The Grand Ducal Princess (1)
"Republic of Korea, Seoul."
Steel sang from its sheath. Blood sprayed and bloomed in midair — a flower unfurling in the dark, its riot of petals unable to defy gravity, tumbling at last to the earth.
"Ghhhk—!"
"We've been made! Kill them!"
The middle-aged man who had looked so affable only moments before twisted his face into a mask of pure malice as he roared the order.
Just as expected. These men were no stragglers cut off from the main force. The way they swung their daggers and crude, thick-bladed sabers made it obvious they had never received proper military training in their lives.
"How dare you!"
Soldiers in Imperial uniform — men who had even claimed to be regular army — wielding the kind of weapons you'd expect from mountain bandits or common cutthroats. Lancelot understood exactly what that meant, and his eyes burned a furious red.
He had already shown a nameless mercenary like me more goodwill than I had any right to, simply because we had fought the same war. An ambush on stragglers, supplies stripped from the dead — that was more than enough to set him ablaze.
A slash. A thrust.
"Gahhk—!"
"Th-they're strong! These bastards aren't mercenaries — they're knights!"
"Did you kill them? Did you murder every last Imperial soldier?"
I didn't need to ask what had become of the real stragglers. But the young knight seemed determined to hear it from their own mouths, and his sword trembled with barely contained rage.
"He's no low-rank knight. Mid-rank at the very least — maybe higher!"
"R-run!"
"A monster! He's a monster!"
A sword has no eyes. The merciless blade carved through them without pause, and nearly ten living men were cold corpses in less than five minutes.
"...Damn it."
Lancelot flicked the blood from his blade, his gaze sinking deep. Thick disgust sat heavy on his face — and a faint self-loathing besides, as if even rank-and-file soldiers had been comrades in his mind, so long as they marched toward the same goal.
After that, we made a quick sweep of the area. There was always the chance another robber still lay in wait, and we needed at least a minimum of safety secured.
I approached the wagon tucked in a corner of the camp and pulled back the canvas.
"This is..."
The moment I saw what was inside, my brow clenched hard. The wagon was packed with corpses — the elderly, grown men, young women, even children. Adult men made up the largest share, which told me all I needed to know: those were the Imperial soldiers these bastards had murdered.
Lancelot, drawn over by the catch in my voice, went equally still.
"Bandits. Or murdering highwaymen. Looking at the state of decay, I don't think they were operating around here to begin with."
"They wouldn't have been. This whole region falls under the Golden Lion Knights' peacekeeping jurisdiction. There's nowhere for scum like this to put down roots."
I let out a thin sigh and dropped the canvas. Resting here was out of the question. The two of us couldn't even begin to lay more than twenty bodies to rest.
"...Let's move. I'll send word from the nearest village."
"Yeah. That's probably for the best."
With that, we started walking again. Night had already swallowed the world around us, but a single torch made the going easy enough.
"Lights!"
The village Lancelot had mentioned came into view after about another hour on the road. Being so close to Fortress City Roben, it was still bright with lamplight even this late.
"Get some rest. I'll step out for a bit and come back."
Lancelot secured a room at the inn and left the building in the same breath. He was going to report the fight to the knight order, no doubt.
Alone, I washed up quickly, then sprawled across the bed and let my thoughts wander.
Roben. Fortress City Roben.
After bouncing between the orc camp and the Golden Lion Knights Outpost, this would be the first city in Silvering I had ever set foot in — and the largest city in the Empire's north, ruled by the Northern Grand Duke.
"He said if we were lucky we might catch the victory parade... which means I might even run into her."
The Northern Grand Ducal House — House Britzhardt — carried a tragic legend.
The current Grand Duke is, in truth, both merciful and gifted in statecraft — but his personal martial prowess is pitiful.
That much was common knowledge throughout the Empire, and in hindsight it was only natural. The present Grand Duke had ascended at the age of five. His uncle had taken the regency as a matter of course, and once the boy came of age he had fought a bloody civil war against that same uncle for trying to seize the ducal seat.
And after that? He had won the war, but enemies remained — inside the house and out. His own knight orders and mage corps, and beyond them the provincial nobility, all stood against him. A man who had spent his entire life pouring himself into the stability and prosperity of his territory would hardly have had time to train in the sword or the arcane arts.
But they say a tiger never sires a dog.
The Northern Grand Duke had never been able to spare time for his own training. His children were another matter. Even if the Empire's foremost house of power were to fall, it would take a decade to truly collapse — and the Grand Duke's eldest daughter, whose innate talent had come into full bloom, was living proof.
Maria Theresia von Britzhardt.
The Grand Ducal Princess was young and beautiful. The problem was that her dazzling, anything-but-ordinary talent came bundled with a truly vicious personality.
No detailed information had ever been made public. Players, however, estimated she was an 8th Rank monster sitting somewhere above level ninety — meaning that even at her age, she was a fighter who could stand in the same conversation as the Sword Saint. Some even claimed that, like the Heavenly Demon or the Sword Saint, Maria possessed an innate trait of her own.
If it weren't for that complete lunatic streak, she'd have fans for days.
