Chapter 20: 013. Imperial Prince is Toiling Away -2 (Part Two)
This caused the feudal lord to form a troubled expression on his face, then he sneaked a glance at the Paladins. He said, “Y-your highness, that might prove to be quite problematic.”
An evil feudal lord wouldn’t have hesitated to serve up a measly little maidservant as a sacrifice. However, what with the Paladins tasked with being my monitors hanging around us during this little meeting, he wouldn’t be able to do something so blatant like that.
This feudal lord was really quick on the uptake, and I liked that. That’s right, it would indeed prove to be problematic if a maidservant came to visit me in my room at the wrong time. That could potentially end up as a huge problem for me.
“Don’t be mistaken. I merely wish to relax, that’s all,” I reassured him.
The feudal lord formed an awkward smile. “Aha, haha! I-is that so, your highness? In that case, please allow me to show you to your quarters.”
He jumped up from his seat and called for his servant. Meanwhile, I sneaked a glance at the head Paladin.
He was observing me through the holes of his helm. I could just about sense him furrow his brows.
That’s right, take a good look, buddy! I’m still a horny fool! So, like, can you go back home and nicely convince any would-be assassin hirers? I mean, they should have plenty of competition back home already, right? Can they even afford to spare a moment to worry about a banished fool like me?
I really wanted to live a simple life here. Living the life of constantly running away from bloodthirsty assassins was a fate I’d like to avoid at all cost, you know?
I was soon guided to my room.
A manservant, which was clearly not a woman, had been ordered to serve me while a Paladin stuck close as if he would be my observer from now on.
The room I was brought to was quite clean and somewhat plain. But at least it did feature a far, far cushier bed than the hard wooden board that I used back in the monastery, and there was even a fireplace to keep out the cold, too.
I found this arrangement to be quite satisfactory.
I turned my head and stared at both the manservant and the Paladin. The latter stood like a statue tasked with guarding the door, while the former was nervously waiting for my commands.
This made sense though. This grandson of the Holy Emperor was infamous for suddenly slapping servants around. Various unsavoury stories of the ‘mangnani’ prince must’ve done its rounds already in this place before my arrival today.
Rather unsurprisingly, the manservant sneakily covered his cheeks and anxiously waited for me.
“Go fetch me clean water.”
“Water… your highness?”
The servant formed a surprised expression.
“Right. And also… M-mm, get me some booze too.”
The Paladin then sneaked a glance at me.
“What’s the matter? I’m not even allowed to drink now?”
He shifted his gaze away and returned to his ‘duty’.
Huh. Hang on a minute, could this guy be a bloody Termi*ator instead and not a human being?
Not too long afterwards, the servant brought along a bottle of liquor and some water that I requested.
“Oh, thanks. You can go now.”
“T-thank you, your highness!”
He quickly closed the door and escaped from the room.
I then carefully studied the room again.
This world shouldn’t have hidden cameras or stuff like that, right? I wanted to make sure, but since I couldn’t sense any divinity, demonic energy or mana in the room, I should probably be fine.
I went ahead and emptied the bottle down the toilet. Then, I poured the water into the empty bottle before injecting divinity into it.
“I’ll die of overwork if things go the way I imagine.”
Only eighty Priests were stationed in this place, and we were tasked with purification ceremonies meant for several thousands. Are you bloody insane? Priests were supposed to be upper-class citizens in this world. But despite that, what a crazy notion of slave labour this was!
“I better make some pick-me-ups while I still have the chance.”
This world unfortunately didn’t have energy drinks like “Re* B*ll” or “Bac**us-F”. So… it would be a smart thing for me to self-create some and then drink them later on. Sure, it was tiring to create holy water, but nothing came close to reinvigorating one’s body stained by extreme bouts of fatigue. [1]
“And I should take a closer look at this thing too.”
I extracted the Necromancer’s grimoire from the empty air.
“It’s so convenient that my skills and the item window all function exactly like a game.”
