14. Ventorino Kingdom - Fall or Collapse (10)
Valdes had certainly indulged himself to the fullest, but it was only after the night of fire had burned itself out that regret began to creep in. Dragging Alfonso into his bed in the heat of the moment was one thing. Filling Katarina so thoroughly that she ended up pregnant was another.
Neither of those had been part of the plan. In the end, he had simply acted on impulse.
The first case had at least a certain karmic justice to it. At the same time, it annoyed him. A ridiculous chain of chance had piled on top of chance until the whole thing happened. Mischief and impulse had mixed together and produced an outcome he had never expected.
In truth, if Alfonso had been so badly shocked that he looked dangerous, Valdes had even been prepared to erase the prince’s memories with magic. It would not have been easy to wipe them clean, but he could have dressed it up as a head injury and made it seem like a brief case of amnesia.
In the end, though, that had not happened.
Instead, Valdes had gained something rather troublesome.
"Lord Valdes!"
"Lord Valdes!"
"Lord Valdes!"
"..."
The young prince seemed to have lost his mind for reasons Valdes couldn’t begin to understand. With bright, shining eyes, he kept trailing after him, showering him with words of admiration and taking every opportunity to show affection instead of hatred. To Valdes, it was nothing but a burden.
"Alfonso."
"Yes, Lord Valdes!"
"I feel a little strange asking this, but are you... all right?"
"Huh? What do you mean?"
"...Never mind. Forget it."
"Yes, sir!"
Valdes let out a quiet sigh, unable to bring himself to speak plainly about the matter.
Before long, he decided that it was better not to think about Alfonso at all. If the boy himself was pleased, then what was there to complain about? As for being followed around like this, he could simply avoid him if he wanted.
A perfectly ordinary boy who couldn’t even handle mana would never lay eyes on Valdes if Valdes truly made up his mind. He didn’t even need to keep a close watch on his surroundings. For the prince to follow him around, after all, was supported by more than enough justification: he was his savior, the kingdom’s hero.
What Valdes didn’t know, however, was just how twisted Alfonso’s insides really were. That would trouble him a little later on—but only later.
What really matters is...
A woman’s face floated through Valdes’s mind.
Katarina Ventorino, queen of the Ventorino Kingdom.
Last night—no, this morning—he had grabbed hold of his returning sense and regretted it. Why had he impulsively gotten Katarina pregnant?
Before slipping out after tidying her room, he had checked on the queen, who was sleeping soundly from exhaustion. Inside her womb, a new life had only just begun to stir.
In truth, there had been no need to check at all. He had made her ovulate through the Mark, and he had poured his thick seed into her womb more than ten times over. It would have been stranger if she hadn’t conceived. Even so, Valdes had cast magic just in case, but the result had been exactly as expected.
Katarina... Katarina.
Faint lines formed between his brows.
Originally, Valdes had never intended to treat Katarina and Clara kindly. At first, he had approached them actively and gently only to win their interest and train them, but afterward he had intended to train them in the truest sense of the word.
What he had told the Great Witch before returning to the capital had not been a joke. His original plan had been to turn those two mother and daughter into his pets. How thrilling would it be to have Marc’s two most beloved women kneel before him like pets—or slaves—and obey?
But Katarina was different. Clara, perhaps, could still be one thing or another. Katarina, however, had become difficult. No matter what, he wasn’t the sort of brute who could mistreat a woman carrying his child.
That said, I can’t exactly erase it either.
"Tsk."
A sigh escaped him before he could stop it.
He was already worrying about what he would say to the other women—specifically the three women of Ulsro and Serenia. Ethylene and the other two would probably not be disappointed at all; if anything, they’d be delighted, thinking this might mean an opening for them.
...This is giving me a headache.
It felt like pure karma.
If he had been either fully human or utterly rotten, he wouldn’t have had to worry about any of this. In the end, the fault lay in his own half-hearted way of handling everything. From the beginning, this had been packed with signs that something like this might happen.
If that’s how you want to look at it, wasn’t Beatris the one who was at fault to begin with...
Unlike back in the Demon King’s castle, where he had spent so long grinding his teeth and piling up vengeance in his chest, he had forgiven her far too easily. Even though she had helped bring about his death, no less.
"Ugh, I really don’t know."
In the end, Valdes gave up on worrying about it.
He decided to leave the matters of later to his future self. Since things had already reached this point, he might as well think only about the positive side. Just as he had justified himself before that reckless thrusting spree, Katarina’s pregnancy could deal Marc a tremendous blow.
It would be a little troublesome to make him see it for himself, but Valdes considered that nothing more than another tool for tormenting him. He could already think of other long-term advantages as well.
There weren’t many, but they weren’t nonexistent either.
"Good. When I think about it properly, it’s not all that bad. Then now..."
Shall I set my sights on the next target?
A truly vile smile spread across the face of the half-demon who was hunting the kingdom.
If anyone in the Ventorino Kingdom were asked to name the most famous, most inseparable couple, they would all point to the same pair without hesitation.
Clara, the kingdom’s only princess, and Lloyd, heir to the ducal house.
Their love was so fierce that even the people around them found it hard to endure. Barely any time had passed since their engagement, and yet the two of them already looked like a pair destined by the goddess herself. A couple that made everyone around them feel secondhand pressure—and secondhand envy.
That was Clara and Lloyd.
And yet even this couple had once gone through an uneasy spell. It had happened not long ago. The irritability and shouting match that began on the day of the meeting attacked by demons had led to more than a few precarious moments.
