Chapter 93
It had been about a week since the unrest in the city of artists, Marita, had ended.
To give a rough account of Marita's aftermath, the protesters and the city dramatically yielded to each other, and it ended unexpectedly without much of a fuss.
Well, there were countless political reasons beneath the surface, but that wasn't my concern for now, so I left the city immediately, using my weariness with the protests as an excuse.
Of course, I discarded all the letters I had scattered and released [White Shadow] to negotiate with the artists, so the person named Belle who had lived in Marita would probably disappear.
"Is this the place?"
"Yes. It matches the location of the land Mr. Abel purchased."
At Mist's confirmation, I raised my head and looked at the sign of the cocktail bar established in Crocus, the city where [Crocus Academy] stood.
[Mist Dream]
A shop I had established in the city where [Crocus Academy] was located, with a direct line to House Nebula.
In simple terms, the Crocus branch of House Nebula.
For reference, I had already obtained the chairman's permission.
He had approved it so readily that I was surprised.
The name was simply taken from Mist's name, since I had been choosing a suitable shop name and she happened to be near me.
She did not seem to mind much that there was a shop here named after her, either.
Ding.
With those thoughts in mind, I entered the shop, sat in a suitable spot, and placed the luggage I had brought beside the chair.
After setting down my luggage for a moment, I opened my mouth while watching Mist move about somewhat busily.
"What are you doing?"
It wasn't cleaning.
From the start, the shop had a Clean magic circle installed that periodically removed dust and all kinds of filth, so there was no dust.
And since it did not receive customers, there was even less chance for dust to accumulate.
Mist answered my question as though it were nothing special.
"Ah... I was wondering if I should make you a cocktail."
Mist took out the tools needed to make a simple cocktail and asked while looking at me.
"What do you think?"
"Hmm..."
At Mist's words, I looked at the clock hanging in the shop.
There was a little time left until the appointed time.
Information extracted while torturing... ahem! interrogating Azak.
Information extracted from the mana residue obtained in Marita, as well as Sailor's mana, which appeared to belong to a subordinate organization of the [Organization] called [Rhynas], whom I had killed.
And finally, a few facts discovered by cross-checking the information extracted while torturing... interrogating the [Organization] members secured by Charon and Nella.
I had asked Ariel for time to pass on the information because it was too risky to simply transfer it using the typewriter.
But now that there was so little time left, I was supposed to drink?
"No, it's fine."
It was a little disappointing, but it would be rude to have a serious conversation while drinking.
After declining Mist's offer, I spent the time drinking the water she handed me.
Ding.
A little while later.
The sound of a bell reached me while I was passing the time reading a book I had brought along.
When I turned my head, Ariel, still unsure whether this was the meeting place, opened the door, poked her head in, and checked the inside of the shop.
"Pfft."
I gave a small laugh and waved so she could see me, and only then did Ariel enter the shop and sit down across from me.
"It's been a while, hasn't it?"
"Yes. It has."
Perhaps she was slightly embarrassed by how she had just looked; she blushed, sighed, and spoke.
"Um, this is my first time in a shop like this, but is the lighting usually this subdued? I couldn't tell at all from outside that the shop was open."
"Ah..."
At Ariel's words, I nodded as though I understood.
"Well, I suppose it is."
Though that also depended on the shop's concept.
"I like keeping the shop lit this softly; it's my preference."
"I see..."
"I see..."
Hm?
Ariel's voice of understanding came from in front of me. I turned my head and looked at Mist, who was standing behind the cocktail bar.
For some reason, she was nodding.
At my gaze, Ariel also turned her head to look at Mist.
"Ah, it's nice to see you again too, Miss Mist."
"Indeed. We haven't seen each other since we got off the train that day."
Mist gave Ariel a small bow and, with her usual expression, said,
"You must have missed Mr. Abel very much."
She dropped a bomb.
"Excuse me...?"
"If you entered the shop, I would be the first person you saw, yet you came straight to Mr. Abel."
As she spoke, Mist quickly scanned Ariel's clothes and face.
Though she was wearing the uniform of [Crocus Academy], it was nowhere near enough to escape the eyes of an elite assassin.
"Besides, the makeup..."
"Aaaah!!"
No sooner had Mist opened her mouth than Ariel sprang from her seat and, moving at a speed enhanced by divine power, lightly pressed her palm over Mist's mouth.
"???"
"Ah, um..."
She glanced back and forth between Mist and me, fidgeted, then lowered her head completely and mumbled in a small voice.
"S-sorry..."
"...I was only trying to compliment you. The makeup suits you."
"Ah, um... yes. I'm sorry. It's my first time wearing makeup too, so I overreacted."
