Chapter 109
Chapter 109
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 109
Chapter Title: 34. Who Dares Question Qualifications? (3)
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"Such a lame provocation..."
"Shut your mouth. I'm not talking to you."
The 3rd Prince, who had been prattling on with feigned leisure, suddenly raised his sword in a fit of rage.
"Your Highness! Be careful!"
"Your Highness!"
Urgent warnings rang out, but I didn't so much as twitch an eyebrow.
I had merely unleashed the aura I'd been suppressing.
The hero's aura, perfected upon reaching Swordmaster, combined with my fury at having my original body stolen, crushed down mercilessly on the 3rd Prince.
"Wha...? Wh-what..."
The 3rd Prince froze solid, letting out a bewildered groan.
I turned my gaze from his pathetic sight.
"What the hell are you?"
There stood my original body.
My original body, which should never have awakened, contained only the vast energy I'd accumulated over my lifetime.
Yet it had awakened nonetheless.
That meant something unknown to me had taken possession of it.
It wasn't the wastrel. His soul was far too wretched to awaken my original body alone.
I scanned the surroundings.
Lifeless, shriveled corpses lay scattered about.
Traces of the Demon Sword's Gluttony authority at work.
I glared back at my original body.
Baring my teeth savagely at the mysterious entity that had seized another's form and feasted to its fill.
Hummm...
Dusk trembled in my grip. The aura and presence pouring from me vibrated through the air.
But whatever had taken my original body showed no reaction.
This thing that had moments ago exuded presence from every pore, arbitrarily invoking Gluttony to devour its fill, now played the part of an ordinary sword as if it didn't exist.
"If you won't reveal yourself, I'll just have to find out myself."
I reached out my hand. I snatched my original body from the frozen 3rd Prince's grasp.
Or at least, I tried to.
But I couldn't.
Crack!
The moment my hand touched it, an overwhelming chill erupted.
I instinctively pulled back.
My high-quality leather gauntlet was frozen white.
Crunch.
I clenched my fist, and the frozen glove shattered and tore away.
I shook off my hand, expelling the insidious cold that had invaded my body.
A moment later, and my hand wouldn't have been unscathed. My expression twisted involuntarily.
I knew when my original body spewed such chill.
Whenever someone other than its master touched it. Which meant it now had a legitimate master.
"It's not some toy that a wretch like you, brother, can just touch."
A smug voice rang out.
I turned to see the 3rd Prince sneering at me with an air of superiority.
"Only one chosen by the great ancestor's spirit, who felled the Light Dragon, can wield this sword."
The hollow sense of accomplishment from one who believed himself chosen by the holy sword.
"And the ancestor's spirit chose me."
I clicked my tongue.
"You idiot."
"What?"
I asked the scowling fool.
"Do you really think you've been chosen as its master?"
"You don't want to believe it, do you?"
He laughed at me, his lowly triumph plain as day.
I returned the smile.
"You haven't been chosen as master."
He had been chosen. But not as master.
Merely as a slave.
No, even that was too generous.
"You're nothing but a sacrifice."
He was mere fodder to sate the Demon Sword's ravenous instinct, its centuries of hunger.
In truth, the moment he stopped the slaughter, his aging had accelerated dramatically.
Wrinkle lines around his mouth unfit for a fifteen-year-old, skin dry and ashen.
Without finding a replacement sacrifice soon, he'd shrivel into a husk like those around him.
His doom loomed, yet he alone remained oblivious.
"No matter what you say, brother, nothing changes."
Not having awakened the sword despite holding it meant no legitimacy, the 3rd Prince declared, denying his own father.
"From now on, I'll lead this country."
He proclaimed himself the sole rightful heir to the throne.
The ignorance of the fool and the vain greed of the unqualified were all too familiar to me.
Like moths to flame, just like those in the past blinded by greed who grasped the Demon Sword.
And their end would be no different.
I sighed.
"Already two in this generation. My karma weighs heavy indeed."
Though unintentional, I'd led two descendants of a friend I'd promised to protect down this path.
My heart grew heavy.
The weight of the sword in my hand felt all the heavier. I neither shrugged it off nor denied it.
I simply bore that exact weight as I raised the blade.
"Your Highness! The 2nd Prince has been safely evacuated, along with all the wounded!"
Arwen informed me at just the right moment.
All injured had been cleared. Now I could cut loose.
"When did that happen?!"
The foolhardy Leonberger bloodline gritted his teeth upon realizing we'd surrounded him.
Now left were my knights, the kingdom's Silver Lions, the elite of the Royal Knights, and the King and Queen.
"Doesn't matter. His Majesty remains here."
The 3rd Prince said, hastily composing his expression.
"Right here, I'll sever His Majesty and my brother's heads. Before the night ends, I'll hunt down every last Leonberger and erase them."
He cackled with delight at the thought, madness deepening in his eyes.
