"...Ahem! Ahem, ahem!" The lord broke into a thunderous coughing fit. He did not even dare look up at his daughter, who was standing in the middle of the dining table in a martyr-like pose. "I-I just remembered there are some extremely urgent documents waiting for me... something about the report on Axel's city defense tax... Yes, I must deal with that at once. Alexei, and you young people... matters between the young should be decided by the young. This old man won't interfere."
With that, the lord who had once dominated the political world vanished through the dining room door with an agility completely at odds with his age. Under the old steward's pitying gaze, he disappeared almost as if he had teleported, without looking back even once.
Kōichi and Kazuma Satou remained frozen in their terror-stiffened poses, watching their only lifeline abandon ship and flee.
"Hey, Kōichi... shouldn't we run after the lord while we still can?" Kazuma lowered his voice, his tone filled with despair for the future. "In a situation like this, even if Alexei is a saint, he's probably about to call the guards, have us arrested as the villains who corrupted his young lady, and hang us at the city gates as a warning, right?"
Before Kōichi could answer, Alexei, seated across from them, moved.
The young nobleman who had just been sprayed in the face with tea did not fly into a rage as they had expected, nor did he show any disgust.
He slowly drew a snow-white silk handkerchief from his chest pocket, calmly wiped the tea stains from his face, then raised his head and fixed Darkness, still standing on the table, with a burning gaze that almost seemed to shine.
"...How... how beautiful," Alexei murmured, his voice trembling with emotion.
"Huh?" Darkness, who had been waiting for judgment, froze with that expression still stuck on her face. "W-what are you talking about? I said I'm a pervert who wants to be ravaged! You're supposed to call me shameless and dump this dish over my head!"
"No, Miss Lalatina!" Alexei shot to his feet. In that instant, his dignified and elegant bearing erupted with astonishing passion. "In noble society, where everyone lives behind masks and fills the air with empty formalities, this is the first time I've ever met a woman as honest, as genuine, and as unafraid of worldly judgment as you! That courageous declaration of yours was like a bolt of Lightning, splitting open my dull, monotonous life!"
He even took a step forward, gazing deeply into Darkness's eyes, which had gone wide with shock.
"I thought you were merely a beautiful noble lady, but I never imagined your soul would be so unique and so profound! That desire to be trampled is your strongest rebellion against this false world! Miss Lalatina, I admire you even more now! No, I have been completely captivated by you!"
The dining room fell into dead silence again, except this time, the silence carried the sound of everyone's worldview cracking apart.
Kōichi's fork clattered to the floor.
Kazuma Satou's mouth hung open, his jaw nearly dropping into his soup bowl.
Aqua stopped purifying the water and stared blankly at this noble youth who was somehow even more abnormal than the pervert.
"W-wait..." Darkness let out a whimper. She was so terrified that she took a step back and nearly fell off the table. "What are you saying?! Being admired by a perfect person like you is the most terrifying torture in the world! Despise me! Look at me like I'm garbage! I'm begging you!"
"I will never do that!" Alexei declared with righteous conviction. "Miss Lalatina, please rest assured. After we are married, I will devote all the tenderness and consideration of my life to healing your wounded soul! I will prepare the finest afternoon tea for you every day, hire the best orchestra to perform for you, and let you live forever in a sea of love and respect, so that you can finally say farewell to those absurd fantasies of being ravaged by monsters!"
"Nooooooo!" Darkness let out the most despairing scream of her life. She clapped her hands over her ears and collapsed onto the dining table, as if she had already seen the future where she was buried alive beneath tenderness and happiness.
Kōichi wiped away a cold sweat and turned to Kazuma. "Hey, Kazuma... what is this? The Perfect Saint's absolute counter to a masochistic Knight?"
Kazuma shook his head woodenly. "No, this is one villain meeting another villain's match... Alexei may be a good person, but to Darkness, he really is a Devil more terrifying than the Demon King."
Watching this scene of the Pure Love Demon King facing off against the Perverted Crusader, Kōichi could not stop the corner of his mouth from twitching.
Since Darkness had already thrown everything away, he, as the captain, no longer had any reason to keep playing the part of a stiff model citizen.
Kōichi casually tossed the silver fork he had been using to cut steak onto his plate, producing a crisp clink.
He leaned back in his chair, and his previously upright, solemn posture instantly collapsed into the lazy slouch of a street thug.
Narrowing his eyes, he looked Darkness up and down as she lay sprawled on the table, his gaze no different from how he would look at a trash bag on the roadside.
"Hey, Lalatina." Kōichi spoke, his voice no longer gentle or polite, but dripping with open disgust and mockery. "That's enough. Stop posing like some kind of martyr. You think jumping onto a table and announcing you're a pervert makes you impressive? At the end of the day, you're just a useless meat shield who can get slapped in the face by a cabbage during a cabbage hunt, then grin disgustingly because she enjoyed it."
The temperature in the dining room seemed to drop again.
Kazuma Satou froze for a second, then suddenly realized what was happening. This guy was "saving the situation."
And so, Axel's most infamous devilish Thief instantly dropped the act and revealed his signature sleazy grin.
"Exactly, Miss Lalatina." Kazuma crossed his legs and picked his teeth with a toothpick, his tone so flippant it made people want to punch him. "Stop putting on a show in front of Lord Alexei. You're a delusional freak who's good for nothing but getting hit, your attack hit rate is zero, and you even need us to scrub your back when you bathe, which is totally false information. Lord Alexei is one of the kingdom's elites. There's no way he'd actually fall for someone like you."
"U-uuoohhh...!" Darkness's body suddenly stiffened. Her face turned so red it looked ready to bleed, and her breathing grew ten times rougher than before.
She was not angry. On the contrary, it was as if she had been injected with some kind of high-purity stimulant. She clutched the tablecloth tightly in both hands and let out a spine-chilling moan.
"That's it... Kōichi, Kazuma... Are you finally showing your true colors? Trampling all over my useless combat ability and twisted private life in front of my blind date... Ahh, this feeling of being betrayed by my companions and publicly executed... It's wonderful!"
Seeing this, Aqua hurriedly joined the battlefield.
She did not really understand what Kōichi was doing, but mockery came naturally to her. "Exactly, exactly! This perverted woman even borrows money from me to buy alcohol, though actually it's the other way around, and she grinds her teeth and drools in her sleep! Alexei-san, I advise you to run while you still can, or all the furniture in your house will end up stained with her weird bodily fluids!"
"You... you people!" Alexei had been lost in his fantasy of saving a wounded girl, but after hearing all that, he completely snapped.
He looked at Kōichi and Kazuma, whose faces practically screamed that they were scum, then looked at Darkness, who was utterly intoxicated and had even started writhing on the table. At last, the veins on his forehead began to throb.
"How dare you treat Miss Lalatina this way!" Alexei slammed the table and rose in anger, pointing at Kōichi's nose as he shouted. "She is a hero who fought to protect Axel! Even if she has one or two... slightly unusual preferences, that is merely a reflection of her pure nature! And yet you, her companions, humiliate her in public like this and even make up lewd lies about scrubbing her back! You are a disgrace to Adventurers!"