“Keep your opinions out of this!” Laladie snarled.
That seemed to be going a little too far, a little too fast.
“No objections,” Ritter added flatly.
Despite the utter lack of emotion in her voice, there was a medley of frustration and jealousy in the black-haired girl’s voice.
“Nobody asked you!”
Vampille nodded exuberantly. “Seconded! No objections, indeed!”
“You shut up, too!”
The joyful ease in their voices rubbed Laladie the wrong way. The whole trial was a farce, and she was ready to invite one of her plant friends through the floor to break it up.
“Jeez, just give her a break already,” said a collected drawl. Laladie turned to see Leiss, a hand pressed to her horned head as if she had a splitting headache. “The first to finish their work got to spend time with Master, right? We all agreed.”
With that, she snapped the ropes binding Laladie to her chair with her bare hands. Laladie’s eyes widened at the sight.
How strong is she?! Laladie was tied up pretty tight!
Not that the ropes were insurmountable by any measure. She could have broken herself free if she had half a mind to.
“’Sides,” Leiss continued, looking around the room at her colleagues, “she got rid of the Hero’s Party, right? That’s one less obstacle to givin’ Master the world. I say we call it even.”
Nobody could argue with her. As grave a sin as dating Master was, dispatching the Hero was definite progress. Any of them would’ve gladly murdered Laladie for endangering Master, but the ends did indeed justify her means.
Laladie proudly puffed her chest out at their silence.
“Hold on,” Corine cut in. “She didn’t do a thing. It was all Master. She almost got herself killed for treating that ogre like a pushover!”
The red-haired enchantress puffed out her own chest indignantly, and Laladie could swear she heard the monsters on her chest bounce. She glared at her with a killer’s eyes. That smug, stifled chuckle alone would’ve been enough to push Laladie over the edge, but that was the last straw.
“Yeah, fucking right!” Laladie hissed. “That ogre was all your fault!!”
Corine scoffed, rolling her eyes. “What? No, it wasn’t. You can’t prove a thing.”
“Demanding proof is just as bad as admitting you did it!”
Laladie finally boiled over, and the two glared at each other with unbridled malice. Their mana was so thick in the room that they could practically taste it. It was nothing unusual, so just as they had practiced so many times before, the others emitted their own malice to counter the pair.
Anat clapped her hands to get their attention, lips pouting. “Come now, you two, don’t be like that. If you’re going to fight, please take it somewhere you won’t bother Master.”
Corine and Laladie exchanged one last glare and muttered curse apiece before taking their seats once more. They were irritated to be receiving orders from Anat at all, but she had a point.
Anat herself, of course, didn’t actually want them to fight to the death someplace out of Master’s view and leave her with one less romantic rival, preferably two. Absolutely not. She’d never even think something so unpriestesslike.
“B-But that’s still one less obstacle to deal with,” Krankheit chimed in, fingering her long twintails. There wasn’t any point in putting on airs with them, so she left out her blustering and posing.
Laladie smirked. “Exactly! Thanks to Lala, we’re one step closer to giving Master the world. Where’s Lala’s thank-you, bitches?!”
“I-I wouldn’t go that far…”
Still, the damage was done, and Laladie was overjoyed to be validated.
“More importantly, Lala doesn’t have anyone to watch at all now. While you hussies run around doing errands, Lala’s going to enjoy her special lovey-dovey time with Master!” She let out an aroused sigh at the thought.
“WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?!”
Vampille slammed her hands on the table, blood-red eyes flashing.
“No fair.” Ritter narrowed her eyes angrily.
Leiss pursed her lips. “C’mon, Laladie, that’s a step too far.”
Despite being on the receiving end of murderous looks from all corners of the room, Laladie’s heart didn’t so much as skip a beat.
Schwarte cast Anat a cold look. “Anat-san?”
She nodded. “I’m afraid I can’t condone that.”
Laladie only smirked. “Why not? Lala doesn’t have anything else to do. Actually, Lala did so well that she’s bound to be the MVP. You’re welcome to the leftover crumbs of Lala’s success, of course.”
