128

One Lost, One Left (1)

Maximilian quietly watched the people at the dinner table.

They had at first gathered to hear the story of his brother, but as Doris talked, it had become a dinner at which the affairs of state were discussed. Adrian, who all had thought had been merely pursued, had in fact battled against the empire. The possibility of an outbreak of war could not be discounted. Some said that the prince’s actions would surely lead to greater pressure from the empire, and even war.

Others stated that the empire had no grounds upon which they could declare war, as their official position was that it was a contest between knights.

“Since when did the empire need a justification?” the king asked, stating further that if the empire wanted a war, they wouldn’t worry about justifying it.

Some fell silent as they heard his words. Everyone knew the temperament of the empire all too well. Once the anxiety of war reached a fever-pitch, the Prince of Dotrin, who claimed to be Adrian’s friend, spoke up.

“If they want to start a war, they must at least have a decent excuse, however minor.”

He affirmed that the empire would not start a war over the delegation’s actions, or even Adrian’s current mission.

“They don’t know that the Knights of the Sky are involved. Since they move by air, it is impossible to track their course. Therefore it is impossible to link the current tumult occurring in the empire to the Leonberger delegation.”

Prince Doris also dismissed the possibility of magical tracking, saying that a powerful wizard has already taken countermeasures. He also said that Adrian’s goal to sow confusion would be an adequate success.

When Maximilian asked what he meant, Doris replied that Adrian was creating a mess by attacking provinces that had not been involved in the pursuit of the delegation.

“They have decided to collect the arms and armor of their pursuers and leave them as evidence on the scenes of slaughter. If we are lucky, it will lead to conflict among the factions supporting the principes.”

“It’s a false-flag operation,” the Marquis of Bielefeld exclaimed as he slapped his knee. He added that you wouldn’t fool the imperial nobles with a few pieces of weapons and armor, but it would be enough for the paranoid faction to become more distrustful of each other.

The anxiety that had enveloped those at dinner slowly eased and then completely disappeared.

Once the possibility of war was eliminated, the king and others started discussing Adrian’s activities. They were all surprised that a man who had accumulated mana in his mana heart had been able to deal with two imperial paladins, who were knights of the ring.

“In the past, His Highness has unleashed amazing powers in emergencies. His Highness told me it was the power of Muhunshi,” the one-eyed cavalry commander from Balahard, Quéon, told everyone present.

It was a factoid that Maximilian also knew. He had felt Adrian’s Muhunshi on multiple occasions in the orcish war. The Winter Knights themselves had joined in on the songs, raising the resonance of Adrian’s verse.

Maximilian had never thought deeply about it, figuring that the power itself didn’t come from the poems. He was soon proved wrong when the Prince of Dotrin educated them on the matter.

What Maximilian had thought to be mundane and unsurprising was actually an ability that had been handed down from generation to generation in the Leonberger family.

The fact of the matter was that the Leonberger royal family had abandoned mana hearts for mana rings a few generations ago.

Maximilian threw a subtle glance at his father. The king had a stern face, and his eyes were closed, seemingly as shocked as Maximilian himself.

Although the Leonbergers had taken up mana rings to beat back the beasts of the empire, they had, in fact, abandoned their greatest weapon.

If the king wasn’t shocked, it would have been weird indeed.

“His Highness has always regretted it. He said it was an unavoidable trend, to forget tradition and take up the rings, yet he always said the loss was truly great,” Quéon said in a heavy tone, and one could hear the sorrow in his heart.

“Knights possess great strength if they possess completed mana hearts, but such completion is near impossible to achieve. That is why my brother never forced other knights to take up the use of mana hearts.”

“Wait. I think I heard something that is difficult to understand just now,” Doris interjected. He was confused, saying that he thought all the Leonbergers had inherited their ancestors’ gifts.

“How on earth did Adrian inherit the tradition, then?”

No one could provide an answer because no one knew.

“One day, my brother suddenly showed such ability. Everyone assumed that he read of it in olds books and so learned of it.”

