The First Imperial Princess Eris
The director of the Imperial Research Institute doubted his own ears at the order just delivered by the knight.
“What?”
“……Her Majesty the Empress has commanded us to create children using her ova and the sperm of the five Grand Dukes.”
“No—what?”
“That is, Her Majesty the Empress’s……”
“No, I heard you. I heard you, but… what???”
“…….”
At this unprecedented directive, every researcher in the institute stood dumbfounded.
Soon, in absolute secrecy, life was conceived in five artificial incubators.
That they were all girls was only natural.
Ten months later, the Western Grand Duke’s child was the first to enter the world.
Second came the Southern Grand Duke’s child.
Third, the Northern Grand Duke’s child.
Fourth, the Eastern Grand Duke’s child.
Finally it was the Central Grand Duke’s child’s turn to be born, yet—
“……It was stillborn.”
Seriel looked down with an impassive face at the child wrapped in cloth.
“Dispose of it.”
“……Yes.”
The last, fifth child left this world without ever feeling even a parent’s warmth.
The Central Grand Duke pleaded for them to create another child, but Seriel cut him off without mercy.
Ricarton, who had watched the entire process from behind her, felt nothing short of devastated.
After ascending the throne, Seriel never once hit me again.
It was not merely because becoming Empress had matured her.
In my eyes, she seemed somehow broken.
“Ricarton.”
One day, a year after the fourth child was born, Seriel called for me.
“……You do not look well.”
“Pardon? Where do you mean, Your Majesty?”
“Just… I simply do not feel well…… Cough! Cough!”
Blood stained the hand she had coughed into.
Her body listed forward. The form I caught in my arms was cold beyond measure.
It was not only because she was an ice-attribute mage. There was something ominous in that chill.
“Your Majesty!! Is anyone out there! A priest—summon a priest at once! Hurry!”
After a high priest healed her with holy power, Seriel fell into a more peaceful sleep.
As he left the room, he quietly informed me:
“Her Majesty has been cursed.”
“Pardon?”
“It is an extremely powerful curse. One paid for with human lives…… hundreds of them.”
“Hundreds? Who in the world…… who could that even be?”
At my question the priest shook his head.
“I do not know. This curse lies beyond my power; we will need to summon His Holiness the Pope and the Saintess.”
At once the Pope, the Saintess, and bishop-rank high priests poured holy power into Seriel.
After a ten-hour struggle, her curse was lifted.
“Cough!”
The next day, her curse began again.
Seriel’s curse repeated itself day after day.
High priests took up permanent residence in the palace, and treating her every morning became part of the daily routine.
The Imperial Knights launched an investigation into the source of the curse.
Whoever would dare send such a curse upon the Empress. Whoever could harbor such thick malice.
Whoever would perform sorcery every single day at the cost of other people’s lives.
The most likely suspect seemed to be the Central Grand Duke, who had failed to obtain a child—yet no trace of sorcery could be found in his mansion.
Next they investigated every place where people died daily.
Prisons, mines, hospitals, slums, frequent monster-outbreak zones, hazardous regions……
The list alone numbered in the hundreds.
Simply investigating every location on that list took several years.
Yet nowhere did they find any trace matching Seriel’s curse.
“Haa…… I’m exhausted.”
Two knights sat on a rock in the plains and drained their canteens.
They had just finished investigating a village in a frequent monster zone and slain a large monster in the process.
“But tell me—does Her Majesty the Empress really get cursed every single day? Feels more like paranoia to me.”
“Hey now, watch your tongue.”
“Come on, who the hell is going to hear us out in this empty wasteland?”
“……Are you serious? Do you have any idea how far the Captain of the Imperial Guard’s ears reach? Do me a favor and don’t drag me down with you.”
At his colleague’s earnest warning the knight cleared his throat and apologized.
“Ahem. I’ll be careful.”
“Too late.”
When the knights turned around, Ricarton stood behind them in his black uniform.
At twenty, Ricarton had grown into a tall, striking man who towered over most adult males.
“W-we’re sorry!”
The knights immediately dropped flat and pressed their foreheads to the ground.
They were nobles and Ricarton a commoner, yet before the Empress’s right hand—the Captain of the Imperial Guard—such distinctions meant nothing.
“Slander against Her Majesty is subject to summary judgment.”
“P-please, spare our lives at least! We’ll do anything!!”
“Anything, you said?”
