Concealment Is a Princess’s Accomplishment (3)
The fleeing clone quickly met up with the others.
“I miscalculated the muscleheads’ combat strength. The Manaloids can’t even buy us time.”
“They were supposed to hold out for at least an hour, according to the calculations!”
The clone who’d designed and developed the Manaloid fumed. Incidentally, at this point Alicetia’s main body didn’t even know they’d been completed—the Manaloids were brand-new cutting-edge weapons.
The Soldier-Golems were hastily assembled from existing parts. They were easy to mass-produce, but without guns, they could barely stand up to Ostland soldiers.
By contrast, the Manaloids had been modeled after the elite knights of Arland—the strongest of the strong—based on data Alicetia herself had collected. The fact that they’d proven useless was a huge blow to the clones’ morale.
“… If only the Vajra Armament had been completed…”
“I told you not to force-start the Demon Emperor Reactor. Thanks to that, Section Four got vaporized.”
Of the four secret research sectors, one was now a scorched wasteland. The loss of its equipment had hit them hard.
The four sectors were as follows:
Section One—dedicated to finding a cure for Gilbert’s sister-complex.
Section Two—handling relatively safe developments, such as the Manaloid project.
Section Three—for the Grisaille Project, currently being dismantled while all personnel focused on erasing evidence.
Section Four—where Alicetia’s “next-generation” genius research had been conducted.
Section Four had hosted numerous brilliant—no, catastrophic—experiments. If any other mage learned what had been studied there and how it had vanished, they’d surely go insane.
Every one of those studies sought to achieve what most mages called the ultimate challenge. And though an entire trove of such research had been annihilated, the clones took it lightly. “We’ll just rebuild it,” was the prevailing attitude.
“Forget what’s done. We need to stall them, or Section Three will be seized.”
“Even if Arland goes nuclear right now, it won’t end well. We should wipe the project. Start evacuation immediately.”
“Agreed. Redirect the dock personnel here. The rest should delay the prince’s group. If Section One is exposed, so be it.”
“You mean the medicine to cure the sister-complex?”
“Yeah. Big brother’s gaze has been getting sketchier every year. But knowing him, he won’t leave it alone. If we’re going to be raided anyway, better it happen in a low-value sector.”
The strategy meeting ended, and just as they finished building barricades in the corridor, Gilbert’s party appeared. Their defensive line was right in front of Section Three; up to that point, automated defenses had been buying time.
Gilbert looked a bit weary, but the knights’ eyes now burned with madness. The unexpected struggle had roused their battle instincts—they were clearly thinking only of fighting. Still, they hadn’t forgotten their top priority: protecting Gilbert.
They looked happy, having found worthy opponents. The inventors, on the other hand, were furious to see their prized creations turned into scrap.
Behind the barricade, a row of clones were passing documents along like a bucket brigade, tossing them one after another into the fireplace.
“Heave-ho, heave-ho!”
“Hey! Alice! Stop destroying the evidence!”
“You’ve got it wrong, Big brother—we’re just fueling the fire because it’s cold in here.”
“Use firewood! Hand those papers over!”
“I can give you some noble hair instead.”
“Stop offering things that’ll make people hate you!”
Gilbert raised his voice, but beyond the barricade the burning continued. Clones dashed about, finishing the evacuation.
“Enough! All units, charge! Seize the evidence!”
“Yes, sir! Chaaaarge!”
As the knights rushed in, the clones popped up behind the barricade and opened fire with AK-fakes.
“Useless, useless, useless!”
The 7.62 mm bullets rained down—only to be sliced from the air by the knights’ blades.
Guns were nearly useless against the world’s strongest fighters. At Draconia’s level, one could even catch bullets bare-handed.
The knights cloaked themselves in battle aura and deployed magic armor—a technique forming that aura into armor-thick density. Its durability was terrifying; not even the high-powered rifle rounds could pierce it.
Still, being hit stung, so the knights irritably swatted the bullets aside—each deflected shot landing safely away from Gilbert, as if calculated.
“Damn those muscleheads!”
“This isn’t working. We can’t win with bullets.”
“And if we use high-power magic, the tunnel’ll collapse.”
“Wait… aren’t we totally screwed?”
They fought in a narrow underground corridor. Collapse wouldn’t kill a clone—they’d just vanish—but none of them wanted to kill royal knights. The guns had been chosen because they wouldn’t deal fatal damage.
(For the record, losing an arm or leg could be regenerated.)
“Yeah, we’re screwed—but if we can stall them, we win!”
One clone raised her fist high.
“That’s right—buy time and we win!”
“Bring weapons from Section Two!”
