"Lord Eliphis, let's go take a look at that shop~"
Serina deliberately looped her arm through Eliphis's and steered them toward a lavish beauty salon — the kind that radiated expensive from the storefront alone.
Eliphis smiled and nodded. Every movement he made was calibrated to look "doting" toward Serina, exactly the kind of thing that made onlookers want to squeal with delight.
Bringing Serina out today was, functionally, an image-building exercise — reinforcing the impression among the general public that Lord Eliphis and Princess Serina were deeply in love. That way, whenever the actual marriage happened, it wouldn't come across as sudden.
That's right.
Marriage.
He was already seriously weighing it.
However he looked at the current situation, the timing felt genuinely favorable. The Warrior Nation — a country the kingdom had ongoing border friction with — was about to hold its War Festival, an event significant enough to consume the entire nation's attention. They wouldn't have bandwidth left to worry about tensions with the kingdom for a while.
And the long-standing demon problem wasn't something he needed to concern himself with at all right now. Both inside the kingdom and beyond its borders, things were, for once, genuinely calm.
Even if the king died this very moment, it wouldn't create a real problem.
He had to seriously consider whether this represented the one shot he'd ever get.
Miss this window, and would another one like it ever come around again?
Still, his naturally cautious streak kept him from moving rashly.
Part of today's outing with Serina was simply to gauge public reaction firsthand.
If only there were some way to control the thoughts of an entire nation, he found himself thinking.
With his current capabilities, even fully controlling the Royal Capital alone would be a stretch.
Unless — he could get his hands on something capable of producing a genuine, qualitative leap in his power.
The thought pulled his hand, unconsciously, to his chest.
Hidden beneath his clothes hung a strange, reddish pendant.
The Demonfall Egg.
A mysterious artifact he'd acquired after striking some kind of bargain with a demon priest.
It could stir a person's negative emotions into overflow, tempting them toward a fall — transforming them into something resembling a demon.
And, conveniently, one of Eliphis's own unique talents happened to be the ability to shift people's emotions, positive or negative, at will.
After a great deal of experimentation, he'd made a discovery. When someone's negative emotions had been deliberately guided by him first, and they used the Demonfall Egg afterward, they didn't turn into mindless demons. Instead, they emerged as intelligent creatures who retained their own reasoning — something closer to a "magical beast" than a demon proper.
As long as the negative-emotion dosage stayed properly calibrated, the subject kept their intelligence intact.
Working out exactly how much negative emotion the process required had taken him a genuinely exhausting series of trials.
Once he'd cracked it, he believed his own application of the Demonfall Egg had already surpassed what the demons themselves were capable of doing with it. Whenever he wished, he could push someone's negative emotions to overflow and transform them into an intelligent, savage beast — one absolutely loyal to him alone.
The Demonfall Egg carried two problems, though.
First: something had gone inexplicably wrong the one time it had been used on the King.
Second: Eliphis himself still couldn't use it on his own person.
Initially, that second point had merely puzzled him — not worried him. He was a commander. Already extraordinarily powerful in his own right. Using the Demonfall Egg would meaningfully boost his combat capability, sure, but throwing himself headlong into life-or-death combat felt more like something better suited to his subordinates.
Recent events, though, had changed his thinking.
Specifically —
The string of crushing defeats he'd suffered inside Sein Dungeon.
The Black Swordsman.
The dragon.
High Lord Wolnir.
He wanted, more than almost anything, to tear the flesh from their bodies with his own hands and eat it raw.
But he also knew, with clear-eyed certainty, that at his current strength, he couldn't beat any of them in a straight fight.
Which meant he wanted power too. Genuinely, now.
Unfortunately, whatever gains conventional training could still offer him had become negligible. And he didn't have days to spare grinding away inside Sein Dungeon accumulating strength the slow way.
Which left him with no choice but to keep researching the Demonfall Egg, trying to work out precisely how he might be able to use it on himself.
Yet even after pushing his own negative emotions right to the edge of overflow, the Egg still refused to react at all.
Almost as if the thing simply didn't like him.
Pushing his own negative emotions any further risked interfering with his actual work. So — time to get out and clear his head.
Choosing Serina — naturally innocent, and more than a little oblivious — had seemed like an excellent way to unwind.
"Lord Eliphis? Lord Eliphis?"
Serina's voice reached him from beside him.
