The iron hooves of the Mason Legion crushed the withered marsh grass underfoot, each step sending a dull thud rolling across the wetlands.
In the wake of the bloody execution that had just concluded, the entire column radiated a killing intent so thick it was almost tangible.
Inside the first carriage of the Mason convoy, a faint, clean scent of mugwort drifted from a small incense burner — a blend Daphne had specially prepared to ward off the miasma of the wetlands.
Sophia sat expressionless in the seat of honor, her gaze fixed on the wetland map spread across her knees, its surface crowded with dense red-ink annotations.
Her silver hair slipped over her shoulders, catching the faint lamplight with a cold, almost metallic sheen.
Little Hailey sat curled in the corner of the carriage, clutching a half-eaten honey biscuit, her eyes — which had previously darted away in fear — now fixed unblinkingly on Sophia.
To this child, the ice-cold Queen of Mason before her was the only order that existed in this desolate wasteland.
Even though they were on a forced march, she hadn't suffered a single hardship — all of it thanks to Her Majesty.
She had actually wanted to use her status as a small girl to try connecting with the little girl rescued from Jasu, to make herself useful in some small way.
But Sister Daphne had said the other girl was emotionally unstable, so Her Majesty had forbidden the visit, worried the girl might harm her.
Thinking about it, Hailey felt a little glum that she couldn't do anything for Her Majesty — yet at the same time, she felt that Her Majesty was truly, impossibly kind to her.
"Your Majesty, you are absolutely incredible!"
Irene finally couldn't hold it in any longer. She set down the small biscuit she'd been nibbling, her eyes lighting up like two sapphires.
"So that night, when you absolutely insisted on watching the Third Princess change her clothes in person, and even threw her accessories into the fire — you were already anticipating the people of Olan the whole time?
I was wondering how Your Majesty could suddenly take an interest in such a gaudy formal gown..."
The moment Irene's words fell, Daphne — who had been channeling Holy Light toward Delilah nearby — also paused her movements, her jade-green eyes shimmering with genuine awe.
"Your Majesty had severed every possibility of the other side framing you right from the very beginning," Daphne murmured softly.
"This kind of airtight defense — surely this is what true divine logic looks like."
The fingertip Sophia had been using to mark the map paused ever so slightly.
In truth, Sophia hadn't been thinking along those lines at all.
She had simply felt that Victoria's formal gown was too heavy and inconvenient for travel, and that Victoria's flight had been somewhat inelegant — the hem had gotten rather dirty in the process.
Besides, all those tiny diamonds sewn onto it looked quite valuable. She'd been worried Victoria might secretly pocket a few and sell them after escaping, which would make her far harder to track down.
Sophia let out an inward sigh — but not a single muscle in her face moved. She merely lifted her eyelids a fraction and replied in her characteristically flat, emotionless tone:
"A casual precaution. Nothing worth mentioning."
To Irene and Daphne's ears, however, those words were as good as a confirmation of profound, far-reaching foresight.
Casual?
A cold sweat broke out along Irene's spine.
An operation that had accounted for the enemy's scheme to sow discord months in advance — and in Her Majesty's eyes, that was just something she'd done on a whim?
Mason's future must already be mapped out in Her Majesty's mind, hundreds of years ahead.
Beside her, Willow pressed her lips together in quiet admiration. As expected of Her Majesty.
Meanwhile, in the second carriage further back, the atmosphere was considerably stranger.
Victoria sat atop a pile of expensive fur cushions, her ivory folding fan tapping lightly against her thigh.
Her gaze rested on the little girl sprawled across the cushioned bench, sleeping so deeply she looked like a dead cat making up for a month of lost sleep.
The little girl's hemp-rope braids — still in her hair — were ones Victoria had tied that morning, unable to stand the sight of the child's tangled mess.
"The key..."
Victoria repeated the word the assassin had spoken before dying, her expression thoughtful and amused.
Bardess, sitting nearby, was wiping down the barrel of her black musket with a cloth in her characteristically blunt fashion. Hearing this, she muttered:
"Your Highness the Third Princess, don't go listening to that Olan rat's ravings.
Her Majesty already said you're clean — not a thing hidden on you. That old wretch just wanted Her Majesty to grow suspicious of you."
