Chapter 106
Chapter: 106
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>Translator: penny
>Chapter: 106
>Chapter Title: How to Live as the Prince of an Enemy Country (1)
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>Archbishop Kapran’s only daughter got pregnant with a fatherless child on her study abroad trip!
Hearing that bolt-from-the-blue news, Kapran was so shocked that he couldn’t speak for a while.
His daughter Tatiana had been pretty and clever since childhood, the sole focus of all Kapran’s expectations.
She lacked divine power, so she couldn’t become a high priestess, but he was certain she’d at least snag and wield a key administrative post. That was why he’d shelled out a fortune to send her all the way to the University of Brittany.
Yet this mere child.
Instead of studying as told.
She fooled around with romance.
And got pregnant?
He clutched the back of his neck and suppressed his rage, but his daughter—who had returned with a swollen belly—was utterly brazen about it.
“I never imagined I’d see him again in my lifetime. To think I can bear his child—it feels like a dream, Father.”
Was that any way to talk to the father who’d been stabbed in the back after sending his only daughter abroad?!
His social standing and reputation made him want to strike her from the family registry on the spot, but with Tatiana’s blue eyes sparkling with happiness, it was clear no amount of outrage would get through to her.
‘…First, track down that bastard. Find him and kill him!’
Archbishop Kapran’s eyes blazed with fury toward the scum who’d dragged his daughter’s future into the gutter.
Until he heard the identity of the child’s father.
“Nathaniel… the prince, you say? Is that absolutely certain?”
The 3rd Prince had vanished years ago, with everyone assuming him dead. And wasn’t he infertile to boot?
Yet Tatiana affirmed it.
“There’s no way I could mistake him. I’ve loved only him since I was a child.”
“But he was three years younger than you, wasn’t he? If it’s really him, then he’s barely seventeen now…”
“…”
Perhaps his daughter was the true villain after all.
Kapran was briefly flustered by the unforeseen revelation, but he soon shifted his thinking.
The capital was currently a hotbed of covert clashes between the 1st Crown Prince, the 1st Princess, and the 2nd Prince. The 1st Princess Josephine’s faction felt unreliable, and there were rumors that the 2nd Prince Braden had been consorting with shady figures lately.
Up to now, Archbishop Kapran had pegged the 1st Crown Prince Cameron as the next Holy Emperor, but what if the 3rd Prince suddenly entered the fray?
If he could rally a new faction around himself and propel the prince to the throne as Holy Emperor.
And his own daughter was carrying the 3rd Prince’s child.
With his unusually keen political instincts and voracious hunger for power even among the clergy, Archbishop Kapran’s mind began spinning at high speed. He set about secretly tracking the 3rd Prince’s whereabouts while gradually building up his own faction.
And finally, on the day Tatiana gave birth to a healthy baby boy named Logan.
Seeing the radiant light of blessing enveloping the newborn, Kapran realized that his grandson possessed divine power stronger than anyone else’s.
And as the child grew bit by bit, the many talents he displayed.
That innate nobility and keen intelligence.
His grandson would become the crown prince!
Kapran’s eyes gleamed with unconcealed ambition as he gazed fondly at Logan.
Thus, Archbishop Kapran had no clue what thoughts were churning in his little grandson’s head.
‘…Why was another life granted to me? What’s the meaning of this one?’
At an age when other children would still be suckling at their mother’s breast, the child—with his refined and pretty face—was feeding himself pureed food with his tiny fern-like hands while lost in such profound anguish.
* * *
Logan had retained some awareness of his past life from the moment he was born.
The only issue was the physical limitations of infancy—after eating and pondering a little, sleep would come crashing down, leading to a cycle of sleeping, waking to eat, and sleeping again.
He began engaging in truly serious thought only after he could somewhat control his body.
Realizing he had reincarnated as a Delcrossian sent him into a momentary shock. Being granted a new life was disorienting enough on its own, but why of all places here?
His new body was equally bewildering.
He had been hailed as a once-in-a-century genius back in his days as Gael, but this new vessel was so perfectly attuned to aura cultivation that its aura affinity could only be described as optimized for it. It was so extreme that he built up aura just from eating and sleeping.
