Chapter 89 – Freeloader Scramble
89 – Freeloader Scramble
「Eleanor, Lady holy sword, and even succubus-like woman I can understand but… Alchemy, what are you doing?」
Mage said「Excuse me, isn’t calling someone you just met a succubus too cruel?」and was ignored.
「Simply out of pure intellectual curiosity. If anyone were to test it, why not me?」
「Even if it’s only for ten minutes, there is no way that Rainy would fall in love with anyone but me!」 screams Marie.
「If you cannot quell your tendency to go on a rampage, then I shall forbid you from visiting Sir Rain you troublesome Saint!」 yelled Eleanor.
「Looks like you forgot how I teleported you away from Rain last time. I’ll just send you far away again this time!」 yelled Mika.
「Ten minutes, hm…? Well, that should be enough time for one shot.」 Mage said something mysterious.
「It is obvious that a Sage would be more suited to run an experiment than a Saint.」 Alchemy readies her staff.
As the five of them slowly inched their way closer, someone snatched me away from Marie.
「Who…?! My shadow?!」 Marie raised her voice in surprise.
That’s right, Madge jumped out of Marie’s shadow and snatched me away. 「I will protect Sir Rain.」
「Well done, Madge!」 praised Eleanor, but Madge did not stop running.
「There are too many security risks here. I shall escort you to safety.」
「Madge?! You traitor!」 shouted Eleanor, appalled.
「Good show, Madge! With me here, I shall provide Sir Rain with a comfortable hiding place-」
「You are unnecessary, Florence.」
「Wha-…?! Honestly! Notify all guards! The captain has defected! Madge is immediately dismissed and recognized as a security risk! Tell them that whoever catches her shall be given a bonus!」
「My lady’s voice is already so loud that it echoes throughout the premises, so I believe I do not need to notify them.」
I could hear the Florence and Celine master-servant comedy duo underway. When I happened to look at Vivi, I saw a glint in her eye aimed at Madge. That gaze seemed to be saying,『Do you think you can escape my information web?』 Looks like Vivi is confident that she’ll locate where Madge escaped to even if she does manage to run away.
「You’re not going anywhere~ Be it Shadow magic or Teleportation, nothing escapes my Barrier magic.」
Louto opened her eyes and activated her Barrier magic. Barrier magic is the magic that separates the inside from the outside. If it can be configured so that miasma cannot enter, it can be configured so that a person cannot leave. If it’s someone of Louto’s skill level, it really wouldn’t be possible to escape to the outside even if you could use Teleportation.
「You’re taking Sir Rain away? I thought we could finally spend some time together at a party… I won’t forgive you… even if it’s you, Madge.」 Lejie let loose a huge amount of mana.
「Whoa, stop that you idiot! Don’t use that spell, seriously! You wanna bring the whole manor down?!」
「Kuh…! Lejie… If it’s come to this…!」 In order to stop her from going wild, Ferris pulls something out of her breast pocket. 「I shall give you this cherished picture of Sir Hero changing out of his pajamas while half asleep, also with some bare chest visible, so please calm down, Lejie!」
「Bwuh?! What is this photo? It belongs in a museum!」 Lejie was instantly distracted by that photo.
Ferris, when did you take that… I guess, if I think back on it carefully, she asked me「May I take a picture?」but I’m not sure if I gave her permission or not.
「…!」 Madge being Madge, she grit her teeth when there was no more room for escape.
Aside from Lejie, she was being chased while being careful not to destroy the venue, so it was difficult to bring it to a conclusion.
Before I knew it, Shoots had her bow ready. 「Who Rain chooses to spend time with should be his choice and his alone. I will not overlook anyone who tries to take him away.」 she said while everyone was making a fuss.
This whole time, I was thinking about the chocolate. I have no idea what the effects are of the thing that Monana mixed in with the chocolate, but it smells really, really sweet; sweet enough to make me want to put it in my mouth, even after knowing its effects. I’ve been fighting that urge this whole time.
