“Don’t. I don’t want to think about it yet. Stop.”

  “You need to accept reality, Lady Aileen.”

  “It is extremely aggravating when that’s coming from you!” she yells. Telling herself to calm down, Aileen inhales deeply.

  Rachel and her other ladies-in-waiting are still in the room, and this conversation probably makes no sense to them, but none seem even a little fazed. They simply continue working silently. They’re certainly well trained, but it’s also entirely possible that they just consider Aileen and Lilia as members of the same strange species.

  After taking a sip from a fresh glass of fruit-flavored water, Aileen composes herself. “Okay, don’t get the wrong idea. I absolutely do not want to hear about the game. I’m simply appraising your manners.”

  “Oh…?” Lilia laughs. Using the motions Aileen has taught her in the correct order, she elegantly picks up her cup. The gesture is beyond reproach, and Aileen tsks in irritation. Lilia might have mastered some things, but what she chooses to talk about makes her sound nothing like a crown princess.

  “Wanting to talk to me means you do remember something, right?”

  “…Only to the extent that it sounds like a story I may have heard once.”

  “Even though the name of the country is exactly the same?”

  “As a rule, I don’t remember things like that with any confidence…”

  Character names were one thing, but unless the names of regions and countries were unique or she had an intense memory associated with them, Aileen never bothered to remember every last one. Only the most intense players remember every proper noun that comes up in a game.

  “Meaning you haven’t played through it? In that one, instead of the story splitting depending on your affection levels, you just get more choices and branch points after the first playthrough. The basic story doesn’t change, but choices you didn’t originally have show up in your second playthrough, and you find out what actually happened during different events. There’s a mystery-solving aspect to it.”

  “Wait. I thought I told you I haven’t acknowledged that’s what this is yet.”

  “Oh, come on…”

  “I mean, it can’t be, right? It’s a different game! A fan disc or a spin-off would be one thing, but it’s not even part of the same series. Why would it appear in this world?!”

  “Hold on. I thought you knew, Lady Aileen? Both games had the same dev team.”

  “Huh?” Aileen makes a foolish noise that’s rather unbecoming for an empress.

  “It was the company that was different.” Lilia quietly sets her cup down and smiles. It almost seems like she’s doing it out of spite. “Still, it was pretty well known that the team behind Regalia of Saints, Demons, and Maidens also worked on Valkyrie of the Magic Lance.”

  “E-even though the company was different?”

  “The devs apparently argued with the higher-ups ever since the first Regalia. Management forced them to change to completely different specifications, and they told the devs to not include sci-fi or battle elements because they weren’t popular in otome games. On top of that, they one-sidedly declared, ‘This game won’t sell,’ and slashed the budget midway through development.”

  “…But it did sell fairly well, didn’t it?”

  The series had five numbered installments, and fan discs were released as well. As the villainess, Aileen had issues with the way they’d thoughtlessly made her death a sidenote, but she acknowledged that the voice actors and the art were good. They created that husband of hers, the demon king whose beauty could ruin entire nations.

  “It sold like hotcakes. That just made the resentment grow during the production of the second game.”

  “Wh-why would that happen…?”

  “From what I hear, the development team planned to set the sequel in Hausel, right from the beginning, and they wanted to do the Regalia 4 story in Regalia 2. However, since Regalia 1 sold so well, the higher-ups ordered them to also set the sequel in an academy. The first two entries in the series are both school stories, and 2 follows 1 chronologically; there were a lot of similarities, right? And Serena, the heroine, idolized the Maid of the Sacred Sword.”

  Regalia 3 was set in a harem, and although Regalia 4 was also set at a school, the focus was decidedly the royal test. Compared to them, Regalia 1 and 2 had a lot more in common.

  “That’s mostly the stuff of rumors. Still,” Lilia continues, “after Regalia 2 was released, the development team went independent and set up their own company, so I doubt the stuff about fighting with management is a total lie.”