While secretly meditating away from his mother and the servants, Logan pondered.
No matter how he looked at it, his mother Tatiana and maternal grandfather Archbishop Kapran had only average aura affinity. That meant he must have inherited it from his father—but who exactly was this body’s biological father?
The question didn’t linger long.
Before Logan turned four, the capital grew abuzz for a time, and then word arrived that a new Holy Emperor had ascended the throne in Delcross.
His grandfather and mother then seized his hand and dragged him off somewhere.
“Where are we going, Mother?”
In response to Logan’s question, his mother Tatiana replied with a bewitching smile.
“My proud son Logan. We are finally going to meet Him.”
Him?
“Nathaniel Klein. His Holiness the new Holy Emperor of Delcross—he is your father, Logan.”
The child’s face drained of color.
This body’s father was Delcross’s Holy Emperor?
Logan wanted to reject reality, but the majestic and opulent building they arrived at was unmistakably the imperial palace. And upon finally standing before the Holy Emperor, Logan was shocked to the point of soul-loss.
The vast imperial palace hall.
The refined young man seated on the jade throne, gazing silently down at Logan’s group, was none other than someone he knew well.
‘…Bart!’
He was much taller and more mature than in his memories, but there was no way Logan could fail to recognize that impressionable boy from back then.
-Delcross’s founding ideology is to realize God’s kingdom on this earth through His proxy. In other words, they accept nothing short of rule by the Holy Emperor alone.
The calm boy who had once explained Delcross’s situation to Gael in an even tone.
-Dispatching cardinals to other nations to manage their internal affairs is also founded on the ideal of ‘complete rule by God’s proxy.’ Thus, the moment they formally recognize a republican government, the empire loses all justification for its founding purpose and internal meddling.
The one who had unflinchingly identified Delcross as the root cause of all the tragedies in his homeland Ortona—and the chief obstructer of the continent’s progress.
-For true republicanism to truly blossom on this land, Delcross must inevitably collapse first.
That very boy was now the new Holy Emperor of Delcross, seated boldly on the jade throne, looking down upon a host of high priests and holy knights.
Confusion, betrayal, sorrow.
A whirlwind of negative emotions swept through Logan’s small head in an instant.
With the child momentarily speechless and standing dazed, his grandfather and mother seemed to assume he was simply overwhelmed and terrified by the grandeur of the palace.
“Hurry and greet him, Logan. That is your father, His Holiness the Holy Emperor.”
“…”
“Ah, forgive us, Your Holiness. He isn’t usually like this…”
But the Holy Emperor gave no reply either. Bart’s gray eyes were slightly widened as they quietly met Logan’s own.
As Kapran and Tatiana’s faces began to stiffen in his inexplicable silence.
The Holy Emperor slowly rose from the jade throne and approached them. His gaze remained locked on Logan the whole time.
For a fleeting moment, a strange silvery gleam seemed to pass through his eyes.
He drew within one step of Logan, then knelt on one knee and gazed intently down at the child for a moment.
“…You must have had a hard time getting here.”
The Holy Emperor’s voice, when he finally spoke, was slightly low and husky.
And he directed a faint smile toward the child.
“Logan.”
That meager warmth somehow felt so very tender that Logan felt like crying a little.
* * *
Logan entered the Cyan Rose Palace.
Along with his half-brother Mores.
And once the shock of his first meeting with the Holy Emperor began to fade, the child fell into a new dilemma.
‘…How am I supposed to live from here on out?’
He had become a prince of the enemy kingdom, no less.
The culprit who toppled the republican government, incited civil war, and ultimately tore his homeland to shreds.
The empire’s 3rd Prince.
Yet here, Logan’s bad habit reared its head once more: he could somewhat understand Delcross’s position of manipulating continental politics to sustain the empire.
In other words, thoughts like immediately destroying Delcross, or shouting ‘foe of my homeland!’ while wiping out the Holy Emperor’s entire family, never even crossed his mind.
Moreover, as time passed, he came to understand Bart’s circumstances as well.
