"Won't it be dangerous?"
"If you give
just a little ti, I can get the employees out. About 20 minutes."
Holding Daria back and buying ti...
"That's possible."
Avondale Mansion was terrain much more familiar to them. It was also possible at the mansion to use automatons supplentarily to drive her to where they wanted.
"Huh. Will this work?"
"If it's just Daria alone."
"Even if there are two, if Cyrus and I each grab one and face them... To drive her into a corner, both Cyrus and I might need to stick to Daria. That Cyrus will definitely try to find you."
Whether out of resentnt or strategy.
"I have to protect the spaceti machine."
"Ah. Right. Then rather than that, quickly incapacitate the kid and fight Daria?"
Cider nodded. It was a rough plan, but there wasn't ti to think about it in more detail. The rest could probably be solved with adequate improvisation.
"Have you reached a conclusion?"
Pri Minister Tempton asked. He seed to have been listening to everything. They were still standing at the crossroads leading to the exit. The Pri Minister's large palm was wet with saliva from blocking Prince Louis's attempts to interrupt several tis.
"We're going back to the mansion."
Cider sent one more communication to the unresponsive Cyrus. 'Hocoming plan.' Tempton pulled Prince Louis back from the exit and said:
"Go out and turn left twice and you'll see a clearing with a steam carriage. Avondale, we could find yours if we looked, but use mine."
Daria would know which steam carriage was Cider's. Esperanza nodded. They needed to move as quickly as possible.
"Still no response from Cyrus?"
Cider, who had checked the communicator, shook his head.
"He must not be in a situation to send a reply."
Either he couldn't interpret it at all, or the battle with Daria was still ongoing, or he was injured so badly he couldn't even press the communicator in his pocket to send a vibration.
Esperanza set aside the latter speculation for now. Assuming such a worst-case scenario was aningless. For now.
"Then Your Excellency and Your Royal Highness should go directly to where His Majesty is, and we'll part ways here."
Esperanza took out several pieces of equipnt from her inventory.
"And if there's ti, do you know Lady Cordelia?"
"Mabelwood?"
"Yes. If Cordelia Mabelwood is still in the palace, please contact her to tell her to return."
Esperanza sent Tempton and Prince Louis back and slowly opened the door.
Augustus Palace was enormous. In one corner there had been combat that destroyed expensive porcelain and a piano hundreds of years old, but the outside seed unaware such a thing had happened. As usual, staff, a small number of tourists who had pre-purchased tickets, journalists, and elderly nobles visiting the 'court' whose aning had considerably faded were coming and going.
And in the middle of the path leading from that entrance to daily life, Daria stood.
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"He's not here either!"
When she heard his younger brother's voice, Daria thought it was ti to end this standoff. Completely subduing her younger brother who seed to have aged ten more years was difficult. But he couldn't be fooled any longer by this obviously dragged-out ti-wasting.
'The Count hasn't already escaped, has he?'
The board he had carefully set up had beco a complete ss.
Daria roughly pushed away Cyrus's sword. And using the maximum magical power she could gather at once, she blew away half the corridor.
Daria, who confird Cyrus's staggering silhouette through the dust storm, imdiately turned and ran. At least he had bought ti to drink a potion and recover.
While crossing the corridor, she had entered every room she saw, but there was no trace of Cyrus, let alone the Count. Daria, who had co down the stairs avoiding passing royal staff, finally opened the door to the quiet music room.
But it was already too late. Her gaze was cold as she looked at the abundant blood that had blackened and stuck to the carpet and her younger brother collapsed on it with a pale face.
"Cyrus."
His fingertips twitched. He didn't even have the strength to answer. Daria approached with trembling steps, pressing down on the carpet. A shadow fell over the wound that hadn't stopped bleeding.
"Open your mouth."
The magical power had properly penetrated. It had cleanly torn through the middle of his thighbone. Healing completely with one bottle of potion was out of the question. Moreover, since he had already drunk a potion once today... This potion was made from monster byproducts, and due to the slow progress of research to remove toxicity, it couldn't be drunk frequently.
Daria put a brown bottle to Cyrus's mouth. Strength entered his bloodless lips. Daria, who confird his adam's apple moving, lowered her gaze. The real pain was just beginning.
Flesh was filling in and bones were nding. The process of torn muscles recovering seed like slowly rewinding the pain of having his thigh pierced. Cyrus gasped with difficulty. Daria rubbed a towel on his wet forehead.
"It's too much to heal completely. Can you fight more?"
