Chapter 11: Scarlet’s scheme

A few minutes before the Awakening Trial ended, Scarlet was inside Smith’s room in the palace leaning against the wall near his bed. Smith lay resting while Scarlet wore her usual crimson robe. She had her arms crossed over her chest a posture that made her breasts stand out but Smith had no time to appreciate the view.

​"In a few minutes, I will be leaving this place," Smith said, his tone serious. "How I’m leaving, I don’t even know myself. I’m not a very emotional person, and I don’t know how to say goodbye to the children especially Velvet. That kid has been clinging to me. I don’t want to break their hearts, so I’m leaving that task to you."

​Scarlet showed no immediate reaction; he had already warned her yesterday that he would be departing.

​"So, you’re telling me you came here just to participate in a trial?" she asked. "And now you’re leaving with a way you don’t know yourself"

​"As I told you before," Smith replied, "when I first woke up, I was in that arena. Now my time is up, and I have to return to the world I came from. But I have a feeling this won’t be our only meeting. For now, tell the children I left for a quick vacation, or that someone picked me up in an emergency. Just don’t tell them I left without saying goodbye. When we meet again, I’ll make it up to you."

​Scarlet simply nodded without a word. Smith closed his eyes, waiting for the countdown to end. Seeing no further response, Scarlet stepped outside and closed the door behind her.

​She lingered in the hallway for several minutes. When she finally reopened the door and peeked inside, Smith was nowhere to be seen.

​Scarlet retreated to her study. Moments later, a guard knocked on the door. Upon her approval, he entered.

​"Did you find anything?" Scarlet asked.

​"Your Highness, I saw nothing out of the ordinary," the guard reported. "The others reported the same."

​Scarlet nodded and dismissed him, letting out a sigh.

​Though she was a queen who ruled an entire kingdom with an iron fist, she felt utterly helpless with the task Smith had handed her. If ordered to go to war, she wouldn’t hesitate to draw her sword and charge the front line. But deceiving the children about Smith’s sudden disappearance without knowing where he went or when he would return was a daunting task.

​To make matters worse, Velvet burst into the study without knocking, rushing straight to her mother.

​"Mother, have you seen Brother?" Velvet asked, her tone frantic. "We searched the old palace, but nobody has seen him! I’m worried something happened to him!"

​Scarlet felt a headache coming on. Desperate for a cover story, a mischievous idea struck her.

​"Your brother was abducted by bad guys," Scarlet said. "He told me that if you ever want to see him again, you’ll have to go and rescue him yourself."

​Velvet panicked. "What?! How did that happen? Didn’t you say this was the safest place in the kingdom? How could he be kidnapped right under the palace? Aren’t you one of the strongest people in the kingdom? How did they take him right in front of you?!"

​Feeling backed into a corner, Scarlet feigned a bitter sigh and let out a slightly annoyed response. "Because your mother wasn’t strong enough! I was defeated before I could even figure out what was happening. By the time I woke up, Smith was already gone. What else could I do?"

​Velvet gasped. Hearing that even her mother the strongest person she knew had been overwhelmed made her realize how dangerous these mysterious captors must be.

​All of Velvet’s usual playfulness vanished. She looked at her mother with fierce determination. "If Brother trusted me to save him, then from now on, I will become stronger! I’ll get strong enough to protect him so no one can ever take him again!"

​With that, Velvet stormed out of the study. Seeing her daughter’s intense resolve, Scarlet chuckled softly to herself before returning to her sit.

​"At that time, I genuinely thought you had been abducted by the enemies," Velvet said, looking at Smith with a aggrieved expression as she finished her story.

​"During the war, I tried to go to the front lines, but my mother refused me. She said if I could withstand three hits from her, she would let me go. Driven by determination, I trained for five full years. But even then, I could barely hold my own. She told me I’d be slaughtered by true experts on the battlefield."

​Velvet continued, "So, I trained for another five years. By then, others considered me a prodigy. I could easily defeat my mother, and no one in the kingdom was my match. After I commanded and won my first major battle, my mother finally stepped back and handed the war effort over to me."

​"I was told the enemy kingdom we were fighting was the one holding you captive," Velvet added. "I was furious! You wouldn’t believe it—it took me only three months to burn their kingdom to the ground. Even my mother was stunned. That was when she finally decided to tell me the truth. I was completely speechless!"

​Smith was equally speechless after hearing Velvet’s tale. He never expected Scarlet to pull off such a wild lie.

​Remembering the rest of their group, Smith asked, "What about the others?"

​Velvet’s expression brightened with joy. "Oh, we were all in the same boat! My mother must have talked to their parents too, because when I proposed a grueling training schedule, no one objected. We trained together for those ten years."

​"Adam and Apollo stepped back after they came of age to inherit their fathers’ titles," Velvet explained. "But the rest of us were girls with no positions to inherit. Plus, my mother didn’t want me to inherit the kingdom anyway—she just wanted to spend time with me, though she left the actual kingdom affairs to my uncle. Sometimes when she looked at me, I felt like she was terrified of losing me, like she wanted to keep me by her side forever. I never really understood why."

​Smith, however, understood completely.

​Based on his deductions, the Awakening Trials weren’t mere illusions—they were alternate dimensions or second chances granted to fix past tragedies. In the original timeline, Velvet had likely died in the arena, and the kingdom had fallen to internal strife. Scarlet had lost both her child and her kingdom. The lingering grief from that past life was why Scarlet held onto Velvet so fiercely in this one.

​"You mentioned you trained with the others," Smith continued, shifting the subject. "Did they go to the battlefield with you as well?"

​Velvet nodded. "Yes, we fought in the same unit. Even though they weren’t as strong as me in direct combat, everyone had their own specialties, so it was hard to say who was truly the most dangerous."

​Smith then paused, and remembered her gear. "If I remember correctly, your kingdom didn’t use the style of equipment you appeared with. Where did you get it?"

​Smith was right. Their kingdom had always used traditional Western style armor and straight swords. The equipment Velvet wore when she appeared was unmistakably styled after Japanese Samurai armor and weaponry.

​Hearing his question, Velvet suddenly remembered something