"Your Majesty, the place mentioned in the letter lies just ahead."
"It's not just me — when the time comes, all of you must look out for yourselves as well."
Sophia's cool, clear voice rang out, her gaze fixed on the distant city gate with the utmost seriousness.
The pass of Sunset Glow Canyon — a Black Stone Fortress on Olan's border.
Year upon year of wind and sand had weathered the City wall of this small town into a mottled, battered state, yet on this day, the atmosphere here was so suffocatingly oppressive that not even a single bird dared circle at low altitude.
The streets of the little town appeared utterly deserted, but in truth, packed into the shadow of every commoner's house, in the deepest corners of every shuttered stable, were Olan heavy infantrymen forcing their breathing down to its lowest ebb.
Behind the battlement crenels along the inner side of the City wall, over a thousand elite archers wielding repeating crossbows had long since drawn their strings full-taut, their cold arrowheads gleaming with a faint, eerie blue venomous sheen in the sunlight.
This was a meticulously laid-out crucible of slaughter.
At this moment, Queen Tina of Olan's own younger sister — Una — clad in a form-fitting hunting outfit, hand pressed to the short blade at her waist, stood with grave composure atop the very highest watchtower.
On the distant horizon, at last, a faint wisp of dust began to rise.
Una leaned forward slightly, narrowing her eyes with a touch of tension.
According to her elder sister Tina's earlier projections, when faced with the pressing threat of fifty thousand troops bearing down upon her, the freshly-turned-sixteen-year-old Little Queen of Mason would have only two possible responses.
Either she would be so terrified that she would seal Vala's city gates utterly shut, refuse all communication, and rally every soldier she had to prepare for a last desperate stand.
Or, arrogantly and foolishly, she would bring all her regular forces to confront them, drawing up her formations in the canyon.
Whichever it was, both fell within Olan's chain-of-causality calculations.
However, as that wisp of dust gradually grew clearer and the figures within it became visible, the fingers Una had pressed to her short blade suddenly stiffened, her pupils shrinking in an instant.
There was no endless, unbroken army formation; no sky-blotting Black Musketeer force.
On the silent, empty wilderness trade road, there were only five lonely black horses.
Riding at the very front was a young girl clad in an elaborate, heavy, oppressively gorgeous black gothic gown.
Her long silver hair streamed wildly in the evening wind — like the one strand of moonlight in the night that bore not a speck of dust.
And behind her, there followed only four women of similarly slender build.
Five people…
She actually only brought four people?!
My elder sister has ten thousand troops lying in ambush within the city, with countless iron cavalry stationed outside the canyon ready to close in at any moment — does she really not know that this is a trap from which there is no return?
According to all the intelligence my sister and I have gathered, this girl who has risen in the Northern border through some bizarre and unaccountable means ought to be a calculating, deeply self-protective coward.
What gives her the nerve to wear such a cumbersome gown and walk straight into our blades like some noble miss off to attend a tea party?!
She's mad…
This Little Queen of Mason — she's absolutely a madwoman who cannot be measured by ordinary reason!
Una could never have imagined that a young girl could possibly be this audacious.
The five black horses gradually slowed at a distance of a hundred paces from the City wall, the rustle of hooves on loose gravel sounding particularly grating across the deathly silent battlefield.
Una stood high upon the City wall, looking down from her elevated vantage at that seemingly delicate silver-haired figure.
By age alone, this Little Queen looked even a few years younger than her, her frame appearing so slight that it seemed a single Northern border blizzard might break her clean in two.
Yet for some reason, as Una watched that young girl in the black gothic gown — not a single strand of silver hair out of place even amid the wind-blown sand — a layer of cold sweat seeped quietly out across her back.
Just at that moment, the silver-haired girl atop the white horse gave a gentle tug on the reins.
Sophia raised her head ever so slightly, expressionless.
That face, exquisite to the point of seeming unreal, devoid of the slightest emotional ripple, against the backdrop of the ashen-grey black-stone wall, took on a coldness almost like that of a deity looking down from on high upon ants.
Then those pale-golden pupils crossed the hundred-pace void and — with extreme precision and not the slightest trace of warmth — locked onto Una atop the watchtower.
"Boom!"
In that one-tenth of a second when their gazes interwove, Una felt as though her heart had been viciously seized by a cold, invisible hand.
The sensation was extremely strange.
There was no overwhelming, mountain-crushing oppressive aura, no raging tidal surge — just a single calm, infuriatingly rational gaze.
