Pawahara Seijo no Osananajimi to Zetsuen Shitara, Nanimokamo ga Umaku Iku Yō ni Natte Saikyō no Bōke

[Homunculus Who Possesses Will]

――Whoosh!

“Hold it right there.”

The moment Ophir tried to summon her Holy Axe, an arrow of light flew towards her hand.

As Arca had demonstrated in Leolinea, the weapons called ‘Holy Armaments’ could be freely summoned even it was at remote distance from the owner.

“I would advise you not to make reckless moves, Saintesses. As I said earlier, these things don’t have pangs of conscience. Hence, if I give the order, they will mercilessly shoot through your limbs,” said King Zestgard while gracefully drinking wine.

However, the girls weren’t the kind of people who would cower before such a threat.

“That’s a great piece of advice, but unfortunately… it seems that you underestimated us. To think you thought we would be afraid of such a childish threat,” said Arca.

Magmell agreed with a nod, “I concur. For better or worse, we are the people called ‘saintesses’. We are used to face level of adversity.”

“Well, that’s that. If ya get it, then ya better have these girls to stand down before anyone gets hurt y’know, O’ Mighty King?” Ophir said sarcastically.

The three were full of fighting spirit.

How reliable.

As I got encouraged by their words, Zana, who was still seated, said admonishingly, “Don’t do anything foolish. Including me, you are currently up against six saintesses like yourselves, you know? You think you can win against us?”

“Ahh, we indeed think that way. Otherwise, our man wouldn’t have picked a fight with the king,” replied Arca. She, along with Magmell and Ophir, then looked at me with eyes filled with expectation, to which I nodded.

King Zestgard said with a smirk, “I see. So, you really are the one who holds the key. I suspected that might be the case, so I took some measures just in case. Turned out that was a correct decision.”

“What?”

As I frowned, King Zestgard took out a small bottle and said, “I had some poison be put in your glass. Well, no need to worry. You won’t die as long as you drink an antidote that only we can formulate.”

“I see. So you’re intending to use me as a hostage.”

“Correct.”

Seriously, this king sure was a no-good old man…

Haah… sighing, I picked up a knife on the table and said, “Watch closely.”

――Slash.

““!?””

King Zestgard and Zana made an astonished expression seeing me cut at my right arm out of the blue.

But the real surprise was after that.

Blaze, my wound was wrapped in flames for a moment, after which, it was gone as though the wound had never appeared.

Zana stuttered, “W-what’s going on? What did you do just now?”

“Nothing. I’m just ‘immortal’.” I said nonchalantly.

““—Wha!?”” The faces of the two were dyed in astonishment again.

No wonder.

After all, an impossible being, an immortal, was in front of them.

Meanwhile, I returned the knife on top of the table and said, “Hence, I’m immune to poison. Or to be exact, poison gets detoxified the moment it entered my body.”

“Kh…”

Shatter, King Zestgard crushed the small bottle in his hand in frustration.

Eh, his hand’s bleeding; what if the poison seeps into his body? Well, they seem to have the antidote, so he’s probably gonna be okay.

“Well fine. You surely seem impervious to poison, but we still have the upper hand. Rather, since you’re immortal, there is no need to hold back against you,” said King Zestgard.

As expected of a militaristic king.

Though he was surprised for a moment, composure had already returned to his face.

Anyways, what to do?

To be honest, we could just beat everyone up.

However, I wanted to avoid hurting those girls if possible.

They didn’t do this because they wanted to, after all.

At that moment,

――Creaaak.

““““““!””””””

All of a sudden, the door to the dinner room opened, and a girl came in with a drawn bow.

Yes, it was a homunculus of Zana.

But why is she…

“Fuhahahahaha! It looks like the lady luck is on our side! To think the homunculus that was supposed to be disposed of would come here! …hm?”

Looked like King Zestgard finally also noticed the strange thing about her.

The girl… was aiming her bow at him, not us.

“…What are you doing, No. 6? Have you lost your mind?” King Zestgard glared at the girl and asked.

“No, I just decided that this is the right choice. I want to keep these people alive.”

“You… did you decide that out of your own volition…?” Zana asked in surprise.

The girl nodded, “Yes. I’ve that decided out of my own volition.”

“……I see,” after nodding with an indescribable expression, Zana stood up from seat and said to King Zestgard, “Please let me take care of this.”

“……Are you confident?”

“Yes.”

“…Alright. I’ll leave it to you, then. However… you understand, don’t you?”

Nod, after silently nodding, Zana turned in my direction and said, “You don’t want your women get hurt either, yes?”

“Yeah. Rather, I’d like to resolve this without conflict, if possible.”

“I see. Then let’s settle this with a duel between the two of us. But I don’t want this place get destroyed, so let’s go out through that window and fight outside. What do you think?”

“—Alright. You all okay with that, right?”

“““——””” Arca, Magmell, and Ophir nodded in unison to my question.

So, I also told the homunculus girl that had just entered, “Well you heard us, so wait here with your sisters, okay?”

“I understand.”

“Also, thank you for taking our side,” I patted her head. She was still expressionless, but her cheeks reddened slightly.

“Well, shall we go?” Zana asked.

“Yeah, let’s go.” I nodded and tried to go out of the window, following Zana.

But then, I suddenly caught sight of a painting on the wall of the dining room.

On it was drawn a beautiful woman with a graceful smile.

Somehow, I felt like she looked similar to Zana.