Chapter 346: We’re Too Weak, Neither Side Takes Us Seriously
In the living room of Christina’s mansion, Alexia sat comfortably on the sofa and took a sip of coffee.
“Sorry, Christina. My sister’s behavior must have been embarrassing to watch.”
Alexia set down her teacup with graceful elegance and gave a faint smile, casually badmouthing the sister who had just left without the slightest concern for their sibling bond.
“I wouldn’t call it embarrassing. After all, just like Cid, I haven’t had much contact with Shadow or the Cult of Diablos. I don’t know which side is righteous and which side is evil. For all I know, First Princess Iris might actually be right.”
Christina shook her head slightly and gently spoke up for Iris, who had already left.
“Well… actually, you’ve already come into contact with the Cult of Diablos.”
“Huh?”
“Yes. I confirmed the matter of the Nightsword Society with Father. They should be one of the Cult of Diablos’s ‘black gloves’ operating within the Kingdom of Midgar.”
Watching Christina sink into thought after hearing that, Alexia found herself repeatedly recalling the conversation she had with her father the previous day. She picked up her coffee and took another sip, frowning as she lamented her own misfortune, only to suddenly remember something else.
“By the way…”
Startled out of her thoughts, Christina assumed Alexia was about to reveal another piece of important information and immediately sat up straight, afraid she might miss something.
“How did Cid end up at your house?”
“Huh?”
Christina let out a blank, bewildered sound. Compared with what they had been discussing just moments ago, Alexia’s question felt like it belonged to an entirely different conversation. The sudden shift caught Christina completely off guard.
“About that…”
Once she recovered, however, Christina found herself at a loss for words again.
After all, Alexia had told her about her friendship with Cid. Back then, Alexia had even specifically asked Christina to keep Cid safe and get him out of there.
Christina had originally planned to find some free time later and explain that she had gone against Alexia’s request. Instead of forcibly removing Cid from this enormous vortex, she had allowed him to stay.
It seemed she would have to explain sooner than expected.
For some reason, even though Christina knew she ought to be open and straightforward about it, with nothing to feel guilty over, an inexplicable trace of guilt still crept into her heart.
“I’m very sorry, Princess Alexia. I broke my promise to you. I didn’t send Cid away. Instead, I allowed him to stay on my own initiative, and now someone important to you has been dragged into this enormous vortex. As your friend, I failed you.”
Christina apologized solemnly. Her sense of morality would not allow her to make excuses. Because of her naivety at the time, Alexia’s friend had remained here and ended up threatened by the Nightsword Society. She felt she had wronged Alexia.
To Christina’s surprise, however, the moment Alexia heard her apology, she reacted as though she had been suddenly jolted. She sprang to her feet, her face turning bright red as her arms and legs started moving restlessly.
“Huh? ‘Someone important’… Christina, you really know how to joke. Cid occupies about the same place in my heart as a Pochi. He’s just a pet. It’s only because finding a pet this convenient is extremely, extremely difficult that I decided to keep him alive. That’s simply what I should do as his owner…”
As Alexia flailed about while defending herself, she completely failed to notice that Christina’s formerly nervous, uneasy, and apologetic expression had vanished.
Now Christina was staring at her expressionlessly.
That’s awful.
Christina could tell from how naturally Alexia called Cid “Pochi” that there was a very good chance she genuinely meant what she had just said.
At the same time, Christina could also tell that Cid sincerely considered Alexia a friend. When Christina had spoken badly about Alexia while talking with Cid in his room, Cid had even explained Alexia’s behavior on her behalf.
So… that was truly awful.
Taking for granted the kindness of someone who treated you well, trampling all over it, and treating Cid, who possessed the same dignity as any other person, like a pet.
Alexia, are you another parasite on this country?
“So a pet like Cid, who might drop dead the moment I stop supporting him, actually dared to disobey my orders. I really don’t know what you were thinking, Christina.”
Completely oblivious to the twisted thoughts of the woman in front of her, Alexia continued complaining. Having portrayed herself in her previous remarks as someone in a position of absolute superiority, she was now feeling rather pleased with herself.
I’ll give you one more chance.
I’m still willing to believe that the person you showed me before wasn’t an act, Alexia.
