6
After showing us into her room, Tillis receives the report from Snow and listens before she speaks.
“Well, this certainly puts us in a bind… To do this right as my father, the king, was gone and the nobles were trying to claim some power for themselves. If there wasn’t the confusion in our borders, I would have invaded them…”
It’s an unexpectedly aggressive statement from the usually calm Tillis.
“I guess the thing that was most damaging from her point of view was having the knowledge that the artifact was repaired. It seems a little different from the other measures in character, but to take this opportunity to reveal it… Damn, Adelie’s a sly one.”
“…What a terrible thing to do. I’m gonna give her a good smack when I see her next.”
I decide to shift the blame to Adelie and pretend not to know anything.
“I have a request, Your Highness.”
Snow kneels, putting on a more serious expression than I’ve seen from her in a long time.
“I understand that I failed to defeat the giant monster, but please give me an opportunity to redeem myself.”
Oh, right, she was on the verge of getting fired if she failed another mission.
Snow’s usual greedy self is nowhere to be seen as she looks intently up at Tillis and waits for an answer.
Honestly, I thought she was going to cry and throw a tantrum or something, so I’m a little surprised here.
“…A chance to redeem yourself? What do you intend to do? Given that the nobles are hatching schemes of their own, now is not a good time to attack the Hiiragi Agency. And considering you failed your last mission, even if you did get results, I can’t guarantee that you’d be made knight commander again.”
“I care not, Your Highness. I’m prepared to give up my rank as a knight. If you’ll allow me, I will infiltrate Toris and conduct sabotage missions to strike back at them.”
Even Tillis seems a little intimidated by the sheer gap between Snow’s current demeanor and her usual self.
“If we stand by and do nothing, our neighboring countries will stop taking us seriously. Once I’ve defeated the nobles in the political arena, I do intend to send forces against them. But infiltration missions are dangerous. Can you not wait until the time is right? I trust your skills when it comes to entrapping the enemy in a battle of wits. Won’t you stay and help me? …Or rather, to ask more bluntly: What’s driving you to act this way?”
Snow muddles her initial response.
“Lady Snake Woman…suffered a serious injury in the most recent skirmish…”
Snow’s ears turned beet-red, and she murmurs her confession in a soft voice.
“Perhaps because Six keeps calling her Vi, I always think of the Demon Lord Viper whenever I look upon her. I wasn’t able to do anything for the Demon Lord who shouldered the crimes of all demons and died for them. I wanted to do some damage to avenge Lady Snake Woman who had been doing her best to protect the demons in Demon Lord Viper’s stead…”
At this moment, Tillis and I exchange thoughts through a glance.
She seems to ask why I went this long without telling Snow the truth.
See, my plan was to originally have Snow find out about Viper’s identity from some random event and laugh at her for how long it took her to figure it out.
Or rather, given that we’d made Snow’s ignorance the subject of a betting pool, I had no idea she had taken it so seriously, and now I feel like I crossed a line that I shouldn’t have crossed.
Completely ignoring my inner turmoil, the android that had come up with the whole scheme to fool the world into thinking the Demon Lord was dead nods intently to Snow’s remarks and pats Snow reassuringly on the shoulder.
It is at this moment that I confirm that androids really are ruthless and heartless.
“Lady Snow, out of respect for your firm resolve, I will permit you to act freely. And if you’re able to produce results, I will once again make you knight commander of the Royal Guard!”
Apparently, Tillis can’t bear to let Snow wallow in her misery any longer.
While Snow’s transfer to Kisaragi had been all but agreed upon under the table, if she can return to being the knight commander of the Royal Guard, then I agree that would be better.
“T-truly?! N-no, but given that I’ve repeatedly failed in my missions…”
“No. Go and accept that offer. You have the right.”
“Yep, I’d been thinking that for a while. You’re a fine knight. Even during the monster-hunting mission, you made the right call on retreat, so I don’t think you can call it a failure.”
While Alice and I try to back her up, for some reason Snow regards us suspiciously…
“Hey, why are you giving me your recommendation? Could it be that—…that you really don’t want me to formally become a Kisaragi employee? D-do you hate me that much?!”
“No, that’s not it at all! You’re such a handful at times, dammit! I’m just happy about your desire to avenge Vi! Kisaragi employees value their comrades!”
I try to reassure Snow, who looks incredibly worried, when Alice speaks up.
“So you wanna counterattack against Hiiragi, right? Then we’ll lend you our strength, too. Princess, you need to watch out for your own safety. After all, there’s a huge bounty on your head. You can’t let your guard down, even in the palace.”
“Yes, indeed… I was hoping to have Snow, who was a member of the Royal Guard, serve as my bodyguard, but with this, I suppose I’ll have to find someone else I can trust…”
It was just when Tillis glommed on to the conversation and started wondering about who to use for protection in an attempt to continue changing the subject—
“Leave protecting Princess Tillis to me.”
The speaker has a deep voice, despite the fact that I’m supposed to be the only man in the room.
A human-shaped section of the wall begins to lift up, and a man appears, peeling wallpaper off his body. He smiles at us.
“Guards!”
At Tillis’s scream, the man holds out his palm and speaks.
“It’s all right, Your Highness, there’s no one suspicious here. It’s just me, Combat Agent Ten.”
“Guaaaards!!!”
At Tillis’s second, louder cry, there comes a buzz from the other side of the door.
Looking closely at the wall Ten had appeared from, I can see a human-shaped hole in the wall.
This man, who we hadn’t seen recently, has evidently been living as a part of that wall.
“If Ten’s here, then the princess is in good hands. We’ll leave her protection to you.”
“Yep, I got it.”
“No, you don’t! Or rather, how long have you been there anyway?!”
Ignoring Tillis’s panicked confusion, Snow smiles at Ten and says, “Her Highness may seem strong, but there’s a part of her that’s still afraid of things any girl her age would be scared of. Take care of her.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m already aware that she flinches at lightning when it’s storming outside. I’m even preparing a body pillow disguise for the next stormy night,” Ten replies with a smile.
Tillis ignores him and declares to Snow:
“Lady Snow, here are your orders! Make absolutely sure you get results and return to being my bodyguard!”
[Status Report]
The weird woman I reported about earlier turned out to be an intelligence agent.
Though she seemed like a moron at first, she turned out to be a lot more capable than I would like to admit.
That one woman was able to completely ruin Tillis’s reputation, nearly start a civil war, cause Vi to get seriously injured, and turn Combat Agent Ten into a wall. What a mess.
After discussing the matter with Tillis, we’ve decided to pin Snow’s corruption on her as well.
Alice has been conducting a propaganda campaign to convince people that because this woman was controlling a giant monster, the Sand King must also have been a living weapon created by Hiiragi. Thanks to her efforts, Hiiragi is being made out to be the most evil organization ever.
The rest of us were worried that this would make us, the evil Kisaragi Corporation, seem less important, so we got together to discuss possible solutions, and as a result…
We, the Grace Kingdom branch of the Kisaragi Corporation, hereby declare war upon the Hiiragi Agency of Order, and as the rightful rulers of this planet, we will annihilate them.
Reporting Operatives:
Combat Agent Six and All Local Combat Agents
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