I Became the First Prince

It was said that the Jifiji Temple was completely burned (2)

The marquis was returned to his mansion, and two additional Swords-elves were attached to him. I even told them that it would be okay to reveal themselves if their reconnaissance necessitated it. The marquis had already made his choice when he had gambled his life, but I knew that he was still human. There was a need to strengthen my surveillance in preparation for the day when he might choose to take flight.

I stood before the crystal ball, which was a precious telecommunication artifact that had I had claimed from the marquis. As I rubbed the crystal sphere, a trace amount of mana flowed from my body.

Shortly thereafter, I heard Vincent’s voice. “Your Highness.”

“Are you free to talk? How are things at Winter Castle?”

“Winter is coming, and thus, we are in the midst of our war preparations.”

After we had greeted and shared our regards, it naturally came about that I told Vincent all about what had happened in the capital.

“I can’t bear it, to hear about His Highness the Third Prince. And, are you talking about Gung Jungbaek? I saw him a long time ago, and he didn’t strike me as the sort of man brave enough to do such a thing.”

Vincent sounded regretful when he heard about Gillian’s attempted coup and was incensed when I told him of the royal courtier’s betrayal.

“Have you ever heard of such a damnable traitor? You have been framed all this time! But why don’t you want the truth known? Is that not unfair?”

“No, and I have already thought about it. The chances are that they won’t listen anyway, so tell me, what would you do? I keep the secret close to my breast for now.”

When I told Vincent about the truth of what had happened four years ago, his anger blazed. When I further stated that I had no intention of revealing the truth, I was stunned by Vincent’s temper at my decision. Still, he finally gave up and told me that I could do whatever I want.

“So, I will travel far away for a time,” I told Vincent, telling him further that I had a job to do in the empire.

“Are you sane!? Do you know where you are going? Don’t be mistaken and think that it’ll be like visiting someone in the next neighborhood.”

Vincent was greatly surprised, and his response so exactly mirrored what the king had told me. Vincent’s emotions were the same as the king’s as well.

However, his feelings were not at all burdensome, nor did they feel uncomfortable. I chuckled and laughed, and Vincent turned even more enraged as he screamed, “All work is done here! And now you go to the empire? That country?”

“Ophelia will take care of the dwarves and their work. Vincent, make sure you keep control of the nobles and find the most usable candidates from among the noble son’s to-“

“So, now you’re telling me that I have to go to war without you. That I have to chase after the children of southern nobles, and that I have to do all the thing that Your Highness should have done!”

“Isn’t war what the Balahards have always been good at?”

“If a man dies on the battlefield, he dies with honor! Your Highness will be behind the enemy lines and probably die at your own desk! I’m already struggling to prepare for the war, so now I must take care of Your Highness’s work as well?”

“No! How much trouble do you think my work will be, Vincent? The tower will basically be just the dwarves and the wizard poking around until it stands, and when the dwarves move out, it’s done with. The Count of Balahard, you, must merely oversee the setting up of the tower on your lands and the settling in of your new neighbors, right? If the noble sons are arrogant and back-chat you or the rangers, you can just laugh at the cute little guys. They’ll fall in line soon enough.”

I closed my mouth. I had nothing more to say. Vincent had been listening to me for a long time and had grown tired of arguing, so he asked, “So when are you going to go?”

“I’m finishing up some business in the capital for a few days. I’m thinking of heading straight from here after that.”

“When will you come back?

“I will return before my coming of age ceremony, when I turn eighteen.”

“If you are late, won’t the tower and all the other projects fail?” Vincent asked, and his words forced me into a laugh.

“Oh yeah,” I said, “send me one ranger platoon. I will need them.”

“I can send Jordan and his guys.”

“Would they like that?”

“If they are ordered to go, they’ll be okay. Why would they suddenly act differently?”

I laughed again as I remembered Jordan’s sour face and affronted eyes whenever he was given long-term missions. As I kept laughing, Vincent’s temper flared up again.

“Rather, why are you going to the empire!?”

“You ask me too early.”

“Please answer me.”

“I want to witness the situation in the empire personally.”

“Is that the true answer?”

