Chapter 45

Ahel shook his head as he watched the disaster unfold right before his eyes.

Ah, how on earth had things come to this?

Why, oh why, did it have to turn out this way?

The plan he had dreamed up half as a joke and half for entertainment wasn’t a bad one. After all, it was a method he had used successfully many times before. But there was one thing he had overlooked. No, assuming that Miss Armienne would naturally hold her liquor well just because she had been so confident about it turned out to be a massive miscalculation.

“To think everyone would be this terrible at drinking.”

Naturally, “everyone” included Miss Armienne herself. She, who had boasted with such absolute confidence that she could knock Miel down, was now completely hammered, sipping her drink in tiny fractions while gently stroking the cheek of Aria, whom she called her daughter.

“Hehe, I wonder who our Aria takes after to be so cute?”

Seemingly disliking it, Aria puffed out her cheeks and gave Armienne’s hand a sharp smack. It was almost as if they had traveled right back to when they first met.

“Don’t touch me! Aria’s cheek hurts!”

Whether it was because she was drunk or because she’d picked up some weird habits early on, Aria used strange honorifics, and watching her, Armienne suddenly started letting tears drip down her face. It was one of the classic, quintessential types of drunken behavior exhibited by parents everywhere.

“Waaaaah. For Aria to rebel against me… The terrible age of puberty has arrived.”

When Aria made Armienne cry, Harmiel—who had been staring blankly up at the ceiling, completely sloshed—pushed herself up from her seat. Holding a single canned beer, she let out a hiccup and shouted at Aria.

“How dare a daughter make her mother cry! Aria, you’re a bad kid!”

Triggered by Yul’s conditioning to react sensitively to the word “bad,” Aria burst into tears at Harmiel’s words. Perhaps due to the alcohol, Aria was even blabbing out her own true identity, which she should never have spoken of aloud.

“Waaah, Aria’s not a bad dragon! Aria’s a good dragon.”

“How dare you lie to your aunt! Aria is a bad child!”

“Waaaaah, Miel got mad at me! It’s scary.”

Watching the scene from afar with cold sweat dripping down his neck as a third-party observer, Ahel thought to himself.

You couldn’t find a more chaotic madhouse if you tried.

If there was ever a place in this world that deserved to be called the very definition of chaos, this was it. That was what he thought. The behavior of these drunken women was completely devoid of rules or common sense. Not only were they lightweights, but their drunken antics were severe.

Yet, it wasn’t all bad. Perhaps because the alcohol had loosened their tongues, they were sharing genuine, heartfelt conversations of their own. Of course, whether they’d remember any of it once they sobered up later was anyone’s guess.

“Mommmy! Auntie is bullying Aria. Sniff. As expected, Mommy’s the only one for me.”

Brushing away Harmiel’s hands as she tried to scold her, Aria buried her face straight into Armienne’s voluptuous chest, and Armienne stroked her softly out of pure, ingrained habit.

“There, there. Is our Aria a good girl? Mom only has Aria, too. Good dragons don’t cry.”

“Sniff.”

Hearing even Armienne refer to Aria as a dragon, Ahel began to feel a creeping sense of doubt.

Could that little kid actually be a real dragon?

He shook his head the very next second, however, after observing Aria’s actions.

Seemingly quite fond of the raw fish sashimi, Aria had already inhaled every last piece that Ahel had brought out earlier, and now she turned to Armienne.

“Aria wants to eat more raw fish.”

“No. Stop eating.”

Whether it was because she didn’t want to cause any more trouble for Ahel, because she thought this was her chance to fix Aria’s endless appetite, or simply due to a sudden whim, Armienne flatly refused. At the same time, unable to accept defeat, Aria burst into tears all over again.

“Waaaaah, more raaaaw fish!”

“When your mother tells you no for your own good, where did you learn to throw a tantrum like this! Aria, you really are a bad dragon! Hold out your palm!”

“Waaaaah.”

“Armien, don’t scold Aria! Where on earth is there any place to hit such a cute child?!”

It was a near-endless loop of this exact scenario. The only saving grace was that the woman who appeared to be Armienne’s maid had passed out the very moment she took her first sip, leaving her blissfully quiet. But as he looked around the room a moment later, Ahel realized that Yul was trapped in the most critical situation of all.

“Ugh… Ughh. Young Lady.”

Thinking that Yul—who hadn’t touched a single drop of alcohol after the first toast—would be fine, Yul was instead shivering in the corner like a leaf and sweating profusely as if caught in a terrible nightmare.

