13. Ventorino Kingdom - Germination (17)
Queen Katarina sat alone in her room, chewing at her fingernails with restless, nervous little bites.
It was a habit that surfaced when she was anxious, uneasy, or so strung out by stress that she could hardly bear herself. And the cause of that stress was usually her husband, Marc. More precisely, his infidelity, his wandering eye. Every time that happened, Katarina would take a lover in return, just to catch the king’s attention.
But this time, she couldn’t do that.
Valdes, why….
The reason she was biting her nails until they bled was Valdes — the man she was having that affair with.
It was the first time in her life she’d ever gnawed her fingers raw over an affair partner.
But by now, Valdes was no ordinary lover to Katarina.
He was the man she loved after her husband — perhaps even as much as her husband, or maybe more. He was the one who had made her remember, once again, the pleasures of being a woman and the happiness that could come with it. That alone made him completely different from anyone she had ever known.
And lately, Valdes had not been visiting her very often.
Katarina knew the reason all too well.
Clara….
The cause was her daughter.
Her own blood, Princess Clara Ventorino.
How absurd it was that the queen’s rival had become the princess.
She had only learned the truth a short while ago. In fact, even calling it “a short while ago” was ridiculous. She had seen it only moments earlier — her beloved affair partner entering the chambers of her beloved daughter.
That alone would not have been enough to make her suspicious.
What Katarina had seen was far more shocking than that.
The door had opened, and a woman had come out from the room to greet Valdes.
She had been naked, wearing strange and indecent accessories, crawling on the floor while speaking to him in a deferential tone.
“Haa…♡ Welcome, Master….”
And she had called him Master.
Of course, that woman had been her daughter, Clara.
After the initial shock passed, Katarina’s mind erupted into a chaotic tangle of thoughts, each one worse than the last, as if it were determined to give her even more headaches, more stress, more anger. In the end, after barely sorting through them, the final feeling that remained was this:
That despicable little thing….
She had a handsome, wealthy, courteous, well-bred fiancé who adored only her, and yet she had the nerve to go wagging her tail at another man. Katarina had never felt more contemptuous, more resentful toward her daughter.
“Hmph. You two were clinging to each other like your lives depended on it just because you didn’t have a fiancé… damned girl. You really did inherit your father’s blood.”
It wasn’t exactly the kind of thing she, of all people, should have said after having affairs with other men, but that only meant how much heat was boiling in Katarina’s chest. She didn’t even once consider the possibility that Valdes had been the one to approach Clara first. He had loved her so thoroughly, after all.
For the woman who had spent the last few weeks being shown a kind of love by the boy that she hadn’t received from her husband in the last ten years, it was unthinkable that Valdes had gone after another woman — let alone her own daughter — first.
Normally, she was so intelligent and so gifted at scheming, but this was the limit of a woman blinded by love.
…Then again, maybe he got as far as, ah, crunch…? No way…?
Suddenly, Katarina lowered her head. Then she looked down between her legs.
She had been ruled by lust and done all manner of obscene things, but in the end, she still hadn’t crossed the final line.
It was because of Marc.
The fact that she was a married woman, the fact that she already had a husband, and the fact that she still loved that husband had kept her from crossing that line. And to be fair, Valdes had taken particular care with that one matter. Katarina had always found it strange that he would push and press in every other way until he got what he wanted, yet on this point he was oddly considerate.
But now that she had seen Clara like that, unease began to gnaw at her.
Is he paying less attention because of Clara? Because she’s there anyway…?
She couldn’t shake the thought.
Even if she had checked that no one was around, to appear in a state so shameful, so humiliating, so utterly beyond embarrassment. To come and go so brazenly from the royal palace, no less. Unless they had gone quite far, it seemed impossible.
Of course, there was the opposite possibility too — that he might be allowing everything else, just not that one thing, and doing so subtly on purpose. Besides, Clara was a virgin, wasn’t she? He could hardly be unaware of the symbolic weight and importance that virginity carried for nobles and royalty.
And yet, she was still afraid.
