Chapter 2
Chapter 2
I had been sitting at the training grounds for three days straight, claiming it was swordsmanship practice, battling the Royal Guard in a muddy brawl.
Three days.
Short if you think so, long if you think otherwise.
But for the Royal Guards, it was long enough.
By then, the air at the training grounds had started to change ever so slightly.
The faint hesitation lingering on the tips of their swords was gradually disappearing.
At first, everyone had been the same.
Just holding a real sword against a royal would make their faces pale. Even if I ran around in just my shirt, deep down, they’d be thinking:
“Please handle him carefully so he doesn’t get hurt.”
But I didn’t want some ceremonial spar where I played the role of flattering a company commander.
I wanted to fight genuinely, blood spattering.
Fight fiercely, roll on the ground, and force myself to raise my survival skills in this cruel world through sheer combat.
So I pushed harder.
If I aimed for their necks first, those monsters would have no choice but to wield their swords properly to survive.
Swordsmanship isn’t an elegant game like chess, where you can retreat a move.
If you defend halfheartedly, you lose your own life.
And finally.
The provocation I kept thrusting at them earned a sharp counterattack.
Shing-
A sting shot through my right wrist, and the next moment, a burning pain surged with the sensation of flesh tearing.
A tendon had been cut.
Cleanly.
“Your Highness—!!”
“Medic! Call a medic immediately!!”
Everyone in the training ground, even the guard who had struck me, went pale.
I gripped my wrist, blood spurting between my fingers, acting as if it were nothing.
The blood flowed like a sudden gush, but since it wasn’t completely severed, it was a wound that would heal soon.
Shhh-spark, crackle.
The torn tendons and flesh bizarrely fused together.
Divine blessing, as expected.
Gross as it was, the effect was incredible.
In the blink of an eye, my shirt sleeve was soaked in blood, and a small pool spread on the muddy ground.
But it was fine.
I even let out a hollow laugh in my head.
‘With a body this ridiculously overpowered, and you’ve never once spilled blood in actual sparring? Rouan, you’ve really wasted your life.’
I pressed my bloody wrist and slowly looked around at the trembling guards.
“Are there really knights who stop their swords out of fear that such trivial scratches might appear on the battlefield?”
The air froze instantly.
A knight is a noble.
One whose honor and pride are built on martial skill.
They call scars from battle glory, and bravery to leap into death a virtue.
What I said was simple.
Where is your courage?
That provocation alone was enough.
I added one more sentence.
“I’ve already survived once through a pit of poison. A warrior who has crossed the battlefield once doesn’t need to be treated like a child.”
The knights’ eyes shook profoundly.
Good. They were starting to understand.
I wasn’t asking for anything extraordinary.
I just wanted them to stop handling me like a fragile royal, and fight like a warrior against a warrior.
Treat me like a real person, not a royal shell.
There was no way the knights couldn’t understand.
They would have seen the past taboo I just mentioned more clearly than my face.
An assassination attempt.
Everyone in the palace knew it, but no one dared speak of it openly.
The fact I mentioned it meant this:
I still haven’t forgotten that day. Yet here I am, clashing swords with you. So drop the royal nonsense.
Of course, just making the mood tense would do no good.
So I offered a carrot as well.
“You only live once. If you can fight fiercely under the glory of God, isn’t that already a fulfilling life?”
The knights’ expressions changed slightly.
The knights of this world love God.
War is God’s will. Loyalty is God’s will. Even death, if glorified, is God’s will.
So my words must have sounded persuasive to them.
Your fight is noble. And I want to jump into it too.
When a royal says this, it carries a different meaning.
I’m not a noble giving orders from behind; I’m declaring that I want to live like a front-line knight, soaked in blood.
And to do that, I obviously cannot be trapped in this suffocating palace.
In other words.
I said subtly, but in a way that no knight could ignore:
I, Rouan Kaiser, want out of the palace power struggle.
That was huge information.
More precious than tens of thousands of gold coins, more valuable than the finest gemstones.
It was a new key to the issue of imperial succession.
The knights would verbally pledge loyalty, but there’s no way they wouldn’t share this news with their families.
By tonight, it would spread.
And then, the 1st prince’s faction would have no choice but to seriously consider my departure.
Their goal is to put Manuel on the throne, not to keep a potentially insane prince in the palace indefinitely.
Of course.
I had no intention of leaving empty-handed.
If I left, I would extract the highest price—money, rights, land, and legitimacy.
The name of the 2nd prince is not trivial.
I had to sell it thoroughly, for all its weight.
Three months passed.
I was still spending sweaty days clashing with knights at the training grounds.
Had the nobles shown no movement during that time?
Of course not.
Nobles never run about panting.
They move by carriage, send letters, send people, and drag out time with calm faces.
Even ending a single war takes them months to negotiate; so letting the 2nd prince leave the palace would take even longer.
