A Scapegoat?
"...Isn't that way too dangerous?" Bingo asked, his brow furrowed with concern. "Why not just expose that the Hero is hiding inside the Imperial Palace? That would divert everyone's attention straight to him."
"Knowing Kwon Hee-jin's personality, he's probably already fled the Imperial Capital," I replied. "He's holed up in some ditch by now. Right now, the one in the greatest danger is me."
"Fair point. You definitely need to put up a defensive wall. ...Still, if that scheme goes even slightly sideways, you could actually die."
"I bought an Elixir."
The Imperial Palace, the private quarters of the Second Prince.
With a hollow, exhausted expression, the Second Prince stared blankly at the crude, unadorned chalice resting on his desk.
"...Your Highness, the Court Minister and the Commander of the Imperial Guard Knights have requested another audience," an attendant reported softly. "They appear to be extremely agitated."
"Tell them I'm sick."
The Second Prince answered listlessly, his eyes never straying from the vessel.
To the naked eye, it looked like nothing more than an awkward, heavy cup with an elongated neck and a flared base. It lacked ornate engravings, precious gems, or any hint of grandeur, and its practical utility as drinkware was virtually nonexistent.
Yet this was no ordinary cup. It was the Holy Grail.
It was a sacred relic whose sheer antiquity defied measurement, an artifact older than any sovereign nation currently standing upon the continent. It was the very vessel used by the first believer of the Goddess Church—later canonized as a primordial saint—during humanity's very first prayer. A divine treasure that rightfully belonged in the grand cathedrals of the Holy Kingdom now sat inconspicuously in the bedchamber of an Imperial prince.
The reason was simple enough: the Second Prince had accepted it as collateral and a discounted sweetener when offloading one hundred and fifty Kodana coins onto the Church in an over-the-counter deal.
Hah. Back then, I genuinely thought I had struck the deal of a lifetime.
Originally, his plan had been to present the Holy Grail to the Emperor. Collecting sacred antiquities happened to be one of His Majesty's private passions. It was not that the Emperor was a pious zealot; rather, he derived immense satisfaction from admiring physical artifacts mentioned in ancient historical chronicles.
Presenting the Grail would have earned the prince immense favor with his father while securing a royal aegis to shield himself whenever the grim truth regarding the Hero's party eventually surfaced. Of course, that grand scheme had now collapsed into utter ruin.
"Um, Your Highness," the attendant ventured cautiously. "Keeping the Holy Grail out in the open like this is far too hazardous."
"Hazardous? Who on earth would believe the genuine Holy Grail is sitting on a desk in my room? It looks no different from a communion chalice used to offer Mass in some backwater countryside parish."
"...While that may be true, sire..."
If there was any silver lining to this catastrophe, it was that virtually no one knew the Holy Grail had fallen into his hands. With Kodana in a state of complete freefall, publicly admitting that they had traded away their supreme religious treasure for speculative coins would make the Holy Kingdom look utterly pathetic. As a result, both parties had agreed to keep the transaction buried in secrecy for the time being.
"Your Highness. Return the Holy Grail to its rightful place first. We can discuss restitution for the damages afterward."
"Damages? Damages?! Are you claiming it is my fault Kodana crashed immediately after our private transaction cleared? It was sheer bad luck! An unfortunate coincidence of timing!"
"Is the timing not far too suspicious? It is widely presumed that Your Highness foresaw the market collapse. Even His Holiness the Holy Emperor believes—!"
"Ah, I didn't have the faintest inkling that the Beast King was alive either! If you're so thoroughly unconvinced, why don't you ask the paladins trailing the Hero's party? Better yet, ask the Saintess herself! Surely the Holy Kingdom possesses a communication crystal and a mage or two capable of operating it!"
"They have been entirely unreachable for weeks! That is yet another matter Your Highness is obligated to resolve!"
"Ha! Anyone listening would assume I was a Church deacon. Resolve it yourselves!"
That had been the vicious shouting match he held with the Cardinal overseeing the Imperial Capital's diocese.
By leveraging the Holy Kingdom's mortal terror of revealing that they had bartered the Holy Grail as purchase capital, the prince had managed to stall for time. Yet even that desperate delaying tactic had reached its absolute limit.
"...Your Highness. The Holy Kingdom's patience will reach its breaking point any day now," the attendant warned in a low murmur. "Considering the population and territory under their direct rule, forty-six point five billion liras is effectively their entire national wealth."
"I can endure for a few more days. ...Besides, the Holy Kingdom is nothing more than a toothless tiger at this point."
"......"
In truth, the Holy Kingdom was not the Second Prince's primary source of torment.