Victoria let out a soft, scornful laugh, a flash of complicated feeling crossing her pale-gold eyes.
Suspicious?
That mad old fool of Olan had certainly been playing that angle.
But what he could never have dreamed of was that on that very night, Sophia had used that outrageously offensive method of hers to personally verify every inch of me, corner by corner.
What was meant to be my humiliation has become, impossibly, the only thing keeping me alive within this iron torrent.
Sophia Mason... just what kind of monster are you?
Victoria came back to herself and looked at the child.
Those assassins earlier had terrible acting — but one detail had caught Victoria's attention.
When they'd mentioned "hemp-rope braids," their tone had been absolutely certain.
And yet those braids had only been tied that morning, on a whim.
Which meant that from the moment they'd left Avalon's territory, Olan's informants had been keeping a close, relentless watch on them — possibly close enough to make out the silhouettes through the carriage windows.
"Bardess."
Victoria spoke up suddenly.
"Yeah?"
"Go tell the supply train behind us to warm up some bread and milk on the stove."
Victoria watched the little girl's lashes flutter faintly.
"This little one is about to wake up."
Bardess blinked. "Wake up now? Shouldn't we hurry and let Her Majesty know?"
"No need. Sophia's eyes have probably been watching this carriage the whole time already."
The instant Victoria finished speaking, the little girl on the cushioned bench let out a tiny sound — barely a kitten's whimper.
Those eyelids of hers — clamped shut for an entire day and night, threaded through with red — at that moment, ever so slowly, cracked open the faintest sliver.
No screaming. No thrashing.
The first thing the girl saw was Victoria's breathtakingly beautiful face — tinged with its characteristic hint of amusement — and beyond the carriage walls, the heavy, measured footfalls of the Mason iron army.
The girl's cracked lips moved. No sound came out.
Inside the carriage, the alchemy warming stove breathed out thread after thread of warmth, sealing the cold damp of the wetlands beyond the thick wooden walls.
The girl's eyes — clouded from prolonged malnutrition — stared blankly up at the elaborate carvings on the ceiling.
Her senses were returning piece by piece. The first thing they reported back to her brain was a searing, raw agony in her throat — as though she had swallowed a fistful of scalding sand.
"You're awake?"
A voice sounded at her ear — elegant and low, like a cello.
The girl flinched instinctively, but her body, stiff from so long without movement, could barely manage even that.
She could only watch as a face of suffocating beauty leaned close.
Victoria kept that same flawless, gentle smile in place. She didn't rush to ask questions — instead, she simply poured a cup of warm water, cradled the back of the girl's head, and pressed the rim of the cup against those lips that looked ready to bleed.
"Don't move yet. Have some water first.
Are you hungry?"
The girl stared at Victoria in a daze.
In her memory, women who wore such fine clothes and possessed such beauty always meant unreachable status and cold, contemptuous stares from above.
Every instinct told her to refuse, to pull away — but the raw, physical thirst shattered that fragile wall.
Gulp. Gulp.
She didn't even spare a thought for manners. Her hands locked around the cup like a desert traveler who had stumbled upon the only oasis left in the world, and she drained it in one breath.
Victoria's expression didn't change. She waited patiently until the girl had finished, then drew out a handkerchief embroidered with a soft floral pattern and gently dabbed the corner of the girl's mouth.
"Slowly, slowly.
In a little while, once the bread on the stove is warmed through, there will be more to eat.
From here on out, you'll always have enough to fill your belly. Those terrible things..." Victoria's voice softened even further, "...they will never happen again."
Victoria's voice was as gentle as a breeze rippling across a wheat field — carrying a magnetic quality that made one want to sink into it without resistance.
A faint crack finally appeared in the girl's numb expression: a flicker of disbelieving struggle.
Victoria, seeing it, let the smile at the corner of her mouth deepen. She observed the tiny change in the light within the girl's eyes with practiced, hidden precision.
"Do you remember the Her Majesty Sophia you met last night?
The elder sister with hair the same color as mine, but with a silver sheen to it.
She is an extraordinarily powerful Queen. She will bring Mason's gunpowder and cavalry and drive away every last one of those wicked men who set the fires."
