Chapter 56
#56화 Crown Prince Alondre (4) - Proper Effort Is Needed for a Good Hobby.
『Docile』
1. adjective Calm and composed in behavior or demeanor.
2. adjective Neat and proper in appearance.
3. adjective Careful and earnest in one’s work.
[[[4. A word that has nothing to do with the Crown Prince. This will be on the test.]]]
Inside Lucidra’s head.
An image flashed through her mind of a dictionary imbued with demonic power grotesquely twisting the arm extending from its cover, obsessively emphasizing a part of its own page.
‘What is this, an illusion spell?’
While Lucidra was busy using reality as an escape hatch, the Crown Prince began spouting utter nonsense with a very serious face.
“The life of the adventurer Bern was splendid. The journey of slaying monsters that would become seeds of a great disaster and crushing the conspiracy of an evil lich was truly the model of the adventurer I had dreamed of.”
“Cedric’s life as a servant wasn’t bad either. After always being the one served, serving someone else was quite a novel experience. Brewing tea to my taste, cleaning the way I thought best, and serving a master who was a little lacking and inexperienced was also enjoyable.”
“But, if I must call it a sad nature, I tend to get bound by the rules of whatever organization I belong to. In that sense, the previous two seemed to have acted a bit too well-behaved and a bit too sensibly.”
Lucidra opened and closed her mouth like a goldfish.
She had so much she needed to say, so much she wanted to say, that none of it could be put into words.
It was enough to make one wonder if this was what a Great Mage’s Silence spell felt like.
But she, too, had once been a Great Demon of renown.
After resisting the Crown Prince’s powerful great magic, Lucidra finally managed to speak.
“So, next you’re going to destroy the world?”
“Hm? Hah, as expected of a demon. That’s a wicked line of thought. How could I do such a thing as a hobby?”
“What are you babbling about, you inherently evil human!?”
“If that is what you think, then that is what it is within you. I respect freedom of thought, so I shan’t stop you from thinking it.”
“#(^)^&^#@^@#!?!!”
With the Great Demon’s shriek of despair and disheveled hair as background music, the Crown Prince quietly lifted his cup and savored the fragrance of black tea.
Tea made sweeter and served at a lower temperature to suit Claudia’s tastes wasn’t bad, but black tea hot enough to burn you if you drank it carelessly suited his preference more.
“Anyway, in that sense, the next doppelgänger will be going with a lone-wolf concept unaffiliated with any organization. Keeping the policy of ‘good’ itself, but moving however the moment takes me—a cheerful scoundrel! Mm, that should be truly enjoyable. Sometimes setting aside the words restraint and self-control and running wild is a good way to relieve stress.”
Watching the Crown Prince nod in satisfaction as if pleased just thinking about it, Lucidra soon let the strength leave her shoulders.
“...Fine. It’s not like I’m the one getting hurt anyway. If that already crazy guy throws off even the last leash he has and goes on a rampage, watching the people who suffer under him should be entertaining enough.”
“Watching, you say? I doubt you’ll have that leisure, though?”
“What?”
To the puzzled Lucidra, the Crown Prince said as if it were only natural.
“You lost, didn’t you? The wager.”
“…….”
Lucidra’s eyes rolled around.
The corners of her eyes curved sharply, and soon her face changed into a sultry smile.
It was a supreme smile that could make countless men burn with longing.
“Hehehe, yes, I know even without being told. Come now, I’ll give you the ultimate pleasure. First, take off those stifling clothes—”
“From now on, you need to create the foundation for my new identity.”
The Crown Prince, treating her with the same easy care one would give a Great Demon, spoke lightly of his purpose.
When her plan to casually spend the price of the wager by creating a suggestive mood fell apart, Lucidra’s lips trembled.
“I-I need to create a foundation for an identity? What is that?”
“Adventurers are a profession that doesn’t really care about a person’s identity to begin with, so I was able to jump into the field bare-handed. Serving as a servant in a noble house also worked because the other side’s circumstances were so unusual that I could get in without much background. However, one can’t keep hoping for that kind of luck every time, can one?”
There are many professions in the world, but among them, those that can be done purely on “ability” are fairly limited.
Someone born to certain parents, raised on a certain land in a certain way.
Without such a profile, there are quite a few industries one can’t even get a foot in the door of to begin with.
“So you’ll have to create that foundation for me.”
“W-wait a second! You’re the Crown Prince!! If what you need is a plausible identity, can’t you just have the people under you make one? Why are you trying to make me do it!?”
It was the empire, the strongest nation on the continent.
If he put his mind to it, creating a suitable identity in another country wouldn’t be difficult at all.
Why was he making her do it when there was a simpler, more convenient method?
The Crown Prince brushed off Lucidra’s protest with ease.
“If I used my authority as Crown Prince like that, wouldn’t my hobby be exposed to everyone else as well?”
“You already spilled it to the others, so why are you suddenly acting like this!?”
“I only told Blanca that it was ‘doppelgänger magic and the real body is elsewhere’; as for Claudia, it wasn’t I who revealed it, but she discovered it herself. Strictly speaking, those are different.”
Moreover, Blanca hadn’t believed from the start that it was a doppelgänger, and Claudia likewise hadn’t known it was a doppelgänger—but that wasn’t important.
“More importantly, having a hobby while being watched by family or acquaintances—that’s another nightmare altogether. In the worst case, I was even prepared to burn through a few doppelgängers just to build the foundation... Hmm, and it turned out fortunate that you happened to propose the wager.”
A demon is, after all, a being that tempts humans with “I will grant your wish” and leads them down the path of corruption.
In other words, there are few workers in the world as easy to exploit as a demon.
Much less if that demon bears the title of Great Demon; among workers, that would be a premium specimen.
