Chapter 20.4

Chapter 20.4

Translator: Adam Seacord

Editor: Weasalopes

「A princess must be educated. A princess must serve the people. Before I can remember, those mantra were drilled into me. And as soon as my younger sister is born into the position of the Priestess Princess, they treat me like I’m worthless. No matter how hard I try, no matter how much I devote myself to the people, they treat me like a piece of garbage. For being born without a certain talent. Why shouldn’t the lot of them rot?」

Hearing this, the Japanese members look at Elena, who shook her head with a frown on her face.

「Katrina. I don’t care what you think, but no one would call what you did trying, nor serving the people.」

「It’s not just her qualification as the Priestess Princess that sets Aearis above you in the people’s eyes. Who would admire you for superficial, one-sided and misplaced charity work that shows your utter lack of empathy? Are you really as foolish as to think otherwise, Katrina?」

Elena and Layotte shut Katrina down. Whether she was born with it or was assigned a bad educator, Katrina always acted with the presumption that she (or rather, the logic that she was taught) was always right. As a result, she often engaged in appropriate yet ultimately pointless works of charity, in a condescending manner, nonetheless. Some might have thanked her for the act alone, but they were often pointless altogether.

Still, until Barold came along, Katrina had made a real effort to live righteously, in her own way. The rest of the royal family knew this, and as such, didn’t disregard Katrina entirely even while reprimanding her for her actions. Even Aearis, thinking that Katrina hated her because of some flaw in her character, had listened well to what her sister had to say, and had desperately tried to fix those flaws (as Katrina saw it).

No one could deny that these reactions ended up distorting Katrina’s sense of reality even further. In her eyes, despite doing the same thing, her actions were rejected by the family while Aearis’ were rewarded. They were supposed to be equals, yet her younger sister was always the good child. In reality, Katrina had earned this by ignoring any reprimand and insisting on failed methods, but one could hardly blame Katrina for feeling as if her family favored Aearis for no good reason.

「You would never understand, Layotte. In your privileged position. Nor you, sister. Since you have never once experienced rejection in your life.」

「…If that’s how you really feel, Katrina, I will get you the best doctor in the world to have him examine your head.」

Elena said.

「A world that can’t accept me. That won’t let me be? Let it crumble to ashes. Why shouldn’t it?」

Layotte and Elena were finally forced to let go of their last shreds of hope for their sister upon seeing her irreconcilable ignorance. At this point, Aearis (who had remained speechless until now) finally spoke.

「Katrina.」

「How dare you speak to me, you filthy rat.」

「Why do you dislike me so? How can I ease your mind?」

「…You selfish child. How many times do I have to tell you that your mere existence aggravates me? If you died right now, the fact that you did exist would continue to annoy me. How can you not understand? You stupid, stupid girl. 」

No matter what Aearis had done, there was never any hope for Katrina and Aearis to reconcile.

Katrina had never felt any joy in Aearis’ existence to begin with. She was able to feel a sense of kinship to Layotte and Mark as her brothers, but all Aearis was to Katrina since the moment she learned of her existence was an object of her hatred. She hated that everyone cheered and woo at Aearis while she just slept. She hated that everyone would run around to tend to her as soon as Aearis cried. She hated that Aearis breathed the air around her at all. She hated most of all that her brothers and sisters and everyone else in life only ever cared about precious little Aearis.

At every attempt of Aearis trying to build a relationship with Katrina, it only gave Katrina more reasons to hate her in return.

「Still… I see. There is one thing you can do.」

Katrina continued in glee, with a grin streaking across her face, filled with so much hatred, that it could only be described as heinous. Sensing danger in this, Aearis drew her dagger and stood on guard. Upon closer inspection, she noticed that Katrina’s shadow had distorted beyond that of a humanoid silhouette.

「Die by my hands. Relinquish every last drop of blood and shred of flesh to me.」

「Dancing…」

「…Edge!」

At the same time as these calls, tentacles sprung out of Katrina’s shadow. Before Hiroshi or Makoto could intervene, they stretched at incredible speed to penetrate Aearis. At the same time, Barold (multiples of him, in fact) attacked them from behind.

