Vol 2 Chapter 18 – The Imperial Tournament【Vol 2 – The Succubus Knight Order】

The day of the Imperial Tournament.

Normally, I should have been on the bench with the participating members as acting captain, advisor, manager, instructor, and coach of the Succubus Knight Order.

Especially since Captain Shion had to prioritize her duties as princess and couldn’t be with her own knight order.

That’s how it should have been.

Yet somehow, I was currently appointed as Prince—no, Princess—Nagisa’s host and commentator, sitting in the Colosseum’s Royal Box. Just the two of us.

The fact that the crown prince was in such high spirits was unsettling in itself.

After all, yesterday…

We’d uncovered the crown prince’s top secret…!

“Um… the weather is lovely today, and Your Highness seems to be in fine spirits…”

“Call me Nagisa.”

“Huh?”

“You already know I’m not actually the crown prince—meaning I’m not a man, right? So I’d be happy if you called me Nagisa.”

“Then… Nagisa-sama?”

“No need for honorifics either. Making a master who saw through my disguise as a girl the instant we met use honorifics would be presumptuous beyond measure. So just Nagisa. And no formal speech either. Got it?”

“That’s still a bit…”

“Man, I was really panicking yesterday. Thought my heart would stop. And now to be addressed formally by someone like a martial god whose level I couldn’t reach in a lifetime—my pride is just in tatters. Maybe I should harass you by calling you Martial God-sama.”

“What kind of harassment is that… Fine, fine.”

Eventually we compromised with Nagisa calling me Master.

Nagisa wasn’t my student, but in the martial arts world, it was common to call any senior practitioner “master.”

“Well, that aside. Nagisa, let’s get to the main topic.”

“Hmm. Master, you’re saying building a friendly relationship with me isn’t the main topic?”

“We finished that yesterday, didn’t we? But you didn’t, instead deliberately calling me here today. To the soundproofed Royal Box where no one can eavesdrop. —Meaning there’s something that absolutely cannot leak outside.”

“Correct! As expected of Master!”

“And there’s one more important thing.”

When I said that, Nagisa’s handsome smile grew even brighter.

“Nice. Tell me?”

“You’re a breathing technique master. And the fact that you could fool not just the Succubus Knight Order’s female knights but even Captain Shion is abnormal beyond measure.”

“Which means?”

“Shion’s my student so I’m biased, but she’s quite the genius. And you completely fooled her, even if she was off guard. —There’s only one answer that follows from this.”

I looked quietly into Nagisa’s eyes and declared:

“Nagisa, you’re not the real crown prince—you’re an assassin impersonating the crown prince.”

An accusation so outrageous that anyone nearby would think I’d lost my mind.

But I was certain.

Sure enough, Shion—wait, Nagisa—grinned and readily admitted it.

“That’s impressive to an absurd degree. I figured Master would see through me to some extent, but how did you figure it out?”

“Even if you were a genius rivaling Shion, you couldn’t pull off something like that overnight. —Only someone with humanity’s highest level of talent who devoted every waking moment to stealth training could possibly master it. And the only people who do that are assassins.”

“Well, anyone other than an assassin would obviously train general martial arts rather than stealth.”

“Exactly.”

There was no crown prince who’d dedicate their life to assassination techniques.

So naturally, the conclusion followed that Nagisa was a fake crown prince.

“By the way, what happened to the real crown prince?”

“Ah, that part’s actually true. I really am the current legitimate crown prince.”

“Huh?”

“To explain further, my country—the Sebas Empire—has several grand ducal houses qualified to become the royal family, and the next monarch and royal house are chosen from among them. One of those grand ducal houses hired me for assassination purposes, and taking advantage of having no real son, I pretended to be their son while gathering intelligence and assassinating people left and right until the house was actually selected as the royal family. So I’m real in a sense, at least currently.”

“I see. By the way, why did you come to this country this time?”

“Foreign diplomacy with a neighboring nation… while pretending to do that, I’m gathering intelligence and assassinating dangerous individuals if possible.”

Makes sense.

Since an assassin was impersonating someone, assassination had to be in the picture.

But since Princess Shion knew, assassinating any important figures should be nearly impossible now.

“Now then. I have one request for Master, who’s seen through all this. Can you guess what it is?”

“No, I can’t figure that out.”

Nagisa leaned close to my ear and whispered in a voice like confessing love:

“It’s simple. —I want you to kill me.”