Chapter 9: Looking for an Escape Part 3

“Good morning, Milady! Are you excited for the party tonight?”

Once again, Sally’s words awoke me, but they hit much differently than they had in the previous loops. Rather than sighing in frustration at the endless frustration, I flinched. Sally was no longer just the stoic maid who had served me since my birth. Now she was a woman capable of casually poisoning a horse while leaning out of a moving carriage.

Though I no longer suspected her of colluding with the prince, I felt less than comfortable eating anything she cooked for me. I even briefly considered the idea that her cheese omelet was somehow responsible for this time loop, despite my refusing to eat it in many of the previous iterations.

“Is something wrong, milady?” Sally asked, seemingly noticing the intense stare I was giving her. That was certainly a loaded question, and I wasn’t quite sure how to respond to it. Should I just ask her how she’d go about poisoning a horse, or should I be a bit more subtle? If I was too direct, would she have to silence me?

“Sally, how many weapons do you have on you?” I finally asked after an awkward pause. The question didn’t really get at the heart of what I wanted to know, but I couldn’t think of a better way of breaching the subject. I suppose I was hoping she’d bring out a small dart gun that she kept up her sleeve for self-defense, but her answer just left me even more confused.

“Is there a particular weapon you’re looking for?”

“A...battleaxe.”

I have no idea why I suggested such a ridiculous thing, but it felt like the natural answer to such an insane question. Part of me was convinced that Sally was just messing with me, so maybe I wanted to mess with her back by requesting something impossible. However, Sally didn’t flinch at my request. She merely nodded before reaching beneath the hem of her dress and pulling out a battleaxe that was nearly as tall as she was and looked as if it weighed nearly as much as she did.

By no stretch of the imagination should such a thing have fit within her dress, and what’s more, despite the weapon’s clear weight, Sally easily held it aloft with one hand. Physics, it would seem, held no sway over Sally, and while I briefly wondered if she might be some sort of goddess in disguise, I quickly realized that her true identity was much more interesting. Sally wasn’t just a maid. She was a trope. She was a combat maid, trained in secret arts to protect her master, which also explained why I had never been assigned a bodyguard or knight to protect me. She was basically a one-woman army, and while that revelation offered me no end of useful options for escaping this loop, my otaku heart couldn’t stop screaming.

“You’re so cool, Sally!” I shouted, unable to contain my excitement any longer.

Immediately, the mask Sally had kept in place for my entire life shattered. Her cheeks turned the deepest shade of crimson, and she became completely incapable of looking me in the eye. Somehow, my smile grew even wider as I realized that my maid was not only a deadly assassin, but absolutely adorable. From then on, I made it a point to start each loop by complimenting Sally, just to see her blush, and unfortunately, there were still a lot of loops left to go.