Sophie couldn’t help but wonder why between wrong and not-wrong, she felt more like it was wrong to demand more.
After properly making sure that everyone else was dumbfounded, Vyce sneered and added, “Don’t worry, this is the last one.”
There was no way anyone couldn’t worry with a smile like that pointed at them.
“Yer gonna live the rest of your life in isolation.”
“Y-You mean to confine me?!” the king demanded. “I-I’ve never seen the likes of such a foreign barbarian!”
“You really do suck at listenin’, don’tcha?” Vyce replied. “I’m not gonna treat you anything like y’all treated those witches. Yer gonna get a nice enough manor, and I’ll make sure you have nice enough provisions there. But you don’t get to have any contact with the outside world. You won’t be allowed to take so much as a step outside. And don’t even think about having any fun. Lunetta’s going to cast a barrier over the whole manor. I’ll make your servants the bunch of fools who were stupid enough to try to attack us outright. Seems like you got along with them just fine, didn’t you? So you can all just have a swell time together inside the barrier.”
I see...so he’s just getting imprisoned in a different way.
He wouldn’t die, nor would he be cast into any sort of coarse prison cell. Since his friendly servants were a part of the deal, the difference between that and the way the witches had been treated was night and day.
But the king would never be permitted to engage with the kingdom’s government again. Revenge was out of the question. The moment he tried, the contents of the memoirs would be revealed and the truth of how the nation had been cursed due to the sins of the royal family would come to light... Not to mention that those same memoirs rested in the hands of the ultimate witch who could blow away the whole castle all on her own.
“Yer over the moon, right?”
The king gave a long pause. “Y-Yes.”
Even if the king was in such agony that blood started dripping from his lips, his only choice was to nod. He’d had everything stolen away from him, but even then, he wouldn’t be killed. And yet, at the same time, he wouldn’t be permitted to live.
The only life that awaited him was a life spent slowly awaiting death.
Even then, with the king’s servants all dragged into this, it was rather questionable just how loyally they would actually serve him. Stuck inside the barrier with him and unable to leave, they’d be tasked with serving him for the rest of their lives. The question was, just how long would the king actually last?
If the contents of the memoirs were to be revealed, waiting glued upon the throne would be its own sort of hell, so in the end, the king’s only choice was to nod.
“This is the first time in my whole life I’ve been glad I was born into House Warrion.”
“I was just feeling thankful for my own life for the first time as well.”
Livio and Sophie nodded at each other, both of them immensely relieved that they weren’t Vyce’s enemies.
“Good,” Vyce said. “You got all that recorded, Lunetta?”
“I did,” Lunetta answered. “It’s all right here in the magic gem.”
“And you there, Mr. Secretary,” Vyce said. “You wrote all that down, right?”
“Y-Y-Y-Y-Y-Y-Y-Y-Yes, indeed!”
Sophie gasped.
Who?!
Sophie and Livio rose to their feet, seeing a small old man standing behind the king, holding a pen and a long sheepskin parchment. How long has he been standing there?! A band of white-robed magicians who had come down alongside him stood to his side.
“I dragged ’em over here while our shiny young knight here had the king’s attention,” Vyce explained. “This is the former prime minister. Good thing he made it just in time for the grand finale!”
Come to think of it, Vyce hadn’t been around when Livio had been dodging the king’s lightning bolts and fireballs.
The now secretary (who’d been stripped of his title as prime minister in all the confusion) couldn’t have been present while they were talking about the memoirs. Which meant that Vyce had waited until the very, very end, making sure the old man was there before he started talking about the contract they were making.
It wasn’t just how Vyce looked that was terrifying—it was how he handled things. It didn’t help that he was rather haphazard in how he did it all. The fact that he was an intelligent criminal in spite of all that made him entirely too frightening.
Remind me to never get on his bad side, Sophie thought, vowing to herself.
But still... Meh.
The new kingdom under Vyce’s management was bound to be a far more wonderful country than the kingdom that had tormented those girls throughout its long and winding history.
After all, it was only when Lunetta found herself beside the Usurper King that her eyes lit up like that.
“Now, we’ll just leave the rest to our esteemed secretary,” Vyce said. “I’m starvin’. Let’s take a break.”
Seeming pleased, the Usurper King looked down on the battered and defeated—both physically and emotionally—king who seemed to be sinking into the ground itself.
Once she was sure that the conversation was over, Lunetta patted Vyce’s arm. Vyce paused for a moment as if in thought before sighing and placing her back on the ground, her black hair and skirt swaying as she stood on her own once more.
Lunetta took a translucent magic gem from her bag—the stone was nearly the size of her hand.
Lunetta began pulling out a shocking number of the gems and rolling them along the ground. Watching the gems spill out one after another from the small pouch was like watching a magic trick—though it simply was a bag with Lunetta’s own handmade spell on it. Still, it was far too advanced a spell to say that it “simply was.”
Lunetta closed her eyes and placed a single magic gem in the palm of her hand. Her hair and eyes gave off a warm red glow, the color spreading to the magic gem in turn.
“L-Look at the size of those and how quickly she’s making them...!”
“Shhh, she’ll hear you!”
I can hear you loud and clear already! Sophie thought. Still, Sophie could sympathize with the magicians whispering as they pointed and gawked at the sight before them.
After all, the magicians that Sophie knew all needed a great deal of time to process a single magic gem. And yet, there was Lunetta, mass-producing the things as if they were nothing. Even Sophie couldn’t suppress her surprise, so it must’ve been even more of a shock for those who’d made magic their lives’ work. It annoyed her that this “shock” would likely be taken as proof of Lunetta’s heresy. It was complete and utter nonsense.
With the magic gems glowing a pale red before her, Lunetta blew on the gems...which then floated up into the air all at once.
“What was that supposed to be?” Vyce asked.
“I’ve put the voice-transmitting magic gems to use here,” Lunetta answered. “I can use another magic gem to check on them no matter where I am.”
“Well now,” Vyce said, peering into the gem resting in Lunetta’s palm. Hearing Vyce’s reaction, Sophie and Livio approached as well.
The magic gem was a beautiful sphere, and inside it, they could see the king slumped over on the ground, magicians casting healing spells on him, and the face of the old secretary looking frazzled as he explained the situation to those around him. After a moment, the image in the gem shifted to the rubble and the faces of those who still didn’t know what was going on, covering a variety of targets.
Looking up, Sophie could see the faintly glowing magic gems bobbing as they floated in the sky.
“So you’ll be able to keep an eye on them, then,” Livio remarked, sounding impressed.
Lunetta nodded.
“If you try to destroy the magic gems or break any of the rules, it’ll notify this gem and trigger a massive explosion,” she said, her eyes jet-black as she addressed the king and the magicians. “So do be careful.”
The magician who’d already been given an explosive magic gem— Oh, what was his name again?
“Um...” what’s-his-name said, speaking up, “would you be, uh...kind enough to tell us what those rules are?” He was being quite polite; certainly he’d settled down a great deal since their previous encounter. Maybe he can learn if nothing else!
“That’s a secret,” Lunetta answered. “Do be sure to follow the rules, please.”
Lunetta had quite the knack for learning herself. No, not like that! Don’t learn from that man beside you, or you’ll never grow up to be a proper adult...! Ha, as if! Go for it! Show ’em everything you’ve learned!