The Crown Prince Who Raises Alt Characters

#Chapter 383 Tyrant (10) - Recruitment Pathetic. That was the first thought that came to Tower Master Kirie Eldenhausen's mind when she first heard about this incident. "That this Emperor is incompetent is nothing new, but even that has its limits. Tsk, tsk, tsk." But in a certain sense, it was also inevitable. After all, once one became the Emperor of the Empire, looking after one's own safety was also one of the duties that came with it. So even if fighting directly was rare, one needed at least some measure of skill in swordsmanship and magic to protect oneself, or failing that, at the very least keep a powerful, loyal servant close by. Only then could one prevent a 6th Rank who had made up their mind from coming to take one's head. But what had Emperor Mihail done? Quite the opposite — he kept the 6th Ranks at a distance, reluctant to have them near him. He feared having, close by, powerful beings who could kill him outright the moment things took a turn. Of course, he had never once admitted with his own mouth that it was out of fear, always offering plausible excuses and bluster instead, but there was not a single 6th Rank in the Empire who failed to see through to his true feelings. And the result was this mess, exactly as it now stood. For someone so cowardly to have failed even at properly protecting himself — there was no way to call it anything but pathetic. "Tsk. Still, I suppose there's no way I can skip going." Honestly, she had absolutely no interest in avenging the Emperor. She did have a slight interest in the Dragonheart that the First Prince had offered, but even that wasn't something worth getting desperately worked up over. Sure enough, the other 6th Ranks who joined up near the imperial palace shared much the same mood. Chelleno Boriel, dressed in a neat suit, giving off the air of an elderly businessman or company chairman rather than a mage. And Arclight Hilden, leaning crookedly against a wall and yawning, letting hang a grotesquely oversized spear whose blade alone was as long as an ordinary greatsword. Either way, both of them were far removed from anything like the passion of "I shall execute the traitor who dared to assassinate His Majesty the Emperor!!" Their attitude was more along the lines of simply doing what needed to be done. "Aren't you two being far too laid-back about this?" "Well. This fellow here, maybe, but I'm being fairly serious in my own way. I have to think about how best to capture him to sell him off at the highest price." "It's just that there's no appetite for this. Honestly, if we'd killed that worthless Emperor, shouldn't we get a reward instead?" "I sympathize, but you know that can't happen, don't you." "Right. Arclight. This isn't a matter of right and wrong anymore. It's a matter of whether the Empire stays intact or not." "Tsk. If he'd at least contacted me, I could've handled it far more cleanly. Why did he have to go and do it with his own hands, of all things. Hah." It was just as Arclight lamented. Alondre Arcandel Eizern. The young man who, through his uncle's usurpation, had been robbed of the throne that should rightfully have been his to inherit. Whether he had truly been an idiot, or whether his intellectual development had simply been delayed around the age of six and his uncle had merely pinned the label of "idiot" on him, or whether he himself had only pretended to be an idiot — none of it was clear, and honestly, it didn't matter much either way. Even the act of killing the Emperor itself wasn't, at least in the eyes of the 6th Ranks, that great a problem. After all, it wasn't as though such a thing had never happened before in the Empire's history. But at the very least, those others had never killed with their own hands. They had pinned it on someone else, passed it off as an unfortunate accident, or in any case killed in a way where "circumstantially, this person is certainly behind it, but there's no outright evidence" — that's what it meant. No matter how much it was just covering one's eyes and pretending, doing so secured at least a minimum of legitimacy. But Alondre had crossed that line. No matter how solid the legitimacy, no matter how justified the revenge, a member of the imperial family who had directly killed the Emperor could not become Emperor. After all, if such a thing were allowed, how much bloodshed would follow within the palace afterward? If a history were left behind where killing the Emperor meant becoming Emperor, how badly would the Empire's stability be shaken? Kirie, who as Tower Master owed her position's very existence to the Empire's immense national power; Chelleno, head of an illustrious imperial house holding a grip on all manner of interests within the Empire; and Arclight, who had grown through the Empire's cultivation of talent and had countless peers and juniors throughout the Empire — — none of them wanted the Empire itself to fall, however much they despised the Emperor. That was precisely why Alondre had to die. "For example. When summoning some being, is it truly necessary to summon its