Chapter 71
──A little earlier.
After leaving the hall with the brown-haired young man, Melissa entered a private room and immediately shoved a homemade candy into the mouth of the man with an arm around her waist.
"You could at least have given it to me mouth-to-mouth."
Melissa gave the man, who leaned his face toward hers as he said that, a bright smile.
"Oh, I'm sorry I wasn't more considerate. But, unfortunately..."
The next instant, the man who had put the candy in his mouth crumpled to the floor.
The sleep effect imbued in the rose candy had taken hold.
Melissa looked down at him and brushed back her dry, straw-like red hair.
"Impatient men aren't my type."
Melissa confirmed that the man had completely lost consciousness, then checked how many candies she had left.
Members of the Roseberg family can temporarily imbue roses—or products made from roses—with powerful magic. The effects they can bestow include sleep, arousal, paralysis, and detoxification.
The candies she had given Monica had been imbued with a detoxifying effect. As long as Monica kept one in her mouth, it should neutralize the effects of the aphrodisiac potion.
"...Maybe I should make a few more candies with a detoxifying effect."
Melissa placed a finger against a candy and rapidly chanted a spell.
The Roseberg family's temporary enchantment magic was powerful because it could bestow strong effects instantly.
However, temporary enchantments were temporary by nature, so their effects had a time limit.
The duration varied somewhat depending on the amount of magic imbued, but the effects lasted roughly thirty minutes to an hour. After that, the candy would return to being an ordinary candy.
More importantly, ingesting magic potions naturally carried the risk of magical toxicity. Melissa imbued them with the utmost care, but even so, one should avoid consuming five or more candies.
(So I'll finish this quickly.)
Melissa opened the door and beckoned Theodore, who had been hiding around the corner of the hallway and watching what was happening.
"Come here, Wimpy."
"Not Wimpy—Theodore."
"You can be Wimpy or Milquetoast for all I care. Now, take me to Sloth's room immediately."
"Okaaay..."
Theodore nodded with a resigned expression and started walking.
The establishment had three floors: a large hall on the first floor, guest rooms on the second, and rooms for the employees on the third. Melissa and Theodore were currently on the second floor.
The inside of the building was extremely labyrinthine. Without knowing the way, even getting up to the third floor was a challenge.
When they finally reached the third floor, Theodore spoke while glancing at Melissa repeatedly.
"Hey, hey, is there any point in recovering the magic potions? Once they've been sold all over the place, there's nothing anyone can do about it."
"Sorry to disappoint you. It's not the magic potion I'm trying to recover."
"...?"
Magic potions generally available on the market were made using permanent enchantment magic. However, because permanent enchantment magic was strictly regulated by law, it could not bestow especially powerful effects.
The Roseberg family's secret magic potions, on the other hand, were made using temporary enchantment magic, which was not subject to legal restrictions. They were potions that only the Roseberg family could make, since the family could bestow powerful magic even through a temporary enchantment.
But it was still only a temporary enchantment. The effect wore off within an hour of the magic being imbued.
That was why the Witch's Love Potion was stored in special bottles.
"The magic potions I make are stored in special magic-tool bottles. They look like ordinary bottles, but as long as the potion is kept in one, its effects will be maintained."
Ordinary temporary enchantment magic could not bestow particularly powerful effects, and no one would go to the trouble of preserving an effect that weak.
They were magic tools unique to the Roseberg family, which could perform powerful temporary enchantments.
Naturally, the Roseberg family did not tell its customers that the bottles were magic tools.
They simply told customers, "Use the love potion within thirty minutes of opening the lid, or the active ingredients will dissipate." Afterward, they collected the empty bottles from the customers.
In other words, this whole mess was Melissa's fault for selling the magic potion left and right and then slacking off on collecting the bottles.
Of course, Melissa was not the sort to be wracked by guilt, so she simply insisted, "Anyone who misuses the Witch's Love Potion is to blame."
"Without the potion bottles, the magic potion's effects can't be maintained. So if I recover or destroy those bottles, Sloth is finished. The nerve of a third-rate mage... You'll regret picking a fight with a first-rate prestigious family."
Melissa twisted her red lips into an evil grin and cackled, prompting Theodore to mutter under his breath.
"If you were really first-rate, this wouldn't have happened..."
"Shut up."
Melissa spread her hand wide and pressed it into Theodore's face.
Her red-painted nails mercilessly gouged his skin.
"Aaaah! It hurts, it hurts, it hurts! You're scarier than a female dragon in heat!"
"You're so damn loud. Don't shout."
Melissa clicked her tongue and took her hand off Theodore's face.