But in that instant, Una felt as though her whole person had been stripped naked, and that even the speed of the blood flowing within her body, and even her physiological intent of preparing to draw her blade in the next moment, had all been laid utterly bare within the reckoning of those pale-golden pupils.
This kind of absolute rationality — that was the most terrifying tyranny in this world.
"Adjutant…"
Una was gripping the stone bricks of the City wall so hard that she didn't even register her fingernails scraping into the cracks, her voice trembling in a way she could no longer entirely control.
"Pass the order…
Have every single one of them tuck their weapons even deeper out of sight.
Without my direct order, absolutely… absolutely not one stray arrow is to be loosed."
"Your Highness?"
The Olan general beside her looked somewhat puzzled.
"There are only five of them — if we just rain down a volley of arrows right now…" we'd solve Queen Tina's most pressing problem at a single stroke!
"Shut up!"
Una let out a low, almost out-of-control growl, those eyes fixed dead on the silver-haired girl who had already started her horse forward again — and whose pace had not shifted by even the slightest physical fraction.
"What do you understand?!
She used a few sheets of paper and a handful of strange tubes to chew Vala and Yurilland to utter pieces in the span of just a few days — how could a person like that possibly come and throw her life away?
The very fact that she dared come means that somewhere beyond the attack range of this city, or in some blind spot of our logic, there is a giant hammer we cannot see — and it is currently hanging right over Olan's head!
This person… she is absolutely not to be underestimated.
No — she isn't even a person at all."
The setting sun gradually sank towards the edge of the canyon, dyeing the entire Black Stone Fortress in a blood-like shade of sunset glow.
And within that crimson tide, Sophia, in her floor-length black gothic gown, under the dead silence and the secret terror-stricken gaze of tens of thousands, gracefully and coldly crossed the last line of defence of Black Stone City.
"Creeeak—"
Accompanied by a harsh, heavy grinding of metal, the massive iron-plated city gate of the Black Stone Fortress — sealed for months on end — slowly swung open inward beneath the taut, watchful eyes of countless Olan soldiers.
The wind and sand kicked up by the opening gate blew straight into her face, and Una forcibly suppressed the war-drum pounding in her chest, swiftly descending from the watchtower.
Her hand pressed to the short blade had by now seeped out a fine layer of sweat, leaving damp marks on the coarse leather grip.
With a light step from her white horse, Sophia took the lead and rode across the shadow of the gate.
The folds of that elaborate black gothic gown rippled gently on either side of the horse's flanks, and the dark silver threads sewn into the hem of the skirt refracted in the dying glow of the setting sun a kind of beauty that bordered on the cold and ruthless.
"Your Majesty the Queen of Mason."
Una stood on the inner side of the gate, bowing slightly in a standard Olan royal courtesy.
Although she did her utmost to keep her voice sounding calm and proper, her slightly stiff neck and faintly trembling eyelashes still betrayed the unrest in her heart.
"I am the Queen's younger sister, Una.
My elder sister has by now prepared an evening banquet at the City Lord's Mansion. If you will please follow me, all of you."
Sophia glanced down at her from on high, those pale-golden pupils still carrying no trace of warmth whatsoever, merely giving the slightest nod as a form of reply.
"Quick!
Get to the City Lord's Mansion. Tell the Chief Steward to bring out every silver platter and every drop of the finest Flowing Light Ancient Wine at once!"
In the very instant she turned to lead the way, Una — using the cover of adjusting her hunting jacket's collar — barked a low, extremely furtive order to one of her trusted personal attendants beside her.
Her voice was pressed to its lowest pitch, with a frantic, exasperated edge to it:
"And the kitchen!
Tell those damned cooks to speed up their work tenfold!
Bring out every single one of those top-grade dishes we'd prepared!
If any of them dare show even a sliver of slacking, I'll have their heads twisted clean off today and lined up neatly all along the City wall!"
That attendant's face went white, and she scrambled to take the shortest route, dashing madly toward the City Lord's Mansion.
It was no wonder Una was so frantic.
In Queen Tina's and the entire Olan think tank's earlier projections, Sophia would either be quivering in fear inside Vala city, or she'd be drawing up her formations in the canyon with several thousand regular troops at her back.
They had simply never imagined that this silver-haired girl, the one reputed to be a flawless calculator, would actually bring just four people and stride brazenly into this death trap.
Because they'd been all but certain Sophia wouldn't come at all, the trappings of this Hongmen Banquet at the City Lord's Mansion had originally been thrown together extremely perfunctorily.
