Chapter 280
There Was a Real Gift (4)
When Carls arrived at the hall, he predicted that the Crown Prince would not be able to escape reprimand. He thought that he himself might also be censured for guilt by association. But it wasn’t so.
The king quietly looked at the prince without saying anything, not scolding him for a second. The emotions contained in the king’s gaze were so complicated that it was hard for Carls to read what the monarch was thinking.
“Are you willing to introduce your guests to me now?”
It wasn’t clear whether the Crown Prince had noticed such signs about his father’s disposition at all. Carls could not understand the atmosphere in the hall; it was strangely subdued.
“Ian.”
After a while, the king spoke. His voice was as heavy as the somber atmosphere in the hall.
“Prepare your heart firmly.”
The king beckoned the prince to silence before he could say anything. The palace knights guarding the hall’s door swung it wide open.‘Bft!’
A man with a hood pulled low over his head stood in the middle of the archway. Black fur was draped over his shoulders, and he wore a thick cloak that covered his entire body. Leather armored bolstered with iron plates he wore over the cloak. It was the typical clothing style for a northern knight. The peculiar aspects were that the man was fairly large-built compared to the average skinny northerner and that one of his arms had been severed at the shoulder.
‘Thud!’
The giant knight, who had not said a word as his eyes scanned the hall, stepped forward. He took another step. Soon, he strode on but was limping with each second step. Until then, the Crown Prince seemed to have no idea…
“He’s a little different from the guests I saw earlier.”
Prince Adrian merely noted that this man had not been among the other visitors.
‘Jrkf! Jrkf!’
All the while, the giant knight continued to hobble forward until he came to face the Crown Prince.
“Well?”
Prince Adrian, who had been pleasantly bright from the start, now frowned in silence. Then he suddenly widened his eyes.
“Well, no way…”
Disbelief arose in his round-stretched eyes. And at that moment-
‘Shh!’
The giant knight removed his hood. His hair was faded stark white; his forehead was full of wrinkles, and his face was stubbornly set. The prince looked at the knight’s face, trembling as if he was seeing a ghost.
“Uh, how…”
The knight stared at the prince without a word. Even if his face was so elderly, his stern gaze spoke of his strength.
“It’s been a long time,” the knight said, and his pronunciation was as sluggish as his gait.
“How have you been?”
The prince did not answer. He merely looked at the knight with a pale face. The knight wriggled, clearly frustrated. However, it was as if he was deciding whether to do something he did not like or not. He raised his hand to his mouth several times, and each time had to correct his expression.
After a while, a slim smile appeared on a face that was as ragged and crosshatched as an old rag. There was no mirth to the smile or any other emotion; it was just a thin grin on an ugly face. The knight was trying his best to smile, but the result was not adequate.
“I missed you,” he said with his distorted face. “Ian.”
Even if the words came out stunted, the Crown Prince trembled at the emotions contained within them. He looked as if he would fall right away. Usually, there were plenty of people who would have stepped forward and supported him, but none in the hall did so now. They merely watched the prince with complex emotions writ upon their faces.
“…Uh, what happened to you?” Prince Adrian asked after a long time in a tight voice.
“And- Why is your face like that?”
His face was shaken by grief and passion.
“Where are you hiding your arm?!”
It was a scream rather than a question.
“Why- Why is your face like this?”
“Why is there no answer? Answer me!”
Now, the prince was only screaming, so much so that he grew out of breath.
“Where is that devoted man gone… What happened to that majestic figure… Why are you this way?”
“But did you not just come back to life as well?”
The prince now allowed all his energy to run out.
“So don’t pull this on me.”
The knight twisted his lips upward. Seeing that jolly grimace, the prince-
“That’s what I mean!”
At this, he got angry.
“Why didn’t you come right away!”
“I couldn’t come.”
“You couldn’t at least deliver me the news!”
“It wasn’t like that,” the knight replied, almost in a scream.
“For some, the path of recovery is only a month. But for me… it was a path I had to walk for seven years.”
Seeing the knight show off his missing arm and hobbled leg, the Crown Prince clenched his teeth.
“Come here,” urged the knight.
“No!”
The prince shook his head vigorously.
“How long will you be so angry?”
“I definitely said no!”
The prince’s rejection did not sound as if it came from his heart, however.
The knight reached out his hand, the direction it took subtly askew. As the Crown Prince saw this, his face became on the verge of tears.
“Oh, where are you looking- Now…”
Then he stepped forward and placed the knight’s hand on his shoulder with both his hands. The knight promptly hugged the prince.
“I was so big you didn’t recognize me, little guy.”
“I hate to hear it.”
“But how are you so thin?”
“Now, who’s telling who-?”
