Half of the onlookers vomited from sheer horror, while the other half turned deathly pale, trembling uncontrollably. Several of the female servants, including the maids, fainted dead away.
Even Rose's knees were knocking together. She figured Zack was probably the only person in the room who hadn't so much as twitched an eyebrow.
At any rate, there was no longer any doubt that Jane had intended to murder Lord Oliver.
"So? Sis Asta, where's the antidote for that food?"
To Zack's utterly exasperated and weary question, Asta answered instantly with a curiously refreshed expression.
"No poison was ever in it to begin with."
"There wasn't?"
"Indeed. The plate of food that woman poisoned is right here."
A dish piled high with food suddenly materialized in Asta's left hand.
"Huh? Then what about the dish from before?"
"Ah, this one, you mean?"
Asta placed the plate in his right hand—the one he had claimed was laced with poison—onto the table and turned his palm upward. The next instant, a brand-new plate of food rested in his grasp.
For a moment, Zack could only gawk at the absurd sight, his mouth working silently.
"Man... Sis, you really are a devil."
He forced the words out from the depths of his throat.
"Indeed. Precisely so."
Just as Asta brushed off Zack's remark—
"It's over! It's all over for you bastards! More than five hundred members of Snake Blood are already surrounding this city! Not even a single bug is getting out of here!"
Jane shrieked, her facial muscles spasming as tears and snot smeared across her contorted features.
"Sn-Snake Blood!? You're one of Snake Blood's thugs!?"
The color drained completely from Lord Oliver's face as he interrogated her.
"That's right! I'm a scout for Snake Blood! If they don't get my signal, they're ordered to raid this city! And when they do, every last one of you is getting slaughtered!"
At Jane's scream, all strength left Lord Oliver's body. His face painted in pure despair, his head dropped.
"This is the worst..."
Groaning, he sank heavily to the floor and clutched his head in his hands.
"Lord Oliver, do you know of them?"
"Yes... Snake Blood is one of the top ten militant syndicates in the Holy Amelia Kingdom's underworld."
"What are our chances?"
"The Akinashi Domain is merely a mining territory. We have very few hunters stationed here. If five hundred members of Snake Blood attack us, we won't stand a chance."
Lord Oliver's words instantly plunged the room into sheer pandemonium.
"Wh-What's going to happen to us!?"
"How should I know!?"
Seeing the normally calm and collected Lord Oliver so thoroughly shaken, it was impossible to expect anyone else to keep their composure.
Still, this was bad. If they just sat idly by, the situation would spiral beyond repair. Now was the time for immediate action.
"Serves you right! Every last one of you is doomed!"
Watching Lord Oliver and the staff panic, Jane's face twisted into a cackling laugh.
Zack shrugged, looking down at the gloating woman with an expression of genuine pity.
"Man, what terrible luck. Seriously rotten luck."
He muttered the words repeatedly, as though he had given up on something entirely.
"It's too late to cry about it now! Young and old, men and women, you'll all be slaugh—"
Right in the middle of her victory screech, the dining hall doors flew open, and a man in armor—presumably a guard—came stumbling in.
"O-O-Outside the city—!"
He frantically pointed toward the entrance, but the words caught in his throat, leaving his mouth opening and closing uselessly.
"Lord Oliver!"
Rose called out with a voice so commanding it surprised even herself. Lord Oliver snapped to attention as if struck, his eyes darting across the servants in the room. Slapping both cheeks with his hands, he shot up from the floor and thrust his right arm into the air.
"It will be all right! It's true our domain guards cannot repel them alone. However, the Sword Saint resides in neighboring Lamoor! As long as reinforcements reach us, victory is ours!"
He bellowed at the top of his lungs, clearly trying to rally his own spirits.
"I agree with your reasoning, Lord Oliver. However, the Forest of Deep Magic in Eastend, where Kai is, is slightly closer than Lamoor. I believe it would be far wiser for us to buy time while sending for Kai's aid."
From Akinashi, reaching the Forest of Deep Magic would be faster than getting to Lamoor. Furthermore, Kai had an absurd asset under his command: the giant bird. That beast could travel from the Forest of Deep Magic to Akinashi almost instantaneously. In other words, as long as word reached the Forest of Deep Magic, their victory was practically guaranteed.
Naturally, they would have to defend Akinashi until then, but Rose believed they could manage somehow with Zack and Asta present.
