Chapter 201

Translator: Willia

“It seems a little late to ask, but why do you want to become emperor?”

Ricardt spoke with his gaze directed out the window. The worst of the heat seemed to have passed, and a pleasantly cool breeze wafted in.

What he saw was mostly people at work. Some shaped timber, carried heavy loads, paved roads, or erected buildings. A crane was even hoisting enormous blocks of stone.

Hardly any of them were from Stormhertz. Most were outsiders connected to the Master Alliance, or people who had business with them.

Far in the distance, almost out of sight, Adeloron’s army was encamped. Wagons and carts traveled back and forth between the camp and the place now growing into a city.

“If I take control of the family and bring it down from the imperial throne by lawful means, yet all of us, including me, live happily ever after, wouldn’t that be the finest revenge?”

It was Marie’s voice. When Ricardt turned, she was sitting on the bed with their son in her arms, gazing lovingly down at him.

If Marie became emperor, she would automatically become head of the Nibelinger Family. After her death, however, Vilter of House Ricarn would succeed her, so the ruling house would no longer be Nibelinger.

Marie had little attachment to her family. If anything, she hated it.

Yet she did not reject it entirely either, for she made use of her status as a member of the Imperial Family when it suited her.

“You know, Ricky, I’m different from you and Billy.”

“How?”

“My mother never wanted to become pregnant with me, so my birth was unwanted too. It would be better to lose your parents. Being rejected by them is truly dreadful. But look. In the end, I won.”

“......”

Ricardt did not know what she believed she had won, but when Marie raised her head to look at him, she wore the happiest smile in the world.

“......Not yet.”

“You aren’t going to kill the Fifth Prince?”

“No, that’s not what I mean. Killing the Fifth Prince is only the beginning. The former emperor had many children. To finish this cleanly, you’ll have to kill every one of them. Hunt them down one by one. But I can’t help you with that.”

“All right. I’ll do it.”

“Be careful, Marie.”

“Of what?”

“Of losing yourself. You mustn’t forget how you felt when you began, or why you wanted to become emperor.”

“Mm...... But now I feel as though none of it matters. I don’t mind being unhappy. Even unhappiness feels like happiness now.”

Marie smiled again as she looked at the son in her arms. Vilter’s very existence seemed to be a kind of magic that made even unhappiness feel like happiness to her.

Ricardt knew that Marie had changed. So had he. Could someone who had changed still remember how they had felt at the beginning?

It all seemed truly difficult now. He no longer knew what was what. A modest dream had set enormous events in motion and carried them far too far, until there was no longer any way back.

“I’m going.”

“But don’t we need to worry about the Second Prince?”

“He won’t target Stormhertz. He’ll probably follow me. Whichever side wins the battle between the Fifth Prince and me, the victor will still suffer losses, so he’ll try to intervene at the end and become the final winner. But he has neither the ability nor the resolve to do it.”

“You’re that certain?”

“I’ve seen him in person. He’s the typical...... how should I put it? He was born an imperial prince, has simply gone on living as one, and does whatever he thinks an imperial prince is supposed to do. He has never questioned any of it. So he doesn’t even know who he is or what he wants.”

Ricardt, Marie, and their other friends had all suffered in the shackles of fate and somehow struggled until they broke their chains. Second Prince Rotarius had not.

He had been treated poorly by the Imperial Family, but that had merely filled him with greed. He had never seriously contemplated fate or his own life.

People like that were usually poor at making decisions. Because they did not know themselves, they lacked the mettle to cast themselves into uncertain circumstances.

Ricardt approached Marie and kissed her lightly. Then, after stroking his son’s head so gently that his hand barely seemed to touch it, he left the bedroom.

Outside the headquarters, Roy was waiting with the reins of his own mount and Red Comet in hand.

He was speaking with someone, and strangely enough, it was the girl named Bellin whom Ricardt had met in Esck.

Bellin was also affiliated with the Master Alliance in the broad sense, so her presence there was not particularly strange.

“Can’t I try riding?”

