Interlude 2: Merry, It Was You

When he finally finished his work and checked the clock, the hour and minute hands were perfectly overlapped.

Prince Lucas took a moment to indulge in a long, deep stretch.

He pressed the heels of his palms against his tired eyes through his blindfold, slowly exhaling the breath that had settled heavy in his lungs.

He was currently in the drawing room of the House of Drefon’s estate. In the wake of the territory losing its lord, Lucas had been pulling every string available to ensure the resulting chaos was kept to an absolute minimum.

Beyond the standard handover of administrative duties and the political maneuvering required to appease neighboring lords, he also had to devise safeguards to ensure the commoners and servants wouldn't be branded as criminals for Victim’s atrocities.

My uncle’s condemnation is unavoidable, Lucas thought grimly. But in a way, I suspect this is exactly what he wanted.

『I will likely die. Consider this my final act of defiance.』

That was the last sentence recorded in Victim’s journal. To honor the desperate plea hidden within those words, Lucas had spent the last several days working himself to the bone, sacrificing sleep to complete the necessary preparations.

His diligence had paid off. He had managed to finish everything by the deadline for their departure from the Drefon territory. They were set to return to the royal capital early tomorrow morning, and Lucas finally felt a sense of relief wash over him.

Realizing he might actually secure a decent amount of sleep before it was time to leave, he stood up and cast a casual glance out the window. From the drawing room, he could look down upon the estate’s sprawling gardens.

There, in the center of the moonlit garden, a lone girl stood by the small fountain. Her silver-gray hair shimmered under the lunar glow. Clad in her maid’s uniform, the petite girl reached out toward the moon with her right hand, as if trying to touch it.

Lucas reached up and removed his blindfold, observing the girl’s silhouette with his bare eyes. After a heavy sigh, he left the drawing room and made his way down to the garden to meet her.

The rhythmic click-clack of his footsteps echoed through the night, cutting through the chirping of insects and the splashing of the fountain. Sensing his approach, the girl withdrew her hand and turned to face him.

“Good evening, Your Highness,” she said.

“Hello, Merry. What are you doing out here at this hour?”

“I was watching the moon, it is.”

Behind Merry, the moon hung in the night sky, its perfect circle just beginning to wane. It was an oval, nearing a gibbous shape.

Merry reached toward it once more. The gesture struck a chord in Lucas, reminding him vividly of his younger sister. Lucretia used to do the exact same thing—reaching out for the moon just like Merry was doing now.

“The souls of the dead go to the moon to watch over us, it is. That is what I was told.”

“...And who told you that?” Lucas asked.

“My mama, it is.”

Merry offered a nostalgic smile before turning her gaze back to Lucas.

Caught in the stare of her deep-navy eyes, Lucas let out a soft breath.

I’ve always known my ocular skill shows me exactly what I don’t want to see, he reflected. But I never imagined it would show me something like this.

In Lucas’s vision—unobscured by his blindfold—a string of characters floated above the girl’s head.

It was her true name.

—Lou Pnocis.

This wasn't the first time he’d seen it. He had first spotted the name after the negotiations with the Divine Grant Religion regarding Malicious. He had just finished reporting to the King and surviving an exhausting conversation with the Second Prince, Brute; when he returned to his room, he had caught Merry sneaking a few of his cookies.

At the time, he had been too exhausted to press her for answers.

Later, he had deliberately engineered several encounters between Merry and Hugh to see if there was any connection between them, but judging by Hugh’s reactions, the possibility seemed low.

He had already confirmed that the House of Pnocis had no relatives or acquaintances in the capital. Furthermore, there was no record of a girl named Lou in the Pnocis family. He’d even had his people dig for any sign of an illegitimate child or an adoption, but they’d come up empty-handed.

To make matters worse, there was no record of a girl named “Merry,” either. She claimed to be of commoner birth, but there were no records to prove it and no witnesses to verify her story.

This girl of unknown origin had effectively materialized out of thin air at Letchery’s estate, slipping into Lucas’s inner circle as his personal maid. From a rational perspective, the whole situation was beyond suspicious.

Since she looks so much like Lucretia, I thought she’d be useful as a body double. But in hindsight, I was far too careless.

