Chapter 15
Chapter 15
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 15
Chapter Title: Northern Archduke (4)
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After dinner that evening, Serath suddenly summoned me while I was, as usual, playing in my room by flicking the magic stone lamp on and off.
What's going on? Did she find out I beat up Wagner? I'd cleaned up the scene thoroughly to leave no evidence behind. I'd even reached amicable agreements with the person involved and the witnesses, so there shouldn't have been any leaks anywhere.
Sweating bullets on the inside, I headed to the study. Serath, who had been reviewing documents, spoke as soon as I sat down in the chair. Her expression was as cold as ice.
"Ivar, there's something I need to confess to you."
"What is it?"
"The truth is, I've been deceiving you all this time."
Oh, that. It was the third time I'd heard it, so it didn't stir much emotion anymore. The story about how she had to maintain the Imperial Edict of Isolation under orders from the military high command.
If she failed, the Ninth Legion would be disbanded, and Marquis Marcus would likely take control of the North—a highly probable prediction.
"The investiture ceremony is a trap. Tomorrow, probably, as soon as the carriage arrives at the manor, he'll try to kill me. Or he'll capture me and imprison me so I'll never see the light of day again."
"Why?"
"Because if I disappear, the North will be his even if the edict isn't lifted."
Normally, Marcus stood no chance against Serath, a user of unique magic arts. The gap in their skills was that vast.
But the balance was tilting little by little. Serath had half her mana circuits ripped out. On top of that, she'd been operating magic almost nonstop over the past few days to protect me from any potential threats.
Now that continuous mana usage had left her thoroughly exhausted, Marcus finally had the upper hand he'd been waiting for.
"I see. So it was that bastard who put Flora up to it after all. To heighten your vigilance even further... Now all the puzzle pieces are falling into place."
"......"
"Serath?"
"Ahem. In any case, I can't beat him in my current state."
Finding a pretext for battle would be easy enough. Killing hostile nobles and sealing lips was happening countless times across the Empire even now.
It was something that would happen inevitably, even without my existence. Repealing the edict was just the trigger. With two powers living in uncomfortable coexistence, one side was bound to draw steel eventually.
But amid this unfavorable turn, Serath had no allies outside her own subordinates.
"What about the military high command?"
"They're looking down on me."
"Because you're the daughter of the Minister of War?"
"Exactly."
"Then what about your ultimate superior? Can't you report the situation and ask for help?"
"You mean the Emperor? Ha! He's worth less than a single word or glance."
Serath swept the area with a cold breeze. Even after confirming no one was around, she lowered her voice as much as possible to tell me.
"The current Emperor is a monster who devours even his own children. He's merciless to anyone who challenges his power, but he couldn't care less about petty noble squabbles in some backwater like this. Why beg mercy from a monster in the first place?"
"......"
It matched what I knew. As Serath described, the Emperor was an extreme power-obsessed psychopath who didn't even want to pass the throne to his own offspring.
Whether a barbarian received a reward for slaying a black dragon or not, he wouldn't bat an eye. He'd granted it in the first place not out of joy, but merely to honor his own word. The same went for the edict. He could whimsically revoke it despite all this chaos. That was the kind of man he was.
"Anyway, that's the situation. The woman sitting before you now is a rotten lifeline about to snap."
With that, Serath urged me to leave the manor. She didn't want me caught up in their power struggle.
In truth, she had one way to resolve all this right here and now: cast a spell at me on the spot.
The same thing Wagner and his elite guards had tried. As long as she maintained the edict somehow, she could keep her position. Just like before.
But Serath didn't choose that. Instead, she opted for her own sacrifice. At least, it didn't seem logical to me. Perhaps it was purely emotional.
"So go join Marcus. Get out of the manor right now. I haven't prepared a carriage. Just say I swung my spear and you had to flee barefoot."
I didn't bother asking what that emotion was. What mattered was that, unlike what Serath had overlooked, she had exactly one ally who could help her right now. Standing before her very eyes. The very barbarian she'd tried to protect.
"If we deal with Marcus, does everything get resolved?"
"If you're thinking of stepping in yourself, forget it. The Empire's investigators aren't that incompetent."
There were too many eyes in the manor. Disguising the cause of death was impossible. Besides, the investiture ceremony would take place in the Shratma family's front courtyard.
