If the Hunt Becomes the Hunted, the Hounds Will Be Slaughtered
“Empress? Your Majesty?”
The empress, who always sat up in bed and welcomed her with a gentle smile, was lying still beneath the covers.
If not for the bright red blood dripping onto the floor, Regina might have thought she had merely fallen asleep. Her face was so peaceful it seemed almost unreal.
The pool of blood gathered beneath the bed was so large it was hard to believe it had come from a human body.
When Regina saw that crimson stain and the empress’s face, white as if all blood had been drained from it, she shuddered.
It was impossible. The empress had been murdered?
The one person in this imperial palace who had always opened her arms to her had died so alone? It was unthinkable.
The gentle, beautiful empress had been ill for years, yet she was loved by the people of the empire. And now she had passed away in the dark, with not a single attendant at her side?
The moment Regina opened her mouth to cry out that the empress was dead—
“Aaah! The First Princess has— she’s killed Her Majesty the Empress!”
A shriek, sharp as a blade, tore through the air outside.
She snapped her head around and met the eyes of Imelda, one of the maids in the Empress’s Palace.
The woman was already screaming at the top of her lungs.
“Her Majesty the Empress is dead! The First Princess stabbed Her Majesty the Empress! She said she was coming to heal her, and then she stabbed Her Majesty, she stabbed her!”
Her voice was so loud it seemed to shake the entire Empress’s Palace.
It was a trap.
Before Regina could even mourn the empress’s death, a cold premonition raced down her spine. With a face gone pale, she looked toward the corridor.
Servants who had not shown themselves before suddenly emerged from here and there, joining in the cry.
“Treason!”
“The First Princess has rebelled!”
“She demanded the succession, and when she didn’t get her way, she attacked Her Majesty the Empress—!”
Instinctively, Regina fled the bedroom. She blasted past the maids blocking her path with mana and reached toward the window.
And then, just as she was about to unleash flames—
She remembered that her subordinates were still inside the palace.
They would be resting in their quarters, unaware of anything and defenseless. If she alone escaped here, then who would this conspiracy be aimed at?
The instant that thought struck, Regina’s hand froze.
Not long after, knights stormed in. Rough kicks and brutal hands forced Regina to her knees without the slightest hesitation.
Behind them, Heres, strolling in at an unhurried pace, looked down at Regina and smiled brightly.
“Didn’t I tell you? I’d put you back where you belong.”
In his hand was a mana-sealing restraint, painfully familiar.
And so Regina was imprisoned as a traitor, and before long, judgment was handed down.
“We strip the great traitor Regina of all title and status! Her unauthorized mana shall be permanently sealed, and she shall be banished beyond the Magic Barrier. Let the traitor die in agony!”
It was a death sentence.
***
Huff— huff—
Her breath was coming in ragged gasps.
With her mana sealed, there was nothing she could do.
When she finally managed to clear her head, monsters were already right in front of her, and all she could do was run from them.
Regina was wandering the Monster Zone outside the barrier. Between the torn edges of her clothes, the red crescent mark on her body showed through—a proof that she was a criminal whose mana had been sealed.
“Let’s see how long you last without that precious mana of yours!”
Heres’s mocking voice echoed in her ears.
“You’ll never escape this curse.”
Had all those times he sealed her mana under the pretense of sparring and poured out violence on her been practice for this?
Regina clenched her teeth. But the realization had come far too late.
“Hah.”
It had already been four days since she’d been thrown into the Monster Zone with no protection. Her whole body was a wreck.
Even so, Regina couldn’t stop moving. Monsters, stirred by the blood of a mage, kept coming in endless waves.
Monsters were highly sensitive to mage blood. Blood and flesh infused with mana were not only a source of strength to them but also a delicacy that worked like an aphrodisiac.
In particular, the one hunting Regina now, Izel, had a nose as sharp as a boar’s and never let go of a target once it had locked on.
Its keen senses, stretched taut, howled at even the faintest sound.
