Chapter 852: A Brilliant Plan

"What is it?"

Ariel had finally finished grumbling about not being able to go to the front line with Muen. But when she turned her head, she found that Muen was still staring fixedly at the coin lying there tails-up.

"It’s nothing."

Muen came back to himself with a smile and flicked the coin up into his palm.

"It just looks like your good luck isn’t quite as good as you thought."

"That’s only because of you!"

Ariel bared her teeth in annoyance. "Whenever I’m with you, my luck’s never good. It has to be your blond-bastard aura interfering with it!"

"...What the hell is a blond-bastard aura?"

"Hmph. Definitely something bad."

"Is that so?"

Muen blinked, then deliberately said, "Then to keep our lucky Miss Ariel from being affected by the blond-bastard aura, should I stay a little farther away?"

"No!"

Ariel shot him a vicious glare, then pouted and held out both arms. "I’m very unhappy right now. I need comforting."

Muen smiled gently, bent down, and wrapped her in his arms again. Then he gave the corner of her mouth a light bite.

"You’ve worked hard for a long time. You should relax properly now. Be good, heal up, and wait for me to come back."

"Mm..." Ariel nodded obediently, then promptly bit him back with force.

"Mmph... nn..."

After another stretch of lingering warmth, Muen rose to his feet and rubbed at the reddened corner of his lips, glancing toward Peles, who had considerately covered her eyes.

"Senior Peles, I’ll leave Ariel in your care for now."

"Don’t worry. Nothing’s going to happen."

Peles hurriedly closed the fingers she had secretly parted and answered in a serious tone,

"I don’t think Ariel is fragile enough to need that much worrying from you."

"I know. But I still ought to ask, shouldn’t I?"

Muen casually ruffled Ariel’s hair. "Thanks."

"I’m her teacher. Do I need your thanks?"

"Fair enough. Then I was being too formal."

Once he had said everything he needed to say to both of them, Muen said goodbye and left. He knew he would not be departing that soon, but over the next few days, the time he and Ariel could spend together would only grow shorter with each passing day.

So Ariel watched his back with obvious reluctance.

Until he disappeared completely from sight.

"Damn it, damn it... when it comes to luck-based things like this, I’m usually never the one who loses. And yet at a time like this... could it really be that blond-bastard aura?"

Ariel rolled around on the bed in frustration for a while, then suddenly pulled out another coin.

"I refuse to believe this... heads I go, tails I don’t, same as before. I’m flipping it!"

The coin spun in the air, the portrait and the tulip alternating over and over. Then under Ariel’s gaze, it hit the floor and rolled.

—Tails again.

"Ah..."

Ariel collapsed flat onto the blanket and stared blankly at the ceiling.

"That damned Muen..."

She had no idea exactly what was so damnable about him...

But he was damnable anyway!

...

...

Not long after leaving Ariel’s room, Muen found Pink Bear standing atop a pile of rubble that had once been part of the estate courtyard, extending one furry paw and dragging deeply on a cheap paper-rolled cigarette.

As a member of the imperial family, the Regent of the Empire stationed in Belrand, a towering figure whose mere stomp of the foot could shake the whole Empire... he was neither seated high above, turning clouds with a flip of the hand, nor indulging himself in wine and excess. Instead, he was hiding out here alone, smoking the kind of rolled cigarettes only the poor in the Lower District would smoke.

It was obvious he was deeply troubled.

"Half my house is gone and I’m not even that miserable, so why do you look like your balls are in a vice?" Muen said.

He sat down beside Pink Bear and sent out a burst of force, instantly blowing away all the smoke and smell hanging around them.

Pink Bear glanced at the cigarette butt in his hand, which had also been snapped in half by the force, and for once said nothing. He only let out a deeply miserable sigh.

"My life is suffering..."

"What exactly are you suffering over? The one that got half a house blown up was me—"

"Celicia just sent word. She dumped the blame for your house getting blown up completely onto my head."

"..."

Muen looked at him with sympathy, patted him on the shoulder, and comforted him.

"Serves you right."

"...Can you stop making that comforting face while saying something so fucking awful?!"

Pink Bear snapped angrily.

"Do you know whose back is taking the blame for you here?"

"Mine? Taking the blame?" Muen said blankly. "Aren’t I the victim here? Do you mean to say you bear none of the responsibility?"