Yet now, not only had the woman come — she'd arrived with the absolute aura of a deity inspecting her territory.
If even the slightest flaw appeared in the banquet brought out at this moment, in Una's view, it would amount to exposing Olan's lack of underlying strength to this terrifying Queen of Mason!
The street from the city gate to the City Lord's Mansion was not particularly long, but for Una walking at the head of the column, this stretch of road was longer than any life-or-death duel she had ever experienced.
In the commoner's houses lining both sides of the street, the ten thousand Olan heavy infantrymen, breathing pressed to its absolute lowest, were peering through the cracks in windows and the dead corners of door panels — eyes locked dead on this strange procession of only five people.
The points of their spear-tips glinted faintly in the shadows, and the tension in the air had already reached a critical threshold.
Yet the conduct of those few following behind Una sent a soul-deep shudder through the Olan soldiers lying in ambush on either side.
Delilah, hand pressed to her longsword, swept those pale-red eyes across the buildings on either side without focusing on anything in particular — her expression of utter indifference as though she'd just walked into a stretch of harmless wild grass.
Willow pushed at the hairband on her head, and even had the leisure to wipe her fingertips with a silk handkerchief, that gentle, meticulous courteous smile never leaving the corners of her lips.
The one who reduced Una to utter despair was that little inventor called Irene.
She was sitting astride her horse swinging both legs about, all the while curiously eyeing the repeating crossbows up on the City wall, fishing a piece of jelly out from her bosom and popping it into her mouth — even rolling her eyes at an Olan archer up on the wall whose hands were trembling from sheer over-tension.
They're far too relaxed… this isn't them coming to a banquet at all, it's practically a leisurely stroll!
Just look at that pink-haired girl — the way she's eyeing our repeating crossbows is like she's looking at a heap of children's toys!
And that smiling purple-haired girl — what on earth is she smiling about?
Can it be that in her eyes, the ten thousand crack ambushers of ours were already written into Mason's death roster long before they even set out?
Sister, oh sister — did you really calculate correctly?
If Sophia dares let her core members walk into our encirclement with this kind of attitude, then around our fortress, just what kind of cross-era weapon capable of wiping us all out in an instant must be lying in ambush?!
This unknown — it's downright more suffocating than even those black tubes!
What sort of trump card could they possibly be holding to act this nonchalant?
Meanwhile, at the centre of the procession, Sophia was just now slightly adjusting her seat. The black gothic gown, though gorgeous, really was a touch stifling in the lingering heat of summer.
Judging by the degree of rot in the timbers of the buildings on either side, the structural stability of this fortress was extremely poor.
If Irene were to toss out some of those new-type bursting bottles from her backpack in a little while, the collapse-logic of this place would proceed very smoothly.
As the group stepped through the somewhat weather-beaten main gate of the City Lord's Mansion, a thick aroma compounded of wild honey, roast lamb and expensive spices came wafting straight into their faces.
Under Una's frantic urging, the Chief Steward of the City Lord's Mansion had — at the cost of three smashed glass goblets, no less — managed to gild this Hongmen Banquet into something glittering and golden within just a few minutes.
Queen Tina at this moment sat upright in the main seat, her jet-black armour radiating a frigid sheen under the light of the glass lamps.
"Queen of Mason, you've got considerably more nerve than I'd imagined."
Tina slowly rose to her feet, those sharp eyes locked dead on Sophia, who was stepping into the hall with the hem of her black gown trailing behind her.
"In the face of efficient logic, nerve is merely the most basic complimentary attachment."
Sophia replied with a faint, level tone, gracefully sitting down into the chair Willow had pulled out for her.
Those pale-golden pupils swept across the exquisite silverware on the table, without the slightest ripple.
Una retreated into the shadows of the hall, watching the two queens seated on either side of the long table whose auras had begun to clash with one another, and that lingering sense of unease in her chest, far from receding, only grew thicker.
Sophia's utterly dismissive coldness — as if Olan's military might were beneath her notice — left Una entirely without any sense of control over the situation.
She had to do something to give Olan some additional, certain leverage.
"Come over."
Una quietly beckoned, calling the personal attendant in charge of pouring wine for Mason's core team behind a pillar.
Her face in the shadows looked somewhat contorted, and there was a sickly resolve in her hushed voice:
"Listen carefully — in a moment, when you pour wine for Sophia and those four beside her,
take the dose of Night God's Tears we'd prepared earlier and triple it for me.