At the knight’s words the corner of Ricarton’s mouth curled upward.
“Y-yes!!”
“Push-up position.”
In his hand as he spoke was a whip.
Its tip bristled with iron thorns—a chilling implement.
“Th-that…… y-you said you’d spare us……”
“Yeah. I’ll spare you. A 3-Core knight should find this ticklish, right?”
“Wait, is that mana-infused—”
Whiiip—! Crack!!
“Gyaaaaah—!!”
…
After swinging the whip to his heart’s content, he wiped his brow with a thoroughly refreshed expression.
Of course not a single drop of sweat had appeared on him.
As a 6-Core, 6th-Class who absorbed the mana of the Ten Thousand Year Ice Cave every year, his body had long since stopped producing sweat.
“Ahh, that fucking blows off the stress.”
“……Pardon?”
“Wanna pretend you didn’t hear that, or take another hit?”
“What words just now, sir?”
“Hahaha.”
He laughed, hooked the whip at his waist, and vanished like smoke.
The remaining knight looked at his collapsed colleague and offered a quiet moment of respect.
“I’m not… dead yet…… you bastard……”
I turned twenty-one.
In the meantime I had risen from escort knight to Imperial Guard knight, then to Captain of the Imperial Guard.
Seriel had tried to bestow a noble title upon me, but noble opposition had scuttled the attempt.
Instead she promoted me at breakneck speed, with the result that above me stood only the Chancellor and the Imperial Knight Commander.
Or rather, I was effectively second in rank. After all, I was the only one constantly at Seriel’s side.
“You have come.”
Compared to eleven years earlier when she first took the throne, she had grown markedly gaunt.
Dark circles always ringed her eyes, and her cheeks were hollowed from thinness.
Nobles had presented every tonic said to be good for the body, and I myself had scoured the land for rare elixirs to feed her, yet there was no improvement.
The root cause—the curse—had to be resolved, yet the curse only grew stronger until even ten bishop-rank priests could no longer heal it.
“How are you feeling today, Your Majesty?”
“……Can you not tell by looking? Cough, cough!”
She was weakening day by day.
As her body failed, her nerves grew sharper as well.
I draped over her the fur coat into which I myself had inscribed magic circles.
A little color returned to her face as she looked up at me. The pink eyes that met mine grew clearer.
“At last the day has come for Her Highness Eris to return.”
Seriel had ordered the Grand Dukes to raise the princesses themselves, and that the girls would only be allowed to live in the Imperial Palace after their tenth birthdays.
It was a measure taken by a Seriel who had no desire to raise daughters she had not carried in her own womb.
Of course it was also a measure to keep the four Grand Dukes from easily setting foot in the palace while she consolidated her power base.
Today was the day Eris, daughter of the Western Grand Duke and the first to turn ten, would enter the palace.
“Tsk. ‘Return’? More like she’s invading.”
“Hahaha. Are you not pleased?”
“You keep running off to the North and all you’ve brought back is that irritating laugh.”
Seriel glared at me with open displeasure.
The Northern Grand Duke was an utterly unpleasant man, yet Rubellion, Commander of the Pure White Knighthood, had become something like an uncle to me—who had no family of my own.
After reaching 6th Class and learning teleportation magic I had visited often, and the laugh had rubbed off.
“Hahaha.”
“……Do you wish to be hit for the first time in a long while?”
“…….”
“I present myself before Her Majesty the Empress.”
In the audience hall, with the usual nobles looking on, Eris offered her bow.
She was a child whose glossy red hair left a strong impression.
“You have traveled far and done well. Princess Eris shall reside in the First Detached Palace, and—”
Seriel merely looked down in silence; the Chancellor spoke in her stead.
In this first meeting of mother and daughter there was not a scrap of blood kinship to be found.
With her head bowed, Eris maintained the same expressionless face as the Seriel of old, completed the formalities, and withdrew.
Seriel’s only reaction upon facing her daughter was:
“Cough, cough.”
A cough.
“Haa.”
After being shown the detached palace where she would live, Eris flopped onto the bed the moment she entered her room.
It had been a long journey, and she had not rested once since arriving; exhaustion crashed over her.
“Mother……”
It was the first time she had seen that face in ten years, yet she recognized it at a glance.
That this woman was her real mother.
She was terribly thin, yet the impassive eyes looking down were identical to her own.
“So I really was a princess.”
The years that had brought her here had been anything but smooth.
