Chapter 113 - How Can Spring Come Without Passing Through Winter? (4)

When I said I would only spare the one whose crimes were lighter, the Palace Count immediately began exposing Montpellier's evil deeds.

The Montpellier bastard just sat quietly and listened.

But perhaps thinking he would be the only one to die if he just endured it, he belatedly started revealing the Palace Count's treasonous acts.

I enjoyed that ridiculous mudslinging contest and gathered information.

"I may have worked for my country, but aren't you a traitor!"

"That is not something a person who persecuted the powerless and forced them to obey should say!"

But before long, the mudslinging quickly devolved into crude insults.

"A bastard who couldn't even make eye contact with me, how dare you run your mouth!"

"Do you really think you can flaunt your authority in that state?"

Watching Montpellier and the Palace Count tear each other down while pointing fingers, a hollow laugh slipped out.

It was an absolute shitshow.

I was dumbfounded that such petty fools had monopolized and deceived the kingdom's state affairs.

"Your Highness! That man is the very one who framed Your innocent Highness as an informant, making you suffer such harsh hardships, so he deserves to die a hundred, a thousand times over!"

When the Palace Count shrieked maliciously, the Montpellier bastard froze in place.

It was a statement that suddenly snapped me awake as I was slowly growing tired of their filthy mudslinging.

"Again."

At my words, Montpellier turned deathly pale, and the Palace Count put on a triumphant face.

"Say what you just said again."

"It is exactly as I said, Your Highness. Marquis Montpellier sought to sow discord between Your Highness and His Majesty to cause chaos in the royal family. On a small scale, this was to disturb His Majesty's mood, and on a large scale, it was to blemish the legitimacy of the eldest legitimate son and cause even greater chaos."

"So you're saying I wasn't the informant?"

"That is exactly what I mean! Your Highness. Your Highness is innocent! Because of that man, the innocent Your Highness was so persecuted..."

The Palace Count, who was running his mouth in arrogance, looked at me, flinched in surprise, and shut his mouth.

It was the pot calling the kettle black.

I ended up laughing. I couldn't hold it back; I just had to laugh.

A giggling sound leaked through my teeth, and a few tears squeezed out of my eyes.

Where else in the world could there be such a farce?

My resolve, having agonized for countless nights before finally deciding to shoulder the Scoundrel Prince's original sin, felt pointless.

The resolve of the three hundred knights, who must be swinging their swords day and night purely out of hatred for me, felt pointless.

I felt like I had become a clown.

As I giggled for a long time, the Montpellier bastard crawled over on his knees, trembling, and prostrated himself before me.

The bastard said something to me, but I couldn't hear him.

Because I had laughed until my jaw nearly fell off, I could hear nothing but ringing in my ears.

After laughing like that for a long while, I suddenly looked back.

The knights who had followed me from Winter Castle were looking at me with concern.

Arwen, Adelia, Karl and his fellow knights. And Gawain.

I looked at Gawain's face.

Because I thought he, of all people, would understand what it felt like to be played by this trivial farce.

But Gawain showed no emotional agitation whatsoever.

He was just staring at me blankly.

It wasn't just Gawain. His comrades were also looking at me with the exact same expressions.

Blink, blink.

The laughter that had been bursting out endlessly subsided like a lie.

"Don't tell me..."

At that moment, frantic thoughts began to flow into my mind.

『Looks like we got caught.』

『I clearly opposed this.』

『More importantly, I don't understand how he recognized us.』

『I'm curious about that too.』

Listening to their ridiculous conversation, my mind felt like it was going blank.

After staring at them for a long time, I burst into laughter again.

"What perfect timing!"

This time, I laughed until I doubled over. I laughed like a truly crazy person.

Of all times, they had switched souls right now. What a coincidence.

『It, it seems we picked the wrong time...』

『I think it would be better to switch back even now.』

『Agreed.』

I shook my head, still laughing.

"There's, *pfft*. There's no need for that."

