Since morning today, we’ve been making preparations to go to a tea party.

Who would have a tea party with such a loner queen as lady Sharon? …is probably what some of you people out there might be foolishly thinking, but milady has indeed received an invitation. Everyone still remember, right? Hmmhm, of course I still do. Right up until I don’t.

 

“L-Letty, is this good enough?”

“Of course. You look wonderful in them, milady.”

 

The invitation came from her schoolmate, a young lady of a viscount family. This would be milady’s first time going to a tea party.

Milady’s ensemble today is a simple dress, albeit one with plenty of room in the chest area in order to bring out all of milady’s charm. I had wanted to get her in all sorts of cute clothes, but milady is unfortunately overly gifted in a particular department. It’s difficult to find ready-made clothes that fit her.

To give you an idea of milady’s size, it is large enough that the employee of the clothing store we went to had clicked her tongue when she looked at milady.

“…Letty, you just had another unflattering thought, didn’t you?”

“I was just thinking about the innate inequality between people, milady.”

“My, Letty, that sounds like a grand topic.”

The grandest in the world, I would say.

 

“Welcome, lady Sharon. I am most grateful that you have accepted my invitation.” The viscount’s young lady turns to me, “It is good to have you here as well, miss Fleurety.”

“O-of course, you’re welcome, come back anytime!”

Milady outdoes herself once again with her stranger anxiety. She’s panicking so much her response doesn’t even make sense. But that’s what makes her beautiful.

“Come, come, let’s go.”

“…umm, ah, yes.”

I had to give the viscount’s young lady a nudge to jolt her out of her temporary blue-screen. After her reboot, she gets back to guiding us to our destination.

The young lady was born to the Liniello viscount, and her name is Clarice. She is in the same study group as me in class. We’ve received her invitation since before milady’s homecoming trip, but I still haven’t been able to discern her intentions.

 

“Hey there, miss Sharon, miss Fleurety.”

“Hello, lady Sharon… Kamishiro.”

The whole terrace has been reserved. There, we find two people already seated and enjoying their tea.

“Salutations, instructor Marsaw, lady Chieri…”　Milady says.

The same two we met before. Instructor Marsaw looks to be in a good mood, but miss Chieri doesn’t seem to be in very good cheer. I can see her frowning a little.

Milady takes her seat. I move to my usual spot behind her.

“…miss Fleurety, please feel free to sit down.” Lady Clarice says, a hint of dismay on her face as she glances at the empty seat.

“My apologies. I am lady Sharon’s maid, and as such, I should not be seated at the same table.” I say, bowing my head.

Strangely enough, milady seems rather sad as she turns her eyes up at me.

“Letty… please. It’s a request from me, too.”

“But…”

“Then I won’t ask you to. I’m ordering you. Take the same seat as me.”

“Milady…”

Of course, I know that despite saying it’s an order, it’s really just her looking out for her humble servant.

“Then, allow me.”

As she has asked me to take the same seat, I climb on lady Sharon to sit on her lap, facing her.

“You know that’s not what I meant!”

*thwack!*

It’s been quite a while since she took out the slipper again.

 

“Speaking of which, miss Sharon, I heard you’ve picked up theurgy?”

“…ah, yes, sir, but I’ve only just started.”

Indeed, with age comes wisdom. While everyone else is still gaping at me as I sit down on the seat next to milady as though nothing had happened, only instructor Marsaw makes conversation, looking as calm as ever.

“As I’ve mentioned in class before, theurgy is quite good for training your magic control. Keep at it, miss Sharon.”

“Y-yes, sir.”

“Teacher, I’ve also learned Purify,” Chieri suddenly cut in, leaning forward and sounding like a cute honor student who’s asking her teacher for some personal tutoring, “And I think I’m getting the hang of Barrier now… but I’m nervous, doing this alone. If you wouldn’t mind, teacher, would you—”

“My, has something happened?”

This time, it is lady Clarice who interrupts Chieri with a smile on her face. Chieri’s lips twitch.

“The Church has requested miss Chieri’s expertise in theurgy.” Instructor Marsaw answers, smiling kindly and seemingly oblivious to the current atmosphere.

“My, is that why she has learned Barrier…? Has something happened at the Church?” Lady Clarice says, her eyes faintly narrowing.

Chieri lightly brushes instructor Marsaw on the arm and chuckles. “That’s a secret, right, teacher?”

 

I can practically feel the sparks flying. Meanwhile, milady cowers in fear, unable to face the carnage with her lacking skills in womanly combat.

Well, it doesn’t really have anything to do with me anyway. In place of the viscount house’s maid who’s frozen in place, I begin to prepare for milady a cup of veeeery sweet caramel milk tea.

 

“Oh yes, which reminds me, I saw Elias talking to miss Fleurety here at the Church. I was honestly surprised, you know? He rarely shows interest in women.” Instructor Marsaw changes the subject. I have no idea if this is him reading the mood, or not reading the mood.

Chieri’s shoulders move in an almost unnoticeable shake.

That day, the silver-armor-wearing knight had continued to be quite insistent in trying to talk to me. A gift of roses then arrived for me a few days later. I immediately made them into rose jam.

“He’s not interested in women? Does that mean he’s interested in men, then?” I ask instructor Marsaw.

“No, that’s not what I meant….”

“And you’re friends with him, teacher… or are you ‘friends’ with him?”

“Please stop.”

Strangely enough, instructor Marsaw’s face rapidly pales. On the other hand, lady Clarice blushes, looking as though she’s discovered something that she likes very much.

“It’s not that, he’s—”

 

“My, my, what an intriguing conversation.”

 

I really have to wonder if the people of this world are culturally inclined to interrupt others. Despite the terrace being reserved for the tea party, the doors are now open, and a very good-looking lady who looks to be in her early twenties strides toward us. Her hair is a scarlet red.

“…lady Camilla.” “Instructor Reese!”

Lady Clarice and miss Chieri’s voices overlap.

Oh, yes, of course I remember her. Like instructor Marsaw, she is also a teacher at the magic academy. Camilla de Reese, the young lady of a duke’s family.

“Clarice. Why have you called Marsaw but not me?”

“My apologies!”

Clarice hurriedly bows, intimidated by the lady instructor’s aggression.

“Instructor Reese, don’t be so harsh…”

As instructor Marsaw tries to mediate, lady Camilla coquettishly leans on him, fingertips caressing his leg.

“Come on, Marsaw, aren’t we coworkers? I told you, just call me Camilla.” She purrs.

 

Indeed, she makes miss Chieri look like a kid in comparison. While lady Camilla is the third daughter of a duke as well as an instructor of the academy, it doesn’t change the fact that instructor Marsaw is still her senior. A rather saucy woman she is, to be acting so familiar with him.

 

“You over there. Are you acquainted with Elias?”

Lady Camilla throws out her chest and ask me, condescension in her voice. How disappointing. Milady is far more impressively endowed.

“Instructor Camilla, your ringlets are truly luxurious.”

“My, is that your attempt at deflection?”

Despite saying that, she still seems quite pleased. Her lips faintly twitches in a smile, while her fingers brush through her scarlet curls.

Right, right. My hands meet each other in a gesture of realization, and I turn to milady.

“Letty?”

“Milady, today’s snack will be chocolate cornets.”

“What were you looking at to get that idea?!”

 

***

 

The words had offended Camilla’s sensibilities and signaled the end of the tea party. Chieri waited until no one was looking at her and quietly sighed.

Today’s tea party had been extremely… stressful. Not only was the viscount young lady — the main heroine — there, but also two of the villainesses.

There were three villainesses in this game. Sharon was a character that showed up in all routes to annoy and harass you, but never really doing more. On the other hand, Camilla only appeared if you proceeded with the adults’ routes, but she made for a truly terrifying villain.

Chieri had seen her in the game many, many times. Nevertheless, when it came time to face her in the flesh and not through a two-dimensional screen, Chieri found her to be an even more intense woman than she had expected.

Thinking that today was a ‘game event’, Chieri had pestered Marsaw to take her along to the tea party, but then she found out the main heroine had also invited Sharon. She had no idea what the viscount young lady had been thinking.

At first, she thought she would have to make enemies out of all of them at the same time, a headache-inducing prospect if there ever was one. But then her mind changed tack. Maybe the real problem was Kamishiro, after all.

The presence Camilla displayed had been crushing, yet the girl still had the nerve to ignore the woman without even blinking an eye. If it had been Chieri, she was sure she wouldn’t have been able to do it.

I guess I really have to deal with her first…

 

“Instructor Reese… may I have a bit of your time? I would like to consult you on a matter…”

 

***

 

“Hey, Letty, where is this?”

Today, milady and I are on a shopping trip downtown. I take a look at the memo she shows me, and my eyebrows slightly furrow.

“This store is located in a back alley. I shall go and make the purchase, milady.”

“You can’t. Instructor Camilla has asked me to do this, and so I will.”

At school, there may be times when an instructor requests their students to run an errand for them.

Rather than being a personal chore that the teacher needs doing, it’s more meant to serve as a sort of practical lesson for the noble boys and girls who haven’t had much contact with the common people.

All the same, as milady is a marquis’ daughter, there hasn’t been many teachers who have sent her for errands. Lady Camilla was the one to have asked her this time, however, so milady couldn’t refuse.

“My apologies. I have overstepped my bounds.”

“Don’t mind it, Letty. Besides, umm… I still want you to stay with me.”

Milady is already somewhat blushing by the end, her voice shrunken into an embarrassed whisper. How cute.

 

“Hey there young ladies, brave of you to come here without bodyguar—”

A man appears before us right after we enter the back alley and starts running his mouth, so I let him have a taste of my spiked club.

“Nice shot.”

“Letty?!” Milady sounds shocked.

“Quite a ruffian he was, to have scared milady so.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about! What are you doing so suddenly?”

“What do you mean, milady?”

Anyone who would say something so cliché in this sort of place would inevitably meet the same fate.

“Oh yes, do you mean we should have tied him up and interrogate him? My apologies, I have been hasty.”

“No, that’s not what I meant either…”

I have held back as much as I could on him, but the man is still twitching on the ground with hands between his legs. He does not seem to be available for questioning.

But there is no need to worry. He hasn’t been alone. The few men behind him are already taking out bladed weapons, see? Though I can see some fear mixing in with the anger they’re showing on the faces.

 

“Damn this bitch, she thinks she’s hot shit?!”

“Don’t bother kidnapping them! Just fuck ‘em up!”

 

So, ‘kidnapping’, is it. Simply to take a ransom? Or perhaps they’re working for someone?

I ready my Orc Killer EX in an actual stance. Seeing me, milady tugs on my sleeves.

“You can take them down, but, umm, don’t do that ‘Nice Shot’ thing again, okay?”

“Hmm.”

How kind of milady. I understand, her face is flipping between a pale pallor and a bright blush, after all. Besides, if I do the upswing with my full strength, I don’t think they’d be in any condition to talk.

“Understood.”

 

I approach the group. One of the men runs at me with his weapon. I trip him with my spiked club and once he lies on the ground, I make a putt with Orc Killer EX.

*splat*

“Birdie.”

“Urflp…”

My gentle strike hasn’t been enough to make him faint. It only turns his face ashen pale and sodden with cold sweat while his body shivers.

 

“Come on, be grateful for milady’s kindness. One more hit…”

“No, that’s not it!”

 

Don’t worry, milady. There are still plenty of balls left to hit. Let’s see what they know about their backer.

---

A/N: It was very kind of the maid and her mistress to have allowed them to stay conscious.

---

Previous Chapter | Index | Next Chapter

A/N: The maid thinks of herself as a lovely little spider who’s just a bit different from others, that’s all.

---

“May the Goddess’ will be done…”

We are at the Church. Milady Sharon has been accepted for lessons in this ‘theurgy’ thing without any problems. As I stay back behind her, a middle-aged priest walks up to me and covertly slips me a piece of paper.

“Ten gold coins, is it?”

“The Antidote spell that the young lady would be learning is quite suitable for nobles who are dabbling in the arts. Let us give thanks to the Goddess for her benevolence in granting us the knowledge.”

One needs to give an offering if one wants to get lessons in theurgy. In other words, the priest is pretty much saying: “She’s a noble, she needs the spell, right? It’s not even that much, just pay up.”

So, ten gold coins.

We have enough leeway in our funds now for a pricy purchase or two, but as the manager of milady’s finance, needless expenses are to be avoided.

“It’s not very affordable for the common person, is it?”

“Our learners would be able to receive a part of the Goddess’ miracles. They have all gladly made their offerings.”

“Yet I am quite sure the man who had just left had said that it was three gold coins for him.”

I see a twitch on the priest’s cheeks.

“…it would not reflect well on a noble if they were known to be unable to pay more than a commoner, would it?”

“Yes, indeed.”

The priest nods, showing obvious relief at my agreement. Humans don’t feel very comfortable when someone else keeps on blankly staring at them in the eyes, do they?

“If I may make an idle observation, revered pastor. For a holy servant of the Goddess, would it not give rise to undesirable rumors if they were seen to, say, stare at a certain… area… of young ladies?”

The middle-aged priest’s smile freezes on his face.

“…what… might you be speaking about?”

“Oh, nothing, nothing at all. I understand that milady is quite beautiful. She has attracted quite a bit of attention from many of the male persuasion when she was on her way here as well. It bothered her, it seems.”

She jiggles just by walking, after all.

“…she must feel rather uncomfortable indeed.”

“Of course, these men were but commoners, so I had no intentions of raising a fuss as long as they stay discreet. But only because they were commoners, I must add.”

“…”

“Kind pastor. If possible, might you be willing to further instruct milady on some harmless knowledge on theurgy? I am willing to give the aforementioned donation.”

“…understood.”

“Thank you, good priest. As a token of my gratitude, here…”

I slip him a few pieces of paper with printed pictures on them. The priest gives them a glance and carefully, reverently put them away in his pocket. The two of us share a pleased smile.

“”May the Goddess’ will be done.””

 

The generous priest has decided to also teach milady some curative spells.

By the way, these printed pictures are a kind of ‘monochrome photographs’ that were taken by a magitool. Newspaper use them, and the academy also has a few of the magitools.

And by sheer coincidence, in my pockets are photographs of miss Akiru and miss Hina after they’d been administered medicine and their faces were looking quite… indecent. My, I wonder how these photos existed. Heheheh.

