"I am Felt."
The golden-haired, red-eyed girl stood atop the elevated platform, every trace of her usual street-rat energy stripped away. Her voice carried a steadiness that brooked no argument, her gaze sweeping across the sea of nobles and officials packed below.
Every word landed clean and sharp.
"I have one goal, and one goal only: to sit on that throne."
"And when I do, everyone who backed me will share in every last scrap of glory and wealth that comes with it. First, once I'm crowned, my supporters gain exclusive monopoly rights. Mining, grain, livestock... all of it, distributed by contribution. The more you give, the more you get. Second, from the day I take the throne, my supporters pay zero taxes for three years. Those with exceptional contributions get extensions, no questions asked. Third, my supporters' children inherit titles one rank higher, automatically. Their heirs gain direct entry into the Royal Guard Knights, no examinations, no hoops to jump through."
Felt stepped forward, her voice rising with a fierce, magnetic energy. "From the moment you choose to stand behind me, we become bound by the same interests. If I succeed, you will drown in more wealth and power than you've ever dreamed of."
"Absolute, undeniable profit. That is my promise to you. Not from some pampered noble, but from a thief who crawled out of the slums, a Royal Candidate, and the last surviving orphan of the royal bloodline."
She finished, lifted the hem of her skirt in a practiced curtsy, fixed her face into a textbook smile, and turned to walk back to her seat.
She didn't make it a single step.
The voice of Rickert, the same man who'd made a point of repeating "slum thief" earlier, cut through the hall again.
"The last surviving orphan of the royal bloodline?"
"Lord Miklotov, the entire royal family may have perished to illness, but that hardly gives anyone license to impersonate them!"
"I demand a thorough investigation of her identity. If this is a deliberate fabrication, she must be punished accordingly!"
Felt heard every word. The curve of her smile twitched, threatening to crack, but she held it in place through sheer willpower. Barely.
"Lord Miklotov, I have already verified this matter personally."
Reinhard van Astrea, who had remained largely silent until now, turned toward Miklotov and dipped his head, his voice low and measured.
"Sir Reinhard, please explain the circumstances to the assembly."
The revelation that Felt was a royal orphan caught everyone off guard. Not just the crowd below. Even Roswaal hadn't known.
The hall erupted. Whispers became murmurs, murmurs became a roar of speculation that swallowed the generous terms Felt had just laid out, burying them under the weight of this bombshell before they could take proper hold.
"Yes, Lord Miklotov."
Reinhard faced the assembly and began, unhurried. "Fourteen years ago..."
The Astrea family had been the most directly involved party at the time, and Reinhard's reputation alone lent his words an ironclad credibility, especially once he produced the corroborating evidence.
Across the hall, eyes drifted back to the golden-haired figure on the platform. More than a few saw, for a fleeting moment, the shadow of the late king in her features.
"Even if she carries royal blood, without proper education or upbringing, the result is nothing more than a common thief. Placing someone like that on the throne is an absolute disgrace."
Rickert, finding the bloodline angle airtight and impossible to attack, pivoted without missing a beat, dragging attention back to Felt's past as a thief.
Provocation after provocation. Felt told herself to swallow it, reminded herself of the wealth waiting on the other side of patience.
But watching that smug, needling face, the corner of her mouth twitched once, twice, three times, and the rehearsed smile she'd spent days perfecting finally collapsed.
What replaced it was something cold and sharp.
"Hah?"
"Are you questioning the Divine Dragon's revelation?"
"Or do you think a rat-faced nobody like you has more authority than the Dragon itself to judge who's fit to rule?"
She folded her arms and stared down at Rickert, her restraint cracked but her mind still working. Not hiding it anymore, but not entirely unhinged either.
"No manners whatsoever."
"Watching you try to hold it together was almost entertaining, in a pathetic sort of way. Proof that even the noblest blood turns to something inferior without the right environment."
The barb came from a different direction entirely. Felt turned, already bristling, and found Priscilla Barielle fanning herself with an expression of open contempt.
"Stupid and arrogant. Did all the nutrients in your brain get stolen by that excess flesh of yours?"
Felt's lip curled as she fired back without hesitation.
When it came to trading insults, no one in this hall stood a chance against her.
In the slums, dignity was a luxury nobody could afford. The streetwalkers fighting over clients could string together profanity so creative, so foul, that everyone in this polished assembly would drop dead from the shock of hearing it. If Felt hadn't been clinging to the last scraps of her public image, she would have given this arrogant woman a proper education in what a heartfelt greeting really sounded like.
"As expected. I simply cannot bring myself to like someone as vulgar as you."
Priscilla moved forward, her generous figure swaying with each deliberate step.
An invisible pressure rolled off her like a tidal wave, crashing toward Felt the instant she began to close the distance.
She hadn't done anything. Hadn't raised a hand or spoken a word of power. She was merely approaching. And yet Felt felt it crushing down on her like a physical weight.
She's this strong?
Felt had only felt this kind of pressure from a handful of people. Gojo among them.
The realization threw her, but backing down here wasn't an option. Not if she wanted anything that came after to matter.
Besides, even as a child in the slums, she'd never flinched from kids twice her size.
The pressure bore down, step by step.
Then a figure blurred between them.
Reinhard. His tall frame appeared directly in the space between Felt and Priscilla, solid as a wall, and the suffocating weight simply... stopped.
"Outrageous!"
"Absolutely outrageous!"
"Do you think this is some playground for your amusement?!"
From the elevated seats, an old man sitting beside Miklotov slammed his voice down over the hall. He was bald, with eyebrows so thick and dense they looked like a pair of throwing darts bolted to his face.
His cold gaze swept across the candidates and their accompanying knights, every syllable dripping with rebuke.