“I told you, not now. I’m on duty. I’m attending the king.”

“Isn’t battle dangerous?”

“Behind the king is the safest place in the world.”

“Is that so?”

“Ah, there he is.”

Ricardt approached Roy and asked,

“Flirting, are you?”

“No...... It isn’t like that. We just happened to run into each other.”

“It doesn’t look like chance to me......”

“Pardon?”

“Can’t you tell just by looking?”

“Tell what?”

“Who knows.”

Ricardt mounted without answering. He was suddenly much higher up and could see clearly into the distance. Yet he looked down at Bellin nearby and spoke.

“Roy is a good lad. He’s just a little oblivious. Don’t fret too much. Keep reaching out, and one day you’ll reach his heart.”

“I know.”

“Is that so?”

Ricardt smiled as he turned his horse around.

It was a truly strange feeling. Why was his heart so buoyant when he was riding off to battle? The days when he had lived with a cold, keen edge to his heart now seemed like a lie.

Everything in the world looked beautiful, and now he prayed that hope, not death and despair, might bloom at the tip of his sword.

He did not know whether hope blooming from a sword point even made sense, but the reality around him showed him plainly: Ricardt, you are living as you should.

Among the many virtues a military commander needed was the ability to rally his forces after a defeat.

It was an exceedingly important ability, yet one that seldom won recognition. Once the battle was already lost, it was very difficult for others to appreciate the achievement.

Unfortunately, recognition or no recognition, the Fifth Prince’s army, defeated in the siege of Stormhertz, had no one to rally its forces in the first place.

Its field commander, Count Gustred, had been killed, and there were various opinions about why he had gone so far.

Some said the heat had addled him. Others said that from the moment he defied the Fifth Prince’s orders, he had needed to produce results and pushed himself too hard. Still others said it was both.

Whatever the reason, he was dead. In terms of troop losses alone, the number sacrificed had not been all that great.

A Sword Master’s blade killed cleanly, so there were few wounded and only several hundred dead. Then had the remaining five thousand or so returned to the imperial capital of Nibelungen?

They had not. Astonishingly, only several hundred soldiers from the routed army returned to the imperial capital. All the rest simply went home.

Some of them encountered Ricardt as he advanced on the imperial capital.

“The Fifth Prince doesn’t know the meaning of forgiveness. He does not tolerate failure. At first, everyone followed him because he had seized the imperial capital and seemed certain to become emperor soon, but that is no longer the case, is it? Why should we return to the capital and live in fear of losing our heads at any moment? Why should we follow him? If Your Majesty shows us mercy, we will return home and live quietly, tending our fields. We know nothing of banditry or any such thing.”

The soldier who spoke knelt before Ricardt. He had lost his weapon and stripped off his gambeson in the heat, leaving him dressed only in his underclothes.

A group of other routed soldiers knelt beside him. They merely blinked up at Ricardt, looking as though they had no will to fight whatsoever.

Ricardt looked down at them from horseback, then gave an easy nod.

“The grievance and the vengeance are matters for the prince and me to settle. You who merely obeyed orders are not guilty. Return home as you wish.”

The routed soldiers, who had looked like children being scolded by an adult, brightened at once in the face of Ricardt’s mercy.

They thanked him over and over, then ran off waving their arms like children.

Ricardt watched them for a while, then spoke to Raimund.

“Ray, perhaps we won’t need to encircle the city after all.”

“Shall we station the troops nearby?”

“No. Divide the forces in two and seal off the north and west. I’ll enter the city first with only the royal guard knights.”

“Isn’t that too dangerous?”

“The imperial capital never had walls. The surrounding estates served as its walls. But they have already been defeated. The walls might as well have fallen.”

“I will simply obey. Still, only now will Sir Edmund finally be avenged.”

“......Yes.”

The knight Edmund had brought Ricardt’s older brother Vilter into the Order of the Flame Knights. Though innocent of any crime, Edmund had been subjected to horrific torture and burned at the stake. By Fifth Prince Bellator.

