"I'm really not cut out for this…"

My silent grumbles were hidden under the quiet hiss of the automatic door of my quarters, and as soon as I stepped through, I could hear a shuffling noise. Glancing over, I found Mountain Girl standing ramrod straight by the couch. When our eyes met (presumably, as she was wearing her helmet), her posture immediately loosened and she greeted me with a hint of relief.

"Oh, it's Leonard-dono this time. Welcome back."

"This time?" I echoed her as I walked into the room and, after a beat, undid my Polemos disguise and stretched my back. "Did someone else visit my room while I was away?"

"Yes. Director Mensah-san was looking for Leonard-dono, and Director Tsephanyah-san sent an indivisible to request for a meeting too. Rinne thinks her name was Tire-san, the Vice-Director of Rurals."

"Indivisi— Ah, you meant 'individual'." I rubbed my chin and pondered for a second. "Rurals, Tire… Was she a middle-aged woman with black hair?" Rinne nodded, and while I could recall her from the Mana Well Shrine, or whatever that place was called, I couldn't remember her full name either. She was definitely one of the Reformists though, so that checked out. "Did she say anything else?"

"No. Rinne nodded to let her know Rinne would deliver the message, and then she left."

"What about Mensah?"

"Director Mensah-san was more insistent, so Rinne had to forcefully remove him from the room."

"Let's hope he won't hold a grudge over that," I muttered and sat down on the nearby sofa.

She must have considered that the sign that she could sit down as well, and she did so without any pretences. I expected that she would start reading her book again, but her eyes remained fixated on me.

"Leonard-dono seems tired."

"Probably because I am," I answered a touch irritably. "This was a long day, and playing the role of Polemos in public for nearly three hours straight wasn't exactly relaxing either."

"Was there any conflict?"

"In a sense, but nothing major," I responded with a shrug.

Things went almost exactly as expected. A bit of small talk, lots of veiled hints and inquiries about loyalties and secret plans within plans, a single confrontational side character with an inflated ego who existed just so that I could take him down a peg, et cetera. Seriously, the whole thing was like clockwork, and while it wasn't a banquet, it hit all of the usual tropes. Well, maybe except for introducing a masked femme-fatale type character, but to be fair, I didn't mind missing out on that. The only thing worth a mention was how I got roped into attending a military exercise, but considering how the director in charge was trying to impress me, it wasn't that surprising.

Anyhow, while the modus operandi of the Simulacrum was as predictable as ever, it didn't make these situations any less draining. While successfully pulling off the Bel act I'd been preparing for close to a week did take some of the tension out of my shoulders, I could certainly use some me-time to wind down.

Glancing over at Rinne made me wonder. Should I pick up reading as a hobby? Or maybe something lighter, like mangas? Or those newfangled 'webtoon' things, the ones that are just one long strip you can scroll on your phone. A lot of those were available on the internet for free if one knew where to look and… oh, wait—no internet in the Elysium.

"Well, scratch that idea then," I whispered under my breath, and while it made Rinne's ears perk up for a second, she returned to her book just as quickly, leaving me functionally alone with my thoughts.

I figured I could visit the girls again to cuddle a bit, but I'd already done that before coming here. There wasn't anything pressing to do in the base either, and I'd just visited the other hideout as well, so that left me with… nothing much.

In the end, I exhaled a shallow yet audibly exhausted breath, and resolved myself to do the only thing I could in this situation: use my Far Sight to check the ripples my public appearance, both as myself through the recording and as Bel, created.

…

I really didn't want to though. While Judy was unusually chill about it, I had a feeling I would be getting an earful from Roland later. Penny would probably also be pretty damn confused and/or outraged once she learned that I was working together with Bel. Actually… that probably applied to everyone in the Draconic Federation who didn't already know that I was Bel, which was pretty much just the girls, the Fauns, my three Knightly accomplices, and Snowy. So that leaves only… eighty percent of my allies, all the Celestial higher-ups who learned about this, and…

"Heh. I guess Crowey and company would be pretty mad too, just the other way around…" I whispered, making my alleged bodyguard glance up at me. "Don't mind me, I was thinking aloud."