  “You really know a lot about this…,” Aileen says, trailing off.

  “When I like a game, I at least check to see who made it, obviously. Games aren’t cheap, you know. Besides, Regalia of Saints, Demons, and Maidens was specifically called out as the Valkyrie of the Magic Lance development team’s flagship work in promo material.”

  Was that a thing most people did? Compared to Aileen, who only ever checked the art and the voice actors at most, Lilia was apparently the type to gather as much information as she could before deciding whether to purchase a game.

  “But even if the development team was the same, it’s still a different game, isn’t it?”

  “How naive can you get, Lady Aileen?” Lilia tuts, waving a spoonful of jelly from side to side. “As I said earlier, they fought with upper management. Then both games 1 and 2 sold well, in ways the development team was unhappy with.”

  “U-unhappy…”

  “Valkyrie of the Magic Lance was a creation born from their despair—the Regalia of Saints, Demons, and Maidens that the original development team actually wanted to make.”

  “B-but that doesn’t mean the world is the same!”

  “Incidentally, the same illustrator did the character designs!”

  “……”

  “The dev team even ended up in court with their former company, which sued them for plagiarism.”

  Aileen buries her face in her hands.

  Lilia continues cheerfully, “Both the game system and the story were different, so the original company lost their suit. Valkyrie isn’t set at a school, and the tone of the story is more refined than Regalia 1. Still, the character distribution and design were strikingly similar. While the exact same names weren’t used, occasionally there’d be bits of background info that made you think, ‘Oh, this could be Ellmeyer, and that could be Hausel.’”

  “…You’re talking about the mastermind behind the revolution, right?” Aileen asks timidly.

  Lilia nods. “Yes. The country ruled by the demon king, and the blue country a queen controls with her predictions. It feels like they turned Regalia of Saints, Demons, and Maidens into the villain, doesn’t it? And that perfectly matches up with reality, no?”

  Strictly speaking, Imperial Ellmeyer did depose the Maid of the Sacred Sword and is currently ruled by the demon king, while the Queendom of Hausel was undoubtedly a blue country—a country of the sky—which a queen ruled with precognition.

  “It can’t be… Are you suggesting that because the world no longer aligns with Regalia of Saints, Demons, and Maidens, it’s triggered the start of Valkyrie of the Magic Lance, which it does resemble? That’s why, even though that game is different, the setting has overlapped…with this reality…”

  “It’s thanks to all that hard work you put in to warp the game, Lady Aileen. I think you should be proud!”

  Aileen doesn’t find this the slightest bit amusing. Planting her elbows on the table, she dredges up vague, distant memories. “…If I recall, in the first ending with the hero, the revolution in the Kilvas Empire succeeded, but the demon attacks didn’t stop. Correct?”

  “Right, because Hausel and Ellmeyer were the root of the trouble. On the second playthrough, your stats carry over, and you dispatch troops to Hausel and Ellmeyer.”

  “And win, I assume, if the game progresses as expected.”

  “Mm-hmm. Ultimately, the heroine becomes empress of Kilvas and tries to unify the continent in order to rid it of conflict.”

  In other words, if everything plays out according to the game, Imperial Ellmeyer will become a battlefield.

  Aileen is on the verge of collapsing to the floor in a shattered heap, but something abruptly occurs to her. “No, wait. Hausel’s already been defeated…and this is absolutely, positively a different game, isn’t it?! Even if the character designer was the same!”

  “Oh, well, yes. The country names were camouflaged as well; they were technically just ‘the demon king’s country’ and ‘the queen’s blue country.’”

  “And none of the same characters appear. At least, they didn’t on the first playthrough; I’ve done that!”

  “That’s probably because the dev team changed companies and didn’t have the rights, so they couldn’t openly use the same character names, don’t you think?”

  “You don’t know that for sure, though! In that case, the mastermind might be someone else!”