Christina’s blank expression shifted into a warm smile as she faced Alexia, who had begun glancing around suspiciously after feeling an inexplicable chill.
“The reason I agreed to let Cid stay is actually quite simple. I couldn’t refuse him.”
“Couldn’t refuse him?”
“Yes, Princess Alexia. I couldn’t refuse someone with such passion in his heart, someone who sincerely wanted to solve the kidnappings caused by the Nightsword Society and genuinely sympathized with the people suffering below.”
Placing one hand against her chest, Christina spoke with unprecedented seriousness.
She had a pessimistic view of this country, which was now riddled with decay and parasites. If anything was ever going to change, they needed people like Cid, people who possessed the same passion she did.
“…Are we talking about the same person?”
Alexia fell silent for an unusually long moment.
Carefully recalling Cid’s shameless, crafty, unscrupulous behavior whenever he was around her, Alexia suddenly wondered whether she had somehow crossed into another world.
Otherwise, how had the story suddenly skipped so many steps?
Was Christina really talking about the same Pochi she knew?!
“Cid is just some random background nobody who’ll throw away his dignity and become someone’s dog for a single gold coin. He’s a fence-sitter who goes wherever the wind blows, and a crybaby siscon who starts whining whenever something happens. How could someone like that possibly deserve such high praise?”
Alexia criticized him without the slightest restraint, completely failing to notice Christina’s increasingly cold gaze.
I thought we could become like-minded partners who fought side by side, Alexia.
But that arrogant attitude of yours tells me that you’re just another parasite, no different from my father or the Nightswords.
With that condescending attitude, does that mean the only people I can trust are Cid and Kanade?
Christina calmly considered the matter while her white-stockinged thighs trembled rapidly beneath the table.
She was nearly beginning to despair over this utterly rotten country.
Was finding even one ally of justice really that difficult?
“That bastard… Forget it. Just talking about Cid makes me angry. Onee-sama has already led her forces in sealing off the entire royal capital, so there’s no way to send him out anymore. Let’s talk about something serious instead.”
Realizing that her complaints about Pochi had probably included a little too much personal bias, Alexia finally stopped.
She had considered saying one or two good things about him, but after insulting him so thoroughly, she couldn’t bring herself to suddenly change course. In the end, she simply switched topics.
Cid wasn’t here anyway, and Christina probably wouldn’t care that much.
She could just treat it like a lovers’ quarrel where the two sides quickly made up afterward.
“Something serious? Is it about the Thirteen Nightblades?”
Seeing Alexia finally stop complaining, Christina put away the various thoughts in her mind and became serious as well.
The important thing right now was dealing with the Thirteen Nightblades, not correcting Alexia’s twisted outlook. She needed to keep her priorities straight.
“Yes. Things have already developed to the point where we can’t avoid stepping in anymore. Under these circumstances, Father finally chose to tell me the truth. Christina, you’re my partner, so I won’t hide it from you.”
…
“Father, the Nightsword Society is openly killing people inside the royal capital. They’ve even mobilized the Knights and the Guard to seal off the city. If we continue letting them run wild, the royal family’s dignity will be damaged.”
Alexia recounted everything that had happened recently to the imposing man standing before the floor-to-ceiling window. He possessed the same fiery red hair as First Princess Iris.
She stared intently at her father.
The current situation no longer allowed him to keep pretending he had seen and heard nothing.
“Sigh… Alexia, why did you have to come back with your sister?”
Sensing Alexia’s determination, the red-haired man sighed, turned around, and looked at her helplessly.
“If I hadn’t come back, Father, what were you planning to do to Onee-sama?”
“Nothing. It’s simply that the Kingdom of Midgar needs your sister more than it needs you right now.”
The red-haired man shook his head, rejecting Alexia’s suspicion.
“So what you’re saying, Father, is that I should have remained at the academy.”
“That’s right. You should keep pace with the others, build relationships with people from the other two worlds, and move forward together with them. You should serve as a diplomat for our country.”
“Hah. In that case, Father, can you tell me what’s actually going on? The Nightsword Society has already begun disregarding the dignity of the royal family and killing people inside the royal capital. Why aren’t you intervening?”
Alexia no longer had the patience to keep circling around the issue and directly stated her purpose.