However, since they knew an attack was coming, it was easy for them to activate their trump card, despite their lack of experience in close-range combat. They had uttered their keyword at the very moment the tentacles emerged. In an instant, six daggers appeared around each of them, and twenty four blades of varying shapes and sizes appeared around each set of daggers.

As soon as the first blade pierced a thorned tentacle, several blades sliced through one of Barold’s doubles. Tentacles or doubles that make it fast the twenty four offensive blades were blocked by the defensive six, then promptly torn apart by the offensive blades.

There were always twenty four offensive blades and six defensive blades that were not engaging with anything. The flood of Barold’s doubles and tentacles, as well as his diffusion attacks served no purpose at all. Barold abandoned his diffusion tactic when he could see that at least one hundred blades had materialized around them.

「…One of your little tricks again?」

「Kinda the minimum requirement for defense, don’t ya think?」

Barold presumed from his experience so far, that this sheepish man was the culprit behind such an annoying contraption. Even as Barold glared at Hiroshi, he managed to return a quip through his chattering teeth. While it was aggravating for him to admit, Barold had to acknowledge the biggest cause of his mission to fail this time around was Hiroshi.

「…No wonder Ernest called it a weapon of war. How many blades can manifest at a time.」

「Tested up to ’bout 10,000. Didn’t bother tryin’ past that point.」

「Could it take down a Wyvern, for example?」

「Like ya see, each blade on their own don’t do much damage. Who knows how many blades it’ll take to take down somethin’ bigger than ten meters.」

Layotte seemed satisfied with the answer. He could see that, while the blades kept the Barold doubles at bay, they weren’t powerful enough to take them down. At this rate, he could easily imagine a Wyvern charging through these defenses to simply run over Aearis.

Besides, after observing it in action for a while, Layotte noticed a clear weak point. If the user were already captured, this may not help all that much. This was why Hiroshi stopped Aearis from using this during their last infiltration into the Temple. Of course, if they had let the enemy that close to Aearis, a few daggers would not change her fate.

「Now. Elle and Elena did their thing, so let’s make some noise.」

「I second that. Let’s do some crowd control, first.」

Sliding her longsword out of her sheath, Makoto cut down the closest double to her, as Tatsuya burned a bunch of them with Hellfire Sanctum. In lieu of her usual bow, Mio used her dagger to carve out the core of one double to the next with precision. Hiroshi stopped the flooding horde of doubles, tanking all of the attacks (each of which could insta-kill a player in the double-digit levels) and coming out with only a scratch or two.

Now and then, some attacks would slip by and hit someone (other than Hiroshi) but by then, the power of the attacks were drastically reduced. A Novice heal spell easily counteracted the damage.

Our heroes were starting to gain some ground.

「You can kill as many of us as you want, it’s no use.」

「In fact, your only giving this place more holiness.」

「Besides, we haven’t even used a fraction of our power.」

The Barolds clamored with a condescending tone, as more and more of them materialized with every double they killed. Everyone there was aware of this, of course. Now that they had more than enough healing to cover any resource they expend, it didn’t matter how many doubles came around. They had a proper card to deal with the doubles, anyway, They were just buying time until Haruna’s voice recovered.

「Haruna, are you ready!?」

「Whenever you are. Any requests?」

「Somethin’ that’ll piss ‘em off. You got a sea shanty?」

「You got it.」

Haruna began some Celtic-sounding shanty upon Tatsuya’s cue and Hiroshi’s request. Hiroshi was only kidding, by the way. The Japanese party had realized that they had underestimated Haruna once again.

「This sounds… Bitter sweet, somehow…」

「I don’t understand some of the words, but I can tell that it definitely doesn’t match the mood.」

「Can’t you pick something a little more fitting?」

Layotte and Elena muttered, with a constipated expression. Regardless of how off-putting it is, the song still seemed to do the job in purifying affliction. The tentacles all shriveled up, crumbling any of them that had been sliced by the daggers. Katrina and Barold writhed in harmonious agony.