Chapter 2 - I Became the Scoundrel Prince (2)

Just as I was about to begin the work of forming a Mana Heart, an uninvited guest arrived.

"Your Highness! His Majesty has arrived! Please compose your attire at once and prepare to receive His Majesty."

"No, why would that man suddenly come now, when he didn't even look in on me while I was half dead?"

The maid helping me dress stared at me with a startled face.

"Y-Your Highness. The sharp-eared court knights have already come close. Please, mind your words and conduct..."

Only belatedly did I remember my current situation and shut my mouth.

Unfortunately, her advice had come a little too late.

"I heard you came back from the brink of death, but that temper of yours is still the same."

One of those sharp-eared fellows she had mentioned had already heard me.

Before I knew it, an old knight with a head full of white hair was standing in the room.

"You may go now. His Majesty is not expecting anything anyway."

The old knight drove the maid out on his own authority, then looked at me with displeasure.

"Still, we share the bond of master and disciple. Will you not even acknowledge me now?"

I wondered who he was, acting so completely at ease, and it seemed he had been that scoundrel's teacher.

But as for me, I had no way of knowing what the old knight and the scoundrel had taught or learned from each other.

Even if I wanted to pretend I knew him, this was not a situation where I could.

So I just stared blankly, and the old knight's expression changed.

"Your Highness?"

Perhaps he had sensed something strange, because the look he turned on me grew sharp as a blade.

I took that searching gaze head-on and said,

"My memory is a mess. I feel as if I might remember who you are, and yet I also feel as if I might not..."

I threw out the amnesia bait I had been thinking about ever since I woke up.

"Surely...?"

The old knight took the bait at once.

"His Majesty the King has arrived!"

But before the old knight could chew on the bait properly, the fellow called the king barged in.

Well, well.

Even among the attendants clustered around him, the middle-aged man shone especially bright, and I could not help but be impressed as I looked at the king.

I had thought the passage of time might have thinned the lion's blood until it became a dog's blood, but seeing the king, it seemed that was not the case after all.

In his imposing appearance and in his dignity as a monarch, the king seemed in no way lacking as a man who led a nation.

"You look far better than I was told."

The king spoke abruptly.

For the first words addressed to a son who had come back from the brink of death, his tone was excessively cold.

"Seeing as you do not even greet your father, it seems crossing the threshold of death does not necessarily change a person."

The king clicked his tongue as he spoke.

Just then, the old knight cut in.

"Your Majesty, this humble servant has just heard that His Highness's memory is not whole."

At the old knight's words, the king asked me with his eyes if that was true.

I nodded for him.

"My goodness! How could such a thing happen!"

"Why on earth did the royal physician not report such an important fact to Your Majesty?"

"Call the royal physician at once and have him examine His Highness!"

While the attendants made a fuss, the royal physician arrived.

Perhaps he had already heard the situation on the way, because as soon as the royal physician appeared, he examined my body.

Then he reported to the king,

"This humble servant can find no abnormality whatsoever in His Highness's body."

He said so.

However, he did not forget to add an excuse to cover himself, saying there was also the possibility that it was a temporary symptom caused by mental shock.

"Memory loss..."

At the royal physician's words, the king stared fixedly at me.

His gaze was so cold it was like a sheet of ice, and it did not at all seem like the look one would give a son who had survived a brush with death and lost his memory.

'Has he noticed?'

I grew tense without realizing it.

It felt as if the king would shout at any moment, asking who I was and where his son had gone.

"How very convenient."

But the king did not suspect me.

"Do you think that if you say you do not remember now, everything you have done until now will cease to exist?"

He was merely angry.

"At times, one may make the wrong choice. One may also act in a way that earns the condemnation of all. If later one realizes something and never repeats the same mistake, then that too may be called a process of learning and growth. And yet you have forgotten all of it."

The king's voice, which had been cold, was now heated with anger.

"Because all of it has become as though it never happened, you have not taken even a single step forward from your past wrongs. Nor will you be able to move forward in the future."

The resentment contained within was so deep that each and every word sounded less like a rebuke and more like a curse.

"Your Majesty. Please calm yourself."

Only after the old knight, unable to keep listening, stepped forward and offered words of dissuasion did the king withdraw his anger.

But the coldness in his eyes remained unchanged.

'Shit. I stepped in it.'

Since I had realized at our first meeting that the bastard was a scoundrel rarely seen in this world, I had not expected to be properly treated like a prince.

But seeing this now, it looked as if I would not be treated like a person, let alone a prince.

Seeing the uniform contempt in the eyes of those who looked at me, I came to understand that living on in the body of a prince would not be as easy as I had thought.

Like that, the king looked at me as if he were looking at some thing, then left the room.

As a bonus, before leaving, he handed down a six-month confinement.

"Phew."

I let out a sigh, and then felt a gaze staring fixedly at me from right beside me.

When I turned my head, the old knight was looking at me.

His transparent gaze, as if it could see through my insides, swept over my entire body.

WHOOSH.

I had thought the old knight would say something, but he only looked at me like that and disappeared.

"What the hell did this kid go around doing?"

I asked myself out of frustration, but there was no way an answer would come.

After the king left, a woman called the Queen came to visit.

"I heard all about the situation on the way here. Yes. How confused you must be."

No sooner had she appeared than she pulled me into an embrace and wiped away her tears.

Her face plainly revealed how upset she was.