 

“Letty, they taught me Cure and Strengthen!”

“I expect no less, milady.”

“But I’m not sure if I can handle them…”

The cheer on lady Sharon’s face clouds with worry.

“Milady, you’ve learned theurgical spells in order to help with your magic control in the first place. Let us proceed in our studies.”

“I’ll do my best!”

Milady clenches her wee little hands in determination. How dangerously cute.

 

That aside… I’ve been feeling a rather strange gaze.

Yes, it’s true that ever since we entered the cathedral, I’ve sensed a slight pressure coming from the statue of the Goddess, but this other gaze feels different.

“Hey, Letty.”

“What is it?”

Milady whispers in my ear, smiling in mischievous amusement.

“That knight over there has been looking at you, you know?”

I follow her gaze to see a knight wearing a suit of eye-wateringly shiny silver armor, looking about halfway through his twenties. He had been there when milady and I first came into the cathedral, I noticed. He left some time afterward, but apparently he’s returned.

“I see, he must be a pedophile.”

“Come on, Letty…” Milady gives me a look full of disappointment.

Oh, yes, of course. For noble girls in this world, being halfway through their teenage years is enough for them to be considered a mature lady. While I’m not exactly a little kid myself, I would have expected him to look at milady instead with how maternal she looks. Why me?

…hmm?

“Milady, instructor Marsaw is there.”

“My.”

 

As soon as Eric Marsaw, the magic academy teacher, enters the cathedral, the aforementioned silvery knight displays a beaming smile. He runs up toward the instructor.

“Ah, they’re homo-”

“Letty?!”

My mistake. It was not a word suitable for my angelic lady’s ears.

“Oh, over there…”

“I see that the instructor hasn’t come alone.”

Behind instructor Marsaw is a petite young woman. I say petite, but that is only in comparison to the instructor and the knight, both of whom look to be over 180 centimeters. She is probably around my size.

She has long black hair and wears a pair of thin, silver-rimmed glasses. Among the middle-schoolers from Earth, she used to be the class president. Her name is…

 

“Hello, miss Sharon, miss Fleurety. I didn’t know you two were here too.”

Instructor Marsaw notices us and greets us with a smile. Like the knight, instructor Marsaw is also rather handsome. They’re being targeted by quite a few sultry gazes from the female churchgoers.

“Greetings, instructor Marsaw.” Milady says.

I follow suit. “It has been a while, instructor.”

“…although I do hope you would attend class more frequently, miss Fleurety. Ah, yes, miss Chieri is also here.”

“Hello… Kamishiro.”

 

Oh, yes, her name is Chieri. Of course I remember.

If memory serves, her family manages a shrine. Behind the thin silver-rimmed pair of glasses, tense almond eyes pierce at me.

I remember her, of course. I remember how she, as the class president, hadn’t done anything.

 

Miss Chieri averts her gaze. She then turns a gentle smile toward instructor Marsaw, seeming as though her earlier coldness hadn’t existed.

“Teacher, allow me to introduce myself.”

“Sure, go ahead.”

Chieri smiles sweetly. She steps in front of milady.

“Lady Sharon. I believe this is the first time we’ve talked, yes?”

“Eh? …ah, yes, indeed it is, lady Chieri.”

Truly, milady is a terminal patient of shyness. Just getting talked to by a girl of the same age is enough for her to get nervous and her face to turn stony.

Miss Chieri’s smile gains a hint of satisfaction. She walks even closer to milady.

“I’ve always wanted to talk to you. I hope we can be friends from now on.”

“Y-yes.”

Chieri stretches out her hand for a shake. Milady reflexively responds and brings out her own…

 

*thwap*

“…Letty?”

But before they could touch, I grabbed both their arms.

“Excuse me.” I say.

Milady gapes at me, while Chieri looks at me quizzically. I slowly release my hold and begin to rub and pull at the flab on both their arms.

“Good.”

“‘Good’?! Is that what you have to say?!”

“…really, Kamishiro?”

Please, no need for such exasperation. I only like it if it’s milady making that sort of gaze.

At any rate, after my flabbiness comparison, it seems there is no need to change milady’s diet yet.

 

“May I introduce myself as well?” The silvery knight says, smiling at milady and me. “Greetings, lady Sharon. I am Elias Loewe. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

The knight kneels and brushes milady’s hand with his lips. She panics and reverts to her instinctive haughtiness.

“Ah, yes, of course you should be! I am Sharon de Michel!”

Things are as usual. But then he also kneels in front of me, a simple maid, and he takes my hand in both of his. He kisses it so reverently I’m half convinced he thinks of me as his Goddess.

 

“My lady most lovely. May I have the honor of hearing your name?”

 

***

 

‘…damn it.’

 

Chieri was born as the only daughter of a shrine near her middle school.

Yet even since her childhood, she had never been a pious girl. She treated priestesshood as nothing more than a job, and she saw the shrine as nothing more than an establishment that did business in faith.

When she was summoned in this world and gained a Skill called [Theurgy Aptitude], she had thought that life had quite a sense of irony.

 

Chieri was aware that she was a logical girl, maybe a bit high-strung as well. Half the reason she had become the class president was for her academic records, while the other half was because she knew she wouldn’t be able to stand letting the job go to someone less intelligent.

So even when the class had a girl being ostracized, she still ignored it. She didn’t even try to hide the fact.

It was her class. She wouldn’t allow her peace to be disturbed, even if the girl had been completely blameless.

 

Chieri had often heard the girls in the class chattering over this or that handsome boy, but she had never really understood them. She expected she would inherit the shrine someday, and so ever since she was a grade-schooler, she had always thought that she would be marrying a mature and rich man in the future, one who wouldn’t interfere with what she did and had his own work to focus on. She was practical that way.

Unfortunately, this was real life. She wouldn’t find such a man when she was still a kid. But then, her cousin, an older girl, misinterpreted it as her wanting to have a romance with an older man, and so she had given Chieri an otome game.

It had changed Chieri’s world.

 

The game was called Light, Darkness, and Love Online 2 – The Millefeuille of Love. An installment of a series, the game was an online open world simulation game. While the title was undeniably rather dubious, once Chieri tried it out, she instantly got hooked.

Not because it allowed her to vicariously experience a romance with adults, no.

It was because through the game, she had discovered a perverse sort of pleasure in seducing grown-up men, in bewitching them and driving them mad with love as a little kid.

 

The available seduction targets in this game who were adult men were, according to the official introduction, the imperial knight leader and the magic academy’s instructor. And of course, Chieri had mostly focused on them in her hours and hours of game time.

In these sort of romance game, information was the most powerful weapon. And when the class was summoned into this world, Chieri had been the fastest to realize that it was the game’s world. She immediately concealed her knowledge.

She expected that surely there were other ‘heroines’ who were aware of this game, too. She quietly began making her moves, hiding from the other heroines while changing this world to her advantage.

 

A fortunate surprise was waiting for her.

In the game, if a player tried to seduce more than a certain number of targets at the same time, there was a chance they might encounter a special, secret character. Now that the game had become reality, Chieri had thought it would be difficult to do the same, but then the [Theurgy Aptitude] Skill she had gained afforded her an opportunity. She was called to the Church, and there she met the secret character.

Elias Loewe, the most powerful holy knight. If certain conditions were fulfilled, conditions that were unknown to her, it would result in the appearance of an ‘outside enemy’. The heroine and Elias would cooperate to defeat them.

 

Yet now, that holy knight, that stunningly beautiful man was kneeling in front of the bullied girl, kissing the back of her hand and looking at her with so, so much passion.

Unforgivable. It should have been Chieri instead.

 

Ever since the summoning, the girl had had a rather drastic change in personality. Chieri wondered if it wouldn’t be her actual personality instead if she hadn’t been bullied.

When Chieri heard that the girl had Partnered with Sharon, one of the villainesses, she had thought it fitting that the undesirables were sticking together. But then, a possibility came to Chieri’s mind: that the girl knew of the game and still decided to become Sharon’s Partner regardless. If so, she might just be Chieri’s most dangerous enemy.

And her apprehension was proven. Just when Chieri was about to cast a tactile-type surveillance spell on Sharon, her arm was pinched by the girl and her spell was nullified.

 

Chieri wouldn’t allow anyone to stand in her way. The girl and Sharon would be removed from the face of this world, she quietly swore to herself.

---

A/N: Willingly walking into the spider’s parlor.

---

Previous Chapter | Index | Next Chapter

“Sharon…”

“Father…”

The Michel marquis has gotten so weak that he nearly falls over trying to stand up, but he does so anyway, calling for milady’s name. The two share a tearful embrace.

Gidel had never allowed her to meet him, and the only letters she ever received from the family had been full of heartless words. Nevertheless, milady still believed in her father.

It seems the Michel marquis had been bedridden for a long, long time due to being continuously fed poison by Gidel. He can move around somewhat now that the poison is gone, but the danger has not fully passed. He still needs rest.

Well, I suppose there’s also a little bit of my poison involved in his condition too, but that’s irrelevant. Just a bit of an accident, really.

 

“S-Sister!”

“…Yohanne?”

The boy is looking at milady with so much reverence in his gaze, it’s like his personality has been switched. Are those cheeks blushing because he has just been embraced in milady’s bountiful blessings a moment ago? What a lecherous kid.

“U-umm… can I still talk to you at school, sister?”

“You can, Yohanne. We’re siblings, no need to be so reserved.”

“Yes!”

Yohanne. Lady Sharon is your older sister. Do you remember that? Do you?

 

In the end, everyone in the Balla count’s house, from family members to high-ranking servants, were discovered to have gone missing. Gidel was the only exception. She had been arrested as a suspect, but was then found to be of unsound mind. The rest of her life would be spent in the asylum, it seemed.

I found out that she wasn’t immortal. Still, I left her alive to take responsibility for the incident.

Now, the only remaining person to carry the Balla blood is Yohanne. After he turns of age, he would either become the next count, or the Balla territory would be absorbed by the Michel house. There are also talks of having the territory become milady’s instead, but the matter is still for the far future.

 

I’ve managed to deal with most of Gidel’s lackeys within the Michel family’s servants.

The job of explaining things to the truly ignorant servants — those who had been deceived by Gidel — would be done by the young maids that I’d saved, so I expect there would be no problem on that end. The only troublesome ones are the servants allied with Gidel who weren’t aware of her crimes, such as Mia. I only left them under surveillance, however; they might prove to be useful for something.

“Then I shall leave the matter to you, sir Franz.”

“Understood, miss Fleurety. I will accomplish my duties.”

Mister Franz has changed from his gardener attire to a butler uniform. Quite a few of the high-ranking servants are gone now, so he has been reinstated to his old position.

From what I’ve heard, he and that one knight named Bardo are now making contact with the people who had been forced to resign, calling them back to service.

Well then…

 

“Eep!”

Just giving her a glance is already enough for lady Akiru to squeak fearfully. She shrinks away from me.

Ah, but there are quite a lot of black rings around her eyes, aren’t there? I’ve recruited her help with a bit of my experiments, though I do hope she wouldn’t turn out like lady Hina. That young lady now loses control of her bladder whenever I come close.

 

I have had a little talk with lady Akiru, and she said this world is the world of an otome game. A likely claim. I decided some verification was in order, and so since the young miss cannot die, I administered a nearly-fatal dose of my medicine. Unfortunately, it only confirmed that she truly believed what she was saying.

In other words, this world is a world with an incredible resemblance to that of the so-called ‘otome game’.

According to Akiru, there are several ‘heroines’. In order to conquer their targets, they would have to bring down the ‘villainesses’ and raise their affection points with the target.

And one of those villainesses is supposed to be lady Sharon.

…what a farce.

 

“Letty?”

“My apologies. My mind was occupied with a small matter.”

Milady and I have returned from the Michel territory to the capital, where the academy is. There are quite a few concerns, but as I have no concrete evidence yet, I cannot afford to burden milady with more worries.

“My, Letty. That’s unusual for you.”

“I was thinking to write a thesis about the inverse relationship between milady’s scholarly ability and bust size in order to present it to the academy.”

“Can you please not?! Seriously!”

“It was only half a joke, milady.”

“…fine then, I guess.”

Which is to say that I am also half-serious. The headmaster has shown a surprising amount of interest, and he even told me he would fund all expenses for my research from his own pocket.

“Milady, in order to raise your scores, we will look into studying magic today.”

“Alright…”

Milady sulks somewhat as she looks at me with upturned eyes. How devastatingly cute.

 

If lady Sharon is supposed to be one of those so-called ‘villainesses’, then I need only defeat the heroines. At the same time, getting her grades up and clearing her stigma of being a terrible student are also very important.

How much effort should I spend on entertaining this silly idea, I wonder…

 

“Which reminds me, I’ve heard that theurgy would be good for learning magic control.”

“Theurgy, is it?”

Different from the elemental magics that we learn at the academy such as earth, water, fire, wind, and a few other types, theurgy is magic that uses the element of ‘light’. While the academy also teaches the basics of theurgy, this type of magic is mainly the Church’s domain, since many healing spells are theurgical in nature.

“Have you not gone to church before, milady?”

“Umm… I’ve gone for a prayer or two before, but getting theurgical lessons… well…”

“Aah, I understand. Milady used to be impoverished, after all.”

“Shut up!”

Apparently, one needs to give a rather sizable donation if one wishes to learn theurgical magic from the Church. With the funds we’ve earned from the dungeons and the actual support that the marquis house is now giving us, we can afford it.

“Alright, we’ll go to the Church!”

“Yes, milady. I shall accompany you.”

 

And so we get ready for a trip downtown. Getting there on foot wouldn’t take more than an hour, but just as milady and I leave the dormitory, we find the dorm mother’s horse already waiting for us with the carriage.

“Your name is Nir from now on.”

“Grrr!”

“Umm, Letty, are you sure it’s fine to name it without asking the dorm mother first…?”

It is, it is. The dorm mother never manages to stay conscious whenever she catches sight of Nir here, anyway. She must be quite the sheltered lady if seeing a horse with four extra legs is already enough to make her faint. Just in case, I drape Nir in a sheet of cloth to hide his changes.

As I expected, Nir is rather speedy. We arrive at the church several times faster than in a normal carriage.

 

“So this is the church…”

“Yes, it’s the cathedral of the Church that venerates the true Goddess.”

