The Only One Who Understands (3)
One hour later.
The deepest chamber of the royal castle — the room where Prince Lasen's portrait hung.
Tap. Tap.
King Rio heard a set of footsteps he knew all too well drawing slowly closer.
And then, before long—
BANG! SLAM!
The door was flung open with such violence that the sound tore roughly through the silence of the room.
Without so much as lifting his eyes from the documents he was reading, the King spoke.
"I distinctly recall ordering you never to come here, Helena."
His wife. The Queen of the Crossline Kingdom.
Helena Castor strode into the private chamber, her breath coming in ragged gasps.
"What is the meaning of this!?"
She had stormed in having hurled away even the fan that never left her hand, and her face was a tangle of fury, panic, and desperation.
Only then did the King raise his head to look at her.
"It seems Incansus delivered the message properly."
At the sight of the Queen seething with rage from head to toe, he quietly organized his thoughts.
By now, everything must already be settled.
No doubt she had finished speaking with those leech-like priests of the Holy Order as well.
"You truly did it, Your Majesty... You ordered your Proxy to do that?"
At the sudden shift in how she addressed him, the King narrowed his eyes.
Fortunately, no one else was there to hear it.
This private chamber could be entered only by the Proxy and the King himself, so Helena was free to fall back into the intimate form of address she used only when the two of them were alone.
"I did."
"How could you... No. That girl nearly brought the castle down around our ears. Simply exiling her cannot be the end of it!"
"Then what would you have had me do?"
"The emotions are the problem, so they must be suppressed again — harder than ever!"
the Queen cried, her voice trembling.
"If it weren't for that cursed Central Officer, none of this would ever have happened!"
"Even after witnessing the fallout this disaster has caused, you cling to the very same method."
King Rio's rebuttal was blunt.
"Stubborn, even after seeing the worst possible result."
"Then what am I supposed to do, sending her outside the castle!? Nothing would change, that would only—"
And then it happened.
As if she had realized something, a look of utter horror spread across the Queen's face.
"Don't tell me... you mean to take Elaine away from me...?"
"..."
Silence.
Helena, already spiraling into panic, didn't even wait for an answer and pressed on of her own accord.
"Elaine — she killed our son. How — how am I supposed to forgive that!?"
A scream on the edge of a wail echoed through the chamber.
But King Rio cut her words down with a single stroke.
"You are wrong. It was not the Princess who killed Lasen, Queen."
"What did you say?"
He rose slowly from his seat.
"It was God who did such a thing."
With his smiling son's portrait at his back, he looked down upon his wife.
"The day Lasen died, I buried two children in my heart, Helena."
It was the first time she had ever heard Rio speak of his feelings.
"Lasen was not the only one who collapsed that day. That day! The day that accursed God scorned us!"
He knew.
"...Elaine died too."
On the day his son vanished at his daughter's hands, his daughter had died as well.
The death of the body, and the death of the soul.
When his green-eyed son's eyes closed, his daughter's eyes had lost their light.
"And yet you keep clinging to that loathsome existence, searching for answers from it."
His face contorted with disgust.
"Wagging your tail before the very being that killed our son, and before the vermin who serve him!"
But Helena, too, had things she needed to say.
Forcing back tears brimming with hatred, she screamed.
"...You have no right to say that. Not when you've shut yourself in this room for fifteen years!"
The blade struck true.
"You never once went to see your own daughter — and now you have the nerve to speak as if you care for her."
Words overflowing with the years of suppressed resentment she had swallowed down.
"I was the one who cared for Elaine. I held this kingdom up, I took responsibility for everything!"
Contradiction and truth spilled out in a tangled flood.
"If it weren't for me, you would have been dragged off the throne long ago. Do you understand!?"
"..."
Faced with the thorned truth, Rio gave no answer.
That much, he could not deny.
He had run away.
From his duty as King, and from his duty as a father.
Because he could not bear the grief, the despair, and the blame.
And the void he left behind had been forced onto Helena and the vassals.
The Dark Age.
That gloomy word could be felt with one's very skin.
The brilliant golden age had faded, and the kingdom had been walking through its dark age — precisely because Rio himself had cast everything aside and turned away his eyes.
He spoke in a voice heavy with grief.
"...I will not deny it."
An undeniable fault.
