072 – A Warning’s Disposition
“Master! I got permission!”
“N-Neh?..”
“I’m telling you, I got permission!”
To Isabella-ssi’s words, delivered early in the morning, still half-asleep…
Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I rose from the bed only to hear…
“I’m Master’s wife now too!”
Isabella-ssi spoke words that made the world spin.
Surely, Isabella-ssi also hadn’t fully woken up yet.
“Alright, alright. Come here, dear.”
Playing along with her mood, I embraced the cat and closed my eyes again.
“Uhhh, I’m not kidding, I’m serious.”
“That’s right. This is our wedding night.”
“..It’s morning?”
“It’s night.”
The desire to sleep more was greater, so I loosely embraced Isabella-ssi and closed my eyes once more.
Isabella-ssi, who had hoped I would wake up, didn’t seem to dislike being held like this either.
Thanks to her quietly purring and snuggling in my arms…
“..What time is it now?”
“Five o’clock!”
“..Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“I definitely woke you up.”
Our days and nights were spectacularly reversed.
“You should have woken me up more actively.”
“How did I end up falling for a man like this…”
“Take responsibility.”
“Alright… I’ll feed you and Mistress for the rest of our lives together.”
“Thank you.”
Somehow, I’ve ended up with two wives, each willing to feed a useless layabout like me.
“Alpha Male, Meehan, the best.”
That aside, Lady Ella actually *allowed* Isabella and I to have, well, that kind of relationship.
“This is completely…”
Thinking from Lady Ella’s point of view, does that make me a furry?
No… that is… Sul has a human form, actually… but even as a human she’s still my younger sister, so…
Furry or siscon…
“…”
Maybe I shouldn’t have asked Lady Ella for permission last night.
“Hmm…”
“Let’s go to the slums!”
As things stand, I’ll be sure to explain the furry thing at the next opportunity.
Originally, I was meant to visit the slums with Lady Isabella after our visit to the Eloise family, as we had promised.
“It’s been two days since she escaped from the Imperial Palace, wouldn’t they have caught almost everyone by now?”
If it’s been two days… I figured the Imperial search party would have caught all the criminals by now.
Not that I was making excuses because I couldn’t be bothered to go out. Absolutely not.
Lady Isabella, in her ever-so-confident way, responded to that question with…
“There are still fourteen who haven’t been caught!”
Fourteen criminals still on the loose, apparently.
“…How do you know such specific information?”
How did she know such precise details?
I wondered if Lady Isabella went to the Imperial Palace every night to personally check how many criminals had been apprehended.
“Nephira told me.”
The answer that came back… was more unexpected than I could have imagined.
“…Lady Nephira did?”
“Yep!”
“You mean… the former Sovereign, right?”
“Former Sovereign, yes.”
“…Is she perhaps… currently in the Magocracy?”
“Yep!”
Good heavens, there were two beings residing in the Magocracy who could destroy the entire country.
And the people had no idea… The people really should be worshipping Lady Isabella and be thankful to her.
If the Prime Progenitor Vampire hadn’t been so friendly to humans, this nation would have been ruined long ago.
“When did she arrive?”
I asked when Lady Nephira had arrived here.
“Two days ago, I suddenly felt a familiar presence outside the window, so I went out to check. And Nephira was there.”
Two days ago, when Her Majesty came to visit Asher and I in our room.
Lady Isabella suddenly rushed out the window… and it seems Lady Nephira had been there since then.
“I’ve known since then! There was a breakout from the Imperial Palace, and she said that she has a duty to protect the Sovereign, so she came here?”
I couldn’t deny that I was a little puzzled that I hadn’t sensed Lady Nephira’s presence in the last three days.
The former sovereign, who was supposed to protect me, never showed his face even when I was in several dangerous situations.
“Uh… I didn’t know I had someone watching over me…”
“Of course not! I told him not to!”
That unfilial cat-like creature.
“Since I’m protecting my master, I told Nephira to do other things. And she figured out the escaped prisoner’s location.”
That pious, cat-like creature.
“Ah, so that time you killed the escapee and called him a criminal?”
“That’s right! Nephira told me he was an escapee, so I killed him!”