We’re not talking about a building for worship. We’re talking about a religious organization that is named ‘The Church’. How confusing. Which reminds me, I do recall lady Akiru mentioning that this world has an actual Goddess who grants Oracles to the heroines.

The entrance is a staircase with ten steps. Milady jiggles whenever she goes up a step, which is why she’s been the target of quite a few gazes from the men visiting the Church.

“What’s wrong, Letty?” She says mid-way through the stairs, her head turned to look back at me. I haven’t moved from the bottom.

I’m not sure how to describe this. The moment I try to go up the stairs, I immediately feel some sort of pressure, like I’m being rejected. It makes it rather difficult for me to proceed.

But, well, it’s not strong enough to stop me completely.

“No, it is nothing. I will be with you in a moment, milady.”

I smile at her and make a forceful step forward. Something crackles, almost like static electricity on a cold day. From deeper within the cathedral, a faint column of smoke begins to rise.

“My… are they making a bonfire?”

“How about some roasted sweet potatoes for today’s snack, milady?”

“Ooh! Yes, I’d like that!”

 

***

 

“What happened?!”

“I-I don’t know. The protective talisman just suddenly burned…”

 

The talisman at the cathedral was the core of a holy barrier that repelled malice and all things evil. Legend has it that it was first set up centuries ago by the Saint, a holy woman who had received an Oracle from the Goddess, and it had protected the cathedral from wicked humans and dark spirits ever since.

What would it mean, then, that the talisman burned?

The thought that there could be an existence powerful enough to destroy the Saint’s protection did not even come to the minds of the priests and priestesses. They all believed it had been because of a lack of piety, and they could do nothing but helplessly watch in panic as the talisman continued to burn.

 

“Everyone, calm down.” “Sir Elias! Oh, thank the Goddess!”

The priests and priestesses all exclaimed in relief and cheer.

 

Arriving at the scene was a dashingly handsome man. He was the most powerful Holy Knight, the only man in this country — as well as the surrounding countries, in fact — to have received the Goddess’ Protection.

With unshakable composure, he stepped in front of the priests and raised his right hand.

 

“[Holy Light]”

 

Light suffused the chamber. The moment it touched the talisman, the flames were instantly snuffed out.

“As expected of sir Elias!”

“How wonderful… he truly is loved by the Goddess.”

Words of praise and rejoice rang out one after another. Even as Elias responded to their cheers with a hint of a wry smile on his face, his eyes were still fixed at the charred talisman.

…what has happened? He thought.

At the great hall, Elias had felt a malevolent presence, albeit for only a single instant.

It had vanished so quickly that he almost thought he was imagining it. But then, from the burning talisman, he sensed a wicked magic power lingering. It had been the reason why the fire couldn’t be extinguished, as well as why Elias had decided to use the evil-repelling theurgical spell Holy Light to purify the magic power.

As Elias was deep in his thoughts, one of the priests called at him.

“Sir Elias, what should we do? The cathedral cannot be defenseless…”

“Indeed…”

 

The protective talisman was imbued by the theurgical power of the Saint hundred of years ago.

While Elias could also use powerful theurgical spells thanks to the Goddess’ Protection, his repertoire were mainly combat-focused. He could manage during the short-term, but he couldn’t make a talisman that would last centuries like the Saint had.

Then Elias remembered. His friend Eric Marsaw, an instructor at the magic academy, had told him that among the boys and girls summoned this year, there was a person who was a prodigy in theurgy.

 

“Perhaps they could do it…”

 

Deciding to contact Marsaw, Elias returned to the great hall. The moment he did, he noticed a noble-looking silver-haired girl entering the hall…

“How lovely…”

…and his gaze was instantly stolen by the adorable black-haired maid walking behind her.

---

A/N: No Elias don’t go there, that way lies madness.

There’s been a lot of names and since more of the middle-schoolers are going to show up from now on, I thought I’d list out the names of the female middle-school students.

秋留【akiru】　牡丹【botan】　知恵里【chieri】　伝子【denko】 依波【ena】　吹亜【fua】　銀子【ginko】　比奈【hina】

They’re literally named in ABC order.

---

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Argrey Kingdom was a country in the middle of the continent, and its capital held an academy for magic. At the beginning of their fifth and final school year, noble students and those with good academic results would be performing a summoning in order to call upon intelligent beings from other worlds to become their lifetime Partners.

The number of the summoned did not necessarily correlate to the number of the summoners, and neither was there any guarantee that all of the summoned would agreed to become Partners. It was why the students would have to win over the Partner candidates by themselves. Upon being chosen, the student would then be recognized as an official magus, and their Partner would bring them prestige as a noble.

The students of this year had succeeded in summoning human boys and girls just like them, an achievement that hadn’t been seen in centuries.

They had a year, only a year, until their graduation to earn the summoned humans’ trust. And yet on the very first day, a marquis’ daughter infamous for her poor academic skills had already gained her Partner.

The human girl named Fleurety had slid into the role of being a maid to Sharon, the marquis’ daughter, with such ease that left everyone flabbergasted. Like a whirlwind, the maid rapidly brought chaos to the status quo around Sharon.

And so, let us have a look into a day of this rather… eccentric… maid.

 

A maid’s day began when the sky was still dark.

Her mistress lived in the dorm of the boarding academy, and her room was connected to a servant’s room. This room was where the maid of our story resided.

The room was bare and empty, looking as though nobody had been living in it. The maid woke up, not on the cleanly-made bed, but on a spiderweb woven in a corner of the ceiling.

She did not have anything against beds. She simply felt safer in the nest that she had made herself.

And she did not need to sleep, either, but she was prudent enough to know that inhuman behavior would be frowned upon.

 

“Geez, Letty. Do you even know what ‘prudence’ mean?”

“I do, milady. It’s tasty and goes well with rice.”

“Wait, you actually don’t?!!”

 

But let us return to our story. A maid’s day began when the sky was still dark.

After her morning ablutions, the maid headed for the Dark Woods to prepare her mistress’ breakfast. She was picking up fresh eggs from a cockatrice’s nest when a griffon passed her by, and it immediately prostrated itself before her and gave her the prey it had just hunted as an offering.

The endearing sight was one commonly seen ever since the maid began to frequent the forest. Truly, nature itself favored her. She would not need to worry about finding meat ever again.

The sun rose as the maid prepared breakfast. She left to get the newspaper for her mistress, and a horse came to pester her for food.

“Good boy, good boy. No leftovers, alright?”

“Gggrrr…”

The maid kindly watched over the horse as he munched on a whole, still-living goblin.

After their journey together, the horse had become very attached to the maid. He liked her even more than he liked his owner, the dorm mother. The fresh food the maid continued to give him had been very good for him, and he had recently grown another four legs to make a total of eight.

“You’re just like me now, aren’t you? Good boy…”

“Gggrrrrah!”

Now, the dorm mother would faint every time she looked at the horse. The maid wondered if the woman was jealous that the horse didn’t show the same friendliness for her.

The dorm mother was still young, still just in her forties, and it was no surprise that she might feel… insecure at times. The maid understood, and she would not tell anyone that the dorm mother sometimes went downtown to pay underage boys to help her ‘destress’.

And breakfast was done. The menu for today was mixed salad and bacon quiche.

 

“Hey, Letty… The dorm mother seems kinda strange these days. Have you noticed?”

“She is happy that her horse had returned healthy, milady.”

“Ah, I see, it is a very energetic horse. I’m happy for her.”

Once more, the maid felt the joy of serving under a mistress who loved animals so much that she would call a horse that could kill a charging boar with a single kick ‘energetic’.

 

The maid also accompanied her mistress to class.

Karl, her mistress’ childhood friend, began to talk to the young noble lady. But the maid would not allow him to touch her.

“Wait, hold on, I haven’t done anything!”

As the maid quietly took out a spiked club, Karl turned pale, his hips pulled so far back he looked like a shrimp in an attempt to protect his irreplaceable treasures.

 

After school, the maid often spent her time frolicking with her mistress, but sometimes she also went shopping alone. Her mistress loved sweet things, so the pantry must always be stocked with sugar and honey.

“…shit, it’s you again.”

The store that the maid favored was located near the salt dungeon. The owner was a strange man. Despite having such a cute customer visiting his store, he always grimaced whenever he saw her.

“What do you have for me today, mister?”

“Dammit girl, I’m not a treasure vault for you. I only had that cursed stone because somebody foisted it on me after it accidentally got out of a noble’s storage, you should know.”

“Oh, but you sold it in the end. All’s well that ends well.”

“…maybe, if I hadn’t been forced to sell it for peanuts.”

The cursed stone was, indeed, the heavy ore that had been used to coat the end of Orc Killer.

“So I don’t have anything for you today, alright?”

“I have heard that you have just imported some good rum from the neighboring country.”

“…hey, maid girl.”

“What is it?”

“Are you spying on my shop? Why the fuck do you know that?! The rum’s for selling to a trading firm, leave it alone!”

“Such a scandalous accusation, mister. I’m not telling you to give me everything, just a few bottles. Milady loves the sweets I make from them.”

“…just one bottle, alright? One gold coin.”

“Three bottles for one gold coin, please.”

“You fucking wot, maid?! That’s below cost!!!”

“My? Didn’t you get them by trading the monster materials that I sold you the other day? How much would a bottle be, then, calculating from that?”

“…here, three bottles for one gold.”

“As well as some of those rock candies, please. In return, here…”

The maid glanced at the shopkeeper’s head and covertly handed him a bag of dried seaweed. He took a quick look inside, then took it just as sneakily.

“…I’ll deliver them to your place.”

“Thank you, mister.”

There was now a faint covering on the shopkeeper’s head. But it wasn’t hair. It was actually the seaweed that had infested him.

 

Gathering information was also one of the important duties of a maid. So went the teachings of the kind Maid Chief. The maid understood that she could not rely on just the Seaweed Spirits, so she went to work herself.

As had become custom, the maid called for a gathering of snot-nosed urchins and gave them rock candies in exchange for information. Indeed, not many watched their words around children.

“…I heard that the viscount’s son was buying the same thing again, in the northern forest.”

“My, my.”

“An independent Explorer named Bob found some strange magic tool. He’s hiding it.”

“Details?”

“…it’s for assassinations.”

“I see.”

The maid gave some more rock candies. “Thank you, miss!” they said, waving their hands as they departed.

Indeed, the smiles of children could warm anyone’s heart.

 

The maid returned to the dorm and prepared her mistress’ dinner.

Today’s dinner would be beef stew. Beef-ish. The maid did get a lot of meat from something cow-like the other day.

And after the dinner came homework.

 

“Ah, so milady truly is bad at math.”

“N-No! No, that’s not it!”

 

It was to be expected. After all, the young lady’s bosom had grown even larger thanks to her maid’s efforts.

After homework was done, it was bathtime. With a washcloth that the maid had made herself, she scrubbed her mistress pristine and spotless, turning the noble young lady’s skin into the envy of silk and satin.

 

“Good night, Letty.”

“Yes. I wish you a good night as well, milady.”

 

But even after her mistress had fallen asleep, the maid’s day was still not over. She still had the laundering and ironing of clothes to do, budgets to manage, pharmaceutical substance to process, underwear thieves to exterminate, so on and so forth. She only slept when dawn of the next day neared.

The duties of a maid were daunting indeed. However…

 

“It’s still so much easier than helping the Maid Chief.”

 

The maid sounded rather traumatized.

---

A/N: The Maid Chief seemed like quite the strict person.

---

Previous Chapter | Index | Next Chapter

Gidel was born as the first child to the count of Balla.

Theirs was not a particularly wealthy noble family. They had land, but their land had neither any dungeons nor industries of noteworthy value.

The Balla count wasn’t content with his lot. He made ventures into multiple lines of business only to end in failures after failures, and his debt to other noble houses grew and grew.

It was at that time that the Michel marquis of the previous generation decided to grant him a loan. In return, the marquis wanted Gidel to be the second wife for his heir, a young man who had just gotten engaged.

 

The Michel heir’s engagement was with a young woman who was close to the queen. While the lady had been adopted by a viscount, originally, she was born as nothing more than a simple daughter of a knight. Even if the couple themselves did not mind, it was still enough justification for the noble world to look down on them. So the Michel marquis had thought that by bringing Gidel, the daughter of a count, into their family, then they would be able to maintain their status. On the surface at least, if nothing else.

The fact of the matter was, having the eldest daughter of a count as a second wife wasn’t generally done. It meant that instead of being a union of equals, it was a declaration that the Balla house would be subservient to the Michel house.

Gidel’s pride as a noble was dealt a grievous blow.

Still, Gidel believed that if she could give birth to a child before the main wife could, she would gain more influence within the Michel house than her. But the Michel heir had consummated his long-awaited marriage with his sweetheart, and the two had had a child together before his second marriage with Gidel.

 

With the second blow to her pride — as a woman, this time — Gidel had the Balla house’s magus to make her some aphrodisiac. She used it to force the Michel heir into bed, despite the fact that they hadn’t yet entered wedlock.

As a result, their wedding was delayed, and she almost had her newly-born Yohanne taken away from her, but the Balla family had then brought the boy who carried the blood of Michel into their protection. They didn’t return him until the next year, after the Michel marquis passed away in a sudden accident.

Several years after, when the Michel heir was now the official head, tragedy struck once again as his main wife died due to a sudden illness. It was then that the current Michel marquis, a man now poor in spirit, officially took Gidel as his second wife.

 

Everything went smoothly. As convenient as they had been for the Ballas, the successive deaths had given rise to rumors among the nobles for a time, but in the end, for a noble caste of a country that had lasted for a thousand years, it wasn’t anything they hadn’t seen before.

But a single concern remained: Sharon, the child of the main wife. The girl must have been carrying a grudge against her stepmother and brother, considering how they had spurned her so.

In the noble world, the son generally inherited the house, but according to the law, the first child also had inheritance rights. In another noble family, an older sister who wouldn’t relinquish the house to her younger brother could be safely dealt with by marrying her into another house, but Gidel could no longer do that to Sharon when she was now a fiancee candidate to the second prince.

Then what should Gidel do? The solution was simple.

 

“Aah… finally. Finally…”

Gidel sighed as she looked down upon one of the boss rooms of the Agate Dungeon. Everything she had done was for this day.

To Gidel, the girl summoned from another world, Akiru, was nothing more than a convenient pawn.

