7-11 The Final Ambush

Man, this tournament really felt long.

If I’d just been a spectator, it would’ve been over in no time.

So—what were the Empire’s people going to do now?

Wasn’t it supposed to be a bad idea to lay a hand on me?

I could stick to Antonio like glue, but that wouldn’t satisfy what was gnawing at my gut.

I’d let them pick a fight—with Antonio.

And after that…

As the final wrap-up, the Bernstein Emperor finished presenting Antonio with his commendation.

As expected, there was no attempt by the Empire to recruit Antonio.

The Orston House was famous for being inflexible, after all.

They had once sworn loyalty to the Albatross Royal Family, and even now they sought restoration in Albatross—and that wish was about to be fulfilled.

So that was the Empire’s emperor.

He had a harsh face, all right.

He was thin and not especially big, but his features were rugged and solidly built.

And those powerful eyes.

Not needlessly sharp, but the type who couldn’t rest unless everything was done properly.

He’d be a tough enemy to make.

Well, we’d already made him one a long time ago.

I made sure to tag the emperor with a marker, too.

I didn’t see the crown prince or the second prince anywhere in this venue.

I wanted to see their faces too.

What kind of man was the crown prince?

I’d heard he wasn’t part of the hardline warmongers.

If the crown prince turned out to be a remarkable person we could negotiate with, it wouldn’t be the worst idea to quietly erase the emperor and the second prince.

Well, if I actually did that, it would become a huge incident.

I recorded the emperor’s appearance properly on video.

How did the emperor feel right now?

Antonio was still only a B-rank adventurer.

Right now, they could still kill him.

He’d become A-rank, return home, get formally recommended for S-rank at the royal palace, then do the guild paperwork to become S-rank.

Then he’d receive a count title.

Once that happened, even the Empire couldn’t easily move against him—so then they’d have to rely on schemes.

After that, we safely finished the procedures at the imperial capital’s Adventurers’ Guild.

Just like that, Antonio officially became an A-rank adventurer.

But even now, the Empire could still kill him.

We shouldn’t linger, but we still had to go home properly through the border.

I watched through the window between the cabin and the driver’s seat, staying on alert as the carriage rolled along, when someone suddenly jumped out in front of us.

No—wrong.

They came tumbling out, like they’d been thrown.

So someone had forced them into the road.

The person who got kicked and sent rolling pitifully by our carriage horse was… a woman?

Ugh—this was…!

It was none other than the young lady of House Palmia.

After failing her mission the first time, I’d wondered where she’d gone.

Oh, come on. They used a disposable pawn as a literal roadblock.

Of course the carriage stopped dead.

So the plan was to rattle us?

In this Empire, for someone like Antonio—who’d lived a similar kind of fate—there probably wasn’t any log more impactful than a noble young lady like her.

But I wasn’t that soft.

…Okay, I absolutely did get rattled.

I wasn’t a person born of this brutal world, so I still couldn’t get used to things this cold.

This whole trip had been a parade of disposable assets.

They attacked without mercy—sacrificing even their own side—again and again.

Even during that earlier dungeon incident, one of the world’s precious teleportation mages—rare enough to count on one hand—had been thrown away.

It felt like the emperor and his people’s warped personalities bled into everything they did.

I urged the driver to ignore her and get the carriage moving, and I was about to tell Antonio to teleport out of the carriage immediately, when—

“Hey, Antonio, hurry—huh?”

Wait. Antonio?

Why are you leaving this safe carriage—where are you going?

And then, unbelievably, Antonio went to her, crouched down, and spoke gently.

“We’re both worn out by our countries’ circumstances. It’s been a hard life.”

She was already drenched in blood and limp, her eyes dim like the light was fading—yet tears still welled faintly.

She was on the brink, and her purple lips seemed to barely form the word “Thank you.”

Maybe they hadn’t expected these two to act like this, because the enemy seemed to hesitate, watching.

