Chapter 249 - The Crown Prince's Virtues (6)

Before the woman had even finished speaking, screams erupted all around them. Thick, sickening screams, unmistakably inhuman. The monsters' heads and severed body parts flew into the air.

CLANK! CLANK!

The heavy clatter of metal followed a moment later.

"Do not let a single one escape!"

"Leave the gnolls to the knights! Soldiers, protect the villagers!"

With those resounding voices came knights in heavy armor and soldiers, cutting down the monsters like sheaves of straw. The slaughter began.

This time, it was the monsters being slaughtered.

Hansen watched, dumbfounded.

"Th-they really came?"

The soldiers had come, just as the villagers had said they would. And they had brought knights in gleaming armor with them.

Yet the nobles and knights he knew never spared a thought for what happened to some remote village like this.

"Most people facing a monster for the first time are overwhelmed by its stench and frozen by its gaze. They die without even realizing their bodies are being torn apart."

That same clear voice reached his ears as he stood there dazed.

"For someone without training to thrust a spear at such a monster is remarkable in itself. You may take pride in what you did today."

Hansen turned to find the speaker.

"Ah..."

But she had already vanished from before him. Looking around, he finally spotted the woman farther ahead, cutting down monsters amid a torrent of starlike sword light.

"You should feel honored. That knight you just met is a Direct Knight of His Highness the Crown Prince. And not just any Direct Knight, either. She's his most cherished knight, and one of the kingdom's eight Silver Lions."

As Hansen followed her with an entranced gaze, a man spoke to him. His leather armor clearly set him apart from the others.

"A Silver Lion..."

Hansen gazed at the soldier with somewhat vacant eyes, then suddenly brightened.

"What's her name?"

"Dame Arwen of Count Kirgayen's house. The likes of us just call her the Knight of Steel."

"The Knight of Steel..."

Hansen repeated the title to himself several times.

"How can I become one of her soldiers?"

"She doesn't recruit soldiers of her own. But that doesn't mean there's no way."

"Please tell me. I'll make it worth your while."

The soldier gave a sly smile. Absorbed in watching the knight's retreating figure, Hansen missed it.

"Go to Ballorhard in the North. Enlist in the Rangers there."

Had he seen that smile, he would have realized the soldier had an ulterior motive.

"Is that all I have to do for them to take me?"

"Oh, make sure you say this to the recruiting officer."

"Say what...?"

"That you've come to kick that bastard Yorden's ass."

"Who's that?"

"You don't need to know. Say that, and they'll at least take you in. The rest is up to you."

But Hansen had been through far too much in a single day and was far more excited than he should have been. He made a decision he would regret for the rest of his life.

"Thank you. It isn't much, but please take this."

He even gave away precious merchandise from his pack.

* * *

"Two hundred and thirty-three. We've killed every last one."

At the knight's report, Arwen Kirgayen was about to give a firm order to check once more for survivors, but closed her mouth. The Ballorhard Rangers accompanying them as guides were already roaming the area, plunging swords into the fallen monsters' corpses.

"We leave as soon as the cleanup is finished."

"Immediately?"

"On our way here, we confirmed time and again that His Highness was right to say this would happen throughout the kingdom. The longer we delay, the more lives will be lost. We have no time to waste."

The knight nodded in agreement, then addressed Arwen as though something had just occurred to him.

"How could His Highness have known this would happen? It truly is astonishing."

"His thoughts run unfathomably deep. I cannot even begin to guess how great a purpose he holds in his heart. I can only trust and follow him."

Arwen spoke with pride written across her face. But it was fleeting; soon, her expression grew somber.

"How many lives would have been lost in vain without His Highness? Even with forewarning, there have been so many deaths we could not prevent. How many more would we have suffered?"

She looked at the old men's bodies, which had yet to be fully gathered. She spent a long while mourning those who had died so senselessly before the knights informed her that the battlefield had been cleared.

"Thank you. Thank you so much."

Though filled with grief, the women who had survived the calamity thanked her in steady voices.

"There is no need to thank me. I merely followed His Highness the Crown Prince's orders."

Claiming no credit herself, she attributed it all to the Royal Family and mounted her horse.

"Move out."

"Move out!"

A knight echoed her command, and the expedition set off once more.

Whenever they found someone in need along the way, they turned their horses aside. Whenever they saw monsters, they wiped them out. And they credited every good deed to the Crown Prince.

Similar scenes played out throughout the kingdom. The forces led by the Silver Lions traveled from place to place, suppressing the monsters before they could gain a foothold. Thanks to them, the unrest that might have engulfed the entire kingdom quickly subsided.