Zack was undeniably powerful. If not for Kai, he would easily be the prime candidate for a royal's Royal Guard. Asta, too, judging by the blinding speed that had completely eluded perception moments ago, was without doubt a formidable warrior. It would naturally be impossible for just the two of them to wipe out five hundred bandits, but holding the line until Kai arrived should be well within their capabilities.
"Is your Royal Guard truly powerful enough to destroy five hundred elite bandits?"
Gauging Rose's expression, Lord Oliver pressed her. She had already told him that Kai was a boy bearing an incompetent Gift. That was precisely why she knew he found her claim so hard to believe.
"Yes. Powerful enough that Knight Commander Arnold, His Majesty's own Royal Guard, openly declared Kai to be overwhelmingly stronger than himself."
"..."
A heavy silence descended over the room. Kingdom Knight Commander Arnold was celebrated worldwide as the greatest swordsman in the Holy Amelia Kingdom. A warrior surpassing him was simply beyond imagination. That was undoubtedly the shared sentiment of everyone present.
"No matter who it is, it's impossible..."
The guard who had brought the report sank to his knees, muttering under his breath with his head bowed low. Seeing him look as though he had surrendered all hope, Lord Oliver stepped forward and seized both of his shoulders.
"What do you mean, impossible?"
He quietly demanded an explanation.
"There's no way we can win! Go for help!? That's out of the question! Right now, well over a thousand bandits have surrounded the city of Akinashi! How in the world are we supposed to break through that!?"
Over a thousand bandits? Snake Blood's forces were supposed to number five hundred. And at this exact moment... There was almost no doubt.
"Could the thousand-plus bandits surrounding the city right now be...?"
"Yeah, probably. That makes Master's plan a whole lot clearer. Those bandits can't be ordinary thugs either. Did they have any identifying features? Anything at all?"
Trembling, the guard pressed an index finger to his temple.
"...I think one of their units was carrying a banner with the crest of a jar and a dragon."
He forced the words out in a halting stammer.
"A crest of... a jar and a dragon?"
An image depicting a dragon emerging from a jar, perhaps? Rose felt as though she had heard of that insignia before back in the royal capital. If she remembered correctly...
"Khaha! Kuhaha! He really did it! Nine times out of ten, that's the Tao Family!"
Clapping a hand over his face, Zack burst into wild, ecstatic laughter. The name he uttered instantly surfaced information Rose had once heard from a government official.
The Tao Family—a colossal syndicate with deep roots in the great eastern empire of Butou. They enforced ruthless initiation trials, and every single member was said to be worth a thousand men in battle. They were absolute monarchs of the underworld, existing on a completely different plane from mid-tier outfits like Snake Blood.
"Th-Then... bringing the Wind Cats into the fold... You're telling me he drew the Tao Family here just for that!? You've got to be kidding me! That's completely unhinged!"
From the perspective of the Tao Family perched at the pinnacle of the underworld, the Wind Cats were the lowest of the low. To use a syndicate hailed as underworld royalty as a mere tool to absorb a minor gang like the Wind Cats was utter madness.
"A bit late to figure that out, Princess."
"Indeed. Master is an unprecedented anomaly—an eccentric god and a mad god rolled into one."
As Asta chimed in with smug certainty, Jane let out a bloodcurdling shriek.
"That makes no sense! Why would the mighty Tao Family attack a flimsy, backwater territory like this!?"
Looking thoroughly annoyed, Zack dug a pinky into his ear.
"That's why I told you your luck was rotten, didn't I? You guys got written into a monster's script as disposable clowns dancing for his amusement. Your luck is just hopelessly, disastrously bad."
He looked down at her once more, his gaze laced with genuine pity.
"Indeed. I am of the same mind. The mastermind who dispatched you lot to this land possesses an evil so profound even I must admire it. In all likelihood, you will all dance as pitiful marionettes, picked clean to the bone, only to meet a miserable and brutal end."
Resting hands on his slender hips and leaning forward to gaze down at Jane, the upward curl of Asta's lips was truly reminiscent of the archdevils worshipped by the demon race in fairy tales—a sight that was honestly chilling.
"..."
Jane stared wide-eyed at Asta for several seconds before wrapping her arms tightly around herself and weeping in stifled sobs.
Perhaps unable to process a reality that had spiraled so wildly out of scale, Lord Oliver and his servants could only watch the unfolding scene in stunned silence.
"Well, in that case, our job here is done. We might as well grab front-row seats and watch this story written by a monster play out."
With Zack's parting words setting the stage, the operation to absorb the Wind Cats as citizens of the domain was officially underway.