"Then Rinne won't."

Saying so, she returned to her book, but not before letting out a strange, muffled sound. It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out what that was about, but then I asked, "Are you sleepy?"

"It's fine. Rinne is at a good part, so Rinne will read one more chapter before going to bed."

"Careful. Thinking 'just one more chapter' is how you end up on a binge until morning."

"Rinne is always careful, and even if Rinne wasn't careful, it doesn't matter. Rinne is still young."

I couldn't quite grasp what those two things had to do with each other, but I didn't argue, and instead, I made myself comfortable and closed my eyes.

After deliberating for a few breaths' time, I decided to start with the three head directors, no small part thanks to how I could see that their red dots were close to each other. Once my vision shifted, I found myself in a poorly lit room, and…

"— have to do something about him! He's completely out of our control!" Director Mensah yelled while wearing one of those stupid cowls that covered his face in shadows. So were the others.

What was even the point of those when they were perfectly aware of who they were talking to? Hell, they were even wearing their colour-coded togas, so even a random passer-by could tell who they were!

"But what exactly can we do?" the second conspirator, obviously Tsephanyah, lamented with a very obviously faked dejected sigh. "He's the Second True Archon. We announced him ourselves."

"You did," the third person in the room stated flatly, causing Mensah to snap at her.

"Don't try to weasel out of this, Eris! If anything, his position got even more entrenched when you changed your tune after just a single day! If only you didn't—!"

"Yes, and if only someone didn't try to drug his food, he wouldn't be so vigilant and we could try keeping him under control with—!"

"Please, calm down!" Tsephanyah cut in between the two with his hands raised. "We have all made mistakes. Let the past stay in the past and focus on the future."

"The future where we have to bow our heads to him?" Mensah continued to gripe and moan. "By now, the entire Directorate acknowledged him. We can't touch him."

"Maybe if we tried to use his connection to this Abyssal Lord? If it were to be known to the greater public, it would shake his support base." Tsephanyah proposed, and Mensah agreed on the spot.

"Right. We could use it as leverage against him."

"No, we can't," Savir spoke up next, shooting down their idea just as the other two were getting into it. "He directly told me that he considers himself beyond reproach. He must think that his status, together with the combined support of the Department of Military Affairs and his power base on Critias makes him untouchable."

"He's not entirely wrong…" Tsephanyah grumbled, but the female director shook her head.

"No. You were already on the right track. We need a form of leverage. We need to show him that he isn't in full control yet."

"Do you have a plan?"

Tsephanyah looked and sounded reserved, but she didn't seem to mind.

"Yes. We're going to use the opportunity Gideon provided us." It took me a second to figure out who she was talking about, but based on her following words, I realized she must've meant the lantern-jawed military direction with whom I just had a nice dinner. "We'll make our move during the military exercise. I've already received a report on their discussion, and the Archon is going to be present at the site."

"What exactly are you planning?" Tsephanyah asked, still sounding unsure that this was a good idea, which showed that he has more common sense than the other man in the room.

"Don't tell me you plan to assassinate the Archon?" Mensah asked, sounding equal parts outraged and excited by the prospect. "Some kind of training accident? Or something more involved?"

"Please, Dolion. As infuriating as he is, we can't kill him," she scoffed and tapped her feet. "No. We just need to show him that he's not beyond our reach, and this will be the best opportunity we could ask for to do that."

"You still haven't told us your plan," the Reformist director echoed his previous sentiment, and after a long beat, Savir shrugged.

"I'm still working on the details. Once I have a plan of action, I will notify you through unofficial correspondence, as usual. I might need your help too." Mensah nodded, and after hesitating for a while, the other male director followed suit. "It's been a while since we last cooperated like this, but I think it would be best to leave it at that for today. It's getting late, and tomorrow we'll have a parade to attend."