  Lilia stops scarfing down jelly and considers this possibility. “They did hide the queen of Hausel’s and the demon king’s faces in the game. Those were definitely their silhouettes, though, and that makes me think there’s no mistake. If they’d been different characters, the dev team would have come up with new character designs and given them names. You could practically feel the hatred oozing from the way the developers deliberately made them duplicates and then denied it.”

  “Ngh… Still, we don’t appear in the game! This has nothing to do with the game; this is just reality! Even the wedding is a political one, meant to prevent civil war.”

  “Oh, the heroine initiates the revolution at the ceremony! The ‘revolutionary in a wedding dress’ still image was really good.”

  “As I said! It won’t be like the game—”

  “Lady Aileen, are you sure you want to let the demon king go by himself?” Lilia’s probing question shuts down Aileen’s attempt to deny her claims. “They’ve invited both the queen of Hausel and the demon king to the ceremony, haven’t they? That’s exactly what happens in the game.”

  “The queen of Hausel, Lady Amelia, is gone. It won’t be the same.”

  “But the demon king’s attending. After that first playthrough, Kilvas considers him the final boss and mastermind, and he’s just sauntering over there of his own accord.”

  With the spoon in her mouth, Lilia shoots Aileen a sidelong glance. There’s nothing well mannered about the way she’s eating now, but Aileen doesn’t have the spare energy to point this out.

  This world isn’t a game; it’s her life. However, her life to date has made Aileen understand very keenly that she can’t afford to ignore the game’s events. In the first place, without the memories from her previous life guiding her, Aileen would never have considered marrying Claude.

  “But…without the sacred sword, they can’t defeat the demon king! Master Claude won’t be in dange—”

  Lilia interrupts Aileen. “They’ve got a sacred sword over there, too.”

  Aileen’s heart freezes when she hears that.

  “Even though the title says Magic Lance…?”

  “It’s a hidden element. You have to fulfill a certain condition to make it show up. It’s ‘the ultimate weapon that can take out even a human demon king in one attack. ’”

  That completely ruins the game’s title. Aileen groans. “If the developers matched the details of this game’s setting, the sacred sword shouldn’t work on humans…! Why would they upgrade that and nothing else?!”

  “Maybe it was one of the development team’s original ideas. I bet the company complained about having a protagonist who could hurt humans in a game aimed at a female audience and watered it down. This is spite, pure and simple. As a result, that overlapped brilliantly with reality as well. After all, the real sacred sword passes judgment on humans, too.”

  Lilia is cackling, but Aileen doesn’t find any of this the least bit funny.

  “On top of that, Valkyrie presents itself as sophisticated and refined, but it’s really just tragedy porn. I really doubt either side is going to get a happy ending. Just give up and accept reality already, Lady Aileen.”

  “…You’re just trying to toy with me again. You won’t fool me.”

  “But Valkyrie of the Magic Lance was a story created by the developers—the gods—in order to make up for Regalia of Saints, Demons, and Maidens, you know?”

  If one views the game as the world and the development team as gods, then what Lilia is saying makes perfect sense.

  “In order to save the Valkyries, the heroine, Diana, wins the help of the hero, Ernst, and the Valkyries themselves. She slays the final boss and his sister, who tries to protect him—that would be Emperor Vica and Cattleya, the villainess—through a revolution. Then she exposes the wicked deeds of the powerful nations Hausel and Ellmeyer, wins back her freedom, and leads the world to true peace… While being completely self-absorbed and generating countless sacrifices.”

  “……”

  “The wedding event is a route branch point. Exactly how it plays out depends on the route, but it’s also the event where the heroine declares the start of the revolution. Shouldn’t you see it for yourself?”

  Balling her hands into fists, Aileen raises her head. She forces a smile, trying to appear as elegant as possible. “I won’t fall for that.”

  “Hmm.”

  “I am an empress now. I can’t act recklessly because of something as childish as a game.”

