“Aha! This is the perfect time to borrow the wisdom of a scholar!” I exclaimed. “Right, Sita?”
“Uh, I’ve never done any sort of research on cuteness,” Sita replied, rapidly waving her hands in front of her. “It’s not really a thing passed down in historical documents, so I can’t be of any help.”
“If not now, then when? When can we use that knowledge of yours?”
“She’s right, Sita,” Emilia joined in. “Use the entirety of Kairomea’s resources to find a solution.”
“That’s so unreasonable...” Sita muttered at having this impossible task pushed on her. “What should we do, Lord Orthoaguina?”
“Hey, now,” Orthoaguina replied. “Don’t involve me in this charade!”
“Good grief. For all the bravado that comes with your nickname, the Philomath Dragon, you certainly don’t live up to it...” Emilia mumbled to herself. “How very ignorant you are.”
Uh, Emilia?! You really shouldn’t go there. I gasped with fear and gingerly turned to the book that Sita had taken out. I couldn’t tell the emotions of a book, but I felt like I saw the air around it crackle for a moment.
“Oho?” Orthoaguina replied. “You sure know how to talk, Witch Princess of Relirex.”
“Oh, it’s not your fault,” Emilia replied. “If anything, the blame should fall onto us for relying on a silly, simple book.” She genuinely hadn’t been intending to provoke him, but it sounded awfully mocking nonetheless.
“Heh... Heh heh heh...” Orthoaguina chuckled. “Very well! Then why don’t I use everything I’ve got to teach you this so-called cuteness that you desire!”
Oh no... We touched on the sore spot of our resident unhinged dragon... What can I do about this?
“All right, Mary,” Orthoaguina said. “Let’s do this!”
“Why me?!” I shrieked. “Emilia’s right there!”
“If I were to analyze cuteness among you all, Noa would be the best, but you and the princess were selected for this mission. Using the daughter of the judge would be unfair. It’d encourage favoritism, and we don’t want that. If we want to fight fair and square, you’re the only one left.”
“Why not use favoritism to our advantage?”
“I won’t be happy winning by cheating!”
The flame had been sparked within the scholar’s troublesome heart, leaving me little choice but to accept this peculiar battle against the Argent Armor.
“Now then, I’ve gathered all the scholars of Kairomea,” Orthoaguina informed us. “Give us a few moments to finish debating how best to make the Argent Holy Woman adorably beg for something.”
“Don’t make a ton of researchers dedicate serious effort to something so bizarre! Don’t you think they feel embarrassed?! I bet everyone’s just praying for this to end as quickly as possible.”
“Ah, quite contrary to your presumption, we have a healthy contingent offering their perceptions of how the Argent Holy Woman would behave, and they’re being met with vehement refutations from those who claim the Argent Holy Woman would never act as they envision, and we have more researchers still who claim they’ve yet to see a compelling analysis. The debate is quite heated with all these differing opinions.”
I have no idea what to make of these Kairomean scholars anymore... I fell to my knees in the middle of Orthoaguina’s play-by-play report, unable to utter a single sound.
“Now then, I believe I’ve gathered enough opinions to proceed with fashioning my own hypothesis,” Orthoaguina continued. “To begin, there are three important points to cuteness: body language, facial expression, and charming diction.”
“Uh, we can just do this more normally,” Queen Belletochka offered, trying to lend me a helping hand.
“The host of this competition need only sit tight and keep mum!” Orthoaguina roared. No one could stop him now.
“First, let us decide on a pose,” Orthoaguina said. His book had been positioned in front of me so he could direct me more easily. “Bend your body diagonally to the side at a thirty-five-degree angle.”
“Um, l-like this?” I asked.
“Wrooong! You’ve gone four degrees too far! Now you’re point five degrees too close! And now you’re point one degrees too far! Argh! No, no. How are you incapable of following such simple instructions?”
“I’m terribly sorry,” I said through gritted teeth, trying my best to endure the insults and the unreasonable requests. Frankly, I was about to explode with anger.
