That's Too Much

A Knight’s armor is top-of-the-line gear as a matter of course. Equipment has to be fitted to the one who wears it, and for Knights, elites without equal even within the Empire, ordinary gear would be pointless.

“And yet here it is, in this state.”

Noelle pointed at the thoroughly crumpled suit of armor as she said it, and Aiden felt his back break out in a sweat, fast. Even someone with no knack for combat would have noticed at once that the air coming off Noelle right now was nothing ordinary.

“Do you know what this means?”
“…What does it mean?”
“It means that without the armor, Gale would have died on the spot. From one sloppy punch you threw without even setting your stance properly.”

Noelle went on with a faint smile.

“It’s absurd. A man of Gale’s level stands head and shoulders above ordinary fighters.”

“…”

“Not even a formally invested Knight could produce a result like this from one preposterous swing like that.”

He really wished she would stop with the compliments. His mouth was going bone dry.

“Though come to think of it, exactly one person does come to mind who looks capable of the same thing.”
“…Is that so?”
“Yes.”

The smile Dame Noelle wore widened a touch, and before long her lips parted again.

“Me.”

“…”

“Because the pure-white ki you just drew out of your body is the purest of all ki. On output alone, something like that would be possible.”
“That’s—”

Aiden let the sentence trail off. Honestly, it had been a hard scene to explain away.

Among Knights, even a man hailed as a genius could barely keep pace with his peers, and the ability that the one standing at their summit had honed over a lifetime was exactly this pure-white ki. So what this woman was asking, in a roundabout way, came down to one thing: how did a nobody like him come to be wielding the essence of the art she had built with her own hands?

“Explain yourself, Aiden Kellermain.”

The further she went, the faster the sweat spread across his back, because Noelle’s face was smiling while her eyes were not smiling at all.

“Just what are you, exactly?”

Forcing down the tightness in his throat, Aiden barely managed an answer.

“You’ve seen my record, haven’t you? I really am a man with nothing at all to—”
“You mean that cover-your-back record of yours. Yes, I did look at it. Looked at it, anyway.”

— Tap, tap.

Noelle drummed slowly on her own arm with her fingers.

“…Pardon?”

A cover-your-back record? What was she on about now? While Aiden sat there blinking, Noelle went on in a placid voice.

“Out of all the many, many people out there, why do you suppose I went to the trouble of bringing you in?”

He had no idea why she was asking him, as if he’d be the one to know. Nobody in the whole world was more curious about that than Aiden himself. Fortunately, Noelle was not the type to drag out an explanation.

“If you wanted to hide what you are properly, you should have left at least one blemish behind. Keep the joke within reason and I might actually believe it.”
“What do you—”
“Aiden. However big a criminal a man is, he gets collared at least once. However good his luck, however good his skill, he is bound to slip at least once; that is simply how it goes. Even a sage who sees through everything never knows when he will be blindsided. And yet—”

The light in Noelle’s eyes sank further still.

“Here, the man who claims to be an ordinary, worthless con man has gone more than ten years without so much as an investigation, never mind an arrest.”

“…”

“Looking over your career, you kept clear of every single thing tied to a big job. And the moment anything looked even slightly dangerous, you pulled out ahead of time, every time.”

“…”

“Honestly, what can that mean except that you ‘knew’ which jobs were dangerous and dodged them all?”

Aiden’s mouth fell slightly open.

…She’s not wrong about that, but.

Once a man worked outside the law, getting tangled up in some big incident or other was practically a given, and he really had dodged with everything he had to keep from being roped into anything dangerous. Of course, that run of luck was possible only because he knew the original. Still, scurrying around avoiding danger was hardly grounds to rate Aiden highly.

“That is why I brought you in.”

…The problem was that this person saw it entirely differently.

“Whoever I put in the husband’s seat for this sham marriage will clearly struggle to pull it off. Nobody among the people I know could, at least.”

Noelle set her teacup down with a click and elaborated.

“Never having failed once means nobody knows where your capacity ends. There is no ceiling in sight. So I brought you in half in the spirit of scratching a lottery ticket.”

No, he got it. There was a logic to it. But the truth behind those records was nothing more than a desperate scramble to stay unnoticed and keep clear of the main story, and he had never dreamed it would come back around on him like this.

There is a limit to how kindly a dream can be read.

Aiden made to open his mouth again, to talk her round somehow. He had built a fair career in a trade that ran on a smooth tongue, after all. Surely he could have spun some plausible explanation…

“Judging by the ability you wield, it rather feels like I’ve won.”

“…”

…If not for that.

He had gone and shown her a scene that could never square with the history he claimed. Aiden clammed up.