"...Fine. I do bear part of it... a small part."

Pink Bear shook his head, stuck the half-smoked paper cigarette back between his lips, then slapped his own knee and burst out angrily,

"But the biggest share belongs to those damned Salvation Society lunatics! Popping out again to pull some stupid stunt, and at a time like this of all times too. It’s infuriating!"

"We already talked about that before. No need to repeat it a second time."

Muen let his gaze tilt aside. Beyond the ducal estate’s walls, the Royal Knights who had helped clean up the aftermath were withdrawing in good order. But the mages of the Royal Mage Corps hidden in the dark had not left. It was obvious the Royal Mage Corps was taking the safety of the ducal estate very seriously.

Muen was grateful, but he guessed there would not be another terrorist attack targeting the ducal estate after this.

Because from the information they had now, attacking the ducal estate—or rather, assassinating the Saintess—had not been all that important to them after all. Or at least, not as important as people had assumed.

To the Holy Lord of Salvation, this had probably just been an idle move on the board. If it succeeded, good. If it failed... it would not affect his real scheme.

"Right. Speaking of that, have you caught all the Salvation Society remnants in Belrand?" Muen asked.

"Naturally."

Pink Bear shot him a sideways glance and gave him a meaningful look.

"With the help of you, our glorious 'Emperor,' dragging out rats that only know how to hide and skulk around was easy."

"Don’t talk nonsense. My loyalty to Celicia is absolute."

Muen’s expression turned righteous.

"I think your loyalty is absolute toward her black stockings."

"There’s no conflict between being loyal to her and loyal to black stockings."

Muen changed the subject.

"So what came out of the interrogations?"

"Nothing much. They were all just little fish." Pink Bear shrugged. "The information we got from them wasn’t even as much as what our intelligence agency had already collected. A large number of them were ordinary people the Salvation Society had simply misled."

"I see..."

Muen was not surprised by that result. Anyone the Salvation Society could discard so casually was bound to be some unimportant outer-ring member. The only truly important ones had probably been Arthur and Dennis’s group, but they were either dead or blown apart. And Dennis, the only one captured alive, had ended up being remotely silenced by the Holy Lord of Salvation himself.

Which only proved that a top-tier terrorist organization still surviving and thriving despite being hunted by every major power really did have its methods.

And that was precisely why Muen was feeling so uneasy right now...

"The front line really has no problems?" Muen suddenly asked.

"What? You don’t trust me?"

Pink Bear said, "Everything I told you before about the war situation was true. Even though we’re at a disadvantage right now, the overall situation is still within manageable limits. And Celicia is clearly building up strength for a major move... though I still don’t know what that move is. She’s absurdly cautious. She won’t even tell me, the Regent."

Pink Bear muttered to himself, twisting one furry paw in a strangely coquettish pose, radiating the grievance of some cast-off mistress.

"I don’t mean it like that."

Muen’s cheek twitched. He quietly edged farther away from this humiliating creature. The looks from the Royal Mage Corps mages standing guard nearby had already gotten a little strange. If they hadn’t known this perverted bear-shaped thing was, tragically enough, the Empire’s current Regent, someone probably would have hurled an explosive spell at him by now.

"It’s not that I don’t trust you, and it’s not that I don’t trust Cia. I’m worried about the Salvation Society," Muen said.

"You mean you’re worried that if the Salvation Society really has crawled into bed with the Kingdom, it’ll affect the course of the war?"

"Not if. They already have crawled into bed together. Otherwise the Salvation Society would never do something this meaningless. But that’s not what I’m worried about. What I’m worried about is..."

Muen thought back to the Holy Lord of Salvation, Gaius, from the night before, and to the strange things he had said. Lowering his voice, he continued,

"I’m worried the Salvation Society doesn’t actually want to help the Kingdom in earnest at all. I’m worried they’re using the Kingdom’s strength—or rather, using the Kingdom as cover—to do something far more terrifying in the dark."

"Oh?"

Pink Bear straightened at once, suddenly serious.

"Why do you say that?"

"Because it’s weird."

Muen said, "Think about it carefully. Why would the Salvation Society want to help the Kingdom? As a terrorist organization hated by everyone, how much benefit could they really gain from helping the Kingdom?"