Though the Church leadership had yet to realize it, dozens of their finest elite paladins had already suffered a blow bordering on total annihilation. In Imperial terms, it was equivalent to having the entire Imperial Guard Knights butchered overnight—a catastrophic loss of military might that would take at least two decades to rebuild.
Considering how hollowed out their military power is, there is no way they'll dare threaten to sever diplomatic ties.
The Second Prince's true nightmare lay with the Emperor and high society—specifically, the nobility. And among them, the aristocrats were an imminent, ticking bomb.
Virtually every noble family within the Empire had lost money on Kodana.
Naturally, the severity of the devastation varied from house to house. There were ancient families who had liquidated every scrap of emergency cash they could scrape together, now facing utter bankruptcy and ruin. Others had merely indulged a child attending the Imperial Academy who begged for one or two coins—though even one or two coins represented a staggering sum of money. A sparse handful had even managed to realize profits, having feverishly bought into the mania only to sell off in a panic due to personal liquidity crunches over the past two months. Those fortunate few were currently keeping their heads down, suppressing triumphant smirks while carefully reading the room.
"...Nevertheless, sire, the overwhelming majority of the aristocracy suffered ruinous losses. Several prominent lineages are on the verge of declaring insolvency."
"Isn't the price still holding at one hundred and eighty million?"
"Only because buy orders have evaporated entirely. Not a single soul in the Empire places any faith in the current quotation."
"......"
Those ruined aristocrats naturally harbored a volcanic, murderous hostility toward both the Second Prince and the Hero. For the moment, formal petitions pleading for an "official investigation into the truth" were pouring into the palace. A fragile sliver of naive hope remained that once the facts were revealed, the asset might stage a miraculous rebound. The sacred majesty of the imperial throne also discouraged them from staging open revolt—for now.
But that won't last much longer.
The Second Prince knew with chilling clarity just how gruesome that requested "truth" actually was. The Hero had lost his pinky finger along with every shred of his martial confidence, and the party members currently hiding across the provinces were reportedly nursing horrific injuries. The Hero's party had always been a hollow facade propped up by the Holy Kingdom's templars; if the public discovered that their core strength had been permanently crippled...
"Kodana will turn into dogshit."
"Your Highness must cease mimicking the Hero's vulgar terminology. And as you well know, this cannot remain hidden forever."
"I know! I bloody well know that!"
The Second Prince clenched his eyes shut, feeling as though an invisible ring of bayonets was tightening around his throat from every direction. How on earth had things deteriorated to this catastrophic state?
...I assumed that monster Beast King would spend at least several months convalescing in his lair! What kind of rabid fiend suddenly leaps back onto the battlefield and beats fully armored knights to death with his bare fists?
Strictly speaking, am I not a victim here as well? I couldn't even offload my remaining seventy coins! Granted, I walked away with vastly more capital than my initial investment, but still...
At this stage, Father won't serve as a shield to hide behind either.
He desperately wished to consult with the Hero, but Kwon Hee-jin had slipped out of the Imperial Capital under the shroud of darkness the very night news of the Beast King's survival broke.
"A catastrophic collapse is coming. If anyone finds out you harbored me inside the Imperial Palace, Your Highness's own life won't be guaranteed either."
The Hero's parting words had been undeniably true. Thus, hoping to buy precious time, the prince had facilitated his escape and arranged a secluded safehouse. In return, the Hero had tossed him a lavish payoff of five billion liras as a parting gift.
"So in the end, I have to claw my way out of this trap with my own two hands."
The Second Prince exhaled a shuddering breath as suffocating dread coiled tightly in his chest. Should he make a public donation? Offering financial lifelines to a few noble houses teetering on the edge of insolvency might temporarily placate aristocratic fury. However, doing so would practically be a confession that he had been an accomplice to the Hero's fraudulent dispatches. And frankly speaking, he despised the very notion of parting with his amassed coin.
I must divert the nobility's wrath toward another target...
There was, in fact, an individual he had already earmarked for that precise role.
Former Imperial Guard Knight, Eric.
Excluding the Hero—who had steadily skimmed fortunes through nominee accounts—Eric was the single player who had harvested the greatest windfall from the mania. There were already countless nobles sharpening their blades against him, particularly those unfortunate souls who had bought the one hundred and eight coins Eric dumped onto the open market at the market's absolute peak.
Provided there was a suitable pretext, Eric could be turned into the ultimate scapegoat.
The issue was that no such pretext existed—at least, not yet. The prince had ordered his attendants to aggressively dredge up dirt on the man, but nothing resembling a prosecutable crime had surfaced. While Eric had acquired vast swathes of commercial real estate prior to the market crash, every single transaction had been conducted through legitimate, airtight legal channels. To make matters worse, the man had even established a charity soup kitchen disguised under the signboard of a swordsmanship clinic.