No — make it five times."
The attendant's hand trembled with fright; she very nearly dropped the silver flagon onto the ground:
"Your Highness…
Five times the dose — that's a deadly poison potent enough to turn the intestines of a fully grown leopard into pus in a single instant!
I'm afraid even the wine cup itself would be eaten away…"
"Then use the finest platinum cups!"
Una grabbed the attendant by the collar, her gaze frantically fixed on that proud silver-haired back at the centre of the hall.
"No matter what they've laid in ambush outside the city, if this Little Queen drops dead the moment she takes that first sip of wine, Mason will be paralysed in an instant!
Pour the poison in for me to the brim — I want to make sure that pair of eyes of hers doesn't even get the chance to do its final reckoning!"
"Y-Yes!
Your Highness!"
The attendant retreated, trembling all the way.
Una drew in a deep breath, plastering that hypocritical, stiff smile back onto her face, and slowly walked back to that negotiating table laden with gunsmoke and deadly venom.
The air within the hall seemed in that one instant to be drawn into a vacuum, broken only by the faint clink of the few ornate glass lamps colliding gently in the breeze overhead.
Queen Tina sat upright at the head of the long table, her cold gaze slowly drifting away from Sophia's flawlessly exquisite face.
At last, with absolute precision, it settled upon Delilah, who stood like an iron tower right behind Sophia.
The corners of Tina's mouth curved slowly into a mocking, cold smile; the index finger of her right hand tapped lightly upon the jet-black armoured vambrace, producing a regular, ear-grating metallic sound:
"Well, well — if it isn't Delilah?
I recall that just over a year ago, when you came to tender your resignation to me, you swore up and down that your old wounds would not heal, that you'd never fight again, that all you wanted was a quiet life somewhere in some remote little village.
Out of consideration for our former bond, I granted your request.
Yet here you are now… standing here, wearing Mason's colours.
Betraying Olan, throwing in your lot with some Little Queen still playing in the mud — Delilah, what crime shall I name for what you've done?"
The moment Tina's last words fell, a burst of brutal pressure exploded through what had already been an oppressively tense hall!
"How dare you!"
"You actually dared betray Her Majesty!"
"Shing-shing-shing—!!"
In a flash, from behind the folding screens, from the side halls, even from behind the ministers — over a dozen of Olan's core Royal Guards drew their longswords from their waists in unison.
The snow-white blade-edges merged in the glow of the glass lamps into a dense, impenetrable forest of steel, all of it pointing in perfect synchronisation at Sophia and her party as they sat in their chairs.
The killing intent in the air at that moment had condensed into something tangible.
Facing the gleaming blades surrounding her, Sophia's fair right hand was still holding that platinum cup, the trembling frequency of her fingertips shifting not even by a single physical fraction.
Yet the few people behind her moved several times faster than Olan's Royal Guards.
"Clack!"
Delilah's longsword did not leave its sheath, but the hilt of her heavy greatsword slammed down hard onto the bluestone floor at the very same moment, and the floor-stones of the entire hall seemed to give a sympathetic jolt with it.
Beside her, the smile on Willow's face didn't change in the slightest, but with a tiny twitch of her sleeves, two short pistols glinting with a faint blue light were already steady in her hands.
Irene, even more dramatically, let out a strange yelp and pulled straight out of her work-bag a Black Rose Reformed Model new-type black tube — thicker by a hand's breadth than any ordinary musket — its muzzle pointed without the slightest courtesy straight at Queen Tina's head.
For an instant, the black tubes and the snow-white longswords were aimed point-blank at one another in the centre of the hall, the silence so deep one could hear the faint patter of ashes falling from the burnt-out Black Vine Incense.
Queen Tina looked at those few blackish, strange tubes — the very ones that had chewed ten thousand heavy infantrymen to pieces beneath the walls of Whitestone City — and a flash of startled doubt darted through the depths of those sharp eyes.
Especially when her gaze returned to Sophia, and she discovered that her opponent was still calm and composed, still meeting her eyes with that same unchanging look — the coldness in her eyes not diminished by even half a fraction — the knuckles of Tina's hand gripping the throne's armrest tightened involuntarily.
She didn't even blink an eye.
Inwardly, Queen Tina felt an inexplicable lurch. She drew in a deep breath, then re-fastened that almost arrogant mask back onto her face, and waved a hand at the surrounding Royal Guards:
"Stand down.
It's nothing — I was merely a little curious today.