“Stop getting angry.”
“… I’m not angry.”
The prince’s voice audibly softened.
“But why don’t you say something nice to me?”
“Well-Welcome back.”
And it quickly became a wet, teary voice.
“Uncle.”
The big knight, Bale Balahard, just laughed, with his marred face looking brighter than ever.
**
“How did you survive that mess?”
“I don’t know the details either. When I woke up, I was in the elven fortress.”
The two, young and old, chatted for a while.
“No way—those eyes are…”
“Different from what they use to be—they have a nasty temper.”
“A thing that tastes bad will not be refreshing no matter how long you chew!”
“There’s nothing to get angry about. If it weren’t for the elves, I wouldn’t have survived being surrounded by orcs. In addition to this, it wasn’t even a transaction that was low in terms of damage to my life.”
“That’s right! It would have been better for you to heal quicker! Someone had some money in it, I’m sure!”
In general, it was the Crown Prince who asked the questions and got angry, while it was Bale Balahard who spoke gently as he answered.
“When I first woke up, it was hard to lift a finger. It took me three years to get up and walk again. Then it took another three to get used to this body. After that, I looked for my one chance, but it wasn’t easy to escape their fortress.”
“That’s right. Because the damned faeries aren’t a tribe that likes making things easy.”
The Crown Prince clucked his tongue, saying he didn’t have to see it to know the truth.
“Even if you become able to resist ordinary elves, how will you handle high elves? And even if you are lucky enough to evade them, where will you go in that forest, able to judge only with the eye?”
“Even if it wasn’t easy, I’m still curious how you did it,” the Crown Prince asked Bale how he escaped the elven fortress, which was a difficult thing to pull off even with a healthy body.
“The elves suddenly disappeared.”
“What do you mean?”
“The fortress was always busy, but one day, I could no longer feel the presence of those watching me. I hadn’t been confined, so I headed straight outside to check the situation. I found out that there was no one left in the fortress. I left the fort by the road, walking without rest.”
Bale Balahard spoke on about the circumstances at the time. He said he was lucky to have met the dwarves while he marched away from the fortress. Under their guidance, he was able to reach Winter Castle, immediately dispatching rangers to explore the elven citadel. None of them could discover where the elves went.
“I came straight to the capital when I heard the news of you and the faerie…”
Bale Balahard, after having spoken for a long time, shut his mouth. Then he listened to his nephew’s breath, who leaned against his arm.
“His Highness has fallen asleep.”
It was then that Arwen Kirgayen, who had been standing back, stepped forward and informed everyone that the Crown Prince had fallen asleep, accepting his drooping body from Bale. The prince then mumbled drunkenly, his eyes still closed.
“Uncle… Don’t go anywhere. Stay the same.”
“Sure.”
“Sure.”
At this, the prince fell silent again. Arwen, who had been standing there for a while, bowed her before she left with the Crown Prince in her arms.
“What will you do from now on?” the king suddenly asked as he gazed in the direction in which they had left.
“I’m still fulfilling the oath made seven years ago,” Bale replied without any hesitation.
“What promises-”
“In the past, I pledged to support your Majesty as the head of the Balahard family, the commander of the Third Legion, the captain of the Black Lancers, and as a four-ring knight.”
“Yes, you said that.”
The king looked at Bale Balahard, his face momentarily distant. The imposing knight of the past was now a half-crippled man. He had been blinded and had lost his left arm. His legs were also hobbled, so his every movement seemed uncomfortable.
“Although I am no longer the head of the Balahard family, the commander of the Third Legion, or the captain of the Black Lancers…”
Nonetheless, the old man did not look too shabby.
“I still have one hand to hold my sword.”
Rather, he looked bigger than anyone else in the hall. And it wasn’t just that he was big-
“I bet…”
In fact, Bale Balahard was a giant.
“If I have five rings in my breast and a sword in my hand, I will not fall short in my service to your Majesty.”
For he was the first penta knight in the Leonberg Kingdom.
**
Bale Balahard did not even leave the prince’s side.
“That’s what I mean—you cut one arm from the Warlord. I would have liked to see that, uncle, to see how he cried.”
“That’s right. I’m sorry, I should have been there when you took down the Warlord.”
“Well, now that I think about it, I don’t think there was anything great about the beast. After all, it was an orc.”
“That’s right. In the end, the Warlord was just an orc.”
Gripping onto his uncle’s shoulder like that, the Crown Prince continued to talk about the things he had seen and experienced over the past seven years.
“Do you know what the name of our mercenary company was at that time?”
“Hoh, yes? What was the company’s name?”
“Veil. Veil Mercenaries. I named us after you, uncle. Thanks to that, your name is widely known in other countries, so you should be grateful toward me.”