Only then did he realize he'd drifted deep enough into his own thoughts to miss her speaking entirely.
That genuinely shouldn't have happened.
"You seem to be carrying quite a bit of fatigue, Lord Eliphis. Why don't you try the hair-washing massage that's become so popular across the Capital lately?"
What are these Royal Capital nobles experimenting with now?
Eliphis was, frankly, baffled.
But with this many eyes on them, surely it was just a straightforward hair wash and a massage. Nothing that could go wrong.
He agreed.
Serina immediately instructed the staff to provide their top-tier service and dragged Eliphis inside to witness this supposedly extraordinary hair-washing massage firsthand.
"OOOOHHH — AAAAAAHHHH!"
A wholly undignified scream tore through the salon.
Eliphis startled, hand reaching instinctively for the sword at his hip —
Only to remember he hadn't brought a weapon today.
What happened? Could a monster have infiltrated the Royal Capital?
Then he witnessed something he genuinely couldn't parse.
A plump, middle-aged man wrapped in a bath towel came stumbling past him. A thin man rode on his back, legs locked around the larger man's neck, both hands clawing frantically at his scalp.
Soap suds flew in every direction.
"Count Samid?"
Eliphis recognized him.
Is this some kind of targeted attack on nobles?
He was about to step in when the thin man leapt off Count Samid's back, waved a hand, and dispersed every last bubble with a quick burst of water magic.
Count Samid — screaming his lungs out moments earlier — now looked thoroughly refreshed and completely at ease.
"Ahhh, just as everyone said — this hair-washing massage genuinely lives up to the hype. I feel like every last trace of fatigue has vanished from my body!"
Eliphis very nearly blurted out:
"...Huh?"
Fortunately, he caught himself in time, in the interest of preserving his image.
Serina launched into an explanation with all the enthusiastic narration of a documentary host:
"The whole Royal Capital's become completely obsessed with the Sein style lately. This shop's hair-washing massage was actually inspired by a monster from Farron Keep called a Ghru. The effect is genuinely incredible — supposedly it clears fatigue even better than Great Heal does!"
What in the world is the "Sein style"?
Why is anyone imitating a monster washing people's hair?
What exactly happened to the Royal Capital while I was buried in Demonfall Egg research?
Eliphis genuinely couldn't follow the thread of how any of this had developed.
For a moment, he felt like he'd been dropped straight back into his earliest days arriving in the Royal Capital as a wide-eyed country transplant.
Serina cut that memory off before it could fully surface.
"You're next, Lord Eliphis."
He froze.
His flawless expression twitched, almost imperceptibly.
"Remember to run around, just like Count Samid did! It's meant to mimic an adventurer under attack from a Ghru — apparently it improves circulation too, which makes the massage even more effective!"
She looked up at him, eyes bright, hanging pitifully off his arm.
"I really am worried about your health, Lord Eliphis. Please — go get a massage."
"That's the first time I've seen the princess act spoiled like that! She's so cute!"
"Lord Eliphis is unbelievably lucky!"
"Forget getting my hair washed — if I were Lord Eliphis, I'd let them shave my head bald for this."
Where did this many onlookers even come from?!
Only now did Eliphis register that a genuine crowd had packed in around them.
Weren't we supposed to be somewhere private?
Of course they weren't.
This had been Serina's plan the entire time.
"Ghru..."
Facing a staff member gesturing him toward the entrance, Eliphis found himself thoroughly cornered.
Running around in front of an audience like Count Samid had?
He'd genuinely rather French-kiss High Lord Wolnir.
But his concern for his own dignity, in this moment, outweighed even the level of resistance Leon had shown on his very first day arriving in the dungeon.
And so —
Not long afterward, word spread through every street and alley of the Royal Capital that Lord Eliphis was extraordinarily affectionate toward Princess Serina.
Had he stumbled, entirely by accident, into accomplishing his actual goal?
"..."
Eliphis walked out of the salon in total silence.
He felt unclean.
As though something had genuinely defiled him.
But —
But somehow —
He couldn't fully explain it, but he had to admit — the hair-washing massage really had felt extraordinary.
His fatigue had, genuinely, completely lifted.
Even the tension in his brow had loosened without him noticing.
"No."
The instant he caught his own thoughts drifting that direction, Eliphis very nearly considered flattening the entire salon with magic on principle.