Since Delilah has already chosen a new master, as the previous queen, I should at least hear out her reasons."
Only then did the Royal Guards slowly draw back their longswords — though their hands remained pressed to the hilts.
Delilah, hand resting on her greatsword, met the gaze of the sovereign she had once served head-on with those dark-red eyes, utterly fearless, her tone cold and rigid, carrying not a trace of past sentiment:
"I merely found a reason that would let me fight again."
"Oh?"
Tina raised an eyebrow, leaning forward slightly, her tone carrying a touch of patronising curiosity.
"A reason that could make Olan's hardest shield take up arms once more…
I really would like to know — what, exactly, has that impoverished Mason, or rather this little girl in front of you, given you that I could not?"
Beneath the tense gazes of the ministers and Una, every eye in the hall once more converged on Sophia.
However, when faced with this question from the nominal ruler of the Northern border, Sophia merely set her cup down with elegant grace, and within those pale-golden pupils there came a flicker of extreme, almost dismissive coldness — as though she found her opponent's prattle excessive.
Her red lips parted lightly, her tone as cool and clear as a north wind sweeping over an ice plain:
"No comment."
Four words — clean, sharp, decisive — like a sledgehammer that pulverised every probing tendril Tina had extended to absolute dust.
Within the hall, a deathly silence descended once more.
Una, standing in the shadows, felt her scalp go entirely numb in an instant, and the Olan ministers seated on either side of the long table turned ashen-faced, their breathing growing rough and heavy.
Arrogant!
Outright, blatantly arrogant!
This was an Olan fortress; ten thousand crack troops were lying in ambush within the city, and outside there were another fifty thousand iron cavalry ready to close in at any moment — just how mad was this freshly-turned-sixteen-year-old Little Queen, to dare, on someone else's territory, deliver the four words "no comment" in a tone bordering on charitable disdain?
Yet beyond their extreme fury, a terrifying line of reasoning began to spread like a plague through the brains of every Olan high official, frantically reassembling itself.
No comment… she didn't even bother making up some excuse to fob me off.
Is this the reaction a sixteen-year-old girl ought to have in the face of a fifty-thousand-strong army's threat?
No, absolutely not!
Delilah is a person of immense pride; the reason that could make her willingly serve as bodyguard at this woman's back is certainly not ordinary gold or land.
Could it be… that Mason has grasped some kind of ultimate Alchemy truth capable of utterly overturning the foundations of this world?
Just look at the expression in Sophia's eyes — that isn't arrogance, that is the absolute disregard of a being looking at the weak.
Those few black tubes in their hands — could they be merely the tip of the iceberg?
If I make my move here today, will the Sunset Glow Canyon outside be reduced in an instant to scorched earth by the terrifying weapons of Mason hidden away in the dark?
Her "no comment" — was it, in fact, a final mercy bestowed upon my ignorance?!
Meanwhile, standing at a distance, Una felt cold sweat sliding down her temple and dripping onto the collar of her hunting jacket.
Too abnormal! This is too abnormal!
The moment she walked in she looked at me with that gaze, and just now the way Irene looked at the repeating crossbows on the wall was nothing but mockery.
Now, facing my sister's interrogation, she can't even be bothered to spare an extra word.
Combined with the fact that, just last month, Mason used those damned slips of paper to drain Olan's black market and supplies utterly clean within a single month…
Could it be that high officials within Olan — even some of the ministers seated here — have already been thoroughly bought out by her Black Rose Credit System?!
She didn't come here today to attend any appointment — she came here to issue a final reckoning ultimatum to Olan, this rotting old empire!
In her eyes, we are already a roomful of dead people!
It wasn't just the two sisters; the Olan ministers seated around the table, too, watched Sophia with eyes that gradually shifted from initial fury to wordless terror.
Those who could sit in such high places were no fools. Under the rules of the old age, the one who had shown all their cards was always the loudest in their bluster.
And a person like Sophia — striding deep into enemy territory with only four people at her back, replying to direct interrogation with a single ice-cold "no comment"…
That meant the hand she held behind her had grown so vast that even Olan's fifty thousand troops registered, in her logic model, as nothing more than a string of meaningless red-figure deficits!
On one side of the long table, Willow gently smiled and slipped the short pistol back up her sleeve, the look she now gave the Olan party growing all the more gentle and tender.
On the other side, Irene, fiddling with the black tube in her hand, gave a somewhat bored twist of her lip.
