Nobles, Princes, Kings, and Empires (1)
‘Szook!’
The Silver Foxes drew their blades, doing what they thought had to be done.
“How dare this man speak in this manner!”
One blade aimed itself at the man’s neck, yet he did not budge an inch even as a trickle of blood flowed down his throat.
His eyes stared at me as if they had been nailed in place.
“Get back, all of you!” The Silver Foxes tried to shout angrily, but before they could gain something from doing so, I pushed back the man who held the blade at the knight’s throat.
“I don’t have anything more to say to you, as you have no right to his life, and because you gave him the alcohol! So don’t make a fuss.”
What loyalty would these Silver Foxes, who are and had always been mercenaries, have for me anyway? They have committed many sins in their lives, so I cared little for them.
“That’s right, I gave them booze, Your Highness, but only enough so they could stave off the cold.”
“Really now?”
The Silver Foxes humbly apologized to me and sheathed their blades. I waved them away with my hands, and they fled as they saw my eyes.
I stared at the knights, and the man who had insulted had not once averted his gaze. Their anger and resentment would not last long, though.
The collective fire of their grudge simmered down, and all that remained were twenty pairs of eyes that had been made docile by their drunkenness, and the hatred in them faded away.
‘Tchu,’ I accidentally clucked my tongue because I believed that vengeful spirits would serve me better than helpless and defeated soldiers.
The single man who had insulted me had karma that was quite heavy. The man stared at his comrades in silence.
“Why…?” he asked – the very same man that had said he could only bear to see my face if he was drunk.
“You called us?” His drunken voice was filled with shame.
“What the fucking hell are you hoping for? Why call us together!?”
Anger had entered his voice.
“What the hell did you want to see, hah? What were you thinking? Why did you… why…”
As before, his anger did not last long. It seemed that the pyre of his wroth had no more wood to fuel it.
“What the hell did I call you for? Why are you here?” I asked him as I screamed into his face. “I can ask you guys the same thing!”
One by one, they stared at me, whether with despair, anger, or empty eyes.
“What kind of glory did you come seeking here?” I demanded, and a few of them muttered at my words. Yet, before their meaningless resentment could flare up again, I spoke.
“Did you come here for an apple? Then I’ll do it, I’ll give you an apple. I’m sorry, really. I sold you, men, to the empire! Because of me, you have become trash, thrown in a ditch, trodden upon and forgotten. I am so sorry about this.”
When I looked back up, the men had stupid expressions on their faces.
“Do you have any wishes? If so, speak up now. I will grant anything that is within my power to grant.”
“We… We just…”
“Just what?”
“Just…”
In my frustration, I ended up unknowingly showing them the true nature of my heart.
“I’d rather not keep a knife under my pillow in fear of another man’s vengeance. If you came here, intent on sticking a knife into the back of the trash that had sold you and the kingdom out…”
I would not be surprised if they were planning this.
“Because of you, we have even lost the capability of gaining vengeance!”
Their eyes changed in an instant.
“You are a sinner who betrayed the future of the country. You are a sinner who so brutally ended the careers of three-hundred-and-twenty-three knights! You! You!”
Their eyes were shining darkly blue, and liveliness had entered their beings.
“You’re a piece of trash that should be king!”
“You mean to blame me for everything?”
“You are the one who sinned! Why is it that we were the ones treated and punished as sinners!?”
Unlike a while ago, the fires within them were now burning properly.
“If it weren’t for you, we would have stood at the forefront of the kingdom!”
I knew that, rather than fading away, the flames of wrath burn brighter with the passage of time.
“And you even look more human now, you snake!”
The men stared at me with lively eyes, yet I asked my questions, not worried in the least.
“So you can do nothing now, just because you had your rings broken? So, without mana, you are not knights?”
“Our entire lives…”
“Listen to me first!” I shouted with an icy tone at the man who dared to interrupt me.
“Are all those who are not knights, garbage? Are those who fight without mana, weak?”
The rangers of Winter Castle had sacrificed their lives against that large monster army, they had thrown themselves into the fray, and not one of them possessed a spark of magic. When their legs were severed, they crawled into battle. If they lost an arm, they held their daggers in their mouths until they reached the enemy. In those last moments of the battle, so many of them had plunged from the walls hugging orcs in death-grapples.
Just because mana had not seeped into their blood did not mean that their tears were not real and their value non-existent.
