[Even Dxsney’s Legal Team Was Too Much]
Black smoke rose from every direction.
A tangle of footsteps and shouts echoed in my ears.
Then a sharp metallic sound, piercing through the commotion, jolted me awake.
‘This is….’
When I raised my eyes to the sky, I saw countless holes punched through it.
Magical beasts were falling from those holes like hail.
‘Ah, I passed out.’
That must be why I was dreaming.
I'd had this familiar dream dozens of times, so I recognized it immediately.
When I lowered my gaze, black eyes with bright yellow slit pupils were glaring at me.
Four horns jutted from his head.
The fact that half of them had snapped clean off was particularly striking.
『You wretch, an impurity in this world! You deserve to be rejected by this world even more than we demonfolk do!』
His hate-filled voice boomed loudly enough to shake the entire world.
I picked at one ear with a hand.
Where was some loser barking?
『You will wander your entire life, accepted by no one, and die a miserable death!』
I raised my middle finger at the struggling bastard.
As though he wanted to snap my neck, he desperately reached out toward me.
But a warped portal swallowed him, and his hand ultimately failed to reach me.
『The moment you become an outcast! I will personally tear you apart and kill you! I swear it! I swear…!』
“That line is creepy no matter how many times I hear it.”
Those words of curse stabbed into my heart like daggers.
It was true that I was an outsider.
More precisely, I was a possessor.
I had become a possessor in a fairly successful character-collection game.
And I had arrived ten full years before the game’s starting point.
After realizing that, I'd wandered the continent, enduring every sort of hardship.
Otherwise, a terrible disaster would have engulfed the entire continent in the hellfire of war.
In short, I had saved the continent.
‘Though I never thought I still wouldn’t be able to go back after doing all that.’
I had no idea what else I needed to do to return to Earth.
Maybe I couldn't return at all.
After all, I hadn't been able to have a single conversation with Teruna, the sole god of this continent who seemed to have brought me here.
For ten years, I hadn't seen a revelation, a status window, a message window, or anything of the sort even once.
Still, teabagging the Demon King right now was more important than that depressing fact.
It was a dream anyway, wasn't it?
A crooked smirk formed on my lips.
“Yeah, yeah. Keep at it, Shatina. You’ve got talent.”
『How?! How could our plan, centuries in the making, be thwarted by that bastard?!』
“Exactly. How did a plan that took hundreds of years get blocked by my mere ten years of hellish struggle? You should spend a few more thousand years preparing.”
『Kraaaaagh!』
With a dying scream, the Demon King was swept into the portal and vanished.
My mind soon sank into an even deeper dream.
When I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was the miserable state of the cabin’s interior.
The next was a knight with androgynous beauty, sitting calmly beside the bed.
It was Hans, a knight whose neat appearance seemed utterly out of place in the wrecked cabin.
“I apologize.”
CLINK—
When Hans lowered his head, a small metallic sound came from his waist.
The sword that had nearly taken my hand off earlier was sheathed at his hip.
“Nngh….”
My entire body ached when I tried to sit up.
“It’s fine. Anyone could panic.”
What had happened today was a world-scale unfair twist of fate.
I couldn't blame a friend and comrade I'd known for so long over something like that….
“Then why were you performing a reading so early in the morning? You should have done it alone late at night.”
Never mind. Hans wasn't my friend anymore as of today.
“It would have worked if you hadn't come.”
“Ahem.”
As I pouted in complaint, Hans discreetly avoided my gaze.
Then he looked around at the mess for no reason.
“You have filled your house with strange mouse drawings. That is no way for a noble to conduct himself.”
“Changing the subject, are we? And I’ve told you countless times, this isn't just a mouse drawing.”
A mouse drawing covered the soot-stained wall.
It was absolutely not an ordinary mouse drawing.
It was something familiar to any modern person, but terrifying enough to make anyone in the industry tremble.
The demon of copyright.
Mickey Mouse himself.
“That mouse is going to take me home.”
“Your madness still hasn't been cured.”
Hans looked at me with a pitiful expression.
