Unruly Summon Chapter 44: Travel (Patreon)

"Miraculum!"

Mary—my cute and loyal maid with the dubious fashion sense—leapt about a foot into the air, jolted by the unexpected loud noise.

"What was that for?!" she exclaimed.

"We're already outside the area that my big Maius Miraculum cast purified. No point wasting mana," I lied as I glanced sideways at the real reason I was casting the spell; the former princess, Stephanie, who, in my anger, I'd reduced to a mere shell of herself. Alas, the spell once again had no effect on her. She remained silent, her blank expression not even twitching in response to the overly loud invocation.

"Still, it would be nice for you to give some warning," said Wendy, despite the fact that she hadn't reacted at all either. Being a genius mage, and one of the youngest court mages until I got her fired, she probably kept mana sight running permanently, or had picked up on my intentions some other way.

The final member of our travelling party, the cat-girl demon Minoru, gave a wry smile. She'd made a valiant effort at hiding her shock at the sudden spell cast, but there was no way she could mask the way the fur on her tail had puffed up. "One more day, and we should reach the border," she said. "It's probably time to heal Stephanie again."

"Parvus Sanatio," chanted Mary, aiming her minor healing magic at the emotionless Stephanie. As usual, Stephanie didn't react.

The reason for her expressionlessness was obvious enough. All I needed was to cast one of my spells that enabled mana sight, and I could see her collar sending tendrils of mana into her brain. The sickening sight was the reason I was keeping my use of such spells to the bare minimum. Even removing the collar didn't help; doing so simply left her utterly unresponsive, and we couldn't even get her to walk.

Wendy had mentioned that the first batch of slaves to be inflicted with those horrific things had all stopped eating, and had gone insane when ordered to do so. Stephanie wasn't that bad, but she was close; she wouldn't touch food or water unless I told her to. Just as bad had been the first night when we'd spotted the blood oozing from her shoes. With the benefit of hindsight, it was obvious that a sheltered princess wouldn't be capable of walking non-stop all day, and we'd realised then that keeping her safe was going to require giving her some special attention. It wasn't that she didn't feel pain or hunger. Her hijacked robotic mind simply didn't consider such things relevant.

"What in the hells was King Edward thinking, rushing things like that, and even letting them use an old-model collar?" asked Wendy.

"Oh? You haven't worked it out yet?" I asked. The few days of walking since we'd been expelled from Odimere and banished from the Ricousian Kingdom had afforded plentiful thinking time. I'd spent many hours contemplating what I might have done differently, had I known at the start what I knew now.

"No, I have not. Would you care to explain to the rest of the class?"

"I had Mary with me in the throne room when I confronted them. They must have worked out that I'd 'healed' her, and assumed that after seeing Stephanie in this state, I'd heal her, too. They were right, too; I did try. But back then, there was no way they could have known that I couldn't. They probably put Stephanie through this believing it would be temporary, and a good way to take advantage of my guilt."

"..." replied Wendy, failing to come up with a response to that.

"I'm surprised you haven't questioned her," said Minoru. "It's a good opportunity to find out what the royal family was hiding."

"I probably should. It's just... King Edward would know that I could, and so there's a good chance he fed her a bunch of lies beforehand."

"There's still lots more walking to go," said Minoru, shrugging. "Plenty of time to work through what she's been told and what she actually knows."

"And giving her orders will make her feel better," added Mary, speaking from first-hand experience.

"I don't think she feels anything, but fair enough," I said, giving a small sigh. I was reluctant to start ordering her around, even little things like making her tell us when her feet hurt. "Stephanie, your claim to be responsible for all the efforts to mislead me was a lie, wasn't it?"

"Yes," she answered instantly, albeit in a flat robotic monotone.

"Okay, I order you to tell me everything you know about it and who was responsible," I asked. Perhaps, once I'd heard her explanation, and she'd exonerated herself from the worst parts of the plot, I'd be able to make Miraculum work.

