Surrender
The string of assassination attempts turned out to be a timely blessing in disguise, snapping the Revolutionary Army out of the lax complacency brought on by their smooth post-victory march.
Losing ten men to an ambush had been a bitter pill for their comrades to swallow. Yet coldly speaking, trading the lives of ten regular soldiers to repel a surprise strike by the Crown Prince’s personal shadow unit—and wiping out half the assailants in the process—was a clear net gain.
Adelheid and the senior staff took care not to show it openly for the sake of morale, but the general atmosphere among high command made it obvious they were quietly satisfied. They had crushed an enemy strike and whipped their ranks back into iron discipline in one stroke.
Having reached the grand highway leading straight to the capital, the Revolutionary Army resumed its march the second dawn broke. Perhaps because most of them were originally soldiers garrisoned in Byron, their boots fell heavy with conflicting emotion, yet carried them forward swifter than ever.
"The rebel remnants are holding out better than expected," I remarked.
"Unlike during the initial uprising, Lady Adelheid is now the rallying figurehead," Bell replied. "Word is that several regional lords have begun discreetly funneling support their way."
The surviving western rebels—initially intended as nothing more than a distraction to divide the siege forces at Hannover—had vastly exceeded expectations. They were still doing an admirable job of tying down thousands of Central Army regulars.
Of course, that wasn't purely out of sheer grit. Provincial nobles, realizing it was high time to hedge their bets between the Crown Prince and Adelheid, had begun covertly sabotaging Central Army movements and slipping supplies to the remnants—just enough to help without painting targets on their own backs.
As for me, after inadvertently thwarting an attempt on my life and sending army morale soaring through the roof...
"Her Imperial Highness gave strict orders. You are under no circumstances to step outside."
I was currently half-imprisoned inside a carriage.
"Come on, it's stifling in here..."
"What would you have me do? If I let you roam free again, the princess looked ready to take my head off."
I parted the curtain and peeked outside. Adelheid was riding tall on horseback at the vanguard, while I sat comfortably ensconced in the safest spot in the entire formation, nestled inside a private carriage and cordoned off not by regular footmen, but by a dense escort of elite imperial knights.
To anyone watching, I was being pampered like an honored sovereign. Truth be told, my standing in the Revolutionary Army was second only to Adelheid herself, but I was entirely unaccustomed to such coddling, and it made my skin crawl.
"Now, stop grumbling and have a sweet. The princess said it wasn't much, but told you to pass the time with this."
"She's treating me like an actual toddler..."
Heaven knew where Bell had procured it, but she held an expensive-looking jar of hard candies. Popping one into her mouth as if it were the most natural thing in the world, she thrust the entire jar toward me to take my pick.
I didn't have much of a sweet tooth, but boredom won out. I plucked one and rolled it across my tongue. Orange.
The flavor wasn't wildly different from what was sold in the market stalls of Remus, but it felt smoother, richer, and lingered longer on the palate. In short, it tasted like money.
"At this pace, how long until we reach the capital?"
"They said we're marching as fast as humanly possible without exhausting the troops, so two days at the latest, wouldn't you say?"
"Two days... I only came here to sign a peace treaty. How on earth did I get dragged into a war for the imperial throne?"
"That 'how on earth' is entirely your own fault, Your Highness. And don't let your guard down just yet. It'll be wonderful if the princess wins, but we still need to plan for what happens if she loses."
Bell was right. We had ridden an unbroken wave of triumphs, but only because the empire's heaviest hitters had yet to stir from their seats.
"Counting Lady Adelheid, how many Tier Four—that is, Gyeol-rank—masters do we have on our side? Six, including General Lucius?"
"And the imperial palace has more than double that number, once you count the royal family."
"That's the real headache. On top of that, isn't the continent's greatest spearman an imperial native? Which means he's probably holed up right there. We might manage against other Tier Fours, but a Tier Five... You could feed ten thousand regular soldiers straight into the meat grinder and still not see a glimmer of victory."