"Your memory will return soon. No, what great matter is it if you do not remember such a trifling past?"

From beginning to end, she comforted me in a warm tone.

Unlike the king, she did not show the slightest sign of displeasure.

But that gentle attitude was terribly uncomfortable for me.

Because I was the weapon that had killed her son, and the thief who had stolen his body.

Besides, at my age, acting like a spoiled child was not exactly something I could do.

So I kept my mouth firmly shut and only listened to what she said.

"I will come again."

By the time the long meeting with the Queen ended, the sun had already set.

Only then was I finally able to begin the work for mana refinement.

"What kind of goddamn body is this!"

I ran into an obstacle right from the start.

Until the first mana was accepted, one had no choice but to be at the mercy of one's constitution.

But the scoundrel's miserable aptitude held me back.

If I drew it in, it scattered, and if I drew it in, it scattered.

No matter how hard I tried, the body would not accept mana.

When it came to mana, the bastard's body was itself a true devotee of owning nothing.

"If only I had my original body."

Once again, I missed my original body, which I had lost.

If it had been my original body, which had accumulated mana for hundreds of years, I could have ignored this paltry constitution and crammed mana in all at once.

Unfortunately, the king had confiscated my original body and stuffed it away in his bedchamber.

How bitterly disappointed I was when I heard that from the maid.

There was nothing I could do.

For now, I had no choice but to keep trying until it worked.

All day long, I played tug-of-war with mana that seemed within reach yet would not be caught.

And even after all that, I could not gain any result at all, so it truly was a remarkable aptitude.

"Your Highness. This is food the Queen specially sent to restore Your Highness's weakened vitality."

At that point, the 「tonic」 sent by the Queen was like welcome rain in a drought to me.

You might wonder what was so remarkable about an apparently common tonic that invigorated and purified the body's energy.

But as expected, once one was royalty, even a tonic was not ordinary.

Astonishingly, there was mana inside the restorative food.

And not just any mana, but pure mana refined to the utmost and containing not a single impurity.

"It may be bitter to the taste, but it will be most beneficial to the body, so please understand the sincerity Her Highness the Queen has placed within..."

When I only stared fixedly at the medicine, the maid spoke with an uneasy face.

She seemed worried that I might throw a tantrum and refuse to take the medicine.

Of course, I had no intention of doing that at all.

"Your Highness?"

I snatched the dish from her hands and devoured every last drop.

Then I even tossed into my mouth the candy she had offered to cleanse my palate.

"You can go now."

Shoo, shoo, I waved my hand to drive the maid out, then immediately sat down on the bed.

I could feel mana.

Without hesitation, I gathered the mana in one place.

Opposite the heart, around the right side of my chest.

As expected, the mana once again refused to settle in my body.

But forcibly holding down mana that had already entered my body was not particularly difficult even for the current me.

The mana took a place inside my body.

The amount was still insufficient, and even that was the kind of thing that would scatter after a single day, but in any case, mana was mana.

I called the maid again.

"Do you happen to have more?"

At my words, the maid's eyes grew wide.

* * *

I took the tonic sent by the Queen several times.

Thanks to that, I finally managed to gather enough mana to create a new heart.

"Do not let anyone come in today until I call for you first."

"And do not let anyone else in either."

After calling the maid and repeatedly impressing that on her, I immediately began forming the Mana Heart.

It was something I had already done more times than I could count.

I was someone who could create something like a Mana Heart with my eyes closed.

Or so I thought.

"Guh!"

Until sudden pain made my mind go hazy, that is.

The mana that had settled around my chest began to thrash wildly.

And every time the mana ran rampant, I felt horrific pain.

I was flustered.

This had never happened before.

"Ah!"

The answer was right nearby.

["It hurts! It feels like my body's on fire!"]

["My chest feels like it's going to burst!"]

The screams my former masters had let out surfaced in my mind like auditory hallucinations.

All of them were people for whom I had forcibly created Mana Hearts.

I realized it.

This was supposed to hurt.

It was just that I at the time had been a worthless scrap of a sword with no blood, no tears, and no sense of pain, so I had overlooked it.

And I came to pay the price for that indifference with my entire body.

"Grrrgh."

I focused my mind.

I must not lose consciousness like my former masters.

They had someone to control the mana for them, but I was alone now.

If I lost consciousness like this, the mana would backflow.

Even a rat's-tail amount of mana would have no trouble turning the body of a brat that had only just taken its first steps into a half-cripple.

Like that, I clung desperately to the formation of the Mana Heart.

And at last, I succeeded in fixing the rampaging mana in place.

I had succeeded in forming a Mana Heart.

"I did it!"

Even though I had created Mana Hearts countless times until now, I had no choice but to cheer.

Not someone else's, but mine.

That small difference made me feel a sense of achievement on an entirely different level.

Just then, a voice like an auditory hallucination rang in my head.

『A Mana Heart has been created.』

That voice told me the value of the step I had just taken.

My satisfaction doubled.

"Huh?"

But that satisfaction lasted only a moment, and I was left completely stunned.

Because...

"It's a status message."

It was completely identical to the status messages I had always sent my masters back when I was a sword.

『Restoring connection to the source.』

"What? Wait..."

Before I could grasp the situation, messages poured out.

『Connection has been restored. However, the connection status is poor.』

『Connection is extremely unstable.』

『Most powers cannot be used.』

『Only some powers are available.』