Chapter 112
“We’re going to leave the academy and investigate every ghost story in the Belhart Empire! You all did your research, right?!”
At Chairwoman Sylvia’s words, I inadvertently let out a dazed “Uh—.”
“We were supposed to research that?”
“You weren’t here last time, so of course you didn’t know. You’re exempt, Lunaris.”
So all I had to do today was nod off while listening to ghost stories?
Not bad.
Just then, Vice Chair Thomas, who had been huddled in a corner, cautiously raised his hand.
“Um... Chairwoman Sylvia. I did some research and gathered various materials...”
The vice chair was holding a huge bundle of papers in his arms.
At a glance, it looked thick enough to be an entire book.
Couldn’t we just publish those as a collection of ghost stories and make enough to cover the club’s operating expenses?
“Thomas, you present last.”
“Pardon?”
“No, don’t present at all. Summarize the material on a single sheet of paper and bring it back. I’d be up all night reading that.”
“That’s too cruel, Chairwoman...!”
Chairwoman Sylvia lightly ignored the teary-eyed Thomas and pointed at Claire.
“Claire! Why don’t you get us started?”
“Ah, yes! This is a story passed down in my territory...”
The ghost story Claire had prepared was a mild, unremarkable tale of the sort you would expect to find in any rural village.
It was the kind of story a grandmother might begin with, “Back when dragons were still sucking down whiskey—” before launching into it.
However.
“The moment the woman opened the door of the old shed with trembling hands...!”
“And then a ghost jumped out with a WAAAH!!”
With Chairwoman Sylvia adding vivid interjections here and there, it became a fairly thrilling ghost story.
“Eek—Aaaah!”
Thomas’s reactions were absolutely delicious, too.
“Kyaaaah!”
...No, wait.
“Why are you screaming, Claire?”
I stared at Claire with an incredulous expression.
“This is your story.”
“B-but... Chairwoman Sylvia keeps screaming at weird times...!”
Claire was pale as a sheet and clutching her chest.
Chairwoman Sylvia was laughing and pounding on the table beside her, while Thomas was crawling up from the floor.
Good grief, what a bunch of characters.
Just then, I felt a finger poking at my side.
When I turned around, Princess Celestina was whispering into my ear.
“Luna, is this when I’m supposed to scream?”
“...Pardon?”
“I’m not very familiar with this sort of thing... Is it proper etiquette to scream along whenever the others scream?”
Unlike the two super-cowards, she showed no sign of being startled at all.
I couldn’t help but let out a quiet chuckle.
“There’s no need to force yourself. See? I’m sitting here quietly too.”
“Oh, really? What a relief. I was worried I was being insensitive.”
Princess Celestina sighed in relief and picked up her teacup again.
Come to think of it, she was surprisingly brave. Even though she didn’t look like it.
Then again, it wasn’t as though ghosts were something to fear.
She had grown up in a brutal imperial palace where blood relatives plotted against one another’s throats.
There was no reason for her to be frightened by a story about a ghost tied up in some rural village’s shed.
“Wow~ That was fun, Claire! Let’s go on a field trip to your territory sometime!”
After Claire finished her ghost story, Chairwoman Sylvia clapped her hands in satisfaction.
“All right, then next...”
“Ah, I’ll go this time.”
Princess Celestina quietly raised her hand.
The moment she saw this, Chairwoman Sylvia’s eyes began to sparkle again.
“Ooh... a ghost story from the princess! I’m looking forward to it. What kind of story is it?”
The princess set down her teacup and slowly looked around the clubroom with her mysterious violet eyes.
Then she began in a low voice.
“Has everyone ever heard of witches?”
*
From time immemorial, people have said that nothing works better than a threat(?) to quiet a crying child.
If you don’t listen, a fat old man in red won’t bring you any presents.
A tiger will stop smoking its pipe and come eat you.
Or a wyvern will fly over and snatch you away with its talons.
The repertoire varied depending on the era and the region.
In the imperial family of the Belhart Empire, apparently, it was a witch.
“This is a story about my older sister.”
“Your older sister... the Second Princess?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
At Chairwoman Sylvia’s words, Princess Celestina nodded.
“Oh! Come to think of it, Second Princess, haven’t you stopped appearing in high society for about three years now?”
Claire’s eyes widened as though she had just remembered something.
The Second Princess had only been described in the original as something of a shut-in loser princess, if I remembered correctly...
“Yes. Until that happened, she was brighter than anyone in the world...”
But three years ago, one day.
The story of the princess began with the news that she had suddenly shut herself away in her room and stopped coming out.
“Whenever the maids went to speak with her, they said she would tremble beneath her blankets and repeat the same words over and over. That the witch was coming to kill her. That the witch was waiting for her outside the door...”
The air in the clubroom turned cold.
“At first, everyone laughed. They asked how someone her age could still believe in a story fit for a fairy tale, about a witch coming to carry her away at night. But...”
Then, people who entered and left the Second Princess’s palace began disappearing one by one every night.
The princess’s voice sank into an eerie murmur.