If Clara was giving him everything, including her virginity, then what on earth could she possibly offer him in return? She was older, and she was married. She didn’t want to admit it, but if she looked at it plainly, the difference was obviously in Clara’s favor.
……
If she was going to lose no matter what she did, then what should she do?
The answer was simple.
She had to do anything.
And even knowing that, Katarina still hesitated and agonized. She did not move.
In a way, that was only natural.
Katarina’s pride bound her tight as iron. It was a pride she had spent years building, firmly and without interruption, with no one ever able to shake it. There were very few things in the world that could disturb it even slightly.
Not even her husband, Marc, had been able to move that pride. That was why she had never been able to reach out to him first, and had instead chosen the ridiculous expedient of taking a lover herself, hoping her husband would reach for her first, beg for her love first.
“Haa….”
And so the wounded queen’s night, full of hesitation, dragged on and on.
The time for making a decision was coming. Very quickly, too, because the date of Valdes’s, or rather the Ulsro delegation’s, return had already been set. In truth, the time they had spent here had not been short to begin with, given all the complications that had stretched it out. And now there was the unsettling mood spreading across the continent as well.
It was only right that they head back soon.
But the place where change had begun was not the Ventorino Kingdom alone.
Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!
Woooooong──!!!
In the wasteland near the border between the Ulsro Kingdom and the Dezac Empire, deep beneath the hidden dungeon of the Great Mage’s Dungeon — a place once occupied by the former tower master of the Imperial Magic Tower and one of the Hero’s former comrades — events were unfolding there as well.
“Ah?! …W, whoa….”
Vilma, the black mage who had been spending her dreamlike days happily reading magic tomes, studying papers, and advancing her research all by herself, now watched with shining eyes as the magical apparatus finally roared to life in earnest.
Unfortunately, because this wasn’t her field of expertise and she hadn’t had enough time, she still didn’t fully understand the facility. Even so, Valdes had helped her before leaving, and Irena had arranged for communication through a scrying crystal with Imur, the Elder Lich who was one of the Four Heavenly Kings of the Demon King’s army.
Thanks to that, it had been easy enough to twist the direction of the facility’s work just slightly and interfere with the Great Mage’s objective.
That result was now unfolding right before Vilma’s eyes.
Wooooong—!! …Crackle, crackle. …Bwoooom, KWAANG!!
“That’s insanely loud….”
As Vilma murmured, the machinery that had entered its final stage was absurdly noisy. Even so, she stared with glittering eyes at the female homunculus lying inside the glass tube.
And at last, the liquid in the tube drained away.
Flash!
And then she — no, it — opened its eyes.
“Hahaha!!! Success! It worked!! As expected, I am the genius of the century—gen—? Huh…?”
Laughing wildly with a grotesque expression that didn’t suit the face at all, Robert sensed something was wrong and looked around. Then he lowered his gaze and checked his own body. Finally, he stared at his reflection in the remaining liquid pooled at the bottom of the glass tube.
“W-what… Why am I….”
“It’s been a while, Robert.”
“…?”
At the sound of a woman’s voice from outside, the Great Mage, Robert, opened the tube with a blank look and stepped out. And there, he came face to face with Vilma.
“You… you are….”
“I don’t know whether you’ll remember me. It’s been twelve years already since the day Robert pretended to die.”
“…….”
Robert narrowed her eyes and glared at Vilma.
The woman looked to be no older than her late teens or early twenties. Twelve years ago, when she had disappeared, she would have been no more than ten. Faces from childhood often remained into adulthood, but Robert had paid little attention to the people around him while planning this for so long.
And yet, he remembered her.
Even if he had not, the instant he saw her, he would surely have recalled her. Her hair was a brilliant, glittering gold all over, and yet as it fell lower it turned a mysterious gray. Even when cut, it kept the same color transition, a strange trait that marked her uniquely.
There was no way he could have forgotten her.
It was a trait belonging to the highest of the high, to the imperial bloodline at the very top of the Dezac Empire.
“Wilhelmina de Desac, the First Princess….”
“Hehe. You do remember.”