  “Hmm.”

  “In addition, I am expecting. I’ve already begun thinking and living like a virtuous wife and good mother…”

  “Hmm.”

  “There will be no more plotting!”

  Which is why she decides to declare it boldly to her husband’s face.

  “Master Claude! I am accompanying you to the Kilvas Empire!”

  “What?”

  Her husband is seated at his desk when she walks in to make that declaration, sweeping back the long train of her dress in a dashing gesture. He stares at her blankly. Drawing herself up to her full height, Aileen crosses her arms. “You don’t mind, do you? We’d originally planned to attend together. Our hosts are already expecting me, so it shouldn’t be any trouble.”

  “But we’d just decided that you wouldn’t attend because of your pregnancy…”

  “What of it? Are you telling me I should seclude myself? That would be detrimental to my health!”

  “Being abroad isn’t the same as being at home. What if something happens?”

  “In that case, you will simply have to do something about it, Master Claude. Pushing all the responsibility onto me like this—are you aware that you are going to be a father soon?!”

  “I’d like to be, but your leap in logic was extremely strange.”

  “You mustn’t just stop thinking like that. It’s all right: You are my husband, Master Claude. You can make the impossible possible!”

  Claude shuts his mouth. While everyone around them is simply stunned by her reckless argument, Aileen continues modestly, “I am going to be a mother soon. I understand that what I am saying is unreasonable. I promise you I won’t do anything dangerous.”

  “Considering your track record, I have no reason to believe you.”

  Although those around them are still dazed by Aileen’s sheer momentum, her husband is calm and unyielding. With an irritated tch!, Aileen changes tactics.

  “Something recently occurred to me, Master Claude. Family ties!” Claude looks puzzled, and Aileen pounces on the opportunity to push harder. “It is your cousin’s wedding, Master Claude. Won’t that make it my first meeting with your relations?!”

  “…My father and my grandmother are technically both alive and well, you know.”

  “Goodness, are you certain? I believe the cold over there is quite harsh.”

  “As the demon king, I can say that my parents are definitely in good health in the demon realm.”

  “Your parents can’t be publicly introduced to others, and of course that is not their fault, but as your wife, I’ve always longed to form good relationships with your human relatives! I’ll send them seasonal gifts and go to greet them formally…”

  “You?”

  “After all, so far, your relatives have always opposed me and treated me harshly.”

  Aileen smiles brightly, and Claude falls silent. It’s true that most of his immediate family have tried to either eliminate Aileen or drive a wedge between them. She’s sure he won’t be able to be too heavy-handed here.

  “When that thought occurred to me, I was unable to contain myself. Please let me come with you.”

  “…You never intended to listen to me, did you?”

  “Oh, I can’t wait to meet your family!”

  Claude frowns but says nothing. His adviser and guards watch them both with bated breath.

  Sighing, Aileen calls to the lady-in-waiting behind her. “Rachel.”

  “Yes, Lady Aileen. The preparations have all been made so that you could make your suggestion at any time. You may depart whenever you wish.”

  She’s demonstrating that whether Claude agrees at this point or not, it won’t change what she does.

  Claude’s face goes blank. Although it was a still, cloudless midsummer day just a moment earlier, a strong wind abruptly rattles the windows. It’s probably less confusion than wordless intimidation.

  Aileen only giggles. “You will take me with you, won’t you? Or would you prefer a repeat of Mirchetta?”

  “……What are you plotting?”

  “Why, nothing at all. I originally intended to thoroughly enjoy myself while my husband was away.”

  This is completely true, but Aileen believes it’s more convenient if he gets the wrong idea. Considering his experiences to date, Claude will probably want to keep Aileen where he can see her.

  In fact, as he looks at her, there’s an ominous, suspicious light in his eyes.

  “On the other hand, life grows stale without a little plotting between couples, no?” Aileen smiles at him with the expression of a woman who’s been plotting all along.