Prince Leopold pulled me into his p, which was all the more confusing with the gravity of his accusations. It threw my entire body off bance, especially given that my hands were still bound, and I could barely support myself in such an awkward position.

  He dangled the legendary shimmering sword in front of him, as if he was holding a carrot.

  "I know you want this," he said provocatively.

  "I don't know what you mean," I pyed dumb.

  It couldn't possibly be a good idea to admit that I had any connection with the sword. The Crown Prince clearly had some sort of suspicion, but he outright admitted that he didn't have proof. This meant that my fate hadn't been sealed, and the entire point of this interrogation was to trick me into confessing a critical piece of information.

  Meanwhile, I arched my back in a useless attempt to get away from a slightly disturbing new development.

  His free hand was absent-mindedly caressing my butt.

  "You keep gncing at it every few minutes. My guess is you're probably waiting for an opening to pounce and seize it. 「Excalibur」 is the only thing that can save you — is that what you think? You want to steal it and cim it for yourself."

  "N-No. You have completely the wrong idea."

  "You shouldn't lie," Prince Leopold warned with a teasing tone. "If you lie, I'll do bad things to you."

  He pressed me down against the ground.

  "—Very bad things to you," he whispered into my ears.

  I suddenly felt cold metal right against the skin of my neck, gliding right against my skin, but not drawing blood. If he rotated his wrist the slightest degree, it would definitely slice my neck. The prince dragged the edge of the bde almost pyfully, intentionally prolonging the encounter and emphasizing the fact he could kill me at the change of his whim.

  I couldn't tell if he was genuinely a sadist, or if he was acting in order to fill a theatrical role.

  The tip of his bde created a deep slit along my blouse. It cut through the fabric like butter, slicing the upper parts of the my dress that rested atop my shoulders. He took extra care to be precise. Like an artisan sculpting an ice statue, Prince Leopold applied just the right amount of finesse so that the thin bde of the sword traveled underneath the innermost yer of my maid uniform.

  He gave a slight tug, and I felt the right shoulder strap of my shift (undergarments) split in half.

  + + +

  "I'll tell you anything!" I spoke, my voice quivering and shaking.

  Prince Leopold paused momentarily to listen.

  "If you have questions, just ask them normally. You had complete control over me from the start. You're the King's son. Everything in this Kingdom belongs to you. You can cim a servant's body, force her to do something she doesn't want, and instruct her follow every one of your commands. Nobody would ever think to disobey you — because that's treason."

  I paused briefly, trying to sink into the role that I created for myself.

  "Please, Your Majesty. Just give me your questions." I pleaded. "I'm not trying to hide anything. I don't even know what I'm 'guilty' for... I can't answer you if you don't expin the situation..."

  + + +

  The Crown Prince's hands were stroking my thighs as I made my pleas.

  He was listening intently, but he didn't make a single change to his shameless behavior.

  "You see, Miss Hanamarie," he responded astutely. "It'd be nice if everything worked that way, but I'm not confident that you've said a single truthful thing ever since you've been in this room. And honestly, I don't mind lies. I don't think there's anything wrong with lying. But you can't expect me to take everything that you say at face value, because I think it's quite doubtful I'll get anything resembling the truth out from you in the normal way."

  "I... Can you at least give me a chance? I don't even know what you want to know."

  "I'd just be wasting my time though? Since you're going to lie anyways?"

  "You can't possibly know that!"

  "Well regardless, I think you'll be a little more truthful after I 'break' your spirit a bit more first."

  His fingers slowly crept their way up to an unspeakable pce.

  + + +

  "You're a fucking psychopath." I blurted out suddenly.

  There was a brief moment of confusion, and then an incredulous look appeared on the Crown Prince's face.

  He probably did not expect to hear such a vile profanity from a subordinate in the Royal Pace. The maids who were employed here were extraordinarily well trained, and crude nguage was essentially expunged from our vocabury. Moreover, it was explicitly against the rules for a servant to refuse the sexual advances of their liege, let alone the crown prince of the entire kingdom. No other maid in this entire country would think do something as stupid as this — it was completely illogical and self-destructive — no matter how much a girl hated being touched.

