Chapter 62
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Translator: Ace
Chapter: 62
Chapter Title: Alteria (4)
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Blake knew nothing of the world.
He was a man utterly devoid of information about anywhere beyond Northernrocks Fortress and the Gray Mountains.
Since being taken in by the commander, he had never once left the battlefield, and he knew next to nothing outside of killing techniques and combat matters.
Such a man as him had been entrusted with delivering a letter that required passing through and across the Empire's key points.
And the one who issued that order was the commander, who knew him better than anyone else in the world.
Therefore, the conclusion was plain as day.
He was meant to move in a way that blatantly drew eyes.
It was almost baffling that it had taken him this long to realize it.
"No, but why? If His Highness has designs on the throne, wouldn't it be wiser to handle things quietly...?"
"That doesn't matter. What matters is that we've grasped the intent behind the commander's order."
"Well, sure, but..."
"Then we act accordingly. I'm a soldier. A soldier obeying his commander's orders is only natural."
Blake sliced through Lindelmann's dubious mutterings with icy precision and pressed on.
"And this Rendalt fellow agreeing to let us board his ship without any strings attached can't be unrelated to the commander's intent."
"Hmm?"
"Rendalt and the Blue River Alliance have clearly sided with the commander. Just like him, they want the current situation out in the open for the world to see."
"Ah!"
"So that's why the innkeeper said what he did..."
Only then did Rubens and Lindelmann, piecing it together, let out low exclamations of realization.
But Lindelmann's face quickly darkened with gravity.
Putting Blake's words together, it did seem certain: Prince Henrik himself had spread his wings wide, and he wanted word of the letter to spread across the world.
The evidence was plain—the head of Rendalt Merchant Company, one of the capital's top merchants, and the Blue River Alliance, one of Bran River's two major guilds, were acting right in line with Prince Henrik's aims.
'All fine and good. The problem is...'
Lindelmann swallowed dryly, eyeing Blake's expression, which looked far more resolute than usual.
He could read it clear as day from that look alone.
Now that he knew Prince Henrik's intent, Blake's decisions and actions going forward were predictable.
Sure, the situation wouldn't call for him to start brazenly drawing eyes out of nowhere—but he wouldn't move with the same caution and secrecy as before, either.
That meant a higher chance of stumbling into far bigger events than anything they'd faced so far.
And for this crew, "bigger events" was just another way of saying "more dangerous ones."
'Screw Soria and all that—should I just bail and head back home right now? Ugh!'
Lindelmann's face crumpled into a miserable pout.
As Rubens cocked his head at the man's kaleidoscope of expressions in such a short span, Blake sank into thought with a hardened face.
Just as he'd told Lindelmann, he was the commander's soldier.
Now that he'd fathomed the intent woven into the order, all that remained was to act on it.
Even back in the Northern Great Mountains, the commander would occasionally have his legion commanders or centurions run drills where he'd deliberately concealed his true aims.
He took a certain delight in his men unearthing those hidden layers mid-operation.
So perhaps this mission was cut from the same cloth.
'But...'
Something about it didn't sit right this time.
If the goal had been to draw maximum eyes, the commander could've simply ordered it outright before he and Lindelmann left the fortress.
Delivering the letter to its recipient wasn't the true aim; the mere fact that it had been sent in the name of Henrik Oscar Villand was what mattered. One word could've cleared it up.
But the commander hadn't breathed it.
That very omission was what sparked Blake's first-ever flicker of doubt toward his commander's order.
And though he hadn't voiced it to Lindelmann or Rubens, Blake even wondered if the commander wanted not just the letter's existence known, but its contents as well.
The reason lay in the offhand remark the commander had tacked on when issuing the order.
—It doesn't matter if others see the letter. Just deliver it, no matter what.
The commander knew his capabilities better than anyone alive.
With the order in hand, no circumstance would see the letter pried from him.
Even in the direst pinch, he'd have memorized it and swallowed the evidence whole—and the commander knew that full well.
Yet he'd gone out of his way to add that "even if someone sees it" clause.
This from the man dubbed the "Knight of Heavenly Strategy," heaven's own mastermind who held every variable in his iron grip.
'Didn't strike me as odd at the time, but... it's just not like him.'
Blake's gaze flashed cold steel.
Why?
Why issue an order utterly unlike any he'd ever given before?
One word, and Blake would've executed it smoother, truer to form. So why force him into this harder path?
'Could it be the commander...'
"Hmph!"
The thought—no, the thought he'd never allowed himself before—slipped in unbidden. Blake exhaled raggedly without realizing it and jerked his head up.
The pair watching his every twitch jumped in unison.
"Something wrong?"
"No. Nothing."
Blake brushed it off in a voice thick with lead.
Without so much as glancing their way, he flopped onto the bed and rolled over, back turned.
"Exhausted. Hitting the sack first—you two do the same."
"Ah, r-right. Let's call it, Ruby. You're beat too, yeah? Time to rest."
"Y-yeah. Sure."
Rubens jumped in quick at Lindelmann's wide-eyed glance—the first time he'd ever heard Blake double down on "no."
The light snuffed out soon after, plunging the inn room into hush.
Tosses and sighs lingered awhile, sleep eluding. Then, as ever, Lindelmann's snores and Rubens' steady breaths settled into rhythm.
Only then did Blake uncurl his sideways sprawl, lying flat.