Truly worthy of Her Majesty — with a single sentence she fried this entire lot's CPUs dry. So this is what the oppression of absolute rationality looks like — noted, noted!
These two vicious sisters — heaven only knows what they've got hidden up their sleeves.
But Irene had assumed Her Majesty had come this time intending to bend and compromise — and instead it turned out Her Majesty had absolutely no intention of indulging them.
Irene's gaze swept across the hall. She felt that with her own abilities, she could absolutely break Her Majesty out of this place.
Queen Tina, atop the main seat, went through a procession of colours — pale, flushed, pale again — the hand grasping the wine cup trembling faintly from sheer over-exertion of grip.
She realised that, from the very moment Sophia had spoken those four words, the dominance of this Hongmen Banquet which she herself had personally laid out had been utterly stripped from her by that pair of pale-golden pupils.
Queen Tina's whole body went rigid upon the throne.
That arrogant mask she usually wore to look down upon the Northern border had been split, by Sophia's flat, unwavering "no comment", clean down the middle with a crack that could not be mended.
Especially the Black Rose Reformed Model black musket in Irene's hand — its pitch-black muzzle locked dead between her brows.
According to reports from Olan scouts planted in every region, these strange iron tubes could not only produce earth-shaking thunder, but at a distance of dozens of paces could blast heavily-armoured infantry clean off their feet, body and armour alike shattering into a sky-wide spray of mangled flesh.
At this distance, if that pink-haired little girl's finger so much as twitched…
Cold sweat trickled silently from Queen Tina's temple.
She didn't dare move; she even deliberately slowed her breathing, terrified that any tiny physical movement might trigger a retaliatory attack from these Mason witches.
Within the deathly silence of the hall, the corner of Queen Tina's eye darted, ever so subtly, across the tightly closed carved doors.
Should she signal right now, and have all the soldiers outside come charging in?
Once this mad thought arose, it grew wild as weeds inside Tina's mind.
This was the Black Stone Fortress — her Tina's absolute home ground!
Although, for the sake of so-called diplomatic etiquette, she hadn't put a large army on display, the surrounding commoners' houses and stables really and truly held ten thousand Olan heavy infantrymen — every last one of them blessed by the temples!
Even if these five had black tubes of fearsome power in their hands, surely they couldn't possibly slaughter ten thousand men dry?
All she had to do was smash a cup to give the signal, and the densely packed shield walls and surging tides of men could trample this hall flat within minutes, and grind this damned silver-haired Little Queen — along with her fire-poking sticks — into mince!
Tina's fingers brushed lightly along the rim of her platinum cup, and the killing intent in her eyes had reached its absolute peak.
However, before Tina's killing intent could be put into action, Una — standing in the shadows of the hall — felt a sudden jolt of alarm pierce her heart.
Una knew her own elder sister far too well; the moment she saw Tina's slightly shifting posture and the way her eyes flicked dead at the doors, she knew her sister was preparing to take a desperate gamble and unleash the ten thousand ambushers for a forced encirclement.
Absolutely no!
Una screamed silently within her heart.
She looked at Irene's utterly tension-free, even faintly eager fingers, and then at Delilah's greatsword that looked as though it could tear space itself apart at any moment — and that fear of being utterly seen through by Sophia's pale-golden pupils once again rushed over her like a tide.
Without making a show of it, Una stepped half a pace forward and — using the cover of a coiling-dragon stone pillar — desperately gave a tiny shake of her head to Tina on the main seat.
Her eyes were filled with frantic urgency and warning, and the hand pressed to her short blade made a furious downward-pressing gesture.
Sister! Whatever you do, don't act on impulse!
Those black tubes are too fast!
That lot from earlier even said it themselves — on the battlefield, half a tenth of a second slow and you're garbage.
The instant you give the signal, those few tubes will absolutely blast your head into smashed-watermelon shards before the heavy infantry can even shove the doors open!
Besides…
haven't we already prepared the most perfect solution?
That's Night God's Tears at a full quintupled dose!
All it will take in a moment is for that deadly poisoned wine to be poured, and this arrogant Sophia and her pack of lackeys will have their innards rot to pus mid-conversation. There is absolutely no need to risk getting our heads blown off racing for speed with these madwomen!
Let them gloat! Let them strut!
The more arrogant a person is, the more wretched their death is when the poisoned wine slides down their throat!
Queen Tina caught her younger sister's terrified, restraining gaze with perfect precision.