“Three hundred knights? That’s a lot. That’s a great power. But how many knights exist in the empire? Ten times that? More? Okay then, there’s no law that says a man can’t fight just because he has no mana! But you guys are just going lay down and say exactly that: That you cannot wield a sword because you have no mana! That your arms are weak because you have no magic!”
I was naturally incensed at their attitudes, so I pressed them further.
“You spout sophistry!” one of them cried, and they held on to the end.
“A knight has the function of a knight, and a soldier the function of a soldier! I never said the one is more valuable than the other.”
Even after my voice had overwhelmed him, the man still managed to criticize me.
“You don’t deserve to say that, or to do as you did and still live! Even if all the people in the world point their fingers at me, you are still the sinner!” the man cried out against the evil that had been done to him.
I was tied down by the original sin of the damned fool. As long as I existed in the body of Adrian Leonberger, these men were right: I was not entitled to scorn their helplessness, as Adrian had taken all that they had from them.
Regardless of such truths, I continued talking.
“I will ask again: What were you hoping for in coming here?”
“I didn’t want to come. I didn’t want to see your face.”
“Nevertheless, you are here.” I clapped my hands, and a door opened as if having awaited my gesture. Vincent and a few rangers and knights appeared from it. The broken knights had sensed trouble coming the moment that I had clapped my hands.
“Your Highness, are you okay?” asked Vincent as he glanced at me. I nodded and said, “Give them swords.”
“Your Highness!”
“I don’t want to say it twice.”
Upon my order, the rangers and knights unbuckled their swords and placed them on the floor.
“Don’t come in here until I call you.”
Vincent stared alternately at the men and me for a while. He then looked down and left us.
“I’ll give you a chance for revenge. Lift up your swords.”
The men stumbled forward in their haste as, one by one, they scooped the blades from the floor.
“Here I am, the sinner who broke your rings and betrayed the kingdom’s future! If things are left as they are, this sinner becomes king. Isn’t it terrible indeed?”
The murderous intent was evident in the men’s eyes.
“Is there reason for you to hesitate?”
The men held their swords, looked at each other, and surrounded me.
One of them gritted his teeth and rushed in. I drove my fist without hesitation into the man’s chest, and his liquor-soaked body was thrust back under such crude a blow. The man clutched his sides as he rolled around on the floor.
“I said I would give you a chance, I never said I would give you victory.”
Upon my words, the other men readied their swords.
“Hyaaarh!” they roared and shouted as they rushed in all at once.
I beat them all. They rose several times to rush at me again, and each time I beat them back.
They stood again, and I beat them again and again and again.
* * *
The bloody man struggled to get up with all his strength. I watched him quietly and kicked him in his side whenever he almost got up, without fail.
“Keep down!”
The man crouched as he clutched his side and groaned in pain.
“Tcha, I’m so sorry,” I said as I laughed at them.
“If only you had your mana rings!”
A man who was stretched out on the floor started to sob out his sorrow. It seemed as if he could no longer bear the fact that his greatest enemy had not only beaten him but was now so cruelly ridiculing him as well.
“Are you okay?” I asked as I looked at them.
“Can you only get revenge on me if you have mana?”
Not one of them answered me.
“Then, you don’t have to wait.”
The man before me stared at me in resentment.
“You can infuse mana into your swords again.”
“We are… I can’t make a ring again.”
“Is the only mana the mana of the rings?”
I drew Twilight as I asked this and let the mana flow into it. I showed the sword to all of them.
“I am not a knight of the ring either. It won’t be difficult for you to take revenge on me, even if you use the low-level technique of mercenaries. So come at me with your clenched hearts, and collect mana into them. That is, if you want to prevent the trash that had sold you and the kingdom out from becoming the king.”
For the first time since I met them, a truly manly light shone in their eyes. There was little kindness left.
“However, I have conditions,” I told them.
“If you’re saying we ought to fight for you, forget it!”
Before I had continued speaking, one of them had had already made his feelings all the more clear.
“I don’t want your oaths, or your service.”
How could I ever expect those who bore rightful grudges against my former self to fight for me?
“You will fight for the kingdom, not for me.”
“Put an end to your sophistry and your-“
“You will fight the enemy you had always wished to fight,” I interrupted the man who shouted at me so fiercely. “The empire is your enemy.”
The men who had so loudly been shouting and cursing at me now shut their mouths at once.
“I understand your need for revenge, so fight the empire! If you condemn me for my sins, condemn them as well!”
I looked at them and continued.