“I-I still haven’t fully recovered my strength.”
“Need mana? I’ll supply it directly. After all, the amount consumed by doppelgängers isn’t that much.”
“I still don’t know the modern world very well, so it might take time to research things and adapt...”
“I’m not so heartless as to tell you to have it ready by tomorrow. Anyway, up to the next ‘D,’ it should be possible even without a special foundation, and if your work is slower than I expected, I can wait until ‘E’ as well. If you still can’t produce results after that, I’ll consider it a contract breach.”
“You, you... Are you really okay with just letting a demon loose in the world? What if I go around dragging the world into corruption and running amok?”
“Hmm.”
At Lucidra’s final resistance, the Crown Prince covered his mouth for a moment and then said lightly.
“Rest assured. Even so, as an old friend with whom I once enjoyed a hobby, I shall send you off neatly on your way.”
It was a declaration with not a trace of doubt that he could indeed do it.
What was even sadder was that Lucidra herself thought that, yes, this human really might be able to do it.
“Then just do it if it can be done!! You heartless Crown Prince bastard!!”
Lucidra’s eyes filled with tears.
A demon whose tear ducts had become much weaker lately.
***
After Lucidra, having obtained the Crown Prince’s cooperation, left the palace in tears.
The Crown Prince, for his part, fell into deep thought.
“Even if the doppelgänger was in poor condition, having Claudia—no, the marquess’s blood beast—see through my disguise can only be described as my own lack of skill.”
He intended to create many more doppelgängers in the future, and among them some would no doubt end up in bad shape from being pushed like this time.
If his identity were exposed to the other party every time, there would be nothing more of a mood killer.
“There’s nothing for it. The side effects are severe, so I had intended not to use it if possible.”
After lamenting softly, the Crown Prince soon summoned a servant and gave an order.
“Bring me the scribe.”
“Understood.”
The servant bowed respectfully with graceful movements and withdrew, and a short while later a middle-aged man in a neat suit appeared, looking thoroughly tense.
“You called for me, Your Highness.”
“Mm, sorry to summon you so suddenly without warning.”
“Not at all. It is only natural to respond whenever Your Highness calls. However, is there perhaps some problem with the documents that were submitted?”
“That’s not it. I called because I have a favor to ask.”
“A favor? Please, just give the order.”
“Then I do order you—bring me all the documents you are currently handling.”
“...Pardon?”
Naturally, when the Crown Prince said he was doing paperwork, it didn’t mean he personally revised every tiny word and calculated every number.
Most of the documents that reached the Crown Prince’s desk were merely waiting for final approval; in other words, the sort that were done once a seal was stamped on them.
Of course, due to the absurd combination of a centralized power structure and a vast territory, even the simple act of “reading it and stamping it” was already a tremendous amount of work, but even so it was far less than the documents being handled one by one below.
So the scribe could only ask back, awkwardly and despite knowing it was rude.
“If there are documents you’re interested in, please tell me their contents. I’ll prioritize them as much as possible and bring them up first.”
“All of them... no, never mind. Thinking about it, it’d be faster if I went myself.”
“What!?”
Leaving the scribe’s shock behind, the Crown Prince truly strode over and stormed into the office where the officials of Geumun Palace were hard at work.
The officials, who had been wrestling with a mountain of documents while drinking the imported magical black drink from a neighboring country like water, froze at the Crown Prince’s sudden appearance.
To those people, the Crown Prince said:
“Just so there’s no misunderstanding, let me say this in advance: what I’m about to do is merely an action taken to carve out some time for my personal training, and absolutely not to criticize how you work. Think of it as one of those little happenings that occasionally pop up in life, and please take it lightly. Understood? If you do, hand over the documents.”
In truth, the officials still didn’t understand what the Crown Prince was saying or why he had stormed in here, but none of them had the guts to ignore his order to hand over the paperwork right away.
Shaking with fear that he might find fault with them, they held out the documents.
And soon opened their mouths wide enough for their jaws to drop.
‘The mountain of documents is... melting away!’
‘No, those calculations have to be right down to a single digit, and he’s doing them in his head without even using a calculator... how is this even correct?’
‘A week’s worth of work is disappearing from the hands of the top boss. ...Aha, I’ve been working overtime too much; I’m dreaming! I need to wake up!’
Shock, disbelief, and escape from reality.
Amid those various gazes and silent screams, the Crown Prince finished all the work that dozens of officials were responsible for, and in that same state handed the completed documents to the scribe while saying:
“The bureaucratic world is the sort where, if there’s no work, they’ll invent some from thin air and dump it on someone, so under no circumstances should this document be sent straight to the imperial court all at once. Understood? Our Geumun Palace is dividing the assigned work and handling it slowly over the course of a week. Isn’t that right?”
At the Crown Prince’s glance, the officials of Geumun Palace hurriedly nodded.
“Yes!!”
“There’s too much work, so it looks like we’ll have to divide it up and do it slowly!!”
“I’ll call home and say I’m working overtime again today!”
At their enthusiastic response, the Crown Prince smiled in satisfaction and left.
The officials left behind merely blinked at the situation, in which a week’s worth of work had abruptly vanished.
Of course, as is usually the case with paperwork, more tasks would come up apart from the work originally scheduled, but compared to the tasks they were supposed to handle in the first place, that amount was no more than child’s play.
For the first couple of days, those same people were plagued by an unnecessary sense of unease, but once they confirmed that the Crown Prince was really devoting his paperwork time to self-training, they soon wore smiles as warm as a spring breeze.
Some of them, whose dark circles had been especially severe, even grew teary-eyed.
“Ah...!”
To think he could make both a Great Demon and his subordinate officials well up at the corners of their eyes—the Crown Prince’s grace truly was as vast as the sea and sky.