Haps? Haps?! Haps! (3)
Phoenix? That's my son.
The Ludbekia Marchioness was indeed Regiph Hapsderk's mother, but that had nothing to do with why her words left me chuckling in disbelief.
"She didn't even run it by me first, and out of nowhere, she drops a bombshell that's spot-on true."
[She yelled it to protect that academy freshman Phoenix, but it looks like it didn't land right?]
I was eavesdropping on the scene through Kimpenril, but the Marchioness's outburst was borderline absurd. No, it was straight-up a tantrum. If it hadn't come from the Ludbekia Marchioness herself, anyone would've dismissed it as the ravings of a lunatic.
"What do you mean by that, Marchioness?"
See? Yurha Silverstar, the woman who'd once shared a brief connection with Regiph, was already calling her out.
"Are you saying you deceived me for ten whole years?"
"Huh?"
Something was off about Yurha Silverstar's tone. Her voice trembled with fury, laced with a deep sense of betrayal toward the Marchioness.
No way.
[She seems to want to believe it's true. How deep an impression did I leave on Yurha Silverstar?]
I didn't do much.
I'd just pulled off that ultimate traitor simp move, groveling like I was ready to hand over my entire family on a silver platter. Back then, my one burning goal was to wipe out House Hapsderk and break free from the incest curse, so I'd sweet-talked her with the mindset of a total sellout betraying his homeland.
Maybe to her, it had come across like a confession. Like a kid proposing by offering up his family at such a young age.
Her reaction suggested that "Regiph is actually alive" hit differently for her.
"Can you take responsibility for that statement, Marchioness Ludbekia? Or maybe you're just pissed that you, of all people, disturbed those memories of someone she holds dear."
"Of course, my benefactor."
"Um, excuse me. We, uh..."
The hunters who'd been trying to lure me moments ago backed off fast, tails between their legs, fading from the conversation's center. Just seconds earlier, they'd been declaring to the academy reps, "Phoenix is coming with us!" But now they sensed the bizarre turn and bailed.
"The guy who vanished ten years ago turns out to be Red Sol Phoenix?"
"That's right."
"Where the hell has he been active all this time? And Marchioness, did you know and keep it quiet?"
"No, that's not it. Truth is... I just found out myself."
The Marchioness responded to Yurha's grilling with a calm voice.
[Shouldn't we go stop this, nyang? It's getting messy.]
"Hold up. Let's see what excuse an S-rank grand mage has cooked up."
I had a rough guess, so I decided to let the scene play out.
[What guess?]
"Even if she knows he's not her real son, she's treating him like one anyway."
[Hmm...]
I didn't have solid proof of her true intentions yet, but claiming me as her son outright proved she wanted to protect me. The key was how convincingly she could tie it all together—how logical, rational, and plausible it sounded to everyone. That was up to the S-rank grand mage now.
"Truth is, my son got flung to another world ten years ago."
"......Huh?"
"Ten years ago, when blue flames raged and a massive monster appeared here. To save his family, the boy touched a forbidden ritual."
"A forbidden... ritual?"
"Yes. To eliminate the monster that devoured my husband, he even made a pact with a demon to protect us."
"What."
[This woman knows everything, doesn't she, nyang?]
"No way."
"Everyone. If you were there, you might remember. It wasn't public knowledge, but angels descended from the heavens back then too."
"Hold on, Marchioness Ludbekia. That means..."
"The Church of the Goddess ordered silence, but the angels' descent itself can't be hidden, right?"
Instructor Esta tried to cut in and stop the Marchioness, but she couldn't halt the "mother" steering the conversation.
"I'm not touching on what the Church cares about anyway."
"That's..."
"I have no intention of going there. Me."
Angels' descent. Back when Ratatosk's seal broke, countless angels had indeed come down from the sky. No matter how hard the Church tried to control info, they couldn't easily distort or manipulate the memories of those who'd witnessed it. Even if they used memory-erasing magic, they wouldn't dare mess with S-rankers' minds lightly. At best, they'd made an unspoken pact under the Church's name: keep it as an absolute secret, never to be leaked.