entire true body? Rather than calling forth an entire dragon whole, wouldn't summoning only the aspect of 'a dragon attempting to breathe fire' be far superior in terms of cost reduction?" "Of course, circular shareholding isn't a technique without its drawbacks. If you're not careful, the moment one piece fails or is seized, the whole thing can come crashing down all at once. But nothing in this world is perfect, and knowing a risk while using it anyway is an entirely different matter from not knowing it at all, wouldn't you say?" "Hilden's Spear handles the contradictory principles of heaviness and change, much like a giant serpent. But contrary to what people commonly mistake it for, Hilden's Spear isn't slow. Rather, it pursues relative speed through the interplay of pace. When something that had seemed endlessly still suddenly moves, the speed the opponent perceives is far more threatening. Am I wrong?" He has to die, though. Hmm. ...Still, perhaps it wouldn't hurt to just listen to a little of what he has to say? Kirie, who had at first scoffed at the idea of an idiot prince daring to lecture her — the foremost authority on summoning magic, the Tower Master, the Empire's strongest mage — on the subject of summoning, found herself drawn into the concepts and theoretical formulas that Alondre presented. Chelleno, who unlike Kirie was not obsessed with magic but devoted to his house's glory and wealth, had been laughing hollowly while quietly preparing to bury Alondre — yet upon hearing the various asset-growth techniques Alondre spoke of, he silently dissolved the substances he had been secretly transmuting and stockpiling. Arclight, who upon Alondre's audacious offer to show him a spear had thought little more than "I do like this one," found his jaw dropping at the sight of Alondre displaying an understanding of spearmanship that put even his own chief disciples to shame. It wasn't that Alondre was stronger or more skilled than they were. Alondre's ability, even including everyone standing nearby — Crown Princess Trisha and the entire Golden Cloud Knights — did not pose even the slightest threat to these three 6th Ranks. The problem was potential. Yes, what they had seen was potential. If they talked with Alondre more, if Alondre grew further, no — if they themselves raised Alondre. Just how high could he climb, how much enlightenment would they themselves gain from watching that process unfold, and how far would the very field they had each devoted their whole lives to advance because of it. That was the potential they had glimpsed, and nothing more. "Of course, there are plenty of problems with the one who killed the Emperor becoming Emperor, whether you look at it from the laws of succession or the precedent it would leave behind. But, think of it the other way around." "What if, to begin with, the Emperor was never truly the Emperor? What if the only rightful Emperor was my father, Fried Wenli Eizern, and all this time, someone who wasn't even the Emperor had simply been temporarily occupying the throne?" "It wasn't a member of the imperial family who killed the Emperor. It was the legitimate Emperor executing a usurper who merely called himself Emperor." That was still something close to a stretch of logic. To call it proper logic would be far too much of covering one's eyes and pretending. ...Then again, as far as covering-your-eyes-and-pretending went, it was at least plausible enough. No — rather, the hearts of the three 6th Ranks persuaded their owners to just go along with "let's call it plausible." And then, about thirty minutes later. "Oho! Welcome back! Did you finally kill that traitor? Though it would've been even better if you'd captured him alive. Hm? Where is he? Why is everyone so quiet? ...Hey?" The First Prince, along with the entire pro-Mihail faction, received three 6th-Rank-caliber skeletons. *** Former Fourth Consort Beatrix was a capable woman. If asked just how capable, capable enough that even after her husband the Emperor died and she was stabbed in the back by the very son she had fully backed, getting ousted once from within the imperial palace, she had still stubbornly survived and managed to rebuild a faction strong enough to check the Emperor of the Empire. "I hear the Emperor's kicked the bucket?" "...What?" But, capable as she was, even she couldn't help but have her mind go momentarily blank white at this out-of-the-blue remark. At the sight of Beatrix like that, a noblewoman with a seductive air, dressed in a dress as red as blood, chuckled. Enhancement, regeneration, disease treatment. A 6th-Rank mage-swordswoman who had risen to a state of absolute mastery as a result of specializing solely in magic that acts upon the human body. Beatrix, mulling over the words of the woman commonly known as "Lady Carmilla," soon asked again with a serious expression. "How exactly did he die?" "You know that son born between the former Emperor and the Empress? That idiot prince. Apparently that kid barged into court in the middle of a session, looking perfectly fine, and just up and killed him." "...Was it a