The fire in my chest had blazed upward, the flames of hatred exploding fiercely.
“You...you were that lowly brat’s lackey, weren’t you?” the woman had said.
Seeing the bundle of silvery-peach hair in this woman’s hand, I’d realized why the princess’s hair had been unnaturally short on one side—it had been because of her.
Using this woman who’d forced injustice upon the princess until the very end, I would rescue the princess with my own hands and place her in the position she’d deserved. Then, this time, not as a maid, but as a man, I would love the princess, and be loved by her in return.
I had always wished to be that kind of person. My ears, filled only with selfish thoughts, could no longer hear my friend’s voice urging me to stop.
After that, I would revive the princess, and had resolved to place her in her rightful position this time. Removing the church as the state religion had been part of that plan. By no longer accepting every land purification request, I’d positioned myself to weaken the nation’s power directly while simultaneously increasing the value of the priests’ purification abilities. I’d been establishing the church as a specialized institution dedicated solely to land purification.
Of course, I was now fully aware that I had done things the princess would not have wanted...and yet I had no regrets.
I couldn’t help but laugh at myself. Truly, I was a hopeless case.
“What’s wrong?” my old friend’s wife called down from above.
“Nothing...” As I answered, however, a fleeting unease struck me. Could Jabi’s timely departure somehow be connected to my experiment? Where had Luciana’s body gone?
That green giant lizard that Jabi had summoned—the will residing within Luciana, attached to that massive body, had been almost entirely swallowed up by the instincts of the lizard. Even so, some of it should have remained at the end. Years of research had taught me that will resided in the head. Luciana was probably the same.
Luciana was Lady Lavi’s mother, but Lady Lavi herself didn’t seem to feel any sort of attachment toward her. The feelings Lady Lavi had now, and the ones the princess had had, toward their mothers... No, even back then, it would have been hard to call it “affection.”
The spear I’d thrust into the giant lizard was a spear that showed nightmares to those it pierced, forcing them to submit. It had been further reinforced with demonic power. The light arrow fired by Lady Lavi’s older brother Mihail had still affected its body even after I’d dispelled it. However, while it had somewhat neutralized the power of my spear embedded in the lizard’s body, it had lacked the strength to completely counteract it.
It was only natural. The power in his pupils had activated the dark magic within him to an extreme. His vision was unstable, and using holy magic, the polar opposite of dark, must have been extremely difficult. Had he continued to overuse the power of his eyes without control, his magic would’ve run wild.
That was why my old friend had knocked him unconscious. Prince Regulus had been collateral damage.
Now, Lady Lavi, having noticed the rampage of his eyes, must have been interfering and suppressing it by infusing her own magic into food or drink for her brother to consume. Otherwise, Mihail would have been running wild like the princess’s former fiancé, Soviesch.
And so far there had been no word of Mihail’s magic running wild. He was, after all, the next head of one of the Four Great Ducal Houses and he possessed considerable magic power. If he had truly lost control, it would be impossible for it not to become common knowledge.
When Soviesch had lost control of his magic at the princess’s Palace Retreat, the young princess, barely of age herself, had been injured in the process of saving him. Ah, even now, just remembering it made me furious.
The princess had kissed Soviesch, directly channeling her own magic into his body to intervene and suppress his raging power. The princess, myself, and Soviesch himself were the only ones who had known about the incident. Afterward, until he could master the power of his eyes, the princess had arranged regular meetings with him under the guise of exchanges related to their engagement. She’d infused her magic into his tea, helping to control it by interfering from within his body to prevent it from running wild.
The power of the eyes manifested in the Robur bloodline, but it wasn’t a power that appeared frequently—the last person to manifest it before Soviesch had been a long, long time ago. I hadn’t been told the details of the power, but I did know that it allowed one to read the emotions and memories of others.
I suspected that successive heads of the family had handled it secretly, to prevent it from becoming public knowledge, and to avoid the truth of it themselves. From what Soviesch had been able to find, no detailed records had seemed to remain.