The little girl lowered her head, staring fixedly at the tip of her own hemp-rope braid. After a long silence, her cracked lips finally moved, and a voice barely louder than a mosquito's hum slipped out:
"Drive away... all the bad people?"
Bardess, who had been jabbing a cleaning rod through a musket barrel with a steady squeak-squeak-squeak, froze the instant she heard that tiny sound — as though she'd been struck by lightning.
Those eyes of hers, always narrowed with sharp focus from years of soldiering, snapped wide open like a pair of brass bells, the pupils swimming with barely-contained, incredulous joy.
She spoke! This little gremlin actually opened her mouth and spoke!
The surge of excitement inside Bardess nearly blew the top of her skull off. Every instinct screamed at her to leap to her feet, slap her thighs, and let out a thunderous "THAT'S MY GIRL!" before pouncing on the child with a thousand questions.
But the corner of her eye caught the girl's hunched, trembling shoulders, and reason physically dragged her back.
She shot out both of her large, calloused hands and slapped them over her own mouth with a force that squeezed her own cheeks halfway off her face.
She held it all in until her complexion went crimson, her massive frame shaking in tiny, barely-perceptible trembles against the carriage seat — a sight that was simultaneously absurd and strangely, helplessly tender.
She was terrified that one stray leak of her foghorn voice would send those tentative little feelers of survival right back into hiding.
Victoria caught a glimpse of Bardess's ridiculous display and let a flicker of amusement cross the depths of her eyes, before returning her gaze, warm and steady, to the girl.
"Of course."
Victoria watched the tension gradually loosen between the girl's brows, and a note of proud solemnity entered her voice.
"That elder sister never lies.
As long as she is here, there is no one in this world who can lay a finger on you."
Holy spirits above... the Third Princess's mouth is deadlier than one of Irene's powder kegs.
I thought she was just sweet-talking a child — but look at that technique.
First, warm her up with water. Then lure her in with bread. Finally, drop Her Majesty's name like an anchor to steady the whole world.
The Third Princess is laying the ideological groundwork for this child's entire future!
Her Majesty must have anticipated this exact scene.
Having a sophisticated, big-sister type like the Third Princess pry open this child's lips? A hundred times more effective than a rough blade-wielding oaf like me.
This must be what Her Majesty calls tactical logic.
Following Her Majesty — even coaxing a child is packed with the wisdom of the ruling class.
The air inside the carriage had grown dry and warm from the heating stove.
Warm milk, rich and sweetly fragrant, sat in an elegant silver cup.
The little girl cradled it in both hands, sipping in tiny, careful mouthfuls — as though she were trying to swallow every drop of warmth this life had denied her, all at once.
She had never tasted anything so good.
Victoria sat across from her, the ivory fan tapping lightly against her thigh, those pale-gold eyes soft — yet carrying a sharpness capable of cutting straight to the heart of a person.
"Have a little more. The bread has honey in it."
Victoria took the warm tray from Bardess's large, rough hands and slid it toward the girl.
The little girl looked at the white, soft piece of bread on the plate — the kind whose smell she had only ever caught in fleeting whiffs at festivals back in the Royal City of Jasu.
She took a bite, and tears suddenly splashed down into her milk, one after another.
The violent contrast — plunging from nightmare into something like paradise — finally shattered the last wall entirely.
The girl set down her cup. Those eyes of hers, shot through with red, looked up at Victoria.
She seemed to recall the silver-haired Queen from the previous night — cold as frost, yet the one who had given her broth — and then she looked at this gentle, soft-spoken elder sister before her now.
"They... they were looking for something," the girl said.
Her voice was hoarse and trembling, carrying a kind of near-feverish resolve.
"Only the Royal House of Jasu knew where those things were.
My father was a palace attendant. He got word out, trying to get it to the Imperial Capital.
But those people came after us.
Before my father died, he carved it... carved it onto my body."
Bardess, sitting to one side, snapped her eyes wide open. The hand that had been wiping down the musket barrel went rigid in an instant — she even forgot to breathe.
Victoria's heart lurched hard in her chest. The razor instincts of someone who had spent a lifetime submerged in conspiracy told her: the real "key" was about to surface.