Everyone stared at each other, but no one spoke.

“It didn’t fall from the sky, and it didn’t rise into him from the ground. Nobody thought it was weird, and I didn’t ask him about it,” Maximilian said.

The Prince of Dotrin looked embarrassed, and so did Maximilian. Now that he thought about it, he didn’t know anything about his brother. They had never spoken properly, except when they discussed military and state affairs.

Maximilian only realized it now.

He looked at his father, and the king was also troubled.

“His Highness does not discuss personal affairs,” the Marquis of Bielefeld said, a man who had visited the First Palace on a daily basis. All the people concerned for the safety of the first prince were gathered in one place, yet none really knew him all that well.

“The only person who openly spoke with His Highness was Count Bale Balahard.”

“Where is he now?”

Prince Doris’s question stiffened everyone around the table.

The royal family was somewhat responsible for the death of the former count of Balahard, so no one was willing to answer.

“He died battling the Warlord,” Quéon finally answered the prince’s question.

“Warlord? Are you referring to the lord of the greenskins?”

Doris was amazed, so surprised that a shiver ran through his spine and into his ass.

The cavalry commander briefly explained the war against the Warlord that was fought in the north.

“This is driving me crazy,” Doris muttered as he scratched his light-brown hair.

He could scarce believe the existence of the Warlord, or that a Knight of the Ring had severed one of the monster’s arms; even that the Leonberg knights had defeated the warlord.

Saying so sounded as if he was insulting the kingdom, so the Marquis of Bielefeld politely pointed this out. However, Doris did not care; he was a man who said what he wanted to say.

After that, no one called him out for his rudeness.

“Presumably, this former Count of Balahard was a penta-chain knight?”

The term ‘penta-chain knight’ held much weight. Few knights could even dream of devoting themselves to weaving five rings, and even fewer manage to weave a perfect five. Even in the empire, overflowing with paladins, the existence of such knights is uncertain.

The state of the penta-chain knight is supreme, and the knights who achieve that state are rare.

But it is said that Count Bale Balahard had died as such a knight.

Doris couldn’t believe it, yet he had no choice other than to believe.

As Doris had said, it had indeed been impossible for those who were not penta-chain to defeat the warlord. An imperial champion and hundreds of knights had faced the beast, and they could not best it.

‘Glugglug,’ Maximilian’s father emptied the goblet of wine that he had not touched throughout the dinner. After that, the king drank wine straight from the bottle.

This was the first time that Maximilian saw his father drink so much. The king was a man who neither enjoyed alcohol nor depended on it. Everyone now knew that there was a great champion in the kingdom, yet their emotions were different.

Quéon was staring at the ceiling, with his remaining eye wide open. Bielefeld had closed his eyes and remained silent. The queen was trying to hide her anxiety, but Maximilian could see her eyes shaking.

He could no longer bear staring at those terrible faces, so he turned his head.

Doris Dotrin was still in his own world, unaware of the prevailing mood.

“Now it makes sense. The power I felt that day was a power that someone couldn’t handle if they weren’t experienced to some extent. It is because Adrian had killed the Warlord that he was able to unleash such great power. Still, it makes no sense that he was able to learn a tradition that had been cut away from his dynasty several generations ago.”

Prince Doris nodded and then began muttering to himself, finally shaking his head like a madman.

Even if the family had worked together and put effort into it, it is inevitable that the power would be damaged through the generations. It is impossible to learn a tradition that had been cut away so long ago.

Maximilian watched as Doris continued to mutter.

The king had downed the entire bottle of wine and had fallen silent. He then spoke in a sad tone.

“It is said that the changes in my son began after the founding king’s sword had pierced his stomach when he had passed so near the gates of death.”

The Prince of Dotrin had been in his own world up till then as he talked to himself, but he now asked whether the sword had been the Dragon Slayer, which had been wielded to kill Gwangryong.

The king nodded, and the prince thought for a moment more before clapping his hands.