She could gain some amount of fame if Yohanne could take Akiru as his wife, but she would also earn the ire of some other nobles. So she decided that the girl would become a victim of Sharon’s, and the two would die together in an accident. Yohanne would then gain sympathy from the other nobles as a boy who had lost his beloved.

Gidel truly thought that having Akiru as a daughter would be fine too, if that Dario hadn’t failed. Still, dealing with Sharon took precedence.

And if the maids attached to Akiru — innocent commoner girls — happened to die as well, public hatred would further concentrate into Sharon. The Michel house would gain even more sympathy, and their bad rumors would dissipate as well.

 

So it was very fortunate for Gidel that the monster that had appeared in the boss room was a minotaur — and not only that, its black horns marked it as a higher-ranked minotaur as well, one unique to this dungeon. Its bones had been transformed into magic iron through its consumption of minerals and ores.

Gidel did find it rather regrettable that she would lose the knowledge of the maid that Sharon had brought, the impudent girl who possessed bizarre skills. On the other hand, seeing her tears, her cries as she begged for life would be much, much more fun, Gidel thought.

She turned her eyes to the maid. The black-haired girl returned an unblinking stare.

 

Gidel looked at that silent stare, that unfeeling smile, those dark eyes, and an unsettling discomfort began to churn deep inside her chest, seeping through her as it grew and grew.

 

“GRAAAAGHH!!!”

 

Upon having its axe deflected, the minotaur released a roar of fury. It charged at the maid.

“Letty!!”

“AAAH!”

As the screams of Sharon and Akiru echoed in the chamber, the minotaur once more swung its battleaxe at the black-haired maid to cleave her in half. But before the weapon could hit its target, the girl spoke, her voice quiet and lilting.

 

“…I call the Darkness…”

 

And all was instantly suffused in black, the darkness surging to cover even where Gidel was standing.

“What happened?!”

It took a moment for her to realize that it was her who had shouted. No voices answered. Not from the maids or the soldiers under her command, nor even Sharon or anyone else below. Even her sight extended no more than her immediate surroundings.

“Is anyone there?! Answer me!”

She shouted once more, in confusion and in fear, but she couldn’t even feel the presence of her servants. They were supposed to be right behind her.

“…what—”

 

“Grlfp…”

 

“Eek?!”

Suddenly, in front of Gidel was the minotaur. Both its horns were broken, its whole body covered with blood, and it collapsed after a final cry of agony.

What had happened? What could have done something so horrible?

Gidel staggered several steps backwards, shaken by a sight so nightmarish she didn’t dare to even think of it. Her back hit something.

She turned in trepidation. She screamed.

Standing behind Gidel was her maid, a servant of the Balla house who had come with her. The maid’s face was deathly pale, her eyes were rolled up, her limbs hanging loose. Only her head jerked to turn toward Gidel, and inside her mouth…

…were crawling, squirming, arachnid legs.

Gidel’s face lost all colors. She tried to run, but a hand caught her legs.

“…ma…dam…”

“L-Let go!”

The maid had served Gidel for a long time, but now, feeling cadaverous skin and ice-cold fingers on her own body, there wasn’t a single moment of hesitation before Gidel reflexively kicked at her.

And Gidel screamed hoarsely in fear as she witnessed the maid visibly shriveling, crumbling into dust.

“…’T-Teleport!’”

The jewel on Gidel’s ring lost its colors and broke, the fragments evaporating into thin air. The woman vanished.

 

*

 

What Gidel used was a Ring of Teleportation, a magic item that could rarely be found in the lower levels of a dungeon. By speaking the keyword, the user would be transported to the location where they believed to be the safest place for them.

Each Ring cost 150 gold coins, and it worked only once. Still, it was a cheap price to pay if it could save one’s life.

 

“This place is…”

Gidel looked around and realized that she wasn’t at the Michel marquis’ house. She was at her parents’ home, in the territory of the Balla count.

“Gidel is here! Somebody, answer me!”

The sun had already set, yet it wasn’t so late that all the people of the mansion had gone to sleep.

Gidel saw light coming from several windows, but there was no sign anyone was here otherwise. She shivered, remembering her previous fear, and she ran through the mansion in a desperate attempt to forget her terror.

 

“Answer me, anyone! Father!”

She had already previously contacted her father, the Balla count. He should have been here today. It was supposed to be the day of Sharon’s disappearance, of the fall of the Michel house by the hands of the Ballas.

Had her father and retainers been impatient for the good news? Had they celebrated in advance and drunken themselves into sleep? In order for them to carry out the takeover at a moment’s notice, they had kept only the servants who knew of their plans at the mansion, so Gidel had expected that there would be fewer people than normal today.

But she didn’t expect this desolation.

 

“…what… what is this?”

Her realization came late due to the darkness. Only now did she noticed that here and there, in corners and on the ceiling of the hallway, there were masses of tangled spiderwebs.

The housekeeper would never have allowed this to happen.

Since when had the mansion deteriorated so? What had happened…?

 

“Wha…”

She reached the ballroom. It was no longer the glorious chamber used for dinner parties that she remembered, but instead a dilapidated hall wreathed in darkness and enormous spiderwebs. She looked at the cocoons hung on the web, and there was one face she immediately recognized.

“F-Father?!”

After noticing the Balla count, Gidel also realized familiar faces of her retainers in the other cocoons. They were hung upside-down, their faces pallid.

She wanted to scream, but her voice died in her throat, frozen by a coldness that seemed to seep into her bones.

Gidel stood paralyzed. Silently appearing from the darkness in front of her eyes was the black-haired maid. The girl was floating in the air.

 

“…Y…ou…”

She noticed that the girl wasn’t actually flying, but was keeping herself in the middle of the spiderweb. All the same, the realization brought the woman no comfort.

Why was she here? How was she here? Questions after questions flashed through Gidel’s mind, questions she couldn’t ask when her voice wasn’t cooperating. The black-haired maid’s lips tore to her ears in a dollish smile.

“I bid you farewell.”

The black-haired maid said, and the nightmare began.

 

The girl’s pinkish-white skin blackened and gained a tint of bronze. Her high-quality set of maid clothes turned frayed and ragged in a blink of an eye, as though the garment had been left to the mercy of the rain and wind for thousands of years.

Miasma surged from her to cover the whole ballroom, rotting the walls and the ceiling in seconds. Bursting out from her back were eight spindly black limbs that resembled the legs of spiders, each about ten meters in length.

Gidel screamed silently, blood trickling from her mouth.

 

In her research for ways to dispose of Sharon, Gidel had looked into curses and poisons. And at their roots, all curses had a connection to demons.

But demons were but myths. Fairy-tales for children. This world had no demons, and the Church also denied their existence. And yet according to the knowledge of some of the people who had been summoned through the ritual, many among them demihumans, demons did exist.

Demons. Rulers of fear. Enemies of gods. Existences with power equivalent to elemental spirits.

And among them, there existed a certain class of high-ranking demons with such might as to rival Arch Elementals, spirits so powerful they could shatter the earth and sunder the seas.

Legends had it that when they manifested themselves in the mortal world, they would take the form of a human clad in old and weathered noble clothing.

 

“…an Archdemon…”

 

Gidel whispered and collapsed. The spider legs of the black-haired maid soundlessly carried her closer, and her lips slowly parted.

The sight of the innumerable, skittering things inside the maid’s mouth drove Gidel to a mad scream. The dark maw moved close to Gidel’s ear, and the maid whispered.

 

“I wonder if you can die…”

 

***

 

Here and there, hung across branches of green, spiderwebs glimmer with droplets of dew. What a wonderful morning.

Greetings, Fleurety here. I wish everyone a Nice Shot on this fine day.

 

At the castle, Yohanne hangs his head, whimpering in despair.

He has returned before us, and in his hands is a letter that has been delivered first thing in the morning by an express messenger.

Wooow, I just wonder what it could have been about.

On the ground next to him are some small agates, so it looks like he hasn’t been able to find anything good in the dungeon.

I take a peek at the letter. It says everyone of the Balla house has gone missing, and only Gidel was found at the scene, the woman gibbering mad. She has been apprehended by the guards.

How unfortunate. I wish she would recover someday.

 

“Yohanne…”

“…sister.”

Milady Sharon calls at him. Yohanne wipes his face with his sleeves. He picks up one of the fallen agates and glare at milady.

“This is all I could find… Mother and Father are gone now. I’ve lost. Now that I no longer have any backing, the country would never accept me as the next marquis with just these tiny pieces of rocks…”

There are quite a few inconveniences involved in inheriting a noble house, aren’t there?

“Yohanne… take these.”

“…eh?”

Milady gives him two large horns.

“These are…”

“The horns of a magic-iron minotaur. Letty got it for me. If you need them to succeed the house, take them.”

Yohanne’s eyes open wide.

“…w-why?! Mother has always told me that you didn’t want to leave the house to me, that you considered me an eyesore…”

“No, Yohanne. The head of the family should be a man. You’ve shown me the courage to go into the dungeon yourself for miss Akiru. Your life has only just begun, Yohanne, stand tall and face it!”

“Y-Yes!”

With milady’s lecture, Yohanne instantly shoots to his feet, back ramrod straight.

“And besides… I never wanted us to fight.”

“…S-sister…”

The dam breaks, and Yohanne starts bawling his eyes out. Milady gently holds his head to her chest… why do I see his ears turning bright red? Does he want me to tear them off?

 

“…how wonderful.”

Akiru says, moved by the heartwarming scene, her eyes wet. I gently place a hand on her shoulder from behind and give her a beaming smile.

“Well then, I think it’s time the two of us have a talk in the office.”

“…eh?”

That is that, and this is this. I’ve already prepared the medicine. It won’t take long.

 

…I must say, why does everyone keep calling me a ‘demon’? Such slander.

 

***

 

The capital held the church to the Goddess of Time.

It was said that the Goddess held domain over the bonds between people and fateful encounters, and that She had brought prosperity to this country through the Oracles that She had granted to people, such as the queen of the first king and the saint.

In the church, a young man was praying in earnest. The solemn sight had invited many a passionate gaze and breathy sigh of infatuation, all coming from the younger sisters and women who had come to worship.

Anyone who was seeing him for the first time would never have thought that this handsome, blond-haired man was, in fact, none other than the Holy Knight, the one considered to be the most powerful person of the country.

 

His long eyelashes rippled. His eyes opened wide to reveal verdant-green orbs, and he stared at the statue of the Goddess.

 

“…there’s an Irregularity in this world…?”

---

A/N: Unbelievable. The maid does not actually know what she is.

---

Previous Chapter | Index | Next Chapter

Alone in the guest room, Akiru paced.

“What do I do…”

She hadn’t made any wrong choice. Compared to the other targets, Yohanne’s route was relatively simple.

By nature of being an online game, the interference of other players could cause certain alterations to the story. Nevertheless, a constant still remained: the player with the highest affection stats would be given evidence of Sharon’s crimes from her mother, Gidel. During the prosecution of Sharon, by admonishing her while still advocating for leniency, the player character would then receive Yohanne’s profession of love.

If the player answered his proposal, the flag for Yohanne would be established. Afterward, as long as the player kept his affection high enough, they could do whatever until the graduation event, be it spending the days all lovey-dovey with him or even ignoring him to go seduce another target.

Yet before Akiru could give her answer, she got in her way again.

 

As it was still rather early on in the game’s timeline, Sharon’s misdeeds were still light. In the game, the crimes that the villainess was guilty of could vary depending on when her tribunal happened. If she was prosecuted during the graduation event, she might even be executed for treason.

Akiru wasn’t the kind of person that could knowingly consign the villainess to execution without guilt. Even as early on in the timeline as they were, she had full confidence she could establish Yohanne’s flag before the other players interfered. She had cleared his route so, so many times, after all.

So she had acted. She made her moves with such assertiveness that it surprised even her, and she had succeeded in acquiring the affection of Yohanne as she stayed hidden from the eyes of the other girls who could be player characters, as well as the viscount young lady that was the main heroine of the game.

 

“…’Status’.”

Akiru whispered. A panel, translucent as though made of acrylic, appeared in front of her.

This was a kind of magic that no one else in this world, other than those who were aware they were player characters, could use. The first time Akiru tried out the chant, she had done it thinking that if she could see her Status in the game, she could do it now, too. And to her surprise, the spell had worked.

[Name: Akiru] [Female — 14 Years Old] [Status: Good]

Skill List (skills with ☆ are hidden):
[Water Magic Aptitude] [Noble Blood] [Alchemy Aptitude] [Foreign Tongue]
[Charm (Weak) ☆] [Goddess’ Blessing ☆ ]

She hadn’t much interest in the skills that were public. To her, they were only convenient skills to have in this world. Akiru’s attention was on the hidden skills instead.

She suspected that both were skills that only player characters could have. She didn’t know what ‘Goddess’ Blessing’ was, but ‘Charm’ was what had helped her to gain Yohanne’s affection. It was what had made him hear her lines, even sounding as wooden as they were due to her nervousness, as a heartfelt speech full of passion.

Yet right at the end, Akiru was thwarted once again.

Was she a player character too? Then perhaps she might be the kind of troll player that played not to capture any target, but only to mess with other people.

“…I won’t let you spoil my game.”

Akiru had already forgotten what she had done to the girl in the past. To Akiru, she was just an enemy now.

 

Two knocks came from the door.

“…yes, I am here.”

Upon Akiru’s reply, a maid opened the door to reveal the madam of the house.

“My, madam Gidel.”

“Akiru. Can I have some of your time?”

Gidel was smiling, and in the woman’s hands were some documents that were presumably the proof of Sharon’s crimes. Seeing them, Akiru smiled as well.

 

Akiru had still not yet realized that this world was reality.

 

***

 

With Yohanne’s official declaration, the competition becomes a duel between siblings to determine the next successor.

Gidel and the servants had tried to get Yohanne to stand down at first. So I gave him just a liiiitle bit of a push.

“Aww, so the little-widdle ****less boy can’t do anything without his mama?”

And he suddenly found his motivation. A lot of it too, in fact. Even madam Gidel seemed to have changed her mind.

 

“Hey Letty, what did you say to Yohanne?”

“Simply some encouragement, milady.”

She didn’t hear because I was blocking her ears. I simply could not let her innocence be spoiled by such bad words.

“But… I didn’t want to have to fight my own brother…”

Milady’s expression somewhat darkens. Such a kind girl, she is.