Seeing that, Ahel snapped his fingers, and Yul quickly began to calm down. It was a light mental stabilization and recovery magic.

Looks like there’s some kind of problem.

There was no way something like this could happen just from drinking a single glass of alcohol completely free of any poison or drugs. That meant there was an issue with the maid named Yul. Whatever the problem was, she seemed desperate not to let Miss Armienne find out.

Seriously, what a bunch of eccentric oddballs.

From their unusual appearances to their distinct personalities, everyone here was one of a kind.

“Well, I suppose the operation is completely down the drain?”

With Armienne getting drunk right off the bat, you could say it was half-failed from the start. Still, since everyone was intoxicated, he thought something might somehow come of it, but given that she couldn’t even manage to hold Harmiel’s hand, that possibility looked completely out of the window.

“Hehe.”

Ahel watched Armienne kneeling in front of Harmiel and recalled the very first time he had laid eyes on her.

It had been in the garden at the royal palace banquet hall a short while back. He had only come because he received an invitation with no real choice in the matter, but with zero intention of dancing, he had quietly lain down under the open sky to stargaze. When the area below suddenly grew noisy, he looked over, and right there was Armienne.

Lady Harmiel had been there too, but the one who shone the brightest was undoubtedly Armienne. She was an interesting person who radiated light, the kind whose very presence automatically brought a smile to your face.

So he kept an eye on her after that. It was the first time he had ever taken the initiative to show interest in a woman. Even that felt refreshing to him. It was as though a dash of spice had been sprinkled into his otherwise tedious life.

When she ran away from home leaving behind nothing more than a single letter, his urge to laugh had burst forth so strongly he nearly teared up. Wanting a closer look, he had been biding his time for an opportunity, and upon spotting them heading into the hot spring inn, he used magic to swiftly teleport right next to the room she booked, casually opened the door, and greeted her.

And everything after that had unfolded exactly as it did today.

Though it’s a bit of a shame she seems to dislike me.

Since he had naturally been popular with women all his life, he was quite used to gazes of affection, but receiving looks of outright dislike felt somewhat unfamiliar. Even so, he liked Armienne far too much, so he intended to keep helping her at least until his feelings changed.

She seemed to want to deepen her relationship with Lady Harmiel.

Though I doubt it’s going to be possible.

Having courted many women in the past, Ahel had already noticed the truth. That Harmiel was looking at Armienne while thinking of someone else, and that she harbored a sense of jealousy toward Armienne.

If Armienne were to confess right now, she’d get rejected a hundred times out of a hundred.

Well, perhaps that wouldn’t be so bad either.

Armienne had a fragile heart hidden beneath her tough exterior, so getting rejected by Harmiel would leave her deeply wounded. And a woman nursing a wounded heart was someone he was confident he could easily win over.

“I’ve let my thoughts run on for too long. It’s about time I wrap things up. Heh-heh-heh.”

Ahel realized the moment had come to put an end to this madhouse. The thought of Miss Armienne waking up the next day and beating the ground in regret brought a genuine chuckle to his lips. However, wrapped up as he was in his musings, he had no idea what kind of catastrophe had transpired in that brief span of time.

Taking in the scene before his eyes, Ahel squeezed his eyes shut and sucked in a sharp breath.

“Yikes! Good grief.”

Before he knew it, the topic of conversation had shifted yet again, and the women, including Armienne, were clamoring about the hot springs.

“Let’s go to the hot spring! The hot spring!”

“Kya! Agreed, agreed!”

“To the hot spring!”

The problem, however, wasn’t that—it was their attire. Laboring under the apparent delusion that this was the changing room, the women were stripping off their clothes one by one. Fortunately, they weren’t wearing the easy-to-remove robes provided by the inn, but rather the actual outfits they had brought with them, which meant it took them time to untie and peel everything off. Thanks to that delay, Ahel caught them in his sleep spell just before they managed to strip completely bare.

That was a close shave.

A split second later, and he would have caught an unfiltered eyeful of their birthday suits. Of course, claiming he didn’t want to see as a red-blooded man would be a blatant lie, but this wasn’t how he wanted to witness it.

“Huu.”

Breathing a sigh of relief, Ahel used magic to gently catch the sleeping young ladies as they wobbled, and began dressing them back in their clothes. But if anyone happened to glance over and misunderstand the situation, it might actually look like he was the one undressing them, so he expertly and lightning-fast zipped and buttoned the noblewomen back up.

“Waaaaah, Aria wants to go to the hot spring.”

“Huh? Why aren’t you asleep?”

