If I'm Wrong, I'll Be Your Slave
If I'm Wrong, I'll Be Your Slave
The Viscount of the North — an early-game super-boss. The scenario that unfolds inside his stronghold is Chapter 2.
It's a chapter steeped in danger. The final boss himself appears, but the scenario's true character lies in the creatures infesting the Northern Margrave's household.
First, the mid-boss: Hermann Pierce, late 4-Star.
Second, the strongest woman in the North: Yergina Pierce, on the cusp of 5-Star.
Third, an existence shrouded in utter mystery: Allicia Pierce.
And finally, the fourth — a 5-Star breakthrough heroine: Sharon Pierce.
This is a land where foreign forces pour over the northern mountains practically every day, and even the ruler's own children are uniformly exceptional warriors.
Collect proof that the Northern Duke is connected to the Blood Rock Sect in a place like this?
Players abandoning everything just to hide and stay alive — at first glance, that's the only rational move this scenario allows.
That doesn't mean there's no way to clear it with all your limbs attached.
After dying over and over and throwing yourself at it, you start to understand.
When too many predators are stuffed into one cage, they end up baring their fangs at each other.
In short: the enemy of my enemy is my ally.
Once you grasp that, the scenario's difficulty sinks from "flatly impossible" to "manageable if you scrape and claw hard enough."
Sharon Pierce, naturally, was one of the predators in that cage.
But Ian had no intention of using her.
◆
Cellos and violins wove their melody beneath the soft glow of candlelight.
Smooth yet buoyant with the three-four liveliness of a waltz, the music guided figures in ornate dress across the floor.
One pair drew particular attention.
The ducal house's youngest daughter, Sharon Pierce, and the Third Imperial Princess's man, Ian Blackangus.
The crowd's eyes gathered on them partly because of the young lady's ice-sculpture beauty and the young man's extravagant title — but there was another reason.
— Tap
— Tock
Dancing is, by convention, something the man leads. Yet here, the man was unmistakably being pulled along.
Ian sank into his own thoughts.
At this rate, preserving the impression of "the Third Imperial Princess's man" was a lost cause.
He needed to establish that he had come here for social purposes — that would clearly widen his freedom of movement going forward.
'Dancing is a one-on-one fight, she said.'
Karen's advice surfaced in his mind.
The memory struck him as a touch exaggerated, but the core insight was probably sound.
Gaining the upper hand in a disadvantaged one-on-one fight was always about psychological warfare.
Ian prodded Sharon as her feet traced elegant arcs in time with the music.
"You're good at this. Have you trained in dance separately or something?"
Sharon deftly evaded Ian's foot as it encroached onto her line.
Her brow smooth, she parted her lips.
"What exactly is your reason for coming all the way to the North?"
"To dance with you?"
— Clack
Ian narrowly evaded Sharon's heel.
"Can't take a joke, I see. We did receive a commendation together, after all."
"Your manner of speech has grown as frivolous as the title 'the Imperial Princess's man' would suggest."
The corner of Ian's mouth lifted.
"I'd prefer you call it composure rather than frivolity."
"Spare me the word games and answer. Why did you seek me out?"
"Sharon Pierce."
"?"
"You ask why I sought you out? You've got a much stronger sense of self-importance than you realize."
A faint crease appeared between Sharon's brows for the first time.
A strong sense of self-importance — what was that supposed to mean?
Was he implying she had been deluded into thinking all of his actions had been aimed at her?
No. That was no delusion.
Him and his curses — every single one of those actions had unmistakably been directed at her.
"Self-importance. Don't talk nonsense. You were always at my heels, always —"
"I was at your heels?"
Before anyone noticed, the music had reached its midpoint.
Across the ballroom, the women spun a full circle around their partners in unison.
Sharon, too, circled around Ian.
She took in every facet of him.
As vividly as she had been observing him all along.
"That's probably because you, Sharon, were looking only at me."
"What absurd —"
"When I confessed to you, I also confessed to three other people at the same time. At the Median women's dormitory, I simply happened to be there by coincidence. The disciplinary committee ruled that you and the other girls had picked a fight with me. At the rank assessment, all I did was show the results of my own effort."
"Th-that's —"
"Now then. You answer, Sharon Pierce. Why do you think I came looking for you? Do I even have a reason to? Why are you convinced that everything I do revolves around you?"
Sharon's steps faltered for an instant.
Ian seized the opening and slipped into the dominant rhythm she had been riding.
"...Ngh."
But Sharon recovered almost immediately.
She rested on the off-beat for a moment and smoothly reclaimed her flow.
"...Damn."
Ian sighed under his breath.
Sharon's eyes flashed a piercing blue.
"You really haven't changed, Ian Blackangus."
"......"
"You throw out absurdities to sow confusion and dodge the issue. All while scheming something filthy behind the scenes."
"That just now was a mistake. But Sharon Pierce, let me give you one piece of advice."
"I have no need of advice from the likes of you."
"Hear me out anyway. You think that everything you've seen, everything you've heard, everything you've felt — you think all of it is the truth."
"It isn't."
"What do you mean, it isn't? Look at your brother. He doubts everything, and then he circles back to look again. Now, what about you?"
"Don't you dare compare me to that waste of flesh."
"Even while you're being trampled by that same waste of flesh?"
"The reason I even came out here tonight was, in my own way —!"
"Your family situation is none of my business. But do you have any idea why I'm so calm and self-assured right now?"
"What drivel..."
Ignoring her, Ian pressed on.
"It's because this isn't a place you can hide. Sharon Pierce, within your own house, you don't frighten me at all."
Sharon's breathing grew ragged.
