68. What A Pretty Name

“There are patients lying right here — are you out of your mind!?”

Lillian’s sharp shout sent vines shooting up to bind Devil and me tight, finally hauling us off each other. They left the pair of us dangling in midair, a sorry sight.

“…Okay, fine, I admit it. I was in the wrong.”

With Eve’s scolding piling on right after Lillian’s, I threw up my hands and surrendered without a fight.

“Good, that’s what you should have done from the start. Now play nice, the two of you.”

Lillian snapped her fingers, and the vines around me loosened first. I glanced at Devil, still trussed up in midair and huffing, and couldn’t resist a parting shot.

“Though of course that mutt’s the one more at fault.”
“Woof! Woof woof!”
“Arden!”

Before the vines could come crashing down again, I slipped free at my leisure and made my way over to where Elli and my brother Valerian lay.

“How are the two of them doing?”

Even through all the commotion, neither of them had stirred; both were still sunk deep in sleep. Whether that was a blessing or a curse remained to be seen.

“…Elli’s in a bad way. I’ve finished some makeshift first aid, but the shock seems to have been too much for her.”

She’d taken the full force of Valerian’s all-out kick head-on and been driven into the wall, and she’d lost far too much blood in the process.

“She needs proper treatment as fast as we can manage.”

The family domain lay a full three days from the Abyss by carriage, which meant that even if we walked out the entrance this very second, proper treatment was at least three days away.

“…Ngh.”

Elli, who’d seemed to be resting peacefully, scrunched her brow in pain as a low moan escaped her. I tightened my grip on her trembling hand and gently brushed the clammy, sweat-beaded skin of her forehead.

“I’ll figure something out, so don’t you worry.”
“…Yeah. I’ll help too.”

Neither Lillian nor Eve wanted to lose Elli any less than I did. I steeled myself and rose to my feet.

“Can I leave the two of them to Devil? He seems to mind whatever you say frighteningly well, Sis.”
“All right.”

While Lillian went over to relay my words to Devil, Eve gazed up at me with bright, sparkling eyes.

Whenever something this grave came up, she’d always tossed me a question just like that, and every time I’d grin and lay the whole thing out for her.

Watching the shock flood Eve’s face, I said it one more time.

My original goal, to kill the Abyss’s boss and carry off a Demonblood Stone, had long since gone hazy. First Lucius had burst in at the second gate; then Valerian had turned up as an enemy in the arena of the third. Who could ever have seen any of this coming?

If this were a lottery, these would be guaranteed jackpot odds every single time.

Lillian’s voice cut through my musings.

“I’ve told Devil everything he needs to know.”

When I turned to look, Devil had planted himself in front of Elli and Valerian, his head held as high as it would go. Going by the scene alone, he looked for all the world like a sturdy Doberman standing guard.

“This time I’m coming with you. I’m done just standing by and watching.”

As Lillian set her jaw with grim resolve, I answered flatly.

“Yeah, you should.”
“Right, how long am I supposed to keep hidi— …What?”
“I told you. I’m leaving the two of them to Devil.”
“Uh… huh?”
“I’m about to walk you through the plan, so get your head on straight.”

While Suhan was off bickering with Devil again, the spearmen, cavalry, archers, and mages left out on the battlefield held their silence.

“…”

Whenever their eyes wandered, even for a moment, there lay the head of the robed man who had commanded them, cold against the floor. They had seen it all: the man begging the boy to spare him, only to be cut down in the end. They knew, too, with all the guilt that came with it, that his death rested in some measure on them for disobeying the order to fight.

“…Maybe we should have fought to the end?”
“Didn’t look like he was going to spare us either.”

The boy who’d lopped off the man’s head so mercilessly didn’t seem the type to go out of his way to let them live. Maybe that was why a veteran among the cavalry spoke up in a low voice.

“…Hey. You see that spot over there, the one all bound up with vines?”

A middle-aged spearman against the opposite wall answered.

“That’s where the challengers wait, isn’t it.”
“From what I saw, that monster of a kid kept glancing over at those vines now and then while he was fighting. The way I figure it, there’s someone in there he’s trying to protect.”
“So he’s got companions, you’re saying?”
“That’s right.”
“And what exactly are you getting at?”

At the flat reply, the cavalryman pressed on, exasperated.

“We come back to life even when we croak, so how long are we going to keep cowering before some wet-behind-the-ears brat?! Let’s hit him with a surprise attack before he catches on.”

The cavalryman stroked the red horse beside him and went on with his pitch.

“With my Red Hare¹, not even that monster from before could ever catch up. We just snatch one of them, somehow, and make him our hostage.”

The middle-aged spearman was about to call the idea insane and put an end to it.

“I’m for it! No matter how capable the guy is, he won’t be able to make a careless move if we’ve got a hostage, right? He doesn’t look like he’s going to spare us anyway.”
“Right, the only reason we lost earlier was those idiot shield-bearers. If they hadn’t wrecked the formation, we’d have won.”

A handful of fairly young spearmen chimed in with heated agreement. And so the cavalryman who’d first floated the idea moved to swing up onto his Red Hare.

“And once you’ve taken a hostage, what then? You going to beg him, ‘We’re so scared of you, please just go home’? You think that monster’s going to meekly play along?”

The leader of the mages, who’d been listening in on the whole exchange, threw cold water on it with a skeptical look.

“…You think?”

The cavalryman, one foot already half-raised toward his Red Hare, made to set it back down on the ground.

“No, then what are we supposed to do?! Just sit here on our hands and all die together?!”

The spearman bellowed his case at the top of his lungs, and his words, too, sounded right.

“He’s got a point.”

Once again, the cavalryman went to throw his full weight up onto his Red Hare.

