As soon as the queen finished her sentence, Trash ripped the collar off.

“I can’t take it anymore! Shield!!”

He was as annoying as ever.

“I will let that slide this time. So there you have it. Aultcra—Trash, I mean. Tell Mr. Iwatani how you power up your staff.”

“I’ll never tell him! I . . . I refuse to accept this! The Shield, a Count?! Absolutely unacceptable!”

“Oh my, what shall we do? I’d like to request that you spare his life at the very least.”

As she said this, the queen delivered repeated blows to Trash’s face. Being my twisted self, I’d begun to enjoy the whole spectacle a bit, but realistically speaking, it would be difficult to get Trash to share his power-up methods. In that case, killing him, waiting for a new staff hero to appear, and asking the new hero would be quicker. But the queen was asking me to show leniency and overlook his behavior. This was proving to be a real predicament.

“Queen. Use every means of torture available to make him speak. A hero that has no intention of fighting for world peace does not deserve to live.”

“Insolence! I’ll—?!”

The queen ordered Trash gagged and quieted.

“Understood.”

“The deadline—”

The queen interrupted me just as I was about to decide how much time to give him.

“My daughter Bitch presents another problem for us.”

Oh? Had there been some kind of development?

The power-up methods were certainly important, but they could wait for Bitch. I had a feeling the queen had purposefully changed the subject, but I could always just bring it back up again later when I got another chance.

“According to the account of events given by Mr. Kitamura upon regaining consciousness, it seems very likely that she survived.”

“That is a problem. You must find and capture her at once.”

According to Kyo, Motoyasu had been abandoned by the rest of his party upon facing the Spirit Tortoise. I had no doubt that she’d survived.

“As you wish.”

I had no idea if she would return to Motoyasu. Then again, maybe she should be executed for deserting him in the face of the enemy?

“I will need to speak with her before anything else. Depending on how that goes, you may find the outcome quite pleasing, Mr. Iwatani.”

“That would be most excellent. Heh heh heh . . .”

The queen and I laughed together as we sneakily probed each other’s true intentions.

“Mr. Naofumi!”

“Yeah, yeah. I know.”

Jeez, was she ever going to let me get away with a bit of mischief? Raph-chan never seemed to mind.

“Rafu fu fu . . .”

Speaking of Raph-chan, she had been imitating me for the past few minutes and had a sinister grin on her face.

“In any case, I have many questions for you, as well, Mr. Iwatani.”

“I know, but I have some things to take care of first.”

We’d just gotten back from the other world, and we needed to get started on preparations.