I Became the First Prince

Chapter 242

War Luck Flows (1)

In the opinion of Malcoy de Marseille, he was not so welcome to the Marshal’s staff.

There was a myriad of organizations dealing with information in the world, and not one existed that was welcoming to outsiders. Moreover, this outsider is from the Imperial Army, whom the Leonbergians hate. Malcoy thought he would suffer a great degree of harassment and bullying.

However, this wasn’t the case.

The Marshal’s staff didn’t welcome him, but they didn’t ostracize him, either.

Malcoy was embarrassed by this, as he had expected all the trends of harassment. He had learned the reason for this sometime after he had been assigned to the marshal’s department: work was being piled up in front of him. Each document wasn’t very important, but the amount was enormous.

It was really strange — he sorted the documents all day, but couldn’t understand why there was always the same amount of documents in front of his eyes.

No, he wasn’t even curious; now, he was just thinking of getting out of this place.

Malcoy looked at paperwork all day, and it seemed that his eyeballs were becoming stained black with ink. The back of the neck was stiff as a stone, and his waist was creaked.

No more… it was impossible.

He looked around quietly. Fortunately, no one cared about him.

Malcoy got up silently from his seat, and no one noticed him leave the room.

Only after exiting the marshal’s building could he catch his breath.

“Woo.” He inhaled and exhaled for a long time and relieved his creaking body. Then he suddenly looked at the building. Except for the on-call knights and guards, it was late at night, and everyone was asleep, with the marshal’s building being the only brightly lit one.

“I wonder if Leonberg’s staff always work like this?”

“The kingdom suffers from a chronic shortage of manpower.”

It was then that Malcoy heard an almost sing-song voice behind his back. And as he turned around, he saw that it belonged to the marshal.

“During the years when the kingdom wasn’t powerful, both the meaningful and the powerful became like hermits. No matter what I try to do, I always run out of people.”

Malcoy nodded involuntarily at the words of the marshal.

It was known that the time that the empire suppressed the kingdom had been over a hundred years. If the seeds of talent had run dry, it wasn’t that strange.

“If the circumstances weren’t so dire, no matter how many times his Highness made his request, I wouldn’t have accepted you.”

“I am just grateful that you did.”

“Your job is to thank the Crown Prince,” the marshal replied with a dismayed voice, then asked if anything inconvenienced Malcoy. He shook his head, and the marshal asked him a few more questions. Most of them were questions to make sure whether Malcoy was adapting well to the marshal’s office.

“That’s good to hear. I think what you said is enough to get you away from chores and let you start working in earnest.”

“Are you no longer concerned about my origin?”

“Why would I be? Our kingdom isn’t warring against Marseille. Rather, now I feel camaraderie toward you, I truly feel it.”

Malcoy became speechless as he heard the marshal’s words. Until today, he had been reluctant to tell the marshal of his true origins, merely telling him he was a prisoner who had been recruited. Now he was very thankful. The marshal was a man he could trust and rely on, unlike a certain other person who had forgotten all about him. Malcoy believed this.

However, it was a hasty judgment. When he woke up, he was sitting at his desk again.

“Congratulations. Starting today, you have become a true staff member of the Marshal’s Department.”

The marshal laughed generously in front of Malcoy, congratulating him, saying that from today he would be handling the true information. Obviously, Malcoy had been about to head to the lodgings provided to him in the palace.

“Okay, let’s start right away. I must report to his Majesty by noon tomorrow at the latest,” the marshal said with a smile, with a kind and generous face. But something felt quite different. The smile that had been just gentle and laid back was now a cunning smirk.

“So I’m merely informing you that, for me to report at noon tomorrow, the work should be done by tomorrow morning,” the Great Marshal said and returned to his desk.

Malcoy stared at his back with a face full of shock, and that was the start. He had to forget about sleeping at night, having to live on a pile of documents. Meals were a luxury, and sleep was a sin. Every day was like hell.

