「Takumi-sama, am I not your escort? Even if you say it is the town of Volton, I find going out by yourself to be a problem.」
「……yes.」
「Right, even if the zealots have been quiet recently, Takumi, you are being targeted while Lulu and I are hidden, wasn’t that too careless of you?」
「……yes.」
「Master, at least Kaede should be on standby in the Subspace.」
「MasterHusband, your body is not just your own.」
「……yes.」
Yep, it’s scolding time from Sophia, Akane, Kaede, and Marnie.
When I returned wearing a bloodstained shirt, I went through surging waves of questioning, and even after explaining the details of the attack, I was sentenced to scoldings for a long time.
And I had to do it in seiza. There shouldn’t have been anything like “seiza” in this world, but when Akane said 「Takumi, seiza!」, I ended up in seiza from a conditioned reflex.
However, rather than me being careless, it was true that I had an opening this time, so in the middle of it all, I resigned myself to accepting sermons from everyone.
「Haa, well, it’s good that I’m safe, but I wonder if I should move around with Akane who can use Light attribute magic………」
「I don’t mind going with you, but I am not as much of a combat-type like Sophia is, so I feel like it would turn out to be the opposite where Takumi would have to protect me.」
「Mm, that’s true.」
「Ah, about that, if it’s poison then you have resistance, and you can manage using detoxification magic by yourself somehow……………. Moreover, I believe Akane is well enough to fight. After all, she is a hero.」
When I tried to give a weak rebuttal to the overprotective Sophia, she glared at me so sharp I could almost hear it. Sophia is scary.
After two full hours of sermons in seiza, I, like a newborn fawn from the trembling of my legs, was finally allowed to sit on the sofa.
「Haa, that was merciless.」
「Hmm?」
「Y-ya know, I meant the attack by the assailant.」
「That so? Then it’s fine.」
There’s no way I could feel at ease with Akane’s pointed gaze. Yep, let’s just not think about the attacker.
「Still, what force could have sent the assailant, I wonder…………」
「Yeah, we can’t say for sure that it’s the Divine Empire of Sydnia either.」
Sophia reflected on the backer of the attack. Akane seems to have considered the country she escaped from first, but felt something to be out of place. It’s the same for me. Sydnia’s zealots were different, and my intuition is saying that it isn’t related to religion. Though I can’t say it for certain, I have a hunch that it’s in a different direction.
「The zealot units of the Divine Empire of Sydnia’s Light God Faith. While at minute quantities, I felt miasma from them. However, I didn’t feel miasma at all from the attacker this time.」
「Even so, just that doesn’t mean that the Divine Empire of Sydnia is not involved.」
When I talked about what I sensed from the attacker, a comment came from Akane that denying it based on the impression I had from the attacker was weak reasoning.
「That’s true…………, then how about we think if there are people who consider me to be a hindrance or have a strong resentment for me?」
「Yeah, first of all would be the Light God Church of the Divine Empire of Sydnia.」
「I imagine Triaria Kingdom does not find Wedgefort to be agreeable. After all, we are people that blocked their invasion route to Yggurle Kingdom.」
Akane and Sophia named the Divine Empire of Sydnia and Triaria Kingdom.
「Even within Valkyra Kingdom, excepting noble houses like Margrave Volton and Earl Rockford, I think there are also nobles that don’t think too nicely of Takumi-sama.」
「……… I can’t say there are none.」
As Maria had said, within Valkyra Kingdom, there were many nobles and merchants that learned of me before we realized. I had planned on not standing out, but Sophia and Maria said that couldn’t be the case after my audience with the King. Furthermore, it was impossible to conceal the fact that we subdued the flood of monsters that came to Wedgefort after its construction.
「Even earlier than that, with the Purifier MD, Toilet MD, and Handpump, there is no way they wouldn’t have noticed MasterHusband.」
「W-well, I guess yeah.」
Even Marnie was astonished, saying “How carefree can you be?”.
「At any rate, even though his battle type skills were crude, his speed and power were abnormally high.」
「It would be dangerous if a first class user had that mysterious power up.」
「Yeah, it’s just as Sophia says. And that assailant died, didn’t he? Did you find out anything from the corpse?」
Sophia had the same impression I had from the assailant. Even now, my back still stiffens from the thought. Then Akane asked if we checked the assailant’s body.
「That’s what we did, but the assailant himself didn’t have the air of an adventurer and looked like a regular person. Aside from the sword, he had no equipment. Then I hit him in the torso with my elbow while holding back, but in the end, he died. After that, we did a quick examination on his corpse in the Order’s station, and the bones and muscles in his entire body were tattered and crumbling.」
「A person that isn’t even a warrior destroyed himself by going beyond his limits?」
「It may or may not have been self destruction, but he was moving until he fell.」
Asked by Akane, I recalled the situation at the time while trying to think if there had been anything strange.
Thinking back on it, the sword swing speed and my reaction speed was not something to panic about when compared to my mock battles with my companions, and once I calmed down, I could cope with it even while humming. I was careless to have been taken by surprise, and my lack of actual experience in interpersonal fights had come back to bite me.
「Forcefully lifting the limiter of a person’s body. Perhaps it was something like that. Though, whether it is with drugs or magic, I don’t know…………」
「If it’s magic, it would already be a type of curse.」
A murder machine that moves until their own body is destroyed. Taking that into consideration, Triaria Kingdom and crime syndicates became options as well.
In any case, since our information is too little, after we talked about a lot of things, the outcome was that we could only be more careful for our own safety.
If I think of who is suspicious, Sydnia, Triaria, factions within this country, or those that could employ criminal syndicates and the like, I’d end up suspecting everyone.
Haa, jeez, I want to stay in the Sanctuary and go into retirement.
***