The clones rallied themselves with empty bravado. Alicetia, after all, lived on momentum—her mood could swing from despair to elation in seconds.
“Uh… you guys remember this is a research sector, right? There’s nothing left to bring out.”
“You’ve done it now!”
This place wasn’t an armory—it only had minimal fabrication gear for experiments. The Manaloid had just been finished, and there wasn’t even a production line. The rest of the weapons weren’t in usable condition.
“This is bad.”
“We still have the Pigeon-Poppo, though.”
“Deploy it!”
A clone yanked a lever by the wall, and a line of metallic pigeons waddled out.
“… They’re tiny.”
Gilbert’s group froze. Clearly artificial, but normal pigeon-sized—and they couldn’t even fly.
“Poppo.”
“The arrival of Pigeon-Poppo marks your doom! This is the sector’s true defense system!”
The clones puffed up proudly.
The knights’ instincts screamed danger! They immediately attacked.
“Fire!”
Poppo!
From the pigeons’ mouths spat a stream of tiny projectiles—much slower than bullets, and far weaker. The knights felt no threat to their armor.
Perhaps that’s why overconfidence set in. Alicetia’s inventions often included baffling failures. Assuming this was just another toy pigeon, they failed to dodge. The beans struck home.
“OWWWW!”
The beans left no mark on the magic armor—but the instant they hit, each knight felt a searing pain in the little toe of his right foot.
“Got you. Those beans inflict the exact pain of stubbing your toe on a cabinet corner—magnified tenfold. Guess training your toes was your downfall.”
Wracked with agony, the knights were pelted again and again. Their little toes throbbed, yet they pressed on, eyes watering, trying to smash the pigeons. But the small, darting targets took time to destroy—even with Gilbert joining in, it was slow going.
“All done!”
“Good. Evacuate!”
While they’d been delayed by the Pigeon-Poppos, the clones had finished dismantling equipment and loaded everything into trucks fitted with storage bags.
“Farewell, Big brother.”
“Wait, Alice! Block the exit!”
“Too bad—there’s a freight elevator!”
A truck rolled into the direct-access freight lift. Gilbert, cloaked in battle aura, dashed forward to slip inside before it closed—sure he’d made it. But the clones’ grins turned wicked.
“Oh, by the way, Section One’s researching a magic potion to cure your sister-complex.”
“What—? Gwah!”
Reflexively looking back at the words, Gilbert slowed just enough to slam face-first into the closing doors. The elevator began to rise.
“They got away…”
He knelt in frustration. He’d been so close to seizing the evidence, but as a proud siscon, Gilbert could not abide the existence of a “cure.”
Looking around, he saw the lab nearly stripped bare. The knights fished in the fireplace for surviving papers, but everything had already burned to ash.
“These sheets burn remarkably well, sire.”
“So even the cleanup was planned in advance…”
“Shall we capture them aboveground?”
“By now, they’ll have fled into the Treasury.”
Gilbert’s guess was correct—the surface-level clones had already opened the Treasury doors and slipped inside.
“If we searched the Treasury…”
“Alice bragged that its inside’s bigger than all of Arland. We’d never find them.”
Indeed, the Treasury was absurdly vast. Even when the main body sent exploration clones, moving at a hundred kilometers per hour for a week hadn’t reached the end.
And since the treasury was effectively a lawless zone under Alicetia’s control, forcing a search would be impossible—she’d resist seriously. This time, they’d only gotten this far because she’d forgotten to delete the project herself.
“What shall we do, sire?”
“She’s clearly warning us to stay out. Look there.”
Gilbert pointed to a huge red button marked with a skull.
“Probably a self-destruct. If it’d been pressed, we’d be dead. Consider it a warning.”
Everything had been dismantled—yet that button was left in plain sight. It hadn’t been used, merely shown.
“The Grisaille Project… call off the search.”
“But, Your Highness—”
“Alice won’t permit us to go further. Can you lot really fight her?”
None of the knights wanted to arrest their princess. It would split the order—and the kingdom—right down the middle. With the best chance lost, there was nothing left but to give up.
“If we pry open this elevator shaft, we might still—ah, no, that won’t work.”
One knight tried forcing the doors, but a crashing sound made them jump back—followed by a thunderous impact. The elevator had been dropped.
Even if they pursued, debris would rain from above; by the time they reached the surface, she’d be long gone.
“We’ll just tell the nobles it was propaganda.”
No one would believe that—especially those who’d seen Alicetia’s cold eyes that day.
But any deeper investigation would be too dangerous. Gilbert made his decision to bury the truth.
The Grisaille Project—for generations to come, it would be spoken of only as an empty piece of propaganda.
What do you think about this chapter?
