1

Things were starting to look just a little grim.

“Good heavens, milady, you're drinking me to perdition at this rate! Where did you say you were from, again? The only women I've seen hold their liquor like this painted their faces to hide the growth of their beards!”

In spite of his comment, General Grohn was barely showing hints of intoxication. His mood was improving by the minute, his already loud voice getting even louder, and keeping his articulation precise demanded increasing effort, yet he retained too clear a situational awareness to allow Izumi to slip from his company.

As they enjoyed the banquet's offerings after parting ways with the Duke, the situation had somehow evolved into a drinking contest. Starting from an innocent remark by Izumi, which the General had taken as a humorous challenge, they soon ended up downing cup after cup of Letham's famous red wine.

It was clear that the people of this land paid no heed to the earthly regulations regarding the percentage of alcohol allowed in a drink for it to be considered wine. Or perhaps Izumi's understanding of the common language of Ortho didn't translate the concepts too accurately? Either way, with faith in her high tolerance, Izumi had seen here a classic cinematic opportunity to get rid of her unexpected courter and move along with the plan to locate the fireworks and Yuliana.

It had proved easier said than done.

“Whatever do you mean, General?” she said with a fake smile. “If you feel you've had your fill, then feel free to set down the cup.”

“Ha, ha, ha!” the man laughed in response. “I would hardly dare show my face at the garrison again, knowing I've been outdone in a game of cups by someone who wasn't born wearing chain mail! Though I must question how come you still look this lucid, my fair rival...?”

“It's all about guts, old man. Guts,” Izumi innocently answered.

“You speak like a sailor, milady!” General Grohn raised his drink, attempting to gather himself. His gaze was starting to wander, but his expression turned softer. “Not that I hate that about a woman. Yes, not at all. My late wife was rather foul-mouthed, if I may say so. Not to speak poorly of the dead, no. No offense. Divines judge me! I considered her verbal readiness a cause for pride. To sting like a bee, yet turn to honey when the time is right. Yes, I rather like that about a woman...”

As the alcohol was beginning to take effect, the man's lobster-toned face started to show more of his underlying motivations, which he had with flawed but nevertheless admirable effort contained behind the gentlemanly exterior so far.

“My, do I resemble your wife that much?” Izumi asked.

“No, to be honest, not in the least,” the General shook his head. “She was a fine woman and I loved her dearly. Too early was she taken from me. But you, my lady...put even the renowned imperial nobles to shame with your looks, and the rest with your spirit. Trust me. I have seen a sample of feminine beauty or two in my lifetime. And you are blessed. Most certainly blessed, to the highest degree, and what I wouldn't do to...Whose turn was it again?”

“Yours.”

“Ah, yes, mine it must be, then. Here's to the dearly departed.” The General raised his cup and drank it empty. “But listen to me go, on and on. I tend to prattle a lot when plastered, I know. You sure landed a goldmine with your vineyards, o’ Baroness of Letham, on that I may agree with our host, douche though he has become. But do tell me more about yourself, I implore you. Is there any quality in which I share a likeness to your husband?”

“Fireworks!” Izumi exclaimed, in a desperate attempt to both avoid the topic and get on with the program. It's not like she was immune to the drink herself.

“Fireworks?” the General repeated.

“Yes, we're at a banquet, so where are the fireworks!? I was promised there were going to be some. I so love fireworks! We'd always go view some on New Year’s Eve, and it never felt like a forced social event at all! Where could he be hiding those things, that no-good Duke! I really wish to see some explosions. Now. Right away. As soon as possible. We can't let another minute go to waste!”

“Ooh, indeed, there are always some!” The General went along with the change of subject. “How beautifully they light up the skies, visible even from the streets of the town. Through their blaze, even the poor citizens can get their share of the festival spirit, a glimpse of something perhaps a bit better...”

“Then all the more reason to get things going. Yes! I shall go look for them at once.” Izumi turned to leave.

“I cannot allow you to do that, milady!” the General quickly stopped her.

Izumi froze, feeling the stabbing eyes of the nearby people on her.

“...Not alone, that is. Yes, let us go together and see what's with the hold-up! I’ll give those organizers a piece of my mind!”

