Wild Card
The battle had barely begun before the main gates swung wide from within, instantly shattering what should have been a precarious stalemate.
Already suffering from a numerical disadvantage, the Central Army fell into immediate disarray, helpless against the rebel knights surging through the breach. Then, through the widening threshold, the Revolutionary Army poured in like an overwhelming tidal wave.
“Surround the Imperial Palace! We must seize the Crown Prince before he flees!”
Sharing the exact same concern as Lucius, Adelheid left the securing of the main gate to Remus and a detachment of soldiers, immediately leading her inner circle on a dead run to capture the Crown Prince.
“Adel! Have you lost your bloody mind?!”
“He must truly be desperate if he undid your leashes with his own hands.”
Barring Adelheid's path were her own imperial siblings—the very contenders who, mere years ago, had vied against the Crown Prince for the throne.
Stripped of their factions and fortunes, permitted only the breath in their lungs while locked away under surveillance in the Detached Palace, it was nonetheless no surprise that they stood here now with retainers in tow. When one's own neck was on the line, what did old grudges matter? Even before the war, the Crown Prince had watched their every breath with paranoid vigilance. Yet, as the fronts multiplied and manpower ran dry, he had begun mobilizing his royal siblings one by one, starting with those who had offered the least resistance. Even so, Adelheid felt a flicker of grim admiration that he had resorted to unleashing those who had fought him to the bitter end—though that was as far as her sentiment went.
“Come at me quickly. I am pressed for time.”
“You treacherous bitch…! You lectured us about family and sacred duty, and then the moment it's all over, you stab us in the back?! If you wanted the crown, you should have fought fair and square when we were all vying for it!”
In contrast to Adelheid's chill demeanor, the two imperial siblings wore expressions of utter despair.
What good was having their leashes cut and being promised a chance to rebuild their power if it meant facing their younger sister as she marched through the capital's shattered gates at the head of a massive army? Though imperial blood and boundless privilege had made them both Tier 4 masters, against such numbers, death was a certainty. Moreover, after years of languishing without weapons or training, the two of them together could hardly guarantee a victory against Adelheid alone. In truth, they wanted nothing more than to throw down their weapons, swing the palace doors wide, and hand over the Crown Prince's head to beg for their lives. But the insidious curse the Crown Prince had placed upon them to prevent that very betrayal left them no choice: fight, or perish.
“I have no intention of wasting time on pointless chatter.”
“Damn it… You know our situation! Are you really doing this to us?!”
They clung to a faint shred of hope, remembering their sister as a stubborn, rigid, yet naive girl with a soft spot for family. But after all she had endured, Adelheid was no longer the girl they remembered. True to her word about wasting no time, she offered no reply. Gathering aura onto her blade, she drove it straight for a vital point.
“Ugh…?!”
A thoroughbred was still a thoroughbred. Being a Tier 4 master herself, the targeted princess reacted swiftly, transmuting her mana into aura to parry the strike. Yet Adelheid's expression remained colder than ice.
“Now that I think of it, neither of you ever stepped foot on the front line when the war began, too busy squabbling over the throne. I was young then, and not yet Tier 4, so I didn't realize… but you truly are weak.”
“Wh-what…?!”
Against a sister who amounted to little more than a sluggish beast with an impressive build, there was no need for destructive output or miraculous swordplay. Adelheid simply tilted the tip of her blade, catching her sister's guard not head-on but at an angle, and swept it aside.
With that solitary motion, the hastily gathered aura was rendered moot. The princess's weapon was batted from her hands, clattering uselessly to the flagstones.
Before the woman could even process what had occurred, Adelheid reversed her swing.
Slice—!
Though the Tier 4 imperial princess instinctively flared her mana in a protective barrier, the strike tore through it like wet parchment, cleaving her clean in two.
“Far weaker than I anticipated. I knew the Empire had gone soft, but to this degree? It is truly astonishing.”
Without lingering on the fact that she had just cut down her own sister, Adelheid recovered her stance in a single fluid motion and turned her blade toward the surviving prince. Dulled though his instincts were, witnessing his former rival and sister slaughtered before his eyes violently sharpened his senses. He thrust his spear forward with desperate ferocity.
“How foolish, dear brother. You wield a spear, yet you allowed me inside your reach and still expect to win? If you truly meant to stop me, you should have saved our sister. Though perhaps you simply lacked the competence.”
“You insolent…!”
His face twisted at Adelheid's provocation. The spear cleaving the air with a howl of aura was vicious, and he was certain his strike would reach her before her sword could reach him.