“Helping a younger brother gain strength through a trial is also an older sister’s duty, milady.”

“…really?”

Yes, it really is. It’s also an excuse, but she doesn’t need to know that.

 

The all-important details of the duel are as follows: until the next morning, milady and Yohanne must bring a valuable dungeon item back from the dungeon that lies in the western region of the Michel territory.

This dungeon is medium-sized, with about forty floors. It used to be famed for its high-quality agates until over a century ago, when its yield of the gemstones dwindled down to almost nothing. The dungeon had since turned into a lair for monsters.

Both parties are allowed up to ten servants to accompany them. This rule is mainly for Yohanne’s benefit, of course.

 

“Milady, I shall accompany you.”

“Franz… I truly appreciate the thought, but you shouldn’t. What if something happens to Father when you’re not here?”

“Milady… I…”

“Besides, I also need you to protect Mother’s grave. I fear her resting place may be disturbed if you get injured, Franz.”

“…understood.”

Franz kneels, his voice full of reluctance. Milady tenderly places her hand on his shoulder to console him.

“I will be fine. Letty is with me… look, Franz, over there. Something is shining in the evening sun. Is it not beautiful?”

“…it is. If only lady Kyria could witness this with us…”

“Indeed, if only Mother was here…”

 

The gleaming thing is, in fact, lady Kyria’s grave.

 

Franz accompanies us all the way to the dungeon in a horse carriage. He says his goodbye as he prepares to return to the marquis castle.

“Then I wish you good fortune, milady. Miss Fleurety, please keep her safe.”

He looks at me with eyes full of trust.

“Of course.”

Then I must prove myself worthy of his trust, too.

By the way, the horse carriage we used was the one I borrowed from the dorm mother. The horse that pulled it is now rampaging in the forest and devouring all the monsters it comes across, even with the carriage still attached to it. It must have been the monster blood I gave it.

This is great. Saves on fodder, too.

 

“Milady, it seems young master Yohanne had already entered the dungeon.”

“My…”

At the dungeon entrance are corpses of what look like goblins, as well as the footprints of multiple people.

Expecting that we may have to stay awake all night, I had let milady take a nap. It was why we had arrived later in the evening, after Yohanne.

“W-Well then, let’s go.”

“Yes, milady.”

We hadn’t taken her leather armor with us on our homecoming trip — who would expect we’d need it? — so milady is now wearing a robe made from my threads. I have my usual maid uniform on, of course.

Our way has already been cleared, just as I planned. It won’t take much time for us to reach the depths.

 

“Yah!”

Milady shouts, smacking a skeleton on the head with her staff. It collapses.

She has relatively more magic power than most others, but also worse control. It is why her spells either burn her targets to ashes or simply fizzle out — there is no in-between.

One of these days, I shall have to devise a way for her to use her magic effectively.

“Letty, I did it!”

“Beautiful work, milady.”

We have descended to the twentieth floor underground, yet we still haven’t encountered any particularly tough enemy. I was thinking that if we can’t find any good items then we could substitute with monster materials, but at this rate…

“Maybe going to the bottom floor would be faster.”

“Then let us hurry. Yohanne should already be deeper in.”

 

…how strange.

I had let Yohanne go first so that he would clear the way for us, yet I have also found monster corpses in some rather unexpected locations, in paths that the younger brother did not take. Did they split into two teams?

 

We are now at the thirtieth floor.

“Excuse me, milady.”

“Wha-Letty?!”

I pick milady up and start running. Bare moments later, rocks fall from the ceiling where we used to be.

I have noticed traps there. I have also not triggered them.

“T-Traps?”

“Yes, milady, traps.”

I catch the sound of far-off running footsteps. As I expected, that was a human trap, one leveraging the dungeon’s own. I did think it was about time and indeed, they haven’t betrayed my expectations.

“Please continue to hold on, milady.”

“…eh?”

“We’re running through.”

“…aaaaAAAAHHH?!!”

With milady holding onto me for dear life, I run deeper into the dungeon. She… jiggles… quite a bit.

I hop to the side to dodge a sudden arrow flying toward us from the front. Before the second could be let loose, I silence the men hiding in the shadows with Maid Kicks.

 

*plort*

 

“Umm, Letty, what was that? It sounded like fruits being crushed…?”

“Something like that, milady. I think even their seeds are ruined now.”

The two men foaming at the mouth aren’t anyone I’ve seen at the castle. I wonder who they are? They don’t seem to be bandits.

I would have liked to interrogate them with my ‘truth serums’, but I don’t have the time at the moment. I continue running.

 

After that, we encounter a few more sporadic traps.

“Letty, there’s a boulder coming toward us!”

“Yes, milady.”

Hmm… it feels like we’re being led somewhere. The boulder chases us to a wide-open room without a floor, and we fall.

“EEEEEPP?!”

“Do not worry, milady.”

It’s less a pitfall and more like an atrium that connects two floors together. It has two doors. Both are closed.

After landing on my feet, I place milady down. She looks up in unease.

“…maybe…”

“This is also a trap.” I reply.

 

“Indeed.”

 

I turn to look at where the new voice came from. One of the doors open, and several people appear.

“Miss Akiru?! Why are you here?!”

“To judge your crimes, miss Sharon.”

Accompanying the lady Akiru is a gaggle of young maids, all armed and pointing their weapons at milady and me. They look fearful.

“You are accused of planning Yohanne’s assassination. How terrible, Sharon. I cannot believe you would do that to your own brother.”

“Wait, no! I would never do anything like that!”

“I have evidence provided by madam Gidel herself.”

Akiru takes out several sheets of paper, thrusting them to milady’s face.

“You have no excuses now, Sha—”

 

“Why did you not bring these to the town guards?” I interrupt, my head tilting in puzzlement. Milady shares the gesture.

Akiru stands in slack-jawed silence. It takes a while for her to respond.

“…huh?”

“If you already have all the evidence, why not take it to the palace? Or even the local town guards?”

“…b-but…” Akiru stammers, her eyes darting to and fro. The young maids begin to chatter in anxiety. “T-this is supposed to be a judgement scene…”

Akiru lowers her gaze as her voice shrinks into a whisper, having lost all of its former fervor. Really, wasn’t she supposed to have come from Earth? Did she forget about the existence of police?

“May I have a look?” I say.

“Ah, yes.”

Akiru absentmindedly allows me to look at the so-called evidence. It’s a sales receipt of the purchase of a rather special kind of poison, and on it is milady’s signature.

“This is not milady’s handwriting.”

“Eh?”

I suppose that with the power a marquis house has, they can make it work even with such a shoddy piece of ‘evidence’, but I would be surprised if it actually fools anyone.

 

“Miss Akiru, do not listen to her!”

The voice is of a man’s, and it comes from behind the group of maids who are currently confused by the unexpected development.

“Mister Dario!”

“Miss Akiru, that maid might as well be a demon with how easily she can lie to your face without blinking an eye. We haven’t given the evidence to the guards only because the madam wishes to grant lady Sharon a chance to redeem herself.”

“I-Is that so…?”

“Indeed. As long as we have the evidence, lady Sharon won’t be able to talk her way out of it. For the house of Michel, we will have her atone for her crimes here and now!”

“Eh, wha?”

“This is for young master Yohanne, lady Akiru! Everyone, ready your weapons!”

 

With an upward swing, my Orc Killer EX finds its target.

“Nice shot.”

Dario gurgles.

“Letty?!” Milady exclaims, shocked.

“It seems sir Dario is not being sound of mind. Is there a doctor around?”

Akiru and the maids furiously shake their heads. They look rather pale, for some reason.

As for Dario, despite his frothing bubbles and convulsions, he still lives, perhaps due to his armor. As I could not let milady’s eyes be tainted, I had been very careful with my strike. Still, I doubt he can continue to live as a man from tomorrow onward.

 

“…really, so useless.”

 

“Madam Gidel?!”

“””Madam!!!”””

Upon hearing the woman’s voice echoing from above, Akiru and the maids look up, exclaiming in surprise mixed with relief.

Gidel is standing not at the door where the two of us fell from, but on another protruding platform. Accompanying the woman is an elderly maid and some armed men. She looks down, her gaze frosty.

“Good work, Akiru. We can finally make Sharon atone for her crimes now.”

“B-but…”

Akiru stumble over her words. She stares at the ‘evidence’, her disarrayed thoughts apparent on her face.

“I had hoped that that butler and you working together would be able to deal with Sharon. How disappointing. A pity, too, I thought you could have made for a good daughter…”

“M-madam Gidel…?”

 

Akiru’s face pales, while a fearful uncertainty spread through the young maids. The door opposite to the one Akiru’s group used slowly creaks open.

“Eeek…”

Somebody squeaks. The thing that entered slowly scans its gaze around, and it roars.

 

“GRRRARAAAAHHH!!!”

 

It is a humanoid monster nearly three meters tall, with the head of a bull and a pair of enormous horns.

“…a minotaur.”

Milady whispers, her voice quivering.

 

“This is one of the boss rooms on the lower floors. Apparently this room leads to a shortcut if you can defeat the minotaur, so why don’t you try? Oh, yes, which reminds me, Yohanne had taken the safe route. Do not fear for him.”

Gidel says, laughing in genuine mirth. Milady glares at her.

“Madam Gidel, what are your intentions?! You would even involve lady Akiru, one of his Highness Joel’s Partner candidates?!”

“Aah, truly regrettable. Akiru was simply unfortunate to have been entangled in your crimes, that was all.”

“It can’t be…” Milady whispers in abject disbelief, while Akiru slumps to the ground upon hearing Gidel’s words, her expression one of sheer despair.

 

“GRAAAAHH!!”

 

The minotaur picks that exact moment to roar and charge toward Akiru.

I don’t plan on saving her. She’s probably immortal too, anyway.

What I didn’t expect, however, is for milady to shout a warning and jump toward Akiru in an attempt to save her.

“Watch out!”

Milady covers Akiru with her own body. Before the minotaur’s axe could reach its target, I smack the weapon away with my spiked club. I bring the two to safety.

“Milady!”

“I-I’m fine, Letty.”

A trickle of blood drips from her forehead, likely from a piece of flying debris. Despite that, she still gives me a brave smile. Akiru shivers, her teeth chattering, and her gaze is fixed on milady.

“Miss Akiru… may I leave milady in your care?”

“B-but… I…”

Akiru looks ready to cry. Out of guilt, perhaps. I look at her icily.

“If you harm her even a hair further…”

“I-I won’t! I swear I won’t!”

 

What a gaffe I’ve made, underestimating milady’s kindness.

So they really want to see me go all-out, then?

---

A/N: Our lady Sharon is an angel.

---

Previous Chapter | Index | Next Chapter

And so the first skirmish ends with lady Sharon’s sweeping victory. Even with all that the stepmother has done to her, taking away a marquis’ daughter’s maid — that’s me — is not one of the things that are in her authority. All Gidel could do is to stew in her anger as she leaves the dining hall in stomping footsteps.

 

The two of us try to visit milady’s father after the dinner, but a young butler stands in front of the room. We are not allowed in.

 

“Why can’t I meet with Father?!”

“My apologies, lady Sharon. By orders of his attending physician, the weary master is not to be disturbed.”

“But—”

“..milady.”

I touch her arm, asking her to relent.

 

Greetings, everyone. It is me, Fleurety, the maid who never misses a chance to savor milady’s soft and squishy arms.

“Let us retire for the day, milady. Perhaps your father will feel better in the morning.”

“…got it.”

Milady bites her lips and sulks like a kid. How cute.

 

Seeing that we won’t be pursuing the matter, the butler smirks. He is a decently handsome man who looks about in the middle of his twenties, with a head of black hair tinged blue, but his leering gaze pinned at milady’s bountiful melons and my own hips just ruins everything about him.

But, well, I can understand him. Milady’s recovery from her nutritional deficiency has made her already-huge cantaloupes even bigger, after all.

 

“…Letty, I have a feeling you’re thinking something weird again.”

“I was thinking that I like melons more than grapefruits, milady.”

“My, you do? So do I.”

“I shall prepare some for you later.”

My efforts will continue until her own become the envy of all melon farmers.

 

“Hey, you…”

Just as we are about to walk away, the young butler calls at me, lowering his voice so that only I hear him.

“I may tell you how the master is faring, but it’ll depend on you… get what I mean?”

The butler smiles suggestively, so I respond with the same expression.

“Then… perhaps midnight, sir. In front of the large tree in the garden.”

“Yeah, I’ll wait. Name’s Dario. Remember it.”

Then he nods and returns to the door. I smile.

I never said I would actually be there, after all.

 

“Letty, what were you talking about with that butler?”

“He seems rather idle, so I asked him to keep watch on the garden until morning.”

“R-Really…?”

Really, really.

We head to milady’s room to take our rest. Quite deep inside the castle, I must say. There hadn’t been much attention paid to this area, it seems, as I find dust still remaining on the window frames of the hallways here.

“This is my room.”

We arrive to a room to the north side. I open the door… and then quietly close it again.

“…Letty?”

“Please wait a moment, milady. I will air the room out first.”

“Y-yeah…”

I smile a saccharine sweet smile at her. She nods, looking uncomfortable.

As a maid, it goes against every fiber of my being to see that her room has not been cleaned at all, even if she rarely returns. Furthermore, I am quite sure milady does not have a hobby of collecting filthy bookcases and boxes of empty bottles.

“I suppose there is no other choice.”

I enter the dark room alone and unleash my Maid Cleaning Technique. Anything not needed is returned to where they belong. Like Mia’s room, for example.

“Milady, please enter.”

“Eh? You’re already done?”

If I took more than three minutes just to do this little bit of cleaning, that horror—ahem, the most kind Maid Chief would reprimand me.

Brrr. I still get nightmares sometimes.

“…wow.” Milady exclaims in amazement.

Everything unnecessary has been removed. All the sheets and curtains have been replaced with brand-new, adorably-patterned fabric. Mainly from Mia’s room.

They have been dyed as well. Nobody will ever find out.

 

“Well then, good night, milady.”

“…but where will you sleep?”

“I can find a place.”

Like on the ceiling, for example.

“You can’t just sleep anywhere! We can share a bed for today. It should be big enough for two, and, umm… you’re my friend anyway…”

“Milady…”

Milady is looking bashful like a little girl going to her first sleepover with friends. How cute.