It was not out of mercy. Theodore's shrieking was simply annoying.
Theodore sniffled and traced the marks left by Melissa's nails with a finger.
"Ow, ow, that's awful... It's bleeding a little."
"It's your own fault for defying me. You're probably some dreadfully third-rate, unsuccessful, washed-up biologist or something."
"...Huh? Amazing. How did you know I was a biologist?"
She had merely blurted out a random thought, but it had happened to be correct.
While praising her own keen intuition, Melissa improvised a plausible-sounding explanation.
"You called MoniMoni, who looks like a small animal, 'you,' remember? It made you look like an old man who likes animals and talks to small creatures."
"Yeah, MoniMoni is like a squirrel or a rabbit. You're like a red dragon in heat."
"Do you want me to strangle you?"
Theodore turned deathly pale and shook his head violently, prompting Melissa to snort.
"No more pointless chatter. That door looks suspicious. Isn't that Sloth's room?"
With that, Melissa jerked her chin toward the particularly impressive door in front of them. Theodore nodded repeatedly. "Yes, yes, it is."
Melissa's impression that the door practically screamed, "The evil mastermind is in here," had apparently been accurate.
"All right, let's storm the place. Follow me, Wimpy."
"D-do I really need to come with youuu?"
"Oh, you do. You have an important role to play."
Grabbing Theodore firmly by the scruff of his neck as he looked ready to flee, Melissa said with a smile,
"A bullet shield."
"Nooooooo!!"
Since Theodore was making such a racket, sneaking around was pointless anyway.
Still gripping Theodore by the collar, Melissa kicked down the door in front of them.
"Now, raise your hands and kneel! Resist, and I'll bathe this place in blood!"
Melissa charged into the room shouting like a burglar, but there was no one inside.
That made her look like an idiot for having delivered such a forceful declaration.
To cover up the awkwardness, Melissa cleared her throat and looked around the room.
The room had the feel of a reasonably spacious parlor, but in a word, it was vulgar.
Cheap furniture was mixed with expensive furnishings, creating a horribly mismatched impression. Mixing cheap and high-end items would have been fine if they still formed a coherent whole, but this room did not.
It was obvious that whoever had decorated it thought putting some expensive-looking items in a room full of cheap furnishings would make it look luxurious.
"It feels like the room of a former pauper who just got a taste for money."
"That's harsh."
The voice came from Melissa's left.
At the same time, she sensed a faint noise from the right and instinctively raised a shield with her right hand.
Melissa's intuition had been correct. One of the chairs in the room flew toward her as though it possessed a will of its own.
The chair slammed into the shield she'd instinctively raised—Theodore's face—and shattered into splinters.
"Yaaagh!"
Theodore let out a pitiful scream as well and toppled backward, spurting blood from his nose.
Melissa let go of Theodore, who had rolled his eyes back, plucked one of the roses from her hair ornament, and began chanting.
Before she could finish chanting, the chairs and tables in the room rose into the air with a clatter and flew at Melissa.
Once Melissa finished chanting and held the rose out in front of her, it immediately sent out vines, which wrapped around every piece of furniture attacking her.
"What is this? Magic-tool desks and chairs?"
"Desks and chairs that move according to the user's will. I made them myself. Pretty good, aren't they?"
The wall to Melissa's left slowly slid sideways, and a man emerged from the hidden room.
He was a large man past his mid-thirties, with dark brown hair slicked back. He wore flashy patterned clothing and had jangling ornaments hanging from every part of his body.
Even so, his face could not hide the ingrained servility and shabby air he had been born with.
With a derisive smile, Melissa thought that he looked like the human embodiment of the room itself and kicked the desk tangled in the rose vines.
"Moving desks and chairs? Magic tools that are only useful for redecorating or moving house. If you're proud of junk like this, then the Sloth family is nothing special. No wonder you've fallen so far."
"Ha ha, as expected of the prestigious Roseberg family... How arrogant."
This man knew Melissa's identity.
And yet, his thoroughly self-assured attitude suggested that he had either decided to brazen it out, or...
"...Your arrogance has left you wide open, former Seven Sage-sama."
Feeling a chill behind her, Melissa moved the desk entangled in vines behind herself.
A crack appeared in the desk. She had been attacked from behind. The faint magic lingering in the air was ice magic.
When she turned around, a woman with pale blond hair and a fur coat was standing behind her. She held two pistols in her hands.
(Those must be magic tools too!)
"Get her, Veronica!"
Sloth barked as Melissa clicked her tongue.
Veronica silently aimed the guns at Melissa and pulled the triggers.