The grading system for mana wielders, patterned after the classic composition of Gi, Seung, Jeon, Gyeol, traditionally capped out at the fourth rank, Gyeol. Yet on the rarest of occasions—once or twice an era, or perhaps once across centuries—monsters emerged who shattered the mortal ceiling entirely. Such beings were dubbed Transcendants, and officially granted the rank of Tier Five.
Of the only five living Transcendents active on the continent, one resided within the Fron Empire: the man known as Blue Sky.
"Rest easy. That old man won't be lifting a finger in this civil war."
Naturally, neither Bell nor I were imperial natives, let alone insiders of the imperial court; our knowledge of Blue Sky was superficial at best.
Which meant the voice hadn't come from my mouth.
Nor had it come from Bell's.
So what did it mean when a third voice casually chimed in from inside a moving carriage meant to hold only two people?
"!"
The realization struck us an instant later. Every hair on our bodies stood on end. We scrambled in desperate unison to draw our weapons and ignite our mana—only for a pale hand reaching from the empty seat right beside me to clamp down on our wrists.
"Shh—"
The grip wasn't bone-crushing, yet the effortless impossibility of breaking free was proof enough that whoever held us operated on a plane far beyond my own.
Suppressing the tremor in my chest, I turned my head.
Sitting beside me was a tall woman. Her hair was raven-black, cut into a loose, wavy bob that framed eyes as dark as an abyss. In stark contrast, her skin was not merely fair, but a ghostly, bloodless white. In every sense of the word, she radiated an utter lack of vitality.
It wasn't just the chilling cast of her gaze or her pale complexion. Even with skin pressed against skin, I could feel virtually no body heat, nor the faintest flutter of a pulse.
"I didn't come to kill you. So would you mind lowering the weapon in your other hand, Prince Romul? You know better than anyone right now that I didn't come here for a fight."
"..."
The corners of her lips curled into a faint smile as she urged me to relax. But nobody on earth would calm down just because the intruder who had effortlessly breached a moving, heavily guarded carriage and pinned their wrist told them to.
"Seeing you up close, I finally understand how my subordinates failed. Hmm, you really are an odd one. Your combat tier is mediocre, but your instincts go far beyond mere 'intuition.' You can pick up on the faintest whisper of subconscious hostility or bloodlust, can't you? Truly, you're the worst natural enemy an assassin could ever encounter."
"Subordinates...? You mean that Nox group, or whatever..."
"...My, Her Imperial Highness shared even that? That's a secret known only to a select few within the imperial family itself. She must truly cherish you."
Having her identity pierced in a single breath only widened the curve of her lips. She crossed her slender legs and gazed at me in silence. Paired with her eerie, lifeless aura, the sight possessed a haunting beauty—yet the sheer terror of being caught completely at an enemy's mercy left me no room to appreciate it.
"For convenience's sake, just call me Nox. I'll let go of your hands slowly and raise mine. You two can hold my wrists instead if you like. If you'd prefer, I could strip bare right here so you can verify I'm unarmed. Tell me whatever it takes to convince you I harbor no ill will, and I'll do it."
She wasn't bluffing. The woman calling herself Nox released Bell and me, raising both hands in an attitude of complete surrender.
"...Assassination failed, so now you're trying negotiation? Does the Crown Prince have something to say to me?"
"...Heh. I suppose you could see it that way. But you're mistaken. I haven't come as a shadow of the Emperor this time. I'm here on personal business."
"...Imperial secret agents must enjoy quite the flexible benefits."
In the middle of an all-out civil war, the Crown Prince's personal henchwoman had slipped away on 'personal business' to meet a foreign prince. Anyone in my shoes would have found it utterly absurd.
"I'll cut straight to the chase," she said evenly. "Save my life."
"...Did you just shorten 'Beg for your life'?"
"No. I'm the one begging for my life."
"...?"
"I know how insane this sounds. I'll explain everything. Just understand that I came here to plead for my survival, and listen to what I have to say."