“Without corpses or bloodstains... they simply disappeared.”
“...!”
“When the situation grew serious, the imperial knights stormed into my sister’s palace and searched everywhere, but they found no sign of an intrusion and no trace of black magic.”
After that came accounts of several brave knights exploring the Second Princess’s palace at night.
If you listened closely, the story itself wasn’t anything special.
It was the usual ghost—or rather, witch—possession story.
But hearing that ordinary tale in the princess’s voice made it quite thrilling.
It was a voice perfectly suited to ghost stories. Pitiful yet eerie, it made me feel as though something might leap out at any moment.
Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who thought so.
When I looked beside me, Claire was trembling but concentrating on the story without letting out a single scream.
Even noisy Chairwoman Sylvia had forgotten to react and was staring with sparkling eyes.
“In the end, they couldn’t find the cause, and the incident was brought to a close by strictly forbidding anyone from entering my older sister’s palace after sunset.”
“R-right! The witch has been with the Belhart Empire since its very beginning!”
The moment Princess Celestina finished speaking, Thomas said in an excited voice.
Until now, he had been cowering under the scary stories and Chairwoman Sylvia’s forceful personality, but he was genuinely excited now.
No wonder it had been so quiet.
For a cowardly senior like him, I would have expected him to scream at least once while the princess was telling her story, but he had been suspiciously quiet.
He hadn’t fainted from fear. He had simply been enjoying the story.
“Now, now, look at this!”
Thomas spread some of the materials he had researched across the table.
“According to the founding legend, the first emperor slew the last queen of an ancient kingdom that had brought the continent to ruin, then built upon its ruins the foundation of an empire that would endure for a thousand years and more! The last queen was known as the ‘Witch of Gluttony’!”
The Witch of Gluttony.
That was a very familiar name.
“Come to think of it, this is supposedly the staff that witch used.”
When I took Arke in hand and held it out in front of me, Thomas’s eyes bulged as though they were about to pop out.
“Whoa... whoa-aaah...!!”
Thomas rose as though possessed by something and approached me.
“A historical relic... Hah, haaah... J-Junior Lunaris... may I hold this for just a moment?”
“Hmm, you’d better just look. If you handle it wrong, it’ll suck out all your mana and turn you into a mummy.”
“Eek!”
Thomas recoiled in fright and hurriedly backed away.
Princess Celestina, who had been listening beside him, also opened her eyes wide.
“I didn’t realize you had the original. I was under the impression that the custom was to grant an archmage a replica of Arke.”
“Apparently it isn’t given outright, but loaned indefinitely. I ended up saddled with it somehow, so it’s a bit troublesome.”
This mana-guzzling nuisance. Even when I wanted to return it, it kept sticking around near me.
At my grumbling, Thomas cleared his throat with an “Ahem—” and changed the subject.
“As it happens, our academy also has a few records concerning witches.”
“Elterion Academy?”
“Yes. According to legend, the site where Elterion Hall, the academy’s largest building, now stands is where the Witch of Envy was defeated.”
In other words, the academy was founded to seal away a witch.
“And one more! This is relatively recent, though by recent I mean a hundred years ago, but anyway, there’s also a record that the Witch of Greed was enrolled at the academy and expelled for researching black magic.”
“What?! Why are you only telling us about such incredible information now?!”
Chairwoman Sylvia slammed her hand on the table and shouted.
Thomas muttered with an aggrieved expression.
“No... I was going to tell you anyway, but Chairwoman...”
“Quiet! Anyway, great. Change of plans! Let’s investigate the Witch of Greed first!”
Chairwoman Sylvia abruptly rose to her feet and shouted.
“For the next hour, let’s scour every book in this old library and all the materials Thomas brought, and look for clues. Then we’ll decide where to explore today.”
At Chairwoman Sylvia’s words, we began digging through the materials.
Claire went over the materials Thomas had researched, while the princess headed toward the bookshelves.
I headed toward a corner of the bookshelves as well, letting out a long, languid yawn.
As I casually skimmed the book titles, I suddenly...
noticed Princess Celestina selecting books beside me.
I hesitated, then lightly tapped her on the shoulder.
“Um, Your Highness.”
“Yes, Luna? What is it?”
“About what you were saying earlier.”
I asked in a voice lowered as much as possible.
“The story about the Second Princess being possessed by a witch—is it really true?”
For something that was supposedly just a ghost story...
Something about the princess’s attitude had been bothering me.
At my question, Princess Celestina closed the book in her hands and looked at me.
The princess let out a meaningful little “Heh-heh—” and said,
“Did you know, Luna?”
“...?”
“In the imperial palace, if you don’t want to become a witch, you have to become one yourself—like our eldest sister.”
A real witch, capable of harming even her blood relatives without a second thought.
As I simply stared at her without saying anything, the princess brought her index finger to her lips and said,
“That’s why I came to Elterion Academy.”
“...”
“Because I didn’t want to become a witch.”
Whether it was against her will or of her own accord.
The princess, as she said this,
looked surprisingly calm, as though it were nothing at all.