The secret the Church of the Goddess wanted buried: Who had those angels targeted upon descending? The mana beast Ratatosk, who was devouring people and rampaging? Or the one who'd made a demon pact to slay that beast, getting bombarded instead?
They hadn't seen the battle itself, but they could've inferred from the aftermath. The armored angels hadn't taken hits from some S-rank mana beast like Ratatosk—they'd been struck by something fundamentally antithetical to angels.
[This is risky, nyang? She's admitting her son made a demon pact.]
As Kimpenril said, the Marchioness was playing a dangerous card. Whether it was just to protect an academy freshman or because she truly believed I was her son—that was the question.
"My son lived in the demon realm for those ten years. He survived by the skin of his teeth, fleeing and enduring, until he finally escaped."
"Do you really think that sounds plausible?"
"But that's what happened, isn't it? She probably can't go into details. How he escaped the demon realm, I mean. Even he might not be able to explain it fully."
"...Hah."
Yurha let out a deep sigh.
"To be honest, the logical, rational take is that the Marchioness, grief-stricken over losing her son, is hallucinating and mistaking some unrelated guy named Red Sol Phoenix for Regiph Hapsderk—a classic case of delusion."
[That's harsh, nyang.]
"But it's a perfectly reasonable statement."
"Fine. Let's go with that."
[Huh?]
"What did she just say?"
"Plenty of people will keep hitting on Junior Phoenix from now on, and some will leverage their backgrounds to claim him. Better to have a massive shield like Marchioness Ludbekia than nothing."
[Whoa. She knows it's delusion and is playing along? Scary lady, nyang.]
"It's about the money. She controls it tightly now, but if I fell under another noble house's influence, it'd be trouble for her."
It was a pragmatic conclusion. Even beyond that, aligning here wasn't a bad move.
"He made a demon pact to save his family... Eh, it's been ten years, and the Church won't call it heresy. Like the Marchioness said, frame it as ten years of hellish suffering in the demon realm before barely escaping—that counts as tribulation enough."
[Are we getting played right now, nyang? They all know and are just pretending to fool you? Maybe they're matching stories assuming we're listening too, nyang?]
Even Kimpenril couldn't help but chuckle at the parlor's "Phoenix-into-Regiph" narrative.
"They might guess we're eavesdropping somehow, but they know zilch about the demon realm."
[Then what's this story even...?]
"In vulgar terms, it fits like a glove."
If "otherworld" existed in the Marchioness's mind, she'd have spun it as adventuring there for ten years before returning. In modern terms, it'd be a hunter isekai tale: a 7-year-old kindergartener pacts with a demon to save his family from a beast, grinds ten years in another world, then returns to Earth.
But her knowledge of otherworlds topped out at spirit realms or demon realms.
"Maybe she intuited it on instinct."
[How?]
"Your existence."
Thanks to Kimpenril, maybe she'd sensed the utterly alien mana leaking during Ratatosk's defeat—not "angel power," but special mana without it. Mana from another realm, nonexistent on the surface.
[Hrm...]
"If she claims I'm really Regiph, introducing you as 'thanks to her, I escaped the demon realm'—"
[I could materialize with zero issues, nyang?!]
Kimpenril's ears perked up, eyes sparkling.
[Then I'd be your lifesaver, so the Marchioness house sponsors my mint choco empire!]
"Hey."
[Might as well come out as the real deal and roll with it, nyang?]
"No."
I'd gone to all this trouble to dodge "Haps"—
[Your body has zero Hapsderk genes, not even 1mg. Why's that incest, nyang?]
"......"
[Chang Yeom told me, nyang. Your body's made of ether, but the genes in your current flesh are reconstructed from your 'original body.' Like plastic surgery, nyang.]
"......"
[So why's that make you 'Haps,' nyang?]
Haps. ...Maybe not?
[Anyway, you're not Haps, nyang!]
The truth? Whatever.
[Keep it our secret, zip our lips. Cumming Dream is truth, nyang.]
"Mm."
All for the love and joy overflowing in Cumming Dream.
"Anyway, not real Haps."