After a disastrous dessert, Princess Nightingale was on her knees picking up pages of scattered clues and cryptic information, ignoring the midori slime, who sank into himself in the corner of the room, seemingly half dead. Gully silently swore in his heart to never let her have the opportunity to cook again unless she went through proper cooking lessons, and he would shoulder the role of the chef instead. If things stayed the same, he would have had a higher chance of survival if he had eaten weapons and scrolls instead. Scanning the messy room, Gully's deadpan eyes looked at the fluttering pieces of scraps with scribbled titles, such as "Elves and demons are descendants of angels?", "Is Santa an alien?", "Clues on why Santa is evil" and "Theoretical creation of the world".
"What are you searching for?" Gully asked, barely gathering enough energy to talk after plopping himself up.
"The truth," the princess replied, looking at Gully innocently with her messy hair and dusty panda eyes. Gully couldn't care less about the princess's appearance after what she made him eat. How could a dessert taste so bad? Although it miraculously raised his speed and luck stats, the trauma was just not worthwhile.
"What truth?" he pressed.
"The world. The school. Everything! Don't you feel how everything doesn't make sense?" she said, clenching the pieces of crumpled paper in her hands. "Before Santa appeared, there were no elves or such species. Instead, there were only slimes, prevalent throughout the world. It was also common for holy beings to interact with everyone. But out of nowhere, slimes got the ability to evolve, and hordes of demons and devils dashed through the cities and multitudes of elves appeared out of nowhere," it is hardly coincidental that Santa appeared in the nick of time to save everyone."
Gully felt his guts turn inside out. "I hope it's not the food," he told himself, sinking deeper into contemplation that the princess might be right after all. Blurry images of Santa and elves appeared in his thoughts, and a trickle of cold sweat streaked down his smooth surface. He felt a chill at the thought of Santa, the principal, using him to kill the tutor and leaving him to die. He started to wonder which was scarier, the incident or the princess's full-course meal. One is a psychopath, and the other is a naive princess with really bad cooking skills. He decided right then that he would be the one cooking in the future.
"But why?" he wondered, knowing full well that Santa could have easily squashed anyone secretly without any implications. "Perhaps he is not as powerful and influential as everyone believed."
"Are you okay? You looked a bit pale..." The princess put her hand on Gully's forehead and muttered a spell. A tender warm glow eased his headache, and the knot in his stomach loosened; he immediately felt comforted as a sense of relief washed over him.
"Thank you, your highness," he said with a bounce.
"I wanted to make you some soup... but I guess this works better on you," she said with a warm, sad smile.
Before Gully could offer any words of reassurance, a random bell rang in the silence between the rustling papers. A small box plopped in the middle of the room from nowhere.
Squealing with excitement, the princess jumped and embraced the box that had the word "Saint Sparks Company" embossed on it. "The thing I ordered finally arrived!" she chirped, stroking the emblem happily.
Gully inched closer to the mysterious box. "What is it? How did it reach you without a postman?" Magic had not advanced to automatic delivery or dimensional delivery and often required a postman to serve as a conduit. Gully was immensely curious and wondered if it was an advanced military technique invented by the Princess.
"This...," the princess said excitedly while holding her breath in between the sentence, "Is a Mahou Shoujo Staff. It has a mysterious makeup function and is powerful enough to eliminate almost all evils."
"Evils? Like the demons and devils?" Gully asked.
"Well, to be precise... enemies. But this staff is sentient, so attacking the innocent will only gather negative and evil energy. I guess it all depends on how the user uses it. It can be a weapon for good or evil," she explained. "Do you want to see me use it? It might be a bit embarrassing though...," she said while hiding behind the heart-shaped head of the pristine white staff.
Gully nodded. After all, what was the worst that could happen, he thought.
"Er hem," coughed Princess Nightingale, slightly embarrassed but relieved that there was no one there.
The Midori slime suddenly thought that it would be a good idea to record this moment, and right by him was a recording device. Without hesitation and as a squire, he intuitively started to record using a recording crystal.
"Angelic Origin Transformation!" the princess shouted. Iridescient lights emitted from the staff form layers of lights like pieces of silk. The magical substance bound itself to the princess's body as she floated mid-air like a being possessed. Her drappy hair turned into gorgeous locks. Her limbs became slender and elegant, and her dress transformed into a priestess like attire.
Gully was immediately impressed; he had never seen anything like it.
"Are you recording?" she asked.
"You want to see?" Gully replied.
"You should have given me notice," she said, slightly annoyed and embarrassed. "Sigh... Well, let's play back the recording. I want to see how I look, too."
Princess Nightgale took the crystal and slotted it into a machine with a large, clear quartz crystal ball. A holographic scene appeared in the middle of the crystal. As soon as the princess said the phrase to activate the mahou shoujo wand, the wand shone for a quick second. The princess in the hologram released the wand in her hand, leaving it suspended in midair with a vacant expression. Oddly, Gully was also staring blankly in the video too.
"Hypnotism," they both said, feeling betrayed.
The holographic princess undressed to her brassiere and pulled out a fairy cocktail dress from the head of the magic staff. After putting it on, she posed like someone with middle-grade syndrome with an odd, vacant smile. There were no changes to her physiology, nor was there any makeup applied. It was all in their mind.
The magic wand in her hand broke into 2 pieces, releasing them from their hypnotic state. Gully took a step away from the princess, sensing danger.
Her face was boiling red, both with embarrassment and anger. Throwing the broken equipment into the box, she recorded her complaint and dumped it into the box. She took the box into her dressing room and returned feeling defeated.
"Let's just call it a day," she said to her squire and threw a key to him. "That's your room key. I need some time to myself. You can figure out the rest."
The innocent slime nodded and silently left the room as a harrowing scream echoed in his absence.
"I can still hear you," the squire said, feeling the heat from second-hand embarrassment.