Chapter 94: Delusion Patient Zero
In the dead of night, behind Castle Westbreak’s rear gatehouse, Shal-yen personally checked the laundry being delivered to the camp of Regiment Quaternius. It was already in the wagon, and the gate was already open; all the Maids had to do was spur the mule onward and they’d be on their way.
Confirming the delivery, Shal-yen walked to the driver’s side. “Good luck,” he said, and the Maid nodded. She faced her comrade beside her, then their three other comrades on the back of the wagon. They were ready.
She spurred the mule onward, and they disappeared into Harmony’s darkness.
“Where do you even find these people?” Arpeggio asked. She stood behind Shal-yen, wondering what he and her mother were up to this time.
“If there’s anyone to blame, blame your mother,” Shal-yen replied.
His phrasing didn’t sound quite right, so Arpeggio looked at him as if he were a convicted lordslayer sentenced to 200 years of lordship—which he was—but the man just stared into the cold night with dead eyes.
She didn’t know what to feel about the implication that her mother actually had something to do with all these Maids. In defense of her sanity, she pushed the thought out of the way.
As the gate closed behind them, they walked together. Anyone outside looking in would think they were just on their way to the gazebo for a casual midnight chat over tea, but even now, they constantly surveyed their environment with battle-honed senses.
“How are your preparations?” Arpeggio asked.
“High chance of infiltration, I’m afraid,” Shal-yen said. “We’ve been denied the services of the Royal Detector.”
The Royal Detector—that mysterious person capable of locating Cursed Ones. Much like passive radar equipment, however, her precision diminishes with longer distances and weaker curses. Against Manager’s strong curse power, however, it would have been child’s play for her to know where he was, down to the nearest inch—if only she were perched on Castle Westbreak.
It was pretty much a cheat move to always know where Manager was at all times, so why wouldn’t her handlers let her come here? “What? What kind of stupid move is that?” Arpeggio blurted out with some passion.
“Sorry, I meant to say the request itself was approved” — “Ah, I see.” — “but…she disappeared in transit.”
Arpeggio almost tripped on her own foot.
There were always a handful of Scarlet Knights guarding the Royal Detector at all times, and they were strong enough that four of them would be able to give Arpeggio some trouble. Other than being strong, they were also equipped with anti-charm armor from head to toe—nigh invulnerable to being charmed.
“Where were they last seen?” Arpeggio asked. She couldn’t imagine them getting defeated, but getting sidetracked? That could certainly happen.
“If you’re thinking of searching for them, don’t bother,” Shal-yen replied. “I don’t doubt you can scour hundreds of kilometers of forest in one day, but one of her guards is exceptional in terms of stealth. If they do not want to be found, they will never be found.”
Arpeggio nodded. Best not worry about it, then. As long as the Royal Detector was still alive, it would be fine.
Besides, having living radar on your side was just one kind of cheat. The two strongest people in the whole country were right here in one place, y’know?
***
Amelia was out late doing wetwork.
As the mother of the Inquisition, she wasn’t just extremely powerful, but also sneaky, devious—scary.
She walked on trampled grass, the soil underneath pockmarked by soldiers’ boot prints. Magic lamps hung from poles on either side, lighting up the path and the tents that surrounded it.
She aimed for the tent at the very end.
Two guards crossed their spears. Amelia had disguised herself as a messenger, so her presence here didn’t surprise them too much. However, security was still tight, and there hadn’t been any expectation for a messenger to arrive in the dead of night.
“Halt!” the guard on the left said. “State your business.”
“I have a message for Captain Seva-len,” Amelia said.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Of course, let’s not forget the one quirk in this world that made infiltration extremely hard: one’s real name and Occupation would always show up in any kind of appraisal magic—appraisal magic which the two guards quietly used.
“Wh—”
“I know, I know, it’s a little embarrassing.” Amelia acted all cute and everything, resting her cheek on her hands in a sleepy pose, but her cold eyes killed the guards’ spirits. “If you don’t say anything” —she looked at the guard to the left— “I won’t mention your affair with Kas” —she looked to the one on the right— “or the fact that you plotted the first wife’s miscarriage with a tobacco overdose. Oh, maybe work for me a little while and I’ll let you off altogether. How about it?”
They didn’t even know that about each other. Such was the true strength of the Inquisition.
Indeed, the Inquisition was anyone, and the Inquisition was everywhere. This was the result of accumulating a critical mass of blackmail, such that that blackmail could be used to gather even more blackmail, resulting in self-perpetuating feedback loop of blackmail that might just one day manifest as a squirming extra-dimensional entity made of pure blackmail energy.