The Western Grand Duke had never given her love.
From the start he was a man who had married three women and sired more than ten children.
In that crush Eris had been raised as nothing more than a tool.
An opportunity for the Western Grand Duke to advance into the center.
An opportunity for his children to set foot in the Imperial Palace.
A tool who, by becoming the next Emperor, was expected to provide them that opportunity as a matter of course.
“Bullshit.”
Her dainty lips twisted.
“When I become Empress.”
The small hand clutching the pure-white sheets trembled.
“I’ll start by taking your heads.”
She would erase every last one of those who treated her as a tool from this world.
And reclaim a life fit for a human being.
For that, she absolutely had to become Empress.
“……Zzz.”
For now, though, sleep first.
With Eris’s arrival in the Imperial Palace, my workload increased as well.
Of course I was not personally guarding the princess. I was exclusively assigned to Seriel.
I had two members of the Imperial Guard rotate in shifts for the princess’s protection.
Every one of my subordinates was hand-picked by me—reliable experts.
Ah, and all of them were women.
Because the female Seriel had to be accompanied wherever she went.
And me? I’m me.
“What? Why are you back?”
The two subordinates I had sent to Eris had returned, so I asked the reason.
“……Her Highness the Princess says she dislikes us. She drove us out, calling us insolent brutes.”
“Huh? Why? Did you commit some breach of etiquette?”
“No, we merely offered greetings……”
“That’s right. We greeted her with full courtesy and respect.”
They were all nobles. In matters of etiquette they knew and performed better than I ever could.
“And then she ordered us to summon the Captain.”
“Me?”
The Imperial Guard members nodded weakly.
“Haa. Fine.”
When I went to the princess, she spoke with an utterly resolute attitude.
“I refuse.”
“……Why do you refuse, Your Highness?”
“Brutes who do not even know the most basic etiquette. That the likes of you should be my escorts—I fear my dignity will plummet.”
Arms crossed, chin lifted, looking down at me—the sight recalled the Seriel of old.
From those pink eyes to the porcelain face to the very mannerisms, she was a perfect copy.
Had the ten-year-old Seriel looked like this?
“Moreover, you are a commoner, are you not? That a commoner cur would dare seek a private audience with royalty. Be grateful I do not strike off that stiff neck of yours, and get the hell out!”
“Hahaha.”
That arrogant attitude, which would have irritated me with any other girl, only looked cute.
I had planned to give her a single knuckle-rap, but my mind changed.
“Your Highness. It seems Your Highness does not yet know.”
“What?”
“We of the Imperial Guard bow our heads or waists to no one. Not even if it means kneeling.”
“What nonsense is that?”
She really hadn’t known.
My uncle had known, though.
“Hahaha, so you did not know because you are not yet a full member of the Imperial Family? It’s all right! From now on you can learn step by step. Hahaha.”
“Y-you—!!”
I had generously forgiven her, yet Eris flushed crimson and fumed. Why?
“Insolent bastard!! Someone—anyone!!!”
“What is it, Your Highness!”
At her cry, escort knights burst in.
Red armor—knights of the Western Grand Duke who had come up with Eris.
“Drag this wretch out and hang him!!”
“Uh, th-that is……”
At her command the knights looked at me.
More precisely, at the Imperial crest engraved on my chest.
Then they exchanged glances among themselves and edged backward.
I peered into both of them with my Mana Eye and asked,
“Hmm, early 4-Core? How long has it been?”
“……Ten years.”
“And you?”
I asked the knight beside him as well.
“Five years for me……”
“Mm-hmm. Right, right. Neither of you will ever even get a glimpse of 5-Core.”
“……!!”
Thud. Thud.
At a mere nod the knights dropped to their knees.
Seeing that, Eris shot to her feet and berated them.
“Wh-what are you doing! Why are you kneeling to a wretch like him!”
“Hahaha.”
“Kill him! Kill him this instant! Are my words not words to you!!”
This cunning little miss apparently could not even handle mana yet.
She had no idea how vast the gulf between them and me truly was.
She can’t handle mana?
Ricarton, age twenty-one.
I suddenly wanted to walk the path of an educator.
I turned to Eris, who had just gifted me a dream, and grinned.
I packed the smile full of gratitude.
“If you intend to hang me, you’ll need to bring at least the Imperial Knight Commander.”
The little face looking up at me was painted with shock.
“Little Highness.”