A little while later.
After a brief commotion, Ariel finally calmed down, took a sip of the cold water Mist offered her, and opened her mouth.
"Ahem! In any case, why did you ask to see me?"
"Ah, it's nothing major. I obtained information that couldn't even be discussed through the typewriter."
"Information?"
"Ah, I have quite a lot of information about those [Organization] bastards I captured. So I came to tell you about it."
"I see..."
At my words, her mood sank slightly.
Her reaction was so transparent that I found it amusing, so I laughed briefly before bringing up something that had been bothering me all along, before getting into the real discussion.
"So who are the friends who came with you?
"
"Excuse me...?"
She looked at me as though startled by my words.
'Confirmed.'
So she didn't know them?
Vroom.
Crunch!
"Aaaah!!"
"Ghk!"
"Guh!"
At the same time, three people came crashing through the shop door, tightly bound in my mana threads.
They had concealed their presence with magic, magical tools, or trained technique, but they had been slightly clumsy.
I had been continuously sensing the surroundings ever since entering this place, so it would have been strange not to notice them.
"Huh?"
Ariel's eyes began to shake violently as she looked at the people writhing on the floor.
"You know them?"
At her reaction, I stopped constricting them with mana threads and looked at Ariel.
It probably was fortunate that I had decided to deal with them inside the shop rather than outside, since handling it out there might have caused trouble for the chairman who ruled this city.
"Yes..."
Judging by her affirmative response to my question.
.
.
.
"So..."
"..."
"Our student Lucy was following Ariel to see whether she was sneaking off, is that right?"
"Following! I was, but... well... yes... I'm sorry."
At the word "following," the student called Lucy reflexively tried to deny it, but shrank under my gaze and lightly admitted her crime.
"Sigh..."
Ariel put a hand to her forehead and sighed softly as she looked at Lucy.
Lucy's eyes began to shake violently as she looked back and forth between Ariel and me.
"..."
What was that?
If I interpreted Lucy's face literally, she looked shocked, as if shouting, [Miss Ariel has a man!!!]
For the record, I had learned mind reading and things like that... but in any case, I had not learned her thoughts through such mind reading.
'It all shows on her face, doesn't it?'
I had never seen anyone whose every thought was revealed in their expression to such an extent, as though they were incapable of wearing a mask.
"Sigh..."
With Lucy's interrogation over, I turned my head and looked at the two men who had crossed their arms and turned their attention toward Ariel and me.
One looked exactly like a stereotypical handsome prince.
And the other was a man of the frigid North. His name was Kairun, right?
The prince character and the cold northern grand duke—truly the standard setup for people who loved romance fantasy.
'Good grief...'
Just as one would expect from a romance fantasy, their looks were enough to make me exclaim at how handsome they were.
'He looks greasy, though...'
But that's how women see those bastards; I'm a man, aren't I?
How often does one man look at another man and marvel at how handsome he is?
Besides, those two were even worse offenders.
Unlike Lucy, who knew she had done wrong and was remorseful, they had no such attitude, and once the mana threads were released, they continued to regard me warily.
Moreover, the looks in their eyes when Ariel sat beside me for the interrogation were...
'Ugh...'
Looks of jealousy from a couple of men.
I never thought I would live to receive looks like that.
"And you?"
"..."
"What is your name, then?"
One.
"What?"
"I know we were in the wrong, but from our perspective, I cannot deny that you look the most suspicious."
What was this blond prince, whose face was greasy as if slathered in butter, babbling about?
"It simply appears that Kairun and I were forced to follow Miss Lucy because we wanted to apologize to Ariel."
The context was strange, and even while speaking to me, the blond prince's eyes were fixed on Ariel sitting beside me.
"But you are different. You know about this shop—a shop that students have been whispering about for the past two months, saying it has not opened even once."
"..."
"Yet Saintess Ariel entered such a shop and met a suspicious man like you inside it, so naturally, you seem even more..."
"Hey."
Two.
"If you're going to make such a pathetic excuse, just leave the shop."
I had expected something like this to happen.
She was, after all, the heroine of a romance fantasy.
Whether she wanted it or not, men were bound to flock to her.
Besides, I had told her to take charge of matters inside the academy.
In other words, what happened here was essentially under her jurisdiction.
So I had been trying to hold back.
People from one district do not resolve incidents involving another organization's territory, after all.
It would have been a nuisance, and honestly, I was lazy too.
But I had to say at least this much.
"And."
A man, you know.
"If it's your fault, admit it and just say you're sorry and that it won't happen again. That's all it takes. Got it?"
"..."
"Picking apart someone's words just to put on some weird show of machismo—that's even more pathetic."