Night had already fallen, and the temperature had dropped sharply. Regina’s body trembled in the cold wind slipping through the tears in her clothes.
No matter how desperately she struggled, her mana would not move. The stamina she had built up over years of exterminating monsters had nearly run dry as well.
In the end, Regina hit her limit.
She looked around, but there was nothing left to throw. The branch she had been swinging like a spear had broken long ago.
Stripped of any means of defense, Regina was surrounded by Izel’s pack.
I can’t die like this.
She had to survive.
She had to return to Ferman, rescue the subordinates who would be in danger, and make the deceivers pay the price they deserved.
Regina bit her lip.
The only thing left was to flee into the trees. The instant Izel’s sharp teeth lunged toward her, Regina shoved off the ground and grabbed the tree beside her.
The clacking of Izel’s snapping jaws rang out beneath her feet. Regina grit her teeth and stubbornly kept her eyes fixed upward.
Blood trickled from her nails, and before she knew it, her shoes had slipped off and fallen to the ground.
She barely managed to escape into the branches, then snapped off a thick limb and whittled it to a sharp point in an instant.
Wheezing, vision blurring, she glared down below. Feeling Izel’s filthy breath brush her toes, she tightened her grip on the branch.
And just as she gathered her strength to drive it down—
Slash—
The body of the Izel closest to the tree was split clean in two. A sword wrapped in white light illuminated the dark forest with brilliant clarity.
Regina couldn’t tear her eyes away from the beautiful arc traced by the swinging blade.
When all the Izel guarding the base of the tree had collapsed, the one who killed them came walking toward her with unhurried steps.
Black hair like the darkness of the forest and blue eyes so cold they seemed to freeze.
He flicked the blood from his sword and looked up into the branches.
“I wondered why it had gotten so noisy.”
The moment their eyes met, Regina’s whole body tensed by instinct.
Under the weight of his blue gaze, she couldn’t move, as though she had come face-to-face with a predator.
A dangerous man.
“Are you a mage?”
She heard the man’s voice, but she couldn’t answer.
The instant she encountered this new source of danger, her body—already at its limit—snuffed out her consciousness.
***
After the Magic Barrier was raised in the Ferman Empire, the monsters there were forced back and surged into the Fredericks Empire instead. The monster wave that resulted became a calamity for Fredericks.
The border territories adjacent to the Monster Zone were trampled with unprecedented cruelty.
Within just a few weeks of the disaster beginning, it had become impossible to suppress the outbreak with only the border garrisons and extermination units.
In the end, even the elite knight order directly under the imperial family had to be dispatched regularly.
If they could slaughter these countless monsters and cross over to the Ferman Empire beyond the barrier, they would already have stormed over there ten times to wreak havoc.
Even today, the knights of the Fredericks Empire were constructing their encampment for another monster purge. The long line of barracks showcased the empire’s might.
“Once those monsters are dealt with, we should start by crushing the Ferman Empire!”
“Those damned bastards caused the monster wave by building that Magic Barrier!”
“Exactly, Your Majesty!”
“We should invade them right this instant!”
As the knights shouted one after another, Conrad Fredericks—the emperor of the Fredericks Empire and commander leading the order—lifted his brows.
He had been dealing with monsters personally for nearly four years now. Yet instead of thinning, their numbers were growing day by day.
The specially organized extermination force, assembled to reduce the yearly increase in monsters, always suffered heavy casualties. Before long, even the knights needed to defend the capital had become too few.
Despite the harsh conditions, Conrad never forced the garrison troops or the nobles’ private soldiers into reckless deployment. He took the field himself and dealt with the monsters head-on.
And yet they had the nerve to chatter so casually about war.
Do they even know what they’re saying?
Even as irritation rose in him, Conrad did not lose his smile.
The knights, seeing the corner of his mouth lift, flinched and hastily shut their mouths.
Conrad Fredericks himself had no fond feelings for the Ferman Empire either. But there was nothing he could do about it right now.
For the moment, before revenge, he had to find a way to protect the people of his empire.