Copy Skills with Affinity! - Chapter 59

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Natty

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Copy Skills with Affinity! ◈

Chapter 59: Detoxification

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“So the last person to visit was the Minister of Administration.”

“...”

“Are you exercising your right to remain silent?”

“...”

At Aiden’s calm question, the pale-faced civil official shook their head.

“Then does your silence mean consent?”

“...”

The official nodded desperately.

Aiden decided to believe them without much suspicion.

After all, it probably was not easy for anyone to lie while dangling outside a high-rise window by nothing but the back of their collar.

More importantly, the Prince and the Minister of Administration...

‘...They just keep crawling back out, don’t they?’

He had expected something like this to some degree.

He had rushed here as quickly as possible to find out who was involved beforehand, yet it was those people again.

Public activity was impossible for them now, so it seemed they had changed their approach to secret meetings like this.

‘Time to teach them a lesson.’

There was a reason he had brought people as formidable as Noel and Katia and laid the groundwork beforehand. He had preparations of his own.

Aiden sighed inwardly and tossed the secretary back through the window.

The secretary flew through the air with a thin scream, landing among the groaning soldiers and knights scattered nearby.

‘I really have gotten much stronger.’

He had felt it somewhat when he knocked Damian, a fighter fairly well known in the Empire, flat with a single punch to the jaw. But now, there was truly a world of difference between Aiden and these nameless fighters. They fell like autumn leaves.

Every night, Meyer still toyed with him without even letting an attack properly graze him, enough to make Aiden feel ashamed of himself, but...

‘My Combat Path is steadily building too...’

The “skills” used to wield abilities could be copied as soon as he raised Affinity.

In that sense, every battle was worth celebrating. Katia’s Sacred Flame Art, which used Divine Power, and Noel’s swordsmanship, One Sword, One Arrival, were both growing more proficient.

Aiden himself could feel the trajectory of his sword and the arrangement of his Divine Power growing more refined each time he fought.

His short-term goal was simple.

‘Land one punch on my senior’s face.’

Even though he was growing this fast, he wanted to properly hit Meyer once, since the man never seemed to tire of making a fool of him every night...

As he dwelled on that thought, one of the people sprawled on the ground stared at him and muttered in a half-lost voice.

“...M-monster...”

“That’s only because you haven’t seen a real monster.”

“...”

“You should be grateful I was the one who hit you. Seriously.”

If the two people outside the territory had come in instead, nobody knew what might have happened.

Considering Katia’s temperament, if she truly lost her temper, she might have burned them all to death without mercy. That was why Aiden had handled this himself.

And Noel also seemed to be a little less restrained whenever something involved him lately.

More importantly, though...

‘...The most important person isn’t here again?’

Aiden frowned as he looked around for the absent Lady.

The Minister of Administration had met with her, certainly, but what on earth had they done that the Lady was nowhere to be found within her own castle...?

---!!!

Aiden flinched and looked beyond the castle.

A monstrous howl rang out.

It was the sort of cry that would make anyone faint of heart go weak at the knees, a sound that could never come from a human or a wild animal.

‘A magical beast?’

The word came to Aiden instinctively, and he immediately ran outside.

It did not take long to find the source.

“Mr. Aiden! Stay back!”

In a wide clearing near the castle, Noel and Katia were fighting a huge magical beast resembling an arthropod.

Sword light flashed, and flames blazed.

‘Good grief.’

The magical beast’s movements were ferocious enough to make Aiden mutter those words without thinking.

Its blade-like claws protruding from multiple legs tore through the air, an intimidating sight even from a distance.

It was not quite on the level of the battles between top-tier ability users he had encountered recently, but if Aiden himself entered that fight, he felt he might not even be able to gather his own bones afterward.

In other words, with two top-tier ability users like Katia and Noel present, they could somehow win.

‘...They look like they’re in a bit of danger.’

At Aiden’s request, both had used a considerable portion of their abilities to establish a net around the area. They were not being pushed back, but it was clear they were only managing to keep from being overwhelmed.

“I’ll support you!”

Aiden pulled a revolver from his coat, but Noel urgently stopped him.

“Wait, Mr. Aiden! You can’t! You mustn’t kill it!”

“What?”

He did not need to ask what she meant.

The moment he drew his gun and aimed it at the magical beast, a window appeared before his eyes.

-System Message

▶ You sense the presence of a magical beast.

▶ “Skill: Magical Beast Hunter” activates automatically.

▶ The target is analyzed.

⊙ Liza Aslan [Magical Beastification]

The target has been injected with the serum of the magical beast “Black Widow.” She is continuously mutating in real time and will keep growing stronger, using all vitality in her body as nourishment until she dies. When the injected target dies, she will return to human form.

Weapon: Eight Bladed Legs

Strengths: Physical toughness, agility

Weaknesses: Heart, head

“...?”

The window itself was an effect of the skill he had obtained from Grand Duke Aslan before, but its contents were the problem.

Aiden froze as he looked at the red text.

He did not even need to examine it closely. The very first line was already a serious problem.

‘That’s the Lady?’

It looked like nothing but a magical beast, but the system had no reason to lie. It would be better to believe it.

Looking more closely, he could see what appeared to be a small human body attached to the enormous magical beast, as if the beast had proliferated from there.

“...”

Aiden let out a deep sigh.

Anger was crawling up inside his chest.

The Lady had been meeting with the Minister of Administration until recently, and according to the skill’s analysis, she had been injected with some kind of serum and turned into that.

There was no need to guess the chain of events. It was obvious what had happened. The Minister of Administration had definitely done something to the Lady.

