The Empty Helmet
Author, have you lost your mind? How are you planning to clean this up?
He was furious enough to burst, but this was no time to sit around complaining. It was almost time.
The servant hesitated at the sudden stiffness on X's face.
"H-huh? What's wrong all of a sudden? Did I say something wro— wait, my eyes... so sleepy..."
The drug's finally kicking in.
The servant slumped against a tree and passed out cold. It had only been possible because X had laced the cigarette with the fast-acting sleeping powder he'd gotten from Luwendolin.
Gotta change. I've got a lot to check.
X stripped the servant at once and pulled on his clothes. Fortunately their builds were similar enough that it wasn't a problem. After hiding the man somewhere out of the way, X—now wearing the servant's face—returned to the manor. The ring stayed on his index finger.
Back inside, he decided to inspect the basement first. He'd meant to ask around among the other servants and maids, but a problem cropped up immediately.
"Hey, Demian! What took you so long?!"
The fact that Demian—the servant whose identity he'd borrowed—was the youngest of the young, the lowest of the low, came back to bite him. A man who looked like a senior servant strode up, seized X by the arm, and started dragging him.
"Guests keep pouring in and you're out here taking it easy? If the butler finds out, you're done—you know that?!"
"I had urgent business..."
"What could possibly be more urgent than attending to the guests?!"
The man hauled him along as if he were simply doing his job. X could have overpowered him easily, but a scene was the last thing he needed. He wrung out a roundabout excuse.
"A guest ordered me to bring that immediately, so I was in a bind. They told me I don't have the authority..."
"What? I told you to just talk them down and say no."
"They were extremely insistent..."
"Ah, hell, I'm swamped. Come with me."
The servant led X off somewhere. They headed deeper into the manor, the halls growing quieter, the security more menacing, until they arrived at a massive iron door.
So this is the basement.
Two soldiers in full plate stood motionless before it. Their visored helms hid their faces; it was impossible to tell whether eyes even gleamed within. As X and the servant approached, one of them spoke.
"Business?"
"We need a sample of the goods."
"Understood."
For a moment the thought flashed through X's mind: That easy? The next question erased it.
"On whose orders?"
The servant turned to X as well.
"Right—did you get this authorized? Without at least the butler's say-so, this is a problem."
Suspicious gazes multiplied from one to two to three.
"I'll ask again. On whose orders?"
Wariness bloomed in the soldier's gaze. The servant who'd come with him took a step away from X.
From here on, this isn't in the original or the setting notes. Now what?
X watched the soldier's sword slowly leave its sheath and ran the options. There were two.
Play it off as a rookie's mistake. The choice most likely to get him out of this. But it would make his objective harder, and if it went wrong he might get hauled to the butler and have his cover blown.
Or I could bluff like it's urgent. Risky, but it might get him into the basement. The problem was his current identity tanked those odds. And in the worst case, he'd make enemies of them.
Last resort...
He still had some of the fast-acting sleeping powder. He'd kept it for a worst-case escape.
Cleanup'll be a nightmare... but I'm out of time.
After a moment's thought, X decided to act.
"Actually, the guest who sent me on this errand gave me this..."
"Gave you what?"
As the servant and the soldier leaned in, X reached into his coat, uncorked the glass vial of sleeping powder, and swept it through the air, scattering the powder everywhere.
Fwoosh—!
The sudden ambush left the servant startled and flustered—which meant he inhaled it.
"What the hell are you— if you do something like this... you'll..."
He couldn't fight the oncoming drowsiness and collapsed.
Next, the soldiers...!
"Intruder!!"
The soldiers didn't panic at the scene unfolding before them. They drew their swords in an instant. They were a bit too far for the powder to put them under.
At least one of them!
Before they could set their stances, X hurled the glass vial. It shattered against the right-hand soldier's helm, scattering sleeping powder.
Crash—!
"Kh...!"
Whether from that or not, the soldier who'd taken the powder staggered. He'd ingested it—he wouldn't be able to resist for now. X immediately launched himself at the soldier on the left.
"Die!!"
A sword came down vertically, as if to split his skull. X recalled his hellish training under Roxwell.
I've taken this kind of hit until I was sick of it.
He twisted aside, slipped the blow, and seized the soldier's wrist and arm. Then he threw his weight backward as if falling, yanking the soldier's arm with him.
Lighter than I expected. I can do this.
His opponent couldn't react to the sudden grappling throw. As the soldier pitched forward, X used his rear foot as a fulcrum and flipped him clean over—the same shoulder throw Roxwell put him through day in and day out.
WHAM—!