Suppose—just suppose—the Salvation Society really helped the Kingdom defeat the Empire. What could the Kingdom possibly give them afterward? It wasn’t as though it could turn the Salvation Society into a legitimate organization.

Of course not. Just like with the demonfolk, the cooperation between the Kingdom and the Salvation Society was something that could never be brought into the open.

But the demonfolk and the Kingdom at least dealt with each other as powers on equal footing. The Salvation Society, in the end, was only an organization—a notorious terrorist organization at that. So if the Kingdom wanted to play dirty, it could easily use them up, toss them aside afterward, and even use that to prove its own innocence.

So the Salvation Society wasn’t stupid, and the Holy Lord of Salvation Gaius wasn’t stupid either. They absolutely were not doing this for some long-term goal. Whatever they intended to accomplish had to happen during this war—before the war ended.

"The truth is, I’ve never understood how the trust relationship between the Kingdom and the Salvation Society was established in the first place. The demonfolk at least made sense, since they and the Kingdom share us as a common enemy. But the Salvation Society? How does an organization that treats terrorist attacks like a hobby end up fooling around with the Kingdom?"

"I’ve heard the Salvation Society’s Third Seat is quite the mature beauty..."

Pink Bear stroked his chin and analyzed the matter with grave seriousness.

"Could it be that she seduced that old thing the Kingdom calls a king?"

"...Be serious!"

Muen nearly rolled his eyes into the sky. "Can you give me one plausible guess?"

The King of the Kingdom was already so old one foot was practically in the grave. How was someone like that supposed to get seduced by beauty? What was he, a boy in first love?

"You’re saying my guess isn’t plausible? Fine, yes, maybe it’s not very plausible."

Pink Bear spread both hands.

"But what I’m trying to tell you is that there are some things you simply can’t reason your way to by guesswork alone. You have to go see them yourself. Find the answer yourself. The more you blindly speculate, the easier it is to lead yourself straight into the wrong dead end."

"I know..."

Muen sighed. "With all these damn riddlers around me, I’ve already developed the habit of trusting my own search for the truth more than any guess."

"So you’ve decided?"

"I’ve decided."

"When are you leaving?"

"Within three days. I still need some time to prepare."

"Three days..."

Pink Bear thought for a moment, then suddenly grinned in a particularly sleazy way.

"If you’re preparing, why not prepare a little more thoroughly?"

"What do you mean?" Muen raised a brow.

"What’s the point of going by yourself? You’ve seen the demonfolk front line. You should know that personal strength alone is actually very hard to use to change the broader course of a war. You ought to bring more people with you. Make the whole thing grand enough that the entire continent knows the Empire’s future prince consort is heading to support the battlefield!"

"Bring more people?"

Muen frowned. "Does Belrand even have troops left that I can mobilize? Let me say this in advance: the rats in the Lower District are fine for running gangs and collecting protection fees, but sending them to war is impossible."

"Who said anything about them? Though yes, we can draft some of them to fill out the crowd, what I actually mean for the main force is something else..."

Pink Bear suddenly leaned in and whispered a few words in Muen’s ear. Before long, Muen’s eyes lit up slightly.

"Would that actually work?"

"Whether it works or not depends on how you handle it. You’re holding such a massive weapon in your hands, yet all you do ◆ Nоvеlіgһt ◆ (Only on Nоvеlіgһt) every day is let it rub your shoulders, pound your back, and serve you tea. Isn’t that a bit of a waste?"

"...It could work, but this isn’t something one person can pull off alone. We’d need cooperation from a lot of different sides."

Muen ran the numbers briefly in his head and realized that to accomplish what Pink Bear was suggesting, forget him alone—even throwing the half of the ducal estate they still had left into it would not come close to being enough.

"Kid, how do you have so little self-awareness?"

Pink Bear slung an arm around Muen’s shoulders.

"Who are you? Celicia’s future husband, the Empire’s future Prince. And who am I? The current Regent of Belrand, the biggest authority around, the one whose word carries the most weight. Put the two of us together, and as long as Celicia isn’t here... doesn’t that make us basically no different from the real Emperor?"

"Hiss—when you put it that way... it kind of does?"

Muen turned to look at him. Pink Bear waggled his brows and then thumped him hard on the chest for emphasis.

"Do you get it? As long as the two of us work together, getting this done will be easy. And when it does, I guarantee it’ll scare those Kingdom bastards so badly they piss themselves!"