Sighing in relief, Izumi followed after the bear-like man, who proceeded to stride up to the nearest servant. “You there, good man. Tell me where you keep your rockets!?”

“R-rockets?” The servant was momentarily stunned by the out-of-nowhere request by the loud, hairy giant decorated with gold.

“Yes, my lovely companion here wants blazes, damn it! Where have you stashed your fire and brimstone? Out with it, in the name of his young majesty's boyhood!”

“T-they're in the shed, your excellency, behind the corner,” the servant answered. “But, it is not midnight yet. Please be patient. They will soon be transported to the roof to be launched.”

“Oh, we're just going to have a peep, you flank-lanker. Why don't you refill my cup and the lady's too, meanwhile? We shan't be for long.”

Shoving his own and Izumi's wine cups into the servant's hands, the General left the confused man and marched off in the direction he'd been given.

This turned out easier than I imagined.

Escorted chivalrously by the arm, Izumi followed General Grohn, and in this fashion, the two exited the banquet area. None of the knights standing in guard at the sides dared to block the imposing General's path.

Going around the corner of the building, they came to a garden. On the other side of it, beyond the bushes trimmed in the shape of a fascinating little maze, beds of fantastic flowers and another, smaller fountain of marble, stood a two-story storage building. Though it was modestly called a storage, a family of five could’ve lived there comfortably. That was apparently the place where they kept the fireworks, on top of various other goods.

“How do they make the fireworks here anyway?” Izumi pondered, as they walked through the garden. “Do they use gunpowder too? But if there's gunpowder, then how come there aren’t any firearms?”

“What powder? Fire-arms? Would those be things of Cotlann, milady?” the General asked.

“W-well, you get gunpowder by mixing saltpeter, and what was it again? Sulfur?” the woman tried to explain, but the cups of wine she'd enjoyed made the chemistry difficult to convey. “If you set fire to it, it blows up. And then, if you shove the mixture in a hollow pipe of steel with a ball of lead on top, the pressure shoots out the lead ball at like, bazillion miles per hour, and kills anybody in the blink of an eye...And that would win all wars for you nice and easy.”

“Salty pepper and—what in the blazes are you talking about?” General Grohn cackled. His confusion probably wouldn't have been any lesser, had he been sober. “Are you an alchemist too, by chance, lady Ilyene? You sure are full of surprises! But I must say, this is precisely why I am firmly of the conviction that women have no place on the battlefield. Pipes of steel and balls of lead? Bwahahaha! Divines smite me! Pardon me! But let me tell you, my good lady, no soldier in their right mind would ever willingly clutch a weapon that explodes in his hands! That is what we here in Luctretz call a suicide!”

“Well, it's not that big an explosion…” Izumi sourly argued.

“Oh, so it would be a small explosion then?” The man ridiculed her. “Could you make a moderate-sized explosion as well? Or perhaps so big of an explosion it wipes out whole armies at once? Kingdoms, even! But then we wouldn't need men with pipes in the first place, would we? It would just be explosions, one after another! Hahaha! Perhaps I should declare myself the winner of our little contest, after all? Eh? Hahahahaha!”

The General continued to laugh so hard he couldn’t walk straight.

It wasn't that funny.

“Geez...” Offended, Izumi pouted and gave up on the introduction to modern warfare.

The door of the storage house was left wide open since servants had to come and go all the time. For similar reasons, there were no guards stationed nearby either. Probably half because they would’ve gotten in the way of the workers, and half because the Duke feared they would be tempted to steal the inventory.

Besides the two floors above ground, there was also an underground cellar in the building, for goods that required storing at a lower temperature.

The General brazenly stepped in through the doorway, Izumi shortly behind.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

A cursory examination revealed there were certainly fireworks inside.

The entire back half of the first floor was full of crates loaded to the brim with colorful rockets, all handmade. There had to have been hundreds of them. They had no plastic wrappers or colorful logos, but still followed the iconic, universal rocket design identical to those on Earth. Some of them were big enough to not fit in any crates and were left to stand against the walls. The organizers certainly hadn't spared expenses planning the show.

Izumi wanted to disassemble one of the rockets to see how it was made, but General Grohn made this plan evaporate from her mind.

“Now,” he said in a lowered, affectionate tone, turning to face Izumi and taking a step closer. “It's just the two of us here.”