"Yes. The secret parade," Mensah nodded with a Cheshire-cat smile visible under his hood.

That sent shivers down my spine, but I ignored it and focused on the more relevant thing. Namely, that they were conspiring against me, and they would strike during the military exercise I reluctantly agreed to attend. I expected something like this to happen, but not in just a few short days from now. That was… rather annoying, to be honest, but since I caught them red-handed like this, it meant it was a prime opportunity to turn the tables on them, and by doing so, I could potentially shorten my stay in the Elysium.

In any case, I watched them for a while longer, but I didn't learn anything new, and they soon took off their silly cowls and left the room through three different doors. I figured it was so that they wouldn't be seen together in public, but the sight still left me scratching my head.

Not for long though, as I soon moved on to my next target. It was getting pretty late for sure though, and most of my Draconic targets were either already asleep or getting ready to go to bed. There wasn't much to gleam there, so I focused on the next set, and to my pleasant surprise, I stumbled upon another late-night meeting.

"— was your fault!" Lord Ambrose growled, one accusing finger pointing at his red-headed colleague's face, so close that it looked like he wanted to pick his nose. "If you didn't insist on doing that, we could have avoided that whole incident!"

"Please, calm down," Lord Barnabas tried to quell the flames, while Lord Taika was holding her head in the back and slowly sipping sparkling water from a clear glass cup.

"I want to go home. No one told me there would be an Abyssal Lord here. No one told me this island is full of lunatics…"

"Lord Taika, please control yourself," the dark-skinned man reprimanded her and glanced to his left. "The Lord of the island is in the room with us."

"And he should've warned us about this ahead of time," she argued back and then took a furious gulp from her glass (or at least as much as such things could be done furiously).

"Everyone, quiet down," Lord Grandpa called out in an exasperated voice, and when everyone levelled their gazes on him, he added, "Please. Arguing like children does not help our situation."

The four newcomer arch-mages shared a few glances filled with everything from hesitation and outrage to resignation and bemusement and ultimately quieted down. The five of them were standing around inside Lord Grandpa's study, and based on how much the walls were glowing, the wards around the place were cranked up to eleven. Most likely to make sure they had perfect privacy. What a funny misconception that was, am I right?

Anyhow, once everyone calmed down a bit, Lord Grandpa let out a long sigh and turned to the only woman in the room. When he spoke up, his voice was calm and carried a rare hint of acquiescence.

"I apologize, Lord Taika. I have indeed kept a few details I have deemed superficial from your attention, but I assure you, I have never met this Bel of the Abyss in person, and as such, I could not in good conscience tell you about his capabilities."

"Well, at least now we know he's immune to manatronic interference bursts," Lord Gulliver noted with a cheeky smile, only to get a finger pointed at his nose again.

"Silence, you halfwit! This was all your fault!"

"Now, now. Calm down, old pal. At this rate, you're going to burst a blood vessel." The man carefully pushed Lord Ambrose's hand away and stepped behind him, putting his palms on his shoulder. "Maybe a relaxing massage would help?"

"I don't need no massage, you—!"

It was at this point that Lord Barnabas reached the end of his rope and exclaimed, "Lord Gulliver, stop fooling around!"

"Hey! Watch your language!" the stout man in the middle yelled back, his brows set into a glare. "Only I can call this simpleton a fool!"

Ignoring their argument, Lord Taika finished up her drink and turned to the owner of the study, eyes narrowed into inquisitive squints.

"You said you have omitted a few inconsequential details. Was the fact that you fought Leonard Dunning in the past one of them, Amadeus?"

Her inquiry made the squabble on her left come to an abrupt halt, and the three men all focused on Lord Grandpa.

"Yes. Yes, it was," he admitted remarkably easily, which only made his guests look more curious.

"And what about that thing this Abyssal Lord said," Lord Barnabas asked, only to quickly clarify, "In regards to losing the battle."