Eyes laced with an icier chill than usual pierced the dark, pinning the ceiling.
On that cracked, worn inn ceiling, a face ghosted faintly like a lingering afterimage. With it came that stray, unbidden thought, now cracking Blake's mind dangerously wide.
'No way... Does the commander not trust me?'
In the profound dark where Prince Henrik's visage flickered, Blake's blue eyes plunged into frigid depths.
Count Alfred Ilrain.
As commander of the Imperial Army's Capital Defense Force, overseeing a force swelling past ten thousand, he embodied the ideal of an imperial knight.
He'd kept a monk-strict schedule for two decades straight. And despite his towering station as Capital Defense commander and imperial count, he scraped by in the emperor's antiquated gift of a mansion with just his retainers' family, living off a modest farm patch and his salary—no more.
His rank could've excused a mistress or two without a blink, yet he shunned even the salons, those noblemen's haunts for dalliance and deal-making.
His sole son from a late wife? Shipped off at age ten to Luminous Church headquarters, Lagos Grand Cathedral, as Templar stock.
Such austerity beggared belief in any typical noble house.
And as if to underscore his temperament, the Capital Defense HQ's choicest gossip for nigh on ten years ran thus: coaxing a joke or a laugh from Commander Count Ilrain each year.
Lately, it'd even seeped into capital high society's whispers.
"...Dismissed!"
Right here, now, in the commander's office at Capital Defense HQ, one of his aide knights—Sir Sapphiro—stood ramrod straight. He too had skin in that perennial game.
Five years betting "commander cracks a smile," though. Staring down his boss's deadpan mug, Sapphiro felt victory slipping further away than ever.
"So to recap: Duke Soria—who's got eyes above—dispatches an envoy with a letter. Palace whispers say the addressee's none other than myself?"
Sapphiro faltered under Count Ilrain's utterly procedural upward gaze.
Three years as aide knight, and still: this man's casual dropping of treason-bait verbiage? Unnerving as hell.
"N-not quite, sir... Source is shaky at best. B-but with Your Excellency tangled in such delicate whispers, I merely..."
"Hm. Understood. Your fealty as imperial knight and Defense Force man to His Majesty and the Army? Ironclad. Resume post."
"Sir, yes sir! For Empire and legion!"
Sapphiro snapped a salute, then marched out at parade-ground clip—neither dawdle nor dash, though his gut screamed run.
Thud!
"Hm."
Count Ilrain's face stayed sour, fixed on the door swallowing Sapphiro whole.
He rubbed his stubbled jaw a few times, then yanked the bottommost drawer of his decade-plus desk.
Dozens of letters crammed it, all wax-sealed pristine.
Ilrain plucked the top one.
"Hrm..."
Brow furrowed in deliberation, he eyed it a beat, tsked once, cracked the seal, and splayed it across the blotter.
The elegant script ended with the unmistakable stamp of House Buniard, counts.
Ilrain's face set like cooling iron as he scanned it.
"Buniard heir Annrose Buniard knows the envoy's trail... and wishes to share Duke Soria's will...?"
The words rumbled heavy from Ilrain's lips.
The note had arrived at his mansion deep last night.
Adjutant-delivered, he'd glimpsed the seal, folded, drawer'd it.
House Buniard? Last year's scandal had pulverized them. Their missives? Pedestrian pleas for favors, nothing more.
Just mildly odd: it'd been ages since such a letter landed, and they knew damn well he'd never bent for one. Messenger-delivered, though?
But Sapphiro—Defense Force's sharpest-dressed, loosest-living chiliarch, fastest info hound—flagged this as outlier.
Buniard featured. No: Annrose Buniard, letter's author.
"Annrose Buniard... Teamed with Soria's envoy in Elbera? Ditched House Grime over it?"
Grime: middling players in Elbera. Ilrain tracked all armed outfits above a threshold—job hazard.
"Grime's not the hook. It's their backers... Hm! Blue Falcon Knights, right."
Ilrain's features honed to razor-edge naming the Blue Falcon Knights.
Annrose Buniard spurned a house shielded by power broker Count Darlington and the Blue Falcons... for Soria's letter-bearing envoy.
No two ways about it.
Sapphiro's tale rang at least half-true.
"Leastways, Prince Henrik's scheming something. Annrose knows pieces."
The picture snapped into focus.
Why Annrose sought audience.
Why Blue Falcons dogged Soria's envoy.
Why these murmurs hit his ears now, of all powder-keg timings.
"Gotta check it myself."
Count Ilrain rose.
Longsword to hip from desk-side rack, thin cloak flung over shoulders: a master knight's aura surged, life-death veteran, mocking his forties.
He crossed the office to the door.
Paused just shy, arrested by a spark.
"That name... Blake? Rings a bell somewhere."
Ilrain pinched brow, head cocked.
Common-as-dirt name, yet snagged. Definitely heard it before.
"Buniard'll know."
Mutter low, he shoved the door wide.
"Your Excellency!"
Aides—including Sapphiro—snapped to attention as Ilrain emerged.
"Scramble the Black Eagles. Full readiness. Sir Sapphiro—with me, now."
"Sir, yes sir!"
Rare call-up for the Defense Force elites, Ilrain's personal Black Eagle Squadron. Sapphiro cursed his loose tongue even as he hustled after.
(To be continued)