Don't Answer a Question with a Question

As I stared silently, the woman looked at me as if asking what the problem was.

My sharp response slipped out before I knew it.

But I quickly regained my composure.

To be honest, what the woman said was perfectly reasonable.

No matter how much mana was infused into this world's cigars, reducing that distinctive tobacco smell, there were certainly people who disliked it.

This was the duke's garden. Besides, she had been there first, so she wasn't wrong to say it.

"..."

If there was a problem, it was that my nerves were on edge after experiencing death through hallucinations about forty-four times just now.

A person's expression can tell you quite a lot.

You know the feeling. Like, Ah, this person is completely ignoring me.

I turned my eyes toward the woman in front of me.

A woman with sharply raised eyes and tightly pressed lips.

Rather than beautiful, she gave off a prickly impression.

"What are you looking at so intently? Can't you hear me?"

It was fascinating that despite speaking politely, I could still feel from her expression and tone that she was looking down on me.

Was she annoyed that I was staring at her, or angry that I had ignored her warning?

The expressionless woman's face began to crack.

"How dare you... ignore me?"

The woman began muttering something after that, but I rolled my eyes and looked behind her, paying her no attention.

The woman in front of me wasn't particularly concerning.

But.

"..."

The maid behind her, as if attending to her, was more concerning.

Why?

My sixth sense, sharpened by my battle with the duke, was shouting.

That maid standing one step behind her was more dangerous than the woman in front of me.

Whoom.

From the moment the woman addressed me, smoke had been spreading across the floor without her noticing.

If I wanted to, I could sever the noisy woman's neck right away.

"Stop smoking that cigar right now. This is a warning."

I looked into the eyes of the woman scolding me.

She didn't know.

She didn't even realize that a blade and a gun muzzle were being pointed right at her.

However.

A glance.

The maid standing one step away was different.

She had been mindful of the smoke stealthily spreading across the floor from the beginning.

As my smoke moved little by little, the maid's fingertips trembled involuntarily.

After watching that, I looked at the woman who was still babbling at me.

'What should I do...'

Should I pin her down with my aura?

That thought began filling my mind.

But.

[So? How did it feel to taste death?]

The duke's words echoed once again in my head.

"Phew... Yeah, let's not."

I decided to let her off this once.

I slowly took the cigar from my mouth and held it in my hand.

I wasn't a psycho who killed people just because they grated on my nerves, nor was I so rotten that I would threaten a woman who didn't even sense the danger.

This was a garden. Besides, she had been using it first, so her words were reasonable.

Besides.

'I really don't want to do the same thing as the duke, even if it kills me.'

I had just fought the duke and was sickened by his mindset. Acting similarly would be a comedy in itself.

"So who are you?"

I examined the woman in front of me.

A neatly arranged dress, and a red robe wrapped around it.

When had I seen that before?

Oh, right. It looked very similar to the robe worn by the mage I had hired in an alley after hearing that someone was looking to hire one.

That mage had been wearing blue, but this one was wearing red?

"...When asking someone's name, shouldn't you introduce yourself first?"

Though I tried to distract myself by letting my thoughts wander elsewhere.

"Don't answer a question with a question!"

That was the kind of exchange I hated most.

If you ask a question, just answer it. Why answer back with another question?

Conversations with Mist were different.

They were like deduction games, like puzzle games where you combined clues to arrive at a single answer.

But this woman wasn't like that.

"Huh?"

And she didn't even realize that she was the one at fault.

I left the garden at once and headed toward the room Mist was guiding me to.

***

"Wha..."

Bella, the final illegitimate child of House Nebla and a candidate for head of the family.

She couldn't say a word at the actions of the ruffian she had seen for the first time in her life.

She realized that when absurdity went too far, even words failed to come out.

"Are all the people here nothing but rude bastards?"

Informal speech slipped out before she knew it.

Yet this was a question Bella couldn't help but ask.

The head of the family had made people experience death under the pretext of a test, hadn't he?

Then, among those she considered her competitors, one had screamed and woken her from her sleep, while another was yet another ruffian like that?

"Haa..."

Bella squeezed her eyes shut and forcibly calmed her agitated heart, stirred by anger.

Calm down. I am a mage. And not just any mage—the valedictorian of Adrian Academy, the nation of magic.

A genius among geniuses.

If I, a high mage who received the youngest-ever Red Robe on the continent, cannot remain calm, it would be no different from bringing shame to the name of mage.

"Phew..."

After taking deep breaths for a while, Bella called the maid who had been standing at attention behind her.

"Nella."

A servant of House Nebla who had suddenly appeared before her one day.