At my words, everyone here except Ariel and Mist widened their eyes and stared at me.
"..."
As always, Mist was polishing a cocktail glass with an expressionless face.
"Sigh..."
Ariel clutched her forehead and sighed as though she had known this would happen.
"Urk!"
“!!”
Perhaps Ariel's sigh had been the decisive blow, because the blond man and Kairun immediately rose from their seats and slammed their hands down on the table.
"Such insolence!"
"You have gone too far."
Phew...
Hold it in. Hold it in. The other party is still a student... No, he is a student, but he's an adult, right?
Ah, but he's a college student, isn't he?
Right. The other party is a college student. Let's hypnotize myself with that.
It isn't unusual for college students to have weird hang-ups, right?
"This is an insult to me, Wilhelm von Berlaim of the Berlaim Kingdom!"
Ah, good. So Wilhelm was a student, huh?
"I have likewise determined that you are insulting House Stellaraim."
What on earth was love that it made them act so stupidly?
Even if love blinded people, wasn't this going too far?
""So.""
""State your name. I challenge you to a duel.”"
...
A duel.
Put simply, it was a way of resolving conflicts that was practiced as an unspoken rule among nobles.
A barbaric tradition that continued to this day to resolve conflicts between families.
They were challenging me to a duel?
"Good grief..."
Finding it strange, I looked into their eyes and saw them looking back and forth between Ariel and me.
At this point, I had to admit it was impressive.
Their ultimate goal in challenging me to a duel was probably to show Ariel their strength and make a good impression on her.
Vroom.
And that was an accident bordering on a coincidence piled atop another coincidence.
Abel's concentration broke from sheer absurdity at the reaction of these lovesick men he was seeing for the first time.
Wilhelm's composure broke when he unconsciously saw the baffled look Abel was giving them, and mana burst forth.
The fire spell that had been pre-cast in that released mana activated.
To make matters worse, the spell was extremely weak, causing Abel's reaction to be delayed.
As a result.
Fwoosh!
"Huh...?"
Abel's luggage bag.
The bag began to burn.
At the same time, the scent of cigars wafted from the bag.
'Huh?'
As he stared blankly at the sight, Abel's thoughts began racing.
What had been in that bag again?
Since the chairman enjoyed cigars, it was a bag filled with the various expensive cigars he had obtained this time, along with the Christo cigars.
Then why had it caught fire?
Unfortunately, that Wilhelm fellow also possessed the title of male lead.
In simple terms, he was probably a main character in a novel or story.
So naturally, he had great magical talent, and having trained himself with that high talent, he could demonstrate magic capable of piercing through the defensive magic placed on the bag.
'So...'
The fire burning over there right now was real fire?
Vroom.
Upon reaching that conclusion, I immediately raised an enormous amount of mana and began enveloping the blazing fire with mana alone.
"What?!"
At the absurd sight, Wilhelm let out a shriek and stared at Abel.
The fire spell he had cast was an advanced spell—in terms of tiers, a fifth-tier spell.
Extinguishing a fire produced by such a spell simply by pouring mana into it?
Sizzle.
It was impossible. It was beyond anything he could understand.
But the fire was quickly extinguished by Abel's mana.
"What is this...?"
Ignoring Wilhelm's horrified reaction, I carefully opened the bag and checked what was inside.
In the brief moment I had been frozen by surprise, a considerable number of the cigars inside the bag had burned and become impossible to smoke.
And at the very back.
I carefully opened the box containing the Christo cigars—the kind I had considered asking Bellias to install a defensive magic circle around.
Click.
I opened the cigar box with slightly trembling hands and saw the Christo cigar already half-burned.
Ah...
It's gone?
It was supposed to be half left. You have to cut off the intact end of a cigar to taste its aroma.
But half of it had burned away?
"Haha..."
They were a tier below the Arutus cigars the chairman had given me, but they were still expensive cigars, and they had burned before I could even smoke them?
Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh?
Pfft.
Strange. When I touched it, it should have lifted up intact, but there was no way these drifting black ashes could be a cigar.
"Ah..."
Strange???
Creak.
Abel turned his head slightly and looked at the two idiots who still seemed confused about what had happened.
Three.
.
.
.
I am a very rational person.
"So did a very rational person hang the heir to the Northern Duchy and the prince of a kingdom from the academy's front gate?"
Mist asked back as though she found my words absurd.
Looking at her, I answered simply while lighting my cigar.
"They burned my cigars, didn't they?"
Right. Well, I could understand if it had been because of a spar or a fight, even giving them a hundred concessions.
But what? They made such a fuss over a woman?
"What a bunch of fucking idiots."