"Don't be afraid, child."
Victoria reached out and gently stroked the girl's tangled hemp-rope braids, her tone growing even softer.
"No one can hurt you here.
You want to show it to us, don't you?"
The little girl nodded, hard and resolute. Those thin hands of hers — frail as dried twigs — trembled as they reached for the front of her ragged linen blouse.
The garment had been worn for so long no one could say how many days — it had fused with the wound beneath it.
As she painstakingly undid the side lacing and pulled down the sleeve that had more or less disintegrated into rags, a stretch of arm was exposed — snow-white, yet so thin it made the heart ache.
"Hss—"
Bardess sucked in a sharp breath. Her calloused hands clenched her thighs without thinking.
On the inner surface of that frail upper arm, the smooth skin had been violently destroyed.
Someone had used wire or iron to slash through flesh — the jagged, crisscrossing wounds had long since crusted into dark crimson scabs, and because the cuts varied in depth, the surrounding skin had taken on a sickly purple-red hue.
They were not random scratches. They were crooked, uneven letters from the Olan script, formed by lines of dried blood.
Cors.
Victoria leaned closer, her brow furrowing deeply.
As a Third Princess who had been schooled in the Imperial Capital, she recognized the meaning behind those two words at a glance.
It was a small town on the edge of the Yurilland wetlands, within the Kingdom of Olan's territory — sparsely populated, utterly resource-poor, and for that reason previously leased out by Olan to Yurilland to facilitate travel for Yurilland's people.
"Cors... Could it be that something Olan wants but has never been able to find is hidden there?!"
Bardess blurted it out before she could stop herself, then immediately slapped a hand over her mouth, eyes nearly bulging out of her head.
We didn't just rescue a child. We rescued a living, breathing strategic map.
I'd originally thought Her Majesty just felt sorry for the kid — a passing act of queenly mercy.
But this?!
Her Majesty, from that far away, already caught the scent of the blade hidden on this child — a blade sharp enough to stab straight through Olan's heart!
No wonder Her Majesty kept the child close but refused to pressure her into talking.
She was afraid someone would spook the prey — afraid the secret carved into this child would be startled to the surface too soon.
Can Her Majesty's eyes truly reach across miles of wasteland and see straight through the dried blood under a child's sleeve?
This isn't human intelligence. This is a god moving pieces around a game board for fun.
At that moment, in the first carriage up ahead.
Sophia's hand — in the middle of reaching for a strip of beef jerky — paused ever so slightly.
Though thick wooden walls and post-rain fog separated them, as the sole command center of this army, she had already received Bardess's notification from the rear.
So what Olan has been trying to find all this time is the name of that town.
Sophia expressionlessly finished chewing her last bite of jerky, a cold and efficient light flickering through her pale-gold eyes.
It appeared that something was hidden in that town — something Olan wanted but couldn't pinpoint the location of — which was why they had stopped at nothing to obtain the information.
That was why Jasu had been slaughtered to the last person.
Carving the coordinates into a child's body. Admittedly more secure than hiding them in any scroll.
A thing that Olan craved and that Jasu had refused to hand over even unto annihilation — she now knew its location.
Then what, exactly, is it? What is worth one side massacring an entire city, and the other choosing to be massacred to the last rather than yield it?
The rhythm of the march came to an abrupt halt in the afternoon.
When Sophia issued the order to halt and make camp on the spot, even the forward scouts were caught off guard — the field cooks most of all.
The slanted sun still hung in the treetops; it was at least two full hours earlier than their usual time to set up camp.
But the reason the Mason Legion was called an iron torrent lay precisely in that near-instinctual obedience.
No questioning. No murmuring.
The soldiers moved swiftly, driving stakes into a patch of high ground at the wetland's edge. The muted thud of mallets striking earth rang out with particular severity across the empty wilderness.
Fires were lit. The scent of bean soup began to spread. Everything looked like an ordinary rest stop.
And yet inside the central command tent — marked with the Black Rose emblem — the air was so taut it felt like it might strike sparks.
The heavy canvas of the tent kept out the rolling damp of the outside world entirely.
Sophia still sat in the seat of honor. Across the table, the map was spread out, one corner stained rust-red with blood.
