“Crying alone won’t accomplish anything.”
“…I know that too.”
After dinner had ended, Countess Neraseumun nagged at Rea, who was sitting in the hallway without having eaten a thing.
Rea, her head buried between her knees, was crying again.
It was because she found her own pathetic state these past two days shameful.
It was so humiliating that she wanted to gouge it out of her life, her memories, with a carving knife.
The more she felt that way, the more vividly she could see herself crying in front of the nobles.
“Is it truly acceptable for you, Countess, to act as my guardian while also being a professor?”
“Well, from the way I’ve treated you these past two days, nobody seems to be paying us any mind, do they?”
“You helped me yesterday.”
“The other nobles didn’t see that. It happened outside, didn’t it?”
“…What about your son?”
Rea asked about the coachman’s absence at the dinner table.
Neraseumun clicked her tongue and responded indifferently.
“If Professor Rote saw this right now, you would’ve lost points. That was a clumsy change of subject.”
“My change of subject may have been clumsy, but my worry for your son is genuine.”
One of the Countess’s eyebrows rose.
Well, look at this?
After taking a beating for half a day, she was starting to talk back.
Not that her tone was aggressive.
The fact that Rea, who had been suffering from severe depression, was changing put Neraseumun on edge.
Whether this change was positive or negative, she had to watch and report.
“My son went to find the fragments of your soul.”
“Fragments of my soul?”
“You know that your soul is currently torn and scattered, with only a quarter of it left, right?”
“Was it?”
Huh, did no one tell her?
Since Rea spoke so indifferently, the Countess was confused as well.
Whatever, she had been told now, so it was fine.
“Well, the shock was enough to turn you into a woman; it’s a wonder your soul didn’t tear apart completely.”
“It was His Majesty the Emperor’s scheme that turned me into a woman, was it not?”
“Hm?”
“…?”
“Ah, that was the concept, wasn’t it.”
She had almost said something useless.
She had considered telling the truth, but Rea’s situation was too poor for that.
It would obviously only add unnecessary confusion, and it wouldn’t make much of a difference whenever she told her, so Neraseumun decided to put it on hold without much worry.
“Anyway, your soul was torn, so the strength you had during your days as Earei has decreased by just as much.”
“So he is finding my soul?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know where and how my soul is? There are too few clues.”
It was a sharp point.
Neraseumun wondered if she ought to tell her this as well, but thinking that she could not hide it anyway, she divulged it willingly.
“I got a hint from Mistress.”
“Mistress? The Revantorte royal court mage?”
“More precisely, the covenant-bound.”
Mistress was the last demon and mage to appear in fairy tales of old.
She was the very one who had cast a spell on the academy building known as the Hall of Socializing, and she was famous throughout the Kingdom of Revantorte for a certain legend.
“‘Only he who would become king can meet her and seek her wisdom’… Could it be His Majesty the Emperor?”
“That is slightly different.”
Neraseumun checked if anyone was nearby.
The lodgings Rea had chosen were in a very remote and secluded part of the dormitory, but it never hurt to be cautious.
“Any member of the royal family can meet her once in their lifetime. However, whether Mistress reveals her identity and chooses to meet them is entirely up to her own heart—that is why such a rumor spread. In fact, it was a rumor perpetuated by a royal family member’s misunderstanding long ago, which is why it was swallowed so believably.”
I see.
Mistress was something akin to an urban legend.
But Rea knew for certain that she existed.
Seorin, too, had met the last mage before becoming king.
When the princess sought wisdom, the mage was said to have spoken thus:
[Thy sword lies in the capital, thy spear in the south; thou, to the north.]
And thus the events that unfolded were the Hagonin border conflict in the south, the Epalencia invasion war in the north, and the Saintess Defense War in the capital.
At that time, Earei had destroyed the main Hagonin forces in the south and gone north to push back the Epalencia invasion, when she received Seorin’s summons and hurried to the capital.
After everything had come to pass, she had admired Mistress’s miraculous abilities, but now it pressed down on Rea’s shoulders with an entirely different weight.
“Was that woman also responsible for me becoming a woman?”
“To some extent? To be precise, we received her help in making your soul whole again.”
Neraseumun took out a very tiny metal rod from inside her clothes.
“They say that if you take this and go where your soul is, it will resonate.”
