Episode 252
- Rumble...
A wheel that had detached from the carriage lying pitifully overturned tumbled unsteadily down the narrow path.
Had a third party witnessed this scene, they would have assumed the occupants inside were unlikely to be unharmed—it was a major accident of that scale.
Of course, given who the passengers were, the carriage had defensive magic cast upon it, but it was such a massive accident that at the very least, they should have sustained serious injuries.
"Mmm..."
However, apart from feeling dizzy from the impact of the carriage flipping over, Serena had suffered no other injuries.
This was because Frey, who had quickly wrapped himself around Serena the moment the incident occurred, had used his own body as a cushion to protect her.
"...Mmm."
Frey, looking down at Serena who was trembling in his arms, carefully reached his hand out to her.
- Rustle, rustle...
And then, Frey began to carefully brush away the hair that had been covering Serena's face.
"...No injuries anywhere."
After a moment, he muttered those words and, maintaining the cold expression he had been wearing, took her hand and helped her to her feet.
"Your already unsightly face almost became even more unsightly."
"...Ugh."
Having helped Serena to her feet, Frey spoke quietly and then leaned his back against the overturned carriage.
"What are you doing, not going out quickly?"
"...Excuse me?"
He had been crouching beside the overturned carriage, breathing roughly for a while, when suddenly he glared coldly at Serena and spoke.
"It's obviously an attack. You need to go out and handle it."
"Ah, ahh..."
"For an assassin, you can't even handle one petty attack like this. You really are completely useless as a fiancée."
"S-sorry..."
"You should at least serve as a shield, shouldn't you?"
As Frey frowned and disparaged her with a cold expression, Serena's expression darkened.
"I'm sorry..."
"Go out and find the ones behind this, you idiot."
"...Y-yes, I understand."
The joy that he had protected her was fleeting; when he looked at her with eyes that genuinely despised her and spoke those words, Serena answered, completely deflated.
"I-I'll go out now..."
Eventually, with fragments of the carriage still in her hair and her shoulders slumped, she crawled clumsily out of the carriage.
"...Sigh."
Frey, who had been quietly watching Serena, let out a short sigh and lowered his head.
- Crunch...!
He lifted his left arm, which he had been hiding behind his back until that moment, and with a cold expression, pulled out the carriage fragment embedded in his arm with his hand.
"Mmm."
Though it was a quite severe wound, he paid it no mind, shook his arm back and forth, and quietly took out bandages from inside his clothes.
...Cough.
Having taken the full impact from bouncing around inside the carriage while holding Serena, he had suffered internal injuries, and a trickle of blood flowed from his mouth.
"There are no life signs nearby..."
But he casually wiped the blood from his lips with his hand and muttered in a cold voice.
"No mana reaction either... Something is strange."
He had already discreetly spread his mana in all directions without Serena knowing, confirming whether there were any dangerous elements nearby.
"...Hmm?"
Making a puzzled expression, then frowning again as he rubbed his chest, Frey tilted his head at the sudden presence he felt.
"Who is it?"
Someone had suddenly been detected in his widely spread surveillance net.
"They weren't there until just now."
Frey, puzzled by the sudden anomaly, glanced at Serena, who was outside scanning the surroundings with sharp eyes.
- Thud...!
He kicked open the door on the opposite side and quietly exited the carriage, beginning to walk toward where the person had been detected.
- Step, step...
Dense thickets began to appear in Frey's field of vision.
"Who could be in a place like this?"
Minimizing his presence as much as possible, he slowly pushed through the thicket, then flashed his eyes and extended his hand forward.
"Let me see that face at least..."
Quietly drawing up the hero's power from his body, Frey prepared to attack the suspicious person crouching in the thicket, but.
".....?"
"U, uhh...!"
Seeing the startled person before him, he quietly tilted his head in confusion.
"W-who are you...?"
The person crouching in the grass was a scruffy-looking young girl with a pale expression.
"A culprit...?"
Frey examined her from various angles—she looked suspicious to anyone—but he began to form a cold expression, suspecting a connection between this incident and the girl.
"...Probably not."
Before long, he shook his head.
"Uhh, ugh..."
The small girl, who had been completely curled up, was blind.
"Why are you here?"
"W-well..."
"Answer quickly."
"Hiek...!"
Frey, not letting down his guard, grabbed her by the throat and began threatening her with a cold voice.
"If you don't answer... I'll twist your neck."
"P-please spare me..."
"I'm currently... very angry because my date was interrupted."
As Frey put strength into his hand while saying this, the blind girl began to tremble violently.