Come to think of it, that’s right.
Lady Isabella, who always asked for permission before killing whenever her bloodlust spiked.
Two days ago, she threw a man out the window, and immediately killed the man who was tailing us.
Saying he was a criminal who deserved to die, I wondered at the time how she knew he was an escapee.
It was all information from Nephira.
“Where is Nephira now?”
I wanted to thank Nephira for her hard work these past three days, but before I could…
I asked if Nephira was also transformed into an animal state…
“No? She’s just a vampire as usual.”
“I shouldn’t call her.”
Inside the Academy, where we were so vulnerable to attack, I vowed not to summon Nephira.
“So, when is it?”
“Tch…”
I changed the subject, hoping Lady Isabella had forgotten about visiting the slums…
But it seemed she really wanted to see me in action.
Therefore.
“It’s a little awkward to go just like this, let’s quickly deal with the Abandoned Heart Harvester first.”
Heading to the dangerous slums without being able to use Aether felt like suicide.
I decided to deal with the Heart Harvester sealed in my body first.
And I decided to meet Lilian Isolde, the top scholar in this field, to ask how to destroy the Aether Core.
If she knows how to make it, wouldn’t she also know how to break it?
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly, so surely she knows how to destroy the Aether Core within my body.
“Wait for me, Heart Harvester. I’ll show you the power of a nuclear explosion.”
…
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“..For real?”
“Yes.”
“..Are you perhaps insane?”
When I said I wanted to remove the Aether Core in my dantian, she asked me seriously if I was crazy.
“There’s a guy called the Heart Harvester sleeping in my heart right now, you know?”
“…”
“But, see, the guy’s a soul-being made of pure aether. And I can’t exactly burst his heart, can I?”
“…”
“So, if I burst the aether core in his *dantian*, wouldn’t that deal him some damage?”
Better to just be honest about what happened.
“You’re insane.”
I could tell from her expression she was convinced of my madness.
“So there is a way.”
“…I’m not telling you.”
Just as I suspected, she knew how to destroy an aether core.
“I know what you’re worried about. It takes a long time to create these cores, doesn’t it?”
“Knowing that, why are you asking me to do something so cruel?”
“What if I told you I had a technique to create another aether core in mere hours? Would you believe me?”
But even she, I knew, would be helpless before new knowledge.
That’s just the way geniuses are.
When new information gets added to a field they already know, they dive in even deeper.
Usually, these geniuses end up going to grad school, getting their doctorates, the whole shebang.
To put it simply, it’s like how top-ranked gamers react when a new dungeon appears, frantically trying to conquer it.
“…Really?”
“If you just shatter my aether core, I’ll show you. While you’re at it, destroying the core in my *dantian*, do you know how to neutralize the one in my heart, too?”
“…I might.”
“Perfect.”
…
Following Lilian Isoldes’ wish to keep the method of shattering aether cores to herself.
I waited patiently, the silence skill on my body lifted.
‘..Huh? What’s with this guy?’
I expected the Heart Harvester to immediately go wild, but I could feel it doing nothing at all.
When aether started flowing through my body again, I had braced myself to use the silence skill as soon as my heart became threatened, but…
“…”
It’s definitely awake.
I was certain it was awake.
Normally I wouldn’t have been able to sense it, but I was the one who intentionally sealed it within my heart.
The moment aether started coursing through me again, I knew it had awakened, but…
‘..What is this?’
For some reason, it wasn’t trying to rampage like before. I almost wondered if it had learned some manners.
“I will remove it.”
Lilian Isolde placed her hand on my abdomen and began extracting a large amount of aether.
If she absorbed that aether, the Heart Harvester sealed within my body could be transferred to her.
I had to stop this…
“The chance..that the Lord granted..second time..I not realise..Sorry…”
‘..What is it babbling about?’
“I shall… accept your judgment willingly…”
‘???’
Along with words difficult to grasp.
“…Truly, this aether isn’t Mistress’s aether. This must be that Heart Reaper thing. I shall eliminate it.”
The forsaken Heart Reaper vaporized from Lillian Isolde’s fingertips.
‘Did she… mistake me for the Goddess just now…?’