Like he’d promised Ryota, Rhys hit the streets and just wandered for a while, taking in the city and making no particular progress toward anything. He canvassed the whole place again for fierce mana, but once again came up empty-handed; not that he’d expected anything. It was just one of those worth-a-look kind of things. He expected nothing, but he could always be wrong.
Wherever they’re hiding the return-point of the fierce mana, it’s either well-shielded, or… or it’s like Ryota’s fierce mana berserk state, and until it’s activated, it’s hidden in another dimension, on the other side of a pinhole. If that was the case, then there’d be literally nothing to find. His options were to either follow a bolt of fierce mana back, which was impossible at his current tier—the stuff moved too fast—or to do what he was doing, and kill enough princes to triangulate the place the mana was going back to.
This is probably the stupidest reason anyone has ever committed regicide. Regicide? That’s just the king, right? Is there a word for prince-killing, or does it land in the general realm of regicide? Close enough, as it were?
It was fine, though. He was only killing bad princes, for the most part. And they were in a succession battle, so it was kind of his job as an underling of the Third Prince to kill the other princes. It was a small, technical detail that Ryota didn’t want him killing the other princes, and that it was a willful action on his part.
Maybe I won’t kill Hanako. Maybe she isn’t the villainess she sounds like, but simply a misunderstood child who needs some love. Anything is possible!
He killed a day or two just wandering around, not doing much of anything. The police settled down and went back to their regular patrols, and the populace stopped talking about the plant-people as much. When he was satisfied that no one was paying that much attention to his exploits anymore, he finally turned his feet toward Hanako’s palace.
She wasn’t living in the city proper, but on one of the separated mini-clouds that floated close around the city in the magical version of the suburbs. There were hundreds of the things floating around the city, over, under, and around it. At times, they even attached to the city at allotted points around the exterior edge of the base city’s platform. When they’d first approached the city, there hadn’t been many, and the ones present had been attached to the city or very close to it, but over the time they’d spent in the city, more and more of the floating mini-clouds had floated over to the main city. Others had wandered off, but now, even the wanderers had begun to return and draw close, leading to a veritable cloud of floating palaces around the original cloud of the city.
Wonder if there’s an event soon? He really should’ve asked Ryota. Though… if there was a big event on the horizon, and also a secret plot, well, he didn’t need to think too hard to put two and two together. He knew the proper thing to do in any good action movie was to not notice the approaching event until the day of, then jump into dramatic action, but he was a child of media. He had enough literacy to put together the extremely obvious bad guys planning big thing and big event coming up soon and come away with bad guys planning bad thing at big event coming soon. It wasn’t exactly a 500 IQ conclusion.
The big brain part is figuring out where the fierce mana is going so I can figure out what bad thing they’re up to and foil it. He could do that part in dramatic fashion, no problem. Drama and fashion were two things he had plenty of. He wasn’t a drama queen—far from it—but when the music swelled and the big hit rolled forth, he knew it was time to strike a pose and deliver his decree. In the name of the moon and all that.
He sighed as the glorious memory of the time he’d gathered an all-male sailor squad floated through his mind. It’d been him and a bunch of randos, so he’d only managed to pull it off once, but what a great once it had been. He’d even managed to talk his female friend into Masked Tuxedo for the full set. She’d been a bit bored with the assignment, but he’d only had to sew one costume and one bonus cape, so that was a win for him. And on the day of, she’d had a great time swishing her cape and declaring that she’d done nothing so her job here was done, so she’d enjoyed it, too.
When the time came, he’d know what to do. But step one is killing Hanako, so let’s get on it.
A tiny part of him wondered if he should swap to Rina for some glorious doomed yuri, but one, villainess doomed yuri took too damn long to get going, and two, the whole city was looking for Rina, so he decided to stick to his guns and run this one out as male Rhys. Or at least male someone. A pit stop at a pond later, he looked like one hell of a butler, and a short stopover at the nearest uniform shop obtained him the threads to match. He didn’t know what Hanako’s servants wore, or even if she had butlers, but if she was a villainess (and he was only interested in her if she was), then she’d go through servants the way other people went through water. Neither she nor her servants would recognize a fresh face amongst the servants as standing out; he’d just be one of the dozens of daily new hires.