“I keep telling you to take your medicine regularly.”
“I’m telling the truth. Those Dxsney bastards are terrifying.”
See? Even without thinking about it, the name got censored automatically!
“Yes. You said that a legal team or something would descend from the sky and take Lord Lewis home because he drew that mouse without permission.”
“Exactly! I even sold that drawing for one copper! I used it commercially!”
“That is why Her Majesty established an air-defense network around this area at the same level as the Imperial Palace long ago. You need not worry about an air raid.”
Hans's joke made me pout again.
‘Maybe because it’s been so long since we last met, he’s determined to tease me.’
An air-defense network strengthened to the level of the Imperial Palace?
That was ridiculous.
Did he have any idea how much it cost to install even one magic circle?
There was no way anyone would establish an air-defense network capable of stopping wyverns around a cabin in some remote mountain village.
It was just nonsense meant to tease me.
Of course, I didn't dislike this sort of bickering.
We'd known each other for ten years, and we were comrades who had faced death together many times.
It would feel strange if we didn't trade jokes like this.
“And you, are you still going around dressed as a man? We're about the same age. At that rate, you’ll never get married.”
At my counterattack, Hans's narrow eyes twitched.
“How many times must I tell you that I am not dressed as a man? I am a man.”
“If you’re a man, I’m a dragon.”
“I beat you in swordsmanship now, too. Shall we have a match?”
“You’re casually dropping formality now, aren't you? I’m your senior, you know? I’m older than you, too—your big brother, even.”
“Come out to the yard. I’ll cut you down, then make you call me big brother.”
Hans's shoulders rose and fell as though he were about to leap up at any moment.
One hand had already moved to the sword at his waist.
I gave his narrow eyes a crooked smile.
“Surrender.”
Then I bowed my head.
They said that ten years as a possessor was enough to teach someone how to draw Mickey Mouse with the tip of a sword, but I couldn't beat him.
Hans had once been a member of the Golden Mane Knights, who represented the Afernia Empire.
He had distinguished himself in the Yggdrasil War, and his abilities had been recognized. He had then become the chief of Special Division 4 within the Special Affairs Bureau of the Imperial Household Ministry.
His principal duties were monitoring nobles and high-ranking officials, as well as carrying out special assignments.
And those special assignments mostly involved producing mysterious corpses.
How was I supposed to beat a monster like that?
My whole body already ached badly enough to kill me!
“Haa….”
Hans sighed and took his hand off his sword.
“You have grown weaker than you were not long ago. Are you still refusing to train?”
“There isn't really a reason to.”
The tarot card ability I had gained when I became a possessor.
The techniques I had learned through the mana of the Teruna Continent.
All of them would disappear once I returned to Earth.
I might be able to retain swordsmanship in my memory, but there would be nowhere to use it.
Besides, I was sick of it.
“Commander Richard would scold you harshly if he knew.”
“…Does that man know I’m alive?”
“No. But one never knows what may happen.”
Hans's eyes gleamed as though he would personally report me if I didn't train.
Sometimes, the glint visible beyond his narrow eyes was intensely intimidating.
But I couldn't yield on this, either.
I'd already suffered for ten years. What kind of training was I supposed to do now?
“Hmph. Her Majesty the Empress has my back. What can that Richard fellow do even if he finds out?”
Our Empress, Hildegard Afernia, was stronger than that old man.
I wasn't talking about power or status.
She was literally, physically stronger.
“Anyway. Since you came all this way, would you like a reading?”
As I brushed the ash from my tarot deck and asked, Hans's expression turned peculiar.
“Why? Aren't you curious about financial luck? Or the feelings of someone on your mind? I can even read your chances of promotion.”
“That is not it. I recalled the matter I had been deliberately avoiding.”
“A matter? Didn't you come just to check whether I was doing well?”
I thought he'd come just to make small talk.
As I tilted my head, a deep sigh escaped Hans's lips.
“You know that liquor bottle that broke earlier.”
“There is some liquor in the cabin, too….”
“Her Majesty brewed it herself.”