And this was ultimately an internal royal matter.
Even if I clamored to leave, it was over if the emperor didn’t approve.
Probably, the 1st prince’s faction and the emperor’s people would finish their deadly calculations before presenting me proper terms.
The problem was that I had almost no power on my side.
The old Rouan had run wildly and burned all his support; the nobles who backed me had mostly gone.
I was close with the knights, but that was just knights.
I had no faction to move the political stage on my behalf.
That day, after finishing sparring and catching my breath with a drink, a knight cautiously approached and whispered in my ear.
“Your Highness Rouan. This weekend, Your Highness Manuel is hosting a grand banquet. Will you attend?”
“Hmm… seems the higher-ups above you haven’t finished their meeting yet.”
“…I’m merely passing on what I heard.”
Manuel.
My half-brother, the 1st prince.
Of course, we were distant.
I could never be close to a brother harboring those who tried to kill me.
Even if I went to the banquet, the atmosphere would freeze stiffly.
So why would he call me?
The reason was obvious.
‘He wants me to declare surrender with my own mouth.’
The old Rouan would have thrown a tantrum here.
Spewed insults at the 1st prince’s knights, drawn his sword, and disrupted the banquet.
But now it was different.
If they called, it meant there was at least a need for dialogue.
I wasn’t particularly pleased, though.
Usually, summoning the negotiation target directly happens when most of the discussion is already over.
And it wasn’t the emperor calling first, but Manuel?
That meant they hadn’t fully sorted things out yet.
My treatment is the emperor’s authority, but the 1st prince called first to move things.
In short:
Their hardliners aren’t easily persuaded, so they want you to come and push the game yourself.
“Quite inflexible, aren’t you? Why can’t I just throw out the ones blocking my departure? Wouldn’t it be easier to cut their heads off at once?”
“…Knights don’t really know what political negotiations are happening.”
“Of course. You spill the blood, the fat nobles decide the exchanges.”
“Yes. That’s right.”
I nodded at the knight with a detached gaze.
He wasn’t a servant or retainer, but a proper knight delivering the message.
Respecting noble formalities meant attending was correct.
And it didn’t hurt me either.
Declaring my position personally could ignite these stagnant negotiations.
I’d been generous in opening my terms, so why are they still hesitating?
That applied pressure.
It also helped silence those desperately preventing me from leaving the palace.
Those who tried to kill me would be in trouble if I withdrew from power.
The justification for killing the prince would vanish into thin air.
It was ironic: those who tried to end my life were now desperately holding me back.
Truly consistently foolish.
“Very well. I’ll attend for your sake, brother. I only hope there’s no poisoned wine in the banquet.”
“…! Understood. Then—”
“Where are you going?”
I stopped the knight trying to leave.
“Eh? I’m delivering the answer—”
“We need a proper spar before you go. You brought me such troublesome news, so sweat a little and relieve my stress. Draw your sword.”
The knight, either flustered or just slow because I’d become strong, moved sluggishly.
In the end, he only retreated after being beaten down and rolled on the floor by my relentless assault.
The reason was simple.
I was still carefully laying the groundwork to leave the palace and showing my dissatisfaction with their slow negotiations.
Soon after, an invitation gilded with gold from Manuel’s banquet arrived in my room.
I looked at it on my desk and chose my outfit.
Not a flashy uniform adorned with jewels, but the lightest outfit that allowed free movement.
I was going to face the ones who tried to poison me—no need to wear a costume offering no defense.
In old subculture circles, terms like yandere and menhera were once popular.
People who go mad over love, destroy their partners, or cling pathologically.
And in women-targeted romance fantasies, such abnormal people are glorified and called sophisticated.
The obsessive male lead.
Born noble, deeply wounded, broken in personality, and would go mad for the heroine if she simply reached out.
Frankly, if you look at real history, rulers have ruined nations for a single woman, so it’s not entirely implausible.
Anyway, until now, I was convinced this world was a proper political fantasy.
I’d suspected it might be a romance fantasy, but no saint, villainess, or pink-haired girl had appeared.
Instead, it was full of realistic political struggles.
Assassinations. Power struggles. Cunning calculations of nobles. Blood in the palace.
Looking at those keywords, it made sense.
So I moved like a political protagonist.
Planned legitimacy, built foundations after leaving the palace, and even made a plan to become the continent’s strongest sword master and cut a dragon’s neck.
But.
That cold, solid certainty of mine was shattered so trivially at today’s banquet.
This world isn’t a political fantasy.
It might be a women-targeted romance fantasy.
Why?
“Ah, hello……!”
“Yes. Hello.”
The sight in front of me was too decisive.
In the grand, solemn banquet hall, where nobles wore black, navy, and deep wine-colored formal attire.
There was only one woman, standing in front of me as if copied and pasted from another genre—
Her fluorescent pink hair shimmered like spun cotton candy.