  "You're the next king of this country, and you can wish for anything in the entire universe using that incredible sword... you could save the world or end all human suffering... yet all you care to do is torment a random maid with your perverted sense of ego and superiority. Do you get off on molesting little girls? Is that your hobby??"

  "Why you ungrateful little..."

  "—Fix it then!" I burst into a stream of tears as I angrily cut him off. "You can do anything, right? You're going to be the king. You can wish for anything. That sword can solve all of the problems in the entire world, so you should make everything better. Make it so that nobody needs to cry. Make it so that we're not miserable. Please! I'm begging you. Or at least, if you can't do it, give the sword to someone else who can fix everything that's horribly messed up about this country."

  He went silent as my tearful pleas shook through the room.

  He was clearly not used to be being refused.

  There was nothing physically stopping him from forcing himself onto me like a brute, but all of a sudden, he seemed to second-guess himself. Doubt had seeded in his mind, and he wasn't as confident as he was before. At least, something that I said must have struck a particur nerve, and those words had a much rger impact on him than I even expected.

  It was actually a subtly veiled act — I didn't actually think that Prince Leopold was capable of using the true abilities of 「Excalibur」, but I wasn't going to survive this encounter unless I hedged my bets onto something drastic. Zhang Guiyu was a retively innocent and idealistic girl at heart, so it made sense to exaggerate those sentiments that were already inside of me. There was no guarantee that it would work, but I hoped that the Crown Prince would buy this fabricated persona of a naive girl who fantasized of 'saving the world' with the sword, yet was utterly clueless about the sword's limitations.

  To be honest, I didn't really understand the mechanics of the wish-granting sword to begin with.

  However, I didn't need to know all the rules in order to py this game.

  + + +

  The Crown Princes shoulders shook, and then he suddenly stood up.

  "Shut up!" He snapped angrily. "What does a maid like you know about me?"

  Prince Leopold suddenly threw the sword at my feet, and it cttered loudly on the floor.

  "Go ahead and pick it up. If you think you can use it, go ahead and try for yourself."

  I looked up to him hesitantly. Frankly, that loud outburst was unexpected, and it felt like a severe overreaction my own little tirade. I didn't think that I said anything that hurtful, although my words had apparently rubbed him the wrong way.

  —Could it be that he actually saw himself as a good person?

  I shuffled over on my knees in order to pick up the handle. Unlike the st time, I was able to feel the grip of the sword quite tangibly. It didn't melt through my hands or turn ethereal. The weapon looked exactly the same, but somehow I was able to hold it in its physical form.

  A fleeting thought crossed my mind.

  Perhaps the sword could only be used to make wishes when it was in an intangible state. Currently, 「Excalibur」 was tangible, so the Crown Prince couldn't use it, and it likely meant that I wasn't able to use it either. If anything, any person who could physically carry the sword was probably ineligible to use its true abilities.

  Just to test this hypothesis, I closed my eyes and I made a brand new wish from the bottom of my heart.

  —I wish to go back to my life on Earth before the bus accident.

  ...But absolutely nothing happened.

  It was not a surprising result, but still deeply disappointing nonetheless.

  + + +

  "A Hero is required to use the sword," Prince Leopold expined spitefully, practically seething through his teeth. "Although for some reason, Heroes are never able to hold the sword. So yeah — I admit it. Maybe I was wrong about you. I thought you were a Hero who had disguised themselves as a maid, in which case you would have been useful pawn, but maybe my instincts were wrong all along."

  "But..." I wore a devastated look on my face. "That's so unfair. Why is it that only Heroes get to make wishes? And why haven't they saved the world? Why does evil and suffering still exist?"

  The Crown Prince reached over and pulled the sword out of my hands.

  "This universe was never fair and humans have never been anything but selfish," he replied coldly. "Heroes have always been able to distort the reality of this world. How many times do you think history and society has been rewritten? What do you think this world was like before it twisted into its current state? This pce is an ever-evolving paradise and a pyground for a few old men with their hedonistic desires, but it is a dystopian ndscape for the majority of those who ck power. If I am not careful, even a rising king can lose everything in the span on an instant."

  He wiped the sliver of blood off the shining metal bde and then he returned it into its sheath.

  He did not look back at me.

  "You can leave now," the prince said. "I'm not interested in you anymore. You are not the liar whom I seek."

  ?