Delilah still lay quietly on the cushioned bench behind the folding screen; Daphne stood nearby checking the brightness of the alchemy oil lamp, ensuring the light was gentle.
Irene crouched in the corner, clutching her crate of materials to her chest, her sapphire-blue eyes darting anxiously from face to face.
Victoria sat with elegant composure slightly behind and to one side of Sophia, her ivory fan making idle passes, fingertips drifting absently across the lake-blue hem of her skirt.
Willow stood at her customary position beside Sophia.
Bardess stood like an iron tower at the tent entrance, little Hailey's hand in hers — and behind Bardess, the girl who had just woken up, the crusted Cors scabs still vivid on her upper arm, cowered shyly.
Sophia expressionlessly chewed the last of her beef jerky, let her fingertip tap the table once, and let her cool, clear voice fall into the silence.
"Everyone is here."
"Your Majesty — you've stopped us here at this hour. Surely it's... for that town?"
Irene couldn't help herself and spoke first. Scatterbrained as she usually was, even she understood that halting in the middle of nowhere at the wetland's edge was not anyone's idea of sightseeing.
"Cors is technically a leased territory, but it sits far too close to Olan's defensive line.
If we march on it now, it would be no different from jabbing a needle directly into the King of Olan's eyeball."
Sophia didn't dispute this. She simply raised one hand and pointed to the small dot on the map, encircled over and over in red.
"Hear my plan first."
The moment Sophia's cool voice finished, everyone in the tent went silent.
Her Majesty rarely addressed them in private using "this Queen." If she was this serious now, something truly significant was at hand.
"Yes, Your Majesty."
Once the tent had settled into quiet, Sophia dragged her finger across the map and laid out her plan.
Inside the tent, the lamp flames swayed, stretching everyone's shadows long across the floor, weaving together into a tangle of suffocating darkness.
Sophia pressed a fingertip lightly onto the words "Cors" on the map, her tone as placid as if she were discussing tomorrow morning's breakfast menu:
"My plan is this: before Olan's main force can react, I will personally take two capable individuals and move ahead to Cors to retrieve whatever is there.
The main column will continue pushing through the wetlands as normal, drawing all attention."
The instant the words landed, the air that had been frozen solid inside the tent seemed to explode.
"Absolutely not! This is completely out of the question!"
Bardess was the first one to her feet. The force of the motion sent her saber crashing into her armor with an ear-splitting clang.
Her face had gone the color of a ripe tomato, as though terrified her voice might not be loud enough:
"Your Majesty, this is sheer madness!
Cors may officially be a leased territory on paper, but in reality it is crawling with Olan informants.
You are worth ten thousand lives — you are the hope of all of Mason! How can you separate from the main force and act alone?
If you were to lose even a single hair from your head, I could hack off my own skull in apology and it still wouldn't be enough!"
Willow, unusually, also let her face go grave. She moved to Sophia's side and bowed slightly, her voice soft but carrying an unshakeable firmness:
"Your Majesty, please forgive this servant's overstepping.
You are undefeated in battle — but infiltrating enemy-occupied territory alone falls entirely outside the bounds of any defensible logic.
As Mason's Chief Steward, I cannot stand by and watch you take such a risk."
Irene, growing frantic, slammed her powder crate down with a loud bang, her sapphire eyes wide with alarm:
"Exactly, Your Majesty!
I've just finished developing a few portable gadgets, but if you don't bring me along, who's going to blast open all those damned hidden passages for you?"
Even the gentlest of them all — Daphne — paused what she was doing, her jade eyes brimming with worry. She said nothing, but the way she held herself — poised to lunge forward and grab Sophia's skirt at any moment — said everything.
Victoria remained seated to one side, ivory fan half-raised before her face.
In the firelight, her pale-gold pupils flickered between brightness and shadow — while inside her chest, waves crashed against one another in tumult.
She's insane. This little stone-face is absolutely insane.
She actually wants to use herself as bait — or rather, wants to turn herself into a blade — and while everyone's eyes are fixed on these four thousand iron soldiers, slip in without a sound and cut out Olan's heart?
This kind of tactic... is literally putting your own life on the gambling table.