Once, there was a Demon called the Nightmare King that put a whole country to sleep, trapping them in an “ideal world”. We Six Saviors were trapped in that dream too, but I got out of it in just a few seconds. I was able to escape from an irresistible ideal world quickly, but I am unable to overcome my desire to eat this candy right now.
What a terrifying piece of candy.
「…In that case, I’ll give up on us being alone.」 Madge muttered something. 「Sir Rain. I’ll be honest, I want you to eat that chocolate while looking at me.」
She put me down and looked at me with all seriousness. She grabbed my hand with the chocolate and pushed it closer to my mouth…
「Oh, no you don’t!」
「Sir Rain’s heart pounding belongs to me!」
「I will not let such a precious sample go to waste.」
「Sir Hero is young, so he should be able to fire two shots if we make it quick.」
Mika, Eleanor, Alchemy, and Mage appeared using Teleportation once again. Since they’re teleporting within the barrier, there is no issue. What is an issue is all of them touching me and activating Teleportation at the same time. All four of them probably tried to teleport just themselves and me to a different room.
However, due to the irregularity caused by the simultaneous activation of their spell, the spell produced unexpected results. In such a situation, there’s a chance that I will be teleported to a ridiculously far place, but thankfully that scenario is prevented by Louto’s barrier.
Just how Louto’s barrier might intervene with the four’s magic spell, I don’t know; but, as a result, I was teleported to the ceiling of the dining hall. In trying to immediately fix my posture, I accidentally let go of the chocolate.
Miraculously, it landed right in my mouth – or maybe I tried to catch it out of instinct. Trying to land, I dropped my gaze to the floor and happened to see everyone who was looking up at me.
Later, I was told that the flaw of this chocolate is that it erases the next ten minutes of the memory of the person who ate it. In other words, this only feels like moments after I ate the chocolate to me; but it is in fact ten minutes in the future.
It looks like I did something in the ten minutes that I can’t recall. However, when I regained consciousness, I didn’t have any method of finding out what happened…
It was like the corpse-riddled aftermath of a battlefield. Eleanor and the other six had all collapsed while bleeding profusely from the nose, which is oddly nostalgic; but each and every other person other than the Seven also seem to have suffered big damage.
The maid Ferris, the maid Azla, the butler Celine, the Demon King Army’s strongest magic user Mage, the Sage Alchemy, the Saint Marie, and the Magic Archer Shoots are all slumped to the ground with their backs to the wall as if they had used up every ounce of their strength.
They are definitely not in a state to tell me what happened.
「What the hell did I… That’s it…! Mika!」
My partner of ten years should be safe, but…when I found her, she was lying face flat on the floor – as if she used up all her strength but was defeated in a battle against a mighty enemy.
I hurriedly helped her sit up.
「Mika…! What happened, Mika?!」
「Urgh… Rain?」 Mike barely opened her eyes and looked at me. 「You’re back to your senses… Good…」
「So, this really was my fault…」
「It’s not your fault…just…」 Mika feebly raised her arm to put a hand on my cheek. 「Never…eat that chocolate…ever…again…」
At the end of her sentence, her hand flopped to the ground as all strength left her body.
「MIKA…!」
After that, I asked the black shirts who could move to help me look after them. Incidentally, the black-clothed security guards that were knocked away by Marie all lost consciousness, so they had no idea what happened either; and there were other personnel who weren’t in the dining hall, thus were safe. I used Healing magic to stop Eleanor’s nosebleed; but fundamentally speaking, they suffered no physical damage. Does that mean I neutralized them purely with mental damage…?
What the hell did I do? When I was falling, I caught sight of everyone on the ground with the chocolate in my mouth. Thinking back on the effect of the chocolate, at that time, I must have had “a heart pounding ten minutes” with everyone in the dining hall. How did that result in this?
I’m used to the Seven ending up like that, but what’s puzzling is that even those other than the Seven collapsed. However, no one would tell me what happened when I asked them; and it appears that that chocolate – or rather the chemical that was mixed into it – was banned.
I may have eaten the unthinkable.
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