“And who are you? You were with His Highness the Crown Prince before, weren’t you?”
I pressed my knee into the chest of the boy who had fallen on his back, and as I held the blade of a hidden weapon to his brow, I applied a light Intimidation. The boy narrowed his eyes slightly and seemed to brace himself, showing composure.
“So, you’re the Adventurer child I met in the Royal Capital… Why are you serving Princess (Your Highness)? Are you Her Highness’s guard?”
“I’m the one asking the questions.”
Just because someone is with the Crown Prince (he) doesn’t mean they’re a noble on the Royal Family’s side. Even if he’s an ally, what was the reason for taking action that could be seen as a sudden “attack”?
To judge that for myself instead of hearing it secondhand, I put more Killing Intent into my gaze. He gritted his teeth as if enduring it, and met my eyes with a strong gaze.
“I am Mikhail Melrose of the Melrose Margrave House, who oversees the Shadow Unit of the Kingdom of Claydale. Knowing that, will you still point your Blade at me?”
“…Very well.”
Melrose House… So that name, which the Spirit said was my blood relative, comes up here. Moreover, the Margrave House that oversees the Shadow Unit means they’re a great noble family on par with Dandole.
Mikhail only knew me as a mere Adventurer, but there was a possibility that information about me had been passed to the Melrose House through Sera.
It wasn’t the answer I wanted, but it’s dangerous to turn him into an enemy “yet.” I need to investigate a little, but if he’s a member of the Shadow Unit, then he’s currently an ally.
Silently, I moved away from him, stood up while straightening the hem of my disheveled skirt, and extended a hand to Mikhail, who was still on the ground. He stared intently at my actions, hesitated for a moment to reach out, then turned away with a red face.
“I can stand on my own… Ugh.”
Mikhail’s face twisted in agony as he tried to stand. Maybe one of his bones was fractured. I composed Magic in my mind and held out my hand towards Mikhail.
“–High Heal–”
The released light healed his body. Mikhail, looking surprised, stood up, confirmed that there was nothing wrong with his body, and then exhaled as if releasing pent-up air.
“I’ll thank you for now… That power… So you are Her Highness’s guard after all? Did you join the Shadow Unit from being an Adventurer?”
“The request is through the Shadow Unit, but my employer is Elena-sama personally. I’m not a member of the “Shadow Unit,” which is your subordinate. If you want to know more than that, ask her directly.”
Mikhail’s eyes widened slightly when he heard the word “request” from my mouth.
“I heard that Princess (Your Highness) made a request to the “Rainbow Sword”… Could it be you?”
“No questions. You’re “Melrose,” so you can get the information, right? Also, I apologize for pushing you down, but I recommend that you don’t suddenly try to touch other people’s bodies from now on.”
“That’s… I’m sorry.”
I don’t know how it is in the world of nobles, but in the Underworld, doing something like that out of the blue is the same as antagonizing someone.
Mikhail might have had a reason, but he lowered his head honestly with a red face. I don’t know what part of my words made him blush, but my actions were also a bit excessive, so it’s better to let this topic pass.
“Well then, see you later. We may be involved in “work” someday.”
“Wait!”
I turned my back and started to leave, but Mikhail’s voice stopped me. When I turned back slightly, he had a strangely nervous expression and opened his mouth as if he had made up his mind.
“Your name… Can you tell me?”
“…Aria.”
“I see… Aria, is it?”
He muttered that and smiled slightly. For a moment, I thought I caught a glimpse of “Mother’s” face. How could I see that when he’s a different gender and age…?
Is this “blood”? Was he the same? His eyes reflected me, but it felt like he was looking beyond me.
“Aria… I’ll give you a little information. In this academy, immediately after entering, the children of nobles above the rank of Baron will observe the Knight Order’s exercises in the suburbs. Women will only participate if they wish, but Princess (Your Highness) will probably participate. The Shadow Unit also wants to provide protection, but this time the Knight Order will be the guard, so the Shadow Unit will be behind the scenes… Be careful.”
“…Understood.”
The Knight Order and the Shadow Unit, protecting this country from the front and back, are the swords and shields of the nation and the Royal Family. But if the Crown Prince (he) and Elena were to become hostile, which side would they take?
“…Haa… Haa…”
In a room with the lace curtains drawn, a girl released her clasped hands and exhaled roughly.
Covering the window was glass, a rare item even in this world where Magic and Alchemy had developed instead of science. Even a small, slightly distorted pane of glass would be worth a gold coin, so a room with a window covering half the wall would be in the mansion of a very high-ranking noble.
The girl, having dismissed even the maids from the spacious room, caught her breath and dipped a quill pen in ink, scribbling words on a scattered piece of paper as if scrawling.
Knock, knock…
“–Clara-ojousama. His Highness the Crown Prince has come to visit you. What shall we do?”
“…Please let him in.”
Clara answered the maid’s voice, which seemed to be peeking in from outside the room, after a moment’s pause.
A few minutes later, Elvan, who had been allowed in alone for a “visit” to his fiancée, saw Clara continuing to write, making the white stone table black with ink, and rushed to her side in a fluster.
“Clara, you shouldn’t, you need to rest!”
“Elvan-sama, please reconsider observing the exercises? No matter how many times I calculate, it comes out as “dangerous”.”
“Clara… You used your Divine Protection (Gift) again, didn’t you?”
The Divine Protection (Gift) that Clara received from the Spirit is called “Foresight.”