Maria Theresia was a psychopath in all but the clinical write-up — a madwoman with several screws rattling loose. The kind of character that would make even the most dedicated role-players beat the ground and wail.
Anyway. Tomorrow we would reach Fortress City Roben. Holding that thought, I let the oncoming sleep take me.
Dawn broke.
We left the village at an hour that still felt like night, and by some mercy we reached Fortress City Roben before midday.
"Whoa..."
I tried not to look like a country bumpkin. My brain refused the order. The towering walls, the endless press of people, and beyond the gates a forest of buildings stretching without end — the awe came out of me whether I wanted it or not.
"The victory parade's today, isn't it? I can't wait!"
"There's a triumph festival too — I'm loosening the belt and drinking till I drop!"
"What? The parade starts any minute? Come on, move! All the good spots will be long gone!"
The clamor of the city's people filled my ears. The roads were already packed with wagons groaning under their loads, and off to one side a handful of soldiers moved in formation under a knight's lead.
A laugh slipped out of me before I could stop it. It was the same feeling I'd had the first time I met Lancelot. Watching a great city from this game unfold, vivid and alive, right in front of my eyes had a way of delivering a particular kind of thrill.
"Allow me to introduce it. This is Fortress City Roben."
"It's incredible. Seeing it in person like this..."
Lancelot spoke with his usual blank expression, but underneath the words ran a deep current of pride.
"Let's go. We cut it close, but it looks like we'll make the parade."
The victory parade. My heart kicked against my ribs of its own accord. It wasn't the festival itself I cared about. I was just curious whether she would be among the Northern Grand Duke's procession. That was all.
Once we were inside the city, I had to fight just to keep from losing the path. Because it was the day of the parade, people had poured into the streets in numbers I had never seen.
"Lancelot, let's get rooms first. We'll be operating out of here for a few days anyway."
"Mm. Understood."
He answered shortly and led me toward the city's center. Past the commercial district near the gates, the streets grew quieter than I had expected.
"What's this? There's hardly anyone here."
"This is the heart of Roben. Nearly everyone you see is a noble, a mage, a knight, or some other kind of wealthy sort."
"That's why the crowds thinned out so fast."
"That's part of it. But the parade starts at the gates to begin with. Of course people would pack in around there."
He fell silent after that and kept walking, then stopped in front of a high-end hotel — the kind of lodging that advertised its price just by existing.
"What, we're staying here?"
"...We are. When I was a child I couldn't even come look at a place like this. Walking in as if it were nothing is almost funny."
"Good for you. So you do know how to spend when it counts."
Lancelot huffed a quiet laugh. A bastard born between a noble and a commoner — as a boy, he would never even have dared to imagine a hotel on a street this fine.
"We'll take the rooms, wash up, and meet back down. The ceremony should be starting soon."
"Right. It'd be a shame to miss it. This might be a once-in-a-lifetime chance."
We went straight inside. I had expected Lancelot to book a twin — one room, two beds — but the man came out swinging.
"Two rooms for four nights? Aren't you overdoing it?"
"It's fine. As you know, I currently belong to House Armance. And Frey — you don't have a single coin to your name, do you?"
...Why does he always have to jab the sore spot.
Time passed, and we met in the hotel lobby as agreed. Freshly washed and feeling almost human, we headed for the central avenue that ran from the city gates to the Grand Duke's castle.
Waaaaaah—!
Had we arrived at just the right moment? Before long a roar of voices rolled through the streets and swallowed the entire city. I craned my neck through the press of bodies and caught sight of cavalry and infantry marching in perfect formation.
"Your Grace the Grand Duke! Congratulations on your victory!"
"Long live Grand Duke Kazimaesi! Long live House Britzhardt! Long live the great Empire!"
"Th-the Grand Ducal Princess is here too!"
"Heavens, to think she would be so beautiful... I'm moved just looking at her."
The Grand Ducal family must have appeared in the procession. The crowd's fervor jumped another notch at once. Somewhere in the press a middle-aged woman was dabbing at her eyes, and the sight of her made me oddly restless.
"Damn it. I can't see a thing."
"Mm."
Curiosity got the better of me and I stretched my neck as far as it would go. Lancelot was no less interested — the man who usually held himself like a board was up on his toes.
And then I found what I had been looking for.
"Kyaaaa! Your Highness!"
"How can anyone be so sacredly beautiful...!"
The daughter of the Grand Ducal House, her golden hair blazing in the light — Grand Ducal Princess Maria Theresia — sat astride a magnificent white horse, waving to the citizens below.
"...Huh?"
The strange little sound that escaped me had nothing to do with her looks, radiant as they were, exactly as advertised.
Dangerous. Dangerous. That woman is genuinely, truly dangerous. I couldn't have explained why, but something close to instinct was screaming a warning. I had to get out of here. If I didn't, that viper would swallow me whole.
The thought had barely formed before my body started to turn away —
A thin, lingering voice brushed against my ear. In a street this loud, that should have been impossible.
My body turned back of its own accord. At the far end of my vision, still waving from the back of her white horse, the Grand Ducal Princess Maria Theresia had her blue eyes fixed — precisely, unmistakably — on me.