“So as we said, not even Mother is heartless enough to marry a young girl off to a creep like that,” Prince Caesar said.
Honestly, the way he phrased it made it sound like he still considered the queen to be somewhat heartless, but I let it go without comment. If Prince Lyle had said that instead, I would’ve said something.
“Okay. So basically, Kriss’s bad luck with men started from the get-go,” I said.
“That’s certainly part of it, but Kriss also has very high standards,” replied Princess Isabella. “Probably because of what she went through with her father when she was younger. She’s not willing to settle.”
We all nodded and turned to glance at Kriss—she was still being lectured by the queen.
“Oh, right... By the way, why were Prince Lyle and Luna taking their butler and maid exams at my house?” I asked casually. That had been bugging me.
However, the looks I got in response were very tense.
“Basically, they made Mother very angry. And we weren’t too happy with them either. To tell the truth, you’re somewhat involved too, Tenma.”
Apparently, Prince Lyle had been scheming to do something nasty involving me, the queen, and Luna. But since Luna had been the one who’d told on him, they had figured she was making it up.
“Both of them had been causing trouble nonstop anyway, so it was decided that the two of them should be punished. They were put on garbage detail in the castle. Since they were already hauling trash, they were told to go straighten up your estate too. Cruyff and Aina went to supervise, but Luna apparently found a pair of gloves somewhere and decided to use them. She actually said she found two pairs and gave one to Lyle too.”
The moment I heard the word “gloves,” a bad feeling grew in the pit of my stomach.
“They didn’t cause any problems at your house, but right after that, there was a fire at the castle’s trash repository. The gloves were the cause of it,” Prince Caesar continued.
Thankfully, the fire had been put out quickly, and only some garbage had burned. But even so, the castle had been thrown into chaos for a while after that.
“How is that my fault?” I asked.
“It’s not. Luna and Lyle were responsible, as well as the ones supervising them, meaning Cruyff and Aina. And Isabella and I bear some responsibility as Luna’s parents too,” Prince Caesar said.
Phew. I was gonna say...
Prince Caesar then sat up straighter. “I’m sorry to say that the gloves Lyle and Luna used were completely destroyed. We can’t repair them. Please don’t give that kind of glove away, and don’t reveal how they were made either. They would be incredibly dangerous in the wrong hands.”
The gloves they had found were ones that could activate magic if you channeled mana through them. That meant someone could use them for terrorism if they really wanted to. For example, someone could even force a child to wear them and blow something up without anyone suspecting them. The technique used also worked on things besides gloves. For example, it could work on other types of cloth—like a handkerchief. Someone such as Luna could innocently pick something like that up and accidentally cause a disaster.
“All right. I have two or three backup pairs, so I’ll destroy them all,” I said.
Prince Caesar said he didn’t mind if I kept them as long as I kept the method a secret and didn’t give them to anyone, but I figured if I wasn’t going to use them, it was better to be safe than sorry. That way, I wouldn’t have to worry about them falling into the wrong hands.
When I told him that, he asked why I didn’t use them myself.
“Honestly, they’re a pain to use,” I said.
I’d made the gloves a long time ago while messing around in the dungeon in Sagan. I hadn’t used them since, and I was fairly sure that anyone who was halfway decent at magic would feel the same.
“Anyone can use them as long as they can channel mana,” I explained. “All they really do is shoot fire, anyway. The process is pretty clunky: You infuse the gloves with mana, the gloves convert that mana into magic, and then they fire off a shot. But casting a spell the normal way takes just two steps, and once you get used to doing that, it’s just one fluid motion.”
Converting your internal mana straight into magic would let you skip that first step altogether. And with enough practice, you could cast while you finished that conversion. The time difference between casting yourself or using the gloves was negligible, with the gloves taking maybe a fraction of a second longer. However, even that long could mean life or death in a real battle.
“Plus, you can only use predetermined spells with the gloves. They’re not very versatile.”
Just channeling mana into the gloves could set off a spell you didn’t want to cast. The best case scenario was that your spells overlapped. In the worst case, they could cancel each other out or explode. While the gloves might have seemed handy at first glance, they were really just a failed experiment.
“It’s just better to get rid of them,” I said.
Prince Caesar offered to reimburse me for the cost of the materials, but I declined. They were just a half-baked experiment I’d done while messing around. The gloves were basic, store-bought ones that weren’t anything fancy that I’d combined with some goblin magic cores. Plus, this was the royal family we were talking about. They’d never just reimburse me for the materials. They’d throw ten times as much money at me—maybe even a hundred times. And even I’d feel guilty taking that kind of money for something I’d just thrown together on a whim, especially from people I knew well.
Prince Caesar didn’t seem completely convinced, but Princess Isabella stepped in and smoothed things over, so in the end, he just apologized again, and we moved on.
We chatted for a little more after that, but once we realized the queen had started her lecture over from square one, we decided to disperse.
Before we left the castle, I made sure to warn Gramps and Jeanne to never bring up that whole conversation about Primera again. However...
“Tenma! Is it true you’re going to marry Primera?!”
So much for that...
Luna was still back at the house, and she blurted that out before we even stepped inside.
Then, absolute chaos ensued.
Amur and Aura had been waiting at the estate, and they started grilling me. “Is that why you only took Jeanne with you? Are you planning to marry her too?” they asked.
To make matters worse, word had spread that we were back, so Uncle Mark and the others from Kukuri Village were here now too. I ended up having to escape from Amur, Aura, and the Kukuri Village crew.
I made it to my room, but they all just stood outside my door, making a ruckus. I ended up hiding in my dimension bag inside the carriage for the rest of the day.
I thought things would cool off if I gave it some time, but they accosted me the moment I came out of my room. Before I knew it, I was completely surrounded and being forced to explain everything.
Thankfully, Gramps had already filled them in the previous day and had explained that the whole marriage thing had just been a plot hatched by the queen to teach me a lesson. Everyone mostly just teased me about it, but it was still annoying. They finally left me alone once I handed over some alcohol.
Amur, however, was a different story. Even if it had just been a warning from the queen, she was mad that she hadn’t been there. Normally, she would’ve been able to hold a grudge for a while, but thanks to Leni’s presence, she seemed to bounce back more quickly than usual.