"Minister Dennis Banks was responsible for the initial plan, including altering the summoning ritual, and everything that happened in the summoning chamber," she answered, as the evil enchantment did its work. "The late King Edward was the one responsible for the staged assassination attempt, along with the idea that it should result in an injury to Mary. I was the one that suggested she should die instead, to prevent you learning how the collars worked."

I blinked in surprise. So the very worst part of the plot was her fault! There went any chances of Miraculum ever working. If we wanted to get her mind back, we'd need to find someone else to cast it on her.

... Not that I was sure I wanted to get her mind back anymore. I'd felt guilty thinking she was just a scapegoat, but knowing she was the one that instigated the murder attempt, part of me felt she deserved this. Then again, that was probably why Miraculum didn't work. Maius Miraculum hadn't worked on the priestesses either, despite me not knowing they were responsible for throwing Minoru from the carriage at the time of the cast. Obviously, my knowledge of crimes wasn't a required part of things. Which, in turn, made it a lot easier to trust Wendy and Minoru, since Maius Miraculum had worked on them. Small silver linings.

"Why did you go along with it, anyway? I wouldn't have thought you would have wanted to... uh... debase yourself."

"King Edward strongly hinted that any child I had with you would end up king or queen," answered Stephanie without hesitation, no matter how bad everything she said made her sound.

"Huh... No wonder you started being so obvious about it, if that was your goal. You must have been getting desperate."

"Yes."

"And what did you do about it?"

"I couldn't believe a princess openly expressed her interest in you and you weren't interested, so I snuck outside your room at night to spy, in case you were bedding Mary, or maybe even the night guard we posted to stop you exploring the castle. You saw me before I could get a proper look."

... Well, that was a mental image I was going to struggle to get rid of. She was worried I was sleeping with the guard? I didn't even get his name! Even if I was able to extract information from her, I was learning things I wasn't sure I wanted to know.

"Wait, you knew I saw you?"

"Looking through the windows risked you seeing me, so I used Magus Visus. I saw you looking at me through the wall, so I warned King Edward, but he thought trying to stage Mary's assassination was still worth the risk."

Thank goodness I'd been using the enhanced version, with its doubled range then. If not, I wouldn't have been able to get back into bed before I was in her range.

"Listening to this is surreal," responded Mary. "Why didn't you just ask me to play along? I would have been quite happy to, at the time."

Stephanie didn't respond.

"Please answer her," I prompted.

"Because we wanted you to die for maximum impact, but we were worried it would be too effective and Thomas would immediately charge off to attack the demons, so we needed you to tell him not to."

"Ah, and if I was in on the plan, I'd probably have given it away."

"Yes."

"Surreal doesn't even begin to cover this conversation," said Wendy.

"Indeed," agreed Minoru. "I'm finding myself rather glad those collars are banned in the Ti'zharr Empire."

"Are they?" I asked. "I suppose it makes sense, given how seriously you take the taboo of mind-altering magic."

"Huh? Oh, no, it's nothing to do with that. It's just that punishments are supposed to be, well, punishing. Stephanie's condition isn't typical—your normal slaves are generally happy however badly they're treated—and we can't go around having happy, contented slaves, or it loses its value as a deterrent."

"... I'm not sure how I feel about that," I commented. "Have you considered just... not having slaves?"

"We've got to do something with our criminals. What do you think we should do? Execute them? Let them off with a fine? Lock them up somewhere and waste our limited food feeding them while they don't do anything productive?"

"Anyway, what happened then?" I asked Stephanie, giving up on that overcomplicated subject and moving back to the gut spillage.

"We staged the assassination, but you saw through it. We tried to teleport you into the war-zone to prevent you potentially rampaging in the castle, but failed that too. I resolved to try to calm you down myself, even if it meant giving up my position as princess, but by demanding my enslavement, you went further than I expected."

"And you're okay with that now?" I asked, stamping down on the urge to say sorry again. I knew that thanks to the way her head had been messed up, doing so would only make her feel bad, if it made her feel anything at all. Was she really utterly emotionless, or did her emotions simply not show on her face?

"Yes." she agreed.

"What about back then?" I asked, out of morbid curiosity.