And I was also pressing them down with the sheer pressure of my mana, threatening them so hard they couldn’t move.

Honestly—you sure make me work, my friend.

Without a word, Antonio poured God Heal over her again and again using the bracelet’s power, and after she was fully restored—bathed for a while in the distinctive golden glow of goal-achievement magic—he carried her back to the carriage.

“The rest is on you.”

“Yeah.”

I nodded, but still warned him.

“Don’t take her straight to the Beast-Ear Garden!”

If that whole scene had been an act and she was actually on the enemy’s side, the kids at the Beast-Ear Garden would be in danger.

Antonio nodded silently, then vanished from inside the carriage via teleportation magic.

What was about to happen was something both the Empire and the Kingdom would pretend never occurred.

We were still in imperial territory, so I couldn’t be too flashy—but they didn’t have much left.

Fifteen B-ranks, plus twenty even weaker ones.

Apparently they’d planned to take down an A-rank equivalent to S-rank, and an SS-rank with that lineup.

Well, they were leftovers—so it couldn’t be helped.

It was just a final, pathetic struggle.

It had been lucky that we’d dealt with that mercenary leader type and those fifty dangerous ones in advance.

I activated my magic armor and drew a forged orichalcum sword—sharp enough to be obscene—that I’d kept in my item box with plenty of enhancements on it.

Instead of defeating them with magic, I deliberately brought the blade out to show them.

Even this was too good for them.

With magic-armor speed, it took under thirty seconds to cut them all down.

As I cut, I stored each corpse away.

Even for me, I was being so thoroughly an undertaker that it felt barren—but I didn’t need misplaced feelings for these people.

If I left these enemy B-rank pawns alive, there was a chance the Beast-Ear Garden’s children would become corpses.

That was unacceptable.

And I also absolutely hated how they’d used that woman.

So I chose—despite hating it and not wanting to—to carve the message to the Empire into my actions: that I would kill them with my own hands, directly, with a blade.

This was like a period drama taken too far.

Japanese period dramas avoided showing blood on family TV, so even grade-school me had enjoyed them—but here this was nothing but a hard R15.

No, if you put this in fiction, it might even hit R18.

By Japanese legal standards, case law treats three or more murders as a benchmark for death sentences—so at this point wouldn’t it be censorship territory anyway?

I hadn’t even been in this world for a year, and my kill record had already crossed into triple digits.

…Yeah.

But I had zero intention of showing mercy to scum.

I’d leave the “nice face” role to the handsome, sweet young man.

I moved with extreme care so my power wouldn’t shatter the stone pavement underfoot.

That was all I focused on.

There was still one dot on the radar, but that was just a watcher, so I left him.

Cutting him down would be pointless.

I’d let him report the epilogue of today’s mess.

You were lucky—your role saved you.

I stored the massive blood spatter around the area to erase the execution’s traces.

Because we were making sure “none of this ever happened.”

Then I slipped back into the carriage, acted like nothing had happened, and had it continue onward.

Officially, Antonio was still riding inside.

In reality, Antonio had teleported to the Adventurers’ Guild in Alba, entrusted the woman to Andre-san, then headed to the royal palace together with the Guildmaster.

As promised, he’d receive an S-rank recommendation from His Majesty the King, then rush back to the guild to have his S-rank card issued.

Then he’d return to the palace again and—despite it being very late for this—receive his countship.

On top of that, he’d be formally permitted on the spot to establish the new Orston Count House.

It was an unbelievably complicated process, but none of those procedures could be skipped.

Those were the things that mattered.

Only the travel back and forth could be shortened with teleportation magic.

He’d achieved his long-held wish.

But there was still more to do, so after finishing the remaining errands, Antonio returned to the carriage by teleportation.

“I’m back.”

“Welcome back, new Count Orston. Then shall we be off?”

“Yeah.”

We stepped out of the carriage.

Antonio’s noble cloak fluttered, bearing a bright, simplified dragon crest.

