The Crown Prince Who Raises Alt Characters

#Chapter 376 Tyrant (3) - Awakening If Trisha were asked to evaluate Empress Eleanor, she would answer with a bit of mischief, something like this. 「She's the aunt who bakes the most delicious cookies. If she'd walked the path of a professional pâtissier, wouldn't she have succeeded at it too?」 To prevent any misunderstanding, it should be said that this wasn't meant as mockery. Trisha tended to dislike or look down on most people who fell into the category of imperial family or maternal relatives, but Eleanor was someone she liked, in a different way than she liked her own mother, Beatrix. The very fact that she served such carefully made sweets to the Imperial Princes and Imperial Princesses — who could be considered rivals to her own child — was proof enough of her kind nature, wasn't it? If her mother Beatrix was one of the few people who could converse or share thoughts with Trisha on equal footing, Eleanor was the kind of person who simply made you feel at ease just by being near her. Which was why, upon seeing this world's "Dowager Empress" Eleanor, Trisha had to work hard to keep her expression under control. "...Y-Your Highness, the Crown Princess? Why would you come to a place like this..." Her body was withered and gaunt, and the dress she wore was threadbare, well beyond merely simple. A face without a trace of makeup. Hollow eyes. Sunken cheeks. Her hands trembled anxiously, her shoulders were hunched, and her gaze was unsteady. If someone who didn't know the circumstances were told that she was the empire's Dowager Empress — that is, the wife of the previous Emperor — that person would scoff and tell you to stop joking. That was how wretched her appearance was. Only then did Trisha come to truly feel, as the hardships that had befallen one person's life, what she had until now merely analyzed as information. Her husband had died suddenly. Her one and only son had been an idiot since birth. The title of Dowager Empress was hollow in name only. In reality, she had no power whatsoever, and had only been granted a tiny palace at the very edge of the imperial palace grounds. The nephews who sat in the Crown Prince's seat that her own son might otherwise have occupied kept on dying, one after another. The reason Alondre and Eleanor had managed to survive until now was simple. Because they were so powerless that they weren't even considered a threat. However, that was merely a reason not to target them immediately — not a reason to keep letting them live indefinitely. A single whim of the Emperor's could be enough to kill them. No one knew when that death might come. And yet, she had no power to protect her son against that death. That situation had lasted more than ten years. Just how much pressure and terror must she have endured in all that time? "It's all right." Trisha, who had been about to address her as "Your Majesty the Dowager Empress," changed the form of address after a moment's thought. Because she was quick on the uptake. "Aunt. I just came to see Brother. To pay my respects, among other things." "Your Highness..." Perhaps the familiar form of address had had some effect. Eleanor's trembling stopped. Instead, her eyes welled up with moisture, but Trisha pretended not to notice. 'I'm not actually this kind and considerate a person by nature, you know.' If anything, she was closer to the type who teased the people around her with odd antics, or went around enchanting people with her fairy-like looks. But what could she do? That was simply the situation. "I'm sorry, Your Highness. I've shown you an unseemly sight." "I didn't see anything at all, though?" "...Hehe, I see. Well then, please come inside." Before following Eleanor's lead inside. Trisha kept her gaze fixed straight ahead, while directing only her spiritual sense toward the rear. Along the wall surrounding Eleanor's palace — a detached palace whose size made it awkward to even call it a "palace" — a knight was hiding himself while staring in this direction. 'I was only going around inside the imperial palace, so even though I specifically ordered him not to follow me, he cleanly ignored it and tagged along anyway. If a guardian knight like that existed in my original world, I'd have had his head off right away — what a waste.' No, to be honest, even now she could take his head off easily enough. Trisha's appearance alone was delicate; in terms of actual ability, she was far from being some helpless Princess who could be kidnapped without resistance. It was only that dealing with the aftermath of doing so would be such a headache that she couldn't be bothered. 'That man, the Emperor, seems to be fond of me the way one is fond of a bird in a cage or a jewel in a display case — if I humor him just enough, I might be able to control him to some degree.' After walking for a while, forming a simple plan in her head. "Here we are." Trisha, stepping into the room Eleanor had opened for her, was slightly taken aback. A rocking chair sat in the corner of the room. Because Alondre, sitting there and blankly gazing outside, looked far more presentable than she had expected. He wasn't drooling from the corner of his mouth, nor wearing a slack, vacant smile, nor muttering unintelligible sounds. More than anything, according to the rumors she'd heard so far, he supposedly spent almost all his time in this room without ever leaving the small detached palace, yet his body looked remarkably well-toned for someone in that condition. Compared to the "Crown Prince" Alondre that Trisha remembered, the only differences, if they could be called that, were that he was slightly thinner, and that instead of formal attire, he wore plain white clothing so unadorned it was closer to a burial shroud. "Alondre. Her Highness the Crown Princess has come to see you." Eleanor took hold of Alondre's hand with a tender touch, but Alondre showed no particular reaction. He simply kept gazing silently out the window, unchanged. Eleanor bowed her head to Trisha, her expression bitter yet also as if she had expected as much. "I'm sorry, Your Highness. And you went to the trouble of coming all this way." "Please don't worry about it." Trisha approached Alondre and spoke. "Hello, Brother Alondre. Your unworthy little sister has come to visit." Still, there was no reaction. Or rather, there appeared to be none. It was a reaction that would be difficult to notice unless one were on Trisha's level. 