Chapter 112

Meanwhile, while Aisha and Marquis Schletz were retrieving the drug, at the royal castle—

“Why is Empress Grace not answering?”

“If what Duke Kreutz said isn’t true, shouldn’t she be able to answer us?”

The people’s demands for the truth were growing stronger by the moment.

Argen trembled violently, unable to say a word.

Grace knew perfectly well what she had to do here.

She simply had to keep her mouth firmly shut, lower her head, and pretend to be deeply distressed.

“Your Majesty!”

“Empress Grace...”

The Queen, who had always been wise and dignified, lowered her head.

The people who saw it were shocked.

Ironically, her silence in response to their demands for the truth gave them greater certainty than any answer could have.

King Argen really had cast dark magic on his wife.

As the gazes of those who realized the truth began changing one by one—

“...I have committed a crime worthy of death!”

One of Argen’s closest knights, who had been holding Grace captive all this time, suddenly dropped to his knees before her.

“I couldn’t disobey His Majesty’s orders... I am truly sorry!”

“W-We have committed crimes worthy of death!”

At the first shout, the surrounding knights began kneeling one after another.

Argen stared at them in stunned disbelief, and all expression vanished from his face.

“.......”

He could not say anything.

The situation had clearly been in his favor.

How had he ended up this cornered?

Wanting nothing more than to escape from this place, he took a step backward.

His back struck something solid.

When he turned his head—

“So even you feel fear. Is it because you know your time to die has come?”

He met Calypse’s gaze.

Calypse stood perfectly straight, without the slightest hint of sympathy, looking down at him as though he were something lower than an insect.

The royal knights were all on their knees, and before Argen realized it, he had been completely surrounded by Calypse’s knights.

“...Th-This makes no sense... I-I’m the King... I’m supposed to be the most respected person in this country....”

This situation was impossible.

It felt unfair, too.

He had never intended to kill Grace in the first place.

He had merely used dark magic to silence a woman who talked too much.

That was all.

“.......”

Argen tried to turn away from Calypse, desperate to escape reality, but wherever he looked, he found nothing but gazes filled with disgust.

The ugly truth had been stripped bare.

This was the price of using the devil’s magic—something even the vast, exalted authority of a King could no longer conceal.

That was when—

“Argen, you bastard! It wasn’t enough to cast dark magic on my daughter, so now you lied about being able to create a power yourself?!”

A thunderous roar suddenly erupted as an enormous old man shoved his way through the crowd.

“You said you can grant people powers through magic?! Maybe my daughter could pull something like that off, but you? You expect me to believe you can perform a miracle like that? Nonsense!”

It was Marquis Schletz, who had just returned through the portal.

His face was twisted with rage.

Pop!

He yanked the cork out of the potion bottle in his hand, then gulped down its contents.

“I know everything! You made this bizarre potion and gave it to the knights!”

Then he stomped his foot hard enough to make the ground feel as though it might quake.

A massive icicle erupted from beneath the earth.

The people who witnessed it gasped and began murmuring in shock.

“My goodness!”

“So his claim that he created a power with his own magic was a lie too?”

“A strange potion... Could it have been made with dark magic? Did he feed something like that to the knights and intend to give it to us too?!”

“At that point, isn’t he a dark mage rather than a mage?! Everything was illegal and fake!”

Enraged to discover that even his claim of creating powers had been false, the nobles began hurling accusations at him.

Argen’s mind went completely blank.

The trump card he had prepared to prove himself superior to Calypse had vanished.

...I... I only...

Thud.

Receiving every accusation head-on, Argen staggered from side to side before collapsing to the floor.

His legs had given out.

He could not stand.

His lips trembled violently.

“I only... because I’m the King... I have to stand above all of you...”

“If you were the King, then you should have acted like one!”

Someone shouted in response to his muttering.

How dare someone talk back to me?

Argen flinched instinctively and glared toward his closest knights.

But there was no one left willing to stand up for him.

“.......”

The title of King, once little different from invincibility itself, no longer worked.

Ever since becoming King, Argen had always thought the same things.

Grace—if that woman had never become Queen, she would have remained nothing more than a talented mage.