It was all speculation. Literally just him spitballing, and absolutely worthless to the scientific part of his brain. He knew the right thing to do was to research Hanako, find out what servants she had and what they wore, and if she actually did fire her servants on the reg, but he was lazy, and this was kind of a rush job. The event, whatever it was, seemed to be coming up real soon, if the proliferation of palaces was anything to go by. They weren’t putting the décor up yet, but they were mages; that kind of thing could go up in the blink of an eye. Not to mention that Ebi’s deadline was looming. Soon, he’d have to either show up or turn the man down, and if that one lady was right, rest in peace, that in of itself would send a message to his enemies. Better if he acted in this gray zone time where he was truly free to do whatever he wanted.
Worst case, I just grab a clipboard and let my official-looking garb do the talking. It wasn’t quite the hard hat + reflective vest + clipboard combo that got you onto any construction site, no questions asked, but it was the closest he could muster at short notice. Maybe if he found a random tea service, he could try carrying that around. That seemed like the kind of thing a butler would be left alone to carry with no scrutiny. On the other hand, random tea services weren’t as readily available as random clipboards, so he wasn’t too hopeful, but he didn’t lose all hope, either. I’m a resourceful guy. I’ll find something to carry.
He’d located Hanako’s palace during his two days of wandering. People often came and went from her palace, especially during the morning and evening hours, and so he lifted off the ground and flew confidently toward it, mingling with the usual people who came and went from her palace.
As he closed in, a barrier loomed. It wasn’t unforeseen, and Rhys casually lifted his hand, meaning to burn his way through with some impurities. Before he could, a pair of guards flew toward him from the palace. He paused, then casually lowered his hand, tucked his arms behind him, and gave his best sparkly-new-employee smile.
“You. Who are you?” one of the guards challenged him, coming to a halt just on the other side of the barrier. His fellow guard drew to a halt beside him. She rested her hand on her sword in a casual challenge.
“I’m here for the interview for the servant position? I’m sorry, am I in the wrong place?”
The guards exchanged a look. The female guard shook her head. “I don’t recall hearing about hiring any new servants.”
Rhys bit his lip. “Er, I thought it was here, though? This is Prince Hanako’s palace, right?”
“It is,” the first guard admitted. He shrugged at the female guard. “It wouldn’t be the first time we didn’t hear about a new hire.”
“There’s a murderer running around the city. We can’t just let anyone in right now,” the female guard rebuffed him.
“Oh… I’m sorry. If it’s a bad time, I can come back later?” Rhys asked apologetically.
“No, no. It’s fine.”
“Is it fine?”
The male guard pointed at Rhys. “He’s a man. The killer was a woman. It’s fine. Besides… do you want to be the one to tell the princess she isn’t getting her new servant?”
Hahahaha! I knew I turned into Rina for a reason! It was truly the ultimate maneuver and definitely not pointless and a mistake that didn’t turn out the way I imagined it going! Ha… haha…
Pretending he wasn’t hardcore coping in his heart, Rhys smiled politely while he waited.
The female guard looked him up and down, then sighed. “Fine. But just a twenty-four hour pass. After that, if he’s hired, he can get a permanent pass.”
“Yeah, yeah.” The male guard reached into his back pocket and tossed a small beaded charm at Rhys. “Hold on to that. If you release it, or your privileges are revoked, you will be immediately teleported out of the barrier. Understand?”
“Of course! Thank you, thank you,” Rhys said, bowing in appreciation. Teleport me out? Go ahead. Not only can I counter-teleport, but good luck with your teleport spell gripping me against my will, through my impurities! In terms of penalties, this was one he already had a perfect counter to. It wasn’t like an attack-penalty or some other magical penalty would do much to him, either, but man, was this specific penalty a total joke to him in particular.
Feeling totally unconcerned about their threat, Rhys floated through the barrier and headed at a slow and respectful pace toward the palace. No one challenged him, and with the charm tucked safely in his butlery breast pocket, he closed in on Hanako and his next kill (pending trash verification).