24 Chapter 24 I love you

I smiled back at my brother. I hadn't spent nearly as much time with Ruval's peerage as I had with him, but from what few interactions I'd had with them before and after Ruval's Rating Game matches, Zissa, Ruval's queen and the third daughter of the Shax Pillar, was kind and loyal to my brother. She was actually one of the main reasons I chose Yubelluna as my queen. I'd much rather have a queen stand beside me through any foe than have the strongest piece possible.

Not that Yubelluna hadn't just shown she was incredibly powerful. She defeated the Gremory heiress by herself, a fact that didn't go unnoticed if the pile of ashes in the corner of the room was anything to go by. Well-wishes and condolences mailed from various lords trying to take advantage of my no longer being a Phenex by offering vast sums in exchange for my queen piece. Their current ashen state showed exactly where I thought they could shove their offers. I wasn't trading Yubelluna.

"Do you have any idea what I should do now?" I asked Ruval, desperate for anything to direct my attention towards. I'd been scrambling since we left the Gremory Estate. The extent of my plan was to free Clarissa, which I'd done, but now I was more lost than a whale beached in a desert.

"Make friends." Ruval said, his features and voice dead serious. "No matter what happens, you will always be my brother. And I swear to you, once I am the head of the Phenex family, your name will be restored, but until then, you need to gather as many allies as you possibly can. Every opportunistic lord and lady will smell blood in the water and come after you. Some will likely offer to protect you by giving you a place in their peerage. Do not accept any such offer."

"I second that advice, my king." Clarissa, speaking up for the first time, said from where she and Yubelluna stood sentinel by the door.

I sighed and fell back onto the bed. "Make friends, huh?" I trusted Ruval's assessment, and my plans for the future had been so thoroughly dashed that most of them were pipe dreams now. Still, I knew a lot about this world from the fanfiction days of my first life. I'd been planning on abusing that knowledge to my own benefit, but I'd lost almost all of the power I had to take advantage of certain things. One thing in particular stood out. The person I had planned to use my queen on before coming across Yubelluna, then ear-marked my mutation bishop for. Seeing as I no longer possessed a mutation bishop and I knew of someone else who would kill for the person in question, I had an opportunity.

"Clarissa?" I said, still staring up at the ceiling. "Would you do me a favor and brew up the most potent restorative draught you can? Add in stuff designed to wake people up too, please. Throw in a Phenex Tear while you're at it. I put the three I carry with me in the dresser." Why was I securing some of the most highly sought after healing concoctions in the world in a dresser? Because there wasn't a shoebox in my hotel of banishment.

I heard Clarissa walk towards Ruval and the sound of something being exchanged between them. Ruval had brought a comically large duffel bag filled with everything important he could find in Clarissa's old lab before Lady Phenex tore through and burned it to 'purify' the room.

"I will, of course, do as you ask, my king, but may I ask what you are planning?"

"I want to know that too."

I looked up and saw Ruval shooting me a calculating look.

"You have a plan, don't you, little brother?"

Sitting back up, I shrugged. "One that will either solve all of my current problems or blow up in my face spectacularly. There's no way to know unless I give it a shot. Given I don't have a better idea, I'm gonna take the gamble."

"Perhaps if you were to share this oh so risky plan with your wise and intelligent older brother, he'd be able to help you sort through the kinks?" Ruval said, a playful glint flashing through his serious gaze.

"Well, I'm going to walk right up to Serafall Leviathan's office and offer to banish any doubt that resides in certain devil's minds about whether or not she is actually powerful enough to be Leviathan's heir."

A disbelieving silence followed in the wake of my absurd statement. Ruval was the one to break it.

"Riser, it's a good thing I love you, because you have a habit of making me question the fundamental principles of reality."

X

"My king, I must once again request you consider what you are about to do." Clarissa said, her eyes darting around anxiously as the three of us walked up to the massive, opulent building before us.

"I have, Clarissa. I screwed up with Lady Phenex, and the two of you got dragged along to suffer the consequences. I'm risking this for you as much as I am for me."

"Clarissa and I will be content so long as we stay at your side, my king. I suggest we heed your brother's suggestion and prepare." Yubelluna said, even more tense and anxious than Clarissa.

"If we wait, there'll be more of an opening for people to take advantage of us. I don't want to give them the opportunity to…I don't even want to think about the thousand things they could do to us. We need to do this now or not at all. I'm in the news right now. That is the only thing that might get me an audience."

Pulling the door open, I led Yubelluna and Clarissa into the building. What awaited us was a modestly decorated waiting room. There were several fake fern plants lining the walls with simple, cushioned chairs between them. Before us was a desk and a blue-haired devil woman attending to a stack of paperwork before her.

She looked us over as we entered and said, "Is there something I can help you with?"

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