Looking at Una's near-pleading silent signal, Tina's head — flushed dizzy with humiliation — at last regained a sliver of reason under the chill of fear.
Una was right; the weapons of these Mason people exceeded all common sense of the old age. At such close range, even if she won the brawl, she — the Queen of Olan — would in all likelihood be wounded herself.
She could not be wounded; she also did not want to see her own subordinates take losses.
She still had the Imperial Capital left to take.
Assets that could be settled with poison really did not warrant a high-risk physical confrontation.
"Heh heh…"
Queen Tina's stiff cheeks twitched, and she forcibly dragged out an extremely strained dry laugh, slowly lifting her hand from the throne's armrest once more in a placating gesture.
"All of you, put your weapons away. Since Her Majesty the Queen of Mason regards this as a no-comment matter of state, then naturally This Queen would not presume to probe any further.
After all, today we are here to enjoy the very finest banquet of the Northern border — not to spill blood."
The Olan Royal Guards exchanged glances, and only then somewhat hesitantly slid their longswords back into their sheaths.
The oppressive air of drawn-swords-and-bent-bows in the hall seemed to disperse on the surface, but in the heart of every present person, the undercurrents surged all the more fiercely.
Sophia turned her head slightly and glanced at Irene.
Irene rolled her eyes, twisted her lip in regret, and tucked the Black Rose Reformed back into her bag, muttering under her breath as she did so:
"Tch, retracting it already — the old woman's got such a small heart."
Willow maintained her flawless smile, the two short pistols tracing graceful arcs across her fingertips before vanishing in an instant up the long sleeves of her robe.
Just as the old order within the hall was barely managing to right itself again, the Chief Steward of the City Lord's Mansion came stepping forward, leading several head-bowed attendants who didn't dare even draw a deep breath, trembling as they carried up silver platters.
And the attendant walking at the very front was bearing in both hands a magnificent flagon wrought of pure platinum.
The flagon was carved with fine roses and twining vines, but beneath that exquisite exterior, it held a quintupled-dose, deadly poisoned wine sufficient to turn any flesh-and-blood body into pus in a single instant.
Una stood behind the stone pillar, her gaze locked dead on that platinum flagon, the corners of her lips at last curling into a faint smile both venomous to the extreme and twisted slightly by fear.
The hour of reckoning has come, Queen Sophia.
Una stood behind the stone pillar, eyes fixed dead on that platinum flagon, her violently pounding heart lending even her breath a faintly scalding warmth.
She closed her eyes for a moment, forcibly pressing the madness and trepidation deep in her gaze down inside herself, then dragged out an elegant smile she believed to be seamless and stepped languidly out from the shadow.
"Pouring wine is such a coarse task — let me, as the younger sister, see to it personally."
Una said with a smile, walking up to the table in a most charming manner, and on her own initiative took that heavy platinum flagon from the trembling attendant.
She stepped to Sophia's side, tilting the spout slightly, and a dark-red, viscous liquid bordering on the eerie began to flow slowly from the spout into the platinum cup before Sophia.
Under the light of the glass lamps, the surface of that wine shimmered faintly with a cold and clinging sheen.
"Your Majesty the Queen of Mason, this is the Flowing Light Ancient Wine that our Olan royal house has treasured for a hundred years. For ordinary folk, even merely catching a whiff of it would be the greatest of gifts.
Today it has been brought up specifically for you — please, Your Majesty Sophia, do partake."
Una raised the cup with both hands and offered it before Sophia, her golden eyes deeply concealing a near-suffocating note of provocation and expectation.
However, Sophia merely lowered her head slightly, those pale-golden pupils gazing quietly at the dark-red liquid filled almost to overflowing inside the cup, without any motion at all.
The entire hall once again sank into a strange stillness.
Queen Tina, seated up high, knit her brows, eyes fixed on Sophia's face — calm as a stagnant pond — the knuckles on the throne armrest tightening once more, her tone now carrying a note of undisguised pressure:
"What's the matter, Your Majesty Sophia?
This Queen has personally hosted this banquet, and Una has personally taken up the flagon for you — and yet you don't intend even to grant Olan the courtesy of one cup of wine?"
Hearing Tina's question, Sophia at last let out a slightly speechless sigh.
She slowly raised her head, and within those cool, deep, pale-golden pupils there was now neither anger nor fear, but instead a thick, heavy weight of disgust and exasperation — the kind one reserves for looking upon an idiot.
Under Una's and Tina's gradually stiffening gazes, Sophia's fair, slender right hand picked up that platinum cup.