If she were merely a body double, that would be one thing.

But the reality was that he allowed her to stay by his side constantly as his personal maid, giving her free rein of his private quarters. If she’d had the mind to do it, she’d had countless opportunities to assassinate him.

The fact that he was still breathing meant her objective lay elsewhere.

And that objective was almost certainly tied to her true identity.

“What was it that you saw, it is?”

Lucas shrugged at her perceptive question. “Your true name, Lou.”

Upon hearing his answer, the girl who had been calling herself Merry pinched the hem of her maid’s uniform and performed an elegant, sweeping curtsy. It was the movement of someone who had been meticulously educated in the etiquette of high nobility.

“I am Lou Pnocis, the daughter of the Lord of Pnocis, Hugh Pnocis, it is.”

“...Hugh’s daughter, you say?”

“Yes! That is right, Uncle Lucas!”

Lou gave him a beaming smile. Lucas pressed a hand to his forehead and let out a groan of a sigh.

I mean, I figured as much, didn’t I?

The daughter of his beloved sister was at the very top of the list of things Lucas didn't want to see. The moment his skill showed him the name “Lou” with the surname “Pnocis,” he had been able to connect the dots to some extent.

However, the question of why the daughter of Hugh and Lucretia was standing before him at this very moment remained a complete mystery. Given that his skill had revealed the name, there was no doubt she was telling the truth.

But her existence was nothing short of absurd.

“Just to be absolutely sure… you’re telling me you are the daughter of Lucretia and Hugh? There’s no mistake?”

“Yes, it is! I am the daughter of Mama Lucretia and Papa Hugh!”

“...But the Lucretia I know hasn't even married Hugh yet, let alone given birth. Even looking at your age, it should be impossible for you to be their daughter… and yet.”

Under any normal circumstances, Lou would be lying.

But Lucas was well aware of a certain skill that existed far outside the realm of common sense.

“Does the 《Brainwashing》 skill truly transcend even time itself?”

At Lucas’s murmur, Lou gave a faint, melancholy smile.

“It is a terrible skill. Just sending a single apple a few minutes into the past is enough to nearly kill the user, it is.”

Every skill carried a recoil proportional to its power. Just as Lucas suffered from stabbing pains in his eyes and head, and the 《Saint》 skill’s healing powers were accompanied by crushing fatigue and lethargy.

“...Then, what about the Hugh who sent his daughter from the future to the past?”

“I do not know, it is.”

Lou pressed her lips together and gave a silent, solemn shake of her head.

The sheer scale of the recoil for a skill that could transcend time was beyond Lucas’s comprehension.

However, he was certain of one thing: the price for sending something as large and heavy as a human being over a decade into the past would be infinitely more devastating than the price for sending an apple.

“Does that mean something is coming in the future—something so dire that Hugh would risk his life to send his daughter back in time?”

Lou nodded firmly, then cast her gaze toward the shadows behind her.

From behind the manicured shrubbery of the garden, two more figures emerged.

It was Ryug and Tina, the pair of adventurers who had accompanied them on the academy’s field exercise.

Lucas looked between the three of them, comparing their features. “I see,” he murmured with a nod.

Each of their faces held traces of the girls Lucas knew in the present.

It seemed Hugh hadn't sent just one child back from the future.

The expressions on the faces of Hugh’s children were a mixture of grim determination and tragic sorrow. That alone told Lucas everything he needed to know about just how miserable their future had been.

“Uncle Lucas, we came here to change the future, it is. We need your help.”

“...To agree to that, I’d need to know what this future of yours actually looks like. But I have a feeling that if I listen to the whole story, the sun will be up before we’re finished.”

Another all-nighter would quite literally be the death of him. Considering they had to leave early in the morning, his only desire right now was to crawl into bed and sleep.

“So, let me ask you just one thing. In the future you know… what happened to me?”

A passing cloud drifted over the moon, obscuring its light. Shadows swallowed the garden, and in the sudden darkness, Lou slowly began to speak.

“Uncle Lucas… two months from now, you will be framed for the assassination of His Majesty the King and executed, it is.”

“...I see. So that’s how they play it.”

Lucas let out a short, dry sigh.

It looks like sleep is going to have to wait a little longer.