My Childhood Friend Is An Archmage Chapter 151
Translated by d6y (ko-fi)
Side Story 4
I stare at Prince Cade in disbelief at his declaration that he's going to kidnap me. To make things worse, he's staring down at me exactly like that too.
“It's ridiculous, isn't it? I find it ridiculous too.”
“Then why are you spouting such nonsense… just, what?”
“Okay, but like, Lord Lancer stole the most precious thing from me, so I'm going to steal something he considers most precious.”
“What?”
“A tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye.”
I blink. “Wait, what did Lancer steal?”
His expression hardens. “I can't tell you.”
“What?”
“It's a matter of national security, so I can't tell you.”
What the hell does stealing something involve national security? Did he steal the king's secret diary or something? “Prince, just what the hell did Lancer do?”
“Ugh, I can't tell you… you can only know that my father is very angry.”
My head hurts. His father would be Iroel, King of the Hebnia Kingdom. I can barely think straight as the information rushes in like a tidal wave.
He glances at me and sighs. “In any case, I must kidnap you, Princess, to prevent war from breaking out between your empire and my kingdom.”
Why the hell would you kidnap me? I want to say something, but I can't even formulate a proper retort. “Prince Cade, what kind of miraculous logic is that— woah!”
“Let's go, Princess!” He flicks his fingers, and a strange aura envelopes my body as I begin levitating. I'm floating in the air like a balloon on a jolie.
“What— what are you doing?!”
“Why, do you want me to carry you?” He asks back.
“No, you're not, I'm not going anywhere!”
“Don't worry. I'll take you somewhere Lord Lancer will never be able to enter.”
With that, he uses his magic to blast open my door.
“That's it, you criminal!”
Someone standing in the candlelit hallway shouts as the doorway opens.
I exclaim in delight, “Phoebe!”
It's none other than Phoebe, who's about to save me!
“I heard noises in your chamber, so I came to see if you're okay!” She grits her teeth. “I would have beaten the crap out of any stranger, but it was you, Viscount!”
Clutching a club, she glares. She has the look of a woman who would have killed her opponent had he been a commoner rather than a viscount.
Prince Cade is taken aback by her unexpected appearance. “Well, well, Maid… why are you wandering about in the night like that when you should be sleeping?”
“What do you think you're doing? Put my lady down at once, Viscount Butter! Otherwise I'll cut you in two and donate you to the Museum of the Mysteries of the Human Body!” Phoebe, her mind racing with rage, shouts insults at him.
“Viscount Butter? I am Viscount Artisina!” He fumes, and I feel like he's mad for the wrong reason.
“Shut up, Butter Animal!”
“Butter— what now?!”
“A provincial mongrel noble, with a mongrel title that doesn't even come close to the metropolitan nobility!”
Prince Cade, or rather Viscount Artisina, seemed to be quite shocked by those words. “How dare you call me a mongrel?’
“Yes, you Viscount Butter, a hybrid butter made from cheap animal fats you don't even know where they come from!”
“Watch your mouth, Maid, who do you think you are to insult me like that?”
Viscount Artisina is evidently angered by Phoebe's venomous tongue. Viscount Artisina is not the only prince of the Hebnia Kingdom. Though his chances of becoming the next king were slim to none, royalty was still royalty, and it was a miracle that his head didn't explode when he was openly called a mongrel.
Unaware of this, Phoebe simply snorts. “What, what kind of a man are you, a flirt who approaches my lady with the intention of stealing her heart?”
“Well, it's true that I've been chasing after her all this time, but that doesn't make me a flirt!”
Not convincing at all!
“You have no real title, not even a property of your name, and how dare you look down on my lady, she and I have a future together, and you have no place in it!”
“Look here, Phoebe. I'm sorry, but I never promised you a future.” Floating in the air, I interrupt.
“I'm just saying it for the sake of saying it. It's a mere dream, only a line I've always wanted to say.” She mutters something under his breath and turns away.
Viscountess Artisina is still hellbent on arguing with Phoebe. “No, no, no, I am not a mongrel, I am of noble blood!”
She sneers. “Noble blood? How ridiculous. Josephine in the Kaerun Duchy’s stable is more noble.”
“Who is Josephine? Is she a coachman?”
“The horse that pulls the carriage my lady rides in.”
‘What? Oh, gosh, Maid. I really wasn't going to say this, but…,” he says, taking a deep breath. “At home, my mother calls me Prince!”