"But no longer, Queen."
But not anymore.
Now that the truth had been laid bare before him, his eyes had opened.
The existence of God.
God's intervention.
And even the appearance of a favored one of God.
King Rio spoke in a low voice.
"Sever your ties with the Holy Order."
"What?"
"You know by now what state the Pope was left in after his trial. Cast them out."
He glanced briefly at the list of hundreds of names written across his documents.
"The festering mass of darkness that has sunk its teeth into this kingdom must be torn out."
The King sat back down in his chair.
He cast upon his wife a gaze that seemed to have resolved upon something.
"Consider this, perhaps, the last warning I will ever give you."
Mass of darkness.
At that chilling phrase, the Queen's eyes went wide with alarm.
"You... what on earth are you planning to do?"
"..."
Rio did not answer.
It was far too early to speak of his plan.
Just as a great beast about to tear into its prey sinks into utter silence, the small beast said nothing at all.
Rather, that silence made Helena feel more afraid than ever.
Indeed, ominous rumors were already circulating through the royal castle.
That the Finance Minister and the Inspector General had, by the King's summons, been set upon some manner of activity.
Come to think of it, the Finance Minister and the Inspector General haven't come to see me lately.
It had been so chaotic that she had forgotten for a moment.
Those were the men who had come crawling to her every few days without fail, wagging their tails for privileges and favors.
And since King Rio had awakened, they had not met with her a single time.
Suddenly, a phrase the King had spoken when he blocked the first Grand Cathedral surfaced in her mind.
"Our spears and blades are more than enough to destroy us ourselves!"
Back then, it had been a declaration made to protect the kingdom.
But the King's cold eyes now told a very different story.
It would be no gentle plan.
In that instant, the most fundamental question of all struck Helena.
"You... why did you send Elaine to the Central Officer?"
At the same moment, at the entrance of the royal castle.
Events were proceeding at an astonishing pace.
The Princess's power going berserk had been officially announced to the public as 'an earthquake caused by volcanic activity in the western region.'
Repairs on the heavily damaged corridor began at once.
Elaine and Hannah were already packing their belongings to depart for the Southern Border immediately.
And only Nathan and Incansus stood waiting for the two of them at the castle entrance.
"..."
"..."
The Proxy, face hidden behind his veil, staring straight at Nathan — and the Central Officer, standing at a careful distance beside him, exerting all his strength to pretend he noticed nothing.
In that strange silence, the two men had stood without exchanging a single word for close to an hour.
"S-so, Lord Proxy."
It was the Central Officer who broke the silence first.
At last he turned his head to look at the dragonewt.
"Is this... is this truly to be my punishment? Returning to the Southern Border with Her Highness the Princess..."
He asked the question he had not dared to ask for an entire hour.
"As I understand it, defying a royal order calls for suspension and severe disciplinary measures."
His voice made it clear he simply could not understand.
But the Proxy severed the doubt with a single stroke.
"Do not question the purpose of the King's command."
"...Yes, my lord."
Once more, a deathly blank face and a bowed head.
Incansus studied him intently.
The Central Officer...
What a strange man, he thought.
When King Rio had requested the Intelligence Department's files, Incansus had read a great deal of the material himself.
And among it, naturally, was everything concerning the Central Officer — the man the King kept his eye upon above all others.
A lowborn, ordinary man with nothing remarkable about him at all.
A man beloved of God who nonetheless rejects God.
A man who stakes his life on principle and law rather than his own safety.
A man broken by a single loss.
And yet a man who, in the end, rose to his feet again, determined never to be broken a second time.
Why does His Majesty concern himself with this man?
The answer was obvious.
Because he was favored by the God the King despised beyond all measure.
But that alone was difficult to accept.
If that were all, a death sentence at trial would have ended the matter.
Yet His Majesty did not do so.
Instead, he simply watched this man with focused attention.
And as the Central Officer himself had said, this royal command was extraordinarily irregular.
Why entrust the Princess to the Southern Border — and to the Central Officer, specifically and by name?
The Southern Border currently shelters a former Saintess under temporary asylum. And it holds the Central Officer, beloved of God.
Why send the Princess — a Talent Awakener whose power had raged out of control — to that place?
It could not possibly be out of goodwill, nor for his daughter's sake.
The King who despised God.
