16-11 Uninvited Guest, Part 2

Tonight, a soirée was being held at Marquis Clift’s house.

An invitation had even come for someone like me.

Maybe I should go there to clear my mood a little.

I asked Fal what she wanted to do.

“Mm. Go home.”

Ah, the shock from that fatty was still lingering.

I suppose I would stop by the soirée, then go home too.

For the time being, I sent Fal to the Beast-Ear Garden with teleportation magic, then went out in the embassy carriage.

When I went to Marquis Clift’s residence together with our ambassador, the atmosphere somehow felt strange.

It was restless, or perhaps strangely noisy.

I wondered if it could be, and when I checked the marker… there he was, that Beckenheim.

Why was he here?

Just as I thought about turning around and going home, my shoulder was suddenly grabbed from behind, and Marquis Clift caught me.

I asked in a quiet voice near the marquis’s ear.

(Why is that guy here?)

(This sort of thing happens all the time. He appears and disappears unpredictably, does whatever he pleases, and all the imperial nobles are fed up with him.)

He probably thought this was a good opportunity for us to meet.

And apparently, he also thought it would be profitable if I drove him away well.

I was not very enthusiastic about it, but since I had already come, it could not be helped.

When I gave up and entered the mansion, all the participants had faces as though the end of the world had come.

Then I appeared, so their despair seemed to deepen even further.

Somehow, I ended up feeling sorry about that.

Maybe I should have had Fal come after all.

Or had she sensed it with a wild instinct and fled?

Normally, I should have been extremely good at that sort of thing too, yet what a disgrace.

But if I was unlucky, even this might have been arranged by “that thing inside me.”

If so, I felt like something dangerous was about to happen…

And just as expected, that guy came straight over to pick a fight with me.

Damn it, so the Seventh Sense bastard really set me up.

“So you are this Granburst or whatever. You former adventurer trash! Hah, the people of the Albatross Kingdom truly show their breeding.”

No, sorry.

I was born in Japan, so the Albatross Kingdom did not really have anything to do with me.

And I was not a former adventurer, but a proper active adventurer.

Unfortunately, I did not do any adventurer work at all, though.

Rather than getting angry, I unexpectedly smiled.

I see.

This was definitely a higher grade than the kingdom’s shame.

What, he was still not as bad as Rick, who had once been in the Empire.

I had broadcast that one to the whole world, including the false charges, so in a manner of speaking, he was the world’s shame.

After that, the “Beckenheim Concert” began.

Or perhaps I should call it a hoarse-voiced opera.

He said things like the Albatross Kingdom was a dried-up nation with nothing but old history, that we should hurry up and hand over Prince Emilio as a hostage, and that Princess Milene or whatever should have been given to the second prince.

On and on, endlessly.

I let it flow past me with the feelings of someone in a government office’s department that listened to complaints from citizens.

To be specific, I played a CD on my magic PC and cranked up the volume while listening to it.

I also cast a silence spell so I would not hear the pig’s filthy hoarse voice.

A real pig’s squealing would have been far better.

And before I knew it, I had fallen asleep while standing.

The whole course of his outrage while I slept was recorded by the camera-eye pod I had set out in automatic filming mode.

Apparently, the pig duke finally noticed that I was snoring loudly, and he made an incredible face.

The people around us had noticed long before and were watching while laughing softly, and the duke reportedly left in a rage.

Nothing he said reached me, and in the end, when he punched my face several times, he injured his hand and apparently rolled around in pain.

When I checked the footage, he punched me twice from the right and twice from the left. Since he had hit me in a blind rage without leaving any pause between blows, the pain must have arrived all at once.

One should not punch a person with eight million HP worth of durability with bare hands.

It was like punching a statue made of steel—no, of magical metal.

Since I was asleep, my head swung nicely left and right each time he punched me from alternating sides, and the footage came out rather well.

It would have made the perfect picture if I had dramatically gone flying too.

Unfortunately, his punches did not do much damage, so I did not notice at all and kept sleeping while standing.

The ambassador woke me up, and when I came to, the man had already gone home.

I felt disappointed when I heard what had happened.

“What, he should have punched me with all his strength. Then his fist would be a mess by now.”

He was the type who boiled over instantly, and those were telegraphed punches he had thrown on the momentum of the moment.

In the end, they were at most on the level of slaps.

“However, I was surprised that he suddenly attacked a noble from another country. His attendants turned pale and tried to stop him. After all, it happened right in front of the ambassador of the country of the man being struck. And in front of many other imperial nobles as well.”

What a happy face this raccoon was making.

Well, if I were in the ambassador’s position, I would probably be so happy I would dance too.

Hmm, maybe it would be fine to keep that duke alive and simply have him fool around with me.

That alone might make the Empire unable to ever raise its head against the kingdom again.

And if I got Fal involved too, the nobles throughout the Empire would probably clutch their heads.

Even at a time like that, that second prince was surely getting excited with some woman.

Maybe I should just raise my own rank all the way to SSS-rank, obtain the honorary title of duke, and stick to that fatty while saying that I was also a duke.

Using teleportation magic, I would cling to him wherever he went and pick fights with him.

After all, I had received the first blow from him.

More accurately, four blows.

If anything, I was actually better at that kind of gloomy and spiteful method.

I had thought he was merely unpleasant, but he might be convenient as a toy to play with.

That alone seemed enough for the kingdom to declare victory over the Empire.

That idiot was not merely on the level of the Empire’s shame, but the continent’s shame.

Apparently, the ambassador turned this incident into a major problem.

The other side’s civil officials were said to have gone quite pale as well.

After all, the ambassador himself had witnessed an act of violence that should absolutely never have happened.

If the opponent had been some minor noble, the imperial side might still have taken a strong stance, but because the opponent was me, and because it happened during the period when Fal was visiting, they apparently had no choice but to surrender completely.

Of course, the ambassador spread that fact throughout the Empire and seized every opportunity to exaggerate it grandly.

Even though it had become such a major issue, that second prince did not show himself even once.

Normally, the second prince would stand at the front, lightly apologize for the blunder of someone from his faction, and quickly settle the matter, but he was too incompetent to even do that.

No, he probably had no intention of apologizing from the beginning.

He might not even have realized that such a thing had happened.

This fact created a mood across the Empire that fiercely opposed the second prince’s coup, and voices calling for the crown prince’s reinstatement rose all at once.

Until now, dissatisfaction toward Prince Sharion had only been spoken in whispers out of fear of purges, but now it became a situation where it echoed loudly throughout the country.

The Albatross spies must have taken this chance to work hard spreading the story as well.

It was not only nobles and civil officials; even common citizens and, in the end, beastfolk slaves were whispering about it.

And instead of condemning those slaves’ insolence, even the people responsible for controlling them ended up agreeing with them.

The one who laughed the most thanks to this incident was none other than Michael of the Gale himself, the mastermind behind everything.