Prince Loki’s supreme magic Fenrir could be considered a complete combat technique in itself.
The wolf of ice which was moving as if it were a living creature excelled in every aspect of offense, defense, evasion, and pursuit.
It was an incredibly troublesome magic.
It was almost like fighting two opponents at once.
“For all your talk, you haven’t managed to do anything, Sir Johan.”
“How could I ever harm the noble body of an imperial member?”
The moment Fenrir moved, Tillis’s mansion was half-destroyed.
The ceiling and walls collapsed in an instant, revealing Tillis’s awkward smile from another room where she had been waiting.
Sorry about that.
“There must be a reason you dragged me here.”
“Of course not. I merely came to seek the Saintess’s advice.”
“Is that so?”
Loki wrapped an arm around Fenrir’s neck and leapt into the air.
I too threw myself aside to evade the fierce assault of Loki and Fenrir.
From above, Loki’s chilling gaze fell upon me as he muttered:
“Jörmungandr.”
Loki’s imperial guards, the Jörmungandr, began to emerge one by one from the building’s shadows.
“Eliminate the witnesses.”
They charged toward Tillis and Yuna.
Their movements were more beastlike than human.
They were all under the influence of Loki’s Mood Poison.
While it was most often used to coerce others into obedience, the Mood Poison was also a form of illusion magic and could be applied in other ways. Such as temporarily enhancing the body.
In short, it was a kind of magical doping.
“Were you planning to borrow the Saintess’s power? If so, that’s unfortunate.”
“Unfortunately for you, I never had such a thought.”
Loki was barking up the wrong tree.
If I had truly borrowed Tillis’s power, there would be no need for all this.
Tillis alone could have slaughtered both Jörmungandr and Loki with ease.
Well, that much was only natural.
Unlike me, Loki had no idea what was really going on.
All he knew was the information visible on the surface, so of course he would jump to the wrong conclusions.
It’s not as if he’d had the time or opportunity to investigate who I really was in the first place.
“Urgh!”
Bang!
The problem was that Loki’s strength was far greater than I had imagined.
Just as Yuna and Tillis had warned me.
I had been overestimating myself.
I knew that in my head, but experiencing it firsthand was something else entirely.
The bitter cold was numbing the tips of my limbs.
I kept clenching and unclenching the hand that held my sword to restore some feeling, but each time Fenrir closed in, I barely had time to dodge, let alone recover.
“Huff…”
I leapt far back to avoid Fenrir as he charged at me again.
As I said earlier, unlike Loki, I could not harm him.
Loki was an imperial member, after all.
“How strange.”
Loki muttered after driving me back again and again with Fenrir.
By that point, frost had settled over my entire body.
It was only natural, given that I had been unable to mount any real resistance, forced into nothing but retreat and defense.
“Why won’t you fight back?”
“Did I not say so before? How could I possibly harm an imperial mùember ?”
“There’s no one here to witness it, is there? If that’s really what worries you, you’d be better off killing me instead. That way, I’d have no chance to frame you with false testimony.”
“……”
He wasn’t wrong.
For Loki, framing someone with lies was hardly even an issue.
If he were to wound himself and claim that I had done it, what could I possibly say in my defense?
It’s not as if anyone would be allowed to examine an imperial member’s body in detail.
I wouldn’t even have time to argue before my head rolled.
If Tillis survived, she could serve as a witness. But even for a Saintess, one witness alone would never be enough to bring Loki down.
To win a battle of public opinion against him, there would need to be countless people who had clearly seen what happened.
“Hmm.”
“……”
“Ah, I see now.”
Loki who was flanked by Fenrir clapped his hands lightly and nodded as he fixed his gaze on me.
“You’ve made such a show of bringing that out, yet it’s had no effect at all. You refuse to counterattack, and instead you try to talk your way out of the situation while running away.”
“…….”
“At first I thought you might be waiting for the Saintess’s help, but she hasn’t moved an inch. Then I wondered if you’d planted a witness, but aside from those two over there, there’s no one else around.”
As expected of an imperial member.
He’d been analyzing my every move in the blink of an eye.
“Don’t tell me… a recording device?”
“Yes, Your Highness. At this very moment, the entire Imperial Academy is watching this unfold.”
“Oh my… that could be troublesome.”
Not that it mattered. It was already too late.
Senior Jabir’s chimera.
It was created to learn an opponent’s attacks and develop countermeasures against them.
The eyes embedded in the weapon serve as a recording device, analyzing the trajectory, direction, and other patterns of incoming attacks.
It might not be much help in the current fight, but it’s more than enough to prepare for the next time we face the same opponent.
And by applying that, it’s possible to record proof that the other side attacked first. Just like this.
I haven’t even fought back; I’m nothing more than a victim who has been chased and battered by Loki’s one‑sided assault.
That alone secures my justification.
Now, it’s perfectly fine to kill Loki.
Of course, that job isn’t mine to do.
Rumble!
“To torment a good citizen of the Empire… Brother, haven’t you crossed far too many lines this time?”
That task would fall to another member of the imperial family. One who appeared in a flash of lightning.
“I never thought you would lay such a trap, Lobelia.”
Loki shrugged in disbelief.
It was no wonder. Lobelia preferred direct confrontation. He likely never imagined she would dig a trap like this.
More precisely, he never would have guessed she’d use a person as bait.
She was someone who typically kept strictly within the bounds of propriety.
“You were impatient. Far too hasty in your actions.”
“It couldn’t be helped.”