"Actually, twisting a neck is worse than just slashing..."
"I-I was hiding...!"
But just as Frey nonchalantly drew his sword from his clothes, the girl answered desperately, and Frey asked another question.
"Why were you hiding here?"
"Ugh..."
As Frey, who had been roughly gripping her throat, used his thumb to lift her chin, the terrified girl began to speak while trembling.
"I-I heard it and was startled... so I hid here..."
"Why?"
"S-suddenly there was a loud boom... I was scared so I hid here... I-I can't see... so I didn't know what was happening..."
"Hmm..."
Frey looked down quietly at the girl and let out a quiet sound of contemplation.
- Squeeze...
"A mere worthless pauper commoner... causing trouble for no reason..."
"P-please spare me... you can do anything, just please spare my life... I have younger siblings I need to feed..."
As he unconsciously put strength into his hand and muttered, the girl began to beg desperately.
"I finally found something to eat... if I take this, I can feed my siblings until they're full..."
"Then get lost quickly, you dirty lowly..."
Beneath her were potatoes that had sprouted quite a bit, packed in abundance.
...Tsk.
Frey's expression began to contort.
.
"This is..."
Serena, who had been examining the overturned carriage carefully, began to have a gleam in her eyes.
"It was definitely an attack."
The front of the carriage was noticeably twisted.
Even she couldn't tell what kind of attack it was, but one thing was certain—it was powerful enough to brutally pierce through the defensive magic she had cast two, even three times over for Frey's safety.
"......."
Her expression, once certain of that fact, suddenly turned cold.
It was a frightening expression she had never once shown in front of Frey.
- Tap, tap.
As Serena tapped the fan she was holding twice against her hand, shadows began to gather from all directions.
- Rustle...
Within two seconds of Serena tapping her fan, five or six people appeared from the shadows, kneeling on one knee before her with their heads bowed.
"Why didn't you intervene?"
Serena asked them with a cold expression.
Those who quietly bowed their heads at her words were direct-line assassins who had served the Moonlight family heads for generations.
"We apologize, Lady Serena."
"It was entirely our mistake."
"...So, please punish us."
At Serenaena's cold expression, the assassins turned pale and bowed their heads, speaking thus.
Originally, following the family's principles, they had only formally served Serena as the family head, and served the 'Secret Lord' as their true master.
However, Serena, who was not completely dominated by the Curse of Subordination, slowly won them over one by one.
Eventually, having succeeded in making all the direct-line assassins except for one who bore the Curse of Subordination like herself obey her, she received nearly infinite loyalty in return for saving them.
"...Kill us, Lady."
Of course, being assassins of the Moonlight family, the Empire's dark shadows, they sometimes deviated from common sense.
"I told you I'm not the Secret Lord. There will be no killing of you."
Serena, her expression softening slightly as she spoke in a gentle voice, looked at those bowing their heads and asked.
"So, why didn't you intervene?"
"Actually, there is a reason, Lady Serena."
Then the girl who appeared to be their leader stepped forward and began to answer.
"...Even we detected nothing."
Surprisingly, she was the blind girl Frey had discovered in the thicket earlier.
And not just her, but all the other assassin girls were blind as well.
This was because the Secret Lord who had trained them had made everyone blind except for their original captain, Alice, in order to maintain secrecy.
Serena had them all dress as passersby and follow along for Frey's safety.
"That is a bit strange..."
Serena, who had been lost in thought after receiving the leader's report, realized that the situation was taking an ominous turn.
"If that's the case for me, and even all of you couldn't detect it..."
They had all lost their sight, but in return, all their other senses were transcendentally developed.
If five or six such individuals had been nearby and still hadn't noticed the attack at all, it was not simply an assassin's oversight but something close to an act of God.
"...Who dares target my husband."
Serena, who had long ago made sure through various methods that no one would target her in order not to become a hindrance to her husband, ground her teeth as she looked at Frey, who was leaning against the carriage in the distance, gazing at the sky.
"For now, stand by. Continue hiding in the surroundings, and if the attacker appears, deal with them at your discretion."
"How much discretion should we exercise?"
When the blind girl tilted her head and asked, Serena answered with a cold smile.
"Do as you have always done."
"...Understood."
Having finished speaking, the assassins instantly became shadows and scattered here and there, and Serena began walking toward Frey as if nothing had happened.
"U-um..."
"...Hmm?"
But then, the blind girl at the front grabbed Serena's shoulder.
"I-I wanted to show you this..."
"Hmm?"
What she handed over was a single gold coin.
"This is... a gold coin with a tracking spell on it? Where did you get it?"