From what he heard, he had faced assassination threats since childhood, forcing him to wander the continent alone. Then, with the previous Holy Emperor and all his siblings dead amid the chaos, and the capital even falling to demonkin infestation, he had hastily ascended the throne to restore order.
‘…Well, then it couldn’t be helped, could it.’
The child scowled deeply as he agonized over it.
Logan, quick to grasp everyone’s perspectives, always ended up with no one to blame.
He couldn’t take revenge on Delcross or the Holy Emperor’s family.
But living a proud second life as a prince? The karmic chains tying him to his previous homeland’s downfall and his own death ran far too deep.
‘What am I supposed to do…’
The child clutched his head and let out a small groan.
Fortunately, Logan’s fretting didn’t drag on for long. Someone in the Cyan Rose Palace was constantly causing one disaster after another.
“Waaaaaah!”
“Kyaaah! Prince Mores!”
“Call a physician! No—hurry, a priest!”
Mores’s wails and the servants’ screams never ceased in the Cyan Rose Palace.
What in the world was wrong with this kid?
He was going to wail hysterically if he got hurt anyway, so why did he always jump down from high places?
His antics were so spectacularly disastrous that Mores’s mother, the 1st Imperial Consort, ended up running away to Asaine, and even the Holy Emperor relocated his office to the Cyan Rose Palace. Logan, who had been precocious even as Gael, simply couldn’t comprehend Mores at all.
And then there was a burly but hopelessly clumsy older brother.
“Hmm, where the heart leads… aura…”
“…”
“Upon a vast emptiness… will… I mean…”
Argh, so frustrating. Masin, was it?
Why was everything this brother did so half-baked that it stressed Logan out just watching? Plus, he had this oddly crestfallen air that nagged at him.
Before he knew it, trailing after Masin and looking after him had become Logan’s daily routine.
An utter impossibility for Gael, who had been an only child in his past life.
In the midst of that hectic time, Logan suddenly came to his senses to find himself huddled together with them in the Cyan Rose Palace’s makeshift office, picking at walnuts. The Holy Emperor sat before them, nimbly cracking the nuts with his own treasured sword—tak, tak.
Was this man’s personality always like this?
“Daddy, whoosh! Whoosh!”
Tiring of the walnuts midway, Mores planted himself in front of the Holy Emperor and spread his arms wide.
The Holy Emperor seemed to hesitate for a moment—might spoil the boy?—but soon sighed and scooped Mores up, tossing him high into the air.
Kyahahahaha!
Mores floated down lightly, wrapped in a breeze that seemed to come from nowhere, before plopping back down into the Holy Emperor’s lap.
Logan was always startled by the sight, for his sensitive senses could detect that the wind was flows of aura manifesting moment by moment.
How shocked he had been the first time he sensed aura flows with this body, at its sheer affinity. But it was nothing compared to his father the Holy Emperor.
Even back on Ortona’s battlefields, he had sensed something eerily advanced about Bart’s aura mastery, but now the man’s body itself felt like aura incarnate. How on earth had he reached such an unfathomable realm in just those few years?
“Daddy! Whoosh! Whoosh again!”
When Mores whined, he tossed the boy into the air once more. Despite his cool demeanor, he was surprisingly weak to children’s tantrums.
They repeated the same routine several more times.
Logan was staring dazedly at them when the Holy Emperor suddenly turned to him.
“What about you, Logan?”
“…Pardon?”
“Would you like to try?”
Pardon? He blinked, not grasping the meaning at first, but before he knew it, Logan’s body was soaring through the air alongside Mores.
Huh?
Whoooosh. A gentle aura breeze enveloped his body, slowing his descent, and the Holy Emperor tossed him high again.
As Logan descended slowly, Mores’s body shot up into the air this time. Kyahihihi!
Eh… it’s actually kind of fun…
No, but still!
Plunged into self-loathing for feeling even a moment of enjoyment, Logan suddenly glanced at Masin’s face and startled, sucking in a breath. His mountain-of-a-man older brother was gazing at them with envious eyes.
“…”
It was a blessing beyond measure that the Holy Emperor hadn’t noticed that look.