“Don’t worry, milady, I will be certain to take responsibility.”

“What responsibility?!”

 

*

 

The night is peaceful, and I enjoy myself with milady’s squishy arms until morning comes.

That said, it is still dark outside. Milady and I walk, our steps carrying us through a garden still glistening with dewdrops.

“Over here.”

“Yes, milady.”

In a corner of the garden is the resting place for lady Kyria, birth mother to milady Sharon. The grave is a simple thing, just a stone slab carved with words, but well-tended to.

“May I give my prayers as well, milady?”

“I don’t mind.”

I place the flowers we’ve brought on the gravestone. As we mourn, I hear faint sounds of footsteps on grass behind us.

“…lady Sharon.”

“Franz…”

An old man wearing a gardener’s attire walks toward us and stops, kneeling in front of milady.

“My utmost apologies. This is all I could do for lady Kyria…”

“No, Franz, you’ve done more than enough. Thank you for protecting her grave.”

 

As milady tells me later, this old man used to be a butler working at this mansion. After he retired, he continued to protect lady Kyria’s resting place as a gardener.

 

“Young miss, might you be lady Sharon’s attendant?”

“Yes, sir Franz. Lady Sharon has allowed me to be in her service. My name is Fleurety.”

“Oh, I’m just an old man, don’t bother with the ‘sir’.”

“Letty is my friend, too.” Milady cheerfully interjects. Franz watches her with the kindly eyes of a grandfather.

But the peaceful air is then suddenly broken.

 

“You! Why didn’t you come?!”

“My, my, such dark shades around your eyes. Did you not sleep well?”

The intruder is, of course, that young butler Dario. I wonder what he has been doing here so early in the morning.

“Stop playing the fool, girl, I’ve been waiting all this time under the tree—”

“Indeed. Thank you for watching over the garden.”

“YOU—”

 

I truly appreciate it. His lack of commitment to his work to instead laze about in the garden had afforded me the opportunity to infiltrate the marquis’ room, after I confirmed that milady had fallen asleep.

From the ceiling, I saw that the marquis was a timid-looking man who showed no signs of waking up any time soon. I decided to check on him by injecting several types of medicine, and I confirmed the faint presence of poison.

My own medicine was much stronger and had subsequently sent him into a coma, but it didn’t matter. He didn’t seem like the kind of man who could stand against that woman anyway, even if he was awake.

 

“Hold it, Dario.”

“…Mia.”

The second intruder is Mia, the rotten maid. Dario stopped just as he was about to lose his composure.

I step in front of milady and smile at her.

“Miss Mia, how may I help you?”

“I have business with lady Sharon! Move!” She growls, her face haggard.

“My, you look quite tired. Did you stay up all night?”

“S-Shut up!”

 

All the garbage in milady’s room had been carried to Mia’s, but I thought just piling it up wouldn’t be interesting, so I set them up as an interlinked mass. Pulling one thing out would make an entirely different thing fall apart.

It would actually be rather simple to clean if she intentionally triggered all the traps to break it apart, but considering her fatigue, it was likely that Mia hadn’t done that. She probably took until morning to clean it up bit by bit.

 

“You did that, didn’t you?!”

“My, do you have evidence? I am also searching for evidence to find out where most of milady’s allowance had gone to.” I say, staring into her eyes. Mia flinches.

“…lady Sharon and you, go to the dining hall immediately. The madam is waiting.”

“Understood.”

I wave at her, smiling. Mia grinds her teeth, giving me a glare that is shared by Dario. She drags him away.

Milady is silent as she looks at me with open-mouthed dumbfoundedness, while Franz just nods at me, seemingly impressed.

 

By the way, before we leave, I also secretly decorate lady Kyria’s grave with some magitech neon lights and disco balls.

 

*

 

I follow milady as we enter the dining hall. Gidel, Yohanne, and miss Akiru are already seated, taking bites of what look like sausages and potatoes as their breakfast.

And since milady doesn’t have her portion — obviously — I give her a plate full of fluffy pancakes with judicious syrup and scoops of ice cream. Miss Akiru looks at me with obvious irritation.

My, does she want some? I don’t mind as long as she asks. No guarantees it wouldn’t earn her the ire of the harpy nearby though.

 

After the stepmother finishes her pickled greens, she glares at milady and opens her mouth.

“Sharon… I have something to say.”

“…what is it?”

Milady turns stony-faced again. It cannot be helped. She has the heart of a rabbit, after all.

After the stepmother spare me a glance as a warning, she airily waves Dario over. He brings to her some sort of document.

“I see that you haven’t had the best reputation at the academy. Are you aware that as a fiancee candidate to his Highness, you have brought disgrace to the house of Michel?”

“…his Highness Joel has permitted me to have Letty as an attendant.”

“The problem is how the other nobles see it. With all that has transpired, I’ve come to believe that you are not fit of the name Michel.”

“Madam Gidel?! What about Father?!”

“My husband agrees. He has woken up, though still bedridden due to fatigue, and I have asked for his thoughts this morning.”

“It cannot be… Father…”

 

My, how strange that Gidel could talk to him when he was supposed to be comatose due to my ‘medicine’.

Milady is a kind girl. She has always endured, tolerating everything that had been done to her because she does not wish for conflict. She still wishes for peace with her stepmother, even as wicked as the woman is, and her younger brother, even when he shares only half of her blood.

From my research, I understood that in this country, the family is generally inherited by the son. In case the daughter is the older sibling, then she would be relinquishing her claim to her younger brother in order to keep up the tradition. It is how things work according to the letter of the law, at least.

Milady intends to let Yohanne inherit the house. Yet it does nothing to curb Gidel’s fear of her, of the daughter of the Michel marquis’ first wife… though I would say that the real reason is because Gidel hadn’t exactly been on the right side of the law with her dealings, really.

 

“‘Lady Sharon, please admit your crime. I and Sir Yohanne will forgive you.’”

Miss Akiru says, suddenly and without even a hint of emotion in her voice, as though she is reading from a script.

“Miss Akiru… you are far too kind. Would you allow me to stay by your side forevermore?”

“My, sir Yohanne…”

 

What is this farce? They say love is blind, but does love also makes you deaf? I am astonished that Yohanne could say that after hearing Akiru’s bland delivery.

…or is something railroading him?

Well then, never let it be said that Fleurety the maid cannot read the mood.

 

“Then it would be wonderful if we can witness the proof of their love, wouldn’t it?”

I say. Surprisingly, everyone looks at me as though I just spoke another language.

“W-What are you…”

Miss Akiru stutters like an actress who has no idea how to ad-lib. I explain.

“Nobles have a duty to bring back dungeon items for the country. While asking servants to do it in one’s stead is all fine and good, I am sure that nobody wishes to be the target of rumors among nobles, saying that one is nothing more than a child of a concubine. And what better way to silence them than to enter the dungeon oneself and take back something worthy?”

 

“SOMEBODY SHUT THAT MAID UP!!!” Gidel screeches.

Her maids rush at me. I take out a few cupcakes, waving them in front of the maids’ eyes, and I throw them far away.

“They are anti-aging cupcakes.” I say.

“”AAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!””

 

As the ravenous wolves chase after their prey, I turn back to Yohanne.

“As lacking in achievements as you are, sir Yohanne, I believe it may be difficult to gain lady Akiru’s hand in marriage. If milady Sharon goes, she would certainly be able to gather a dungeon item fit for a true successor. Or… perhaps you do not have the confidence, sir?”

I tell him, filling my tone with provocation. His hackles rise as Yohanne shoots to his feet.

 

“Don’t underestimate me. I won’t lose to sister! I swear I’ll bring back a dungeon item!” He turns to milady. “Sister, this is a duel!”

 

…I did not think it would be this easy.

---

A/N: Here we see a maid who would pick a fight with the whole world for the sake of her mistress.

---

Previous Chapter | Index | Next Chapter

A/N: Warning: reading this chapter may cause high blood pressure. But don’t worry. The maid is here.

---

I put the spiked club back into my skirt and make way for milady. The noise of the gate has caused the house to be astir with panicked shouts of servants. Soldiers come pouring out from the guardhouse.

“Lady Sharon?!”

A call of surprise and recognition came from an older knight among them, yet the soldiers still raise their spears despite his words.

“Who do you think you’re pointing those to?” Milady answers them with dignity.

The aforementioned knight follows up with a shout. “What are you doing?! Lower your weapons, now!”

The soldiers hurriedly obey.

“Lady Sharon, what has happened here…?” The knight asks as he looks upon what remained of the gate. Milady gives him a cool glance.

“…Bardo. These soldiers have not had enough training. You are the security chief of our Michel house, and yet what have you been doing?”

“I have no excuses, lady Sharon!”

Bardo says, kneeling and bowing on the spot. Milady walks by him with poise and composure.

The servants, the soldiers, the knights — all attention is on milady, the target of their apprehension and their fear, their disdain and their scorn, their anger and hatred.

She still walks forward, undaunted.

 

Truly commendable, milady, although her heartbeats are quite elevated and her eyes are teary now. I’m aware that whenever she gets stressed, she would automatically turn stony-faced and her tone would get a lot colder.

She must have been very scared. I’ll give her a lap pillow and lots of headpats later.

Greetings, everyone. It is I, Fleurety, the maid who would be the happiest in the world if she is to be allowed to comfort her mistress so.

 

Anyway, things are worse than I thought. Most of them have eyes of hostility, and even the best of them are either only neutral or apathetic. The number of people with a favorable attitude to milady can be counted on one hand.

While that old knight named Bardo seems relatively decent, I don’t think I can expect much from him, considering the quality of the soldiers here.

 

“What is going on here? …Sister?! What have you done?!”

 

My, so the brother has also returned.

Yohanne immediately makes a face upon seeing milady. Behind him, that annoying harpy of an attending maid named Mia also shows herself.

“Lady Sharon, this is most disturbing. I would never have thought that a member of the Michel house could be so barbaric that she would vandalize the gates so.”

“T-That’s because these gate guards weren’t—”

“And now you blame it on others! Disgraceful! The repair cost shall be deducted from lady Sharon’s allowance, and—”

 

“My, miss Mia, might there have been a misunderstanding? Milady has done nothing.”

I say from behind milady as I break my concealment. All the servants jolt in shock upon hearing my voice.

 

“W-What, you again? Ill-mannered girl, has no one taught you to not interrupt others?!”

“Ah, my apologies. As I have just seen a servant doing the same to lady Sharon, daughter to a marquis, I have assumed that it is simply a family tradition. Was I mistaken?”

I smile, tilting my head in a display of puzzlement. Mia’s face goes through a gamut of colors.

“Y-You—”

“The gate guards there seemed to have been hard of hearing, so I knocked. I never thought the gates would fall apart so… it must have deteriorated quite a bit. Right?”

I turn to look at the gate guards who was playing their card game when we arrived. Their faces pale, their eyes pinned to the floor.

“That’s impossible! It—”

“Enough.”

Mia is stopped from launching into another tirade by Yohanne, who looks somewhat exasperated.

“It wouldn’t reflect well on our house to have a squabble here. Come in quick, sister. Father and mother are waiting. Follow me, Mia.”

“…tsk, understood. Soldiers, repair the gates!”

 

As Yohanne and Mia return back to the castle, the soldiers and servants get to work. Milady grasps my fingers with her own faintly-trembling hand.

“…Letty. Be careful, alright?”

“Yes, milady, I shall take proper care. Please do not worry.”

I give her a reassuring smile. Her shivering stops, and she moves an inch closer to me.

She’s like a puppy. So cute.

 

*

 

“Lady Sharon, please go to the dining hall. The master and madam are waiting.”

“Understood.”

The maid immediately walks away after she finished relaying her message, sparing not even a bow for milady.

 

“…has any maid in this house been trained, milady?”

“It’s fine, Letty, just let it be… it’s always been like this.”

Milady replies to my complaint with a wry smile of resignation. She truly doesn’t have any allies in this house, does she?

“Then let us depart, milady. I will be with you.”

“Yes, we shall.”

 

We seemed to have returned to the marquis’ castle at just the right time for dinner. A call came before we could even leave milady’s luggage in her room. Fortunately, all of it is inside the Bag of Holding that she entrusted me, so there was no problem.

How deplorable the servants of this house are.

 

Upon entering the dining hall, glares of daggers immediately make us their targets.

“My, Sharon. I never thought you could be so shameless as to show your face here again, after all that.”

The voice is of a caked-faced old hag… ahem, I mean, a lady with a generous application of makeup. The blonde-haired woman is sitting at the head of the table.

How strange. Why is she in that seat?

“…madam Gidel, why are you sitting there? It should be Father’s seat.”

“My dear husband suddenly fell ill and is taking a rest. How terrible he must feel, to have such a dreadful girl as a daughter. Did you know? Just hearing that you’re back was already enough to make him faint.”

“I…”

Milady bites her lips and says no more.

“Father has been most kind! He has allowed Mother to take charge of the house’s affairs, as well as letting her have the seat!” Says Yohanne as he sits next to Gidel, sounding as though it was all his achievements.

“Take your seat, Sharon. We will leave the admonishment for later. The chef has had to make your own portion, seeing as you’ve returned much too late in the day. You’d best be grateful.” Gidel says.

“…I’m sorry. I give my thanks to the chef.” Milady quietly replies.

 

The maid in the room guides milady to the lowest seat, despite the fact that she should be sitting higher up than Yohanne.

A glare prickles my sense, and I turn to look. My, is that not miss Akiru sitting next to Yohanne? Milady notices her too, and she gives voice to her question.

“Excuse me, I would ask about lady Akiru…”

“Miss Akiru has accompanied Yohanne home as his friend, and I must say, she is such a wonderful young lady. Aah, if only I can have a daughter like her… Akiru, getting used to an entirely new world must have been hard on you. Feel free to think of our house as your new family, and I your mother.” Gidel says, smiling kindly at her.

“My, madam Gidel! I would be most happy to!”

Miss Akiru replies with a beaming smile. Yohanne and the servants look upon the scene in joy and contentment.

 

“Lady Sharon, dinner is here.”

The maid before slams a dish of food down in front of milady.

Honestly, calling it ‘food’ would be an offense to cooks everywhere. The plate is full of worm-eaten greens that, on a closer look, still have the live insects inside, as well as dirt and even pieces of gravel. I see Mia standing behind Yohanne and sneering.