Neither did she raise it to her lips, nor did she respond to Tina's words. Instead, with the smoothest twist of her wrist, she slowly — without spilling a single drop — poured the Flowing Light Ancient Wine in the cup onto the clean, neat bluestone floor at her feet.
"Hisss—!!!"
In the one-tenth of a second that the dark-red wine touched the floor, an extraordinarily ear-piercing, muffled sound of violent corrosion erupted in the centre of the hall!
Following that, the pool of wine on the floor began, at a speed utterly defying the common sense of the Northern border, to spew out dense layer upon dense layer of black-brown foam!
That sudden surge of foam roiled and bubbled in a manner more exaggerated than a Coca-Cola shaken under high pressure for three full minutes, bursting upward in layered waves and spreading out across the floor, accompanied by hissing white smoke — within a single moment, a small mountain of foam had piled itself up at the centre of the hall.
Not only that — accompanying the frenzied churning of the foam, an extremely pungent stench, mixed with the smells of low-grade industrial disinfectant and strong acid corrosion, instantly filled the entire gilded hall.
Irene, standing off to one side, sniffed sharply, her delicate features instantly crumpling into a tight knot, and she couldn't help internally ranting to herself in a manic frenzy:
Oh my god!
Are Olan's alchemists all just a bunch of mud-brick mason types stirring strong acid in with crap?!
Even if you're going to poison someone, at least give me something tasteless and odourless — something high-class enough to drop you the moment it draws blood, like the stuff from the old-time storybooks!
Fine, the stuff looks all black and gross like hot Coca-Cola that's been left out for half a month and lost all its fizz, whatever — but the moment you pour it on the floor, why does it have to smell exactly like industrial toilet disinfectant from my original world cranked to a hundred times normal concentration?!
Foam this huge, a smell this overpowering — do you Olan lot really think Her Majesty is blind? Or do you think the entire core leadership of Mason is a herd of olfactory-impaired vegetables?!
This is just way too unprofessional — you might as well have carved the five characters "I am going to poison you" directly onto the flagon!
Sophia gracefully set the emptied platinum cup back down on the table, her fingertip wiping with disgust along the rim of the cup, and then, in a tone of utter cool clarity laced through with disappointment, she lightly tossed out a single line:
"Don't you all think this is a bit too much?"
Even when you're poisoning me, at least give me something of decent quality!
This thing that looks like violently shaken Coca-Cola and smells like overdosed industrial disinfectant — just what kind of crude product entirely devoid of aesthetic value even is this?
However, Sophia's heartfelt, exasperated grumble — by the time it reached the ears of the already-taut-nerved Olan ruler and ministers in the hall — was instantly twisted and amplified into a terrifying truth capable of grinding their very souls to dust!
"Boom!"
The Olan ministers seated on either side of the long table, taking in that pool of black-brown deadly foam now taller than a human head, and breathing in that acid-laden vapour able to dissolve even stone, all turned ashen with fright, scrambling back several steps. The way they looked at Sophia now was as though they were looking at some ancient demon-god clad in human skin.
It's over! We've been completely exposed!
And Una, standing at Sophia's side, in that single instant lost every drop of colour from that face that had been wearing a cold smile only moments ago.
She stared dead at the cup Sophia had so casually set down, her legs gave way, and with a thump she actually collapsed straight to a sitting position on the carpet.
The magnificent platinum flagon clattered and rolled away across the floor, and the splashed-out poison instantly burned a charred black hole through the expensive animal-hide carpet.
She knew… from the very start, she knew everything!
That was Night God's Tears!
Even if a powerful heavily-armoured knight drank it down, it would be utterly impossible to detect any abnormality by sight alone!
Yet why, in the eyes of this Little Queen, was this sacred relic of the temples nothing more than a pile of excessive, crude tricks?!
The way she looked at me a moment ago — that wasn't the gaze you'd give an assassin; that was the gaze you'd give some farcical little clown putting on a juggling act in front of a god!
Her saying we were being "too much"…
That was a warning to us — that Olan has completely crossed Mason's bottom line!
On her ledger of logic, our final value has been deducted clean down to zero!
Heavens above — outside this fortress, how many Black Musketeer forces of Mason have actually surrounded us right now?!
Queen Tina, atop the main seat, was so shaken in that very moment that she stood straight up from her throne.
Una, you absolute fool — just how much poison did you put in?!
I really am a fool — how could I have entrusted something this important to my idiot little sister?
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