If that wench wants to live, she'll have to back off! I just need to hold the space, endure, and look for an opening…!
Yet the gulf between them lay in battlefield experience, where a single split-second of hesitation decided life and death. The prince had been taught from youth that when holding a blade or spear, one must cherish it like life itself and never let go—a maxim he had adhered to all his days.
Thud!
That was precisely why he could not fathom Adelheid's choice: she hurled her longsword without a second thought. And he could do nothing to stop it from driving clean through his chest.
“You madwoman… throwing your weapon…? What if you'd missed…?”
“I didn't miss, did I?”
With that curt retort, Adelheid gripped the hilt of the embedded sword and surged aura into it, blasting a gaping hole through her brother's chest. Flicking the blood from her blade, she turned a freezing gaze upon the retainers, who had been left paralyzed by how instantly the duel had concluded.
“Ten seconds. Kill everyone who has not dropped their weapons and knelt.”
She spoke while staring straight at the enemy, yet it was an order directed to her own vanguard. Realizing their fate had already been decided—and that this was not an offer, but an ultimatum—the surviving retainers scrambled to throw down their arms.
“We've been delayed by three minutes. Move!”
Though they entered the capital as traitors, the core of the Revolutionary Army had once been the Central Army stationed here; they navigated the city's labyrinthine avenues without hesitation. Yet upon arriving at the Imperial Palace, Adelheid could only click her tongue at the sparse garrison, light enough to resemble peacetime security.
“He ran after all…”
She had suspected as much the moment he used imperial royalty as disposable pawns, but sure enough, the Crown Prince had gathered his inner circle, scooped up his wealth, and chosen flight.
“Pursue him! On no account is he to escape the capital!”
Subsequent reports confirmed that the rebel forces entering through the breached South Gate had executed pincer attacks, already seizing the other three gates. Even so, Byron had stood as the ancient capital of the Fron Empire for over two centuries. A fortress city of such pedigree was riddled with hidden escape tunnels designed precisely for times of calamity.
“Command the Nox operatives to scour every secret passage they know and drag the Crown Prince back!”
Adelheid herself knew of only a handful, but the Emperor's shadows would surely know far more. Still, she could not bring herself to be optimistic. Considering the empire's long history and the Crown Prince's pathological deceit, he almost certainly possessed hidden passages even Nox was oblivious to.
They had triumphed in the decisive battle, yet the moment she could truly breathe easy felt agonizingly far away. Just as Adelheid began to resign herself to a prolonged hunt, a scout came sprinting up, breathless.
“Your Highness! A dispatch from the rear… Prince Romul has vanished…!”
“What?!”
Meanwhile, having abandoned the palace just as expected, the Crown Prince was making his escape through a secret passageway he had commissioned years ago. Yet the route he took defied everyone's assumptions.
“Your Highness… your deduction was correct! They are so obsessed with securing the capital that their rear guard is utterly neglected!”
Unable to salvage much of his wealth, accompanied only by a contingent of the imperial guard and a handful of loyal officials, the Crown Prince had chosen a path heading straight toward the South Gate—the very gate breached first.
Predicting that the rebels, confident in their imminent victory, would be entirely consumed with locking down the inner city, the Crown Prince had chosen flight without a second thought the instant the South Gate fell. It was a cunning calculation—foolish though he often was, he was not an idiot. For once, his instincts had saved his life. Yet it only plunged his pride into a deeper abyss, forcing him to acknowledge his defeat without excuse as he fled like a stray cur.
“This is not over…! I will rally the dukes… I will solicit foreign powers if I must! I will reclaim what is rightfully mine…!”
Desperately reining in the madness threatening to shatter his reason, the Crown Prince cast one last look toward the capital, swearing bloody vengeance. Having caught his pursuers off guard and bought precious time, his whereabouts were completely unknown to anyone. It should have been impossible to track them now, whatever might happen later.
And yet—
Thwack!
“Aaaargh?!”
“Your Highness?!”
An arrow whistling out of empty air pierced clean through the Crown Prince's shoulder.
Panic erupted as the strike pinpointed the exact blind spot created when the retinue let down their guard and scanned in the wrong directions.
“Man, who would've thought they'd pull the exact same trick we did? Did Adelheid see this coming and leave me behind on purpose, I wonder?”
“As if she would! Just make sure none of that fallout splashes onto me later, alright?”
“Who goes there?!”
In this entire war, there was only one man.
Only a foreign prince, blessed with senses so preternaturally keen they defied common sense, could track down the Crown Prince simply by following the foul, overflowing stench of his malice.