As I expected, even milady is shocked into silence. Gidel sees her and speaks, sounding absolutely delighted.

“It is all that the chef could make on such short notice. Eat, Sharon. I will not hear of any selfishness.”

“…yes.”

Milady whispers as she takes utensils in hand.

 

“Milady, please refrain.”

I gently stop her before she could reach for the food, and I take the plate.

“L-Letty?”

“Who are you?! I have never seen a maid such as you! Know your place!” Gidel shrieks. Apparently she hasn’t heard of me through Yohanne.

With the plate on my hand, I guilelessly smile at her.

“My apologies. I am Fleurety, exclusive maid of lady Sharon. As I do not work for the Michel family, I am not required to follow your order.”

“Wha-?! Sharon, what did you do this time?!”

“My, my, I would have thought a noble lady would be more graceful. Now, I shall take the liberty to have a taste of this dish.”

“Impudent girl! Are you accusing us of poisoning the food?!”

“I have only said that I would ‘have a taste’, madam, not ‘testing it for poison’. It seems the people of this mansion shares the same hearing impairment.”

 

I borrow the utensils from milady’s lithe hands. With a single mouthful, I clean the plate.

Hmm, quite crunchy, these pebbles. Aside from the sounds of my eating, the room is absolutely silent. Everyone’s faces pale.

 

“Freshness, ingredients, cooking method, all are not to milady’s taste.” I turn to her. “May I prepare your dinner, milady?”

It takes a few moments for her to start speaking. “…yes.”

“Then, please enjoy.”

I place in front of her the food that I have prepared beforehand as insurance.

“It is milady’s favorite: omelette rice with the fluffiest eggs.”

I slice apart the omelette, releasing a flow of creamy gold to cover the rice and a mellow fragrance of butter. As the aroma of chicken rice, egg, and butter spread across the room, I hear somebody gulping.

“Instead of demi-glace sauce, today the topping will be the veeery sweet kind of ketchup that milady likes so much.”

With the ketchup, I draw a huge heart symbol on the dish. I make the same symbol with my fingers near my chest, and I look to lady Sharon.

“Together with me, milady: ‘Tasty, tasty, moe moe kyun!’”

“Umm, ‘tasty, tasty’?”

“‘I’m a lucky man. I’m thankful for everything that led me to this point… that led me to you!!’”

“‘I’m a lucky man’… wait, what?!”

 

My? How strange. This was what the Maid Chief had taught me to do whenever a maid makes omelette rice. Have I made a mistake somewhere?

 

“Open up, milady. Aaaa—”

“Eh? …aaaa—”

Milady reflexively follows my lead, her brain not having rebooted yet, and I feed her with a spoonful of omelette rice. She chews like a little baby bird being fed her first meal.

“So good…!”

“I am glad, milady.”

 

As I continue my happy feeding time with milady, miss Akiru is the first to regain her senses. She asks.

“…Kamishiro… what is that?”

“This wonderful dish has been made from the meat and eggs of birds-of-paradise, as well as tomatoes that I have harvested from the forest of spirits.”

“Letty?! You used monster ingredients again!” Milady says, sounding scandalized.

“They are ingredients that I am certain milady would not be opposed to. Besides, milady’s every meal until now have always been made from some form of monster ingredients.”

“What?!”

 

“Monster meats?! They’re almost poisonous, aren’t they?!”

Hearing the word ‘monster’, Yohanne immediately jumps up and shouts. I chuckle and take out an ancient-looking journal.

“It is, in fact, not so. An elf summoned several centuries ago had left behind this journal, which has since been stored in the academy’s library.”

 

Humans, or living beings in general, would become more powerful by absorbing mana.

Overconsumption of mana would cause flora and fauna, lifeforms lacking in willpower, to be ‘monsterized’. The human body, however, would only find monster meat rich in mana to have an overwhelming taste and would respond with a gastric response as a way to prevent itself from absorbing too much mana.

But an elf has done research into the phenomenon, and they have written as follows.

If the taste and density of mana inside monster ingredients can be reduced down to a level that the human palate can find enjoyable, and if a person continues to consume such ingredients, then over time, his or her body would slowly gain the physical characteristics of elves.

It seemed the elf’s endeavor had been to help their Partner live longer.

 

“The results of the research had led to some success in the removal of mana from certain monster ingredients, which was the origin of several delicacies we know of today. However, the food is still expensive, and the taste remains rather difficult to enjoy.”

“But what about this…?”

Milady says, staring at the omelette rice I made that she has tasted.

“Indeed. I have succeeded in improving the taste. Lady Sharon, I expect you will find yourself quite slow to age, as well as living relatively longer than most other people.”

“Eeeh?!”

Milady begins to pull at her cheeks in her surprise. Recently, her skin has begun to be as smooth and bouncy as that of a baby’s.

 

“Y-You, maid girl! Make me that dish!”

Gidel screeches with bloodshot eyes. And not just her, those among the female servants who are over a certain age are also looking over here with eyes full of desire.

As I pinch my long skirt and drop into a graceful bow, I give them a beaming smile.

 

“My apologies. I work for lady Sharon and her only.”

---

Previous Chapter | Index | Next Chapter

Akiru was born into a family that had been running a brewery for generations. Their sake was famous as a local specialty, so Akiru had wanted for nothing as she grew up. She knew it, too.

Then her life took a turn once she entered middle school.

Her earlier education had been a private primary school in a large city. She had spent her time as carefree as could be, playing with friends from affluent families and taking lessons in the arts. She had thought that her life would continue like this, that she would coast along through middle to high school to enter an affiliated university, but her grandfather, the chief brewer and president of the company at the time, had decided that she should move back to their hometown for her education.

 

While it was only a thirty-minutes car ride from the city, to Akiru, the town might as well be in the middle of nowhere. No nearby trendy cafes, nor shopping malls that she could visit on the way home from school with her friends. Furthermore, the public middle school she would be attending didn’t even have enough students to fill a single class for each of its years. Coming from an academy that expected actual decorum out of its students, it was quite a shock to Akiru.

 

Still, it didn’t mean everything was terrible.

The class had only seventeen students, yet so many of them were good-looking people that it almost felt like they had been hand-picked.

And of particular note were Sei and Hao, two male students who looked more than handsome enough to be models. The first time she saw them, even her own heart began to race despite herself.

It was no romantic love. It was the kind of love a fan had for her idol. Regardless, it didn’t change the fact to Akiru, she might as well have found an oasis in the middle of a desert.

With the social skills that she had gained in her earlier years of living among aristocrats, she smoothly put on her sheep’s clothing and mingled with the class as though she had always belonged.

Sei was the so-called ‘honor student’ type, the kind Akiru had often seen in her private primary school, but Hao, a sporty and roguish boy, was exotic to her. She began to act the part of an elegant princess to try to attract his attention. She had been certain, had been convinced that no country boy could resist a lady such as her.

Yet Akiru’s plan had fallen through just because of one particular girl.

 

It was a half-Japanese girl who was conscious of her height, of her unusually-colored eyes, of all the things that made her different from others, and so she always hung her head low, hid her eyes, and talked to nobody else in the class.

And then, the two male idols of the class began to pay attention to her.

Perhaps they hadn’t been interested in her in that way; perhaps they were just being kind. Still, it rubbed Akiru the wrong way. She hated that they had ignored her in favor of the other girl.

So she began her subtle arrangements in order to incite the three overt bullies that also shared her displeasure. She nudged their thoughts and guided their hands to do the dirty deeds, while her own stayed clean.

She hadn’t done it because of any grand reason.

If there was one to speak of, then perhaps she had simply wanted an outlet for her stress, for the frustrations that she had been enduring ever since she came to this town.

 

The new status quo continued for more than a year. Then one day, all of the class, including Akiru, was summoned into another world.

While some of the more delusional boys were exhilarated, thinking it was a Hero Summoning, Akiru immediately realized what the world around her was.

 

It was the world of the online otome game: Light, Darkness, and Love Online 2 – The Millefeuille of Love.

The country’s name, the people’s names, the situation, they were all extremely similar to the game’s.

 

Akiru’s father had thought his daughter unfortunate when she was made to go to a public middle school, so he spoiled her. He gave her everything she wanted. Among them, she found this game.

When asked, her father had said that he never remembered buying the game. They soon put it out of their minds, however.

In the game, other than the main heroine, the playable characters also included the middle-school students who had been summoned from Earth. Believing that this truly was the world of Light, Darkness, and Love Online 2 – The Millefeuille of Love, Akiru was delighted.

Especially when she thought there was a chance she could meet a certain ‘capture’ character from the game.

 

Yohanne de Michel, fourteen years old. Son of a marquis. A fourth-year student at the magic academy. Brother of a different mother to Sharon, one of the villainesses, as well as the character to fill the ‘cute little boy’ spot of the game’s casting.

Yohanne was born from a union of true love between the marquis and a lady of a count’s family. Fearing that the boy might be harmed by the marquis’ legal wife and Sharon, the marquis had hidden him away.

He grew up being told by his mother about his sister, Sharon, and her unbecoming conduct as a noble. And once he heard that that very same sister was now a fiancee candidate to prince Joel, he was troubled.

The player character would lend him an ear and listen to his worries, as well as his wishes to prevent his sister from committing any more misdeeds. They would be given the evidence by his mother, and upon bringing Sharon’s crimes to light, they would fulfill the condition to have Yohanne as their boyfriend.

Yohanne was Akiru’s absolute favorite character. Time after time, she won against her rivals in the online game to capture his heart.

Perhaps her interest in Hao had been nothing more than a way to live out her fantasy in real life. She saw innocent Yohanne in him, and she wanted to have for herself the mischievous smile that Yohanne made whenever he was alone with the player character.

 

She was sure that some of her classmates were also aware of the game. There was even a possibility that the main heroine, the viscount’s daughter, would become her enemy.

So Akiru was careful. She wasn’t such an idiot that she would reveal what she knew. In the end, her meticulous scheme to gain Yohanne’s affection was successful: she had been invited to meet his family.

And yet…

 

“…is she going to be in my way again?”

 

***

 

What a beautiful day today. Warm sun, cool wind, and even a bit of chilling malice off in the distance. So nice.

Greetings, everyone. It is me, Fleurety, the eternal guardian of milady’s blessed bosom.

 

“Milady, there are several letters addressed to you in the dorm’s mailbox.”

It is while milady is taking happy nibbles of her snack (kouign-amann and a cup of extra-sweet milk tea) that I brought her the news.

“…eh?” She blinks her doe-eyes in surprise.

While important correspondence between nobles are normally handed directly to the receiver, even noble students would have to follow the rules as long as they live in the dorm.

It is always impressive to see that milady continues to be the uncontested Queen of Loners whenever I check her mailbox. It still looks brand-new even now, since even her family don’t write to her.

 

“Letty… I know you just had another unflattering thought.”

“I was just thinking that your arms these days have gotten somewhat plump, milady.”

“T-That’s because you feed me sweet stuff all the time!”

Milady says that, yet she still continues to munch on the pastry like a little hamster. So cute.

“Do not worry, milady, it is necessary nutrition. You’re still perfectly slim.” I reply, smiling sweetly to her.

“Umm, yes, of course I am!”

She radiates relief. She then takes another sip of the cup of milk tea that has so much sugar in it, the liquid is almost molasses now.

I don’t drink that stuff. I’ll get fat.

“Alright, Letty, give me the summary.”

“Then I shall begin with your right arm’s plumpiness—”

“I’m talking about the letters!”

I shall have to check them out later in the bath.

 

That aside, the reason why such a loner as milady got letters is because of the reveal of her true beauty yesterday. As a result, there has been a deluge of invitations from delusional buffoons who thought they had a chance with milady.

 

“Let’s see… then I believe the most important among them is his Highness Joel’s invitation to a meal.”

“His Highness…?”

Milady’s eyes bulge in surprise. It seems that whatever the prince tried to say yesterday, it wasn’t simply a moment’s fancy.

Such a wretched man, he is. He used to pay not a hint of attention to milady Sharon, despite the fact that she was supposed to be one of his fiancee candidates. And now that she has gotten just a bit prettier, he shows his true colors.

“All the same, his is not an invitation milady can ignore. I shall arrange your schedule.”

“That’s fine. Anything else important?”

I sort through the letters. Rabbles and riffraffs… I’ll investigate their names later… my, what is this?

“There is an invitation to a tea party from the young lady of a viscount. Are you acquainted with her, milady?”

The invitation is from lady Clarice, one of the people in my class group. It seems I am also invited.

“…we haven’t really talked, but I also don’t remember her ever be rude to me. Why did she send an invitation?”

“Then shall I propose that milady accepts, with the condition that I am also allowed to attend?”

“Yeah, that’s fine… thanks.”

Milady seems to be relieved that I will be with her. I see her hands fidgeting in apparent bashfulness.

 

“Well then, next is…”

I come to one particular letter. The moment I see it, I twist my body in a perfect half-circle and hurl the letter with all my strength, sending it into the trash can in a corner of the room.

“There is nothing else notable, milady.”

“No no no hold on I saw that! That was a letter from my family, wasn’t it?!”

Tsk. So she noticed.

I reluctantly, begrudgingly pick up the letter that has the insignia of the Michel marquis family, pinching it with two of my fingers and holding it as far away from me as possible, and I give it to milady. She wryly smiles.

“I understand how you feel, I really do. But moderate yourself.”

“My sincere apologies.”

What a blunder. As a maid to milady, I have made a grave mistake.

I bow in sincere remorse. Milady lightly pats my head and opens the envelope.

Upon giving the contents a glance, her mood visibly sours. See, this is why I didn’t want her to see it…

 

The vermins that have been ignoring her for years now suddenly sent a letter.

A little over four years, to be precise, as milady entered this magic academy when she was ten years old. In all that time, she only returned home twice. Understandable — while this academy isn’t exactly the best environment, it is still far more desirable than the compost bin that is her home.

They never even gave her the support that they should have, much less a letter. What do they want now?

 

“What was the contents, milady?”

Normally it wouldn’t be a question a simple maid should ever ask, but this is an exception.

“…they told me they’ve heard of my ‘wrongdoings’ from Yohanne, and they want me to return right away to explain myself.”

“The younger brother again?”

And I suppose the ‘wrongdoing’ is that I’d become milady’s Partner? Such small ***** they have.

