Enthronement
“Haa…….”
White breath scattered from Seriel’s lips as she stepped alone into the Ten Thousand Year Ice Cave.
The North was cold.
Even she, a 4th Class ice-affinity mage, felt the chill seeping in unless she wore cold-weather gear laced with heat magic.
Yet this Ten Thousand Year Ice Cave was on an entirely different level.
She had removed the heat-insulated gear, of course, but she suspected it would have made little difference even if she had kept it on.
Had she not raised her mana to its absolute peak and wrapped herself in a tight defense, her extremities would already have frozen solid and begun to rot.
An ordinary person would have frozen solid before taking two steps past the entrance.
“Hoo……. This spot will do.”
Seriel settled into a lotus position on a flat sheet of ice at the very heart of the cavern.
She closed her eyes and focused on the flow of mana.
Mana mixed into every breath she drew seeped into every corner of her lungs.
A cold so fierce it felt as though her lungs would freeze and tear apart.
Kkugh…….
It was agony.
Her consciousness threatened to slip away at any moment.
One slight misstep and her mana circuits, her dantian, her entire body would freeze solid in an instant.
If the dantian alone is not enough, then I will pass it through my Core as well…….
Refined mana gathered in her dantian.
Even collecting a mere speck of it drained an enormous amount of mental strength.
Could she do it?
No—she had to.
…
How much time had passed?
Her body, now fully adapted to the Ten Thousand Year Ice Cave’s cold, began refining mana at a rapid pace.
I can feel it.
The realm of 5th Class, which had always felt so distant, now seemed within reach.
If she absorbed every last scrap of mana remaining in this place, she would stand firmly upon that next tier—she was certain of it.
Then that Ricarton brat would look at her with new eyes.
She could already picture the flustered face he would make when he saw her pull ahead of him…….
……?
Why am I even thinking about Ricarton?
I am not putting myself through this hell just to beat that boy.
Seriel squeezed her eyes shut, trying to cast the thought aside.
“How dare you set foot in my domain.”
“And not content with that, you even lay hands upon what is mine…… For that crime, pay with your life.”
The voice rang directly inside her skull, and every hair on her body seemed to stand on end.
She wanted to snap back and demand what nonsense that was, yet opening her mouth risked scattering the mana she had only just managed to take in.
If that happened, the delicate refining process would collapse, and the backlash might turn her into an ice statue.
……A spirit of this ice cave, is it?
Extreme cold gathered into a single point and suddenly birthed a storm.
The creature’s level felt roughly equal to the early stages of 5th Class—an upper-rank spirit.
The gap between the very end of 4th Class and 5th Class was truly heaven and earth.
The mana she had wrapped around her body snuffed out like a candle before a gale.
Her left hand froze. Frost flowers bloomed along her left arm and across half her body.
I was so close.
The first thought that rose was regret.
The fruit of all that endurance hung right before her eyes. If she only stretched out her hand, she could almost touch it.
Just as her consciousness began to slip away—
“A ghost?”
Ricarton’s idiotic voice, arriving out of nowhere, barely managed to anchor her mind.
“It is a spirit.”
She could not add the words “you idiot.”
The moment she opened her mouth, the body she had been barely holding together crumbled.
Perhaps it was because Ricarton’s arrival had let her relax; she had spoken without thinking.
Ricarton sprinted forward in a single bound and caught her as she fell. His speed was tremendous.
He was clearly supporting half her body, yet she felt nothing.
His warmth did not reach her at all.
The upper-rank spirit’s assault continued at once.
She felt the mana surrounding the Ricarton who held her being carved away in great chunks.
Any more was impossible.
At this rate they would both die.
In her remaining eye, Ricarton’s face blurred into focus.
You at least must survive.
With talent that shone so brilliantly, you would be a prize the trash Second Prince would covet.
He would not kill you; he would try to use you.
Whatever form that took, live one more day.
Seriel wrung out the last of her strength and spoke.
“…Ricarton.”
“Yes.”
“Destroy it.”
“……Please hold on just a little longer.”
She felt her body touch something hard, and the frost she had been suppressing instantly blanketed her.
If this dream was going to collapse so emptily, perhaps I should never have dreamed it at all.
Maybe I should simply have run away.
……I do not know.
With that, Seriel lost consciousness.
—How dare you touch my woman——.
A muffled voice, as though heard underwater, accompanied her sinking deeper into darkness.
You little brat…….
She wanted to rise that very instant and rap him on the crown of his head, but unfortunately she could not.
When she next opened her eyes, she was back inside the Northern Grand Duke’s fortress.
Pa-pa pa-pa-pa~ pa-pa-ra-pa-pa pa-pa-ra-pa-pa~…….
I opened my eyes to the reveille trumpet blaring inside my skull.
