Pinent House, with professional personnel dispatched, returned to sothing resembling a duke's residence within three hours. It was an amazingly fast pace considering how many people had died and been injured. The duke repeatedly recomnded rest, but Mrs. Kirkfield, who had decided to finish today's work to the end, served tea.
Even after going through this chaos, the tea was sweet. Esperanza unconsciously tried to adopt a relaxed posture like at Avondale Mansion, but maintained proper posture only after Cider gave her a look.
Right, now wasn't the mood for that.
"Is Miss Lily Runderford alright?"
Excluding the fatalities from this battle, the maid who had been guarding in front of the injured had suffered the most serious injury. The duke said that by the ti the battle ended, the maid was almost unconscious, and even with advanced magical dical technology poured into treatnt, she would never be able to use her leg properly for life. It might be better to amputate and use a prosthetic.
After hearing the entire story, Esperanza fell into thought.
"Still, since we fought together, I suppose she could be considered a comrade of sorts?"
"Well..."
Cider replied indifferently. Since when had Esperanza considered people she fought alongside as comrades? They'd be obstacles if anything. That maid seed to have been quite helpful, but that didn't make him feel particularly good either.
"Of sorts?"
"Yes, of sorts."
But since the desired answer was obvious. Even while showing reluctance, he went along with it, so Esperanza quickly nodded and pulled out a bottle from her inventory. Inside the perfu bottle-like container, a harmful-looking green substance sloshed around.
"This is a potion. If it were completely severed it wouldn't work, but if it's still properly attached, it should probably recover enough for daily life. Actually, I've never used it on soone without mana, so I'm not sure."
She glanced at Cider, worried he might say sothing about not showing it until now, but unexpectedly he didn't seem very interested. When their eyes t, he even gave an arrogant smile as if showing off.
"I'm not interested in chemistry."
"Ah, yes."
How fortunate that he wasn't interested in biology either. If he had been interested in that too, his laboratory might not have been much different from that of Sylvia Humphrey's fiancé, which was full of human and monster chiras.
"...Thank you."
The duke received the potion with trembling hands. He certainly took trendous care of his people. Even though he had no personal feelings for the maid nad Runderford.
"Your Highness would have been perfect if born about three hundred years ago."
Thinking about it, he seed like he would have made an excellent pre-modern monarch. The duke guessed the aning of those words and gave a bitter smile.
"That woman is the blackmailer?"
"Her na is Daria."
"Her surna?"
"I don't know."
That was the problem. Just one fake-sounding na without a surna. Bob hair that not even a maid, let alone a lady, would have, and a gaze that looked down on people. That was all the duke knew.
"Daria and Cyrus."
Cyrus. Her head throbbed. It seed better to give up on finding out Cyrus's identity. She just needed to beat him up and steal the Golden Claw.
"They are the ones with the power to create what you call 'dungeons.' I saw them use sothing like a curved sword that gave off a golden light. Probably not a real sword though."
A curved sword. But beast fangs or claws would also have that shape.
'Golden Claw.'
It was what she had expected, but her heart sank anew. Esperanza habitually started to grab Cider's shirt sleeve, then noticed and quietly lowered her hand. Cider, with a face that said she worried about all sorts of things, took Esperanza's hand and placed it back on his wrist.
The duke furrowed his brow then let out a deep sigh. His face was full of thoughts. Esperanza pouted.
"So, where can we find them?"
"I don't know."
"How can you not know? How did you even et them?"
"They ca to find us. Continuously from the winter before last until now."
The first eting was on a harsh winter day when snow was piled up to the ankles.
At that ti, the royal family's situation wasn't good. Now they had caught their breath with the by-election at the end of the year before last, but at the ti the Tempton cabinet was forming a coalition governnt with the Republican Party, and true to its na, the Republican Party's mainstream was dominated by royal abolitionists. Three-tenths of the cabinet was advocating for royal abolition, and with the cost of palace repairs from three years ago being featured prominently in the dia, royal approval ratings were in daily decline.
"Perhaps Osdern no longer needed the royal family. Osdern earning the na of empire was Tempton's achievent when he was minister, and his rise to pri minister was four years earlier than Her Majesty's succession to the throne. The royal family before that was..."
In crude terms, a complete ss.
"Weak Gilbert, dissolute Galliston, immature Sherbury."
Duke Galliston said self-deprecatingly. 'Dissolute Galliston' was his father. Only a few close associates would know how much young Edmund Saturn had censored himself to escape his father's shadow. Nevertheless, he was inevitably of Galliston blood.