“Yeah. Thank you very much.”
No time was given for others to intervene in their conversation.
“This is a statue I made of uncle. I don’t need it anymore, but I still hold it dear, so I’ll give it to you.”
“I don’t know what that is, just at first glance.”
“That’s a shame. It’s a masterpiece that will never exist again.”
The two warriors exchanged stories all day long, almost as if they were the only two persons in the world.
“But that…”
“If you have anything to say, say it.”
“Wow, why do your eyes look so uncomfortable? I don’t mean to be inconvenient, but it rather’s weird.”
“…”
“There’s no need to feel sorry for me, I might have lost my eyes, but I got a bigger one.”
“A bigger one? What is that?”
“You will come to know gradually.”
So while the young and old man tried to catch up with each other after seven years, time continued to flow.
The heads of the kingdom were in the midst of discussing some sort of plan to welcome guests who were visiting the kingdom, and the Southern Legion and the knights deployed on that front were accelerating their preparations for war. As time flowed in and out of the royal palace, a small banquet was held.
“Well, is it my birthday?”
It was the prince’s birthday banquet, for he had not even attended his coming of age ceremony for the past few years. Considering the condition of his body, which was not hale, all the people were seated on simple seats, with the minimum number of personnel serving only the prince’s close relatives and associates.
“Oh, I really don’t need anything like this,” the Crown Prince said with an embarrassed face, yet he seemed happy with the party.
“Your Highness…”
Then came the time for a palace knight to kneel in front of the prince and present a small box to him.
“Your Highness, it’s an item from the South.”
“Southern? What is it?”
“I only know it was sent from the Southern Fortress, but I don’t know who exactly sent it.”
Hearing this, Carls Ulrich stepped forward and rebuked the knight’s frivolity in presenting an object before the Crown Prince if he had no idea who sent it.
“It’s your first duty to accurately know the source.”
The palace knight was about to withdraw the box when Arwen stepped forward and accepted it.
“Please take it, your Highness.”
“I don’t even know who sent it.”
“It’s a gift from Bernardo Eli.”
“How do you know the name when it isn’t written on it, Arwen?”
“I knew it the moment I saw it.”
Hearing her convincing tone, the Crown Prince smiled and soon opened the box with an expectant face.
A few seats away, the king was watching it all. His eldest son, surrounded by his knights and uncle, laughed and talked all day long; he seemed so happy. The king suddenly realized—the independence and great victories his son had achieved on his own were precious, but in fact, there was something truly precious. King Lionel squinted his eyes, and his mouth, which had been rigid with stubbornness, gently bent into a smile.
“I feel so good.”
Laughter came from the king’s lips.
“Hun, your Majesty?”
The old man next to the king looked at him with wide eyes. Regardless of that stare, the monarch laughed on without concern.
“Good! Good!”
This was the moment when King Lionel, who had been overwhelmed with worries all his life, learned to laugh aloud, letting go of all his worries and doubts for the first time ever.
**
The sun went down, and the banquet was finally over.
The prince, who was tired after laughing and talking all day, fell asleep and was soon laid on his bed by some knights. Whether his dreams were good or not, the prince slept deeply with his mouth bent beautifully into a smile.
“Have a good dream, Ian.”
“Please rest in peace.”
Bale Balaahard and the other knights who had remained beside the prince finally left, and Adelia, sitting by the bedside while blankly looking at Prince Adrian, began to daze off.
The night passed, and the sun again rose.
“Woow.”
Adelia gently opened her eyes to the dim light filtering through the window.
“Ha-am.”
Giving a small yawn, she stood up and rubbed her eyes. It was the start of another day, with nothing special happening; all was usual—except for the fact that the prince was more twitchy today.
‘Ksha!’
It was so lovely to see the sleeping prince with his arms and legs hanging over the bed as he twisted his body, opening his mouth like a fool.
“Your Highness, if you sleep like this, your arms and legs become numb.”
Adelia gave a small laugh as she pushed the prince’s arms and legs onto the bed again.
“Huh?”
She tilted her head as she put her hand on the prince’s chest to correct his uncomfortable posture. Then she widened her eyes.
“Well, no way…”
Adelia hastily placed her hand on the prince’s chest again. In a short moment, her expression changed countless times.
Disbelief, anticipation, surprise; these emotions emerged one after another.
“Highness!”
In the end, this had become joy.
“What, what! Why, why!”
The prince, startled by the sudden rush of activity, jumped.
“What’s up?”
Adelia laughed brightly as she watched the prince awaken with an unbounded scream.
“Your Highness’s mana heart!”
“My mana heart! What is it!”
“Your Highness’ mana heart!”
“What about my mana heart?!”
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