“Aiden. I would like to settle this as peacefully as possible. Your having more ability than I expected is, if anything, good news on my end.”

Noelle’s eyes, faintly lowered until now, came straight up to meet his, and that alone overwhelmed him. If a gaze could carry physical force, merely meeting hers felt as though it might lay him open.

“But at the very least, I would like an account of the scene you just showed me. That pure-white ki, whether or not you know it, has a great deal of history tangled up in it.”

“…”

Uh… well, it did rather look that way.

If someone else suddenly started using a cultivation method handed down to one person alone, even Aiden would wonder what on earth was going on. He understood the feeling perfectly well.

“So you had best tell me quickly. Otherwise I will have no choice but to draw my sword.”

Correction.

He would never understand that, not if he died for it.

“…Why is that the conclusion?”
“Gale’s way of thinking isn’t always right, but the combat forms he has built up are unmistakable once you’ve crossed swords with him. That much alone is enough to get a rough idea of how you learned it.”

As she said it, Noelle toyed with the sword at her waist, and the back of Aiden’s neck, damp already, went cold. Her face was still smiling, but the intent beneath her words was in dead earnest. This woman fully meant to draw and cut him down if she did not hear an explanation that satisfied her.

“…”

No, but still. What was he supposed to explain, and how? How was he supposed to explain that he had transmigrated into a game, and that as a perk of it he could somehow copy and use skills?

“Am I to take your continued silence as agreement?”

But he had to do something. Otherwise he really might die.

As he turned that over, a click rang through Aiden’s head, the sound of a button being pressed. He heard it every time he faced a ‘client’, and with it came the feeling of switching into work mode.

Convincing her he was an ordinary con man… He had already crossed the Rubicon on that one, so better to give it up cleanly. Nor could he come up with any explanation on the spot that would satisfy Noelle.

Which left one method.

I’ll have to con her.

Wasn’t that his trade to begin with? Deceiving people to survive.

Aiden’s mind spun up to full tilt, and every scrap of knowledge of the ‘original’ that might help here came pouring into his head at once. A con is built on deceiving others, and deceiving others is built on stirring the emotions.

And so.

Pulling together everything he had on the human being called Noelle Astria Simmers, he sifted out every keyword that would rattle her most right now. What he landed on in the end was this.

“By the look of it—”

Even by Aiden’s own reckoning, the sentence had been assembled by instinct rather than reason.

“You don’t seem to remember the old days?”
“Pardon?”
“When you were little, for instance.”

He tossed the words out lightly, by way of insinuation, letting a subtle touch of loneliness and hurt color his voice. He himself hadn’t the faintest idea what he was talking about. Of course she didn’t remember; he had never even met her.

But the instant she heard what Aiden had pulled out.

“—”

Noelle went dead still. The light in her eyes flickered for an instant, and her expression twisted and broke for a moment too. She snapped right back to her usual self, but.

A split second.

The lapse lasted barely the tail end of that split second, yet Aiden’s eyes caught it precisely.

This woman.

Going by the game’s information, part of her childhood memory had been blown away by some ‘incident’. Which incident, he didn’t know; the game never went that far.

What matters is…!

She really had lost her memory, and on top of that she would not have told anyone. She’d have had no reason to.

And so.

If he could just work himself into something only Noelle herself would know, that alone would be enough, because merely knowing what no one but the person concerned could know made any story enormously more credible.

“…What do you mean by that, Aiden?”

A reply like that, covering her agitation, meant this absurd excuse had more or less landed. Her own secret had been prodded, so it was a natural enough reaction. Every sort of hypothesis about his identity was probably whirling in her head by now, and that alone made a splendid shield for him at the moment.

In any case, the point was to get out of this room alive. Which left only one thing.

“No, it’s nothing. I just didn’t think you would really have forgotten.”

He let his answer trail off, as if there were no point telling her unless she realized it herself first. That alone was enough to set Dame Noelle’s face hard; now it was a face that could not hide its agitation.

“I’ll see you later, Dame Noelle.”

In short.

This was the perfect moment to say something suitably impressive and bolt. Aiden went on, his voice brimming with melancholy.

“…When we next meet, I would like you to greet me a little differently.”

What that was supposed to mean, Noelle would never know.

The reason being.

I don’t know either…!

Aiden himself had no idea what the hell he was even saying!

But by anyone’s reckoning, it was the moment to make a quick exit. With Dame Noelle’s blank stare on his back, Aiden strode out of the room.

That had been yesterday.

A whirlwind run of incidents on his very first day on the job had left Aiden wrung out, and right now he was holed up in his private room, seeing nobody.

It was a good thing. No question about it, a good thing. What he’d pulled yesterday had worked so well that a free skill-copy ticket had come rolling in on top of it. By any reading, there was no loss to speak of.

