radicalducati Page 649
Page 649
Following closely behind, the maid named Karina, like a sophisticated vocal organ, used her steady, unwavering voice to precisely "translate" or supplement the princess's thoughts:
"Lady Tiadera wishes to speak with you." Her words were extremely respectful, yet her demeanor was as if stating a fait accompli.
"With us?" Matou Ike suppressed the visual and auditory discomfort.
“No,” Karina shook her head slightly, her movements precise like a machine. “Excuse me for being rude, but could you please ask the lady over there to leave her seat for the time being?”
The lantern in her hand turned slightly, its cold light illuminating Arcueid, who had been sitting quietly in the high-backed chair by the window.
Beneath the hood's shadow, his amber eyes narrowed slightly in the light, reflecting an inhuman luster.
“…Um, I…” Arcueid seemed a little lost. She looked at Matou Ike, her golden eyebrows furrowing slightly.
Removing her from Matou Ike's side seemed to trigger some kind of instinctive protective mechanism, or rather... a natural wariness of the unknown danger lurking within this "ultimate beauty."
"Arcquet can be trusted."
Matou Ike interrupted decisively, his voice carrying an undeniable resolve. He tilted his head slightly, as if speaking to Karina, or perhaps declaring to the Golden Princess's unseen will:
“I’ll be really worried if the bodyguard I hired is not there when it matters.”
He paused, then added a more convincing reason.
Just then, the golden princess Tiadera, who had been quietly "observing" from the sidelines and exerting invisible pressure with her very presence, seemed to have a very slight shift in her heterochromatic eyes, which were a mixture of molten gold and solidified silver.
No sound entered her mind again, but the maid Karina immediately bowed slightly, as if she had received a silent command.
She turned to Matou Pond and relayed:
“…Since that’s the case,” Karina’s tone remained calm, but her stance subtly shifted, “Lady Tiadera said: Karina, you may leave alone.” She then looked at Matou Ike, adding a question, but her tone remained that of stating a fact: “Is that alright?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Karina nodded immediately without any hesitation or questioning.
Carrying the lantern that emitted a cold, moonlit light, she turned smoothly, silently left the room, and gently closed the door behind her.
The whole process was completely silent. Her presence vanished the moment she stepped out of the room, as if melting into the shadows of the corridor, perfectly demonstrating what "the basic skills of a follower" are.
Now, only three people remain in the luxurious guest room.
Matou Pond. Arcueid. And... the divine incarnation who descended to the mortal realm—the Golden Princess Tiadera Valereta Izeruma.
The lantern was taken away, leaving only the cold moonlight seeping in from the window and the chilling glow emanating from the Golden Princess, which seemed to emanate its own light. The air was as heavy as mercury, and every breath carried a cold pressure.
The Golden Princess's gaze, her dual pupils—one a molten core of the sun, the other a solidified abyss of the moon—slowly focused on Matou Ike.
The silent flow of information once again directly shook his consciousness, transforming it into comprehensible language through his own understanding:
I'm very sorry to have taken up your time.
The apology contained no trace of remorse, only a procedural, godlike politeness.
"...It's alright." Matou Ike shrugged.
However, he keenly noticed an extremely subtle anomaly—the Golden Princess's reaction to his words seemed to have an inexplicable delay, not in her thinking, but at a more basic… level of reception?
A bold, almost absurd guess took shape in his mind.
"...Your ears," Matou Ike's voice carried a hint of barely perceptible probing, his sharp gaze locking onto the Golden Princess's reaction, "could it be...that you can't hear?"
Unexpectedly, a very slight, almost transparent smile appeared on the flawless, divinely crafted face of the Golden Princess—Tiadra.
That smile wasn't mocking; it was more like...acknowledgment that he had noticed it?
She raised a slender hand and, with an elegant, dance-like gesture, gently covered one of her ears.
"Did you notice?" The silent flow of information once again poured directly into Matou Ike's mind, perfectly synchronized with her smiling expression.
Immediately, the maid Karina's steady voice did not appear; it seemed that Tiadera was directly "expressing" herself in some way:
"I lost my hearing because of some...minor genetic issues."
She stated it casually, as if it were a trivial matter, "Even so, most conversations can be conducted simply by reading lips. As for vocalization..."
Her lips, as delicate as flower petals from paradise, curved into a very faint smile. "Learning the correct pronunciation and intonation through magic is also very easy."
"...Oh, I see."
Matou Ike understood. This was precisely a manifestation of how magic, in certain fields, still transcends modern science.
Modern technology may provide hearing aids or cochlear implants for the deaf, but it is absolutely impossible to "teach" a congenitally deaf person to master such precise and beautiful pronunciation so perfectly and fundamentally.
What the Golden Princess just revealed—teaching deaf people to pronounce correctly—is precisely the strength of this type of magic.
Simply put, it's not about repeatedly practicing muscle memory, but about directly instilling all the information needed for "pronunciation"—tongue position, airflow, vocal cord vibration frequency, etc.—into the depths of the recipient's brain, just like transmitting a data packet!
While this requires a certain level of advanced magical skill, for a family like Balyereta and its branches, solving this problem is indeed a piece of cake as long as they find a sorcerer skilled in telepathy or mind manipulation.
