Chapter 20: A Royal Summons and an Unlikely Witness

The royal messenger's words fell into the Guild hall with the subtlety of a falling anvil. The silence that followed was different from before. It was no longer tinged with awe or confusion. It was thick with the delicious, horrified thrill of seeing someone else in a world of trouble. Adventures were stopped mid-boast. Mugs were frozen halfway to lips. Everyone was staring.

Kazuma felt the blood drain from his face. His legs, which had been feeling strong and heroic just moments before, turned to jelly. "Treason?" he squeaked, the word coming out as a strangled whisper. "Destruction of property?"

Aqua, for her part, was utterly scandalized. "This is an outrage! An insult of the highest order! To accuse a goddess of such base criminality! I demand to speak to their manager!"

"To be falsely accused by the crown itself..." Darkness murmured, her hands clasped to her chest as if in prayer. Her whole body trembled with a rapturous dread. "Paraded through the streets as a traitor, judged by the very authority I am sworn to uphold... the potential for soul-searing shame is... it's magnificent!"

Deadpool, however, simply blinked at the royal messenger. He then turned to Kazuma, a look of genuine confusion on his masked face.

"Wait, I thought we were the good guys," he said. "Aren't we? We beat the bad guy. The town cheered. I got a mountain of socks. That's usually how the third act wraps up. Did I miss a post-credits scene?"

The head royal knight, a man with a jawline that could cut diamonds and an expression of profound impatience, stepped forward. "There has been no mistake. You will come with us. Now." His voice was not a request.

Kazuma's mind was racing, trying to find a loophole, an escape route. His eyes darted to Deadpool. "The mansion," he hissed under his breath. "Destruction of a nobleman's property. What did you do?"

Deadpool held up a finger, a look of dawning realization on his face. "Ooooh, that. Right. I remember now." He spoke with the casual air of a man recalling what he had for breakfast. "There was this noble, Lord Veridian. Snooty fellow. Ran a high-end laundry service as a side hustle. Very exclusive. I entrusted him with one of my prize possessions, a vintage argyle sock from my homeworld, Item #000 in the catalogue. A real beauty."

He paused for dramatic effect. "They lost it."

"They lost your sock," Kazuma repeated, his voice dangerously flat.

"They lost my sock," Deadpool confirmed with a solemn nod. "I asked for compensation. They offered me store credit. I felt that was an insufficient response to such a grievous emotional and historical loss. So, I lodged a formal complaint."

"What was the complaint?" Kazuma asked, though he already knew he didn't want the answer.

"About twenty pounds of C4, strategically placed around the structural load-bearing points of his summer villa," Deadpool said cheerfully. "It wasn't there at the time, of course. I'm not a monster. But the villa... the villa is now a very fetching crater with excellent Feng Shui. I thought it was a very proportional response."

Kazuma closed his eyes. The final piece of the puzzle clicked into place, and the picture it formed was of his own execution.

There was no fighting their way out of this. The two royal knights radiated an aura of power that made Beldia seem like a common thug. Left with no choice, the party was escorted from the Guild hall. The other adventurers watched them go, their expressions a mixture of pity and morbid curiosity. Deadpool, for his part, tried to take the magic hamper with him, but one of the knights gave him a look so severe it seemed to violate the laws of physics. The hamper, and its infinite supply of single white socks, was left behind.

The journey to the capital was not a pleasant stroll. It was a forced march under the watchful, humorless eyes of their escort. They were, for all intents and purposes, prisoners of the state.

"So, the capital," Deadpool said, trying to make conversation with one of the stoic knights. "I hear the thread count on the royal sheets is amazing. Is that true? And what's the sock situation like at the castle? Are we talking basic wool, or do you guys spring for the good stuff? Because I'm something of a connoisseur."

The knight did not respond. He just kept riding, his gaze fixed forward.

Days later, they arrived. The capital, Belzerg, was to Axel what a lion is to a housecat. Towering white spires scraped the clouds. Massive walls, manned by thousands of soldiers, encircled a city bustling with a level of wealth and power that made Axel look like a backwater slum. This was the heart of the kingdom, and they were being brought before it in disgrace.

They weren't thrown in a dungeon. The reality was far more terrifying. They were led through marbled halls, past nobles in fine silks who stared at them with open contempt, and into a lavishly decorated antechamber. They were told to wait.

The room was opulent, filled with velvet chairs and priceless art. But it felt like a cage. Aqua was trying to maintain her divine dignity. Megumin was grumbling about the lack of things to explode. Darkness was practically vibrating with anticipation for her impending public humiliation. Kazuma was trying to become one with the wallpaper.

Deadpool, meanwhile, was critiquing a tapestry. "The weave is all wrong. And the griffin looks cross-eyed. This would never pass muster in the Museum."

The heavy doors to the antechamber swung open. A nobleman entered, his clothes worth more than their entire party's earnings combined. He had a sneering, punchable face and a perfectly manicured goatee. It was, without a doubt, Lord Veridian.

"So," the noble said, his voice dripping with condescending venom. "These are the terrorists who destroyed my estate. A motley collection of degenerates and freaks. I must admit, I expected more."

Kazuma opened his mouth to protest, to beg, to offer up Deadpool as a human sacrifice, but the words died in his throat. Because Lord Veridian was not alone.

A second figure stepped out from behind him, moving with a silent, chilling grace. Clad in jet-black armor that seemed to absorb the light of the room, the figure stood tall and imposing. His head was firmly attached to his shoulders, and his red eyes glowed with a cold, triumphant, and utterly vengeful fire.

It was Beldia.

He wasn't here to fight. He was dressed for court. He looked clean, composed, and terribly, terribly official.

He raised a black-gauntleted hand, pointing a single, accusatory finger directly at Kazuma's party. His deep, resonant voice filled the chamber, each word a nail in their collective coffin.

"Those are the ones," the Dullahan declared, his voice ringing with the cold, hard certainty of a sworn witness. "The traitors who laid waste to my castle and whose chaos proves their allegiance to the Demon King." He then fixed his gaze on Deadpool, a flicker of pure, personal hatred in his glowing eyes.

"And he... is the one who steals heads."