Sophia looked at the group of subordinates reacting with such vehemence and felt a flicker of private exasperation.
Whatever is in Cors was enough to justify massacring an entire city. It can't be ordinary. If Olan gets there first, haven't I marched all this way for nothing?
But in everyone else's eyes, Sophia's face — still stubbornly expressionless — projected the impression of a sovereign so profoundly removed from mortal concerns as to say: "What could mere commoners possibly understand of a god's will?"
"Bardess."
Sophia's cool voice sounded again.
"You said you want to go?"
"Yes! Let me go, Your Majesty!
I'll take the special operations unit. I guarantee we'll bring back whatever it is!"
Bardess thumped her chest, her armor clanging wildly from the impact.
Sophia shook her head slightly:
"Delilah hasn't recovered. You are the commander of the four-thousand-strong legion — your every move represents the will of the entire force.
If you vanish for more than half a day, the enemy's scouts will immediately notice something is wrong.
At that point, Cors stops being our target and starts being their ambush point."
She turned to look at Willow.
"You can't go either.
You are Mason's Chief Steward — the supply chain for the entire legion, the three meals a day for every soldier, all of that is on you.
Without you here, the whole column falls out of rhythm."
"Then... what about me?"
Irene raised her hand weakly.
"You have other tasks to stay behind for."
Sophia looked back at the map, her eyes dead-calm and certain:
"As for me — I spend most of my days inside the carriage. Except for the occasional appearance when the mood strikes, I travel under a cloak and wearing a mask for the better part of every day.
Even if I were to slip away — as long as the carriage keeps moving forward, as long as the curtains stay drawn — who could say with certainty whether the person sitting inside is really the Queen or not?"
The tent fell into a silence like death.
Bardess was struck dumb by the ironclad logic. Her Majesty thought through all of this in such a short time?
This is Her Majesty's reasoning?
Her Majesty calculated this far ahead!
She deliberately maintained this air of mystery all along — deliberately wearing the mask, deliberately wearing the great cloak — was she building toward this exact escape all this time?
In Her Majesty's eyes, even her own identity and appearance are just one more piece to be leveraged in this war.
This kind of absolute mastery over oneself — this willingness to sacrifice even herself — it's as if she has already seen the shape of fate unfolding.
Following a sovereign like this, what reason could I possibly have not to give everything I have?!
"But Your Majesty, someone still needs to show their face once or twice," Daphne pointed out in a small voice.
Sophia raised her head with an expressionless look, let her gaze sweep once around the tent, and finally settled on Victoria's face — a face that shared some indefinable resemblance of spirit with her own — and spoke without a trace of inflection:
"Find someone of similar build. Have them put on my black cloak and wear the Black Rose mask.
As long as they don't speak, who could distinguish what the King of Mason actually looks like from a hundred paces away?
After all," Sophia added after a beat,
"in their eyes, I am nothing but an emotionless killing machine, am I not?"
Victoria's fingers tightened around the fan's spine.
This little stone-face... even her self-deprecation comes out this cold.
What does she want to get her hands on? That she would go to these lengths for it.
Under pressure so near to crushing, the voices of opposition in the tent slowly ebbed away.
They were beginning to understand: when Sophia chose to move in a way that defied all conventional military sense, no standard strategic advice had anything useful left to offer.
Sophia's gaze swept the tent and came to rest, steady and certain, on Irene — still crouched in the corner clutching her powder crate.
"Irene could also be the stand-in."
Sophia's voice was perfectly flat as she continued.
"Her build is close to mine. She's always cooped up in the carriage experimenting with her dangerous little bottles and jars — she rarely shows her face in public.
If she puts on my black cloak and the Black Rose mask and sits in my usual seat—"
"—?!"
Me?!"
Irene nearly flung the powder crate across the carriage in shock. Those sapphire eyes went round as saucers, her pink hair practically standing on end from sheer nerves.
"Your Majesty! You want me to... to impersonate you?!
That aura of yours that freezes a person's soul just by looking at it — how in the world am I supposed to act that?!"
Sophia looked at Irene with a blank face, running silent calculations in her head.
But to everyone else's eyes, the way Sophia chose her stand-in carried a deeper layer of strategic meaning altogether.
