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Re:Zero Kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu (LN) - Volume EX5 - Chapter 1.14




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14

Lamia Godwin would never forget that garden party.

The party was held each year on the occasion of the birth of her father, the emperor, Dreizen Volakia. It lasted seven days, and all the royal siblings were obliged to be present—and thus forced to come together—whether they wanted to or not. Of course, with the Rite of Imperial Selection hanging over their heads, they usually arranged their schedules so as to see as little of the others as possible. Still, with more than sixty brothers and sisters in one place, it was impossible to avoid everyone all the time.

“ ”

That year, Lamia—nine years old at the time—was looking for her brother Vincent, whom she knew had come to greet their father on the same day she had.

Many of the Volakian royal children were mature for their age. This was an environment in which an egg that didn’t hatch quickly would simply be broken—you either grew up fast, or you died. Hence, Lamia had none of the sweetness of the average nine-year-old girl; she was already a sharp, perceptive young woman. By this time, she was learning how to evaluate those around her, and she liked capable people. That was why she was looking for Vincent; talking to her intelligent, handsome brother made her heart race.

She’d worked her way around the vast Crystal Palace, where the party was being held, looking for Vincent and meanwhile working on her brother Bartroi, who always seemed a little too unwary of his younger siblings. Just as she finally found the brother she was looking for—

“Prisca Benedict. That’s my name.”

“ ”

—next to Vincent, she discovered a young girl in a bright-crimson dress.

Three scant months later, Lamia Godwin took stern measures to depose the feckless family head and punish a rebellious count.

“Magic-stone cannon strike confirmed. When the smoke clears, I will inform you of the results,” Belstetz reported.

“I don’t care if you use up every magic stone we have; just make sure you get me what I want. You’re to keep me updated as and when the situation develops,” Lamia said.

“Milady,” Belstetz replied with a respectful bow. Lamia rested her chin on her hands and looked out at the forest, which was now a blazing field of light. She smiled. She’d brought so many of her brothers and sisters together to enact this encirclement of Vincent. That she had included even her mortal enemy, Prisca, in this number was not in fact a sign of how much she wished to be sure she had the strength to defeat their brother.

It was because she knew that Prisca’s presence was itself the poison that would finish Vincent.

“Didn’t I tell you, Prisca? I think quite highly of you. You’re the next most dangerous sibling after our dear brother… You think more like him than any of us. That’s why I knew you could find him. I was sure.”

Vincent would have known that he would be everyone’s favorite target when the Rite began. Most likely, he’d even predicted that a coalition of his siblings would attempt to encircle him—and because the battle would be fought on Abelks territory, he’d no doubt prepared plenty of escape routes. Much as she hated to admit it, Lamia found it difficult to predict how exactly Vincent might try to slip her net. But she had a simple rule: If she couldn’t do something, she would just rely on someone who could.

And so she did.

“Vincent and Prisca were in the same place. I’m sure they were both caught in the blast.” The telepathic report from Lamia’s coconspirator, Paladio, assured her that her plan had worked. Paladio kept it a secret from their other siblings that he carried the blood of the Demon Eye Clan and that his abilities allowed him to track a given target with incredible accuracy. He required some part of the target’s body in order to do this, and while Lamia hadn’t been able to obtain any such thing from Vincen t …

“Surely, you didn’t really think I came all the way to your house just to corral you,” Lamia said. She’d had this plan to use Paladio’s special abilities brewing ever since the Rite had begun. Vincent, her real target, was a very careful man. But she didn’t have to track him directly—she just had to track someone she knew would be with him.

Prisca was perfect for that role. That was why Lamia had gone herself to propose an alliance and why she’d made certain to involve Prisca in the encirclement.

It was why Lamia had resisted the urge to kill Prisca for more than seven years.

“My heart finally feels lighter, Prisca,” Lamia said, placing her hand to her generous chest as she pictured the repulsive face of her half sister. Once she was sure Vincent and Prisca were dead, all that would remain would be to use the Pruning Force to massacre Vincent’s troops and then checkmate her other siblings. The biggest threat and the unknown quantity would be eliminated; the rest of her brothers and sisters were no match for Lamia Godwin.

“Lamia, when this is over…”

“Yes, yes, I know. I’ll give you a fingernail or a lock of my hair or whatever you want. You’ll be able to come after me anytime, day or night.”

