Assemble

"Urgh...."

A groan escaped Alex as the severed surface of his right shoulder burned with pain.

Fortunately, thanks to the Healing Potion, the bleeding had stopped and the wound had been kept from festering.

But no matter how effective a Healing Potion was at treating wounds, it could not regenerate a right arm that was already gone.

If it had merely been severed, he could have borrowed the power of a high-ranking priest to reattach the arm. But his right arm had already been shredded to ribbons by the Tunnel Snake's teeth and was sitting in its stomach.

"Your Highness... hng... please put this unworthy one to death!!!"

Cross and the escort knights were weeping as if wailing at the sight of Alex.

Alex tried to raise his hand to signal that he was fine and order them to stop, but his right hand gave no response.

It was a moment that made him realize once again that his arm was gone.

"It's fine. I didn't lose my life."

"The sin of failing to protect His Highness the Crown Prince, the future of the Empire, is one that cannot be repaid even in death!"

Cross slammed his head into the ground as if his head were a hammer.

The ground had drawn blood from Cross when even the Tunnel Snake had failed to. Alex couldn't help but let out a hollow laugh.

"If you keep that up, the soldiers you worked so hard to save might faint from fright."

"Are you planning to make me throw away my right arm for nothing?"

Just as Alex said, the foreheads of the soldiers he had saved were pressed to the ground and showed no sign of lifting.

Their whole bodies trembling like aspens in the wind, they were muttering as if reciting a prayer.

"Please put us to death... because of wretches like us, His Highness the Crown Prince...."

The Crown Prince had not merely been injured protecting them—he had lost an arm.

At the thought that their entire village might disappear, the soldiers could not stop the tears streaming from fear.

Alex looked at one particularly young soldier among them and tried to recall why he had done what he did.

Ridiculously enough, there had been no special reason.

A girl in a manga volume he had read, who had wanted to bring her dead lover back to life.

He had simply remembered the line the protagonist had said while looking at that girl.

『Get up and walk. You still have two strong legs, don't you?』

Tragedy has no eyes.

Whether great or small, tragedy comes for everyone, and only now had he realized that how one faces it is up to them.

That was why he could not abandon the soldiers in front of him.

If he had not conscripted them, these were people who would have spent peaceful days in their own territories and eaten warm dinners with their families after work.

He felt he could never forgive himself if he gave up on such people, said it couldn't be helped, and left them to die.

His missing right arm?

It would be a lie to say he wasn't regretful. But he had no regrets about the choice.

He would make a different choice from his father, the Emperor. Because he wanted to be someone who embraced the people in front of him, not someone who abandoned them for gain or efficiency.

"Your Highness!!!"

Just as the Tunnel Snake attack was winding down, Yustaf's party, who had gone to investigate the enemy's stronghold, returned.

The moment they arrived and saw Alex's condition, the scene of them recoiling in shock repeated itself once again.

Alex quickly calmed them down as they panicked, not knowing what to do, and then received their report.

After receiving a full report on everything from the enemy's identity to the details of what they had been preparing, Alex ordered those remaining to secure evidence and search without letting a single remnant escape.

"Your Highness... please leave the remaining work to us and return to the imperial palace at once."

"Right, I should go now. A one-armed Crown Prince won't be of any more help here."

"That's not what I meant...!"

"It was a joke. But there is one place I need to stop by last."

Before returning to the imperial palace, a certain little kid suddenly came to Alex's mind.

A grimy but rather cute-faced girl.

And someone just like himself, who had been fighting alone all this time to protect that younger sister.

He wanted to tell them not to worry anymore, now that they were free from danger.

Once he returned to the imperial palace this time, all hell would break loose, so he would have no time for a while. If he was going to meet them, now was the only chance.

***

"I'm deeply concerned to hear that the artist has collapsed."

In a carriage drawn by two white horses so white they seemed to radiate purity, rode a person who would rank within the top five if one were to name the most important figures in the Empire.

"Saintess. Would it not be better to come again another time?"

"No. I think this, too, may be the Goddess's arrangement. I might be able to help."

At the Saintess's answer, the bishop who had accompanied her could only be startled.

Her answer implied that the Saintess herself might heal the artist.

This would truly be tremendous luck for the artist.

The Saintess was originally someone who, regardless of status, always traveled and prayed for the people wherever her steps took her.

So while a beggar in the slums could receive her blessing, even the imperial family could not receive her prayers unless their paths happened to cross.

Occasionally nobles would come to the church carrying donations, begging for just one blessing from the Saintess, yet they often returned empty-handed.

Rupert Somerset was undoubtedly a truly fortunate man.

'Though the occasional heretical content in his books troubles me. For the most part, the content was proper.'

The bishop was, in truth, somewhat uneasy about this Rupert fellow.

The picture books he had made and his first manga volume, <Kingdom of Ice>, were excellent works, but <Iron-Blooded Alchemist>, which had gone beyond being a trend in the Empire to causing a frenzy, carried a whiff of heresy.

'The Gate of Heaven, was it.'

The Gate of Heaven that the protagonist in that book encountered, which granted all the knowledge and wisdom in the world.

That part, which seemed to depict an omniscient and omnipotent god, troubled him.

The only gods that existed in this world were the Goddess and the Demon God, whose very name was too vile to utter.

But the one guarding that Gate of Heaven, no matter how he looked at it, seemed closer to the Demon God than to the Goddess, did it not?

Of course, looking at , he also felt that the man was probably not a heretic.

That beautiful sacred image was something so gracious that no heretic could ever have drawn it.

While the bishop was lost in deep thought by himself, the Saintess, whether she knew of such thoughts or not, simply gazed out the window and murmured in a small voice.

"Edmund Eldric, Lloyd Cavallo. As expected, the combination of those two is the best...."

***

"William, it is time for you to marry as well."

An unfamiliar scene unfolded today at the imperial palace's massive dining table, with only three people present.