Of course, if a man is innocent, one can always fabricate a crime and nail him with it...
Yet right now, the prince's own freedom of maneuver was heavily constrained, making overt aggression precarious. Meanwhile, Eric remained quietly holed up inside his estate, minding his own business.
"Ugh. I'm going utterly mad."
He hadn't the faintest idea how to squeeze the bastard into vomiting up his wealth. If he failed to resolve this within the coming days, he himself would be cornered and devoured first. And according to his scouts, Eric was actively reinforcing his defenses at this very second.
"...Your Highness, it appears Eric dispatched a massive convoy of humanitarian relief supplies to the Rancart Margraviate yesterday. He coordinated the operation with the Claudine Merchant Guild."
"What is the meaning of that? Is he trying to buy public sympathy?"
"It does not appear to be mere charity, sire. ...This intelligence was exceptionally difficult to secure, but it seems Eric is angling for a vacant viscountcy within the Margraviate. He recently summoned retired court officials to his residence to seek legal counsel regarding enfeoffment."
"Ha? A noble title?"
Connecting the dots, it seemed clear that Eric was attempting to purchase nobility outright with his coin. By stroke of circumstance, a viscount stationed on the Margraviate's frontier had perished in battle against the lizardmen without producing an heir, leaving the seat vacant. The title carried no personal demesne, functioning essentially as an estate administrator—a deputy count overseeing rough borderland logistics. Regardless of how magnificent his swordsmanship was, it was hardly a station meant to be handed to a young commoner veteran—yet these were extraordinary times.
"What a contemptible swine. He tosses relief bread to a devastated border territory and demands a viscountcy in exchange? How dare a man who calls himself a knight stoop to such filthy opportunism!"
"...He likely offered a colossal sum of private funding as well. While enfeoffment ultimately requires imperial sanction, His Majesty would have no reason to deny it. If an exhausted, battered Margrave requests to take a prodigy who reached peak Expert rank as his sworn vassal, how could the crown refuse?"
"This is complete madness!"
Hero Kwon Hee-jin had explicitly described Eric as a 'half-witted fool,' yet the man possessed an infuriating, venomous talent for political cunning. If Eric genuinely fled to the Rancart Margraviate and hunkered down under the Margrave's banner for several years, laying a finger on him would become an absolute impossibility.
Just as the Second Prince was clutching his head in utter despair, watching his final lifeline slip away, the attendant stared down at him with an inscrutable gaze before softly breaking the silence.
"Indeed, sire. Once he departs, striking him will become exceedingly difficult. However, Your Highness... there is a single, crucial variable. Please bear in mind that the territory in question is the Rancart Margraviate."
"What drivel are you spouting now?"
"Did not numerous Imperial Guard knights lose their lives or suffer maiming wounds upon those very borderlands? Blood spilled entirely because of the Hero's fabricated reports. And there happens to be one individual who is currently seething with uncontrollable rage over that tragedy."
At the attendant's words, the Second Prince blinked once, twice, before his twisted scowl dissolved into a radiant, predatory grin.
Of course. Eric was clever—there was no denying the bastard's sharpness. And if he sought refuge in that war-torn frontier to safeguard his life and coin, prying him out would prove nearly impossible. As a peak Expert, he could happily spend his days hunting monsters along the border in comfortable obscurity.
Yet there was one man—and one man alone—who would never tolerate such an insult.
And by divine providence, that man was the undisputed strongest knight in the entire Empire.
"He is a man who would fly into a murderous fury merely learning that a former subordinate used humanitarian relief as a bargaining chip to purchase nobility. ...How much worse will his wrath be knowing the territory was the Rancart Margraviate, bought with the blood of his fallen comrades?"
"He'll lose his mind," the prince chuckled darkly. "Knowing him, he'll see red."
"We unleash that man to shatter Eric completely. Once the boy is subdued and broken, Your Highness can gauge the atmosphere and pin whatever additional charges suit our convenience."
Believing he had finally seized salvation, the Second Prince looked upon his attendant with profound, doting admiration, making a mental vow that the moment he claimed the throne, he would elevate this servant to Court Minister or Grand Chamberlain. If executed properly, he could alleviate at least one of his two crushing burdens—the nobility. While placating the Holy Kingdom alone was a terrifying prospect, it was incomparably better than fighting a two-front war.
Without a moment's hesitation, the Second Prince summoned Commander Rufus Wainwright of the Imperial Guard Knights.
Since Wainwright himself had already been aggressively demanding an audience in a state of tempestuous agitation, the meeting was granted almost instantaneously.