"No."

"And what happened?" I prompted, trying to extract more detail.

"I begged King Edward not to go through with it, but Queen Victoria insisted. She started making arrangements that very hour. My disownment was formalised within two, and she had me shipped out of the castle first thing in the morning. I didn't sleep at all that night; I spent it crying in my bed. The next night was part crying and part screaming. I think... my memories of the next few days are very blurry."

So it was the former queen, not king, that was responsible for her current condition? "And you don't think this is effective punishment?" I asked Minoru disbelievingly.

"I dunno about punishment... Maybe for the first couple of nights, but she doesn't seem to be being punished now. Deterrent, though? Heck yes. Keep those damn evil collars a long way from me."

"Me too..." agreed Mary, shuddering, which I agreed was a perfectly healthy reaction. "Never again..."

"Did Queen Victoria say why she was so enthusiastic?"

"No."

"Can you make an educated guess?" I asked, starting to get fed up with the way she was answering exactly what I asked without volunteering any more detail.

"To hide the use of taboo magic from you, and to guilt you and so make you feel indebted to the royal family. As you said, she didn't know that Miraculum wouldn't work on me, so she wouldn't have thought the move would cost her anything. And also as you said, they knew you would question me, and I didn't know about the use of taboo magic."

"I can't believe the queen would put you through this just to make Thomas feel guilty..." sighed Wendy.

"Well, that part of her plan certainly succeeded," I shrugged. "Shame about the rest of it. And I suppose she couldn't tell you, to offer you any reassurance, because you'd have just told me."

"Yes," she confirmed.

"Maybe one day Miraculum will work on you, even if it's only a bit at a time."

Stephanie didn't react.

"You don't think she deserves this?" asked Wendy. "Although I'll admit it'll be funny to see her face if she regains her mind and remembers telling you about her crying and wanting your babies."

"It's only a bit of embarrassment," shrugged Mary, who had far worse things to remember. "She should consider herself lucky to have Thomas as a master."

"Speaking of babies, I want to know what previous heroes did, exactly, to get the reputation that they have," I complained. "The way everyone talks about them, I'm surprised hero summoning wasn't banned under that birthrate restriction thingy you mentioned. Do you know, Stephanie?"

"Yes."

"... And the answer is?" I asked, when no further speech seemed to be forthcoming.

She told me, and I listened with rising horror at the tales of the previous heroes' escapades. The most recent hero in particular almost caused me to once more reinforce my reputation for throwing up everywhere, and went some way towards explaining why use of the hero summoning ritual was now treated as such a last resort.

"Why the heck would he do that? And why would you want to read about it?"

"I read up on previous heroes after King Edward asked me to join your harem."

"Then why in the heck did you agree, after reading that?!"

"King Edward promised me that my child would have a good chance of inheriting the kingdom," she answered, still in exactly the same flat monotone.

"Master?" asked Mary, her voice as sweet as ethylene glycol. "Remember last week, when you were worried I was going to stab you in your sleep? If you take advantage of Stephanie like that, I will."

"And I'll help," added Wendy, just as sweetly.

"Good. I'd deserve it," I agreed wholeheartedly, resorting to water magic to wash the taste of vomit out of my mouth.

"Uhh..." said Minoru, who was flushed and clutching at her belly. "Could we please change the subject? This is making me feel... uh... strange."

Wendy peered. "Didn't you promise us that we didn't need to worry about 'that'?"

"Yes, but I may have... uh... slightly neglected to account for Thomas's ability to accidentally heal unhealable wounds."

"Isn't it about time you told me what 'that' is?" I grumbled. "Is this a demon sex thing?"

"Yes," answered Stephanie, interpreting my random question as being directed at her.

"Uhh..." I responded, having not actually expected anyone to answer me.

"It appears our friendly demon is going into heat," said Wendy, filling in the details with a rather indecent grin on her face.

Seriously? And I was almost certainly the only male within miles of her. Why did this world seem so insistent about repeatedly throwing me into such ridiculous situations when I already had a girlfriend waiting for me back home?!