Malcoy recognized this early on and swore a countless number of curses at himself who, in the past, wanted to show his abilities. He hadn’t known it then: to be recognized in the marshal’s department meant that you had to suffer being hit by so much paperwork that you wished for death.

As he lived in such pain day after day, the marshal made a welcoming proposal.

“I’m going to see the Crown Prince. Would you like to go with me?”

Now that Malcoy had adapted quite a bit, he nodded without hesitation, almost begging the marshal to take him along. As long as Malcoy could get out of this place, it wouldn’t matter even if he was going to meet the devil instead of the prince.

And so, he was able to escape from the office after a long time.

“Do we have anything specific to do?” Malcoy asked the marshal, feeling better after breathing the outside air.

“We go because I am suspicious. His Highness is extraordinarily quiet,” Marshal Bielefeld said with a concerned face.

“Isn’t it good if he’s quiet?”

Malcoy wondered why the marshal was worried that the Crown Prince, who liked to have any excuse to go to the battlefield, was strangely quiet. The marshal frowned.

“You need to know these things if you are going to serve the Crown Prince for a long time.”

“What are you talking about?”

“When his Highness is extraordinarily quiet — then is the time to be most careful,” Bielefeld said in a tone filled with aversion. “At that time, in all likelihood, he is either trying to get something started or has already done it.”

The marshal’s tone was very serious, and Malcoy nodded, again and again, saying he would keep it in mind. And while having such a conversation, Malcoy and Marshal Bielefeld reached the Crown Prince’s Palace.

“Well.”

Bielefeld’s expression hardened when he saw the door of the palace was tightly shut.

“Why is the door locked at this early hour, and where did the palace knights guarding it go?” the marshal asked and started shouting out loud to announce their visit.

“Open up!”

Shortly thereafter, the door of the locked palace opened, and from it popped a man’s head.

“Ah? The marshal and his staff member.”

He was a man Malcoy had seen several times. Was his name Bernard Eli?

As a knight serving the Crown Prince, the man had received the title of champion, awarded only to Leonberg’s very best knights.

“Why does your face look like that, Bernardo?” the marshal inquired.

Eli’s face was such a mess that it did not fit the title of glorious champion. He had blue bruises around his eyes, tangled hair, and cracked lips. There was dried blood under his nose.

“Once you come inside, you’ll know,” Bernardo Eli replied to the marshal in a casual tone. Afterward, he pulled the door open.

‘Chik!’

The Great Marshal and Malcoy followed Eli into the palace and stiffened with shock.

“What is this?” the marshal asked as a groan escaped his mouth. Malcoy also looked around with a confused face. The floor has been broken into a mess of rubble, and some walls were cracked or destroyed entirely.

It was difficult to find a place that had not suffered damage, no matter where Malcoy looked.

It was impossible to tell whether this was the palace of a prince or whether it was a ruin that had been swept through by war.

But there was something really absurd: knights were scattered everywhere.

Some were laid out like laundry on a cleanly cut tree trunk, while others were lying like dead bodies half-buried in a mass grave. Others were lying on the broken marble floor.

Malcoy found a familiar face and opened his eyes round.

“Percival?”

He couldn’t figure out why his lieutenant, who he thought to be in the Templar Castle, was here at this moment. He was also buried under a heap of soil that had been gouged out from under the floor.

“You came just when we were resting,” an arrogant voice stated. It was the voice of Prince Adrian Leonberger. Malcoy turned his head and saw the Crown Prince. Muddy dirt covered his brilliant blade, and his clothes were an unsightly mess, all sweaty and torn.

Compared to the ragged forms of the others, the Crown Prince looked relatively fine, but his condition was in no way neat.

“Your Highness? What were you doing in this place?” the marshal asked, and the prince replied profoundly.

“Can’t you see? I’m practicing.”

“Then why are they…”

“They are resting.”

“It seems to me that they are seriously injured and unconscious.”