However, given another ten or twenty years of modern science, perhaps a similar effect could be achieved by directly implanting a sophisticated electrode array into the cerebral cortex.
This habit of comparing magic with the potential future of science was deeply ingrained in him.
"I have a request."
The Golden Princess's information stream once again directly entered his consciousness without any warning, instantly erasing the previous interlude about deafness and getting straight to the point.
Matou Ike quickly composed herself, a familiar, socially mask-like smile appearing on her face, her tone carrying just the right amount of ingratiating, almost aria-like eagerness:
"Oh? Such a beautiful person made the request,"
He skillfully avoided making a direct commitment, limiting the scope to "within his capabilities" and humbly stating that he would "offer a small assistance."
"As long as it is within my ability, I am willing to do my part, however small."
"I'll accept your kind offer." The Golden Princess nodded slightly, accepting the superficial compliment.
Her heterochromatic eyes, a blend of molten gold and solidified silver, were like two cold cosmic vortexes, firmly locking onto Matou Ike.
Then, those words, enough to make any magician who heard them wonder if they were in a collective hallucination, fell like an icicle at absolute zero:
"...I want to ask you for a favor."
"Take us with you—"
"escape."
"……escape?"
The meaning represented by these two words is related to the person before us, the embodiment of "ultimate beauty," the treasure of the Izeruma family, the crystallization of Balyereta's "Path of Beauty," and his identity as the person in the most central magic workshop of his own family...
This has created such an absurd, terrifying, and irreconcilable contradiction!
“Yes, I would like to ask you to hide us.” The Golden Princess said, seemingly noticing Matouchi’s confusion.
"Oh?" Matou Ike drawled, his voice filled with an undisguised, almost cruel curiosity.
"That's quite an unexpected request. May I ask for your reason?"
His gaze was sharp as a scalpel, as if trying to dissect the true motives beneath the other person's divine exterior.
"From what I've seen, you and your sister, Miss Estella, seem to be treated like gods here, enjoying the highest level of protection and... 'nurturing'. What makes you willing to take such a risk to escape this... exquisite cage?"
"I want to protect myself and my sister—Estella, who will inherit the title of Silver Princess this time."
Tiadera said frankly.
Chapter 674 The Deal (4k)
"Protect?" Matou Ike repeated the heavy word, his voice steady, trying to probe for more of the truth.
He was not easily persuaded by the seemingly legitimate reason of "protection," but instead raised a sharp, observation-based counter-question:
"But, from what I've seen, that Lord Bailong... isn't someone who doesn't cherish you, is he?"
He recalled the look in Byron's eyes when he looked at the two sisters at the banquet—a mixture of awe, pride, and an almost morbid obsession.
That look was not that of someone treating an ordinary tool or experimental subject; it was more like admiring one's most perfect and flawless "masterpiece."
"........."
A long, thick silence instantly flowed between the two of them.
This silence was not a refusal to answer, nor a deliberation over words, but rather a kind of...
Something too large, too dark, too heavy suddenly appeared, like an invisible boulder, tightly sealing the Golden Princess's perfect, petal-like lips.
In her heterochromatic eyes, which were a mixture of molten gold and solidified silver, there seemed to be an extremely subtle and indescribable ripple, like a huge shadow suddenly swimming beneath a lake that had been frozen for thousands of years.
The almost inhuman divine tranquility that had always enveloped her began to crack slightly.
Matouchi did not urge him on purpose.
He waited quietly, like the most patient hunter.
He knew that some things only had real power when the other person took the initiative to break free and express themselves.
His deep gaze calmly fixed on her, as if it could withstand any degree of darkness.
After a long time-
Princess Tiadea lowered her eyes slightly, her divine eyes, capable of tearing through time, were obscured by the shadows cast by her thick eyelashes.
A very faint murmur, tinged with an indescribable weariness, like a candle flickering in the wind, flowed directly into Matou Ike's consciousness:
"...I'm a little tired."
Her hand—a delicate, perfect hand as if carved from white jade—slowly rose and gently pressed against the chest of her purple dress, embroidered with intricate and alluring rose patterns.
That movement wasn't affected; it was as if he were unconsciously pressing on an unseen, persistently painful old scar.
She maintained this posture, the information stream continued, her tone remained calm, yet it seemed to carry a bloody weight:
“I think…you can imagine,”
Her "gaze" seemed to pierce through her own palm, looking into a place inside her body that had been torn apart and reshaped countless times.
"In order to 'create' the body we have now... we were forced to... endure an immense amount of pain."
Using magic to transform, refine, and even reshape the body is almost a basic introductory course for most magic schools.
A rigorous training that begins in childhood, stripping away one's humanity; forcibly transplanting and fusing with the magical imprint that carries the family's generations of obsession and pain;
Some practitioners take large doses of potent, side-effect-laden magical potions to alter their physical constitution; some extreme schools even perform permanent magical surgery on the brain structure or internal organs to adapt to specific magical circuits.
That wasn't all. A far more extreme and chilling example flashed through Matou Ike's mind in an instant—
The inheritance ceremony of that magical family in the far east, which has also lasted for hundreds of years, involves using dozens or hundreds of otherworldly insects created by secret techniques and possessing the ability to devour and assimilate, to alternately burrow into the body of the inheritor, lurking, modifying, and eventually turning him into a monster adapted to water-attribute magic from the inside out.