That ability foresees future events with a high probability, but it’s a little different from the “Prediction” that is generally imagined.
The essence of Clara’s ability is that she refines and examines the current situation information she knows, selects information with a high probability, and further calculates that information to derive a highly probable “prediction.”
The effective part of this ability is that Clara herself doesn’t know whether the information is correct or not, but she selects information with a high probability from the situation. Clara combines that with her knowledge from her previous life and information from the “Otome Game Event” that she shouldn’t originally know, and performs a fairly accurate Foresight.
However, things like “tomorrow’s weather” or “tonight’s menu” are fine, but when it comes to events a few weeks later involving humans whose actions are difficult to predict, she performs tens of thousands to tens of millions of calculations in her brain, so Clara suffers considerable damage to her mind each time she uses it.
“You shouldn’t use that ability too much. Besides, Clara, you said that the future is constantly changing, right? I asked the Knight Order for elite guards based on Clara’s “Foresight,” so it’ll be okay.”
“But…”
Even in the game, there was little danger to the Crown Prince (he) himself. Elvan only becomes dangerous when he “gets involved with the Heroine.”
As a game event, the Heroine awakens to the Light attribute in order to heal a student attacked by a Monster-ized bear, and Elvan is injured protecting the Heroine from the bear that attacks again.
Immediately after that, the bear was defeated by Rookwell, the son of the Knight Order Commander, and the escort knights, so increasing the guards would reduce the danger, but Clara couldn’t say that she wanted to “avoid the event with the Heroine” either.
Seeing Clara like that, Elvan gently pulled her head into his chest.
“Elvan-sama?”
“Don’t be so anxious. I, in a strange way, like the current, hardworking you more than the perfect young lady you were before. So, I’ll come back properly for you.”
“…Yes.”
Clara, who was a “perfect Villainess,” became weaker when she remembered her previous life, and the distance between them had narrowed more than before, but the unstable Clara felt Elvan’s body temperature and was not reassured, but rather became more impatient.
The “Pink Hair” girl with extraordinary combat power who reappeared as Elena’s guard, is she really not the Heroine?
The girl who doesn’t resemble the appearance of the “Heroine” and seems to be acting more proactively than the Heroine, is she really the Heroine?
(I have to do something… I won’t let anyone have him.)
“Ufufu.”
The girl who had finished the entrance ceremony rolled around on the bed in her assigned private room in the academy dormitory, smirking to herself.
“Elvan-sama was wonderful. I couldn’t talk to him, but Rookwell-sama and Mikhail-sama were also wonderful. Fufu, of course, Theo-kun is cute too.”
Since men, even butlers, aren’t allowed in the girls’ dormitory, she lives in a mansion outside the dorm, exclusively for attendants. Therefore, she was assigned a maid, but distrusting women, she only allowed the bare minimum of contact with her.
“…I don’t like women. They’re always mean to me because I’m cute. But you’re different. You teach me so many things.”
The girl held up a half-missing Magic Stone from the Amulet Pouch hanging from her chest.
At the age of seven, she found this treasure while cleaning out a ditch during a volunteer activity at the Orphanage. When she cut her finger on the missing part, the Magic Stone showed the girl a bright future.
With no money and no one to protect her, she could only pray to be bought by the best master possible because of her beauty. The Magic Stone showed her a wonderful ‘path to becoming a Princess.’
She had already forgotten her real name.
To become the vanished “Heroine,” she perfectly imitated the Heroine’s gestures, speech, and expressions obtained from the Magic Stone. Now, she had forgotten what her original personality was like, and the girl had completely replaced herself with “Alicia.”
The resentful information of a woman who lived in the past is transmitted from within the Magic Stone. But she decides how to use it and which to choose.
The woman in the Magic Stone wanted to be chosen by the Crown Prince and live a happy life.
“Annoying…”
She slammed the Magic Stone, which was trying to push the Crown Prince, against the edge of the bed, shaving off a corner. The passion faded, and only pure information flowed in from the newly created wound.
“That’s fine… because ‘I’ am the one who chooses.”
A poor orphan girl who had nothing and lived side by side with death.
Even becoming the adopted daughter of a noble and finding happiness did not satisfy the endless “hunger” of the fear and despair she felt at that time.
All she could rely on was the knowledge of this Magic Stone and her own beauty. For the girl, satisfying her insatiable hunger was more important than life itself.
The girl carefully wrapped the Magic Stone in her injured hand and offered a silent prayer.
“I want to be loved by many men. But it’s okay… because I will love them from the bottom of my heart too.”
＊＊＊
Returning to Elena’s mansion within the Magic Academy and entrusting her protection to the Royal Knights, I headed to a certain place within the Magic Academy to connect with my comrades.
This Magic Academy is not only a beautiful place isolated from the outside world, but also a place where high-ranking noble families have infiltrated a certain number of personnel.
Elena was no exception, and she had another person infiltrating for the purpose of gathering information in addition to me.
As I approached my destination, I saw a middle-aged man in blue work clothes, a janitor, squatting by a non-smoking alchemic incinerator, puffing on a pipe. He was talking to a young maid in her twenties who had come to take out the trash, and even though she treated him coldly, he didn’t seem to mind.
“…Viro.”
“Aria… were you watching?”
“Yeah.”
Why does this man look so good in this kind of role…?
Clara and the fake Heroine are quite dangerous.
But what I personally think is dangerous is the man who looks good as a hopeless adult (laughs).
Some of the content received in the comment section has been reflected.
Next time, the first greatly distorted event