Which meant...

The people who ought to be keeping their heads down had openly done something as insane as injecting an unidentified magical beast serum into a member of a grand duke’s household.

If they had taken such a drastic measure, they had probably prepared more traps.

And the fact that it said, “When the injected target dies, she will return to human form,” felt especially wrong.

‘Just how underhanded are they?’

Was this not perfect material for twisting the incident into, “He murdered a noble at will”?

His thoughts on that were simple.

‘This pisses me off.’

Aiden himself had been planning to teach the Lady, who had been preoccupied with the fight for succession rights, a lesson. But he could not help feeling that way when he saw people who treated human lives like disposable trash.

The Minister of Administration was probably delighted right now, thinking he could finally deal a meaningful blow.

‘Yeah, right.’

And knowing that...

There was no reason for Aiden to play along with their intentions.

First, he would begin by not killing the Lady before him.

There was a second step as well, but he should deal with what was in front of him first.

With a scoff, Aiden dismissed the window containing the Lady’s information.

“Lady Noel, Your Highness. Will you follow my instructions?”

▣

The person called Rad Ilja Barfon bent their neck backward.

Crack.

Rad held their head in place before it could twist too far and fall from their body, then let out a whistle.

The adjustments often went wrong. If they wanted to look like an ordinary human, it should have been less grotesque than this.

The Prince had torn this “puppet” to shreds before. Even after repairs, errors like this happened frequently.

‘At least there is some value in keeping this scrap heap running.’

Rad murmured as they watched Aiden’s group fight the Lady, who had transformed into a magical beast.

Their body, shrouded in black demonic energy, could not be detected by anyone nearby. Those in the middle of battle would have an even harder time finding them.

‘It is a perfect opportunity to deal with them, though...’

If they had their way, they would collect everything there at once.

Lionheart. Deathwish.

Humans with that degree of potential were quite rare. If they put them through the same process they had used on the human called Rad and turned them into the most useful “puppets”...

‘...No. I can’t.’

Rad wiped away the smile that was about to spread across their face.

That would be selfish indulgence.

They were consumables to be used for a far greater purpose. They could not tamper with them as they pleased.

There was a reason they had joined hands with that man called the Prince.

‘Everything has its stages.’

Rather than attack now, it would be far easier to make use of Lionheart if they placed her beside the Prince in the form of a “wife.”

If the Prince who inherited the country married her, Lionheart would become Empress. If Lionheart, who received the people’s absolute support, became Empress, the Empire’s support for the next Emperor would grow even more solid.

When their clan, which had entered into a covenant with that side, swallowed the Empire, she would become one of their most useful cards.

“...”

And the starting point was forcibly separating Noel from that damned man.

Aiden Kellermain.

Rad’s ever-smiling face stiffened when their gaze landed on the man radiating ability.

‘...He is a variable.’

There had been countless schemes to place Noel beside the Prince if he had just remained still.

Until that man appeared.

Whenever Rad prepared anything, Aiden emerged as if by magic and disrupted their plans. He was truly a thorn in Rad’s eye.

Still, it would not be easy for him to escape the trap laid this time.

The magical beast Black Widow, a man-eating black widow spider. They had injected her with the serum of a magical beast whose combat strength matched that of an upper-tier knight. They had even painstakingly added the effect that made her keep growing stronger until death.

No ability user in the world could return a human whose magical beastification had already progressed that far.

Especially not with that special serum, which they had created with immense effort. There was no way to neutralize it. It was their masterpiece, a work on which they had staked their pride.

Whether she died in battle or died as time passed, the Lady was fated to die either way.

All they needed to do was leave a record of it while remaining hidden, then use it somehow for agitation and manipulation.

The position of Minister of Administration was useful for that. Creating confusion and turning lies into truth were their specialties.

And above all...

‘Grand Duke Aslan will arrive soon.’

At the time Aiden set out, they had leaked Grand Duke Aslan enough information to realize that something unusual was happening in this territory.

Thanks to that, the Grand Duke was likely rushing here now.

If they showed the Grand Duke the Grand Duke’s daughter being “killed” at just the right moment, they could forge a rather useful grudge against Aiden. A gift, perhaps.

‘Come now. This time, take a real fall, Aiden Kellermain.’

Rad smiled at that thought.

Devices to record everything happening here had already been scattered throughout the area.

Just thinking of humiliating that thorn in their eye made them unable to suppress their laughter.

“...?”

But the moment Rad saw the scene unfolding before them...

‘...What?’

Rad’s expression twisted.

Something was not proceeding as they had expected.

For one thing, instead of preparing for battle, Lionheart and Deathwish had thrown their swords far away and were getting ready to charge in barehanded.

Apparently, Lionheart did not welcome the insanity of charging unarmed at a magical beast with combat strength comparable to an upper-tier knight. Her face turned pale as she cried out.

“M-Mr. Aiden. Is this really a good idea?!”

“Yes. We can’t kill it, even by accident.”

Aiden’s eyes swept over the area.

“I’d hate to do someone a favor.”

Rad’s brow furrowed further at the gesture, as though Aiden were certain someone was nearby.

‘...That bastard.’

He was taunting them.

Aiden knew Rad was nearby, and he was making it clear that he would never fall for this trick.

“Then how are you planning to deal with that without killing it?”

Katia tilted her head as she asked. The answer Aiden gave was surely aimed in the same direction.

“In the way that will make whoever injected it with something strange feel the worst.”

Aiden gave a humorless laugh and manifested his ability.