An Audience with the Emperor and Banishment into the Abyss
The official invitation sent from the Arhen imperial household was far more restrained and elegant than the empire's prestige might have suggested.
There was no unnecessary ornamentation, none of the long, winding flattery that such documents so often drowned in.
On pristine white parchment of the finest quality, there was only the brilliant golden seal of the immortal phoenix of House Aurelia pressed into wax, and a single line—written with perfect courtesy, yet brooking no refusal whatsoever.
✦ By the Grace of the Aurelia Dynasty ✦
The Wanderer of Dimensions, Go Yushin, is hereby formally invited to the Imperial Palace.
On the appointed day of the audience, Yushin passed through the great main gates of the imperial palace under the courteous escort of the imperial guard mages.
The white marble corridors, steeped in a thousand years of history, lay submerged in a silence so deep it seemed to swallow even the sound of footsteps, while the portraits of past emperors and golden magical sigils adorning every wall made it abundantly clear that this was no mere residence—it was the beating heart of power, holding the life and death of the entire continent in its grasp.
The moment Yushin stepped into the imperial audience chamber at the very depths of the palace, the first thing his eyes found was the silver-haired princess, Freya.
She was dressed not in the modest uniform dress she wore at school, but in a court gown of the imperial palace, far more dignified and resplendent.
Her long, pristine white hair shimmered delicately in silver, and the violet flower-ribbon pin in it sparkled brilliantly in the light. Her clear, limpid golden eyes rippled with a soft, tremulous excitement from the very instant Yushin opened the door and entered.
"Thank you truly for coming, Lord Wanderer."
It was a formal, proper greeting befitting the imperial princess, yet at the very edge of her voice there was a warmth of affection far deeper and more tender than anything she had shown during their encounters on the school grounds.
And behind her, upon the golden throne set atop a high dais, an absolute presence quietly looked down upon Yushin.
The absolute sovereign of the Aurelia Empire, the conqueror of the continent—Freya's father, Emperor Aurelia.
"Welcome, Wanderer of the other world."
The instant the Emperor spoke, the very density of the air in the chamber shifted with a crushing weight, as though caught in an enormous gravity well.
And yet, contrary to the oppressive aura of the throne, the Emperor's manner toward the outsider was unexpectedly, tremendously courteous and gentle.
"There is no need for tension. This is no solemn council for weighing the empire's thorny politics or national interest."
The Emperor paused for a moment and gazed quietly at his daughter Freya.
Within that fleeting silence resided not the monarch who commanded a continent, but the deep hesitation and tender ache of a father worrying for the happiness of his beloved only daughter.
"This meeting began purely from a personal request—the very first earnest one my daughter, a child I could not love more dearly, has ever made of me in her life."
A profound silence settled over the audience chamber.
The Emperor, seated at the very apex of power, setting aside his own authority and regarding a man with the sincere eyes of one being tested.
The Emperor looked Yushin squarely in the eye and asked with unvarnished directness.
"So I would ask you this. What do you... truly think of my daughter Freya?"
Feeling the enormous weight and sincerity embedded in that question, Yushin had not the slightest intention of deflecting with shallow flattery or hollow words.
True to his lineage as a direct descendant of King Gwanggaeto the Great, Yushin laid out the plain truth, honestly and without embellishment.
"To speak frankly, Your Majesty, the bond between Princess Freya and myself cannot yet be called deep. We have attended the same classes at the magic academy, and over the past few days we have exchanged a handful of brief conversations. That is the whole of it."
The Emperor did not so much as twitch an eyebrow, silently waiting for Yushin's next words.
Yushin steadied his breath and continued with unwavering composure.
"I am a wanderer who roams across dimensions, and I have already forged many precious bonds in other worlds as well. Which is precisely why I understand better than anyone... that the affection Princess Freya has come to hold for me is by no means a light whim."
With the firm resolve that he would not shirk responsibility, Yushin met the Emperor's piercing gaze head-on.
"If the heart she has shown me is truly that sincere and that heavy... then I, too, as a man, am prepared to face that sincerity in full and take responsibility for it."
At Yushin's bold and unflinching declaration, the corners of the Emperor's eyes trembled faintly before a gratified smile spread across his lips.
"Hoho... as rumored, you are no ordinary man. You are a man after my own heart."
Only then did Freya let her frozen shoulders relax, exhaling a sigh of relief as her cheeks flushed crimson.
The Emperor looked back and forth between the two of them with fond, knowing eyes, then rose from his seat as if to declare he would not intrude upon the young pair's private moment.
"Very well. You young ones may finish your conversation between the two of you."
Once the Emperor dismissed his guards and left the audience chamber, only Yushin and Freya remained in the vast room, utterly alone.
Yushin quietly approached Freya and spoke.
"Your Highness."
"Yes, Lord Yushin."
"I will be honest with you—I have never employed any special schemes or performed any heroic deeds to win your favor. And yet here I am, invited all the way to the imperial palace, receiving your heart... it feels a little bewildering to me. Unfamiliar, even."
Freya nodded as if she understood, and smiled gently.
Then, after a moment to steady her breath, she looked up at Yushin with clear golden eyes that held not a trace of shame or hesitation.
"Then I will speak honestly too, Lord Yushin. From the very first moment I saw you... I fell in love at first sight."
An utterly pure confession fell from the princess's lips.
"There was no political calculation of the Arhen Empire, no interest of the imperial household whatsoever. I asked my father for this purely out of my own selfish desire—simply because my heart commanded it, and I wished to keep you, Lord Yushin, one single man, by my side."