At those words, I fell silent.
Hm.
It wasn't just liquor bestowed by Her Majesty.
She had brewed it herself?
“She said it was to commemorate our ten years of friendship and to ask for another ten good years together.”
“…….”
“She also said that we should open the bottle in ten years and share the well-aged liquor. Here is the letter she wrote herself.”
When I accepted the letter Hans handed me, my vision darkened.
In other words, Her Majesty had said, ‘Shall we remain friends from now on, too?’
And I had responded by making a two-handed sign meaning ‘mountains’ at her?
Of course, I hadn't done it intentionally.
‘No. It wasn't even something I did in the first place!’
But when it came to an item bestowed by Her Majesty, it didn't matter whether it had been intentional.
The result was what mattered.
Even if I stuffed it in a warehouse, someone might become suspicious and ask, ‘Huh? Are you a traitor?’
Yet I had utterly smashed it?
And burned it?
I gritted my teeth and held on to my fading senses.
First, I had to avoid responsibility.
That was how I survived.
“Wow. You threw away such a meaningful item? You might as well have started a rebellion. How could you do something so heinous? Did the Kingdom Alliance pay you to drive a wedge between Her Majesty and me?”
Perhaps realizing my intention, Hans widened his eyes and shouted.
“I did not throw it! The snowy path had frozen and become abnormally slippery, while the ground was terribly uneven! The spot I stepped on to keep my balance gave way beneath me! And what fucking Kingdom Alliance are you talking about?!”
Come to think of it, I hadn't properly cleared out the area after the landslide.
After clearing the snow from the roof, I had simply scattered it over the ground.
Uh….
Was this half my fault?
“You appear to have some idea what might be responsible?”
“No? Nothing.”
“The liquor bottle was engraved not only with a magic circle for aging, but also magic circles for durability enhancement and shock absorption.”
In other words, it shouldn't have broken merely from falling from the height of the roof.
But I could guess the cause of that, too.
‘I'd enchanted the lightning rod with mana absorption because of the lightning that falls from mana clouds….’
What if the flying liquor bottle had happened to brush against the lightning rod?
What if the mana contained in the bottle's magic circles had been absorbed by the lightning rod?
“I see that you do have an idea.”
A cold gleam flashed beyond Hans's narrow eyes.
“…….”
An awful silence suddenly descended.
The moment our eyes met, we both sprang to our feet as though rebounding from each other.
“By the authority of Special Division 4 of the Special Affairs Bureau, Imperial Household Ministry, I arrest the criminal Lewis for damaging an item bestowed by Her Majesty!”
As I tried to escape the cabin and Hans tried to catch me, we became entangled.
I twisted my body aside to evade Hans's hand as it reached for my shoulder.
Hans's hand shot toward me again and seized the nape of my neck.
Not to be outdone, I grabbed Hans's hair.
Hans then seized mine as well.
“Let go!”
“Release me first!”
“If I do, you'll put handcuffs on me!”
“Do you wish to add obstruction of official duties to your charges?!”
“Deliberately damaging an item bestowed by Her Majesty is practically treason! How does adding one charge of obstructing official duties change anything?!”
At this point, I had no choice but to subdue Hans and flee to Yggdrasil or Elysia.
Those places weren't human territory, so even Her Majesty wouldn't be able to chase me there.
“Hey. When I say one, two, three, we let go.”
“Very well.”
“One. Two. Three!”
GRAB!
As if we'd made a promise, we each gripped the other's hair even more tightly.
“You said you’d let go! You said you’d let go!”
“The Imperial Special Affairs Bureau does not negotiate with criminals! Besides, you did not let go either!”
“Criminal? If you think about it, this was your mistake!”
“I do not know how this came about, but isn't the cause of such an incident obvious?”
Hans's gaze fell on my tarot deck.
“I’m aggrieved, too! I only wanted to lift the veil once, but Teruna won't allow it!”
“Address Teruna with respect! The god Teruna is not your friend! This is blasphemy!”