Quietly, the guards got a new part-time job and uncrossed their spears. Amelia headed for Captain Seva-len’s tent.
***
Seva-len was a 180cm, 50-year-old, dagger-eared beauty. By half-elf standards, it was a good time to get married—or have a quarterlife crisis.
For her at [Affection: 100], it really felt like it was gonna be the earlier!
She rolled around in her cot, wearing nothing but combat-ready sleepwear. Indeed, a good soldier should always be ready to fight, even if that meant doing it from bed, half-asleep, in nothing but her pajamas.
And she was a good soldier! In her 20 years of service to Lyrica, she had endured plenty of half-elf slander, and yet she soldiered on. Even when she’d been dispatched to the Eastern Colonies, she’d never complained about the endless sea of trees that each potentially hid a catgirl with a quiver full of poisoned arrows.
Eventually, her detractors died of poisoned arrows, and she came back with a new rank.
Sadly, she still needed another 30 years before she could rise to a battalion commander position. Before then, she would have to continue enduring more half-elf slander.
What was so bad about being a half-elf? Look, it’s her problem that most of her friends would die so much earlier than her, so why would anyone even think of slandering them? It’s not an admirable thing to live too long!
Well, it’s not like she’d ever have that kind of problem—because she didn’t have friends. Drinking buddies could be mass-produced, but real friends? Someone who actually tried to understand her feelings? It’s a myth, that’s what it was.
She knew things had to change, but they never did, because she just kept on pushing new people away. Perhaps it was the rising resentment, or maybe it had always been her personality from the start, but she just! couldn’t! help it!
Everyone dislikes you by default, was what her brain said. How could she possibly trust others when her mind translated the way everyone looked at her—no matter how they actually looked at her—into “worm,” “dog,” and “filth.”
‘Enduring’ something certainly never guaranteed coming out of it intact.
O-oohh, but you see, she’d just met someone just a while ago! She’d just been so bored of approving changes in patrol schedules and organizing the camp’s logistics, so she’d decided to go on a little night patrol of her own.
Naturally, her lieutenant had also decided to tag along, if only just to make sure the good captain wasn’t actually trying to disappear from work.
They’d been somewhere on the other side of a small hill on the southern perimeter when a group of four crested that same hill behind them.
In alarm, their swords flew halfway out of their sheathes—but had stopped right there.
Surely, these people didn’t mean any harm. One of them was even injured!
While her lieutenant tended to the injured person, one of the group—a rather handsome man, right in Seva-len’s strike zone—talked to her. He’d explained their situation and how he’d been falsely accused, leaving him no choice but to run.
My, what an awful story!
As his story of intrigue, conspiracy, and justice deepened, so did her impression of him. What a strong man, she thought. What a daring man to stand up to injustice—what a charming man to be so righteous!
Soon, even her lieutenant had begun listening to him. Hadn’t she just been tending to someone? When Seva-len looked around, the three other people seemed to have disappeared off to somewhere. Well, they’re fine now, so they’re irrelevant!
The two gladly continued to listen to the man, but towards the end of it, he’d started saying things like, “Tell me about your life,” and when that elicited an outpouring of emotions from both Seva-len and her lieutenant, he’d doubled down by saying things like, “That must have been hard.”
For the first time in their lives, they felt recognized. They felt human. Someone had acknowledged their pain, and not just with a silent nod, but with a real, palpable yearning for their lives to become better.
However happy they had been…they quickly felt sad. The man was, after all, on the run. Had circumstances been different, they could have gotten to know each other better, but as it stood, they couldn’t even be friends. Not like this.
Seva-len and her lieutenant had eyed each other, and they’d both known that the other wanted to express some form of thanks.
— A parting gift.
This-and-that had happened right in the open, on the moonlit slope of a hill. Suffice to say, whatever happened might have inspired a new ghost story among the locals.
Manager’s earlier suggestions, however, had already implanted themselves deep in their minds, and soon, they had begun to gather nearby patrols for him to charm one by one…
They had a faint hope that they could gather an army big enough to confront Shal-yen and his Elite Maid Army—and finally bring him to justice! All for the sake of overturning injustice—all for the sake of the rights of the righteous!
Seva-len wrestled with these thoughts. There was something off about them—something intuitively wrong about the whole thing. Try as she might to work through it rationally, however, all paths of logic led to the same conclusion: that she was in the right, and that none of this was a betrayal of her duty as a knight of Lyrica.
She squirmed as she laid on her cot, whispering her delusions aloud. It was an exciting time to be alive, to finally fight for what was right, and she only had Manager to thank for all of it. Oh, she couldn’t wait to see him again—she really couldn’t!