If relations with the sacred beasts had been as good then as they were now with Lady Lavi, one of them would no doubt have offered help voluntarily. But back then, the pact-bearers of the royal house and the Four Great Ducal Houses—those destined to become kings or heads of their houses—had likely looked down on the sacred beasts, binding them through their pacts, so voluntary help had been out of the question.
The princess had been able to free the sacred beasts who’d had pacts with others back then because the sacred beasts themselves had desired it. That was how deeply the sacred beasts’ hearts had already been turned away from this country.
“Sacred beasts... Why did you...” I stopped myself mid-sentence. The lady atop my head was not the previous Drogolena. She was a different magical beast born from seeds left behind. Even if I asked the wife of my former friend, who’d been looked down on by his pact-bearer, why he’d protected this country back then, I doubted I’d find her answer satisfying.
Instead, I asked about something else that had been on my mind. “Who defeated Lady Lavi’s mother?”
The alraune tilted her head. “I wonder...”
“I see.”
Her expression made it impossible to tell if she genuinely didn’t know or was simply choosing to remain silent. I could help a wry smile.
Luciana had vanished from that spot with the spear still piercing her body. That was why, even after I had been teleported alone from the underground to the great hall by my old friend’s magic, and had subsequently witnessed the shocking debauchery of the church officials, I’d still known where her body was. Several days later, however, I’d suddenly sensed the spear disappear.
Then, last week, as pope, I’d signed off on the burial notice for Luciana at the Cherria family cemetery. She must have been slain on the very day that the spear vanished. If it was someone other than Lady Lavi, a sacred beast pact-bearer, who had defeated her, Luciana’s soul would have been devoured by demons and obliterated. Just like what had happened to Sriarde, the queen from two generations ago.
As an aside, I’d accumulated a considerable amount of charm magic, enhanced by demonic power, within the priests. This was so that I could manipulate them swiftly and at will, whenever I desired. I had also intended for the priests to unconsciously crave my presence like a drug, making it difficult for them to leave me.
However, I’d had no idea that, through my magic, demonic charm power had accumulated within the priests themselves.
Only recently had I heard this from one of the alraunes, and I was utterly shocked. If things had gone badly, the priests’ souls might have been devoured by demons. I shuddered at the thought—contracts with demons truly brought nothing but harm.
According to the alraunes, it seemed Lady Lavi had infused the enchanting power replicated from the sacred beasts’ magic into a spell, showered it upon the priests to overwrite the demonic power, and destroyed my enchantment along with it.
Naturally, even the sacred beast pact-bearers I’d seen in action in the past couldn’t have performed such advanced magic. Lady Lavi truly wasn’t the talentless lady of the rumors, said to be limited in her magic power and incapable of using spells properly.
So it couldn’t be helped. That was the result of all that—a phenomenon beyond all comprehension.
Having relinquished the demon’s core, I was curious about the wine Lady Lavi had been drinking, and what she’d said, so I teleported to the church’s great hall.
First in my view were church officials, completely drunk. They were praying and prostrating themselves, kneeling on the floor as if worshipping something. Then, a little farther away, was a red-haired youth with a face twisted in terror, desperately sketching something. Beside him was a young lady with an absurdly faint presence, who was bowing down alternately to the youth and to his subjects, like the church officials were.
Following everyone’s gazes, I saw Lady Lavi’s brother and the first prince. For some reason, they were shirtless.
The two handsome men lay sprawled across the dining table, striking various poses like painting models. Skillfully, they balanced plates of food and glasses of drink on their bodies. Both wore expressions of rapture, tinged with sensuality.
Noticing the half-naked pair staring intently at something, I followed their gaze to see Lady Lavi smiling sweetly with a faint, youthful smile that suited a girl her age. She was also gazing back dreamily, but she somehow resembled that pervert I’d seen after the entrance ceremony... No, never mind, she was just plain adorable.
At that moment, I never could have imagined that this lewd, bewitching scene would soon appear in popular novels and illustrations, circulating in the streets, and being referred to as “body cuisine.”