"If I rest a little."
Then I need to move first. Daria looked around as if trying to find traces. They had definitely passed through the music room. The next mont her gaze turned to the window. They didn't go out that way, did they? There would be many people watching.
"That fra. They went through there."
Cyrus said in a pained voice. The fra his weak fingertip pointed to was indeed large enough for a person to pass through.
"There was a secret passage. The Queen didn't tell us about it."
"She might not have known."
Really? In this case, not knowing was also wrong. Daria irritably threw open the fra.
"The passage is quite large. Could this possibly be throughout the entire palace? The Count must have escaped through this too. This is why we couldn't find him all this ti."
"This wound too... the Count did it."
Cyrus, who had spoken with difficulty, let out rough breath.
"So the two already t. Really nothing goes right."
How could things get so tangled? That dungeon wasn't supposed to be solved in just a couple hours! The ti invested in planning and the magical power poured out generously were almost wasted.
But she couldn't back down either. There wouldn't be another opportunity like this.
"Cyrus. Rest and follow slowly."
Though his mind was muddled, his body moved nimbly. Like a machine that sohow kept running even with faulty structure.
He knew this wouldn't work. But he couldn't accept it.
'What did I do so wrong?'
Is wanting to live well wrong? In this land full of sin, it's okay for those who live off one bloodline to suck blood, but not ?
I'm doing wrong? I'll fail? Why?
He wanted to live more humanly. Monthly hospital bills piling up even though he had no credit and only accumulated high-interest loans. Violence, cri, poverty. Poverty. Poverty without exit.
I want to earn money. I want to live well. If I can do that, I can trample on anyone and climb up.
'Anyway, these things here aren't the sa humans as us. What's wrong with using them a little?'
No, I haven't even been able to use them yet! The small investnt money given by the eccentric who decided to invest in this reckless plan was all they had substantially gained. Without even getting the fruits.
What if this place is ruined? What if so die? That was the way the world had trampled on Daria. Was it sothing to be condemned for stepping on sothing else to escape that suffocating pressure while dragging his young brother along?
All those things that trampled on , no one stopped them.
Daria re-gripped her sword. This was no longer a fight for profit. It was a duel to prove she was right.
Even if she didn't know the exit of the secret passage, she could instinctively know where they were headed. They would be looking for a carriage.
She jumped directly from the second floor to the garden through the window and ran. The shocked gazes of people followed behind her, but he didn't care at all.
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The passage exit closed. Cider headed for the Pri Minister's steam carriage. Bright blue magical bullets poured toward Daria's legs as he chased after him.
Daria barely rolled to dodge. Her leg was scratched but not enough to make movent difficult. However, when she got up, the Count had already disappeared from sight, and before Daria's eyes, a golden gun barrel was glinting.
Damn it. Damn it. Her insides boiled over. That woman had ruined everything. Everything had been going smoothly until then. Daria ground her teeth irritably.
Esperanza blocked Daria charging like a beast by holding her gun horizontally. The steam carriage started up. Smoke began rising from the chimney. Soon the carriage ruthlessly ran across the lawn and through the path in the middle of the garden.
Esperanza kicked Daria's legs as she charged and knocked her entire body down. Actually, she had almost no proper hand-to-hand combat experience. Maybe when she was very young. Still, she could do this much from what she had seen and heard. When Daria sprang up, Esperanza was already sitting on top of the running steam carriage.
The carriage passed through the main gate. Daria gritted her teeth and followed. It wasn't easy to catch up to a steam carriage with just two legs, but the bigger problem was the bullets that accurately aid for Daria's wrists even while getting farther away on that steam carriage. She fired magical bullets so densely he couldn't even get close.
Daria took out a shield and gradually approached while channeling magical power. But each shot was so powerful that her wrist and arm holding the shield trembled.
"She's still chasing us?"
He really didn't think she would co. Actually, even while making the plan, he thought she wouldn't chase them. However, occasionally seeing Daria's face getting closer, he seed to understand the reason. He had thought she wasn't on the intelligent side at other tis too, but the current Daria seed to be driven by spite.
"We'll head toward the busy district for now. Get inside."
Cider said, pulling his hat down low enough that his face couldn't be seen. Esperanza took advantage of a gap when there were no people on the road and climbed through the window inside. And while Daria hesitated, they hid among the pouring stream of steam carriages.
It was fortunate that the Pri Minister's carriage looked ordinary; if it had been Cider's steam carriage, they might have been caught long ago.
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