“Isn’t it really a matter of breaking one stone, or breaking three trillion?”
* * *
I called the rangers and had them escort the men from my presence. Vincent sighed as he took in the state of the blood-spattered room.
“Did you have to do this? There must have been a better way to bring them to our side over time.”
Vincent, whose faith in the kingdom had been shaken after the war with the orcs, had not been surprised at all when I told him the truth of Adrian’s past sins. All he did was express his concern that I was taking the most difficult road in the entire affair.
“Because of some stupid boy, they had lost their rings and become normal men. Vincent, would you have forgiven me if I had done it to you?”
He sighed and shook his head.
“The whole affair has gone too far to bring about a happy solution.”
When I had first seen the men, I had seen the emptiness of their souls through their eyes. Even the resentment and hatred in those eyes were just reflective reactions to my presence. The men had breathed, and while they lived, they were not truly alive. I had seen so many humans like them countless times through all the ages. Especially in the ages of war, there existed those with wounded, stolen, or shattered souls.
I had watched through the centuries, with some boredom, as such living husks had come to ruin.
I had also known how to raise them up, to suggest a path for their wandering souls to take.
That was the only way to save an emptied soul, and I decided to become the beacon, a beacon of hate, for these men.
My sympathetic actions were not fair to me, for I had not committed the sin, yet it was karma that I had to bear as long I lived in Adrian’s body.
I had found the answer to their predicament and solved things in my own way. The apology I had given for the sin that I had never committed had been nothing more than a needed deception woven from lies and hypocrisy.
I will never beg for understanding and forgiveness, seeking a state of peace. I would rather bear the resentment and hatred and elevate the knights to their original status and states.
They would never have to fight for me, yet I was determined to give these men, these men who had been utterly loyal until the moment that their rings had been broken, a place to stand and fight in their own right.
Even if the force that drove their arms and their hearts was their hatred for me, even if the swords that I put in their hands in the time of war might slice my throat in times of peace, until such a time, their blades would be at my side and pointed at our mutual enemies in the empire.
“Wouldn’t it be too dangerous, though? If they really gain mana within their new hearts, wouldn’t they turn against Your Highness? Aren’t you worried about sharpening the swords of the finest men that the royal family could find?”
Vincent’s words made sense. I had examined the men and their talents with [Judgment] and had learned why the royal family had recruited them. All of them possessed talents of a B-grade or higher, so they must have all possessed no less than three mana rings.
And now such men would accumulate mana in mana hearts, and with their driving force being their hatred of me.
“Three hundred knights are by no means a small number.”
In total, there would be three hundred knights rushing at me in hatred, their Aura Blades held out before them, revenge burning in their eyes.
Why must I fear such a thing? I had no reason to be scared, for it is what I had expected. Maybe this was because, even in the body of a human, I was still a sword. Vincent looked at me in silence and shook his head.
“I don’t know why Your Highness continues to blame yourself and invite such troubles.”
“After my cursed life, it seems to have become a habit of mine,” I said with a giggle and then a laugh.
Vincent gave another sigh.
* * *
The Silver Foxes appeared one by one from their missions, and each time they returned, they added a knife against my back.
They had brought three-hundred-and-six people in total.
All of the royal family’s secret knights were now gathered in Winter Castle, except for the seventeen whose whereabouts remained a mystery.
Not one of them did not bear a grudge against me, but it didn’t matter.
The path I had to take was not the path of the wise conciliator king, but the path of the tyrant.
Rivers of blood had to flow until I had restored this decayed kingdom.
There would be a great deal more resentment and hatred heaped upon my shoulders before my duty was done.
What importance did the hidden knives of three-hundred-and-six knights make?
I had passed onto them my superior form of mana heart without any hesitation.
I passed onto them the mana hearts of those ancient guardian knights of the Leonbergers. I found it funny, for the sword that had once protected the veins of the Leonbergers had now become the sword aiming squarely at the heart of a Leonberger.
Yet, the enthusiasm and talents of these knights had never been in doubt. They were taught the mysteries and the breathing methods, and soon enough, each and every one of them had succeeded in forming a mana heart in their bodies.
“Fucking talented knights,” I swore, for I could not help but be a little bitter. While I was shoring up my power bit by bit in the north, the Marquis of Montpellier contacted me.
“All preparations are complete.”
My heart started pounding in my chest.
“Come and get what Your Highness deserves.”
The time had come for me to return to the capital, to the royal palace, which I had left like an exile.
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