Well, the Empire now knew we had teleportation magic—but at this point, that was hardly news.

Leaving the carriage behind, we took off toward the border with the Fly spell.

Thanks to Besmagil, Antonio could use Fly as much as he wanted.

It looked like they had more forces prepared ahead, but by now the Empire couldn’t touch Antonio.

Externally, it was considered that the ambassador Count Marius had provisionally recognized Antonio’s title at the embassy.

That was why we’d deliberately stopped by the embassy before returning.

This was an embassy carriage.

Inside it was foreign territory, and even the Empire couldn’t lay hands on the inside of the carriage.

If they did, that would be instant war—dishonorable in the extreme and internationally disastrous.

So they tried to push us into coming outside, but the mood took an unexpected turn, and I radiated such absurd mana to intimidate them that they couldn’t move to kill Antonio.

They only had leftover small fry anyway—so even if they tried, it would’ve been impossible.

That was why I deliberately drew a blade I hated using—because I hated the sensation of cutting flesh and the spray of blood—and killed them with it.

After so many vicious tricks, even I couldn’t hold it in anymore, so I showed the watcher—the one who’d report back—that I wasn’t a soft man.

Just to send that message.

Even laying a hand on someone inside an embassy carriage was a massive problem, but did the Empire intend to brazen it out by claiming it was bandits in the night?

As long as the target was still an “adventurer,” they could do anything?

To prevent anyone from blocking an emergency ennoblement with petty objections, I’d made sure Antonio had accumulated plenty of achievements and merit beforehand—so this was my strategy paying off.

This was one of those areas where an older man’s sly experience really shined.

Older men beat turtle shells, as they say.

We forced our way across the border river with Fly.

Before that, we asked the captain we knew at the border outpost to expedite the necessary departure formalities.

Naturally, he handled it with a smile.

Now there were two nobles, after all.

When we showed him the flashy high-rank adventurer cards that were unmistakably S-rank and SS-rank, the captain’s face went stiff.

He must’ve finally understood who he’d been picking a fight with.

We hopped over the Eel River, and on the way, a raft was under attack by monsters again, so Antonio and I split up and took their heads.

There were weirdly a lot of them, so we harvested them all without restraint, and the kids on the raft waved at us.

Don’t cross the river this close to sundown.

River snakes are dark-colored, so in this deep, low-clarity river, they’re hard to spot.

Though, to be fair, the monsters in this river attacked even in broad daylight—they didn’t care about day or night.

On the Kingdom side, the outpost let us through smoothly—apparently the cloak alone was enough.

All of you, good work on your duties!

Man… it really had been long.

Since it was considered that Antonio had been granted a count title by the ambassador while inside the Empire, Antonio headed for the royal palace to formally greet His Majesty the King upon return.

He had to report that this entire “shadow interstate war” was fully concluded.

Well, he certainly had no shortage of stories.

After we parted ways, I returned to the Beast-Ear Garden, and Aoi-chan was wearing sweatpants and playing horse.

Little Remi—the cat-eared kid—was gleefully riding her around.

The cute cat ears and tail bounced and flicked nonstop.

Just watching it was healing.

“Welcome home~”

Aoi-chan’s laid-back greeting softened my heart without me even realizing it.

“Looks like you’ve really settled in here.”

“Thanks to you~”

Then little cat Remi jumped off from atop Aoi-chan, kicked her back lightly, and clung to me.

“Welcome hoooome. Souvenirs~”

The child who wouldn’t warm up to me at first now greeted me like this.

It made me truly happy.

This place—and these kids—I would protect them, no matter what.

“Welcome back, director-teacher!”

“Souvenirs~”

“Meow~”

The children swarmed me, shouting over each other.

Crap.

I’d accidentally kept the Kingdom cloak on, and now it was a disaster of drool, snot, and sticky fingerprints.

I thanked the existence of Purification and Regeneration.

“Everyone… I’m home.”