neck jerked sharply to the side.
It was the reaction typical when a manipulated puppet's strings were cut.
The Marquis wasn’t the only one whose strings had been cut.
The strings connecting to every noble still linked were all cut at once.
Pia frowned at the suddenly severed threads.
While she retrieved the severed threads, the Marquis whose strings had been cut rose limply.
With his neck drooping and joints moving unnaturally, he resembled a puppet moved by an unskilled jester.
"My, my. How do you manage to control something like this so well?"
A voice slightly older than the Marquis’s came from his mouth.
"It's been a while, Archbishop. It's been a few months since our last game of chess, hasn't it?"
"You call that chess? The thing where you flip the board the moment things go wrong?"
"If you put it that way, I can only give you the same answer again. Reality is not a game of chess."
"... I shan't play another round with you."
Their conversation was surpassingly familiar, as if between old friends.
They spoke with such natural familiarity that anyone would have been shocked to learn they had met only once before and that only one of them had known the other beforehand.
The old man addressed as Archbishop continued speaking through Marquis Vandel’s mouth.
"To spurn the goodwill we had prepared for you like this—I am somewhat hurt."
"In what way is getting drunk on narcotics and sinking into debauchery 'goodwill'?"
"Humans are foolish creatures. They claim to be rational, but in truth they waste so much hating one another. Is it not goodwill to give such beings a chance to cast aside their pretentious reason and unite in harmony?"
At his words, Pia tilted her head.
The first thought that came to her was, For someone saying that, just this afternoon, addicts were grabbing innocent people and picking fights—but she didn't voice it.
Attempting rational persuasion on a fanatic was as much a waste of time as expecting logic from a drug addict.
Moreover, someone of the Archbishop's level wouldn't be convinced even if you split his head in two.
"Yes, yes. I understand. I've a rough grasp of your doctrine, but I have no interest in that sort of thing. So I must bid you farewell now."
"Farewell? You're leaving already?"
"Regrettably, yes. It's about time for the knights sent to fetch me to arrive. I would've liked to see the Archbishop's face in person at least once, but that will have to wait for another time."
"Heh heh. There's no need to be so disappointed. After all, we'll be meeting soon."
"You don't mean to visit me, do you? If so, you're welcome. The knights will treat you most hospitably."
"No. I am inviting you."
A magic circle appeared beneath Pia’s feet.
Before she could even react, her vision flipped.
As she staggered from the instantaneous translocation, someone lunged at her from behind.
Thwack!
Her loyal bodyguard, who suffered no motion sickness, caught her.
"Thank you, Zeke."
Having barely recovered from the motion sickness, Pia immediately assessed the situation.
Members of the imperial family carried anti-translocation magic tools for precisely this possibility.
Therefore, for a translocation so swift and forceful that it could ignore even such tools to occur, an immense amount of mana was required—or—
"They used the nobles as materials for forbidden arts."
Those intoxicated by the cultists' drugs become puppets who follow only their orders.
Likely, the nobles on the ship had willingly offered their own lives as the price to translocate her here.
'Would the knights be surprised?'
When they reached the ship, they'd find no princess, only the nobles who had killed themselves and traces of forbidden arts.
The officer in charge was probably on the verge of tears at the thought of writing the incident report.
With such idle thoughts, she hooked threads back onto her fingers.
She couldn't tell where this place was, but given the Archbishop said they'd be 'meeting soon,' it wasn't hard to deduce this was his stronghold or some equivalent location.
Still, with the location unknown and knights unlikely to arrive here in time, she had to protect herself.
Just then, the sound of countless footsteps drew nearer to where she stood.
"The board's been overturned. It feels like such things have been happening quite often lately."
She smiled and draped threads over the ceiling.
As the door opened and cultists rushed in, her hand swept downward, and the ceiling collapsed.
*
"Oh my. This might actually be a crisis. Don't you think, Zeke?"
"..."
Contrary to her words, Pia's voice, utterly devoid of urgency, echoed through the small room.
Zeke's body, in contrast, was already in tatters as he received her words.
Seeing him like that, Pia erased her smile for the first time and looked at him with sympathy.
"There's no need to be sorry, Zeke. I contracted with you for personal reasons. You've more than fulfilled your role."
Creaaak— nod.
With his body in tatters, the armor laboriously responded to her words.
Pia gave a bitter smile, looped threads around her fingers again, and assessed the situation.
Immediately after the translocation, she had joined Zeke to unilaterally overwhelm the cultists, proving the title of Duke wasn't given for nothing.
But the problem was Zeke.
Her familiar still was not strong enough to keep up with her.
The Archbishop and the cultists seemed to notice as well, and shifted their attacks from Pia to her familiar.
Unable to bear losing him in a place like this, when Zeke was in danger, she pulled the pre-placed threads all at once to collapse walls and ceilings, buying time.
What she realized while hiding was that this place, presumed to be the cultists' base, was underground.
It made sense for an organization of this size to hide underground, but as the person who’d been teleported there, Pia couldn’t help complaining about the limited escape routes.
'The exit was blocked by them...'
And this small room was in the most remote corner.
It would take them time to find her, but once they did, it meant the distance to the exit would be that much farther.
As she was devising a clever plan to break through the situation, she heard footsteps and doors opening in the corridor.
The sound of doors banging open started at the end of the hallway and gradually closed the net around her.
As their footsteps drew near, doors opening one by one, she wordlessly returned Zeke to a pocket dimension.
'Fighting directly on the front line wasn’t my style... but I didn’t have a choice.'
Her threads slowly drifted down.
Not through the ceiling, but deep beneath the earth.
The thread stretched further down and further down, until it reached the place people called the Dragon Vein.
'I’d have to apologize to Father and my big brother...'
The door to the next room opened, and just as she was about to pull her thread, the ground began to tremble.
Not from the underground where she had cast her threads, but from the surface above.
"?"
Boom! Boom!
The trembling began above and gradually approached where they were.
And after the ground tremors repeated several more times, accompanied by the sound of the room's ceiling caving in, a voice that had no business being there was heard.
"Surprise, mother fxxkers."
Before the cultists could even answer, the sound of Allen viciously beating something resonated.