His anguished cry of “I am innocent!” still rang clearly in Ricardt’s ears.

Perhaps the Fifth Prince had begun losing the people’s trust from that moment. He possessed a brilliant mind, but knew only how to suppress others, never how to win their hearts.

Thinking of what Bellator had been like as a child left Ricardt with tangled feelings. He truly had possessed remarkable intelligence. Yet when every problem was traced back to its source, the family he had grown up in was the problem.

In any event, Ricardt entered the imperial capital of Nibelungen with only some fifty royal guard knights. The city was so deserted that it seemed as though ghosts might appear at any moment.

Even the troops defending the city had fled when they heard Ricardt was coming.

Ricardt followed his old memories toward the palace. The forest with its striking robur oaks, and the fantastical palace that blended into the woods. The once-beautiful garden plainly bore the marks of a hasty evacuation.

The knights secured the surrounding area, and Ricardt dismounted and entered the palace. When he reached the enormous hall that housed the throne, he found Fifth Prince Bellator seated there alone.

Light fell diagonally through a round window high behind the throne. As though designed for that very purpose, it illuminated only the path to the throne in a single straight line.

Backlit by the window, the figure seated upon the throne naturally appeared as a dark silhouette.

“Leave.”

Ricardt spoke to the knights, and they withdrew without complaint. Only Ricardt and Fifth Prince Bellator remained in the vast hall.

Silence lingered between them for a moment before Bellator spoke. The hall carried sound so well that he could be heard clearly without raising his voice.

“When did you start planning this? If you planned it from the moment you married my sister, then you are indeed worthy of being called my teacher.”

“No. I will not become emperor. Marie is the one who decided to become emperor. I merely support her.”

“What a laughable excuse.”

“Think whatever you like. But you once said that human history was the process of projecting a monarch’s power far and wide. What comes after that? Is spreading that power far and wide the end of it?”

“It ends chaos and restores order. By maintaining that order, peace is maintained as well. Bloodshed in the process is inevitable.”

He saw only half the picture. Bellator’s argument ultimately amounted to saying that peace meant the Imperial House holding power securely, but such power was bound to grow corrupt.

Having dealt with Hellauman, Ricardt knew that well. Hellauman too had regarded that same principle as justice and had been incapable of recognizing what was wrong with his own inhuman conduct.

“Do you think people who submitted to fear will remain loyal to you when a greater terror appears?”

“Loyalty? You believe in such a thing? I never wanted loyalty to begin with.”

“That is why it ended this way. In the end, there is no one beside you.”

“There has been no one beside me since birth. So it is better to be alone when I die as well.”

“That sounds like petulance. I pray that death brings you rest.”

With that, Ricardt drew his sword and walked into the light. Each step across the carpet sounded a dull thud, thud through the hall.

“One final lesson, my teacher?”

“The whole world is filled with lessons. You merely saw what you wished to see and heard what you wished to hear.”

When Ricardt reached the dark silhouette, he found Bellator unexpectedly calm. An imperial crown rested upon his head.

Ricardt gripped Bellator’s shoulder and drove the sword point into his heart in a single motion. Bellator sucked in a sharp breath and shuddered. His gaze remained straight ahead, fixed on Ricardt’s chest.

Yet he struggled to maintain his posture to the very end. Ricardt’s hand upon his shoulder helped him, if only a little.

Blood flowing from his heart soaked the front of his robes and ran onto the throne. Then it reached the floor.

Ricardt waited until Bellator was completely dead before withdrawing his sword. Bellator’s blood streaked the blade.

He was born alone, raised alone, and died alone. He had no friends, and his family were his rivals.

His teacher was the only person for whom he had ever felt any human attachment, and his teacher alone remained beside him at the end.

Ricardt gently leaned him back against the throne and straightened the imperial crown as it slipped askew.

They had merely vied in politics, diplomacy, and strategy; for Ricardt, there was nothing personal in it. All that came to mind was this: if only I had been born a little later, or somehow become his friend sooner.

Because he knew that, at their core, Marie and Bellator were not so different.

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