'His pupils. His eyes. He registered me here, just for an instant. Though right after that, he switched off his interest again.' Even after that, while continuing to make all sorts of idle conversation, Trisha kept checking on Alondre's condition. More precisely, she fixed the notepad she'd left idle at the edge of her vision somewhere clearly visible, and began writing down her thoughts by moving the pen with her mind. [There's no trace whatsoever of training in swordsmanship or magic.] [Even though he barely engages in physical activity, including walking, his physical condition looks fine. On top of his inherent constitution, it seems he's instinctively using a breathing method that engages his whole body.] [His perception of the outside world is excellent. I manifested a sphere of mana at my fingertip for about 0.01 seconds and then dismissed it, and he definitely moved his eyes to look at it.] [The problem is that he only reacts to outside stimuli, with absolutely no active, self-directed behavior. I'm curious what state his mind is actually in.] The pen in her mind paused for a moment. What she was about to write from here on was less a summary than idle chatter. [If I use mind magic, I could actually look inside his mind.] [But magic that intervenes in another person's mind carries quite a large risk. If I'm not careful, it could rebound on me.] [More than anything, there's no point to it. My goal is to return to my original world, and what I need for that is abundant research material and that man, my uncle's, trust.] [No matter how harmless and powerless the Crown Prince and Empress are, their symbolic weight is strong. There's a good chance my uncle would find it uncomfortable that the Crown Princess is associating with them. He didn't exactly strike me as a guy with good character.] [In other words, if we're talking about the correct answer, it would be rational for me to abandon this mother and son right now and go flatter my uncle instead. It's not even my world to begin with, so whether this place falls apart or not isn't really my concern.] [Hm.] [Ah, something's gotten twisted up inside me.] Trisha stopped writing her notes. "Aunt. Would it be all right if I used a blessing on him for a moment? It's a blessing that lets you sleep well. It's quite effective." "Pardon?" Eleanor looked flustered for a moment, but soon nodded. Perhaps it was the words about it being good for her son, combined with everything Trisha had said and done so far, that had earned her trust. Trisha took hold of Alondre's face with both hands and met his eyes. And then she activated the spell formula. *** First, there was sight. A space that ordinary people would distinguish into roughly white, blue, sky-blue, red, and black held within it light more varied than a rainbow, scattering in every direction. The ground that she had simply thought of as flat was a collection of countless irregular curved surfaces, and skin that people described as smooth was a cluster of fine hairs, pores, dead skin cells, and every other element besides. Next, there was hearing. The sound of human speech, the rustling of fabric, the beating of a heart, the creaking of bones, the chirping of birds, the sound of insects. Everything was intertwined with everything else, everything pushed against everything else, forming either harmony or dissonance. Following that came smell, taste, touch. Every sense made contact with the world and indiscriminately sucked in information. '...Wow, this is insane.' The fact that Trisha could somehow maintain her sense of self was only possible because she herself was a genius, and because she had already established a firm sense of self. She understood at once why Alondre had been in a state like an idiot. Of course problems would arise if the sheer volume of information was this enormous. When an ordinary person's eyes see a single tree, Alondre's eyes see the entire forest. When an ordinary person's ears hear a single bird's chirp, Alondre's ears hear even the sound of the bird's feather falling to the ground. His innately given sensory organs performed at such a ridiculous level that the sheer volume of information pouring into his head was enormous enough to be terrifying. 'And it's not even just that his senses are good.' The beating of his heart, the peristalsis of his digestive organs, the contraction and relaxation of his blood vessels, the dilation and contraction of his eyes' lenses. All sorts of internal bodily processes that ordinary people couldn't even become conscious of were, within Alondre's body, "objects of control." It might be possible to simply not control them if he chose not to, but even that would only be possible once he'd first taken hold of the reins. Just as a person who has once become "conscious" of blinking finds it difficult to blink unconsciously again, having excessive authority over control likewise demands enormous resources just to automate it. Alondre's "brain" was processing all of this without any problem whatsoever. It was a wondrous body. And it was also a terrible one. [Raise a hand and grasp an object in front of you.] Just a single sentence. If an act that amounted to nothing more than this one sentence were processed through Alondre's body, the sheer volume of information that came with it would be enough to densely fill over a hundred hardcover volumes, with plenty left over to spare. Then what would become of a soul that had been forced to bear this absurd volume of information from the very moment of its birth? Trisha could describe that situation with a single word. 【Crushed to death】 The body's performance, its talent, was so overwhelming that the soul simply couldn't bear it. To be so excellent that, paradoxically, one could never survive at all — what an irony that was. Or else, was she supposed to go find, from somewhere, a soul with a sense of self firm enough, control refined enough, and willpower mighty enough to actually handle this body? '...Hm? Wait. Then how was Brother perfectly fine—' The moment Trisha thought of the Crown Prince of her original world. —Thump! In a mental world that had only ever indiscriminately taken in and overflowed with countless pieces of information, a change occurred for the very first time. Something saw the Crown Prince within Trisha. Something heard the Crown Prince within Trisha. Something detected, felt, and recognized the Crown Prince within Trisha. And it trembled. As though it had just seen a model showing that doing "that" was the way. In the next moment, Trisha was flung out. *** "Cough...!!" "...!? Y-Your Highness! Your Highness!! Please stay with me! Your Highness!!" Eleanor fell into a panic at the sight of Trisha suddenly coughing up blood. "I'm fine. Just bring me a clean towel, please." After calming her down, Trisha wiped the blood from around her mouth. Her physical condition was, frankly, a complete mess, but there was something she needed to confirm before dealing with that. "—Is that you, Brother Alondre?" The eyes of Alondre, seated in the rocking chair, found their focus. He looked at Trisha. And then he spoke. "Half of me."