Ch.964I Chose the Wrong Friend

I’ll turn fairies into products of imagination from fairy tales.

With a declaration that would make Lacy faint from joy beyond mere cheers and shed tears of emotion, Hestella entered a war footing.

“Your Majesty, how will you organize the troops for the subjugation force? If you plan to issue a full mobilization order, preparations should be made in advance…”

“Full mobilization? Is the country about to collapse? Thirteen people should be sufficient.”

Well, perhaps “war footing” is a bit of an exaggerated expression.

My invasion plan wasn’t to advance into Alvheim with thousands or tens of thousands of troops, but rather to strike their capital with a small number of elite forces.

Just as they sent fifteen guardians to target Demian’s life, I planned to retaliate in exactly the same manner.

From the beginning, that was our only option anyway.

Hestella’s population and national power were still far from stable enough to maintain independence as a self-sufficient nation.

If we issued a large-scale conscription order and swept up all the men in their prime, the entire country might collapse.

If victory could be achieved that way, it might be worth considering, but we’d be lucky just to avoid total annihilation, let alone achieve victory.

Even the Empire’s elite soldiers wouldn’t dream of marching into the Great Forest, so what good would conscripts do there except die and rot as fertilizer?

Just marching across human territory to reach the Great Forest would cause about half to drop out, and the remaining half would be annihilated as soon as they reached the forest.

Issue a full mobilization order that would certainly doom the country just to recruit scarecrows who would be destroyed in a single battle?

Who would do such a crazy thing? Even Amin wouldn’t do that. It was nonsensical.

“Me, Demian, Ophelia, and Perne. These four, plus eight or nine assistant mages to operate the airship. Any more would be a waste of manpower.”

Therefore, the forces I would mobilize for the Alvheim invasion consisted only of four warriors who had surpassed the wall and the minimum personnel needed for the airship.

Taking knights or masters would be somewhat helpful, but unlike us four, forces below master level honestly seemed to have no chance of returning alive.

Rather than wasting them as disposable forces, it seemed better to leave them as defensive forces to protect the kingdom’s mainland.

Would they be enough for defense? Well, that depends on the opponent.

If a dragon or fairy guardian attacked, they would be annihilated like a joke, but they could suppress monsters, bandits, or civil unrest without much difficulty.

That should be sufficient.

Since dragons would track the energy of the holy sword Demian carried, if I took Demian with me, they would target our airship rather than Hestella.

The fairies too, having lost fifteen guardians, wouldn’t have the capacity to send new guardians for a while.

Only one problem remained.

“The four of us going to attack Alvheim…?”

The only question was whether just the four of us with a single airship could really bring down Alvheim.

—-

“Hey, our Queen, do you need some fatigue recovery medicine? You seem quite mentally exhausted.”

When told to participate in the Alvheim assault operation, Ophelia stopped dissecting a fairy, turned to me with an incredulous face, and offered me medicine.

“…I won’t drink medicine from you. It’s obvious you’ve mixed drugs into it.”

I shook my head and refused.

It’s common sense that fatigue recovery medicine from a mage is full of drug components, right? It wasn’t something a non-mage like me should put in my mouth.

“That’s hurtful. Even poison can become medicine if used properly, you know?”

“And medicine can become poison if used improperly.”

See? She must have put something in it after all. I don’t know if it was a stimulant or a sedative.

“Anyway, I’m not talking nonsense, so listen carefully. I’m saying this because I have a plan. Would I say such crazy things without any plan?”

“Hmm…”

Instead of nodding, Ophelia avoided my gaze, deeply inhaling and exhaling the mana herb smoke.

With a face that said she had much to say but would restrain herself out of respect for my dignity and our relationship.

“No, I’m serious this time! Just hear me out. If you’re still worried, we can bring Perne and ask if it’s feasible.”

“…Sigh. Fine, I’ll listen.”

Ophelia, who had been staring at me intently, eventually nodded with a deep sigh.

“But if I think your plan is nonsensical, I’ll oppose it to the end. For the safety of not just myself, but all of us.”