“Huh?”

“I know. I feel the same way,” the man reached out his hand and gently traced the line of Izumi's cheek with his bulky fingers. “Surely it was fate that brought our kindred hearts together tonight. Yes, I saw straight away that I had my match in you, Ilyene. That the Divines had at last granted me a second chance at life. No, you are certainly in all respects more than I deserve. I didn't dare to even dream that you'd answer my clumsiness with acceptance. Yet you did. I am most glad.”

“G-general…?”

“Please, Ilyene. Call me Matis.”

Izumi was struck speechless.

In one moment, her mind cleared up enough for her to realize how her sudden proposal to withdraw from the banquet’s commotion had to have appeared to her companion. What other non-criminal purpose could there be in a female leading a male to a secluded place, if not imminent acts of intimacy?

With her wine-induced tunnel vision, thinking only about the operation, Izumi had unwittingly taken such a bold initiative, which she would have been too timid to even fantasize about otherwise.

“...Ha.”

This sudden enlightenment overloaded her already burdened consciousness, overheating her brain and leaving her completely dumbfounded, her expression frozen on her face.

Gently but firmly guiding her chin upward, the tall man leaned forward.

Lewd imagery filled Izumi's distressed mind, enhanced by a life-long consumption of pornographic imagery online. In her mind's eye flashed very lively and detailed visions of a man and a woman engaged in a rough, beastly love-making in the middle of a room full of explosives.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeehhhhhh!?

The perverse scenario provided simply too much stimulation.

Too much, too much, it was all too much.

But while Izumi's brain was busied by a crossfire of chaotically discharging synapses, General Grohn considered her silent immobility a sign of consent, and brought his bearded face even closer. Their lips were mere inches apart, and Izumi still remained hopelessly undecided on whether the sudden change of business was wanted or not.

Well, a kiss at least should be fine, right?

By the age of thirty-eight, Izumi had never kissed anyone on the lips, not even her own family. Wasn't this as good a chance as any to get rid of one persisting source of embarrassment? Surely there were worse ways for it to happen. Who knew when she might get another opportunity? Here, in this place, her life could start over from zero in every area and aspect, unshackled by the mistakes of her youth. Trying to convince herself with such ideas, Izumi squeezed her eyes shut and waited, hearing only her rampant pulse in her ears.

But nothing happened.

The General had suddenly stopped moving.

Chuck.

“Hm?”

The hand holding her chin suddenly grew weirdly cold. Stepping back, startled, Izumi looked up at the man and saw General Grohn's face stilled in a silly expression of astonishment.

Actually, it was quite literally frozen.

Izumi moved her gaze downward and saw that there was something resembling a jewel, a diamond, stuck in the man's chest, sharply pointing outward through the coat front. She soon realized that it wasn't a simple decoration that had somehow gone unnoticed before, but a large icicle protruding all the way through his torso, from the backside. The deadly piece of ice drained heat from its surroundings with unnatural rapidness, freezing the large man from inside out.

General Olliver Matis Grohn was already dead as a rock, his heart impaled by a curse. His outstretched arm, frozen solid, broke off under its own enormity. As his legs lost their flexibility, his unevenly positioned mass made him soon dip forward. That tall body hit the shed's stone floor and shattered into large chunks of frozen meat.

Izumi had been lucky. Had she remained in contact with him for but a few seconds longer, the curse would've reached her as well.

Stepping aside to keep from being crushed under the corpse, Izumi turned her alarmed attention to the front part of the room, looking for the source of the deadly projectile.

And saw a figure robed in black stand in the beam of light cast from the doorway.

“You are…?”

“So you do see me?” Joviél the sorcerer noted, slight surprise in his unhurried tone. “How ironic that you should live past the noon of your brief existence, only to discover your potential at the hour of your nightfall.”

“I'm really not in the shape to follow purple prose like that,” Izumi said, “but are you the one running things around here? Because it was about time somebody looking like a boss made an appearance.”

“Drunken fool,” the elf snorted in disgust. “You know not your own Death when you see it?”

“Death?”

“Yes. Meaningless to me as your existence is, the lord of this house wishes for your demise. And so it shall be.”