lie, then, that he was an idiot?" "No. That's not it. He really was, for certain, an idiot. I examined him myself, so there's no room for doubt." After the gods fell and divine power grew extremely scarce across the continent, the Empire had to find a means other than divine power to heal the body, and that means was broadly divided into three: medicine, drugs, and magic. And Carmilla was a figure well-versed in all three. As a woman who had even served as the imperial family's personal physician back in the previous Emperor's time, she had of course tended to Alondre as well. "Do you know what happens if you take an object from the surface and put it deep, deep down in the abyssal depths of the sea?" "I've read in a book that it gets crushed by the water pressure." "That prince is exactly that. His body itself is like the deep sea, so neither soul nor spirit could simply endure it. You might call him a being whose ruin was sealed from the moment he was born." "But didn't you say he killed the Emperor?" "That's exactly what makes it strange. It means either he's a fake, or some absurd soul utterly mismatched to that body got stuffed into it, or else something happened that's hard even to imagine. Anyway, they ordered me to go fight something like that, so I just told them to screw off and came here instead." Watching a fire from a safe distance was one thing, Carmilla declared flatly, but doing so without even properly gauging the size of the blaze was simply suicide. Beatrix's mind was racing, tangled with thoughts. Resentment toward the Emperor, who had coaxed her son Nikolaus into betraying his own mother, and then, once his usefulness had run out, had him killed disguised as an accident. A sense of emptiness over her target of revenge having died so suddenly. The need to redefine her relationship with Duke Valencia's house, with whom she had built an alliance against the current Emperor. The threat from the Republic, which she was experiencing in real time due to geographical disadvantages. The various schemes to be made of this incident. But setting all of that aside, there was something else that took top priority above all. "What about Trisha? Is Trisha safe?" Assuming the one who had assassinated the Emperor really was the idiot prince Alondre himself, he surely harbored resentment and a desire for revenge against the Emperor. If so, what then of Trisha, whom that Emperor had named Crown Princess? In truth, Trisha too had merely been confined like a bird in a cage, but would a prince driven mad with vengeance really spare a child who wasn't even his full sibling by the same mother, but only a half-sister? That the girl was said to be in league with the traitor; that Carmilla had considered trying to pull her out herself but judged it would be rather difficult among the many other 6th Ranks present; that it would be better to extract her through negotiation instead, so Beatrix should hurry and prepare — and so on. It was at that very moment that Carmilla was about to bring up all sorts of things. Crackle!! Flap flap! A single bird — one that anyone could tell at a glance was no ordinary fowl, crackling with something like electricity all over its body, clearly some kind of spirit or magical beast — dropped something onto the outdoor table where the two women sat. Just as the nearby guardian knights and mages were about to move to intercept it, and Beatrix was moving to stop them — Carmilla snatched it out of the air with her hand and promptly tilted her head. "A communication magic tool? How odd. That bird just now — however I look at it, it seemed just like the Tower Master's summoned familiar." Well, considering Kirie was, if anything, one of the 6th Ranks who tended to "listen to" what the imperial family said, it wouldn't be strange at all for her to try contacting Beatrix — Trisha's mother, who stood opposed to the imperial family — if she had suppressed this incident and secured custody of Trisha. The problem was that it was happening far too quickly. Carmilla, who had assumed that even if the traitor were subdued swiftly, it would still take at least a day for various words to pass among the imperial family and for the balance of power to settle, felt a pang of doubt. Beatrix too seemed to sense something ominous, and with a face steeled in resolve, activated the magic tool. After a brief signal tone, the other party's voice came through. 『Ah, Mom? Mother dearest? Did you get this properly? It's not some random person who picked up, right?』 "Trisha? Is that you, Trisha? Are you safe? Where are you right now!!" 『I'm in the imperial palace. I'm safe. To be specific, I'm busy enjoying the leisure of a winner right now. Ah, but let's save the explanation of the situation for later — there's something I need to check first. It's a bit urgent.』 Trisha said it all remarkably nonchalantly. 『The people you're allied with right now, Mom — they've got plenty of bad blood with the imperial family, don't they? If any of them happen to want to cut off an imperial family member's head, would you mind having them come to the imperial palace right away?』