“Never mind. Gently clench your fists and bring them in front of your chest. Tuck in your elbows and try leaning— No. This one won’t do...”
“Uh, you came to that conclusion after you looked at my chest, didn’t you?”
“Indeed. You’re flatter than I expected.”
“Hi-yah! Divine punishment!”
“Gah!”
I’d endured all the insults until now, but my patience had finally reached its end and I smacked the book to the ground. He grunted like he’d been hurt as he plummeted to the floor, but of course, that was just him playing along, considering his senses weren’t actually connected to the book or anything.
“Hmph. Do you mean to make me witness some kind of skit?” the Argent Armor asked, breaking her silence. “I can’t bear to see you fooling around much longer—pardon me as I bring this all to a close.” She sighed and stepped forward.
I wanted to deny that we’d just been putting on a skit, but honestly, I couldn’t really claim it’d been any better than that, much to my chagrin. All right, fine. Let’s see you try acting cute, talking suit of armor! I’m sure this’ll be good.
“Belletochka, do not go to Xeoral! I won’t forgive you if you dare go against my wishes,” the Argent Armor declared proudly and menacingly.
This is her best shot? I froze along with everyone else as silence settled over the room, each of us unsure how to process what we’d just experienced.
“U-Um... And that’s your cute request?” the queen asked.
“Hmph, this is me acting tsundere,” the Argent Armor replied. “Did my sublime subtlety fly over your heads?”
“Uh, you know that a tsundere has to act warm and friendly at some point, right?” I asked. She looked so proud of herself that I just had to point out her mistakes. “Where’s that part? I only saw you being harsh.”
“You fool,” the armor replied. “I’ll act warm and friendly when everyone is gone and the two of us can be alone.”
“You’re going to be alone with her? How?” I asked.
“I-I’ll just call Belletochka to the corner of the room and...” It was apparent the situation she’d had in mind was completely unrealistic, and she seemed to have realized as much now that I’d pointed it out.
“Do you maybe not actually know what being tsundere means?” I asked.
“Sh-Shut up! Silence!” the armor roared, launching into a childish tantrum and stomping the floor angrily. “Why must I go to the trouble of entertaining this nonsense anyway?!” Suddenly, she unsheathed her sword and pointed it at the queen.
We hastily stepped forward to protect Queen Belletochka, but she raised her hand to stop us, her attitude firm and resolute, quite unlike the warm, fuzzy air she’d been maintaining mere moments ago. “You’ve become rather emotional these days,” she observed. “You used to be so calm and collected.”
“Silence! Sileeence!” the Argent Armor shouted. “That’s because Agard was with me! The me from back then wasn’t my true self! Don’t act like you know anything about me!”
I wasn’t sure if the queen and the armor used to be friends, or if the past was a taboo subject for her, but what was clear was that the armor’s murderous intent was becoming more and more palpable by the second. It was similar to the time she’d tried to kill Noa—her demeanor could shift at a moment’s notice. Put simply, I felt that the armor was emotionally unstable.
“Yes, there’s a very simple solution,” the Argent Armor said. She gazed up and spoke at an empty area of the room—no one was there. “Surely, I’m allowed to kill people to protect our garden. Isn’t that right, Agard?”
The moment she turned back to us, she moved without hesitation. She was acting to kill. She was so swift that no one could react as she approached the queen, and I instinctively moved to protect her...but just then, a blow from the side assaulted the Argent Armor.
“Gah!” she grunted.
She blew through the wall and slammed into the next wall past it. The metallic clamor was deafening.
“Argent, I shall turn a blind eye if you’re just playing around,” a low voice said. “But should you dare mean to raise a finger against my wife, I shan’t go easy on you.” A man emerged from beyond the shattered wall clenching his fists. We all watched on in astonishment as he then proceeded to huff and flex his muscles before striking a pose. “I swear it on my muscles!” he shouted.
We were face-to-face with a pervert in underwear— Ahem, I mean, we were face-to-face with Vram Relirex, the Dark Lord who had once lost to the Argent Knight.