"The moment a corpse mangled by your fists—not my mana or ice magic—is discovered, that's it for real. Not just the Ninth Legion, but every Imperial army will swarm in and sweep the plains clean."
"......"
"You wouldn't kill him anyway, right? Hah, or have you fallen for me, like your brother said?"
This was about the time to come clean. I'd agonized over it plenty.
Because the moment I told her this truth, our relationship could never go back to how it was. I slowly rose from the chair. Then I walked to the fireplace and took off my clothes.
"I have a confession for you too."
"What? No way, you really...!"
"Look closely, Serath."
"Wait. Wait, wait, waaaait!! Eek!?"
She let out a girlish shriek and toppled backward, evoking her teenage years from an era far more distant than my previous life. Surprisingly, she didn't resist much.
Her scalp, white as piled snow, flushed all the way down to the collar of her dress at her collarbone. She merely pushed weakly at my hand gripping her wrist.
"S-Stop, this kind of thing needs more time! N-No, that's not what I...!"
The scent of glacier melt from winter wafted from her hair. As I easily lifted her and drew her half into an embrace, she dropped her head as if steeling herself for something momentous.
"......"
I brought her trembling, cold hand nonstop to my left shoulder, where the sixth rune was located.
"Look. Part of your power is dormant here."
"Huh?"
"I used the blood on my axe. Devouring you like the other magic beasts was impossible, but I needed it to take down the black dragon."
"Wha...???"
I set Serath back down in the chair. Then I explained the method I'd come up with—one that could make her the ruler of the North.
"So the point is, if he dies by your magic, isn't that fine? Make it look like an accident from the noble infighting."
It took time for the ice-frozen Serath to thaw enough to react to my words. Until the logs in the fireplace had all burned to ash. Until dawn broke.
"It doesn't matter who casts it, right?"
"......"
Even then, her cheeks remained flushed red.
"It's cold."
On the day of the investiture ceremony, with a fierce snowstorm raging as if forgetting the season, Marquis Marcus flung open every door of the manor.
The candidates, who should have been taking their glorious first steps as knights after years of grueling apprenticeship at the academy, were sent to the cold, dark underground shelter in anticipation of the out-of-spec battle about to unfold. Still, a few couldn't overcome their curiosity and sneaked out.
And they witnessed it. Every plant in the garden withering in an instant.
Marcus hauled out every ironclad soldier from the armory. Two hundred in total. Enough force to topple a small fortress in a single night.
As the wind died down, a snowy landscape unfolded. And soon after, a figure leaving footprints in the white snowfield revealed itself.
Serath Icefern. The Winter Witch feared by the barbarians of the plains.
For the first time, the spear tip that had always been aimed at enemies beyond the castle walls turned in a new direction. And she wasn't alone.
"Haha... You're playing an interesting game. Planning a numbers game, are you?"
Dozens of golems made of snow and ice, each several meters tall, marched in formation. Creations of her unique magic arts.
Marcus quickly scanned the surroundings, now cleared of the blizzard. He was checking if Serath had brought the barbarian. Naturally, there was no sign of him.
'She must have hidden him somewhere tight. Even if she loses, she wants to save his life...'
She'd probably kept the barbarian away from the ceremony to prevent the edict from being lifted. It didn't matter. Once he crushed Serath, he'd ferret out the bastard and make him burn no matter where he was.
Marcus advanced the ironclads. He lacked Serath's battlefield command experience, but hunting was his specialty.
Unlike the sluggish ice golems, the steel knights moved swiftly even in the snow. Tirelessly, without mercy. They relentlessly chipped away at the golems' bodies with magic-infused weapons.
This wasn't Serath's preferred fighting style. He didn't know why, but with her already depleted state wasting power like this, Marcus was grateful.
As the battle tipped in his favor, the ironclads spotted a new target. A particularly fat one approaching with clumsy swings of its arms and legs.
When facing a wolf pack, you kill the weakest first. Marcus immediately ordered it surrounded and smashed.
"I'll tear you apart slowly, one bite at a time."
One ironclad on an iron steed charged to shatter an ice golem. But right then, the unexpected happened.
Suddenly, the golem grabbed the knight's mount and hoisted it straight up.
The golem, arm extended back, soon shifted its weight forward lightly.
"Huh?"
And then, like hurling an axe. The iron steed flew toward Marcus at a monstrous speed.