But Ian did not trespass into her space.
Instead, he gently supported her lead from behind.
Thanks to the music cresting into its highlight, it didn't show.
Sharon's hand twitched.
"Are you mocking me? Ian Blackangus?"
"Angry? I was helping you out that time."
"I will never trust you."
"I never asked you to trust me. I'm just telling you to open your eyes properly. Like that girl, Rina Rosewell."
"Rina Rosewell? Why are you bringing up that name here?"
Ian pointed with his gaze toward a woman dancing at an expert level far across the room.
"Why is Rina Rosewell here...?"
"That girl made an effort to see the truth. And in the end, she's with me."
"...She's nothing but the traitor who abandoned us at the disciplinary hearing."
"Hm."
Ian caught his breath through a complicated sequence of steps, then spoke.
"Alright then, Sharon Pierce. Let's make a wager."
"A wager?"
"Yes, a wager. Let's hear what you'd be prepared to do if everything I've said turns out to be true."
"I've never entertained such a thought. Because you can't possibly be right."
"I'm just saying, let's suppose."
Sharon, who had been silently glaring at Ian, etched a thin sneer onto her lips.
"I would kneel and apologize. And then I would follow your every command."
"Follow my commands — are you saying you'd swear an Oath of Submission?"
The Oath of Submission. A magical covenant that engraves one's standing beneath another's existence. A fearsome pact in itself, but the reason for its infamy lies above all in the ceremony through which it is sealed.
It is a ritual performed kneeling and bowing without a single thread upon your body, signifying that you have nothing left to hide.
In other words, it means total humiliation.
"!"
Murderous intent flickered in Sharon's eyes.
A raw, unrefined chill surged out with enough force to freeze Ian's hand solid.
But.
— Ba-bamm!
The trumpet blared, flooding the ballroom with the first piece's most intense final measure.
In the fleeting instant when Sharon drew breath to speak,
Ian extended his right foot far out.
Using it as a pivot, he drove his weight into the axis.
And yanked Sharon toward him with all his strength.
"...!"
Sharon's eyes flew wide at the sudden brutal force.
She was already in a state of confusion, tangled in her own thoughts.
Ian's abrupt, unscripted action collapsed her center of gravity.
Even if it was the musical highlight, who in the world pulls their partner with full force like that?
"Ngh."
She tried to drag her leg back immediately and brace herself.
But Ian's left foot swept away her center of gravity,
"Hk."
and he caught her waist with his left knee as she fell onto it.
— Ba-baaaamm!
The music ended.
Every gaze in the hall converged on Ian and Sharon at its center.
— Clap, clap, clap, clap!
Applause filled the banquet hall.
"As if they meant to devour each other... Truly a magnificent dance."
"For a moment I thought the two of them were having a duel. I'd heard Lady Sharon was accomplished with the sword — now I see it was no idle rumor."
"Lord Ian hardly seemed out of his depth either, did he? If anything, he looked every bit the man worthy of being called the Imperial Princess's man."
Sharon lifted her head after gauging the room's reaction.
Ian was looking down at her, his back ramrod straight.
She lay delicately draped over the knee he had supported her with.
Sharon pulled herself upright.
— Oh my, how utterly feminine!
— Truly so elegant.
Words she had no desire to hear.
The very reason she had forced herself to attend was to declare herself one of the heirs as well.
Not to flaunt femininity.
Sharon met Ian's eyes in silence.
"...As always, you conceal your strength with such underhandedness, and then you explode."
"All I did was dance a little. Let's drop the theatrics."
Sharon bit her lip.
"...Since when did you become so brazen? It was you who used to be gloomy and devoid of confidence."
"Finally opening your eyes a bit? A pity you didn't open them sooner."
"I haven't acknowledged you. Ian Blackangus."
Sharon closed her mouth for a moment.
The direction differed, but she had made her presence known in society and ruined Hermann's mood, which partially satisfied her intentions.
Yet Ian's words couldn't simply be brushed aside.
That she was excessively self-absorbed and deluded, viewing everything as revolving around Ian alone?
That she believed wrong things to be right?
"Utterly ridiculous."
"Then there's nothing stopping us."
A clear provocation from Ian.
Eyes blazing, Sharon nodded.
"Fine. If by the slimmest chance you are correct, I shall swear the Oath of Submission. However — what will you do in the opposite case?"
"In the opposite case..."
Just as Ian was about to answer.
— CRASSSHHH!
The door burst open once more.
No — could you even call that opened?
Shattered fragments of the door rained onto the floor as though defying the laws of physics.
Unsurprisingly, Hermann Pierce was in a state of rage so towering that his eyes had nearly rolled halfway back into his head.
But every gaze was fixed on the wide-open — no, the now-destroyed door.
"Wh-what now?!"
"What is it this time?!"
— Clank
The weighty sound of steel grinding against the floor.
A presence as heavy as that footfall blanketed the banquet hall.
"...Th-the Second Daughter?"
Someone in the front murmured.
There was no need to confirm the truth of that question.
Her form emerged moments later.
— Clank
Though she was merely walking, a sense of pressure crushed down on the whole hall as though a beast were prowling through.
Her hair was blue, but her eyes were red — like those of a predator.
She was tall, with powerfully exposed thighs that left a striking impression.
She wasn't petite by any measure, but the raw physical might she radiated far outstripped her frame.
Ian's brow furrowed as he watched the Second Daughter.
'What she's dragging by the hand... is that a person?'
She swept her gaze once around the room, then opened her mouth with a beast's low growl.
"I heard there was a party, so I came. Doesn't look very entertaining."
Drip. Drip.
Blood fell from her hand, staining the floor crimson.