In any case, Gilbert III's brothers were ones he was rather grateful had died. The king died trying to clean up the accidents his brothers had caused, and throughout the king's funeral, the dia competed to report the sordid scandals of the dead dukes. High-ranking Republican officials completely boycotted the queen's coronation. That was seven years ago.
And the ti when Daria appeared. After five years since the coronation with no improvent in the situation, the queen's patience was wearing thin like a bomb fuse.
"The Republican Party was planning collective action for royal abolition. We had obtained that information, but with rumors rife that Tempton was secretly backing them, there was almost nothing the royal family, already receiving hostile attention, could do... That's when Daria appeared."
Like a wish-granting fairy from a fairy tale, Daria in strange clothing appeared on the queen's balcony that day. On a foggy night, a woman standing on the balcony railing extended her hand to the nightgown-clad queen.
'What worries keep you from sleep so late at night? Who has made Your precious Majesty sad?'
It could only be described as bewitchnt. The woman who kindly wiped away tears lted into the shadows and disappeared. And in the queen's hand remained a contract.
"A contract?"
What a thoroughly ticulous fairy.
The duke nodded with an embarrassed face.
"The condition was to give up Her Majesty's tiara. It was sothing Her Majesty had been fond of using even after ascending to the throne."
About a week later, Republican Party mbers boarded a train to go to southern Duskham. They made quite a show of calling reporters to take photos and promote their unbreakable convictions. However, eight hours later, when the train arrived in Duskham, there was no one aboard.
Truly no one.
"They called it the ghost train incident. There were photographs of a train arriving leisurely at Duskham Central Station and stopping, with everyone from other passengers to crew mbers, even the engineer, completely disappeared. And inside the train were gambling tables, broken liquor bottles, even drugs. The Republican Party had no choice but to cover it up first."
But there are no secrets. Photos of the ghost train's interior circulated secretly, and rumors grew. Eventually a by-election was held, and the Republican Party lost more than half their seats.
"We shook hands with the devil."
They got what they wanted, but not in the way they wanted. Deals with devils could never end well.
That was a sentintal conclusion for His Highness the Duke. Cider snorted. The way he did his utmost to beautify himself until the very end felt both ridiculous and dangerous. The reason he didn't interrupt the story like before was because Esperanza's face listening to it looked unimpressed.
"That incident beca our weakness, and Daria and Cyrus gradually began demanding more."
It would be endless to tell the whole story. Esperanza asked straightforwardly.
"What is their purpose?"
"To create nurous dungeons in Osdern and exploit Osdern's wealth in exchange for protecting people from dungeons. To build their kingdom above Nine Holder."
Cider thought. With half personal feelings mixed in.
'If we heard their side of the story, it would probably sound quite different?'
And Esperanza thought this.
"So it's a kind of colonial rule."
At that mont, shock, humiliation, and displeasure flashed across the duke's face. The sight of the underlying obvious premise that 'we' couldn't possibly suffer 'such' treatnt being shattered to pieces.
But were there people in the world who deserved to suffer 'such' treatnt? If so, wouldn't it be those who had done the sa to others? That would truly be karmic retribution, poetic justice, the karma that should rightfully be returned.
Thinking this way, all of this seed laughable. Anyway, she had obtained as much information from the duke as possible, and she had t Daria directly and they had recognized each other. There was no more business here.
"I won't get involved in such matters. I trust you understand."
She stood up from her seat. Esperanza extended her hand toward Cider.
"Let's go, just leave."
The door closed rcilessly without compassion. Just before it closed, the duke's sigh seed to be heard through the door crack.
"You seem upset?"
"Well. I didn't expect anything great from the duke, but I was basically... should I say I believed in that person's goodwill?"
"Let's say you suspected it."
Cider showed inexplicable displeasure. Esperanza lowered her head and laughed. True, the word trust didn't suit the relationship with the duke.
"Fine, I was suspecting the duke's goodwill, but realized it was 'only that much' after all."
"He's not trustworthy."
After dealing with Daria and Cyrus, next might co Esperanza's turn, who was relatively exposed to weaknesses by staying at Avondale Mansion. From the royal family's perspective, both Daria and Esperanza would be equally dangerous figures.
"You did well to refuse. If you start getting entangled in political problems, it becos troubleso. The royal family was victimized this ti, but usually they're the ones cornering the other party in such ways."
Esperanza stopped briefly to laugh. Cider, who had been walking about half a step ahead, stopped and turned around. His face, which had been about to smile at Esperanza, gradually hardened pale. His pupils sank cold as if frozen like glaciers.
"What's wrong?"
Cider's arm, which she had grabbed soothingly, was full of tension. His gaze remained fixed behind Esperanza. What was he looking at? She followed his gaze.
"Ah..."
"Are you. Injured?"
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