Most of the blame for that had belonged to Lloyd, but even that was only half true at best. In reality, it had been Clara who had caused nearly all of it.
And yet Lloyd still loved her. Separate from that, though, stress was stress.
This young noble had his own method for relieving it. It cost a great deal of money, but he prided himself on its effectiveness.
That, in fact, was the one flaw people often pointed out in Lloyd, who was otherwise held in very high regard. His stress relief habit was simply too expensive. But aside from that, his virtues far outweighed the rest, and as a vigorous young man, he was more than worthy of admiration.
He loved his fiancée deeply. He hated brothels. He wasn’t especially lecherous, so he had little interest in adultery, and he drank only in moderation. He didn’t gamble, either. All the common vices of nobles were absent from him save for one.
Clara hadn’t been afraid to confess her exhibitionist tendencies to him for no reason.
Still, there had been a time when he’d worried things might fall apart. The mood would improve for a moment, only to sour again for reasons he couldn’t understand, and his fiancée would flare up in anger.
But autumn passed, and winter passed even faster.
"My love, Clara! Are you satisfied with the tour of the manor?"
"Of course, Lloyd! I love it!"
"Hahaha!"
Wasn’t he enjoying such a happy, delightful date right now?
It had already been days since they last fought. Lloyd firmly believed, without the slightest doubt, that this meant the brief cold spell had come and gone.
"As expected of the Antifeol ducal house. Even your capital mansion is this splendid."
"Haha. It’s all thanks to the royal family selling us the nearby land at a low price because our contribution to the capital’s reconstruction was so great, Your Highness."
"Oh, hohoho."
Clara laughed brightly at him, despite the polished, courteous tone of a proper young noble.
What he said was true. After the war ended and the capital was rebuilt, the Antifeol ducal house had contributed quite a bit of funding. In return, they were allotted part of the vacant land near the site where the original manor had stood.
Because of that, they were able to expand the property significantly, creating a vast mansion complex whose overall scale could not be matched by the royal palace, even if its individual buildings were smaller. Some portions were still unfinished, and the manor they were visiting had only recently been completed.
That was why Clara, who had never been here before, had come under the guise of a date to visit the brand-new manor while it was still warm from construction. There were still many empty rooms without a set purpose, but roughly half of them had already been furnished with all manner of furniture and belongings.
After sitting on the sofa in the guest room to rest for a moment, Clara said,
"I’m just going to... step out for a moment."
"Hm? Alone? Where to...?"
"Oh? Must you really ask?"
At her prim reply, Lloyd realized his mistake.
"Ah—right. Sorry. Go on, then."
He thought he must have gotten carried away and blurted something careless. If a woman spoke vaguely and then left the room, there were only two possibilities: either the place was unbearably uncomfortable, or she was heading to the restroom.
Since they were engaged and called a perfect couple, it obviously couldn’t be the first. That meant the second. And yet to ask where she was going at a time like this was a terribly stupid slip.
I’m still inexperienced in moments like this.
With Clara gone and himself left alone, Lloyd smiled faintly and muttered to himself.
Then he took a small, luxurious box from his coat.
The contents were obvious. A gift for his fiancée.
A jewel he had specially imported. It was an extremely rare and famous piece, purchased by his retainers at an auction in the Dezac Empire with money he had saved from the reduced stress-relief costs now that their relationship had improved again.
Its name was Eternal Whisper.
It was a jewel that shone with a soft white light, resembling Clara’s hair, and legend said that its radiance never faded. Because of that, it was often given as a gift between couples who hoped to grow old together, and Lloyd had chosen it for exactly that reason.
With a pleased smile, he gazed at the box he had prepared, then tucked it back into his coat and eagerly waited for the moment his fiancée would return so he could present it to her.
What expression would she make?
Just thinking about it made his whole body feel light.
But then.
"..."
Before he realized it, Lloyd had begun tapping his foot and glancing again and again at the clock hanging in one corner of the wall.
"...She’s late."
Twenty minutes had already passed.
For a simple trip to the restroom, that was rather a long time.
Could she have gotten lost?
He was sure his guess was right. This was her first time in the manor, after all. The place had only recently been completed, so there were many similar-looking rooms, and she wasn’t familiar with the layout. On top of that, there still weren’t many servants around.
I should’ve moved sooner.
With a little self-reproach, the young noble rose to his feet.
He didn’t yet know the manor’s entire interior by heart either, but at least he knew where the restroom was. If he searched from a nearby room and worked his way around, he was sure he’d find Clara.
And so Lloyd hurried off in search of his fiancée.
However, contrary to his expectation that he would find the princess again in no time, even after checking two restrooms he still couldn’t find so much as a strand of her hair. When he asked the servants he met along the way, not a single person knew where Clara had gone.
"That’s strange... where could she be?"
Lloyd was baffled.
Where had the love of his life disappeared to?
Could she have accidentally gone down to the basement he had built for stress relief? If so, that would be worrying. It wasn’t exactly a place that couldn’t be shown to others, but it was hardly the sort of place a delicate woman ought to see with her own eyes.
If she went in there and fainted from shock, he’d truly feel terrible.
...No, wait. That place is locked securely with a key, isn’t it? There’s no way she could’ve gone in there.
This newly built manor had been a betrothal gift from the Antifeol duke—Lloyd’s father. That was why he personally controlled the key, and as for the basement, not even the butler in charge of the manor had been given one.
That was when it happened.
"Haa... ahh... ngh..."
"...?"
An odd sound drifted to him from somewhere nearby.