“Just as well that his Highness Joel’s invitation has arrived at the same time. Let us refuse, milady.”

“…no, Letty. I can’t run away forever. Besides, they might just let loose some unsavory rumors if I continue to ignore them.”

Milady sounds like she’s speaking from experience.

“I understand. May I just say that it doesn’t make it any less aggravating, however.”

Hearing my frank admission, milady snorts.

“But this may be a good chance, too. I… umm… I have you with me now…”

She says, smiling bashfully. Precious! Too precious!

“Milady…”

Overcome with emotion, I instantly kneel in front of her and speak my vows once more.

“I, Fleurety, hereby solemnly swear that with my Dynamite Punch, the rivers will run red with the blood of all who wishes to bring harm upon milady!”

“I never asked for that!”

 

*

 

The next morning, after we have sent in our notice of absent to the academy, we leave for milady’s home.

“I never thought that strict dorm mother would actually lend us her personal horse carriage…”

“She was very glad to help us, milady.”

 

The dorm mother is an unmarried lady in her forties who is very harsh with the dorm’s girls, but I’m sure she’s a kind woman deep down. She was grumbling about milady under her breath when she first heard we would be absent, but once she noticed my kind gaze, she paled and finished doing our formalities in no time at all.

See, isn’t she such a considerate person? She should rest assured, I won’t tell anyone about her sneaking into town and buying young boys to accompany her.

 

“Then I shall take the liberty to be the driver.”

“Can you handle horses, Letty?”

The horse looked strangely scared of me when we first got on the carriage, but it soon turned obedient after some persuasion.

To reach the territory of the Michel marquis, it generally takes a day and a half in a carriage. But as we left early in the morning and the horse has been very enthusiastic, we arrive during the evening of the same day.

The energy drink made from monster blood that I gave it along the way has worked well, it seemed.

 

“…here we are, Letty.”

“I see…”

The Michel marquis’ mansion looks less a mansion and more like a small castle. Painted by the light of the setting sun, the stone almost seems like it’s been drenched in blood.

It looks amazing.

I stop the carriage in front of the gate. Despite calling us here, there isn’t anyone there to welcome us. Not even the gate guards.

“I am Sharon, and I have returned. Open the gates!”

She calls out, her clear voice reverberating through the air. On the other side of the gate, I can see some people who look like the security staff playing cards. They look up in surprise upon hearing her voice… and then return to their game.

“You, open the gates now! I am—”

“Milady, allow me.”

We can just return home, but that would mean milady’s determination would go to waste. I decide to take things into my own hands.

“Milady, whenever we visit someone, we should first knock.”

“…eh?”

Milady’s eyes bulge as she sees me taking out Orc Killer EX.

 

Orc Killer EX is simply Orc Killer with its ball end coated in a kind of metal that is as heavy as depleted uranium.

The metal had been thought as a cursed item that brought its owner toward a gradual and inevitable death. It had been languishing in a corner, and it was why I got it at a fraction of the price.

I can still hear some ghastly moaning coming from the weapon in my hand even now. The coating took really well, if I do say so myself.

 

“Hello, and excuse us.”

I say, at the same time swinging the spiked club. The gates made out of magic iron crumple like wet paper.

Dust billows around us. Cards fall from the stupefied gate guards’ hands. I give them a smile then turn to milady, who looks at me in open-mouth shock.

“The gate must have deteriorated quite a bit. Come, milady.”

“…yeah… yeah.”

 

And so it is that we return to milady’s home without any problems.

---

Previous Chapter | Index | Next Chapter

It is now later in the day, after milady, having become even more beautiful thanks to all the love and devotion that I had showered her, has finished reinventing herself to the class. She is now having a reunion with her younger brother, a member of the family that has been giving her the cold shoulder.

Can lady Sharon display the dignity of an elder sister? Let us see.

 

“Sister, it has been some time. You look… different.”

“Truly? I, as well, am relieved to see that you are in good health.”

The younger brother named Yohanne seems to be honestly surprised. On the other hand, milady is looking very much stone-faced. No wonder she gets misunderstood all the time, but that doesn’t make her any less cute, any less lovely.

Yohanne is a boy with blond hair and a face that makes me think he’s going to be kidnapped by some older woman sooner or later. He doesn’t look very similar to milady; he shares her violet eyes at most, I suppose.

Of the two ladies standing behind him, the one who looks like his personal maid is glaring at me. Quite galling. Do you want to have a go? Do you?

“Yet that selfish part of yours hasn’t changed at all, sister, deciding a Partner on your own like that. Have you no consideration for his Highness Joel?”

“I-I’m not being selfish! As a student of the academy, it is a fully justified Partnership—”

“Aren’t you his Highness’s fiancee candidate, sister? Did you not think that perhaps you should wait until his Highness decided on his own Partner? Really, I have to wonder why someone like you was chosen. Stop bringing disgrace to our family.”

…hmm, where did I put my Orc Killer…

“…Letty.”

Noticing my indignation, milady whispers, her hand grasping my own.

…aah, so soft, so smooth…

Understood. If lady Sharon wishes to tolerate them, then as her maid, it shan’t be my place to make a move before she does.

Seeing milady’s lack of resistance, Yohanne begins to get cocky. He looks at me and spits out.

“And just who is that maid? Did you hire her? If you have the money, why not pay me what you owe?”

Unbidden, Milady and I look at each other. It seems that being of a different academic grade, Yohanne hasn’t heard that I’ve become milady’s maid.

 

“Umm, Yohanne, she’s…”

“Ah, my apologies, lady Akiru. Family matters or not, I have still done you a disservice. Were you bored?”

“No… umm…”

The other girl standing behind Yohanne is Akiru, one of the summoned middle-school students from Earth. She has long, black hair, and quite a graceful air about her. According to my memories, she was from a well-to-do family.

“…Kamishiro. It’s… been a while, I guess?”

“My, my, what strange happenstance that we would meet here.”

 

I remember her, of course. I remember what she did to me.

 

“Oh, do you two know each other?”

“Umm, yes…”

“I am acquainted with her.” I say, guilelessly. The young miss Akiru faintly frown.

We’re not friends, Akiru. You know that, don’t you?

“Lady Akiru is one of the Partner candidates of this year’s summoning. I saw that she wasn’t familiar with this academy, and so I have offered to be her guide.”

“Yes, and for that I am truly grateful. Yohanne has been most kind to me.”

“Hahahah, it is but a matter of course! How can I leave such a noble and lovely lady to fend for herself?!”

They are smiling at each other now, each looking not at all dissatisfied with the other. Are they going to start getting hearts in their eyes? Would they even… hold hands?

Maybe I should prepare some pink curtains.

 

“Yohanne! She is a Partner candidate, what do you think you’re doing?! Have you forgotten your place?!”

As well-versed in common sense as she is, it is no wonder that milady is upset. Despite saying all that to his sister and being of a different school year that has nothing to do with the Partnership ritual, that very same Yohanne is now being intimate with a Partner candidate. I smell a scandal incoming.

“…can you shut up, sister? I’m just taking care of them since you haven’t. Whoever you chose to be your Partner candidate, I’m sure you did it by shouting them down like you did to me just now, didn’t you? And when all Partner candidates inevitably reject you, there’s going to be one extra person.”

“No, you’re wrong! Letty and I—”

“Hey, that maid over there. My sister forced you to serve her, right? Want me to lend a hand? Ah, yes, as you and lady Akiru already knew each other, you can be her maid. I’ll pay you double the wage.”

“Y-Yohanne!” Akiru says, shocked by Yohanne’s incredibly idiocy.

Double, you say? Even your whole life isn’t worth that much.

 

“Please wait a moment, young master Yohanne.”

Right then, the attending maid behind Yohanne walks forward.

She is a woman around twenty years of age, with the same kind of blonde hair as Yohanne. I have heard that he has inherited the color from his mother, and also that when the woman entered milady’s family, many of her relatives had also been hired. This maid might be one of them.

“It would not be prudent to have her as lady Akiru’s maid right away when we don’t even know who she is, nor which ditch lady Sharon had picked her from.”

“Then what do you suggest, Mia?”

“If I may propose, she should first receive a full education as a servant of the Michel house. This lowly maid, Mia, shall take responsibility and beat her into shape.”

So-called Mia says, smirking at me. I see, this is how they’ve been removing milady’s allies.

“Yohanne, how dare you?! What gives you the right?!”

“Don’t you owe me, sister? Mia, how much is her debt?”

The filths just ignored milady entirely.

“Yes, young master. Lady Sharon has borrowed about three gold coins…”

Mia takes out what looks like a contract.

“…excuse me, two gold coins and eight silver coins. My apologies. Even as a servant of a marquis family, being so vague would have earned me ridicule. However, including interest, lady Sharon would be required to pay back thirty gold coins.”

I thrust a sack full of gold coins into her hand, at the same time snatching away the contract.

“W-What are you doing! Return it!”

“So the exact amount is written here, I see. You won’t be needing this anymore.”

Mia stretches out her hand with a painful-looking grimace, her wrist seemingly hurt. I rot the contract — magical too, it looks like — and turn it into dust in an instant, right in front of her eyes.

“Eep!”

Mia frantically jerks her arm away as though she was just about to touch acid. How rude. My decomposition poison is made from all-natural ingredients. It won’t take effect right away.

That aside, I am quite amazed that a magical contract is involved in an agreement between siblings. I wonder how degenerate one must be that they would do such a thing. And not only that, there is even a rather nasty curse in case of a breach of contract.

 

“…w-who are you?”

Yohanne glares at me in surprise and wariness.

“Ah, my greetings to sir Yohanne, younger brother of my esteemed lady. I am lady Sharon’s Partner, and my name is Fleurety.”

I pinch the long skirt of my maid uniform and perform a perfect curtsey, one more elegant than any noble and yet would still not overshadow lady Sharon.

“Wha…” Yohanne turns to miss Akiru in absolute disbelief. “Her?!”

“…yes, she is.”

Akiru reluctantly, quietly nods.

 

“Letty!”

“Lady Sharon, my apologies. I have not consulted you before using our funds.”

“No no, that’s fine. Are you hurt?”

Incredible. Milady hasn’t had a moment of hesitation as she ran to me, checking my hand after I decomposed the contract to see if I am wounded. Instead of the money, she worried for me.

I almost hugged her right there and then to give her headpats, but I control myself. A maid cannot do such a thing to her mistress.

“I am overflowing with happiness, milady. May I have some fun with you in the bath?”

“What in the world are you talking about?!”

 

“…s-sister’s Partner? How can it be? How can someone so arrogant as you… no, this is not right. You’ve brought nothing but trouble to our house, it’s impossible that a Partner could have chosen you! Even Karl has told me you’ve been trouble at the dungeon! He said he wouldn’t accept it!!!”

“Indeed, master Yohanne! Perhaps she might even be using some sort of forbidden magic to control her. Rest assured, maid, I shall bring you to your sense!”

 

I wonder if both the master and servant really believed it, or if they’re only doing this on purpose… well, I suppose that to Mia, an improvement in lady Sharon’s reputation would be quite inconvenient for her. It is no surprise she would act so.

I take a quiet step forward, standing in front of milady to cover for her.

“My, how disgraceful for a maid of a marquis house.” I say.

“Silent, girl. I will—”

“You will… what?”

Unable to hold myself back for much longer, I give Mia the widest grin I have, one only she can see. She freezes up.

…my, my, what an expression, Mia. It makes you look so… delicious…

 

“Hey, that’s enough.”

 

And just when it was getting good, I was interrupted.

“Karl!”

“Sir Karl…”

In contrast to Yohanne’s shiny-eyed excitement, milady whispers his name with a conflicted cast to her face.

Karl looks at the two and after a moment’s frown, he sighs deeply.

“And what is it now? A fight inside the school isn’t any better than a fight outside, you two.”

“There’s no way sister could have a Partner! She obviously forced her! Weren’t you opposed too, Karl?!”

“She is Sharon’s Partner, provisional ones as they may be, and it was Fleurety herself who made the choice. I no longer object.”

Indeed, indeed.

“But, but… I heard that sister has inconvenienced you in the dungeon, I was just trying to help you…”

Karl looks at lady Sharon for a single moment (trying his best to not let me into his field of vision) and turns back to Yohanne.

“…and since when have I asked for your help?” He says, his tone brooking no dissent.

“I-I’m sorry, Karl…”

Yohanne hangs his head like a scolded puppy.

It seems Yohanne very much likes Karl. From what I can see, he considers Karl as both a friend and a brother one year older to look up to.

Yet even as he was chastised so, Yohanne still sends glares at milady and me.

“…I still won’t accept it.”

“Master Yohanne!”

“Ah, Yohanne, wait up!”

With a parting bite, Yohanne quickly walks away. Mia and the young lady Akiru hastily follow… with the latter making a quiet tsk as she leaves, thinking that no one would notice.

Too bad for her. I did.

 

“…sir Karl, I apologize for my brother… as well as what happened the other day…”

“No, that’s already in the past. I don’t mind.” Karl says, yet at the same time his hip still instinctively flinches back, making him look a bit like a shrimp. Should I pretend not to have seen it?

“In that case, allow me to take my leave…”

“Wait, Sharon, just a moment!”

Karl says in a panic. Milady turns back in surprise.

“Y-yes!”

“Umm, back then, umm… I’m sorry.”

“…Karl…”

…what a strange atmosphere. What is this lout thinking, after all this time?

Still, being the exemplary maid that I am, I cannot interrupt their conversation. Ah, but is this not a good time for some music?

 

“It’s been a long time since we can talk like this, Sharon…”

“…yes… it is…”

 

Hmm, hmmhmm~

 

“…those days were nice. There was me, elder brother… and lady Kyria, too.”

“…yeah.”

 

Humm, humm, hohhumm~

 

“…I’d been a brat.”

“…eh?”

 

Hmmhohumm~

 

“…I’m sorry. Brother was an idiot, but me even more so.”

“No, Karl… so was I.”

 

Hmmhmmhmm~

 

“…S-Sharon, I…”

“Karl…?”

 

Lalalalaa~

 

“…”

“…”

The two suddenly go quiet. They slowly, stiffly turn their heads to look at the ceiling, their faces twitching.

 

“…Letty…”

“…what the hell are you doing…”

 

The wistful tune I hummed as I clung to the ceiling was not to their liking, it seems.

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