"Lord Eliphis, let's try the next shop — they've got a Golden Lion-style spinal massage experience."
Absolutely not.
Eliphis could feel real negative emotion building inside him now.
If he kept wandering around with Serina like this, there was a genuine chance he might actually manage to trigger the Demonfall Egg today.
I need an exit. Now.
The moment he stepped out of the salon, he spotted two familiar figures waiting outside.
Elsa and Sali.
"Ah, Commander."
Spotting Eliphis emerge, Sali spoke up quickly.
"Guts has something important to report — oh. The princess is here too. We'll leave you to it, then—"
"Your Highness, please excuse me for now. There are pressing matters awaiting my attention within the Light Eagle Corps."
Eliphis cut in fast.
"Mm. Don't worry about me. Please, go attend to more important things."
Why does that sentence sound faintly off?
Eliphis decided, firmly, to pretend he hadn't noticed.
After all — he could always manage Serina's loyalty toward him directly.
And so, thanks to Elsa and Sali's entirely unplanned rescue, Eliphis successfully escaped the impending spinal massage.
Serina watched them go, smiling faintly.
Privately, her thoughts had already drifted elsewhere — specifically, to when her ordered life-sized solid-gold statue of Ornstein would finally arrive.
On the walk back to the Light Eagle Corps' camp, Eliphis listened to Sali's report.
Naturally, everything relayed had come from intelligence Elsa had gathered while adventuring with the Skyrim Group.
"Pontiff Sulyvahn..."
Eliphis sank into thought.
This Pontiff sounded like another genuine heavyweight. If anything, the impression he gave off suggested someone considerably more formidable than even Wolnir.
Could the power I've been searching for be sitting in Sulyvahn's hands? Could defeating him be the key to obtaining it?
How many regions had Sein Dungeon revealed since first appearing near the Royal Capital?
Irithyll made five.
Given its scale and the raw strength of what lived inside it, it genuinely felt like it could be the final area.
Nobody — Eliphis included — had ever encountered a dungeon that kept producing new regions this relentlessly. People had been speculating endlessly about when exactly it would finally stop "updating."
And now — didn't Irithyll feel like precisely the right note to end on?
Perfectly suited as a conclusion.
"Have everyone start making preparations," Eliphis said.
"In a few days, I'll personally lead the expedition into the dungeon."
Sali had already anticipated that exact answer and showed no surprise.
Then Eliphis turned toward Elsa, unexpectedly.
"Have you been enjoying yourself lately?"
Elsa froze.
She hesitated a moment before finally nodding. She'd never once been anything but honest.
"You've been spending your time with that adventuring group — the Skyrim Group, was it? Thank you for gathering intelligence for me, Guts."
Eliphis offered her a warm, friendly smile.
Then something occurred to him.
"By the way — since you're clearly fond of them, why don't we simply recruit the whole group into the Light Eagle Corps?"
"What?"
Sali looked genuinely startled.
The question caught Elsa completely off guard too. Something conflicted crossed her face.
In the end, she shook her head.
But what reason could she actually give?
Nothing suitable came to mind.
If her inner thoughts in that moment could be reduced to a single sentence, it would have gone something like: how could a flower grown at home ever compare to one found growing wild?
"Fair enough."
Eliphis clapped a hand on each of their backs, gently, almost as if encouraging them.
"They've already carved out their own standing — no real reason for them to join the Light Eagle Corps at this point. But no matter what our relationship with outsiders looks like, the two of you will always be family."
A brief flicker of red crossed behind Sali's eyes. He nodded, visibly moved.
Elsa's expression stayed unchanged, no reaction of any kind.
But that was simply how she always was, so Eliphis didn't think much of it.
Lately, though, a fairly consistent opinion had taken hold among the Light Eagle Corps' mercenaries regarding Elsa:
"Captain Guts has been showing a lot more expression lately. She's gotten a lot cuter."
Right now, Eliphis's thoughts had settled on the Skyrim Group, and on Leon's group alongside them.
The same two parties that had caused him real trouble before.
And now, the cabbage he'd raised in his own garden — Elsa — appeared to have sprouted legs, apparently preparing to wander straight out of the vegetable patch in search of wild boar.
Even if that cabbage came back carrying a slice of meat carved from that boar for him, the whole thing still left an unpleasant residue sitting in his chest.
Which meant —
It was time to slaughter the boar and claim the meat directly.