The prince looked at the marshal with a sense of natural virtue, as if the marshal was being absurd. Then the Crown Prince said with a frown, “If anyone here has fainted, tell me.”

Of course, no answer was heard.

“See? No one has fainted.”

The prince started to laugh, and the marshal was left speechless.

“But what are you doing here?” the Crown Prince asked, and it took the marshal some time to form an answer.

“I came here anxious because your Highness hasn’t appeared outside the palace at all.”

The prince again laughed. “What you mean to say is, you came to see if I was doing anything dangerous.”

“Hmhgm,” Bielefeld coughed.

“As you can plainly see, I didn’t sneak out of the palace, nor did I have any other accidents in particular. There is nothing different than usual.”

The marshal glanced around at the ruin as he heard the prince’s words.

“Oh, that’s strange indeed. To me, the scene inside this palace looks very different from usual.”

“Because I am so passionate about training, it became a little broken.”

“When his Majesty sees this scene, I am already worried about what the hell he will say. Even now, I will call someone to repair the palace.”

The prince shook his head. “Afterward, it will become broken again anyway.”

“Why is that-?”

“It’s time,” the Crown Prince interrupted as he looked around the room. “Everyone, wake up. The break is over.”

Nothing had happened.

“If you don’t wake up, stay there then.”

As the prince said this, he raised his sword.

‘Schoop!’ At that moment, the knights who were scattered about like corpses stood up and took their stances. Malcoy looked to one side.

There was a woman with red cheeks and black hair; and a woman with light brown hair who stood up, seeming to limp on her legs. They were the champions trained by the Crown Prince. They were his knights. The men who stood with dismal expressions were also knights who followed the prince.

There was Bernardo Eli, who had opened the door, and Lieutenant Percival.

Until then, Malcoy had thought the fighting was over; now, his eyes widened. The knights drew their swords at once and aimed them at the prince, the edges of their blades shining brightly.

“Will you come in? Or should I go to you?” the Crown Prince asked as he arrogantly raised his chin. Instead of answering, the knights charged across the floor. Malcoy’s mouth opened wide. The knights were beaten and scattered to the floor by the prince’s sword in no time. The paladins fared no different; they just took a bit longer to beat than the others and were soon covered in dirt as they were forced to roll to the floor.

‘Shh!’ The air behind the Crown Prince shook, and from it, shadows in green cloaks emerged. The Crown Prince mercilessly pushed away Percival and kicked out toward the shadows in an arc.

‘Puck!’

Malcoy heard a dull noise, and the shadows were battered back one after another. One of them rolled over the floor for a long time before jumping up. They were the half-elf prosecutors who followed the prince. Even after Malcoy had watched for a while, it was still unclear to him whether this was a mass duel or something else. The crown prince had defeated all the knights, without exception.

Fallen knights scrambled and rose up, once again running at the prince — again and again, again and again, all in a repetitive cycle.

When they finally fell to the floor and stopped getting up, the prince lowered his sword and looked around.

“We’re not enough, me and all of you.”

To Malcoy, the prince’s face looked like that of a person suffering from starvation.

“Marquis,” the prince suddenly turned toward the Great Marshal, “gather the Templars and the kingdom’s champions.”

“Why all of a sudden?”

The Crown Prince responded as if the answer was self-evident.

“Why? We have to prepare for war. Before a war, shouldn’t we sharpen our swords?”

He spoke with a resolute voice, leaving no room for compromise. Malcoy realized that it was exactly as the marshal had said:

‘When his Highness is extraordinarily quiet, then is the time to be most careful.’

‘At that time, in all likelihood, he is either trying to get something started or has already done it.’

This was the very situation the marshal had warned Malcoy of.

“That’s just the beginning,” said the prince, “Next, we gather all the knights of the kingdom.”

Even though the marshal had suspected the prince was up to something, this turned out to be far more than he had been expecting.

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