“Respect, my ass! My human rights have been trampled on for ten years! At this point, I’m practically a slave!”
“At that point, you should simply give up…!”
The instant the word give up left his mouth, we stopped bickering like fighting cats, as though someone had pressed pause.
Hans immediately released my hair and bowed.
“I apologize. In my excitement, I said something I should not have said.”
“Well, it’s….”
When he apologized so seriously, our playful arguing from moments ago suddenly seemed insignificant.
It wasn't even such a serious subject.
“It’s true that I want to go home, but that doesn't mean I hate it here. I just want to rest a little.”
“No. I heard the circumstances from Her Majesty. The fact that you cannot even see the ‘present’….”
“Why have you become so serious since I last saw you?”
I pointed at the drawing of Mickey Mouse on the wall.
“I’m telling you, that will take me home someday. I just need to wait for that day.”
“…….”
When I pointed at Mickey Mouse, pity entered Hans's eyes.
“Of course, I need to resolve that first.”
When I moved my finger toward the broken liquor bottle, a shadow fell across Hans's face again.
“Could you explain it to Her Majesty for me?”
“Honestly, this isn't my fault. It isn't my responsibility, either.”
“Are you really going to do this?”
“If I tell the truth, it’s obvious she won't believe me.”
There were knights in this world who could knock aside flying arrows.
A knight with reflexes and dynamic vision like that had slipped on an icy road?
Well, perhaps that could happen on an extremely rare occasion.
But then, because of an unbelievable coincidence, the liquor bottle in one hand and the sword at his waist had both flown that high?
The liquor bottle had happened to brush against a mana-absorbing lightning rod?
Then it had happened to slip neatly through the hole the sword had made, so it couldn't even land in the soft snow?
It was a maddening accumulation of one unfair twist of fate on top of another.
Who would believe that?
“Her Majesty will believe Lord Lewis's words.”
“I don't think she will….”
“You can simply say you were performing a reading.”
Whenever I tried to glimpse my ‘present’ and ‘future,’ strange phenomena occurred and interfered with me.
Her Majesty had experienced it herself, so she would understand immediately.
But.
“I was forbidden from performing readings immediately before I went into seclusion. By imperial decree.”
“…Pardon?”
“I was doing it in secret. If this is discovered, I’ll be hauled off to the Imperial Palace.”
Her Majesty had been horrified when she saw lightning strike my head while I was performing a reading outdoors, and she had issued the prohibition.
That was when I first saw her cut lightning apart with a sword.
‘They cut lightning….’
I could understand how a high-ranking ninja felt when they despaired.
It had been so incredible that I was left speechless.
Her Majesty had scolded me, asking whether I understood that I'd almost died.
Anyway.
“So explain it well yourself.”
“Hah. If you intend to be so cold about this, very well. I shall resolve it myself.”
“Huh?”
Why was he backing down so obediently?
Her Majesty truly was broad-minded.
But she wasn't generous enough to simply forgive a subordinate who had smashed a gift she had painstakingly made.
I looked at Hans with that question in mind.
Hans took out a crystal ball and spoke smugly.
“Since you told me to resolve it myself, I have no choice but to report the truth.”
“No, wait…!”
“That I was caught up in this because Lord Lewis was performing a reading.”
“How cowardly, fighting with facts! And you still call yourself a knight?!”
“I left knighthood quite some time ago. I am now the chief of Special Division 4. I am a bureaucrat.”
“You can cover up a friend’s mistake!”
“I do not wish to become that sort of corrupt official. I wish even less to bear Her Majesty's wrath.”
When Hans activated the crystal ball, a bright light began to shine from it.
“If I report that I have prepared to escort Lord Lewis to the Imperial Palace, my small crime will vanish, and I will receive a reward instead.”
“You're selling out a comrade you've known for ten years! You aren't even human!”
“You were the first to let go of my hand, Lord Lewis. Farewell.”
“Haaans!”
I rushed Hans and tried to snatch away the crystal ball, but I was hopelessly outmatched.
Soon, the image of a beautiful blond woman appeared within the crystal ball.