I tried to bolt upright, only for searing pain to lock my body in place.
Gyaaah—!
Thankfully it was not the army.
I was still alive as Ricarton of this fantasy world.
My circuits!
Mana circuits all over my body had frozen solid.
It was a miracle I was even breathing.
How did I survive…… oh!
When I examined my condition, I was stunned.
An expanded dantian, and mana that now carried the cold within it.
I had become a 5th Class mage.
Reaching 5th Class must have been what kept the circuits from freezing completely.
……Seriel. Where is Seriel?
I managed to roll my eyes sideways and spotted a pink crown of hair at the edge of the large bed.
“Hoo…….”
Her back rose and fell with every soft breath.
I saved her.
Only then did the memories of the ice cave return.
At the time I had forced heated mana from my own body directly into hers and succeeded in thawing her circuits.
After the bare minimum of first aid, I detonated every scrap of mana inside me, punched through the killing cold, and ran all the way to the Northern Grand Duke’s residence.
How I got there, and what happened afterward, I could not remember.
I watched the pink-top sleeping soundly beside me, then drifted off again myself.
It took a full week for my body to recover.
Regrettably, the mages and knights who possessed no ice resistance whatsoever had died on the spot.
It was absolutely not because I was late saving Seriel.
……Probably.
“How is your body?”
Slurp.
Seriel asked while sipping black tea.
“Fully recovered. However…….”
I had just finished changing into light clothes.
Having reached 5th Class by absorbing the cave’s mana, I no longer needed cold-weather gear of any kind.
“Why are you drinking tea in my room……?”
Seriel sat in the cold, shabby chamber, displaying her noble bearing while sipping black tea.
I had woken from a late sleep to find her already drinking; even when I tried to change clothes she showed no intention of leaving, so I had been forced to change in the storage room next door.
Why she insisted on drinking here instead of her own warm, spacious, clean, luxurious chambers was beyond me.
“Your room is practically mine already.”
“Ah, yes…….”
As you say.
Our pink-top princess must be bored again.
“Shall we go for a walk, Your Highness?”
“No need. More importantly…….”
Seriel loaded mana into her eyes and scanned every inch of my body.
“…Your mana capacity increased again while you slept.”
“Did it?”
My mana had grown so vast that a small increase was hard to notice now.
Then how does Seriel know?
Surely she was not watching me every single day and keeping records.
Given that finicky personality of hers, it was entirely possible—and the thought sent a chill through my whole body.
I am 5th Class and I am cold.
“I am a patient.”
I struck first, sensing another beating coming.
Yet Seriel only glared at me and took no further action.
“Oh, she has finally grown— ah.”
The thought slipped straight out of my mouth.
A week of lying there with my jaw locked shut was to blame.
Try practicing speech for a whole week with a frozen mouth. This is what happens.
Creak—.
Seriel rose without a word.
I’m dead.
I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing myself.
Click.
She simply left the room.
Has she actually grown, Seriel?!
It felt like the heart of a father watching a child who had taken first steps later than his peers now zooming around on a two-wheeler.
Tears of emotion were about to fall when—
Click.
Seriel returned.
In her hand was a whip.
The very same iron-thorned whip that had beaten me before.
She had gone to her own room to fetch it.
“W-wait a moment, Your Highness.”
“Let us see whether I have truly grown, as you claim.”
Seriel smiled sweetly.
It was an exceedingly gentle smile.
Whoosh—! Crack!
“No, that was just a slip of the tongue— aaagh!”
Terrifying sounds and screams rang through the fortress, yet no one came to look.
No one…….
And another month passed, into the full green of midsummer.
Bwoooo—!
The Third Imperial Princess and Northern Grand Duke Allied Army marched out.
As they advanced from the North toward the capital, the Third Imperial Princess’s forces steadily swelled.
Factions opposed to the Second Prince, hearing that she had entered the succession war, flocked to her from every direction.
Thus an army that had numbered a mere five thousand at departure had grown to twenty thousand by the time it reached the capital, Adelin.
Riding that momentum, the allied forces immediately assaulted Adelin’s northern walls and locked into a fierce siege against the Second Prince’s defenders.
“Young Ricarton. Are you prepared?”
“Yes.”
On the second night of the siege.
Rubellion and I assembled a special detachment composed solely of Sword Master-class knights.
With every eye in the Empire fixed on Adelin’s northern walls, we planned to enter the capital through the relatively lightly guarded southern wall.
“Fortune favor you.”
Before we departed, the North’s foremost 7th Class mage cast spells to evade magical detection and tracking.
Thanks to that, we slipped through the southern gate without the slightest interference.
“H-how…… how did you……!”
Rubellion and I stepped into the Second Prince’s bedchamber.
The face of the man who had been lounging carelessly with women in his arms darkened in an instant.
