“Aaaargh—!”
The thought lasted only a moment. When the knights wrenched the sword free from the back of his hand, a raw scream tore out of him.
“B—blood loss! There’s massive blood loss! Bandages! Bandages, quickly!”
It was more agonizing pulling the blade out than it had been going in.
Duke Foss burst into tears like a child and threw a tantrum—but the knights paid him no attention whatsoever.
On the contrary—
“Duke Calypse has fallen! Move him immediately!”
“Yes, sir!”
As the saying goes, a crab’s arm bends inward. They were attending only to their own kingdom’s noble.
‘I’m going to be arrested like this? Is it really going to end here?’
Had King Arjen truly betrayed him?
If so.
If all the crimes were to be loaded onto his shoulders alone—if the full catalogue of House Foss’s atrocities were made public—
‘The spies alone, how many—no, forget that. The Creature frenzying, even—’
His complexion had gone entirely ashen by the time he finished counting.
Being arrested in the Kingdom of Frozen was not even the real problem.
If this became widely known, neither Frozen nor Doctia would take him in.
Of course they wouldn’t.
The end of a spy who failed their mission?
A quiet death that no one would ever know about.
And the end of the master of those spies, should he fail?
A death that would be known to everyone in the world.
A death of pure, complete disgrace.
“Aaaaaaaaagh! If you’re going to arrest me—arrest King Arjen too! King Arjen was a key architect of the Creature frenzying incident!”
Duke Foss’s screams filled the room, and through his mind flashed the faces of the nobles he had seen at the Kingdom of Frozen’s banquet. People who believed him to be a good man. People who trusted him. He watched their expressions twist and distort one by one.
No.
House Foss could not be destroyed like this. Even if he himself died, the next generation had to carry the family name forward.
“Ar—Arjen keeps Creatures inside the palace! He’s a madman illegally harboring Creatures!”
He thrashed in a frenzy even as his mind lost its grip on itself, forgetting the pain entirely—
“Enough. Knock him out.”
“Yes, sir.”
One of the knights sighed, then struck him sharply at the back of the neck.
Urk.
Duke Foss’s eyes closed—and just like that, he was dragged away to the royal palace of the Kingdom of Frozen.
* * *
Several hours before Duke Foss’s arrest. The Royal Palace of the Kingdom of Frozen.
‘Strange.’
Calypse, who had broken away from his conversation with Grace and gone out to observe the Creatures now spreading through every corner of the palace, furrowed his brow.
Creatures that were rarely seen even in the north had appeared in the very heart of the capital. That alone was peculiar enough—but what troubled him most was how they were moving.
Creatures were by nature the sort of creatures that would devour any living thing that moved.
And yet these Giant Orcs were doing nothing but defending against the knights’ attacks—not once striking back. More than that, their movements seemed to have a clear purpose. They appeared to be walking intently toward a specific destination.
Boom, boom—! The ground shook with each footfall of the Orcs that towered over three meters tall.
In Calypse’s experience, there was only one situation in which this happened.
That would be under Kyle’s command—
“Aisha is in danger.”
It was then. A white head of hair was thrust right in front of his face.
Kyle had appeared at exactly the right moment.
He had apparently already taken human form—dried blood was still smeared carelessly across his lips.
“Where is Aisha?”
“I don’t know either. That’s why I ordered the Orcs to find her. Some woman made me drink a strange potion.”
‘A potion.’
In Kyle’s guileless words lay the answer. It had to be House Foss’s doing.
“First of all—”
The problem was that he now had to explain the situation to Kyle.
Would this child actually be able to understand what he was saying?
‘Damn it all.’
He stood there with a hollow feeling, pressing his palm briefly over his dry face.
But he didn’t have even a moment to spare. And in this situation, the only person who would follow his orders and act on them properly was Kyle.
Calypse bent his knees until his eyes were level with the boy’s.
He found himself looking into Kyle’s round violet irises, which were staring back at him with bright, frank curiosity.
‘First things first—those eyes need to be covered.’
“Drink this.”
“This? Yuck. Isn’t this the same kind of potion that woman gave me?”
“It isn’t. Drink this and you’ll be able to save Aisha.”
“For real?”
“Yes. We don’t have time, so hurry up and drink—”
Whoosh—
Before Calypse even finished speaking, Kyle had already snatched the vial, squeezed his eyes shut, and drank it down. His expression made it abundantly clear the taste was horrific—but he swallowed every last drop without spilling a thing. His desire to find Aisha was that certain, that unconditional.