At first, I wondered if this was some twisted mockery after catching me off guard. But staring straight into Nox's eyes, I realized she was dead serious. And in that same breath, I understood why I hadn't sensed her presence until she spoke.
"...You're really not joking, are you?"
This woman had sought me out with nothing on her mind other than an unadulterated desire to live. She harbored not a speck of animosity, not a shred of murderous intent. It was purely because she had approached me out of a desperate bid for survival that my instincts hadn't sounded the alarm.
Nox's explanation was crisp and concise.
Driven into a corner by a succession of miscalculations, the Crown Prince had lost his grip on sanity and begun executing his own subordinates on fabricated, absurd charges.
When she revealed that the surviving assassins I had chosen not to pursue were slaughtered by the Crown Prince's own hands, I was struck speechless.
He hadn't even executed them on the grounds that failed operatives had outlived their usefulness. No, he had framed them for defecting to Adelheid and butchered them without bothering to investigate.
No matter how much Nox served as a pliable blade wielded at the Emperor's whim, executing them on such baseless pretexts was guaranteed to sow revolt.
And the result of that folly was sitting right in front of me.
"The Crown Prince flew into a rage and ordered me to bring back both your head and Her Highness's," she continued. "From the looks of it, refusing or failing would get me killed all the same. So I pretended to obey, and came straight here."
"...I would have thought the 'Emperor's Blade' would obey even an order like that. Color me surprised."
"Because he isn't the Emperor yet. He thinks he already is, but the throne isn't so cheap that an heir can simply inherit it just because his predecessor died. True ascension only comes when the subjects you are meant to govern willingly bend the knee, acknowledging your rule with genuine allegiance. Yet the Crown Prince took what could have been settled as a minor scorch mark and turned it into an inferno that has engulfed the entire empire."
"I understand your standards for a sovereign are strict," I said. "And I understand you came to defect to our side with your people because staying under him means dying for no reason. But why come to me instead of Lady Adelheid?"
"You call Her Imperial Highness by her name?"
"...She coerced me into it."
"I knew I came to the right place. To catch the rider, you shoot the mount first, right? You're a foreigner from Remus who's never clashed with her on the battlefield, so you might not know, but our princess is a soldier to the marrow of her bones."
"I've picked up on that much."
"No, you don't understand. She is an uncompromising dogmatist who is notoriously rigid regarding discipline and loyalty. Circumstances may have forced her into staging a coup, but at heart, she loathes betrayal and insubordination above all else—even when it comes from the enemy."
"...So there's a strong chance she wouldn't look kindly on your surrender?"
She certainly seemed strict about protocol, but the Adelheid I knew didn't strike me as someone completely devoid of pragmatism.
"Perhaps I could play on our shared victimhood under the Crown Prince, but my gut tells me... if I approached her directly right now, my head wouldn't stay on my shoulders. Especially after my subordinates tried to assassinate you just a few days ago."
"..."
"And seeing this carriage confirmed it. I don't know if Her Highness caught feelings late in life, but she treasures you above all else. Perhaps even more than her own life."
"...Well, that's because this entire coup was made possible by Remus's backing."
At my response, Nox let out a soft chuckle, looking at me as if she had just watched an adorable child say something earnest.
"You can rationalize it however you want, Prince. What matters is that I'm on her blackest list right now. She probably wants my head second only to the Crown Prince's. And the only person alive who could appease her wrath happens to be you. So I'll say it once more: save me."
Having laid out the whole story, Nox repeated the exact words she started with. But this time, with even deeper desperation, she dropped to her knees on the carriage seat and bowed her head low.
"Persuade her to take Nox in. I'm not asking for special treatment. If she just spares our lives, I will surrender every secret of the imperial palace we've gathered and throw our lives on the line for this coup."
"You came here to live, yet you offer to risk your life fighting?"
"Sacrificing oneself for a mission is entirely different from being butchered in a fit of someone's pique, isn't it? Please... if you convince her, I swear my obedience to you, Prince—so long as it doesn't cross Her Highness, that is."