“K-Knight Command——.”
Thud. Roll…….
That same face rolled across the floor.
“It begins now. Are you ready?”
“Of course.”
The Imperial Knights would storm in any moment.
How strong was the continent’s greatest knight, the Imperial Knight Commander?
My heart pounded with a mix of dread and thrill as I opened every Core, prepared to burn my life—then the Imperial Knights burst in.
The Imperial Knight Commander glanced once at the Second Prince’s head rolling on the floor and spoke.
“…I surrender.”
The Empire’s finest knight laid down his sword.
At once the other knights dropped theirs as well.
“Huh?”
Why?
Then what was all my resolve for?
……And so the siege ended in a mere two days.
Seriel entered the Imperial Palace in triumph.
“…I am the sword that protects the Empire. From this day forth I swear to live as the sword that protects Lady Seriel Adelin Acilion.”
“Mm.”
In exchange for the oath of loyalty, she did not punish the Knight Commander.
In truth she already knew.
He had not stopped the special detachment’s infiltration, and he had allowed the vicious Second Prince’s head to leave his shoulders.
…
Several more months passed.
Her coronation was held amid the blessings of all save the nobles who had backed the Second Prince.
Radiant light filtering through the church’s stained glass enveloped Seriel’s head and entire body.
It truly looked as though the gods themselves were blessing her.
Immediately after the coronation.
In the palace audience chamber, the five Grand Dukes knelt before Seriel.
“Hear ye. Of late, unfortunate events have thrown the Empire into turmoil—”
The Chancellor recited a preamble thick with flowery rhetoric.
Though she had ascended the throne, Seriel still lacked firm power of her own.
It was a house of cards.
What she held was mere scraps of authority—enough that if the Five Grand Dukes truly decided on a coup, they could topple her in an instant.
Thus she punished no one except the nobles who had committed the most heinous war crimes.
To the Five Grand Dukes she instead bestowed rewards.
At last it was the Northern Grand Duke’s turn; he pressed his lips to the back of Seriel’s hand.
“You and the Pure White Knighthood rendered distinguished service in Her Majesty the Empress’s recapture of Adelin. Therefore We intend to grant you a great reward—”
“Your Majesty. May this humble servant dare make a request?”
He cut off the Chancellor who spoke in the Empress’s stead, yet Seriel did not rebuke him.
“Speak.”
“What I desire is something else entirely.”
“We know. We shall grant you sufficient lands near Adelin—”
“That is not it.”
The other Grand Dukes looked openly surprised that what he wanted was not central territory.
“It shames me to speak of it in such a place, yet though I am nearly thirty I have still not married. In the barren North I could find no beauty who excelled in both letters and arms. At this rate I fear I shall leave no heir.”
“Very well, then We shall personally select a suitable lady for you—”
“I wish to receive Your Majesty’s imperial favor.”
“……!!!”
Imperial favor.
The request to have a child with her.
In the presence of all five Grand Dukes, the Northern Grand Duke made that shameless demand with perfect composure.
It was a public declaration that he was certain his current standing surpassed Seriel’s.
“Northern Grand Duke!!”
“How dare you utter such obscenity before Her Majesty!”
“Utterly disrespectful!”
“You must strike that man’s head from his shoulders this instant and restore order to the palace!”
The other Grand Dukes, sensing opportunity, tore into him.
That bastard.
My blood ran cold.
Give the order, Seriel.
I will take his head this very second.
As I let killing intent leak and gripped my sword hilt, I saw Rubellion, standing in formation, place his hand on his own hilt as well.
Yet—
“Hahahaha!”
Seriel laughed.
She threw her head back and laughed until the audience chamber seemed ready to shatter.
It was the first time she had laughed like that since the late Emperor’s sudden death.
“I knew it! Indeed, there is no such thing as free goodwill. I have learned something from the Northern Grand Duke today. Hahahaha!”
Bang bang!
The sight of her slamming the armrests and laughing so freely no longer resembled the Seriel I knew.
An unexplainable chill ran down my spine.
“Very well. We shall bestow glory upon you.”
“!!!”
At those words I stared at her.
What did I just hear?
Did I mishear, or did Seriel misspeak?
“My deepest thanks.”
The Northern Grand Duke bowed his head with a satisfied smile.
“Your Majesty!!”
“—However.”
Eyes like a beast’s made all five Grand Dukes swallow hard.
Mana that seemed ready to freeze the entire chamber poured forth.
“That glory shall be shared by all Five Grand Dukes.”
“……!!!”
The Northern Grand Duke looked briefly startled, then nodded.
“Your words are most just.”
…
The following year, a child was born.
Four sisters, each spaced a month apart.
The birth of the four imperial princesses sent enormous shockwaves through the Empire.