It was the most sacred confession in the world, offered by a girl in love, having cast aside every pretense of her station as an imperial princess.
Looking into her clear, innocent golden eyes, Yushin quietly added one more thing.
"There will be other women from other worlds at my side, now and in the future. Even so... are you truly all right with that?"
"It doesn't matter at all! That is not a problem in the slightest."
Freya instead smiled bashfully and gently took Yushin's hand in both of hers.
"I knew from the very beginning what kind of great man you are, Lord Yushin, and what path you walk. The fact that I love you will never change."
It was the very instant that Yushin, a moved smile on his face, moved to gently draw her slender waist into his embrace—
KWAAAAM—!
The entire floor of the audience chamber shuddered with a catastrophic roar, as though the very tectonic plates of the continent had been flipped over.
The colossal marble pillars sustaining the entire palace shrieked and swayed, and the ornate chandeliers overhead swung wildly.
Freya's body froze for an instant.
"Wh-what is this?!"
"Your Highness, get down!"
Acting on pure instinct, Yushin snatched Freya by the waist and pulled her into his arms.
Startled but offering no resistance whatsoever, Freya pressed herself against his solid chest and clutched tightly at his sleeve.
The thousands of defensive magic circles etched into the floor of the audience chamber spiraled out of control and began to burn crimson.
"The palace's protective barrier is going berserk...! But this is no external intrusion. The barrier was forcibly inverted from deep within— from the deepest abyss inside the palace itself!"
Along with Freya's cry, a sinister and grotesque voice of unfathomable antiquity, as though space itself were being torn limb from limb, pressed down upon and reverberated through the entire audience chamber.
An overwhelming pressure, as though an unseen mass of malice were carving the language of curses into space itself.
That bone-chilling killing intent was unambiguously aimed at Yushin.
KWAGUGUGUNG!
From directly beneath the feet of Yushin and Freya, a colossal ancient dimensional isolation array—black darkness and blood-red mana tangled together—surged upward, spinning at terrifying speed.
"Lord Yushin...!"
Before they could find even a crack of an escape, the two of them were perfectly sealed inside the barrier of dimensional severance that the array had wrought.
Yushin's eyes flared open as he explosively drew up the A-rank mana in his dantian.
"Do not worry, Your Highness. I will shatter it right now. Silence!"
Silence—the S-rank signature spell arsenal that forcibly severed and nullified an opponent's every flow of mana.
But the moment the wave of silence erupting from Yushin's fingertips touched the blood-red array, instead of being erased, the array devoured that very energy and blazed forth with an even more ferocious light.
"...Silence got repelled?!"
A crease formed between Yushin's brows.
Freya screamed, her face drained ashen.
"This is no ordinary magic...! It is the ancient forbidden art of dimensional banishment, carved by the primordial gods to seal criminals away for all eternity!"
KWAGUGUGUNG!
The center of the array converged with furious intensity, and the space of the audience chamber itself crumpled and tore away like paper.
Gravity vanished entirely. The marble floor beneath their feet gave way, swallowing their bodies into a pitch-black vortex of dimensions.
"Lord Yushin—!"
"Freya, hold my hand tight!"
Amid the raging dimensional storm, Yushin refused to let go of Freya's hand, folding her into his arms without a single gap.
And in the next moment, with a massive impact that rattled their brains to their cores, their bodies plummeted into the endless darkness.
THUD—!
Swallowing a short groan at the violent impact of being thrown to the ground, Yushin pushed himself upright.
Their surroundings were nothing like the resplendent imperial audience chamber they had occupied mere moments ago—this was a horrific ruin, like the very bottom of hell.
Gray mist blurred the boundary between sky and earth.
All around, colossal ancient stone pillars, shattered thousands of years ago, and blood-stained altars lay strewn in chaotic disarray.
Grudges and killing intent, and the dreadful malice of the dying, hung in the damp fog gnawing at their skin—a land of absolute death.
"Uuun... Lord Yushin..."
Freya moaned with a trembling voice from within Yushin's arms.
Yushin gently helped her to her feet and ran a careful examination over her entire body.
"Are you all right? Are you hurt anywhere?"
"I'm fine... you shielded me with your whole body, so I'm unharmed. But... where on earth is this place?"
Clutching the spellbook held against her chest, Freya surveyed their surroundings with terror-stricken eyes.
Yushin drew the magic sword Heukwol from his hip.
The blade of Heukwol, evolved to E-rank, was pulsing with ominous menace as it sensed the ferocious killing intent lurking all around them.
"A place like a festering garbage dump of the abyss, rotted through with the curses and malice of the dead."
The moment those words left his mouth, the shadow of the nearest broken statue began to writhe grotesquely.
Sssssssk.
Irrespective of any source of light, black shadows rose up from the ground, congealing into a massive lump of mana with a viscous, syrupy texture.
Ghastly human upper torsos with twisted joints, grotesquely elongated arms scraping the ground, and blood-soaked magical sigils embedded in the centers of their chests.
They were the vengeful wraith-beasts of the abyss, born from the congealed curses and grudges they had never managed to release even in death.
As the wraiths came shrieking toward them, their red eyes blazing, Yushin laid his A-rank mana coldly across the blade of Heukwol and smiled an icy smile.
"Daring to throw the princess and me into a place like this... Whoever is behind this, I'll make them pay the price in full."
And so, in the very heart of the abyss's land of death, the life-or-death struggle and counterattack of Yushin and the Princess Freya had only just begun.