"The Astrea family, nominating an orphan from the slums. The Mathers family, endorsing a half-elf."
"We have all gathered here to select the next ruler of Lugunica. A matter of the gravest importance. And yet you treat it like this?"
"Do you truly wish to see the throne occupied by a half-elf who resembles the Witch of Envy, or a thief born in the gutter?"
"Hey!"
"What the hell are you saying, you bastard!"
The old man's words had landed exactly where they'd cut deepest. Emilia's expression crumbled, pain and isolation written across her face.
The instant Subaru saw it, the hurt flickering in her eyes, fury obliterated every other thought in his head. His voice tore through the chamber, drowning out the old man entirely.
Natsuki Subaru launched himself from the ranks of the Royal Guard Knights, face twisted with rage, shouting up at the platform.
Emilia was kind. Emilia was gentle. Even when her own appearance made her shrink with self-consciousness, she never stopped thinking about how others felt.
Why should someone like her be treated this way just because she was a half-elf? Just because she happened to share the face of some figure from legend?
As someone who had his own tangled, inexplicable connection to the Witch of Envy, Subaru understood that particular sting better than most.
And that was exactly why he didn't hesitate. Why, in this hall where every thread of power in Lugunica converged, he stepped forward and raised his voice without a second thought.
"You're just sitting up there, posturing behind that title. What do you actually know?"
"Have you ever met Emilia? Do you have any idea how gentle she is, how warm..."
Roswaal, standing beside Emilia, had been on the verge of speaking up himself. But watching this unfold, he swallowed whatever he'd prepared and simply observed, visibly entertained, like a man watching a particularly interesting show.
Emilia stared at Subaru, who had charged out without a thought for the consequences, and her heart twisted with a tangle of shock, gratitude, and above all, worry.
As a candidate, she knew better than anyone that being associated with her was no gift. Especially for someone like Subaru, who held no title, no standing, who had no business being here in the first place, and had just done something this reckless.
There would almost certainly be consequences after the assembly. Punishment of some kind.
Every instinct screamed at her to stop him, to pull him back before he sank any deeper.
"Honestly."
"I knew a place like this was going to be trouble."
Gojo watched the scene spiral and sighed, more weary than surprised.
"What are you planning now?"
Betty caught the shift in him immediately, her head tilting up, suspicion sharp in her voice.
"Something that'll make me feel a whole lot better."
He nudged his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose, slipped one hand into his pocket, and started down the steps.
"Felt."
He called out as he descended.
"Yeah."
Felt kept her cold stare locked on Priscilla, answering without looking.
"Looks like we're moving up the timeline on our little plan."
"Fine by me."
"That bald geezer's pissing me off too, by the way."
Her gaze shifted to the old man on the high platform, irritation dripping from every word.
"Perfect. We're on the same page."
By the time he finished the sentence, Gojo had reached Subaru's side. He rested a hand on the younger man's shoulder.
"I'll take it from here."
"Some people don't learn from words alone."
"Gojo, you..."
Subaru had been burning with anger, and the sudden touch caught him off guard. He blinked, and some of the heat drained from his chest without his permission.
"Relax. It's fine."
Gojo smiled, easy and unbothered, then turned and walked straight toward the rows of officials and nobles.
Rickert watched him approach. His brow creased, his voice cutting low and sharp.
"And who are you? What exactly do you think you're doing?"
"This is no place for someone like you to act out..."
"You know what your problem is, all of you?"
Gojo picked at his ear, the picture of indifference, his tone soaked in disdain. "Always so convinced you're right. Going on and on about bloodlines, qualifications, about what's 'proper.'"
"All this talk about being correct."
"Nothing pisses me off more than being correct."
The last syllable dropped like a hammer, and the air pressure in the hall plummeted.
Up on the platform, Reinhard stiffened. Every knightly instinct in his body fired at once, snapping his gaze toward Gojo with razor precision.
The other candidates and their attendants felt it too, that sudden, inexplicable weight pressing against their chests, and turned.
Every eye in the room went wide. The man who had been standing beside Subaru a heartbeat ago was now directly in front of Rickert, as though the intervening space had simply ceased to exist.
Gojo's tall frame leaned forward, casting a shadow so deep it swallowed the thinner man whole and dimmed the light around them.
He looked down at Rickert, at those calculating, scheming eyes half-hidden beneath a pinched expression.
Behind the sunglasses, his gaze burned with unconcealed contempt, piercing straight through the man's mask of composure.
A smile curled at the corner of his mouth. Playful. Frigid.
His voice was quiet, meant only for the man in front of him, but it carried the weight of an absolute threat.
"What's the matter? While Felt was talking, I saw that little flicker in your eyes. The contempt, the scheming. So which was it? You think she doesn't belong here? Or was it her offer that didn't meet your standards?"
Rickert stumbled back half a step before he could stop himself, fingers clenching tight.
Panic flashed across his narrow face, quickly smothered under a thin veneer of composure as he forced himself to meet Gojo's eyes. "You... what do you think you're doing? This is the Royal Selection assembly! You can't just..."
"Commander Marcos! Is this how you maintain order in this hall?!"
"Restrain him."
Marcos gave the command, and several knights from the Royal Guard broke formation, converging on Gojo without needing to be told twice.
"Gojo."
Reinhard watched from the platform, his brow furrowed.
Others might not fully grasp what they were dealing with, but he and Julius knew. They had witnessed the aftermath of Gojo's clash with the Bowel Hunter. The shockwaves had been felt across the entire Royal Capital.
Ordinary knights wouldn't stand a chance.
"Reinhard."
Felt's voice cut through, cool and level.
"I order you to stay right here and protect me. Not a single step away."
"If you can't even manage that, then there's no point in you serving me at all."