“Of course, I only have Lady Robur in mind,” he added.
“No, there’s more to it than that...”
“I’ll make sure your sister is happy, so you can rest assured and fade away.”
Hey! Don’t look away after you finish speaking. It’s obvious you accidentally let your true feelings slip at the end...
“Honestly,” I said, “I can’t feel the slightest bit at ease about my own situation...”
“I will definitely make your sister happy...” He cut in before I could finish with a meaningless declaration of happiness—his attempt to gloss over things.
Then Jabi cut him off. “Somehow, that’s a real letdown.” I really felt things were just getting pointlessly chaotic.
I looked over at Jabi to see she was shrouded in a faint, dark crimson haze. I couldn’t help but feel a distinct sense of horror. Was my vision acting up again at a time like this? The sinister magic curse I’d faced not long ago flashed through my mind.
“Indeed,” said the pope. “Who would have thought we’d attract such interference in this manner?” He wore the smile he always did at Academy events—or was it a wry smile? I sensed that something was off.
“For someone so troubled, you seem rather relieved,” Jabi remarked. It was true: The pope really did look relieved, or at least I thought so.
“Me? Ha! As if!” He laughed with a hint of self-mockery. I felt another prickle of unease, and I wondered if perhaps...
“Are you regretting that incompetent lady discovering your true purpose? But you understand, don’t you? You’ve already made a contract with me. Neither you nor I can sever it now. Unless you’re a sacred beast or its pact-bearer, even if the contract fails, even if you die, your soul remains bound to it. My power has permeated your body and soul—it’s fused with you.”
“That woman is a demon,” Regulus said. “Are you aware, Your Holiness, that you’ve made a contract with a demon?”
So basically, he’d colluded with a demon to target my sister?! Right after I’d teleported here, I’d heard my sister’s voice, and it had sounded different than usual! Had he inflicted some deep psychological wound on her?
“Of course I did,” the pope replied calmly.
“Why does a demon’s ally like you obsess over Lady Robur? I won’t tolerate any more followers!”
Hold on, hold on, first-love fool! He was completely missing the point. My sister had no followers—she wasn’t some cult leader. But...why did the faces of my sister’s team leader, Heinz, and Miss Faltan suddenly flash through my mind? From reading the first-love fool’s expressionless face a moment ago, to the faces popping into my head now...it really had to be a problem with my eyes...
“Damn... I won’t lose,” Regulus muttered.
It was no good. That lovestruck fool’s misguided remark was messing with my concentration. “What?” I asked.
“Nothing...” He was the first prince, after all. He couldn’t possibly speak his true thoughts...
“Heh, I don’t know what you two are trying to signal with your eye contact, but I’m certainly not letting my guard down against a member of the royal family and the direct heir of one of the Four Ducal Houses.”
I was sorry to interrupt the pope’s vigilance and his cheerful smile, but I’d completely forgotten he was even there...
“Besides,” he added, “I don’t recall becoming an ally of the demon.”
“Oh dear, how coldly you put it,” Jabi said.
“We’re not exactly on friendly terms, Jabi. We merely made a contract based on shared interests. My wish hasn’t even been granted yet—allies? Impossible. Ah, and I have no interest in Lady Robur herself. Rest assured. My interest lies solely in my beloved princess. I merely require the lady’s face and indigo eyes to resurrect Her Highness. In any case, the young lady has long been mistreated, including by you, her own brother.”
Hey, did he just declare he’d take my sister’s face and eyeballs? I struggled to suppress the rage that boiled up in me.
But wait—what was he saying? A princess? A royal from another country? Yet he intended to resurrect her? Was he seriously considering using some kind of resurrection magic? Even if it was forbidden magic, though, I’d never heard of a successful case of it being used. Not even in the documents stored in the Robur residence’s library—accessible only to the current head and the next heir—had I ever seen anything like it.
“It won’t hurt a bit, and I would ensure I took good care of her afterward.”
My anger flared instantly, but beside me, the first-love fool was radiating an even greater rage—no, it was outright murderous intent.
“What? What wouldn’t you hesitate to do?” His voice was thick with a menace he wasn’t even trying to conceal. Because of him, I couldn’t focus on my own anger.
“It’s unusual for the first prince to display his emotions so openly,” the pope remarked. “But in any case, both you and the other young man will keep this secret, won’t you?”
“Nonsense,” I snapped. “That’s impossible. I intend to pursue this matter to the fullest, including your attempt to kidnap my sister.”
“I hope you can manage that.” He seemed surprisingly calm. Even as my unease about the pope grew, my concentration was actually being sapped by the increasing chaos in my vision.
The dark red mist surrounding Jabi was growing denser, and the same kind of mist was beginning to rise from the pope himself. And wasn’t the pope firing particles of light at us? Why were they pink? Well, mainly pink, but mixed with dark red. It wasn’t mist, but light particles. Could the pope be casting magic on us? The color was different, but they resembled the light particles I saw sometimes when magic was used.
“Hmm. It seems the shoddy shadow attached to Lady Robur hasn’t appeared,” mused the pope. “That shadow, which was exceptionally skilled at concealing its presence, must have been teleported somewhere with the young lady. If so...”
Your Holiness, that was definitely not a trained spy. It was Miss Faltan, I thought. Just to be sure, I glanced sideways and locked eyes with Regulus’s vermilion pupils.
“You think I’d assign anyone but myself to guard Lady Robur?” he scoffed. “Don’t underestimate me.”
This first-love fool’s thought process was criminal. Could he be secretly spying on my sister? The Robur family’s spy had been told by father not to follow my sister, but could the prince have used his own influence?
The pope paid us no mind as he touched a nearby rock wall and channeled magic into it. By some spell, droplets appeared and began flowing over the left and right rock walls. Contrary to the ordinary course of things, they flowed upward, from bottom to top. The droplets rapidly increased in volume, forming multiple streams all flowing up the walls to the ceiling, where the streams converged into a waterfall flowing upward from the bottom to the top.
He was setting something up. Some part of my mind knew it, yet Regulus and I just stood there, watching. Distantly aware of my own sluggish thinking, I also noticed the particles the pope was emitting were increasing. Had he already set something in motion?
“Since I’ve been keeping it in the sea, I thought I’d teleport it directly here,” the pope stated calmly, wearing a cool smile. In that moment, countless magic circles appeared on the surface of the waterfall.
Even predicting that something vicious was being teleported over, we somehow didn’t move.
“Regulus, be careful,” I said. “I can’t shake the feeling that the target is something else entirely.”
“Ah, it’s not a subjugation spell either...” It seemed he hadn’t just been displaying his first-love foolishness beside me; he’d been thinking properly too.
The more I focused my awareness on the numerous magic circles, the more something within my mind tried to erode my thoughts, making me want to abandon them. It wasn’t a subjugation spell. I didn’t sense the will to forcibly compel obedience emanating from the magic. Had I not been alerted by those particles of light at first, I might have let my thoughts dull without even noticing the unease, and committed an irreversible blunder.