"It was not a battle, merely a small demonstration," the old man corrected him, and it made the tall redhead, who was incidentally still massaging the other old man's shoulders, raise a curious brow.

"You didn't answer the question. Did you actually lose to him?"

"As I was saying," Lord Grandpa stressed, trying to seem dignified while even a blind man could see that he was defensive about the topic. "It was a show of force, where I demonstrated the might of an arch-mage to Leonard Dunning. Nothing less, nothing more."

"He's still dodging," Lord Gulliver noted with schadenfreude. "He totally lost, didn't he?"

"Or at the very least, Lord Endymonion's demonstration didn't have the desired effect," Lord Barnabas tried to be diplomatic, but it only made the stout man with the big beard laugh out loud.

"Hah! You got done in by a child?"

"Do not put words into my mouth, Lord Ambrose," the old badger responded in a low, threatening voice, but it only earned him another guffaw.

"Hah! You shouldn't have held back then!"

"I did not," Lord Grandpa responded, causing the boisterous arch-mage to quiet down.

"Well, then you should've picked your battlefield better. I would've taken him to the Nexus chamber under the school, and then—"

"That was precisely what I did,"

"Really?" Taika blurted out in a mixture of shock and disbelief, and even Lord Barnabas seemed flabbergasted.

"And you still couldn't win?" he asked, causing Lord Grandpa to exhale an exasperated breath.

"As I had already told you, I did not lose. We exchanged blows, and he merely matched me until our time was up."

"But you couldn't overpower him," Lord Gulliver pointed out. "While you were in the Nexus Chamber."

Lord Grandpa remained silent, though his sullen expression spoke volumes about his feelings on the topic.

"Amadeus." The grave tone used by Lord Taika made everyone look at her, and after a melodramatic pause, she asked, "Who exactly is Leonard Dunning?"

"Good question," the redhead mage added with a finger raised. "We already knew that he's the famous Chimera Slayer of Critias and that he's this… what was he called by those people?"

"Their King of Knights," Lord Barnabas supplied the answer.

"Yes, that." Lord Gulliver snapped his finger. "The King of Knights. Has a nice ring to it. More importantly, he's also powerful enough to match one of the few combat-ready arch-mages of our Assembly, and he can order an Abyssal Lord to make deliveries for him."

"One thing's for sure," Lord Ambrose cut in, sounding remarkably calmer. "Whatever this Draconic Federation is, it's not a Celestial ploy."

"Right. They would never work with an Abyssal, let alone a Lord of them," the dark-skinned man mused, and while his deduction was beneficial to me, I had no choice but to point out that he attributed waaay too much integrity to the Celestials.

"The way he publicly announced that he is working as some sort of diplomat in their court also points to the same conclusion," Lord Taika added with a thoughtful finger on her chin. "If he was a Celestial agent, there is no way he would let us know this, let alone on his own accord."

"In retrospect, that should have been obvious," Lord Barnabas mused in turn. "He is the leader of the Brotherhood of Most Heroic Bloodlines, or rather, its successor organization. They are historically on bad terms with the Celestial Intelligence Network, so it's unthinkable that one of them could turn traitor, let alone their leader."

Once again, the dark-skinned man proved that he was not only prone to jumping to conclusions, but he also gave way too much benefit of the doubt to secret supernatural organizations. On the other hand, he was still the sanest person in the room, so I couldn't get too mad at him.

"Maybe we have been mistaken from the start," Lord Grandpa spoke up in a solemn voice, yet his eyes looked like that of a drowning man who just caught sight of a lifebuoy floating in arm's reach. "It could be that we have been so focused on our ancient adversaries that we naturally presumed that they were the ones pulling the strings behind the scenes, and never considered the possibility that they might have been yet another puppet in the play directed by someone else."

"Bel of the Abyss," Lord Ambrose spoke the name on everyone's mind. "He's a damn scary bastard, that's for sure, but he doesn't strike me as the mastermind type."

