Otome Game no Heroine de Saikyou Survival-Chapter 72

Fake “Heroine”

Lake Mel, the largest lake in the Kingdom of Cleydale, and its surrounding area was a land of scenic beauty.

The Viscount Mercis, a branch of the Melrose family that ruled the area under the direct jurisdiction of the Melrose family, was to adopt a certain girl as their adopted daughter that day.

“Miss Alicia, the house is in sight. Are you tired?

“Yes, I’m fine! Thank you!

The girl called Alicia answered the young butler’s words with a big smile on her face.

She had golden hair with a hint of red. Her almost black blue eyes showed a strong will and enhanced the loveliness of the girl, who was only 10 years old.

“That mansion will be my home, right?

Alicia’s eyes lit up when she saw the large mansion by the lake that could be seen from inside the carriage.

For a noblewoman, she looked even younger than she acted and spoke.

A noble would have been trained in magic from an early age to increase her magic value, and her appearance would have grown two to three years faster than that of a commoner, but Alicia’s appearance was really only that of a commoner, a ten-year-old child.

There was a reason for her young appearance.

Alicia was originally a noblewoman, but for some reason she was orphaned and lived in an orphanage with other commoner orphans until she reached this age.

Alicia, who had gone missing, was found, and a caretaker was dispatched from the nobility to educate her to some extent until she was identified as the person she was, but as expected, it was not possible to give a higher education such as magic to someone who had no foundation. As a result, Alicia was only able to acquire the basics of magic, and was unable to acquire enough magical power to rapidly grow her body.

“What’s wrong? Do you see something on my face?”

“No, Alicia-sama is small.”

Alicia, noticing that the young butler was looking at her, looked him up and down, and the butler couldn’t help but chuckle as Alicia touched her face as if in a panic.

“Eh, is that so? Even this one has grown a little taller recently and was one of the bigger ones in the orphanage!”

If she had grown up to be as tall as a commoner in an orphanage where growth was said to be slow due to abuse by the previous superintendent, then perhaps the basic magic might have had some effect.

When the young butler pulled himself away from Alicia, as if troubled by her grown body pressing against him in the narrow carriage, a voice came from a maid sitting on the other side of him.

“Miss Alicia. As a lady, you must not easily touch the opposite sex.”

“Yes~…but you are a butler…”

“Even butlers are men. Since the young lady will become the daughter of the Viscount Mercis, you must know how to keep a moderate distance from the opposite sex, or your lady Alicia will be in trouble when she goes out to socialize.”

“…Yes~”

Alicia reluctantly released her hand from the butler’s arm at the attendant’s reproachful tone.

In addition to Alicia, there was one butler and one maid of honor riding in this carriage.

Alicia, being an aristocratic daughter, would have been better off sitting next to the butler than be by herself.

The two sisters, who had been chosen as Alicia’s escort and caretaker for her move from the orphanage, looked at each other and communicated only through their gazes, recalling the troubled face of their grandfather, who had been assigned to manage the orphanage, and his words.

[Alicia was so good-looking and lovely that she had been tormented by those of the same gender, who were jealous of her. Therefore, she is wary of women and tends to seek protection from men.]

If this were true, it would be pitiful, but I felt that Alicia’s words and actions were even more fascinating than childlike.

“The carriage has arrived, sir.”

The carriage stopped, and Alicia got out of the carriage after the butler and the maidservant, and as she was being handed over to the Viscount and his maidservant, Alicia looked up at the butler anxiously.

“We are done here. From now on, your family, the Viscounts of Mercis, will take care of Miss Alicia.”

“But…”

Was there something wrong?

When the Viscount, who took the trouble to walk from the entrance to pick her up, asked this, Alicia’s anxious face instantly changed, and she turned back to the Viscount with a big smile on her face.

“No, it’s nothing! Father…!”

“Oh, oh, I see.”

Alicia clutched at the Viscount’s arm without making eye contact with the Viscount and the attendants behind her. The butler and the attendants who had ridden in the carriage with her let out a sigh, bowed to the Viscount, handed the documents to the maid and got into the carriage they rode in.

“…Are you sure you’re ready to go?”

“No, thank you.”

The steward nodded easily to the gentleman who was concerned about it.

The butler nodded to her concern. The lady-in-waiting easily got into the carriage without saying a word, and when he had no choice but to move the carriage, Alicia, noticing this, shook off the arm of Viscount Mercis, who had been clinging to her, and waved a big hand toward the carriage.

“Please come see me again, Mr. Oz! Oz-san!!!!”

***

This was my report.

“Thank you, Oz, Sera.”

Bert, the head of the Melrose frontier count, exhaled a sigh as he labored over his two subordinates.

Bert decided to first keep Alicia, his supposed granddaughter, as an adopted child of his branch family, the Viscounts of Mercis, until she came of age, to see how she was doing.