“So you're not the last boss but just an underling? Even though you look that evil? Then, does that mean the Duke has more HP than you do? Don't tell me he's one of those guys, who only look human but transform into some kind of gross beast when you get them down to one-third of their health? That would really be a pain.”

Joviél grimaced. The woman was mad, blabbering incomprehensible things instead of begging for her life. Then again, sometimes they did that. The fear of death could drive humans insane, and make them sink into their own little world, where nothing could reach them anymore.

Appalled, the sorcerer raised his staff to repeat the spell.

Inoviath. Icicle of Vile Frost.

The curse meant instant death to any mortal, chilling their very cells.

Simply touching it was enough.

So long as it could be successfully cast, that is.

In the next moment, something flew at the elf.

He shielded himself instinctively with his arms and felt something strike his left wrist. A block of ice? The woman had kicked a piece of the General's frozen corpse at him? The shameless disrespect for the deceased was stunning, after how intimate they had seemed but a minute ago. He had no time to marvel at the human degeneracy any further, however, as something struck Joviél again, in the face, past his guard.

“Gah—!” Dull pain flared through the left side of his head like an electric jolt, making him stagger a step back. Half of his vision was gone, covered in black. His left eye—he couldn't see, he was blinded. What had happened? Had the woman thrown another piece at him? As he looked for the cause, he turned and realized the human was already standing right beside him. “What…!?”

The sorcerer backed away, but the staircase to the upper floor blocked his way and he stumbled.

“You're not very good at playing a ranged class, are you?” Izumi remarked. “Why would you, as a caster, ever try to fight someone in close quarters, in a cramped little room like this? If those corny robes are anything to go by, your physical defense is a big round zero and your reflexes honestly aren't too great either. If you were going to kill us, why didn't you ambush us in the garden instead? It doesn't matter if anybody is around, since you're invisible to them, right? Second, since this is a world with realistic combat, it doesn't seem you wizards have anything handy like a lock-on targeting system but have to rely on your eyesight, right? Then what good do you think you are in a fight—if you have no eyes?”

There was something in the woman's fingers. Something small, round and covered in blood. In horror, Joviél realized that it was an eyeball. His own left eye, gouged out of its socket. The piece of ice had been only a distraction, to buy the woman the few seconds she needed to get within the striking distance.

“By the way, I'm the daredevil type that turns fearless when she's drunk,” Izumi said, squashing the eye in her hand like a ripe grape, dark goo oozing between her fingers. “Would you mind telling me where I can find the princess? This eye doesn't seem to know. Maybe the other one is better informed? Or should I go for the tongue next? Ah, but it won't tell me anything if it's not attached to your body. Silly me!”

Daemon! Monster!

In a figurative blink of an eye, the elven magician had returned to his fabled city of birth, in the now lost land of Amarno. He recalled in high precision the hungry flames that had devoured his family mansion, the cries of his countrymen as they were trampled and slaughtered on the streets in the raging pandeaemonium. The primitive terror that gripped his heart now vividly reminded him of those traumatic days long gone, causing every last one of his spells to vanish from his memory, save for the one he was most accustomed to using.

And so, for the first time in his life that had spanned a reputable eight hundred years, Joviél of Elevro—ran from battle.

With a frantic wave of his hand, he opened a portal of shadows and slipped away from the storage room as quickly as he could.

Izumi saw him off with a pout.

“What's the rush?”

Unsure if the portal was the type you could see in wild science fiction flicks that simply severed anything going through it as it closed, she refrained from attempting to pursue the magician.

“So this is the kind of people Yule’s playing with?”

The unpleasant feeling Izumi had felt before was now rekindled within her, stronger.

And here she realized what it was: anger.

Fury Izumi had scarcely felt burned in her heart with unprecedented, uncontrollable ferocity.

It was not anger over the unjust murder of the General, or her own near-death experience. It was at base the overprotective, jealous fury of a mother hen, as she discovers her naive daughter has ended up in bad company.

It was anger and dismay at herself, for not keeping a closer eye on the girl. The feeble excuses like, “I'm not really even related to her,” and “we only met the day before yesterday,” seemed unforgivable now, silenced by the dark storm that rolled on without coherence, unrestrained by her intoxicated mind.

“Oh my. I might just be too angry for my own good now.”