…Except for this part.

And what’s a ‘related event’ supposed to be?

He frowned and glared at the pane. However he looked at it, the phrase gave him a bad feeling, a distinct sense that danger to his person was about to come down on him again.

…Should I gather more abilities?

Honestly, he’d rather not get dragged into a fight in the first place, but when something told you this plainly that trouble was coming your way soon, sitting still would be the stupid play.

From who, though?

Going to Dame Noelle for another skill was out of the question. After what had happened only yesterday, even showing his face to her right now would be awkward.

Wasn’t there a suitable candidate somewhere? He was still mulling that over when a tremendous bustle broke out somewhere nearby.

“His Highness Daniel will be arriving shortly!”
“Everybody finish tidying up and clear out! Don’t go catching his eye for nothing!”

When he poked his head into the corridor at the untimely racket, it looked as if some high-ranking personage was paying a visit. The Capital Command was the central nervous system of the Imperial army, so to speak, and all sorts of people came through it. Even so, royalty from another nation was plainly a guest of rare standing. As the prince swept down the corridor in full majesty, the Capital Command staff passing nearby cleared out of his way so briskly it was conspicuous.

Watching, Aiden narrowed his eyes slightly.

…Royalty of the Holy Kingdom, then…

He rummaged through the game’s lore in his head. The supernatural power of the Empire’s people is ki, received from the authority of Karva; that of the Holy Kingdom’s people is divinity, drawn from the authority of Sier, the god of purification. And the ones who handle it best are that royal family, the closest to the source of divinity, so to speak.

…Maybe I’ll give it a try.

If deepening a relationship copied a skill, then getting acquainted with someone like that could hardly hurt. If a good connection formed, fine; if not, never mind. And with the title of Dame Noelle’s spouse hanging on him, a brief greeting and a word or two should not be too grave a breach of etiquette.

With that in mind, he fixed on the prince striding down the corridor with his chest thrown out and stepped naturally into his path, as though to welcome him.

“A pleasure to meet you, Your Highness. I am…”

The moment he said it and held out his hand, it was slapped roughly aside with a sharp smack. A voice laced with disgust, as though its owner had spotted a cockroach crawling toward him, cut in.

“Take that away. Filthy, low-born thing.”

“…”

…Life in this world really was rough going.

Chewing that impression over anew, Aiden looked at the one who had struck his hand aside: a young man with a slick, smarmy look about him, his whole face packed with arrogance and entitlement.

…So that’s why everyone was scrambling to get clear before this one arrived.

With a temper like that, the reaction was only to be expected.

“One pays respect to royalty by going down on one knee. Why is there an ignorant lout standing here who does not even know that?”

“…”

Hadn’t that custom died out, and a long while ago at that? In this day and age, demanding something like that got you buried, royalty or not.

“I am the Seventh Prince of the Holy Kingdom of Craven. My name is—”

Slick.

There was no particular need to remember his real name. This one was simply Slick. Wearing a bored look, Aiden snipped the name out of the sentence he had just heard, right there inside his head, and settled on that. Judging by what came next, it was plainly the right call.

“—and from your guttersnipe conduct, there is no need to ask after your bloodline, either.”

“…”

Good grief.

Within a few seconds the man’s words and conduct had laid his character bare, and watching it, Aiden felt his temples throb as if they might burst.

“…Your Highness. It may be well to reconsider treating this man so lightly.”

Things got bad enough that the guard at the prince’s side, clad in a full suit of armor, stepped up as though to rein him in. Of course, Prince Slick’s face twisted into a scowl at once.

“Be quiet. Who told you to interrupt?”
“But this man is—”

At the guard’s quiet whisper, a crooked smile crept onto Slick’s face.

“—Ah.”

A sneer, as though he had heard a joke too absurd to credit.

“The one she brought in, was it? The Lionhearted’s?”
“Yes, Your Highness.”

At the guard’s answer, Slick’s odious gaze ran over Aiden once, up and down.

“This thing?”

“…”

“She would not so much as pretend to hear my request, and she picked something like this for a spouse?”

…From the way he talked, this one had plainly been eyeing the seat of Dame Noelle’s spouse all along. Aiden only now realized it.

“…”

The ‘related event’ written there. Wasn’t it simply whatever was about to roll out around the loutish royal in front of him? And he had stepped out to prepare for it, only to walk straight into the thing itself.

Ah.

Aiden Kellermain.

Day two on the job.

On day one, a man calling himself an old friend of Dame Noelle had drawn a blade and charged him; on day two, he had been dragged into a quarrel with foreign royalty.

Ah.

There was nothing to let out but that one sigh.