"...Excuse me?"
Seeing this, Serena spoke with interest, and the girl was startled.
"Oh, well. That is..."
And then, the girl began to explain the whole story.
"So that man... bought your basket of potatoes...?"
"Y-yes... He said he was feeling a bit hungry and forcibly took the basket from me... He said someone like us commoners would be satisfied with just that..."
"Hmm."
"B-but... he definitely said it was copper coins..."
The girl, who had been hesitating while speaking, then said.
"T-then is this... all gold coins too?"
She took out a handful of gold coins from her pocket and showed them to Serena.
"Hmm..."
As Serena stared blankly down at them and then nodded, the girl, reading the air current created by the nod, quietly blushed.
"T-the person we're protecting right now... who is he...?"
Then, the girl, twisting her body, asked the question.
"I-it's nothing special... I just wanted to know the name..."
At that question, Serena's expression turned cold.
"I-I'll tell you later. For now, return to your mission immediately."
"Y-yes..."
And Serena, answering hastily with an anxious expression, began to walk.
She liked her fiancé, who had somehow become more attractive, but it was problematic if he was indiscriminately seducing others.
Because of that, seized by the obsession that she had to appeal herself as much as possible during this opportunity, she began to approach Frey.
"F-Frey..."
"...Just as I thought, you couldn't find the cause."
"Ah, well..."
"Useless woman."
But receiving Frey's cold gaze, she shrank again, abandoning her obsession.
Just standing before him made her mind go completely blank.
"T-that... the basket... why did you buy that...?"
So Serena, fumbling, ended up asking the question she had been so curious about without meaning to.
"What, were you watching?"
Then Frey answered casually.
"I bought it to disguise myself as a farmer. Living as a noble, there would be many times my identity would be suspect."
"I-I see? But... you paid entirely in gold coins..."
"........"
As Serena stared blankly at him and asked another question, Frey, who had been quietly looking at his own hand that had gripped the girl's throat, answered in a nonchalant, indifferent voice.
"...Must have gotten confused."
"Oh, that..."
"Don't pry so much. It's annoying."
As Frey turned his head, Serena, who had been looking at him with a dazed smile, then asked with a gloomy expression.
"B-but... the carriage is broken, and we were attacked... s-should we... end the d-date here...?"
"........"
"I-I enjoyed it, even though it was short. I wore the dress you chose... and I got to be held in your arms... and, um..."
Looking at her, who had slumped her shoulders with an expression as if she had lost everything, Frey began to walk forward.
"If the carriage is broken, we'll just walk to the city."
"...Excuse me?"
Serena asked with a blank expression.
"B-but... then it'll be evening? Then we'd only have a few hours..."
Frey, continuing to walk ahead with her left behind, spoke abruptly.
"...Were you only planning on doing this for one day?"
"Huh?"
Hearing those words, Serena's eyes, which had been diligently analyzing the meaning, widened greatly.
"What are you doing, not following."
"...Gulp."
Hearing Frey's words from afar, she swallowed dryly and took out a small notebook from her bosom.
[21 Selections of Music Good for Prenatal Education]
- Lampid March
- Serenade of Stars and Moon
- Symphony of Fate
.
"Which academy should I send the child to...? For the child's future, is Sunrise Academy the best after all? No, perhaps a foreign academy could be more helpful..."
Though Serena was calmly memorizing the notebook, her imagination was running wildly out of control.
.
Meanwhile, at that same time, a tower quite far from Frey and Serena.
"W-what...?"
Aris, who had been using a magic tool to monitor the two under orders to attack Frey, was quietly breaking out in a cold sweat.
"Who on earth attacked them...!?"
This was because the carriage they had been riding in was attacked even though no attack order had been given to the assault team.
"I-I need to report this. Something is strange..."
Aris, flustered by such an anomaly, was speaking in a trembling voice to her comrades behind her, but.
"Please be quiet..."
"Hm?"
Her words were cut off by someone's voice, full of tension.
"...Aris, who doesn't think."
".....?"
Surprisingly, Perlotche, who always wore only a foolish expression, was looking at someone with a cold sweat running down her face.
"What's the matter?"
After a moment, the youngest paladin, who was under Perlotche's gaze, asked quietly.
"...Is there some problem?"
Her eyes, which had been silver until just a week ago before she was summoned to the Order, were now glowing red for some reason.
"Ah, hello Lord Frey?"
".....!"
As Perlotche, who had been looking at her, suddenly looked behind her and waved with a bright expression, the paladin flinched for an instant.
"........"
And then, a long silence flowed.