‘The kid’s a good one.’
Without quite meaning to, Calypse reached out and ruffled the white head roughly.
Presently the potion began to take effect in Kyle’s eyes. Calypse gripped his shoulder and spoke.
“You have a sharp nose, don’t you? There are a lot of people in the palace—but among them you need to find Lucas. Can you do that?”
“Lucas?”
“Yes. Or Knox, if Lucas isn’t there.”
“Ugh. I hate Knox. He makes me wear those weird Creature pajamas.”
“But we need to find Aisha, don’t we.”
“……!”
The eyes went wide again at the single word: Aisha.
“Okay. I’ll do it. What do I do then?”
* * *
Contrary to his concern, the Half-Fiend boy picked things up with remarkable speed.
Nod, nod. Bounce, bounce.
Kyle absorbed every word Calypse said without missing a single one, then sprinted straight for the annex. He wove through the crowd of nobles murmuring in fear, and spotted Knox far across the room.
“Knox!”
“…Kyle? Where is Lady Aisha?”
Knox turned at the voice and blinked in confusion.
Kyle burst out from between the tall people pressing around him and spoke without even stopping to catch his breath.
“Calypse told me to tell you. Calypse is going to Aisha now. And the plan proceeds as arranged.”
“…What?”
“He says the plan proceeds as arranged, so go to Grace and gather the knights. The place is wherever the Creatures are walking toward.”
“Wherever the Creatures are walking? Then these Creatures—”
“Yes. I called them. I ordered them to save Aisha.”
At the Half-Fiend’s straightforward statement, Knox was momentarily speechless.
Knox had been watching Kyle for some time now. The boy had extraordinary physical ability—but in terms of language and social function, he was essentially at zero. Bluntly put, he had simply been something of a disaster in that respect.
“…Good work. Now go find Lucas and stay with him.”
‘A little impressive, actually.’
With a rub of that white head that was almost identical to how Calypse had done it, Knox sprinted toward Grace.
“Your Majesty! Your Majesty!”
And Grace, having heard everything—
“Duke Foss did WHAT?! Is everything I just heard actually true?”
—without so much as a scream, blanched and immediately called for the royal knights. King Arjen, watching from beside her—
“How DARE Duke Foss kidnap a Krost child?! He even summoned Creatures?!”
—seized the moment as his opportunity and, pushing every crime he had shared in onto Duke Foss, ordered the knights to move on the location without delay.
Meanwhile.
The people who had been gathered in the annex without any explanation for what felt like a very long time were growing restless.
“Wh—what is the situation? What’s actually happening?”
“I don’t know. We followed Queen Consort Grace’s lead and came here, but…”
“We are going to be all right, aren’t we? We’re not about to die, are we?”
The fear gradually turned to anger and spread quickly.
“Who in the world brought Creatures to a royal banquet?! When I find out who it was, I’ll have his head and—”
“Marquess Tolly. Even in an emergency, please mind your words.”
“But the Marquess isn’t wrong. If you’re a citizen of the Kingdom of Frozen, everyone knows how dangerous Creatures are. So why are Creatures that belong in the north doing here?”
None of them knew that Aisha had been kidnapped.
The Creature frenzying incident had been reported to the public only as a natural disaster of unknown cause. So they assumed this too was another sudden Creature attack.
But.
“Kyaaaah—!”
At that moment, a noble lady at one side of the hall screamed.
Pale as a sheet, she pointed toward something with a shaking hand.
“There—there is a dead person over there!”
A dead person? Had a Creature gotten this far inside?
The crowd surged and retreated like a wave, murmuring and stumbling over itself—
“Ah—aaaah!”
A man who had been pushed out into the corridor fell backward screaming.
“Th—there’s a dead body here too!”
“Here as well!”
“Aaah! Here too!”
Those who had been pushed into the hallway came scrambling back inside in a panic, having found bodies at every turn.
“Good God… this banquet…”
A noblewoman who had been muttering to herself at the horror-film quality of it all fainted dead away.
In the chaos, Grace stepped forward through the crowd.
“Bring every one of the dead to me right now!”
Grace read the situation rapidly and had the bodies moved to one place.
Before long, she recognized a strange thing they all had in common.
Without exception, each corpse was frozen solid. And on each neck were what appeared to be bite marks left by a beast.
And then—
“…A vial of potion and a brooch in the shape of a serpent have been found on each body.”
* * *