I told them over and over that it wasn't necessary.

Because it was better for them not to know.

The only reason Gawain and his comrades were rolling in the mud with mercenaries, suffering under instructors wet behind the ears, was purely out of hatred for me.

The reason they had so easily accepted the technique called Mana Heart, which they had been taught was trivial, was also to take revenge on me.

What good would it do for such people to learn the truth now?

At most, their self-loathing would only grow at the fact that they had resented and hated the wrong person. At worst, they would merely lose their hard-earned drive and lose their edge.

They needed a pillar of support to reach even greater glory through the mana in their hearts.

It wouldn't be too late for them to learn the truth after that.

Stroking my cheekbones, which still ached from laughing, I crouched back down and met the Palace Count's eyes.

"That was a very entertaining story."

The moment our eyes met, the Palace Count desperately slammed his head against the floor.

"Y-Your Highness! Please, have mercy!"

I grabbed his jaw to stop the quickly bloodied Palace Count from slamming his head again.

"If you have any more entertaining stories, tell them."

The extreme anger I felt turned into status and spirit, crushing the Palace Count's soul.

With his soul utterly suppressed, the Palace Count, half out of his mind in the face of an overwhelming status he was encountering for the first time in his life, rambled on about past events.

Among them were filthy, completely useless stories for me, like having an affair with a certain maid in the royal palace, as well as stories related to the royal family.

I quietly listened to the Palace Count's incoherent rambling.

And when I had heard every story, I couldn't hide my disbelief.

This bastard, whose soul's vessel was worse than a market thug's, had caused no small amount of harm to the kingdom.

Embezzling the funds that should have been given to Gawain and his comrades halfway, causing them to fall into even greater despair, was a relatively old matter, and inciting the Third Prince's rampage was a recent one.

I thought it was strange.

I wondered how the Third Prince knew about and found my original body, which the King had hidden away so carefully, to run rampant, and it turned out to be the doing of this exact bastard.

He was the one who figured out the location of the vault where my original body was stored and informed the Third Prince, and he was also the one who goaded the Third Prince by claiming the princes would never be safe if I ascended the throne.

He claimed he didn't know the Third Prince would take up a sword and storm His Majesty's quarters to cause such an incident, but ultimately, it was an unchanging fact that the disaster occurred because of him.

"Hah..."

A hollow laugh escaped me naturally.

To think this pathetic, petty man had caused the disbandment of three of the kingdom's knightly orders and led a prince of the nation to die as a traitor.

It was almost unbelievable.

The out-of-his-mind Palace Count kept blabbering for a long while after that, and later on, he even brought up extremely personal stories that couldn't even be called misdeeds.

I drew my sword and sliced off the shoulder of the Palace Count, who was babbling like a madman.

The Palace Count blinked and looked at his severed arm. I proceeded to slice off that Palace Count's remaining arm as well.

"Huh? Huh? Aaaaargh!"

Only then did the Palace Count scream.

I quietly waited for his screams to die down. I waited for him to regain his senses and look at me.

"Y-Your Highness! Please, spare me!"

And when he finally regained his senses and looked at me, I gifted him a slow death so he could fully feel the terror of dying.

"Your Highness! Please, just my life... Urghhh."

With his throat slit, the Palace Count gurgled like a beast.

He tried to stop the bleeding, but without arms, he couldn't stop it; the Palace Count only thrashed his limbs around before eventually stopping moving altogether.

I turned my head.

"Y-Your Highness..."

Terrified, Marquis Montpellier was lying flat on his face, trembling like a leaf.

I thrust the bloodstained blade of Twilight forward.

"Eek!"

Montpellier let out a bizarre groan. I wiped the blood off Twilight's blade onto the clothes of the prostrate Montpellier bastard.

"You're in luck, Montpellier."

I whispered to him as I sheathed Twilight back into its scabbard.

"This time, you were the small one."

A sour stench pierced through the metallic scent of blood.

"Tsk."