What a fortunate thing it was, not having to worry about reaching the storage limit. Of course, there was a restriction on what could be stored depending on the item’s size, but still, that was more than an acceptable compromise in my book.
I flipped open the Necromancer’s records.
It seemed that Necromancy of this world sacrificed ‘demonic energy’ and ‘life span’ to summon the undead. This could be the reason why Necromancers boasted a high-level of magic control that easily overshadowed any other types of magicians.
As I enjoyed the game-like attribute, I had pretty much nothing to do with the ‘life span’ part, but on the flip side, I had seriously poor ‘divinity’ control.
I mean, didn’t I grant blessings inadvertently back then?
What I needed right now were two things – one, items that either recovered my spent divinity or even greatly increased it. And two, learn to perfectly control the amount of divinity I use at any given situation.
“So, this thing is basically telling me to inject demonic energy into water and refine my control that way.”
It emphasized that ‘breathing’ was the connecting chain of one’s soul. Apparently, the demonic energy injected via ‘breathing technique’ would allow me to exert the greatest level of control.
“But that’s the story for Necromancers, right? I mean, will it even work for a Priest like me?”
After pouring the water into the liquor bottle and breathing into it, I was suddenly slapped in the head with a pop-up message. It said that ‘Blessing’ had been activated. Subsequently, I now got myself a new bottle of holy water.
Compared to how anemic I felt the last time, this process felt a lot more easier.
“Huh. I guess there was a reward for training for the whole of last month, then.”
For sure, the Necromancer’s way of magic control was the absolute best out of everyone else. It was a day and night difference from how Priests would just stupidly dump as much of their divinity they can handle in one go.
But then again, this made a lot of sense – your life was on the line after all, so if you were sloppy with magic control, you wouldn’t even last a single year as a Necromancer. That’s just how this profession was like.
Yup, as expected of the profession stuck in the extreme end of the scale, the Necromancer! This was perfectly fitting for the job class where one needed to put up life span as collateral before being allowed to use magic.
I nodded my head while perusing the Necromancer’s grimoire once more.
This was truly excellent! When I’m done with this sucker, I should sell it off. I was thinking that it’d earn me some pretty penny later.
Ever since the zombie wave incident, I worked quite hard to greatly increase my divinity reserve so that I could survive into the future.
I kept praying, even though I barely held any faith whatsoever, and tried my best to absorb as much divinity as possible. And then, I’d sneak off to the forest by myself and diligently focus on summoning various undead, thereby increasing their numbers. All to prepare for that off-chance of something unsavoury happening later.
My current problem, though, was the potential fate of me dying from overwork in a short while. Which was unfortunately not related to all the hard work I had recently put in.
The more I thought about it, the more pissed off I got. How did anyone expect me to perform funerals for thousands of people, anyway?
“No, hang on a minute.”
I pondered my dilemma for a while but eventually, shook my head.
There was no need for me to diligently do what they told me in the first place, right? Besides, this place wasn’t my ‘jurisdiction’, as it were.
All I had to do was simply go, “Aigoo! I’m so exhausted that I can’t go on anymore!”, and everything should be fine after that.
By pretending to be ill, I wouldn’t need to risk my life by performing this so-called volunteer slave service anymore. To think that there was such a wonderful method to cheat the system!
“Nice! I should just pretend to work hard, up to a certain point.”
When that happens, even the Paladins would have no choice but to let me off the hook. Just who was I, anyway? Even if it was just the shell, wasn’t I the Holy Emperor’s grandson?
Even if they knew I was just faking an illness, none of them were in a position to force me back to work.
“Still…”
Just in case, I should still create a few more energy recovery drinks.
This world was, figuratively and literally, extremely fantastic. No one knew what might happen at any given time, so it’d be wiser to get myself some insurance.
While creating more holy water, I shifted my gaze towards the side. There was this one thing that kept nagging me in the corner of my mind. And that was…
“…Yup, that’s a gun, alright.”
…It was none other than a musket rifle hanging on the wall as decoration.
< 013. Imperial Prince is Toiling Away -2 (Part One and Two) > Fin.