Since her existence was still a closely guarded secret, Bert could not afford to have a large number of knights escorting her on her move, so he had to rely on Sera and Oz, two of his most trusted men, both in mind and in arms.

The loss of Sera, who was responsible for the Queen’s Palace security at the Royal Castle, and Oz, who doubled as Bert’s butler and secretary as Prime Minister, affected not only Bert but also many other areas, and complaints had erupted all over those places, but there was nothing that could be done about this.

We were seriously understaffed. It was not just a matter of recruiting people, but of competing in each ministry for the most reliable and skilled people.

(If only there was someone who could at least be entrusted with escorting the princess around…but that’s not the point right now…)

“That’s what I mean, what do you think?”

“Grandfather…”

Mikhail, who was only twelve years old but had the looks of a male around fifteen, looked at his grandfather with a scowl in his glossy eyes that the young attendants of the royal court made a fuss over.

“Isn’t that girl supposed to join the Viscount’s family next year? You were supposed to find out if she was the real one by then, but why did you move it up a year?”

“The girl herself almost got into trouble by claiming to be a nobleman’s daughter, so we had no choice but to accelerate the protection.”

“…She’s quite a troublesome girl, isn’t she?”

Mikhail let out a deep sigh at his grandfather’s words, as if biting down on a bitter bug.

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Two years have passed, and there was still no clear evidence that the Alicia who was found was the real.

If one only looked at the testimony and circumstantial evidence, any noble family would recognize her as their own, but Bert felt uncomfortable recognizing her as Alicia simply because she did not have the hair color of a Melrose woman.

“Anyway, I will be entering the academy next month. Even as a senior noble, I will be living in a dormitory for half of the term, so I won’t be able to handle being called up like this.”

“You’re already that old. I’m sorry.”

The magic academy where the nobles were enrolled started a new term in the new year, after the harvest of crops was over and the collection of taxes was completed.

The children of nobles who turned thirteen that year would be eligible, and at the end of the year when they all reach the age of fifteen, they graduated and were treated as adults.

“My feelings are the same as your grandfather’s. I can hardly believe that the daughter is Moon Rose of Melrose just by listening to the report.”

With that, Mikhail left his grandfather’s office.

Because Sera and Oz were not present, Mikhail, who had not yet entered the academy, had to help Bert in his office to learn how to be Prime Minister.

Normally, Mikhail would have liked that, but right now, he was busy with preparations before entering the academy, and he also had some personal things he wanted to do and think about.

“…Moon Rose of Melrose…”

Mikhail uttered the words from earlier once more.

According to an old legend, the spirit of the moon gave a Moon Rose and hair of the same color to one woman in honor of her integrity and beauty.

I didn’t know whether this was true or not. But it seemed to me that the Moon really loved her because the color would disappear after a few generations if a woman married outside the family, but was passed down only to the direct descendants of the Melrose family.

If I told my friend Rockwell of Dandol, he might call me a romantic again, but just muttering that name reminded me of a certain girl.

An adventurer girl I met in King’s Landing.

Her hair was the same color as the Moon Rose, which really only bloomed on moonlit nights.

I had been curious about her since the first time I saw her. She had an air of solitude and was even beautiful, just like the spirit of the moon that Mikhail had envisioned when he was a child.

If she was an adventurer in this royal city, I would be able to see her again.

So, he parted ways with her and visited the Adventurers’ Guild several times, but time passed without his ever seeing her again.

If I continued to enroll in the school, I would not be able to go looking for her.

Mikhail didn’t think this was love but he longed for her solitary figure.

“I wonder if… we will meet again.”

*

“Well, I’ll leave you to it.”

“Thank you, Sera.”

“It’s my job, sir.”

Sera, who had not said anything before, bowed a bit as Mikhail left the room, to which Bert replied, and Oz felt slightly intimidated by his sister’s work, and a cold sweat broke out on his forehead.

“…”

Sera, leaving the Lord’s office, silently lets out a deep sigh.

Most of that sigh was from exhaustion. After being away from the royal palace for several months, there were discrepancies here and there.

Not only was there a lot of work that her subordinates couldn’t handle alone, but the reason for the sigh was because she had been with that Alicia for two months.

It was only natural that Alicia had no manners, since she was an orphan. Her grandfather had assigned people to teach her, so Sera thought that was at least better than acting like a commoner.

However, the way the girl clung to the man and ignored the woman was too bizarre to be considered a child.

Considering the fact that she would be the daughter of the family, I was inclined to agree with the Lord’s and Mikhail’s suspicions.

And now I had to take care of Princess Elena, who had been in a bad mood.

Her favorite maid had gone missing, and since then, she knew that the maid was someone from the Dark Side, so she would get in a bad mood whenever she saw Sera and the others from the Dark side.

Elena was thinking that the Dark Side had assigned the maid a dangerous job, but instead, it was also possible that a traitor from the Dark Side had taken the job, which made things even worse.

If the maid could return, she would entrust that maid with the princess’s protection and with that, her mood would also improve, but no such good news was forthcoming.