Naturally, the people united in praise of the Royal Family, which had noticed signs no one else had seen and dispatched even its precious knights, including the Silver Lions, to safeguard their lives.

Yet Lionel Leonberk, the head of that Royal Family, was far from at ease. Of course, as a sovereign, he ought to welcome his people's safety and their growing praise for the Royal Family.

"The trouble in Branbrut County was settled ages ago! Why has he still not returned?"

The problem was the Royal Family's eldest son, who showed no sign of coming home now that he had left.

"W-well, it seems His Highness the Crown Prince has established a base at a fortress in the Central region."

The king nearly leaped from his seat at Marquis Bielefeld's words.

"A base!"

"He is directing the extermination operations throughout the kingdom from there..."

Watching the king's mood, the marquis relayed the Silver Lions' reports: the Crown Prince's advice and orders had been so timely that they had averted potential catastrophes on several occasions.

The king gave a hollow laugh.

He had allowed the boy to travel so he could earn his people's trust and cultivate the virtues befitting a crown prince. Yet all he was doing was exactly what he had done on the battlefield.

The king wanted to summon his troublesome heir back at once, but he had no grounds to do so. Just as the marquis said, reports from Silver Lions and lords praising the Crown Prince's insight were piled high.

"This is all my fault. I let him wander outside instead of finding a place for himself in the palace as a child, and now, at his age, he still roams beyond its walls. Who else can I blame at this point?"

The king could only sigh.

As his eldest son's failure to return continued to draw ever more sighs from him, a messenger sent by the Crown Prince came before the king one day.

"His Highness has sent Your Majesty a letter."

The messenger drew a carefully sealed letter from his breast and handed it over.

Without hesitation, the king broke the seal and examined its contents. As he scanned the letter, he burst into a hearty laugh.

"What does His Highness say?"

Marquis Bielefeld, who had heard the news and hurried over, asked about the letter. The king silently handed it to the old marquis. After reading it, the marquis gave the same incredulous laugh.

"He has dressed it up in an uncharacteristic amount of flowery language, but I take it to mean he will not return until everything is finished. Have I misunderstood?"

"I understood it exactly as Your Majesty did."

The king sighed again at his answer.

Perhaps feeling sorry for the king, the marquis cautiously offered some consolation.

"Still, according to the letter, he intends to avoid fighting in person as much as possible. Surely it is a blessing that our greatest worry has been eased."

"Do you believe him, Marquis?"

The marquis averted his eyes.

In all honesty, the Crown Prince might be sitting quietly in a fortress now, but there was no telling when he would suddenly seize his sword and rush onto a battlefield. The king knew it, the marquis knew it, and so did everyone else.

"Still, viewed another way, we cannot say His Highness has entirely disregarded Your Majesty's wishes."

After a moment's hesitation, the marquis tried once more to console the king, unwilling to give up.

"Swiftly eliminating the vicious creatures frightening the people will quickly restore their peace of mind. And in the process, praise for His Highness's virtue and insight has spread throughout the kingdom. Is that not also what Your Majesty desired?"

The king had no answer. The marquis was not wrong.

Though the boy had not met his people face-to-face and tended to their suffering, he had certainly sought to bring them peace by removing the source of their fears. It would not be wrong to say that this, too, demonstrated the virtues befitting a crown prince.

Of course, it was a far cry from what the king had hoped for.

In any case, thanks to the Crown Prince, the kingdom's unrest swiftly subsided. But not every country on the continent had quelled the chaos as early as the Leonberk Kingdom.

Indeed, far from bringing it under control, most found their situations worsening with time. The Empire was no exception.

The South had been devastated by the Fire Dragon. The East suffered defeat after defeat under the Dotrin Kingdom's relentless offensive. The northeast was engulfed in a rebellion by its lords, while the West had long since fallen under the traitorous Fifth Imperial Prince's control.

With matters in such disarray, the Empire could not properly respond to the strange creatures stirring on every side.

Lords everywhere cried out for aid. Having requisitioned troops from across the Empire to gain an advantage in his war against the Fifth Imperial Prince, the Third Imperial Prince could not simply ignore their pleas forever.

Of course, selfish to the extreme and concerned only with himself, he had not listened to them from the outset.

"Your Highness, please heed their pleas."

"Why should I?"

The Third Imperial Prince blamed the lords for failing to keep their territories in order. It never even occurred to him that they were struggling because he had requisitioned their elite troops.