Huh?
Is he allowed to say that?
I stare at him with wide eyes. He's finally revealing that he's of royal descent. It's a risky move for a man who had always kept his identity a secret to avoid arranged marriages.
But unfortunately or fortunately, his response has no effect on Phoebe. “What the hell? Even I can receive that! I’ll just go back home and ask my parents to call me Princess!”
With that, she raises his club and charges at him.
But he doesn't blink an eye.
As he watches her charge towards him, he waves his hand lightly, and the club snaps out of her grasp.
“Aah!”
A scream bursts from her mouth, along with his laughter.
“Haha! How about that? A commoner can't beat a mage, no matter how strong she is!”
“Ugh… cowardly bastard, is that all you are, a mage? You can't beat me without using magic!”
“You have a problem with a mage using magic? If you're envious, you should learn magic too!” He mocks her with a smirk. It's the kind of condescension that makes me want to punch him in the head even as I look down at him from the air.
“Shut up, you're nothing if you can't use magic!”
“Hahaha! So what, if a normal person and a mage fight, who wins?”
He's about to add more fuel to the fire when—
BANG!
A deafening roar echoes through the corridor. I whip my head around to the source of noise. There stands Phoebe, holding an unfamiliar object in her hand.
“The commoner with the gun wins, you idiot.”
“Uh, where did you get th…?” Prince Cade collapses on the spot, unable to finish his sentence. Wait, is he dead?
Frozen in place, I turn my gaze back to her. In her hand, she holds something that appears to be made of silvered iron. It looks like a slightly bent iron rod, something I've never seen before.
“...Phoebe, what is that?”
“Alas… it is a weapon called a gun.” She mumbles, looking down at the weapon in her hand.
I stand still, staring at it. “Wow… that's one ugly weapon. Where did you get it?”
“It's a weapon made in the Hebnia Kingdom. I bought it the other day.”
“From where?”
“I purchased it through a group order from some… backstreet girls I know.”
I try to analyse the contents of her confession. “...So you've been procuring unauthorised weapons from another country for our empire?”
“Yes.”
“That's smuggling.”
At my point, she remains calm. “No, I paid for the first international and domestic shipment, it's just that I deliberately mixed it in with other miscellaneous goods to avoid getting caught by customs when crossing the border.”
“That's what they call smuggling.”
While I'm debating international trade law with her, Prince Cade holds my hand and pulls himself to his feet.
“This hurts, you Maid!” He cries out, shaking something off of him. A small wooden bead clatters to the marble floor.
Phoebe clicks her tongue. “Sh*t, I should have given them more money and gotten some real bullets instead.”
“I'm really going to make you regret that!”
BOOM!
He lifts the hem of his robe.
“Ugh!” Thinking he's attacking her, Phoebe flinches and stumbles backwards.
But it's a trick.
One of the windows in the corridor rattle open. At the same time, he begins to run towards it.
“Hohoho, I'll see you next time, Maid!” Even as he runs, he talks uselessly.
“Stop there, you coward!”
“Hah, what a joke! I wouldn't stand if I were you, Maid, why do you make others do what you don't want to do yourself?”
With a grin, he winks and leaps out of the hallway window.
Entangled in his magic, I fall in the same trajectory.
“Aaaaaah!”
“Hang in there, Princess, even if you're dizzy!”
I can see his magic flickering beside me. Seems like it's at its limit.
“What the hell is going on…!” I cry out, staring at the ground as it rushes towards me.
* * *
I wake up.
Chirp. Chirp.
Outside, I hear the lazy chirping of birds.
I open my eyes to the warm morning sunlight. The light streaming in through the window is unusually bright. The atmosphere of complacency was overwhelmingly cheerful. Everything that has happened the night before felt like a fragment of a messy dream.
“Are you awake, Princess Kaerun?”
Or not.
As I lift myself out of bed, I'm met by one of the maids who's been waiting by the door, as if expecting me. But she's not the same maid who's served me all my life.
“You're not Phoebe.”
‘I don't know who that is, but I'm not part of Kaerun Duchy, for one thing.” She replies. She's not dressed in our duchy's uniform.
“First, let me prepare some water for you to wash in.”
“Wait.”
I grab her as she turns to leave. I have to make sense of this situation somehow.
“Where am I, and where is the prince?”
“This is the imperial palace, and by prince, I assume you mean His Highness…?”
Huh?
My eyes can only widen.