The soldier slammed into the floor from midair. In that heavy armor, the impact should have been tremendous. Sure enough, the thrown soldier shuddered once, then went limp.
Fortunately, it was over. The one hit by the powder seemed to have passed out on his feet as well, standing in place.
"Hah... I need to hurry."
He had to check the keywords in the basement before anyone showed up. X used the key the soldier had been carrying to open the iron door. It was so massive he'd worried he wouldn't be able to budge it, but when he put his weight into it, it began to swing open.
That was when things went wrong.
Clank—
Behind him, armor shifted. Two sets of it.
They weren't unconscious?!
Sensing danger, X started to spin around—
Shing—!
"Kh...!"
A blade grazed past the side of his neck. A hair deeper and it would have severed his carotid.
"How...?!"
Had they been playing dead? That didn't fit—the throw had felt genuine. The one hit by the powder, maybe. But the one he'd slammed into the floor shouldn't have been getting up.
Then an odd detail clicked in X's mind.
Wait. Lighter than expected? In armor like that?
As if in answer, the thrown soldier's helm—its gorget knocked askew—slid right off. The moment he saw what was inside, X's vision swam.
"Ah, hell. Of all the things I had to run into..."
Inside the helm, where a human head should have been, there was nothing.
"They're golems...!"
They weren't people. They were golems that moved only as commanded.
"Commoner, when are you coming..."
Lola was having a miserable time of it. She was being tossed this way and that among noble young ladies of every age.
"I'm thinking of poisoning my fiancé. His standing is so shabby. All I need is the estate, anyway."
"These days, using demons leaves less of a mess than poison. Whatever happens, it's the demons who are the villains, right?"
"What do you all do if your child's talent is lacking? I don't want to raise some lowborn who can't even sense mana... Would smothering them with a pillow be better?"
Conspiracies more vicious than anything she could have imagined were unfolding right here. Everyone had hidden their identities so carefully that they were spreading these schemes without a shred of restraint.
How Lola had ended up among them was a little complicated.
I only joined in to gather information at first...
Once she realized how vicious the young ladies' talk was, she'd been so disgusted she tried to slip away. That was when someone tossed her a question.
"And you, miss? If you ever needed to get rid of someone, how would you do it?"
She couldn't ignore a question directed at her. But a topic like this hadn't even occurred to her. From the mush of her thoughts, the answer she barely wrung out to avoid suspicion was this:
"Frame them as a demon, maybe...?"
The young ladies were horrified.
"How could you even think something so wicked!"
"If it went wrong, your entire house would face a heresy inquisition!"
"Just how high-ranking a noble are you...!"
If X had heard it, he'd have thought, Isn't that a pretty common trick? But in this world, playing games with demons was a kind of taboo. Get it wrong and everyone involved went down together—the kind of madness that got people killed in droves. Even so, high nobles who could handle the aftermath had used the method in secret. Frame someone as a demon and you could have them executed without even needing a pretext.
What even happened just now?!
Lola, still a young noble, didn't know any of this complicated context.
What do I do...
She felt X's absence more keenly than ever—the way he somehow talked his way through anything. What kept her composed was her pride.
I'm the daughter of a count's house! I can't let myself get pushed around like this in high society!
Lola steeled herself. She cleared her throat once, and when the surrounding gazes settled on her, she asked calmly.
"Come to think of it, who recommended all of you? I was recommended by an old friend..."
"That friend—you wouldn't happen to mean me, would you?"
From behind Lola came a voice she did not want to hear. Every gaze turned to her back. Some of the ladies covered the mouths of their masks in shock.
Lola knew at once what they were looking at. Their eyes had climbed so high they were tilting their heads back, and more than that, that voice—seared into her memory—made it perfectly clear who stood behind her.
That someone took Lola's shoulder and spoke. The hand was the size of a pot lid. A palm so rough and trained it was hard to believe it belonged to a woman crushed down on Lola's shoulder.
"You're unwell—what are you doing out like this? After what I heard last time, I was worried sick. I even reached out myself to ask how you were."
The pressure in that palm slowly increased. Lola's confidence shrank as if it were being wrung out of her.
"You said you weren't coming then, too, and here you are anyway! I really did pick the right friend. It was getting a little lonely on my own, you know."
That someone turned Lola around to face her. With no way to resist that strength, Lola saw who stood before her.
A massive frame a full two meters tall. Hideous musculature covering her entire body. There was only one person in Lola's memory with that fearsome appearance.
Ma-Marlene...!
Marlene smiled strangely from behind her mask and asked.
"Why are you shaking like that? Are you unwell?"
Then she whispered, just loud enough for Lola alone.
Lola had only one thought.
Commoner, help me!!