Later that night, Scarlet came to me in my room and promptly bowed her head. “My sincerest apologies, Master.”
“What’s going on?”
“I surmise that...we cornered Parta too far.”
I cocked my head in confusion as I tried to review the past sequence of events in my head. “Well, our plan was to corner Tristan, wasn’t it?”
“Yes...”
“I approved that plan as well,” Lardon reminded me.
“How is it you went too far, then?”
“Allow me to explain.” Scarlet took a deep breath and smoothed her expression. “Our efforts to corner Parta’s Grand Duke Tristan have been very effective. At the rate we were going, we would see results in less than a decade. However...” She sighed. “The counts and barons beneath Tristan knew this as well. They feared that they would soon suffer the consequences too.”
I hummed, trying to process her words.
“Basically, Tristan was likely to raise their taxes to pay the reparations,” Lardon supplied.
“Ahh, I see.” I nodded.
Scarlet knew that I received supplementary explanations from Lardon during these types of discussions, so she always made sure to pause every now and then. Naturally, she didn’t find it odd whenever I replied to Lardon.
“The reparations are wholly the grand duke’s responsibility,” Scarlet continued. “It has nothing to do with the nobles beneath him.”
“So, they wanna run away before they get dragged into it?”
“Precisely. And therein lies the problem. Nobles ranked as counts and below do not tend to act independently. It is possible, but unlikely. More often than not, they situate themselves under the protection of a higher-ranking noble.”
“And their new backers would be...”
“From Quistador and Jamille, from the looks of things.”
“I see... So, what happens next?”
“The Duchy of Parta will probably collapse. Within the foreseeable future, the seat of grand duke will be reduced to a throne lathered in debt and bereft of actual power. From there, Parta’s territories will be absorbed into the neighboring Quistador and Jamille.”
“Whoa... Sounds complicated.”
“Not necessarily,” Lardon cut in.
I arched an eyebrow in question. Scarlet considerately pursed her lips for a moment.
“You may liken it to a father incurring heavy debts, causing his sons to cut ties and marry into other houses.”
“Oh... That does sound simple enough.”
Some debt collectors out there would probably demand the children to pay for their parents’ debts, but that’d get a lot harder to do if the children preemptively cut their ties.
Coming up with such a great analogy on the fly... That’s Lardon for you.
“They are cheating the system in a way, but their logic is incredibly sound,” Scarlet continued. “Thus, I’ve come seeking your instruction.”
“Mine?”
“Yes.” Scarlet nodded, the apologetic pinch in her expression giving way for seething anger. She almost looked like she was staring down her parents’ murderer. “At this rate, Tristan’s demise will come in one fell swoop, when our original plan was to subject him to prolonged suffering.”
“Oh...”
So, this was our main topic of discussion for today. We no longer had to lift a finger to get rid of Tristan, but in Scarlet’s eyes that was too quick and easy an end for him. After all, she was even angrier than I was about everything Tristan did to me.
I gave it some thought, humming as I tilted my head left and right.
“Master...?”
“Well,” I said finally, “I don’t really care.”
“You...don’t?”
“Nope. Surprisingly.”
“Is that so...?”
Back when I first learned what Tristan had done to Amelia, I’d gotten so mad that my vision turned red, but her voice that night had washed away every thought I had of him from my mind. He didn’t matter to me anymore.
I heard Lardon chuckle. “How very like you.”
“Really?”
“I’d suspected things would turn out this way. I sensed no obstinacy in your wrath.”
No obstinacy in my wrath...? I didn’t get what she meant by that, but Lardon couldn’t be wrong.
“Before a new magical endeavor, that incident and the wrath you felt in that moment mean nothing.”
“Well...yeah.” I knew myself. Between revenge against Tristan and a new magical pursuit, I wouldn’t hesitate to go for the latter. I turned to Scarlet again and asked, “Can’t we just leave Tristan be?”
“Very well. If that is your order, Master, then I shall obey.”
Lardon chuckled. “Our actions have led to Parta’s collapse and dissolution... This seems like an opportune moment to withdraw.”