“Like hell you will!” Corine snarled. “Just try it! I bet Master won’t even want a shrimpy little squirt like you getting all flirty and gross with him!”
“That does it, udder-breath! You went too far!” Laladie hissed with rage.
She was the only one to have dealt with her part of the work completely. The others were preoccupied with gathering knowledge on their targets while running interference to ensure their enemies didn’t grow wise to Yerkchira’s designs, something Laladie didn’t have to do. Corine, of all people, didn’t have the patience to baby the alraune for doing less work.
“If you had worked alone,” Anat continued, “I would gladly let you relax. Since you had an accomplice, however, I’m afraid it won’t stand.”
Laladie’s brow furrowed. “Accomplice? Master was—”
Anat shook her head. “Not him. There was another who helped you take on the Hero.”
Laladie was ready to tear into the priestess for spouting more nonsense—but to her surprise, Anat simply turned to her co-conspirator.
“’Twas I, Laladie-dono.”
Sitting there was Soulgros, hands folded neatly on her lap, her back impeccably straight.
“What?! Th-The stalker wasn’t even there! Lala did everything!”
The ninja sighed and shook her head. “Stalker…? Thine words sting me so.”
Krankheit raised an eyebrow. I-I don’t think she can argue with the stalker bit…
“Soulgros infiltrated the gray guilds and intentionally leaked your information to the Kingdom,” Schwarte explained emotionlessly. “Those filthy villains would never have assembled so neatly for you on their own.”
It was a little frustrating that Schwarte was so cold and aloof with everyone except Master, but when Laladie remembered how irritating some of her other guild members could be, she immediately changed her mind.
Laladie shot a sharp look at Soulgros, her nose scrunching in disgust. “Stop selling out your friends like that, creep.”
Soulgros chuckled. “Mine sole regret is that thou hath survived the encounter.”
“Laladie’s not dying before she’s lived a full, happy live as Master’s wife!”
As cruel as the kunoichi’s words were, everyone in attendance found themselves agreeing with her.
“At any rate,” Anat announced, “you’ll continue to aid us on anything that needs doing. Your alraune abilities are rather useful, after all.”
After a moment’s thought, Laladie begrudgingly nodded. “Fine.”
It’d be best to play along. If any of the others finished their work in the same way, she could demand the same treatment for them. On top of that, it’d be suicidal to make herself the most hated woman in the guild.
“Ah!” Soulgros’s eyes brightened, as if remembering something. “Anat-dono, I must mention that Scrap Metal hath begun to move.”
“Oh~? You mean that dark guild?”
Scrap Metal was a mocking codename of sorts and referred to one of the few other dark guilds, Heinichen. Yerkchira prided themselves on their covert operations and limiting public knowledge of their very existence, but the so-called Steel Matriarch was much more open in their evildoing.
“The prince is sponsoring them,” Ritter offered.
Leiss nodded. “I don’t know the details, but I heard the infighting in the Kingdom’s gettin’ brutal. You know they’ve gone rotten if royalty’s hiring dark guilds… though I guess they never were that great.”
Leiss had been around since Yerkchira’s founding all those years ago, and she was so sure of the Kingdom’s history because she’d lived through it. A few of her guildmates made a few snide inward remarks about her age, but they didn’t say anything for fear she’d kill them on the spot.
“They’ve been getting under our skin for a while now,” Corine grumbled, her hair beginning to rise and flicker like fire with her anger. “I’m getting sick of tiptoeing around them.”
Anat shot her a thoughtful look. “With the Hero’s Party out of the way, perhaps it’s time we got to business in earnest?”
Soulgros nodded. “Might I suggest we begin with mine mark, the other guilds? I hath gathered a great deal on them.”
Schwarte nodded understandingly. “You’re good at skulking around, after all.”
“Thine words art poison to mine ears.”
Not that poison of any kind worked on Soulgros, of course.
“It’s decided, then,” Anat declared with a snicker.
Her laugh was far more subdued than most of the others’ cackling and bickering, but they all obediently shut their mouths and turned to face her as soon as they heard it.
“Our first obstacle for Operation: Give Master the World, that being the Hero, has been eliminated. Next on the docket—war with the dark guild Scrap Metal!”