Indeed, it couldn’t.
For Loki, who had long relied on poisoning people as leverage, the very foundation of his methods was now threatened.
He had to erase the existence of an antidote as quickly as possible.
He’d been walking a tightrope from the start; it was inevitable things would come to this.
“So, Brother, will you admit to attacking an Imperial subject without being provoked? One who is also the heir to a count’s house?”
“Well… I’ve killed more than a few people in my time. Surely you’re not planning to charge me for that now, are you?”
“This time we have irrefutable proof. Running away like a rat will no longer be an option.”
At this point, Loki had only one path left.
A cornered rat will bite the cat.
“Hah. I certainly didn’t expect such solid evidence to surface. I thought this secluded place would make fabricating the story easy. But it turned out to be the opposite…”
Crunch!
In that instant, the sword I was holding split clean in two and fell apart.
When I turned my gaze at the sudden lightness in my hands, I saw the blade was covered in a reddish rust, as though it had been neglected for years.
The recording device was destroyed.
“In that case, I suppose it’s best to just kill them all first and think later.”
With Fenrir’s appearance, the chill in the air suddenly turned oppressive and stifling.
No, the actual temperature hadn’t changed.
It was just that the wind I felt through my breathing was now unpleasant enough to send a shiver down my spine.
“To be honest, I’d already half guessed as much the moment I came here.”
As the unsettling wind howled around us, Fenrir began to darken.
It was clear something had mixed into the frost.
“So I decided to think in a slightly different way than usual.”
Loki spread out his hand. The disturbing wind swirled in his palm.
And within that small storm appeared a sinister-looking book.
“I’ve decided to bet everything on this.”
I knew that when Loki was cornered, he could make a contract with a demon.
After all, the Oracle had warned me of it.
So I had already prepared a countermeasure for that eventuality.
However…
“Since when?”
“Who knows?”
Beside Loki appeared a woman with wings made of membrane.
Her hands and feet were blackened, and she stared at me with an expressionless face.
“Was it when the rumors about the antidote first began to spread?”
Loki had already made a contract with the demon.
Then let’s think this through again.
“Hela.”
Since when had Loki been using demonic power?
“Khak!”
Something surged up from within me.
In my hazy state, something dark red came into my blurred vision.
Was it my own blood?
But why was it so black?
“You know it’s dangerous to drink something from someone else without thinking, right? Even if you happen to have an antidote.”
“Johan!”
Ah… I hadn’t seen this coming.
I never imagined Loki would be the kind of lunatic to so casually throw away his own soul even when he wasn’t cornered.
***
For a moment, I thought I might die like this. Fortunately, it turned out not to be that serious.
After vomiting up a mouthful of black blood, my mind felt clearer.
I hadn’t expected Loki to wield Hela’s power, but apparently the amount he could slip into a single teacup was limited.
Unlike a colorless, odorless poison, Hela’s power was far more conspicuous.
Still…
“Johan, are you all right? Get a hold of yourself!”
I grabbed Lobelia’s arm and tried to calm her down for now.
I’d lost enough blood to feel somewhat dazed, but it wasn’t enough to kill me.
I didn’t even feel any pain.
Whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, I couldn’t say…
But I had realized Loki’s intent.
“……”
No voice came out.
It seemed Loki had assumed I was Lobelia’s adviser.
If his goal had been to silence me entirely, he’d succeeded.
But there was one thing Loki didn’t know.
I’d prepared something specifically to interfere with his contract.
What that was…
“Haa…”
Gasping for breath, I reached into my robes and pulled something out.
“That’s Helena’s…!”
I clenched tightly the ring Helena had given me as a gift.
The relic Helena left me was originally meant for protection, but the source of the divine power within it was still intact.
And divine power is the most lethal force against the dead and against demons.
The power of wholeness restored my insides, which had been defiled by the demon’s power.
“Huh?”
Loki let out a dry laugh as he saw me recover in an instant.
“What, is this your first time seeing divine power?”
With that, we were even now.
“If you really wanted to shut me up, you should’ve branded my mouth with a hot iron. Do you have any idea how many idiots have tried and failed at that over the years?”
“Even though he looks like this, Johan is the kind of man who’d curse at the imperial family.”
“A truly destructive mouth… Perhaps I should have done just that.”
As expected of fellow imperial members, their opinion of me was surprisingly similar.
Well, family is family, I suppose.
There’s a resemblance, after all.
“Your Highness, I think you can take down Loki now.”
“After dragging things to this point, you’re just going to dump it all on me?”
“Well, if you’d handled yourself better and avoided strange rumors, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
“Th-That’s true… My apologies.”
At any rate, I’d done what I could.
I couldn’t call it a perfect success, but I had definitely cornered Loki.
Of course, the fact that Loki had already fully sealed a contract with a demon and was wielding that power was unexpected.
I’d thought he’d only risk his soul in the worst-case scenario.
But here we were. He’d already made the contract, and I’d just used up the divine power that could fatally wound a demon. There was no helping it now.
“Can you win?”
“To be honest, it won’t be easy. Brother was never an easy opponent… and now he commands a demon as well.”
Well, that much was obvious.
Still, I believed it would be fine.
“It’s not like we’ve ever had an easy fight before, is it?”
After all, she’s the main character.
“I’ll give it a try.”
“While protecting me, of course.”
“…You can be infuriatingly shameless at times.”
I couldn’t help it.
In this situation, if Lobelia didn’t protect me, I’d be dead.
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