When he asked that, I suspected that he would start nagging me again, so I hurriedly told him of my plans. I told him that the empire was noisier than usual, with every princeps fielding his right to inherit the throne. Among them were the third and fifth principes, the two most likely to welcome me.

“So, what will your plans be?” Vincent asked.

“I don’t have anything concrete in mind. To make a mess, I’d say.”

“Even if you are the prince of another country, they won’t handle you kindly if you make a mess in the empire.”

“Why do you think I am going there?” I asked Vincent, who did not really understand politics, “The accident is coming to them, not to me.”

* * *

My business in the capital would soon come to an end.

All that remained to be done was to set a schedule and a route for going to the empire. That was easily resolved when the king appointed me as the main representative of the official delegation that would travel to attend the empire’s new year’s event.

I just had to follow along with that delegation, and our journey would soon be over.

Of course, before all that, I had to select those of my knights who would be going to the empire with me.

“Am I going? I will go unconditionally,” came Carls’s answer.

“We’re going to the empire? I have to go and see how good they are, then,” said Gwain.

“I have to pack my things,” Arwen immediately said and then left the room without awaiting my permission. Adelia also quickly disappeared, saying that she had a lot of things to pack if we were to go on such a long journey.

Almost all of my knights had expressed their desire to participate in the expedition. Still, I could not take them all. I could not take such a large force with me, along with enough provisions, especially as I would be the head envoy for what was meant as a peaceful delegation.

After thinking it over, I was able to select my group.

Among them were some of my palace knights, and Carls was chosen as their representative. Arwen and Adelia had been included by default, ad they would follow me to the ends of the earth even if I told them not to.

The three Ekyon brothers, hiding in Gwain and his two comrades, were also included, along with the half-elves Gunn and Geomhee.

And in that manner, I had chosen the knights that would escort me on the mission.

And soon thereafter, it was officially announced that the king had appointed me as the representative of the delegation. I later heard from the Marquis of Bielefeld that there was a lot of talk among the nobles about the choice.

The nobles were not aware that the conflict between the king and me was resolved, so they complained that it was not a good idea for the king to include me in the delegation.

They said that everyone must wait and see; they would be proved right. Of course, their fears were all unfounded.

Firstly, the trip to the empire had been my decision. The position as the representative of the delegation was merely so that I could conduct my visit under the guise of an official event so that the people of the empire would not treat me carelessly.

However, the nobles did not know that my relationship with the king had changed, so they complained that I was being driven out from the kingdom due to our arguments after the war.

I paid no heed to such bullshit rumors. The deeper the feud between the king and me is believed to be, the easier things become for me in the future.

The king looked at things in the same way as me.

“The day will come when the traitors who try to take advantage of the discord between you and me will be greatly surprised.”

“I’m really excited for that day to come,” I had said as we looked at each other and laughed and then awkwardly closed our mouths. The king had then avoided my gaze and coughed as if he had had nothing to say.

Our misunderstanding was resolved, and there was no resentment left, but strangely, there was no way for us to counter the awkwardness that always crept in between us.

“That is what it means to be a royal man,” the Marquis of Bielefeld said when he visited me late one night. He said that most royal men could laugh happily, but not for long.

“Right,” was all I said.

I didn’t have anything more to say, so I simply responded by tilting back my glass.

“Ah, it’s being said that the delegation’s composition has been decided. It seems that the king has found the right man to assist Your Highness.”

When I asked who it was, the marquis made a weird sound and said, “A person who has volunteered by themself.”

“It will be a year-long mission, so who would volunteer for such a journey if they have nothing to gain?”

“They say he volunteered for his own reasons,” the marquis said, and a playful look came into his wrinkled eyes. He didn’t tell me who it was until the end.

“If that’s the end of our talk, why don’t you just go?” I chided him.

“I was about to get up, anyway,” the marquis said as he rose from his seat.

“The next time you come, bring some alcohol,” I told him as he left because he came here to drink my own liquor every day. The Marquis of Bielefeld pretended not to hear me.

* * *

The palace was quiet, yet it was, in truth, noisy.