I looked at the Montpellier bastard's suddenly soaked trousers before turning my body.

"Dispose of the corpse, and send all the carriages loaded with wealth to the Iron Lion Fortress."

"Yes! Your Highness!"

"Furthermore, what happened here today must not be mentioned again, even amongst those present."

"We will keep that in mind!"

Hearing the knights' replies, I mounted my horse.

Even then, the Montpellier bastard was still prostrated on the ground, shaking uncontrollably.

"Montpellier."

"P-Please speak!"

"You didn't really think it would end like this, did you?"

The bastard trembled violently once.

"I-I am just deeply grateful that you spared my insignificant life! Your Highness!"

In my mind, I had already torn him to pieces and killed him countless times. But I needed to keep him alive for the time being.

At least until the Magic Tower was completed and the North had finished its preparations.

"Come find me by noon today."

Feeling like I would just cut him down if I looked at him any longer, I spurred my horse without waiting for an answer.

Arwen and Adelia, who hadn't participated in the cleanup, stuck to my left and right.

While riding the horse, I suddenly felt a gaze.

I turned my head and saw Arwen looking at me, but she startled and quickly turned her head away.

"What is it?"

When I asked if she had something to say, she hesitated for a long time before opening her mouth.

"Do you not feel wronged?"

She knew of my past and the existence of the Death Knights as well. And she was also aware of the fact that the Death Knights occasionally took over the bodies of Gawain and the knights.

Because she was like that, it seemed she understood the meaning behind the gazes and the brief conversation I had just shared with Gawain.

Seeing her gaze full of pity, I made a small hand gesture.

It was one of the sign language motions used by the Sword Maidens, a simple gesture of pinching the thumb and ring finger together and releasing them.

"Your Highness?"

Arwen, who did not know sign language, asked me the meaning of the hand gesture. Instead of answering, I spurred my horse and rode ahead.

* * *

Not long after I returned to my quarters, the day broke.

With Adelia's help, I washed away the smell of blood and changed into new clothes. Then I headed straight to His Majesty's quarters.

"Your Highness."

"Announce me."

Giving a small nod, the royal knight reported my arrival to the King.

"Your Majesty. His Highness the First Prince has arrived."

"Let him enter."

I immediately stepped into the King's quarters.

Without withdrawing his gaze from out the window, the King only showed me his back.

He didn't ask anything.

Even though he surely knew that I had vacated my seat during the night and exactly where I had been.

Perhaps it was because it finally sank in that the legitimate son of a family that had offered loyalty for generations had committed treason during his reign, or perhaps it was because it was still a bit too burdensome to look at my face so casually.

Whichever it was, it was an undeniable fact that the King's mood wasn't exactly at ease.

"How are they doing?"

The King's question, spoken after a long while, was not about the Palace Count, but about the knights of old.

"They are training, forgetting day and night, to regain their past strength."

I didn't bother revealing the fact that the souls during the day and night were different.

I told the King that if he wished, I could arrange for him to meet a few of them right away.

The King shook his head, still without turning back.

That quiet nod seemed to say that it wasn't the right time yet.

I also had no intention of forcing the matter, so I didn't press him further.

"If you have something to say, say it."

After a long silence, the King asked me my business.

It was still a stiff tone, but it was incomparably softer than his past tone, which used to be as chilly as a blowing midwinter wind.

But even that was only brief.

"What did you say?"

The moment I opened my mouth and stated my business, the King whipped around to look at me.

Looking at that face, which had hardened coldly as if settling with the freezing northern wind and snow, I felt as if the winter I thought had passed had returned once again.

"Are you in your right mind saying that right now!"

Even a sharp rebuke like a raging northern wind.

It was only natural for spring to come after winter passed, but it seemed I had a disposition for winter after all.

Seeing how I welcomed the sight of the King cornering me so coldly.

"Just where do you think that place is that you want to go there!"

Though the King seemed to have a different opinion than me in many ways.