As far as she remembered, while the Nightsword Society held considerable power within the kingdom, it should still have been easy for the royal family to interfere if it wished.
So why had things already escalated this far while her father still refused to step in?
“Because I can’t intervene.”
“Why? They’re only the Thirteen Nightblades.”
“No. It isn’t just the Thirteen Nightblades. The royal capital is currently at the center of a battlefield between two colossal forces of the underworld. Any third party that dares interfere will be swallowed by the vortex between them.”
“What exactly happened?”
Alexia closed her eyes, then opened them again.
From those few words alone, she had the feeling that during the year or more she had been away, the Kingdom of Midgar…
No.
The entire underworld had undergone some earth-shattering transformation.
“Alexia, what do you think Shadow is to us?”
Instead of answering directly, the King of Midgar responded with a question of his own.
Alexia thought for a moment before answering honestly.
“A global terrorist?”
“To people from the other two worlds, perhaps. But to us, Shadow is both our umbrella and our king.”
“!!!”
Ignoring Alexia’s shock, the red-haired man walked to the floor-to-ceiling window and gazed out at the night sky wrapped in darkness.
“Power comes from violence, and Shadow, who stands at the very pinnacle of the world through his own strength, is undoubtedly the being with the greatest authority in existence. With that as the premise, the upper echelons of the other worlds have tacitly accepted that our world, along with the alliances between its nations, belongs to Shadow.”
“That conclusion is correct. But before that, the conclusion itself provoked another long-standing overlord of the Inner World, the Cult of Diablos.”
The red-haired man raised his head and stared into the night sky. A trace of jealousy and unwillingness entered his voice.
“The title of ‘world’s strongest,’ one of only five supreme positions, and that absolutely invincible power… It truly is astonishing. If that power had been displayed before the world not at the United Assembly, but when the Cult of Diablos was gathering its armies, then that supposedly invincible overlord, the Cult of Diablos, might genuinely have vanished from this world.”
He turned around and sat back down in his office chair. It was difficult to tell whether the emotion in the man’s voice was relief or regret.
“But there’s no point discussing that now. No matter how powerful a hidden card Shadow possessed, the moment he played it, it lost its value as a hidden card.”
The King of Midgar took an intelligence report from a drawer, spread it across the desk, and motioned for Alexia to come look.
“If the reason Shadow was able to deal with the Cult of Diablos so easily before was because he kept his strength concealed, allowing the intelligence gap between the two sides to help him locate their hidden members, then once Shadow displayed absolute power, the Cult of Diablos went completely underground.”
“What you see here is the death list from the past year or so, created as Shadow Garden and the Cult of Diablos searched for and probed each other.”
Alexia stared at the list with trembling hands.
Every name on it belonged to a mid-ranking or high-ranking official from one country or another.
And all of them had died within a single year!
“The Cult of Diablos’s puppets inside the various nations have now reached the point where none of them know one another. Aside from knowing their own identities and what purpose they serve, they don’t even know who their comrades are or who stands above them.”
Werewolf.
Dark Forest.
Even the King of Midgar himself had no idea how to describe the current state of the various nations.
Damn it.
Not a single core member of either the Cult of Diablos or Shadow Garden was standing out in the open as a target. Every last one of them was hiding in the shadows.
Meanwhile, the puppets dying in their place were all mid-level personnel within the nations, valuable talents who were extremely difficult to replace.
“Do you think the spies from other factions were killed by both sides because Shadow Garden and the Cult of Diablos are cooperating? They aren’t. They simply attack every faction that might be connected to them without distinction.”
The King of Midgar sighed and slumped helplessly into his office chair.
“So we can’t move against the Thirteen Nightblades, and we can’t stop them either. This is the Cult of Diablos’s first major operation since going underground. Whether this is a counterattack against Shadow Garden, a trap for them, or some other enormous plan, the moment we interfere, they’ll eliminate us and activate new puppets to replace the Nightswords.”
“After all, the Nightswords are merely convenient puppets operating in the open. They still have plenty of hidden puppets. Doing nothing is our best option.”
…
“That’s more or less the situation.”
Alexia blew gently across the surface of her coffee, her mood clearly poor.
“We’re too weak. Neither side even considers us worth paying attention to.”