Her alliance with Paladio would last only until Vincent was dead. After that, the agreement was that Lamia would hand over some piece of her body to him—but even the Demon Eye, which held an incomparable advantage in the war of information that was key to every victory, was worthless if its user was a witless fool. Sadly for him, Paladio simply couldn’t beat Lamia. He could try to rally the other siblings against her as she had done against Vincent, but it wouldn’t get him anywhere. She already knew the vulnerabilities, weaknesses, and dark secrets of most of the more powerful candidates; they wouldn’t join Paladio.

Vincent and Prisca—they were the only ones with any hope of besting Lamia. And Paladio was helping head off that possibility himself. The absurdity was that he didn’t even notice it—he was little different from Bartroi, who had died a dog’s death by the maneuvering of his own little sister.

“For that matter, the fact that he actually still thinks he can beat me makes him even stupider than dear Bartroi.”

“Your Excellency, the smoke is clearing.”

The use of magic-stone cannons had been banned for sheer destructive force, and as the haze began to drift away from over the forest, everyone could see why. The devastation caused by ten cannons acting in concert was self-evident.

The power of a magic-stone cannon depended on the size and purity of the magic stone used with it, but regardless, the devastation wreaked on one corner of the battlefield was a testament to how sincerely Lamia wanted her targets dead.

She’d obtained magic crystals, which were magic stones of the utmost purity. The firepower they could generate must have been second in the empire only to the stones used in the construction of the Crystal Palace in the capital city of Lupghana. The stones were so powerful that the cannons had proven unable to cope with the resulting force, tearing themselves apart in the process of firing. Not even a member of the Volakian Royal Family could have escaped unscathed under such an assault. Not even if there were two of them.

This was the masterstroke that would secure Lamia’s victory. And now…

One of the scouts, peering through a spyglass, could be heard muttering, “That’s impossible!” With his telescope, he must have been able to see the outcome of the assault, which could not be discerned with the naked eye.


Even if she couldn’t make out exactly what was going on, however, Lamia herself could tell that something wasn’t right. The forest, which should have been reduced to splinters by the barrage, was still intact in one place, the trees still standing. And what had caused this inconceivable state of affairs?

“There’s someone at the point of impact!” the scout shouted, trembling. “A silver-haired dog girl… It’s Prisca Benedict’s right hand!”

Lamia’s eyes widened. Prisca’s right hand—Lamia remembered the taciturn, inexpressive mongrel…

“I’ve got to hand it to you, Prisca…,” she growled. She stood and marched over to the scout, snatching his spyglass. Through it, she could see ground zero, where Prisca’s little friend lay prone on the ground, breathing out smoke. Somehow or other, that mutt had completely foiled Lamia’s cannonade.

The dogfolk girl didn’t so much as twitch; Lamia couldn’t tell whether she was dead or alive. But she didn’t care. What mattered was the scale of the destruction in that patch of forest—or rather, the lack of it. There was no way Prisca and Vincent were dead.

Meaning the first phase of her plan had failed. But Lamia had another arrow in her quiver—and another after that. “I never imagined I would actually have to use Bartroi’s little insurance policy…”

She was recalling a suggestion left to her by her brother, the one who had voluntarily thrown away his right to the throne. The other nine siblings who had likewise declined candidacy were cards in her hand, and she would play them to finish off the wounded Vincent and Prisca both at a stroke.

Lamia lowered the spyglass and started to give her next instructions: “Begin the ambush. Their hearts might not be in it, but they’ll slow them down at least…”

“Your Excellency!” a sharp voice interrupted.

No sooner had the voice sounded than a shadow came slicing across Lamia’s vision. She reflexively raised her arm, and the Bright Sword she grasped in her hand singed the air it passed through, incinerating the arrow that had come flying at her.

She might have blocked the first attack, but the arrows came relentlessly; her soldiers, slow to react, surrounded her to shield her with their own bodies.

“But how did they figure out where I was camped?” she asked. “Wait… It can’t be!” Sensing the answer to her own question, Lamia peered out at her attackers from behind her soldiers. Looking directly into the oncoming barrage, she saw that her guess had been correct; it was the dropout brothers and sisters, the ones she’d stolen from Bartroi, the ones she’d tried to use to complete the encirclement of Vincent. The cowards who should never have been able to turn on her were all rebelling at once.

What? Had the sight of battle suddenly inspired the lot of them to desire the throne at the same time? No, they were incapable of such decisive action. That left only one explanation.