But Bella hadn't felt particularly moved by that meeting.

An entire year of assassins targeting her?

Couldn't she just keep defensive magic active at all times?

An overwhelming amount of mana, enough to be conceited about being a genius.

Outstanding ability to use magic to fully control that mana.

As public opinion claimed, Bella was a genius born with enough talent to become a grand mage before long.

That she was of the bloodline of House Nebla, ruler of the Empire's south, was, in a way, only natural.

She truly believed that.

A commoner who graduated at the top of a magic academy, carving out her own path from the very bottom to the highest position, with a brilliant future guaranteed.

The pride of being that person supported Bella all the more firmly.

"Find out that ruffian's information. Right now."

Yet even a genius like her had begun to have her pride shattered after entering House Nebla.

She had fainted from the hallucination upon meeting the head of the family, then been awakened by an alarm bell and the scream of an illegitimate child who looked exactly like her.

Finally, there was the sudden appearance of a man reeking of cigar smoke.

"They're all fucking insane... Gasp."

Startled by the rough language that slipped out, she immediately clasped both hands over her mouth.

No matter how vulgar the other person was, if I acted the same way, I would become no different from them.

"Phew..."

Knowing that all too well, Bella looked at the maid, who still hadn't moved.

"Are you not moving?"

"...Yes, understood."

At Bella's chilly gaze, Nella lowered her head and paid her respects to Bella, who had legitimately secured her right of succession by passing her test.

***

After cutting short the conversation with the exasperating woman who answered questions with questions, I immediately headed to my room, which Mist was guiding me to.

"How unexpected."

"Huh?"

As we walked, Mist looked at me and said that.

Unexpected? What was unexpected?

Seeing my questioning gaze, Mist immediately continued.

"Given your personality, Lord Abel, I thought you would take control of the conversation with a sly smile, rather than deliberately ending the situation in a way that provoked hostility."

"...Well, I suppose I normally would have."

As I spoke, I put the cigar in my mouth.

"It's a hassle."

Yeah, normally, with my personality, I might have had a suitable conversation.

That woman... I don't even know her name, do I?

Anyway, she obviously seemed like an illegitimate child similar to me, so I might have drawn information out of her while talking.

"But do I really need to?"

I'd seen that type often enough.

The mages hired by the Empire's underworld organizations that had commissioned my assassination had been like that.

Heads held high and pride impossibly lofty, they treated every ordinary person and ability user who wasn't a mage as a savage.

Of course, I killed every last one of them.

In the process, I learned what they had in common.

"You can't get information out of that type even by talking to them. Or rather, they're the type who'll only give you information if I humble myself."

Of course, if I played up to them, they might give me information.

But why should I?

Was I supposed to suck up to a mage who might die at any moment?

I frowned before I knew it.

"I hate that."

I said it in a low voice before I knew it.

She looked at me strangely.

What should I call that look? Yes, it was like she was looking at a jewel...

Lick.

As I stared at her quietly, she suddenly ran her tongue lightly over her lips.

The sight of her apricot-colored tongue peeking out was almost seductive.

A shiver.

"You..."

"Is something the matter?"

I blinked once, and her expression immediately returned to normal.

Her face changed so quickly that for a moment I wondered if it was just my imagination—so much so that I doubted whether I had seen it correctly.

"No. That can't be it. Hey, you sometimes look at me strangely. What's that about?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"Don't brush it off."

Just then, as I was walking along exchanging pointless remarks with Mist.

Bam!

In the middle of our walk, one of the doors was violently flung open, and a man rushed out.

"Aaaaaah!!! How dare you! I'll kill... I'll kill you!!!"

The man charged off with the ferocity of a wounded beast.

As I watched silently, Mist's voice reached my ears.

"Ah, that's Lord Kaizen, the illegitimate child from the North who arrived today."

"...That guy?"

I looked at Kaizen, now running far away while shouting at the top of his lungs.

That direction looked like it was toward the head of the family, but he said he had taken the same test as me, didn't he?

"Oh, and the woman's name from earlier was Bella. She's another illegitimate child of House Nebla."

So one of them was a madman running around screaming at the top of his lungs,

and the other was that mage woman with a talent for getting on people's nerves?

When my thoughts reached that point, one question occurred to me.

If I hadn't been here, wouldn't one of those two have become head of House Nebla?

"Hmm...?"

Could those two take control of the ducal house and the underworld?

"Huh?"

No, they couldn't.

If they had truly taken control, the underworld crime organizations wouldn't have targeted the academy at the beginning of the story I knew.

In other words.

"If one of those two becomes head of the family."

Does that mean the ducal house is doomed, for starters?