“It’s clear! There are objects in the world called artifacts, and each artifact contains more than one tradition.”

He added that if his guess was correct, then the Dragon Slayer was one of these relics, as it had been passed down from generation to generation in the Leonberger family.

“Adrian must have been chosen by this relic of the Leonberger royal family.”

This story was a pretty one for Maximilian to hear. He had heard that it was about time that his brother, who had a troubled relationship with their father, had changed abruptly. It was only after that that he had shown the prominence of his unprecedented abilities.

If Maximilian’s elder brother had obtained the tradition and power of Dragon Slayer, then everything fits together perfectly.

The king gave a small nod, saying that it must be the reason for Adrian’s obsession with Dragon Slayer. He then added that it was fortunate that a champion of the royal blood arose before the evil empire could steal the sword.

“According to historical records, the archetype of the tradition passed down to the Leonberger royal family is at least on a mythological level. It is natural that the empire covets the Dragon Slayer,” Doris mused.

To Maximilian, the prince’s words sounded like a rebuke of the royal family for forgetting such a glorious tradition. As for the king, his dark face only darkened; his emotions the same as Maximilian’s.

Still, Adrian’s messenger was unaware of such animosity and said something that was on the king’s mind as well.

“Of course, Adrian couldn’t really have inherited a mythical tradition. For him to have defeated the Warlord, he needed to possess a certain level of natural skill.”

Doris asserted that the power that Adrian inherited was rather that of a heroic poem. Both mythic and heroic Muhunshi was an unfamiliar topic to everyone, so Maximilian asked how powerful Adrian truly was.

“If he has fully inherited everything without any damage, he must possess the power of heroic poems.” The Prince of Dotrin was silent for a while, then said, “He’s at least on the level of a penta-chain knight.”

* * *

The empire’s border control was too lax, as well as their domestic security.

The nobles blindly believed in their prestige, believing that none would dare harm them.

They were true morons who had targeted me and the delegation, never expecting that I would target them in turn. From their point of view, I was just a petty prince from a small country that they could trample over at any time.

They had to learn: If you step on an earthworm, it will only wriggle. But if a cat corners a rat, the rat bites back. If you draw a knife, that same knife can end your life.

I let them learn my lesson. Of course, it wasn’t for free.

The price of my instruction was their lives. I flew across the empire and murdered nobles at random. Sometimes we invaded their bed-chambers and slit their throats. At other times, we killed them once they and their knights left their fortresses.

We were giving the empire a beating of insane proportions. Thirty or more imperial nobles had died by my hand, and five of them were counts or greater.

Thanks to this, the empire was plunged into chaos.

They reinforced their checkpoints to catch the intruders, and they patrolled everywhere.

I mounted my wyvern and laughed as I thought of the empire’s soldiers and knights. As I laughed, I heard an uneven voice speak up.

“Oh, really. Don’t clutch your waist! You have a very strange personality.”

It was Jin Katrin, a close friend of Prince Dotrin and vice-commander of the Sky Knights.

He looked at me and grumbled.

“Now that we’ve run so wild, can’t we stop? In recent weeks, the wizards’ attempts at tracking and pursuing us have intensified. If it goes on like this, the Knights of the Sky will be exposed sooner or later.”

Jin’s voice was exhausted, for we had crisscrossed the vast empire from east to west and from north to south over the past few months.

But I didn’t care.

“Today, I am a winged lion.”

I was like a knight who had wandered thousands of miles to end his foes.

“What, a winged lion? More like a loose foal,” Jin grumbled under his breath.

I ignored him again. It wasn’t time to return to the kingdom. I was thinking of adding a last, proper decoration; to enact a final proper battle.

“Let’s go to one final place.”

“Where?” Jin asked.

“The Marquis of Yvesinth,” I said with a smile.

My last gift to the emperor would be the marquis’ head.

“Crazy! You’re insane! He is the strongest marquis!”

Of course, Jin Katrin seemed to disagree with me.