244 Intermission - When She Fell

It has already been a few years since Katsuki had started serving Aster as her personal maid. In just these few years, she had already learned a great deal of things when it came to serving the sweets loving Meslatar.

Some might call her Mistress weird or even eccentric, but she knew that those people would not live very long if those words ever slipped out of their mouths. Almost every servant in the Nilm estate was trained in assassination of course.

This was something that was kept hidden from the Mistress by all the staff in the Nilm household.

It was a well known fact that the Nilm family had many layers of secrecy surrounding it, but one fact that many knew was that the Nilm family was involved in the darker sides of politics, which of course included assassinations.

In fact, Katsuki herself had been extensively trained by both Sebastian and Mary in such skills too, although she had not been able to showcase it much in recent days.

Katsuki did not mind the peace of course, as it was times like this where she could see her Mistress being the happiest.

Simply watching her Mistress engrossed in eating the sweets she loved was something that Katsuki would not give up for the World.

That was another secret that Katsuki kept from her Mistress.

There was just something oddly calming about watching her Mistress eating sweets. The joy and happiness expressed while she was engrossed in her sweets was something that granted those who witnessed it an odd sense of fulfilment, as though they were the ones eating the sweets instead.

Which was why she was a little upset about the current trip.

Her Mistress had brought everyone she was close to on this vacation which included the Amrap Odeta and the Infrid Lisa, both of whom Katsuki have met and acquainted herself with before.

As much as she did not want to admit it, she felt a little vexed that she was unable to be the sole being to stand by her Mistress's side.

But such feelings were unsuitable for a maid like her to possess, which was why she made sure to push down such thoughts deep within her heart.

Unfortunately, that feeling sprung up once more when she learned that her Mistress was having a rendezvous with that Nekomata captain to eat sweets that she prepared. Yet she was unable to follow her along because she had to take care of some woman that her Mistress had fished up from the sea.

When she was starting to wonder how she could get rid of that woman, it was revealed that the woman was actually a pirate and the Nekomata captain's crew had set Emilia up to get rid of her.

And just when Katsuki thought that things could not get any worse, her Mistress was caught up in the same trap and sent overboard.

She wanted to dive right into the water after her when she found out about it, yet the Head Maid Mary had stopped her.

Katsuki was ready to fight the vastly superior Mary just to get to her Mistress to ensure her safety when Mary had assured her that Aster was indeed safe.

The Head Maid then brought her back to the room where the Madam was using some kind of screen that was floating in the air to see what was happening to her beloved child.

They saw how Aster had dealt with her mermaid attackers before bringing Odeta to safety on one of the nearby islands, the ship having sailed too far for them to catch up.

That was when Katsuki got really confused by the situation.

"Why are we not going to rescue Mistress, Madam?" She asked.

The Madam of the Nilm Family simply smiled at her, "Not to worry, little Katsuki. My child is safe and she will continue to be so as long as I have a say in it~ But I'm afraid that right now, you have other things to worry about aside from my dearest child~"

"What is it?"

"Ufufufu~ I believe you are already aware that Miss Emilia's crew has betrayed her, yes?"

Katsuki was of course aware of it once the news had spread around, though she did not understand what this had anything to do with her Mistress's current plight.

Madam Nilm smiled at her, "I want you to round up all of those responsible back here with the condition that they must not know who is the one taking them. You will then proceed to torture these people for the crime of inconveniencing my dearest child. Aside from anyone related to my Family, you are free to make use of any resources you see fit to complete this mission. Once you do, my little one shall return~"

Katsuki got a little upset then, "My apologies, Madam… But should I assume that Madam is testing me right now and making use of Mistress to facilitate this test?"

"Ufufufu~ I suppose you could say that. I had something else in mind originally but this would work as well. As my dearest child's personal maid, you need to be ready to operate independently and sometimes also being far away from my little one. Are you able to prove your worth to stand behind my dearest child?"

As much as Katsuki was unhappy that her Mistress was not here, she took comfort in the fact that this meant the sooner she could complete this task that Madam had given her, the sooner she would be able to reunite with her Mistress.

After all, she did not have a choice in the matter in the first place since it was a direct order from Aster's mother herself.

She then excused herself, taking the time to plan out her task where the first thing was identifying which ones were her targets.

With her skills in information gathering, such a question was easily answered though it surprised her a little to know that almost all of Emilia's close aides had turned against her.

The reason the betrayal even succeeded in the first place was the fact that her second in command had joined in on stabbing her in the back as well, otherwise this plan would have failed even before it started.

Then it was the hard part where Katsuki had to extract each of these people without alerting the others. This task alone already took up a significant amount of time and Katsuki decided that acting alone was not ideal for completing this mission, which was why she enlisted Lisa's help in doing so.

The Infrid had been especially excited to be part of this, even claiming that she had somehow foreseen this with her Clairvoyance before.

Katsuki did not fully buy her words of course, since she believed that Lisa would have gone to stop her Mistress from getting involved in the trap if she knew about it. Nevertheless, she appreciated the help the Infrid gave by helping her torture the ones she had taken.

Even the Inugami had to admit that Lisa's talent in torturing those traitors was top class.

Ironically, despite everything that had happened, the other passengers on board the ship were not even aware of all this happening behind the scenes. Both the traitors and Katsuki were working hard on keeping everything under wraps.

That fact made the assignment harder than normal as most of the traitors would avoid standing out or even just hide somewhere which made it take much more time to complete.

But still, the Inugami persevered and used various methods to kidnap the perpetrators from their hiding spots. One such method even included Lisa seducing a few of them to isolated locations.

When the both of them weren't busy dealing with this task, they were watching Aster continuing on her adventure in finding a way back to Emilia's ship, which only further encouraged them to deal with the task with more determination than before.

It was not an exaggeration to say that both Lisa and Katsuki were feeling quite frustrated by Aster's absence and were absolutely jealous that Odeta was with Aster instead of them.

Not to mention the fact that her Mistress seemed to have picked up even more people for her group with the newest one being Delmare the Siren.

There was, however, one particular moment that made them almost demand to be at Aster's side. The moment being the time where Aster had gone berserk underwater and tore that Deepsea Merfolk apart in the process.

Katsuki had been with her Mistress long enough to know when she was feeling anguish and the fact that she was not getting the promised sweets was enough to send her Mistress off into a rage like that, making both Lisa and Katsuki hasten in their task even more.

All the while, Madam Nilm was watching over her child intently, giving both Mary and Sebastian the order that they were to jump in to aid her beloved child should any unexpected problems arise.

Mary was even prepared to open a portal to Aster should that moment prove too dangerous for her.

Fortunately, she managed to get through it and they were all able to watch over Aster without much worry.

It still took both Lisa and Katsuki a while more before they managed to capture everyone that was responsible for Emilia's betrayal, the two of them enjoying every single second of torturing these traitors.

With the task finally complete, Madam Nilm finally gave the order for the ship to go pick up her dearest child, using the screen to pinpoint her location so that they could intercept them.

Thus, when Aster finally managed to find her way back to the ship and appear in front of them, Lisa and Katsuki could no longer hold back and rushed to embrace her.

At last, Katsuki felt whole once more.

Yes, she already knew from the start, her rightful place was definitely by her Mistress's side.