At first glance, the situation seemed normal, but underneath that peace, the king’s agents were working behind the curtains to cleanse the kingdom of the traitors.

It wasn’t easy, and it would take a long time. The royal family’s power was too lessened to wipe out the traitors all at once.

Still, the king had promised that he would try to break the power of the traitor nobles as much as possible while I traveled, and he had seemed motivated.

Next to consider was the Marquis of Montpellier. Montpellier seemed to have completely made up his mind ever since I had told him my plans to drive a wedge into the wheel that was the struggle for succession to the imperial throne.

“If things are done according to Your Highness’s will, the relationship between the kingdom and the empire will become different. There is the possibility that the terms of the treaty will be treated as obsolete, as they would be imposed on a kingdom that has become the ally of the emperor. If so, won’t I be recognized as being a player in the peace process?”

I hadn’t thought that far ahead; all I wanted to do was sow confusion in the internal politics of the empire. Montpellier dreamt of a rosy future. His was an illusion, but I had nothing to lose by strengthening it, so I did.

Things went well, but not everything went smoothly.

“What the hell is going on in it?”

No matter how much I held and shook my true body, it would not wake up.

Something was obviously happening inside, but there was no way to know exactly what. I just knew that it was cramped. Not much time remained.

The empire had been seeking my body for a long time, and in such a situation, holding onto it and heading into the empire would be like giving them Dragon Slayer on a silver platter.

So, I was thinking of leaving my body with Maximilian before I left.

The power of the magic sword usually expressed itself by digging into the immoral and corrupted corners of human minds, and Maximilian had no such corners. Even if something lurked within my body and would not leave, I knew with confidence that I could leave it with Maximilian.

* * *

Time passed by quickly. The scheduled time for departure to the empire crept closer.

One day, a week before departure, an elderly nobleman approached me.

Though he was not young, he was a very handsome man who seemed to be very attentive to his appearance, seeing as he was dressed in stylish clothes.

His face was very familiar. It was definitely the first time I had met him, yet it still felt like meeting someone that I knew.

“I should have come to see Your Highness sooner, but I had to finish my work. Now I am finally here, for my work had been slow.”

I wanted to use the power of [Judgment] to see who he was, but he spoke first.

“I am Siorin, from Kirgayen in the east.”

Only when I heard these words did I know why he was so familiar. He was Siorin Kirgayen, Arwen’s father.

“It honors my family that I will be serving Your Highness for a set period of time.”

So, he was the actual head of the delegation whose identity the Marquis of Bielefeld had never revealed to me.

I studied Siorin Kirgayen. His was a cold and impassive appearance, and while one might think him modest, that would be a mistake.

“You look alike,” I said, for him and his daughter did look surprisingly similar.

Siorin did not have a ready answer to my sudden statement. Even his careless attitude to me was the same as his daughter’s.

And then, Arwen appeared.

“Your Highness!”

She seemed in a hurry. Her hair was well-groomed, and as she greeted me, she saw her father.

Siorin’s expression when looking at his daughter was expansive. His nostrils widened, his eyebrows twitched, and he flushed rose-red.

It probably wouldn’t help me if he had heard some of the rumors surrounding his daughter. The fact that she had become stigmatized due to being my knight must have brought him some displeasure.

I stood from my seat. I didn’t wish to see Arwen arguing with her father in my presence, so I thought to be modest.

There was no need.

“My daughter!” Siorin exclaimed as he opened his arms wide toward Arwen. His face, which had been so cold and unmoving before, was now nowhere to be found. He simply couldn’t control the love that was overflowing within him; he couldn’t help but show it.

“How can I be so heartless that I have not contacted you for two years?”

It was at that moment that I understood why Siorin Kiragayen had volunteered for a mission into the empire when no one else had volunteered.

After I had stood up in a hurry, I looked at Arwen and Siorin.

No matter how long he stood there waiting, Arwen did not take a step forward to hug her father. So, Siorin stepped forward, arms still wide open, intending to embrace his daughter.

Arwen saw her father doing this.

“His Highness is watching! Keep your posture in check.”

I hated it. With all my heart, I hated the awkwardness of the situation, almost so much that I wanted to die.

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