Though they’d initiated this whole plan to corner Tristan with much vigor, Scarlet and Lardon both easily backed off now.
I had no doubt in their assessment of the situation—that the Duchy of Parta would likely come to an end soon enough. This was how our long, long dispute with the duchy finally came to an end... However, the same couldn’t be said for the dispute between the human nations.
Just a few days later, Sheila of Quistador came to visit me for the first time in a very long while.
✦ ✦ ✦
After lunch, I returned to my room for a postmeal exercise—magic practice. My goal was to increase the amount of mana I could use instantaneously.
Until now, I’d only ever worked on increasing my total mana capacity and refilling my reserves with manastones and Another Dimension. The latter, in particular, practically served as a bottomless supply of mana, so I’d never run into any wall or obstacle just doing things this way.
But here I was now, faced with a new problem: Instantaneously using four times my full capacity with Covenant Summoning caused me to black out. It was like...being able to cross tens of floors when taking the stairs, but getting badly hurt when jumping down three floors in one go.
Anyway, now I was trying to find a way to use a huge burst of mana without passing out. It wasn’t an urgent issue, but there was no reason not to try adding it to my repertoire either.
A quiet knock from the door cut through my thoughts.
“Come in,” I called.
Reina the elven maid stepped into my room. “Excuse me.”
“What’s up, Reina?”
“Princess Sheila Austrom has sent a letter.”
My eyebrows shot up. “Sheila?”
Sheila Austrom was the nineteenth princess of Quistador Kingdom and the active head of the Austrom house. If I had to describe her simply, she was a much more proud and passionate woman than even Scarlet.
My gaze fell to the letter set upon the ornamented tray in Reina’s hands. “She didn’t strike me as the letter-writing type... Did the messenger say anything?”
“No, Master. Only to make sure it gets to you.”
“Well, that’s a given...” I took the letter. “Anyway, thanks.”
“Of course.” Reina performed a deep bow, then quietly left the room with the tray.
Once I was alone, I opened up the letter.
“Even her handwriting’s full of confidence...” It immediately caught my eye. Now, I wasn’t a handwriting connoisseur or anything, but it wasn’t hard to sense Sheila’s zeal from hers. Well, maybe it’s also because I just know her in person.
“Anyway...” I proceeded to read the actual contents of the letter.
Her message was simple: “I’ve grown much stronger. Allow me to show you next time.”
“‘Also,’” I read aloud, “‘this letter will automatically combust once you finish reading’— Whoa!”
The moment my eyes trailed over the last line, the letter burst into flames in my hands. In no time at all, I found myself staring at a pile of ashes.
“Gosh, that startled me...”
Lardon chuckled. “An interesting trick.”
“Yeah... This must have been embedded with a spell that detects my gaze on the letters—no, the ink. It was set to combust once my gaze passed over all of the ink.”
“Oh? You analyzed it that quickly?”
“The logic is simple enough. I can imagine it wasn’t easy to embed the spell into the ink, though.”
“Hmph. Well, knowing that lass... To her, any effort is worth it if it means catching you off guard,” Lardon said, her amusement clear in her voice.
“Oh yeah. You were there when we met.” Anyway, she might be right. I wasn’t the best at reading other people, but Sheila’s intense and straightforward personality didn’t really leave much room for misinterpretation. “So, she did this to catch me off guard...?”
“Indeed I did.”
I drew in a sharp breath at the sudden and unexpected voice. Before I knew it, a blade was drawing near my eyes.
“Haaah!”
There was no time to cast a spell—I just unleashed a burst of mana to push it away. It was terribly inefficient compared to setting up a proper barrier, but this was all I could manage in that split second.
Wasting no time, I kicked the ground and leaped backward to take some distance—
“En garde!”
—but I heard the voice behind me once more, followed by a swift slash.
Fortunately, that brief moment was enough time for me to regain my bearings and prepare a barrier. The slash collided with it, sending a shock wave across my room and shattering the windows.
I whirled around and jumped backward again—and there, where I’d been just a moment ago, stood Sheila. Her stance was elegant and graceful, yet haughty and imposing. With an ominous sword in her hand, she looked at me with a leisurely and confident gaze.