"We don't have many other options," Lord Barnabas pointed out. "If we presume that the Celestials aren't the ones controlling the situation on the island, he's the only entity powerful enough to qualify."

"Him, and Leonard Dunning," Lord Gulliver quipped, and seeing the deadpan stares directed at him, he loudly added, "Oh, come on, people! I couldn't be the only one to think that!"

"Shut it, you dolt! Do you expect a seventeen years old kid to manipulate all the dragonbloods, and the Brotherhood, and the winged ones, all on his own? Bah!"

"It is a rather far-fetched theory," Lord Grandpa agreed with unusual emphasis, and everyone seemed to agree with him.

"Okay, then it's this Bel guy," Gulliver relented. "What do we do about him?"

"That's a good question," Lord Taika spoke softly and exhaled a long sigh. "It is obvious that he does not consider us a credible threat to him, so our presence alone is not going to serve as an effective deterrent."

"It could've if we kicked his teeth in back there," the bearded arch-mage grumbled, aiming a dissatisfied frown at the black man standing by his side.

"I thought we were over this, Lord Ambrose," Lord Barnabas groaned back, one hand already reaching for his temple. "We are on a diplomatic mission, and we were standing in the heart of the Draconic Federation. Just the fact that we attempted to interfere without prior agreement was overstepping our boundaries. So long as none of the dragonblooded patriarchs had attempted to apprehend him and requested our aid, doing anything more could have been grounds for a conflict we can't afford right now."

"That is correct." Lord Grandpa backed him up right away, sounding pleased by the direction the conversation was going. "So long as this Bel of the Abyss remains an element out of our control, we cannot afford to alienate a potential ally."

"I wouldn't go as far as to call them a 'potential ally', but I agree that de-escalation was the right choice at the time."

Hearing Lord Taika's agreement, Lord Ambrose let out another 'Bah!' and dropped the issue, only for Lord Gulliver to pick up back up.

"It wasn't that bad! At least we learned that the anti-manatronic burst had some effect on him, even if it didn't stop him from moving about." When Lord Grandpa raised a brow, he explained, "His clothes were fuzzy for a moment, and he seemed alarmed. It shows that he wasn't completely immune to the effect. We just have to go bigger next time!"

"I would prefer it if there wasn't a next time," the female arch-mage griped. "If I never had to meet that winged fiend again, it would be too soon. I knew I shouldn't have come to this island..."

Wait, did she just say 'winged'? Was she talking generally, like how they collectively referred to the Draconians, Celestials, and Abyssals as 'the Winged Ones', or did I accidentally manifest a pair of wings again?

I hoped they would say something else on the topic, but instead, the discussion went in a completely different direction when Lord Gulliver said, "I think we should take a break. Until tomorrow, I mean. It's getting late, and Ambrose gets reeeally grumpy when he misses his beauty sleep."

"Who are you calling grumpy, you uncultured lout!?"

While those two started bickering again, Lord Grandpa jumped to capitalize on the opportunity to get these allegedly wise and venerable senior mages out of his office, and bid everyone farewell, agreeing to have another meeting the next day to come up with some 'Anti-Bel Counter Measures'. Better add that to my schedule, I supposed.

In any case, I caught two plot-relevant discussions one after the other, so I was rather pleased with myself. Still, I figured I could check some of my other marks before I got up from my seat and decided what to do for the rest of the night, and after leafing through the red dots on the edge of my vision, my eyes suddenly popped open.

"You've got to be kidding me…"

"Is Leonard-dono still thinking aloud?"

Mountain Girl sounded rather disinterested, and after a moment of consideration, I shook my head.

"Don't mind me, just keep reading."

"All right. Rinne just got to a good part, so Rinne will read one more chapter."

It took me a lot of willpower not to echo my previous warning, in the company of a cheeky smile, but I suppressed the urge and closed my eyes instead. I had a feeling that this one required my full and immediate attention…