“Vincent Abelks…”

Fight an encirclement with an encirclement. Lamia ground her teeth after realizing her opponent had been wily enough to pull off this maneuver. The handsome face of Vincent, the man who had put her in this situation, floated into her mind, and she thought about how much she hated him.

It was a classic double cross. Lamia, the Poison Princess, had allowed the poison directly into her own inner circle. When had it started? Lamia was perceptive enough that the moment she had the thought, a possibility occurred to her.

“Don’t tell me… He was working with my dear brother Bartroi all along?”

Bartroi, who had died a dog’s death, who should have been the ultimate loser. The brothers and sisters he had gathered to his cause became the very spear tip of Vincent’s counterattack. Lamia shuddered at the possibility that she had been outplotted by Bartroi and at the realization that Vincent had dug in his heels even more than she had. Perhaps even allowing her to attack with the magic-stone cannons had been part of his plan. That neatly took them out of the equation, leaving an opening he could exploit to trap her.

But that plan involved one thing that should have been impossible. To protect himself against Lamia’s cannonade, Vincent needed Prisca’s dog-girl. And that meant Prisca’s trust and aid were indispensable if he was to succeed. It all led to just one conclusion: “You’ve been working with him this whole time, haven’t you, Prisca?”

A secret alliance between Prisca and Vincent—that precondition was necessary for successfully encircling Lamia. And with that condition achieved, the attack against the now-outmaneuvered Lamia intensified.

“Your Excellency! Leave this to us. You must find your way to the Pruning Force and retreat.” Her commander, Belstetz, seeing that the enemy had the upper hand, was advising Lamia to flee. For a second, she almost spat on the suggestion out of sheer spite, but Belstetz was right. Cold, rational judgment quickly prevailed; if she stayed here, she could only die.

“Belstetz, you have the line. Hold them here, even if it costs you your lives,” she instructed.

“Yes, Excellency. Be safe.”

With that brief farewell, Lamia left her camp, which had become a battlefield. She took with her only the elite troops of her personal guard. Meanwhile, Belstetz was launching a vigorous attack against the traitorous siblings, but he no longer occupied her thoughts. She was already thinking about how to get out of this situation and planning what she would do once she was free.

It seemed like the same thing always happened to her plans.

“If you control them with emotion, they can be taken from you by someone who wields a greater emotion. There’s something cheaper and simpler than jealousy or greed. It’s fear.”

“ ” Lamia could almost hear the plans crumbling in her mind—and the one who had brought them down, had destroyed everything she had worked for, was none other than the person who stood easily in front of her. Vincent’s man, the true manslayer.

“Hey there. Real sorry I was late getting here. I tried to hurry, I really did, but it’s tough work being the first sword on the stage. I think I’ve caught the mood here, though. Maybe I can finish this up without too pathetic a performance.” He smiled—a young man holding a sword and drenched in blood.

How many crowds of people had he slain? He was almost entirely red with splattered gore, his unusual kimono so badly stained that it was impossible to tell what color it had once been. What made the young man so aberrant, however, wasn’t that he was covered from head to toe in blood but the fact that he paid this no mind; it was the way he moved and spoke with total nonchalance, and the overwhelming, almost demonic presence he exuded that made it clear beyond any doubt that he only dealt in death. That was the strangest and most awful thing about him.

“Excellency…” The soldiers wearing the armor of the Pruning Force stepped forward, putting themselves between Lamia and the young man, choosing to make themselves a shield so that he could not approach her. Every one of them knew that this choice meant their deaths.

“Hmm, yes! You shine with a brilliant resolve to protect your mistress. That’s a beautiful attitude! Truly stupendous. I don’t disapprove of such tragedy—in fact, I like it.”

“We’ll never let a monster like you get near Her Excellency!”

The young man struck like lightning; the soldiers met him with their giant shears. At the instant of collision, what could be heard was not the terrible sound of blades cutting flesh, but the echo of a great crashing of weapon against weapon.

Lamia knew her soldiers were dying; still, she stepped over the bodies of the Pruning Force, escaping to where the boy and his sword could not reach her, fleeing to where he could not follow, running, running, running.

And when Lamia Godwin finally reached the place she was running to…

“Don’t worry, Lamia. He won’t get you here…because I’m going to bury you with my own hands.”

…Prisca Benedict was waiting for her, grasping the Bright Sword.



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