“Is there only one of those?”
“There are about four.”
“Please give one to me as well.”
“Focus on attending your classes properly. You’re already being harassed by the southern madman as it is.”
She could tell without being told that “the southern madman” referred to Shuren.
“On top of that, the other nobles do not have you in their sights either, do they?”
“……”
Neraseumun criticized her so harshly that even Rea’s tears retreated.
It was not a direct grudge, but Neraseumun cackled with the pleasure of tormenting the Queen’s person.
“It seems traces of your old temperament remain, so your true skill surfaces for a brief moment at times, but if you abuse that, you might die coughing up blood. You know that, don’t you?”
She could not refute it.
Rea remembered the sensation of the moment in the marketplace when, to save the Countess’s son, she had tried to use ruthless hand speed against Shuren and Belgirt.
Literally, it was a heat that seemed to burn through her life force.
The problem was that every time she felt that heat, her physical condition rapidly deteriorated, taking time to recover.
It was something she had felt ever since being educated by Baron and Baroness Bashfort.
“Besides, since your soul was torn away, your lifespan must have drastically decreased as well.”
Somehow, she had expected as much.
She felt herself growing weaker day by day, unable to put strength into her body as she once had.
Just the other day, Rea had sweated profusely all day simply from kneading bread dough.
She endured through willpower alone, but she was constantly tormented by fatigue.
Yet the reason her skin and hair had not become dry and brittle was likely because her youth was still holding out.
“That does not matter.”
“It does not matter?”
The Countess flinched and looked down at Rea.
However, because Rea had her face buried in her knees, she could not see Rea’s hollow gaze.
“To be precise, I said that if your will breaks, it would not be strange for you to die in your sleep tonight.”
“My will will not break.”
There was no energy whatsoever in Rea’s voice itself.
But its content held a strange, chilling power.
“And I have always lived with death by my side.”
Once, death had grazed past her, and from Demitrix Virensha she had received the Virensha name and been commanded to live the life of his clan in his stead.
Death had always presented Earei with a corresponding price whenever she cast aside its touch.
“Are you not afraid of death? Does this mean the noble master Earei Virensha is indeed different from ordinary people?”
“Death is but a hair’s breadth away from me. Loneliness rises up to just below my lips, and if just one more drop is added, that poison will rush into my mouth. Then I will die.”
“…”
“To me, death is no different from the future one step ahead.”
Rather, Rea was more afraid and terrified of finding the reason for her own life.
She had searched for the driving force to keep living, asking “why” over and over again.
She did not want to live and leave this world without value, not when she had been born into it.
“Thinkthinkthinkthinkthinkthink.”
“Hey?”
After falling for Seorin, making her shine brightly and being loved by her had been the reason and driving force of her life.
But now that she had become a woman, that had been askew for a long time.
“Nobles will naturally seek out those with ability at any rate. Even if you join a faction, you might be too busy fighting for rank within it to prepare for competition with external forces.”
“Rearie?”
No, it had already been askew ever since she lost the Queen’s favor.
“What you need is power—a properly established great power. You already tried rampaging about as a small elite force, but because you were outmatched by numbers, you ended up like this.”
“Hey! Rearie!”
“Thinkthinkthinkthinkthinkthink.”
Then what reason should Rea use now to find meaning and live on?
The answer was simple.
“Let’s recover my senses. The senses from when I was called a ghost.”
“If you do that, you’ll die in no time!”
She would do what her Queen needed.
“I told you.”
But if she did, as Countess Neraseumun said, Rea would soon die.
Unable to match the strength and movements of her Earei days, she would experience a living hell of grinding her body away.
“I am not afraid of death.”
She did not care whether her lifespan decreased or not.
This solitude, this loneliness made it hard for Rea to even breathe, so if she let go of her will for even a moment, she could sink into eternal rest.
Burying her head, Rea smiled.
“If it is for the one I love, even if I am naught but a half-light inferior to a candle, I would gladly burn this life away.”
Think.
What is the effective move.
Squeeze it out.
What to target and how to approach.
“Thinkthinkthinkthinkthinkthink.”
In the end, fed up with that sight, Neraseumun frowned and left her seat.
“What is this? You say you are not afraid, yet you fear death more than anyone.”
While sneering at the weakness of the old hero.