"You don't need to act anything."
Sophia rose to her feet, her silver hair trailing across her waist.
"You just need to sit there, the way I normally do — not saying a word, looking out the window, or flipping through plans.
Keep the glass curtains drawn as usual.
Bardess and Willow will cover the rest."
Willow studied Irene for a moment, something dawning in her eyes. She turned and bowed deeply to Sophia:
"Your Majesty's wisdom is supreme.
Miss Irene's build truly is almost identical to yours.
More than that — the faint, ever-present smell of gunpowder around Miss Irene, and that single-minded, 'do-not-approach' intensity she carries — to anyone who doesn't know the truth, it would be very easy to mistake it for Your Majesty's own decisive, ruthless authority.
That mismatch between what the eye sees and what the instincts feel — that is the most sophisticated form of cover there is."
Bardess had been on the verge of objecting, but the moment she heard Sophia's reasoning, the expression on that weathered face flipped from anxious to stunned — and then sank into a depth of awe that had no bottom.
This is Her Majesty's scheme?
I'd been wondering this whole time why Her Majesty kept Irene, this total tech hermit, constantly chained to her side — even had that calm, simply-cut apprentice outfit specially made for her.
Turns out... from the very moment Irene entered the Palace, Her Majesty was already looking for her own body double!
Her Majesty probably even factored in the deathly pallor Irene had developed from years of pulling all-nighters — so that the strip of skin visible above the mask would match Her Majesty's own bloodless complexion.
She didn't recruit an inventor. She hand-sculpted a perfect, swappable shadow.
Following Her Majesty, you have to make sure even your own shadow holds up to logical scrutiny. That's absolutely terrifying.
Victoria still hadn't said a word — but the knuckles wrapped around her ivory fan had gone faintly white.
Sophia, you've even factored in Irene — someone utterly devoted to you — as a piece on the board?
Victoria glanced at Irene, a trace of pity moving through her eyes.
This foolish girl thinks she's just filling in for a little while. She has no idea that on Sophia's tactical board, she has already become the most tempting bait to lure the King of Olan into striking.
Only a fool would agree to be someone's body double.
But then...
Victoria turned and looked at Sophia.
"Who do you plan to bring?
Someone who can keep up with your pace and won't become a liability in the middle of chaos — there aren't many like that here."
Victoria's words landed, and the rest of the tent arrived at the same realization all at once.
Right.
They've all been assigned their roles by Her Majesty — each with their own duty. So who is going with Her Majesty?
"Me?" Daphne volunteered herself immediately.
"Not you."
Sophia shook her head.
"Until Delilah wakes up, you must stay at her side channeling Holy Light for her recovery."
"Then there are very few people in the army who are both skilled enough and in enough sync with Your Majesty."
Sophia acknowledged the problem herself.
And that was when the gears in Irene's head started turning.
Just as Sophia was about to nail down the details, Irene — as if something had suddenly clicked into place — slapped her powder crate hard, shot straight up, and planted herself in front of Sophia.
"No, Your Majesty!
I've thought about it, and I can't stay behind!"
Those sapphire eyes burned with a stubbornness unlike anything Irene usually showed, locked unwaveringly on Sophia.
"If Cors is hiding something even the people of Olan couldn't crack open, there's bound to be alchemy locks or heavy-duty mechanisms involved.
Those soldiers are good at killing — what do they know about defusing fuses?
If you run into a sealed-shut passage and I'm not there to do a targeted demolition, are you going to claw it open with your bare hands?"
Irene took a deep breath, turned, and shot a glance at Victoria — who was sitting nearby with a slightly dazed look — before pointing at her with complete conviction:
"Have Princess Victoria impersonate you instead!
In terms of hair color, eye color, and that aura of shared bloodline between you two — as long as she puts on the cloak and mask and sits there without speaking, that aristocratic, untouchable air of hers alone is a far more convincing match than anything I could manage!
As for me — I have to come with you. My combat ability and our level of sync aren't something any random soldier in the camp can touch!"
Victoria, who had still been fanning herself a moment before, froze with her hand suspended in mid-air. Her pale-gold eyes were flooded with pure incredulity.
What kind of lunacy is this pink-haired girl spouting?