Perhaps this was a test.
What would the man do, with the Princess, the former Saintess, and the Central Officer all gathered in one place?
And that grace period was precisely two months.
It matched, to the day, the duration of the former Saintess's temporary asylum.
The moment the thought reached that point, the Proxy understood what the King intended with his command.
Rio... you mean to cross the line that must never be crossed.
For the first time in decades, Incansus murmured his old friend's name.
At the end of grief lies rage, and at the end of rage lies destruction.
And Rio was now walking toward the end of rage.
Incansus had seen the blazing fury cool and settle, replaced by a cold and quiet resolve.
A quiet resolve.
Rio intends to erase the existence of God from this kingdom entirely.
He was preparing a purge.
To execute everyone — every single soul with even the faintest connection to the Holy Order.
To take revenge on the being who had left his son to die.
The only way to blaspheme God — to mock him and shame him.
That was why he had devoured the Intelligence Department's files like a madman, and why he had summoned the Finance Minister and the Inspector General to entrust them with secret missions.
This will be a road that demands blood.
Chaos would come.
Chaos that would overturn everything and build it anew.
But it would not arrive from outside. It was already rising from within.
And as a final chance — the last opportunity to stop his own resolve — the King had sent the Princess to Nathan.
To another man who rejects God.
Hoping he might find a different path from his own — one more path besides the road he himself was walking.
If that is truly your will...
He could not allow his friend, newly awakened, to walk down that road a second time.
Incansus made his decision.
"Central Officer Nathan Kell."
The dragonewt's enormous hand slowly drew back the veil that had covered his face.
"...!!! L-Lord Proxy!"
Nathan gasped, startled out of his wits.
From behind the veil, eyes of blazing crimson met his dark ones.
For the Proxy to bare his face carried immense weight.
It meant that in this moment — only in this moment — he was not the vessel of the King's will, but a single individual with words of his own to speak.
It was the act of setting down, for a time, the duty he had carried for decades, to share words as an equal.
The dragonewt opened his mouth slowly.
"From you, we hope to find our way."
"...I beg your pardon?"
Incansus was the King's Proxy.
As a dragonewt, there was one oath he could never break.
"I, Incansus Vermotem, do vow that I shall offer my life for you and for this kingdom."
If the King wished for ruin, he must walk with him into ruin; if the King wished to rise again, he must stand at his side.
That was the duty, the obligation, and the loyalty of a Proxy.
I cannot stop my friend. But this man can.
It was possible.
This man — who had defied the Pope, rejected God, and resolved to remain human — was, despite standing at the exact opposite end from Rio, astonishingly similar in nature.
And so,
here and now, he offered up another vow.
"I, Incansus Vermotem, place my faith in the Central Officer, Nathan Kell."
Just as his old friend had thrown his dice on a purge, so too would he throw his own.
CLUNK.
Incansus struck his teeth together and pressed his great hand against his own heart.
It was the ritual unique to dragonewts when they swore an oath.
The Central Officer, grasping its meaning, froze where he stood.
The vow of a dragonewt was one with his very heart.
Incansus now believed in the Central Officer.
He would doubt no word that came from him, and would support him without reserve.
And that vow would never break — not until the day the Central Officer betrayed him.
"I believe in you."
Believed that he would pull the King back from his cold resolve.
Believed that he would heal the Princess's wounds.
Believed that he would offer this kingdom another path — not a road of blood and slaughter, but a road of dialogue.
He would believe.
Sixty days.
That was the final deadline — the last days that remained.
"Go, and carry out your will. Every obstacle from the castle and the Queen, I shall hold back myself."
"W-wait, just a moment, Lord Proxy! What do you mean by that!?"
Flustered by the sudden oath, the Central Officer raised his voice.
"Wh-what is it you expect me to do? Believe in me, you say!? Believe in me for what — for why!?"
The Proxy did not answer.
Instead, he drew the veil back over his face.
And he laid a hand upon the Central Officer's shoulder.
"Find it."
Go and find the answer.
The right path — the one no one has ever found.
So that my friend's rage and brilliance may find their true direction once more.
"Officer, we're here!"
And by the time the Princess and Hannah finally arrived at the castle entrance, hauling their heavy luggage, the Proxy was already gone — vanished far down the corridor beyond.