Calypse—if that man had not been born into House Kreutz, at best he would have died serving among the royal knights while protecting the King.

But now that he truly stood on the brink of death, Argen finally began looking not at others, but at himself.

What about me?

If I weren’t the King, what would I have left?

“.......”

Argen looked around with lifeless eyes.

Not one person was looking at him with pity or sympathy.

With the status of King stripped away, all that remained upon him was jealousy, lies—

and hypocrisy.

***

[Frozen Royal Records—

King Argen, who led the Frozen royal family for fifteen years, was sentenced to death.

He used dark magic on his wife, Queen Grace Schletz, in an attempt to silence her about his collusion with the former House Pose.

He also administered potions made from ice power crystals to the royal knights, then falsely proclaimed that he had created powers through magic in order to sway the people.

Later, under the orders of Grace, who ascended the throne as the next King, Duke Kreutz personally executed Argen as her representative.

G-Grace... I only... I’m the King... just forgive me this once...

It is said that when asked whether he had any final words, Argen gave this answer.

With that single statement, his charges expanded beyond illegal use of magic, attempted regicide, and fraud—

to include impersonating the King.]

***

Flower petals rained from the sky over the capital as it welcomed its new ruler.

It was the day of the celebratory banquet following King Grace’s coronation.

“Wow, the first banquet of a new era. Has everyone been well? By the way, Lady Reit, I heard you were actually there at ‘that place’ that day?”

The lavish banquet was more crowded with nobles than ever before.

Perhaps because it was the first banquet hosted by the new King, even rural nobles who normally could not afford the expense of attending had made sure to come.

“Don’t even get me started. I personally witnessed the whole ‘final moment’...”

Naturally, the most talked-about subject of the banquet was the downfall of the “former King.”

Strictly speaking, the actions of Marquis Schletz and Duke Calypse, led by the former Queen Grace, had constituted rebellion.

But Argen’s crimes had been so severe that among the people of the kingdom, their actions were treated as something that simply had to be done.

“Out of nowhere, Duke Kreutz suddenly said that Queen Grace was under dark magic.”

“Yes, and then?”

“Of course everyone there, myself included, demanded that the truth be revealed. But no matter how many times His Majes—no, that man Argen spoke to Queen Grace, Her Majesty couldn’t say a single thing...”

“My goodness. So everything in the newspapers was true.”

“Exactly. And then Marquis Schletz started shouting that this wasn’t Argen’s only lie...”

The Day of Truth.

That was what people had begun calling the day the King changed.

Argen’s crimes had been heinous enough on their own, but even with Duke Kreutz personally drawing his sword and the knights of House Schletz mobilized in full force, the transfer of royal power had ended without a single casualty.

Once people realized that the one attempting to overturn the kingdom had not been the rebels, but the King himself, nobles and commoners alike had no choice but to welcome the change.

“But how did Marquis Schletz know about that?”

The viscountess brightened when the question she had been waiting for finally came.

Speaking proudly, she said,

“As someone who witnessed it personally, let me tell you—Marquis Schletz wasn’t the only one who exposed the truth. Princess Aisha was sitting on his shoulder.”

“...On the Marquis’s shoulder?”

“Princess Aisha?”

“That’s right! The Princess is an ice power user too, isn’t she? They say she recognized what that potion really was immediately. In any case, House Kreutz deserves the greatest credit for what happened.”

At her triumphant conclusion, the nobles listening to the story let out impressed exclamations.

“I heard she’s only five years old... She really accomplished something extraordinary.”

“Exactly. I suppose people born with powers really are exceptional from birth. No wonder House Kreutz is the family that protects the north.”

And just then—

“House Kreutz is entering!”

At the doorman’s announcement, the nobles who had been completely absorbed in their gossip all turned toward the door.

Every face showed anticipation as they welcomed the people who, after the King, were undoubtedly the protagonists of today’s celebration.

“My goodness. I have to see them up close.”

“I’m coming too!”

The doors finally opened.

The moment an enormous silhouette appeared, people rose onto their toes one after another.

Before them appeared the Young Lord—

and the Princess, cradled in the massive Duke’s arms.