“Mother!”

Sera heard her son’s voice and let out another sigh.

“Did you find Aria?”

“We did find information about her. We even went north to look for her, but we didn’t find her.”

Sera’s son, Theo, was still chasing Aria’s shadow.

He had grown up so fast in body and mind that he now looked about twelve years old, but meeting her must have been a shock to him as a young boy because even though Sera told him that Aria might be dead, Theo never gave up and continued his training, believing that he would see her again.

“I see…”

Theo, not expecting to find her so easily without giving up, suppressed the urge to let out a sigh and smiled.

“Mom, you’re back.”

“Isn’t it a little late for that?”

With that, she hugged Theo as if to check on his growth, and Theo hugged his mother to make sure she was safe.

“We have welcomed the daughter of the main family. You will probably be her escort when she goes up to the academy.”

“…I haven’t heard much good about her, though?”

“That is not for me to say.”

Theo couldn’t help but chuckle at his mother, who showed a crisp and detached attitude, but didn’t deny it.

“I’m going back to work as an apprentice butler too. After that, you’ll have to put on another apprenticeship.”

“Okay, I understand. Good luck.”

Theo smiled as best he could at Sera, who smiled at him with a warm motherly face, and they parted in the hallway.

“Aria will leave me behind if I don’t do my best. I won’t give up.”

***

The Marquisate of Kendras, located in the northwest of the Kingdom of Cleydale, was a prosperous land of mines.

The Kondo Mine, located to the west of the land, was the largest mine in the southern part of the continent and was also a buffer zone between the neighboring Duchy of was, and the Kingdom of Solhorus, which were competing for ownership of the mine.

Therefore, the deployment of the national army would agitate other countries, and there was much work for adventurers to ensure the safety of the journey to the mine.

On the nighttime road connecting the mine and the town, six men jumped out to attack a lone figure walking along the road.

The man was dressed in a black leather outfit and a warped single-edged sword. Those in the know would have guessed that they were assassins from the Central West Branch of the Desert Tribe.

There was no official assassin guild branch in this northern frontier region, and there were no more fools in the Marquis’ Thieves’ Guild who would mess with this person.

“Guh!?”

One of the attackers, who had noiselessly attacked from the side, was caught by a spider’s thread, and his neck was sliced open by a blade that flew right next to him.

“What?

The two trained assassins, shocked at the sudden death of their comrade, attacked at the same time, and their blades slipped through the girl who was walking on the road, and at that moment one of them collapsed, spurting blood from his carotid artery.

“It was an illusion!”

“Where are you?

The girl was still walking straight ahead. Was this really a hallucination? Or was she the real one? One of the assassins hesitated for a moment, and then was slashed to death without a second’s hesitation by the girl walking straight ahead.

“What?”

A flying blade sliced the throat of one of the assassins, who jumped back in a panic when he realized that it was real one.

One of them, who had stopped moving, fearing the unknown attack, was pierced through the face and throat by the knife thrown by the girl and died with a startled look on his face.

“What the…what the hell are you…w-what the hell are you…what the hell are you…?!”

In the blink of an eye, their comrades were killed, and the last one left screamed as if he were delirious.

This time, the personnel gathered for this assassination were all top-ranked Rank 3s. They were all killed like insects, unable to do anything about it.

“…You know about this, don’t you?”

The voice came from directly behind him. Before he knew it, the girl who should have been right in front of him had disappeared, and the assassin reflexively swung his blade behind him, and the humanoid presence behind him vanished.

“Gugi!”

At that moment, the man was hit by sharp pain that felt as if he was pierced through his stomach. The girl’s white arm reached out from behind him, passing through the side of his head, and the hand wrapped around his neck, snapping it without any hesitation.

The man’s eyes finally caught a glimpse of the girl as he fell to the ground with his neck snapped.

The man finally remembered the girl’s name, as if he had just noticed.

“… Ashe-crowned…princess…”

[Aria (Alicia)] [Race: Human Female] [Rank 3]

[Magic: 174/240] 30Up [Strength: 182/190] 20Up

[Strength: 9 (12)] 2Up [Endurance: 9 (12)] 1Up

[Agility: 13 (17)] 1Up [Dexterity: 8

[Dagger Arts Lv.3] [Taijutsu Lv.3] [Throwing Lv.3] 1Up [Archery Lv.1] New

[Defense Lv.3] 2Up [Manipulation Lv.4] 2Up

[Light Magic Lv.3] 1Up [Dark Magic Lv.3] [Non-Attribute Magic Lv.3

[Life Magic x6] [Magic Control Lv.4] 1Up [Intimidate Lv.3

[Concealment Lv.4] 1Up [Night Vision Lv.2] [Detection Lv.4] 1Up [Poison Resistance Lv.3] 2Up

[Simple Appraisal]

[Total Combat Power: 576 (With Physical Enhancements: 691)] 133Up