"We must report the situation to His Majesty the Emperor and deploy the Imperial House's elite forces to extinguish these outbreaks of unrest."

"If he has troops to spare, he should give them to me, so I can crush those rebels who don't know their place."

His confidants persisted in trying to persuade him.

"Consider it another way. If they fall, there may be less territory for Your Highness to rule when you ascend the throne."

"They must have troops tucked away somewhere. Surely it won't come to that."

"Even if they overcome this crisis, they will certainly suffer considerable losses. That could mean less tax and tribute for the Imperial House in the future."

Only then did the greedy prince begin to listen seriously. Even so, it took much more persuasion before he gave the answer everyone wanted.

"Very well. This time, I shall personally attend to their troubles. I will seek an audience with His Majesty, secure permission to deploy the legions directly under the Imperial House, and obtain a strategy to quell the Empire's unrest."

The Third Imperial Prince made his grand promise. But when the day of his audience arrived, he began to hesitate and look for a way out.

Lately, he had found the thought of meeting the emperor alone deeply unsettling.

Indeed, fear flickered in his eyes as he approached the emperor's residence. He had been afraid before, but it had grown much worse.

He could not say when it had started. He had simply become aware one day that the emperor was watching him with terribly cold eyes.

At first, he had thought it was displeasure over his unauthorized peace negotiations, in which he had ceded precious imperial fortresses and territory to the Leonberk Kingdom. But as time passed, he realized that was not it.

The emperor's cold gaze was like that of a snake eyeing a plump frog.

"Could His Majesty really have done something forbidden, as that traitor claims?"

Whenever he recalled those inhuman eyes, he wondered whether the traitor's ravings might not be entirely baseless.

"I'm the only one left to inherit the throne anyway. What do I have to fear now?"

He forced himself to take comfort in being the Imperial House's sole remaining direct heir.

At last, he summoned the courage to stand before the emperor and reported the Empire's plight as his confidants had instructed.

"Denied."

The emperor rejected his request outright, without a moment's consideration.

The Empire's circumstances were so dire that even the Third Imperial Prince, who cared nothing for the lords' plight, had grasped their severity after hearing his confidants' explanations.

Repeated failures of conquest, rebellions, the Fire Dragon's rampage. Not one was a trivial matter. Every one was a crisis.

Yet the emperor, said to survey the world from his seat, acted as though he could not see any of them.

The Third Imperial Prince suddenly frowned. Now that he thought about it, every decision the emperor had made had been a blunder.

It was the emperor who had ordered the two failed invasions of Dotrin. It was also the emperor who had ordered them to overstretch the front and attack the Leonberk Kingdom as well.

Surely he would not have deliberately made poor decisions to bring about the Empire's decline. Perhaps he was not as great a man as everyone believed.

The prince grew emboldened, as though the predictions his confidants had spent days hammering into his head, almost brainwashing him, had been his own all along.

For the first time, he felt something other than fear toward the emperor.

It was a violation of filial duty. It was ambition.

With a crooked smile, the Third Imperial Prince raised his head and met the emperor's eyes. The instant he saw those clear eyes, the wicked ambition in his heart vanished without a trace.

He could only tremble.

The emperor gazed at him for a moment, then waved him away. Unable even to offer a proper farewell, the prince hurried out as though fleeing.

Seated on his throne, the emperor looked at the place where the prince had stood. Only after a long while did he speak.

"Even Bourgogne's once-great blood has become so paltry after a thousand years."

It was an oddly peculiar thing to say of his own flesh and blood. His tone was dry, devoid of emotion or even the slightest regret, as though he were appraising an unrelated stranger.

Suddenly, the emperor's face contorted. Unlike a moment earlier, all manner of emotions raged across it.

"Ghh..."

An animal-like groan escaped him.

He raised a hand. Hideous veins bulged across its back. The hand, discolored blue, struggled toward his head.

His fingernails clawed furiously at the rim of his resplendent golden crown.

Ordinary gold would already have been scratched, but the ancient crown, whose history stretched back as far as the Imperial House of Bourgogne itself, remained unmarked.

Still, the emperor kept clawing at it.

After continuing this inexplicable behavior for a long while, he stopped. He lowered his hand and examined his fingertips.

The bulging veins and trembling fingers had already returned to normal. The only difference was the ugly damage to his cracked and broken nails.

"Tsk. If you would only wait a little longer, I would let you go anyway."

The emperor clicked his tongue softly and rose from his seat.

As though nothing had happened.