“Was it you? You’re the one who tampered with my body?”
“That’s right, and not right.”
“You damned bitch…!!”
Burning with rage, Robert glared at Vilma as though he meant to kill her. In the past, he had lowered himself and spoken politely to the Emperor and the imperial family to hide his intentions. But all of that had been a lie.
She was a Great Mage who had reached the apex of her craft. Many knights and mages who stood at extremely high levels shared that same trait: they saw themselves as supreme and regarded even royalty and imperial bloodlines as laughable. On the surface they bowed their heads, but in their hearts they waited for the day they could place their betters beneath their feet.
Robert was even worse than most of them.
From long ago, she had been a woman with only magic as her sole talent.
Appearance, body, personality — nothing about her had ever been remotely decent. That was why, after growing old, she had plotted to change bodies. She had intended to be reborn in a body that was handsome, sturdy, powerful, and would inherit her magical talent and skill intact. She wanted to live a life completely different from the one she had led until now.
But the result had been a failure.
“I’ll kill you─!!”
Robert, brimming with fury, threw a punch at Vilma.
“Oh dear, how scary.”
Thunk!
“Ghk!”
But her strike was effortlessly blocked by the magical barrier Vilma had raised with a simple motion, without even a cast. If anything, the only thing that hurt was Robert’s own fist.
“Wh-why….”
Robert was baffled. Even if she hadn’t gone into the body she originally wanted, this body was still a homunculus. It had been something she had personally created for later use as one of her subordinates, so that much was certain. Naturally, an ordinary defensive spell like that should have been nothing more than a light obstacle for her fist to punch through.
“Do you take me for an idiot? Of course I tampered with this body too. I made it weak, weak, and weak again.”
“No… no way….”
Reality, which had been hidden from her by rage, came crashing down on her.
She had been placed into a body completely different from the one she had originally planned.
There was no strength, no stamina, no talent, no skill. Nothing. Even the sex was opposite. The only thing remotely similar was that, where he had once wanted to be handsome and dashing as a man, she was now handsome and beautiful as a woman. But that fact only made her more afraid.
“Why… why would you do this…? I, I only wanted to be born anew….”
Robert was in tears, his face full of despair. Her pretty appearance only made her look more pitiful, but Vilma answered with nothing more than a cold stare.
“...Then why did you do those things, Robert?”
“What?”
“I saw everything. What you had upstairs. And the documents listing your experiments.”
“…….”
“You really were thorough about collecting them, weren’t you? People.”
“Th-that’s….”
She fell silent. If Vilma had seen all of it, there was no excuse left.
For the sake of her goal, she had committed every forbidden spell and experiment imaginable. The fact that the woman before her was a black mage, and also an imperial princess, only made the impact that much greater. Most of the people she had collected were imperial subjects. Among them were slaves she had bought with money, but there were also commoners she had abducted for her research.
Think, Robert. Think… How do I get out of this situation….
Robert racked her brains desperately.
But nothing came.
Even as she felt it for herself, this body possessed not a trace of magical talent. And Vilma had said she had weakened even the homunculus body itself. That meant the only thing Robert could do was try to persuade her with words.
But Robert already understood, from the icy look in Vilma’s eyes, that such a thing was impossible.
“...What do you plan to do with me?”
Still, she had to try something.
So she asked her purpose. Why had Vilma awakened her, if not to kill her outright, or to simply let her die — why had she gone to the trouble of placing her in a weakened female homunculus body? If she was lucky, maybe there would still be some way out.
“I don’t know the details either.”
“What?”
“Unluckily for you, someone above me ordered this. Robert… ugh, this is annoying. Someone who bears a very deep grudge against you.”
“Don’t tell me… the Emperor? N-no, wait. You mean His Majesty the Emperor?”
“Ha! You don’t have to force such polite language. It only annoys me more.”
“…….”
“Well, it’s not my father. He’s actually… someone far more dangerous.”
Robert felt an inexplicable unease rising from Vilma’s smile.
And later, she would regret it. For not killing herself immediately upon waking.