"And I will become king of this land!"
At that instant, an overwhelming presence poured from his body.
"Behold!"
A mighty aura nearing that of a Swordmaster.
"This is the power of the Dragon Slayer! Witness it, feel it, revere it!"
He bellowed in fervent exaltation.
I shook my head.
"That's not the sword's power."
It was the source of life he'd been born with,
a potential he might have reached through patient cultivation,
the very essence of human life meant to span decades or a century,
all burned in a single blaze—his final, desperate spark.
I closed my eyes briefly. Thoughts raced through my mind.
The kingdom's foolish third son,
whose ambition outstripped his talent and ability,
who sought to slay his father and brothers to claim the throne.
Even in this state, his mind dominated by the sword, reduced to instinct, he spoke of the kingdom's glory.
I opened my eyes.
I looked at the 3rd Prince. His face, rapidly aged, resembled someone.
I turned my head.
The King stood there, his face eerily identical to his mad son's.
The Empire constantly added clauses to treaties to sap the kingdom's vitality.
Marquis Villepeldt's words resurfaced.
They even demanded that all heirs to baronies or higher send their children to the Empire before age ten for five years of mandatory education at the Imperial Academy.
Countless other unjust demands, but His Majesty rejected them all.
In retaliation, nobles and knights loyal to him vanished or met mysterious ends. Among them were the 3rd Queen, mother to the 2nd Prince, and the 2nd Queen, mother to the other princes.
The marquis had called the monarch of a weak nation
one who does not advance, but refuses to retreat—that is the king of powerless Leonberger.
Holding the line at the precipice.
Now, finally, it made sense.
Only now, as a young prince aimed a sword at his aged father before me.
For the first time, the grief and pathos of men draped in ill-fitting royal robes, crushed by crowns, seated uneasily on thrones, pierced my soul.
Hummmm...
I gripped my sword with both hands.
And gazed upon the pitiable traitor.
I drew my aura to its peak. The presence swelling from the 3rd Prince's body grew monstrous in response.
He grinned at me.
"I've hated you from the start, brother."
"I've hated you too."
"Perfect!"
The 3rd Prince raised his sword and charged.
The Demon Sword, gorged on the prince's vitality, spewed chill like vomit.
Watching it, I recited a quiet verse in my heart.
A fragment of the legend the fool craved so desperately—the Dragon Slayer's myth.
Grrrrrr...
Dusk howled, singing the tale of the True Dragon.
The song became authority, became destruction, cleaving the world.
It sliced through the freezing cold blanketing the area, reaching the wretched traitor's body beyond.
The 3rd Prince halted, unable to fully swing down his raised sword.
"Ah..."
His gaze fell to his arm.
Thud.
Both hands, severed from the elbows, dropped to the ground—still clutching the sword.
"Ah...? Aaaah..."
The 3rd Prince collapsed, babbling incoherently.
Decades settled upon his face as he stared at his shriveled, bloodless forearms.
Seeing him, I recalled our first meeting.
The young prince who approached, hiding his intent to trample his brother and make a name for himself. I'd called him vile and base then. Now, it seemed merely childish bravado and rivalry.
"But now... I don't hate you so much."
I raised my sword.
Those drained by [Gluttony's Authority] writhe in agony until death. I'd end his suffering myself.
Ping!
A faint twang echoed from somewhere.
An arrow embedded itself in the 3rd Prince's forehead.
I turned toward the arrow's origin.
There stood the King with bow in hand.
The king punishing a rebel. The father ending his traitorous son.
The King spoke.
"Burn the traitor's corpse. Retrieve the bodies of our fallen knights and soldiers."
He masked the grief in his eyes, playing the stern sovereign.
And for the first time, I saw it.
Not the soul's aura glimpsed through petty authority, but the true soul of a king.
A wretched soul that lost everything one by one to stand firm,
now forced to lose even his son.
The King looked at me.
Thud. Thud.
The King approached me.
He bowed before me.
Clink.
Prying the shriveled arm from the sword, he stared at me intently.
Then thrust the sword toward me.
"It's yours."
Words laden with meaning.
Ridiculously, I hesitated to take it.
For the first time, I felt the true weight of succession to the throne—something I'd dismissed as mere baggage clinging to my original body.
Being king wasn't just fighting and advancing.
Had I arrogantly judged royal worth once more?
"Take it."
The King pressed the sword into my hands. I accepted it carefully with both.
The King turned and departed, leading his knights.
The Queen approached and embraced me tightly.
"Don't curse His Majesty as a father without blood or tears."
Her voice in my ear brimmed with sorrow.
"He merely wished no child of his to bear the sin of taking his brothers' lives."
Speechless, I could offer no reply.
Thus, I watched the King and Queen depart.
Hummm...
At that moment, my original body hummed in my grasp. And someone addressed me.