“Ngh, nghhh… ughhh…”

One archer, dragged back to life by the robed man’s magic, let out a string of garbled, unintelligible sounds. He worked his mouth as if desperate to force something out, but in his state, a zombie freshly risen from a corpse, all he could manage was a grotesque groan.

“What’s he trying to say?”

At the spearman’s jab, one of the mages gave her staff a wave.

“Hold on a moment.”

She conjured a small violet magic circle near the archer’s throat, and in place of the grotesque noise, the thoroughly terrified archer’s true feelings rang out across the arena.

“…I’m against it! Hostage scheme or whatever it is — I’m dead set against it!”
“What? Hey, you moron. If we don’t at least grab a hostage, we’re all dead.”

Even at the spearman’s reproach, the archer shook his head like a man possessed and shouted.

“Did none of you hear what that monster said earlier? He said he’d torture you — carving you up one piece at a time, starting from your eyeballs and working all the way down to the tips of your toes! The day you take a hostage and rub that guy the wrong way… you’ll end up in a hell you can’t escape even after you revive! I want no part of it! My whole body’s already killing me as it is — you want to get put through something even worse? I’m just going to stay glued to this wall!”

As the archer poured out his heartfelt plea, even the spearman, for once, had nothing to say. The cavalryman, a hair from fully mounting his Red Hare, had somewhere along the way slid back down to the ground. He stroked his beloved steed and spoke.

“What’s that, Red Hare? You’re feeling a little tired today? Hmm, well, if that’s the case, I suppose I can’t go through with the surprise attack.”

It was an impossibly awkward bit of talking to himself, but what else was he supposed to do?

Nobody told ME anything about getting dissected!

It was all simply too terrifying.

.

.

.

“Pfft— hahaha!”

I’d been getting the whole situation relayed to me from inside the waiting room, and in the end I couldn’t hold it in. A snort of laughter burst right out of me. Lillian, who’d been grimly making her preparations beside me, looked at me like I’d lost my mind.

“…What’s gotten into you all of a sudden? You’re creeping me out.”
“It’s nothing — a funny thought just popped into my head.”

When I glanced over at Eve beside me, she’d been cracking up for a good while herself. Finally, she spoke.

“Operation name: Charm. Let’s go.”

Lillian reopened the entrance she’d sealed off with her vines. At our sudden appearance, the spearmen, cavalry, and mages who’d been whispering against the wall flinched and snatched up their weapons.

Savoring their stares, I strolled up to face them, taking my time. With every step, the tension hung taut in the air, as if a clash might break out at any second. It was a hair-trigger standoff.

Coming at last to a stop before them, I laid a hand over my chest.

“Well met, gentlemen. My introductions are overdue. I am Arden Arne, youngest son of House Arne.”

At my abrupt introduction, the minions split sharply into two camps. One group faltered, unsure how to take it, reading the room; the other hadn’t so much as twitched, still glaring me down.

So those are the ones.

They were the young spearmen who’d so eagerly backed the surprise attack, still too green to keep their hostility toward me under wraps. Deliberately, I let my gaze settle on them, cleared my throat, and set the mood.

“Ahem. The reception’s awfully cold. Guess that’s what I get for a crowd of mostly men?”

I took a step back and put Lillian forward. On my cue, she walked out, struck a demure pose, and gently swept the hair back from her ear.

“…Hello, everyone. I’m Lillian Arne, of House Arne.”
“This is my second-eldest sister, Lillian. As you can see, she’s blessed with a beauty counted among the finest even in our house.”

As Lillian dipped her head shyly along with my introduction, the eyes of those young spearmen, radiating bloodlust only moments before, wavered wildly.

A man going weak before a beauty is an unbreakable law of nature.

To them, men who’d been cooped up among themselves in this dreary Abyss, Lillian’s bashful little greeting was deadlier than any spell. A single introduction, and I watched the keen-edged hostility wrapped around them melt away like snow.

Not every minion, however, fell for Lillian’s beauty trap. The overwhelming majority of them were men, true, but the mages, every last one, were women. The one who seemed to be their leader arched an eyebrow and shot back coldly.

“…Whether that woman is beautiful or not has nothing to do with us. Drop the games and get to the point. What exactly are you scheming to do with us?”

A beauty trap works best on the opposite sex, so I’d fully expected the all-female mage corps to bristle instead. I took their frosty stares in stride and let a soft smile tug at the corner of my mouth.

“A fine question. But before we begin our little talk… what would your name be?”
“What? Why my name, all of a sudden…”

The mage leader faltered, mumbling the words out. Not letting that brief opening slip by, I took one more step toward her.

“In the code of our House Arne, there’s a maxim that to fail to ask a beautiful woman her name is the gravest of discourtesies. As a member of a proud house, I have no wish to commit such a rudeness.”

There was one fact I’d been certain of from the very moment I possessed this body. Quite simply, Arden Arne was a good-looking man.

To start with, there was Kairon, whose chiseled, angular features flaunted an overwhelming masculinity, and of course Valerian, who’d inherited those genes wholesale. My sister Seraphina, true to her byname the Frost Empress, carried snow-white hair and a refined beauty, while Lillian tied her sunlight-gold hair up in a ponytail for a crisp, fresh charm.

…Only Lucius drew the short straw.

In any case, Arden hadn’t escaped the blessing of those genes either. His translucent skin stood out against his black hair, and the taut, well-toned build I’d sculpted through all my training only added to it. Embarrassing as it is to say so myself, by any objective measure this face had more than enough going for it to set a woman’s heart fluttering.

I looked her straight in the eye and asked once again.

“So I’ll ask you one more time. Your name?”
“…It’s Sylvia.”
“Sylvia.”

“…”

“What a pretty name.”