Ahel asked Aria, who was still holstering demands for the hot spring as clear as day despite the fact that he had cast his sleep spell on everyone. In response to his question, Aria simply renewed her wailing.

“Waaaaah.”

“What gives?”

He cast the spell over and over again, yet bizarrely, it had zero effect on this kid. Was she genuinely some kind of legendary dragon or something?

“Ugh, what a headache.”

He had no idea what to do with a toddler who was immune to magic, leaving him completely flustered. On top of that, while he had managed to put Armienne and Harmiel back into their clothes before they stripped down entirely, Aria—whom he never could have dreamed would resist his magic—was already displaying her smooth, porcelain skin to the wide world.

“This also looks terribly incriminating.”

It was a setup practically guaranteed to frame someone as a child predator. If this was someone’s handiwork, there was bound to be someone lurking in the wings right about now. And not just anyone, but an immense entity whose presence even he wouldn’t dare treat lightly.

“Haha, as if that’s possible.”

Yet, as though to mock the very concept of impossibility, a voice dripping with killing intent rang out in response to his words, sounding like something straight out of a nightmare.

“What do you mean, as if that’s possible?”

Gulp.

Felt down to the roots of his spine by an overwhelming wave of murderous pressure, Ahel swallowed hard of his own accord and slowly turned his head.

Standing there was a black-haired man dripping with sweat, a crude, unadorned sword strapped at his waist, glaring daggers right at him. And the sheer momentum radiating off him was off the charts. At the very least, he was a Master. No, he might even be beyond that.

Ahel mentally cycled through sword-wielding figures capable of projecting such presence, and promptly called out the name of the man he recognized.

“Could you perhaps be Sir Carusien de Farba? I am the genius mage Ahel de Velia. Would you be so kind as to hear me out for a moment?”

However, all that registered in Carusien’s field of vision was a weeping, stark-naked Aria and the two young ladies collapsed on the floor as if knocked unconscious.

“I have nothing to say to a pervert like you.”

“It’s a misunderstanding, I swear! I’m completely innocent.”

“That’s what every criminal says.”

“………”

There was nothing left to say to that. Ahel figured as much and wisely kept his mouth shut.

Looks like I have no choice but to make a run for it.

Just as Ahel was contemplating a tactical retreat and Carusien’s hand drifted toward the hilt of his sword, Yul—who had recovered her wits early on, thanks in no small part to Ahel’s magic—stepped in to stop him.

“Would you mind holding on for a moment, Viscount Farba?”

Viscount? That’s a title I haven’t heard in a while, thought Carusien as he glanced over at Yul. As Armienne’s most trusted and doted-upon maid, Yul certainly held the authority to make him pause.

“I have captured the truth of this incident on camera.”

At Yul’s declaration, Ahel clapped his hands together and cheered.

“Phew! What a relief. To think my innocence can be proven with this! Treating you earlier must have been a stroke of divine intervention.”

Seeing Ahel’s brazen confidence, even Carusien began to wonder if he had perhaps jumped to a massive conclusion and misunderstood the situation. If that were the case, he had just behaved appallingly rudely toward the man, leaving him with no choice but to apologize.

“Ah… my apologies. I suppose I lost my temper a bit.”

“Haha, think nothing of it. People make mistakes and misunderstand things from time to time, don’t they?”

Feeling like the incident was about to wrap up on a heartwarming note, Ahel replied with a deeply satisfied smile. He had been wanting to have a serious chat with the man standing before him anyway, and if they could become friends over this, a minor misunderstanding like this was a small price to pay.

“Here it is.”

Yul untied the orb hanging around her neck and projected the recorded images into the air one by one. To be able to utilize a function like this without any extra bulky equipment—it was truly an item worth every bit of its thirty thousand gold price tag.

“Eh? Oh, crap!”

Meanwhile, the moment Ahel caught sight of the pictures materializing in midair, he blanched in sheer horror. Whether the universe had targeted him or he was just catastrophically unlucky, every single frame captured was the absolute worst possible angle for misinterpretation.

Pictures of him dressing the young ladies made it look like he was undressing them, and pictures of him looking flustered because his magic wouldn’t work on Aria made it look as though he was intentionally bullying the child to make her cry.

“Now see here, Sir Carusien. I assure you once more, I am entirely innocent. That right there is just—”

“………”

Swooooish.

Without even bothering to listen to Ahel’s explanation to the end, Carusien quietly drew his sword from its scabbard and spoke to Ahel.

“I’m going to put you down right here.”

That day, a rumor spread far and wide through the hot spring inn: a pervert was on the loose.