Though she did add unnecessary conditions with great suspicion.

—-

After a long explanation riddled with assumptions and speculations, Ophelia finally, albeit reluctantly, agreed to my operation plan.

“Honestly, I’m not thrilled about this… sigh, but I’ve received too much to refuse. This is why people shouldn’t live in debt.”

“Debt? Now I’m hurt. How can you disparage my gestures of goodwill and friendship like that? Call them gifts, gifts.”

I joked while lightly swirling the teacup she had given me.

While it was true that I had provided her with various conveniences to use her abilities to the fullest, there was still some goodwill mixed in.

“A friendly gift is at most a good meal. Anything beyond that means you want something in return and are paying in advance.”

Ophelia chuckled and twirled the mana herb between her fingers, saying these were too excessive to be tokens of friendship.

“That’s quite a bleak perspective. Who told you that? Some cynics with trust issues?”

“It’s my own principle.”

“Ah, is that so…?”

If it’s her principle, I guess there’s nothing to be done.

I shrugged as I gently put down the teacup I had been playfully swirling.

Showing an attitude that I didn’t particularly care whether she considered them gifts or bribes.

In reality, it made no difference to me how she viewed them. Either way, what she had to do wouldn’t change.

Who else but me would tolerate a half-soul sorcerer who raised her supposedly dead sister in an infantile state?

From the beginning, she had no choice but me. Unless she could live independently without a sponsor or crawl under Feirius.

The former would make it difficult to conduct proper research, and the latter would mean being used in various ways until she was discarded when her usefulness ended.

To put it bluntly, Ophelia was in a position where if I ordered her to come to my bed, she would have to bite her lip and comply without refusal.

Of course, I had no such intention.

What am I, some lustful tyrant king with oil on my belly? Why would I give such an order to a subordinate? Especially to a woman who isn’t even my type.

From the beginning, she was literally a woman who would bring trouble if involved. Looking at what she did to her own sister made that obvious.

It was quite strange, thinking back, how she managed to hide that nature and stay close to Demian in the original work.

—-

“Oh, by the way, I heard you took down three guardians single-handedly. Without a scratch, too.”

Just before returning to the palace after finishing my persuasion, I put on my uniform coat that had been hanging on the wall and voiced a question that suddenly came to mind.

“I did… why do you ask so suddenly?”

Ophelia, sitting askew on the sofa, tilted her head and asked back.

The feat of defeating five fairy guardians along with Perne and Hush.

When I first heard about it, I thought they had fought three against five with Perne as the vanguard, but the details I later received from Hush were quite different from what I expected.

Perne had faced one guardian alone, Hush had luckily assassinated one, and Ophelia had single-handedly annihilated the remaining three?

“How did you manage that?”

It was somewhat surprising.

Although Ophelia was a great mage who had obtained a dragon’s inner core, her crossing of the wall was a very recent event.

If she had faced three guardians in a confined space without a vanguard, she should have at least lost an arm under normal circumstances, but she had annihilated them without injuring even a fingertip.

“I’m not underestimating your skills, but even for you, three guardians must have been difficult.”

I was very curious about what method she had used.

“Oh, that?”

Ophelia smirked as she exhaled the mana herb smoke, tapped the half-burned herb into an ashtray, and then raised her left hand, wiggling her fingers.

“By a method that would bring divine punishment if I told the Holy Lady.”

With that, she gave me an answer that was difficult to understand.

“Divine punishment…?”

A method that would bring divine punishment if told to me? What nonsense is this? Is she indirectly asking to be burned at the stake?

My expression must have been quite amusing, as Ophelia shook her shoulders while snickering for a while.

“Want me to show you?”

Then, saying it would be faster to see directly than to explain verbally, she gathered mana at her fingertips and shot it toward a cabinet fixed to one wall of the laboratory.

A moment later.

“Kigigigigik…!”

I learned how she had defeated three guardians without injury.

“What the actual fuck is this?”

Though a curse did spontaneously escape my lips upon seeing it.