Have me impersonate that little stone-face?
Sit in as the Girl Tyrant who might get stabbed by an Olan assassin at any given moment?
But before Victoria could get a word of protest out, she found herself looking directly into Sophia's pale-gold eyes — perfectly still, perfectly undisturbed.
Sophia didn't respond immediately. She looked at Victoria for a moment, then looked at Irene — who had the unshakeable look of someone ready to die for the cause.
Irene, actually, is not wrong.
If whatever was in Cors was genuinely difficult to retrieve, an ordinary soldier would indeed be useless, and without the rapport of repeated collaboration, they might actively hinder the mission rather than help it.
Besides — Irene's mind occasionally short-circuited, yes, but for this kind of infiltration, having a walking self-propelled cannon capable of blasting through walls on demand was, most of the time, also quite smart. It was simply more efficient than bringing two soldiers who knew only how to swing swords.
The natural, unspoken understanding she shared with Irene was seamless. Sophia was fairly confident she could read most of what Irene was thinking — and Irene had a habit of landing on exactly what was in Sophia's mind too.
Most importantly: Victoria's old-nobility elegance and detachment were genuinely more likely to fool those cunning old Yurilland lords than Irene ever could be.
A glimpse of silver hair through the gap between glass window and curtain at any distance — yes, that would raise far fewer suspicions.
"Agreed."
Sophia's cool voice fell like a gavel.
"Victoria — starting tomorrow, you are the Queen of Mason.
Irene — pack your crate. The two of us change into those slightly loose athletic suits of yours with the body armor and soft plating underneath. We leave tonight."
Bardess stood there with her jaw hanging open — then that old face of hers broke into an expression of thunderstruck, bottomless reverence.
So this is Her Majesty's game of balance.
I thought she was just picking a stand-in at random. I had no idea there was a political minefield this deep buried underneath.
By pushing Victoria into the Queen's seat — ostensibly as a decoy — Her Majesty is actually locking Olan's royal attention dead on Victoria!
It's a test of Victoria's loyalty, and at the same time, it forces her to commit completely to Mason's side.
And by taking Irene away with her, Her Majesty is combining Mason's sharpest spear and its most powerful mind into one strike force.
One moves in open daylight, one in secret shadow — it's like having the whole wetland wrapped around her little finger.
Following Her Majesty, Old Bard's brain really isn't keeping up anymore. This is what a true ruler looks like!
"Yes, yes, Your Majesty! I swear on my life I will blast you the smoothest red carpet straight through to your destination!"
Irene's cheeks flushed red with excitement. She hadn't even noticed how dangerous the gamble she'd just proposed looked to anyone watching from outside — she simply felt, with complete and uncomplicated sincerity, that getting to do things at Sophia's side was the most romantic work her life had ever offered her.
Sophia stood up. She didn't pay any mind to Irene's excitement. She simply walked with calm steps over to Victoria and looked down at the somewhat unsettled Third Princess of the Empire.
"The mask and cloak are in the carriage.
If you slip up tomorrow and someone gets suspicious, try imagining what it would feel like to kill someone.
It isn't hard. You just have to look at everyone the way you'd look at a wooden post blocking your path.
As for your figure..." Sophia added after a brief pause, "the black full-length skirt will conceal the difference well enough."
With that, Sophia turned and walked away, her silver hair lifting a cold current in the firelight.
Victoria clutched her fan, feeling a faint dampness in her palm. She watched that cold, receding silhouette, then glanced at Irene — already cheerfully auditing her powder supply.
These two lunatics.
Sophia, you've genuinely handed me the entire army and gone charging into the enemy's fortress with that walking powder keg.
Do you truly trust me — or do you simply believe that even if I betray you, I'll never find a way out of the logic trap you've already laid?
Deep in the night, when the Mason Legion's great camp sank into silence, two slender silhouettes wrapped themselves in darkness — and like a ribbon of silver light — slipped without a sound into the deepest, darkest reaches of the Yurilland wetlands.
Through the gaps in the tent canvas, the others watched in silence as the two figures disappeared into the black.
"Miss Willow..." someone said quietly. "You don't think... Her Majesty took Irene and eloped, never to return, do you?"
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