Night of the Long Swords
The words had been spat out.
Crude, vulgar words barely fit for anyone's mouth.
The musicians hadn't stopped playing, yet silence seemed to have been poured over the entire space.
Most people had overheard them, but even those who had listened wondered whether they had truly heard what they thought they heard.
Where, after all, was this place?
The imperial capital of the empire.
A site raised anew where a pagan temple had once stood — a place called the torch of humanity, home to the noble blood of the imperial family, who stood at the forefront of mankind's defense.
Ahh. That felt good.
In a place where most people believed exactly that, Shiron wiped a hand across his chest with a thoroughly satisfied look. The faces of the people ringing him were a spectacle in their own right, but none of those reactions mattered to him in the slightest.
The only reaction that mattered was Austin's.
Even Victor, standing at his side, had gone deathly pale as if he might faint at any moment — yet Austin was still managing a thin smile, as if determined to look unbothered.
"There. I've told you. Well? Has that settled some of your curiosity?"
"…Hmm. I knew your temperament was unusual, but to think you would openly threaten a member of the imperial family."
"Threaten? That's a misunderstanding."
Shiron waved both hands in hurried denial.
"Your Highness asked me to share my troubles as a request. As a fellow human being, I simply told you the concerns I'd been carrying."
"It sounded rather more like a wish than a concern."
"I made myself perfectly clear. I said it would be difficult to answer."
Shiron let out a short laugh and looked around. Just as expected — everyone was merely flushing red. No one dared call out a boy who was matching wits with a prince.
And of course they didn't.
Shiron might still be a brat with the blood barely dry on his head, but he was Hugo's nephew. The Emperor favored Hugo Prien more than his own sons and clung to him with a near-fanatical obsession.
Everyone knew what Hugo did in the North. Anyone who threatened imperial authority was marked for purging — that much was obvious. But anyone who had ever set foot in the North even once…
This bastard has no idea how terrifying the Demon Realm really is.
Shiron thought of the monstrous beasts of that nightmare land and spoke again.
"Or did you expect me to have the tact to feed you some polite lie?"
"I at least expected you to phrase it a little more carefully."
"How strange."
Shiron started toward Austin — then changed direction and laid a hand on Victor's shoulder.
"Your Highness isn't even the Emperor yet, never mind the Crown Prince, are you?"
"…Father keeps putting off the investiture, yes."
"Which means I have absolutely no reason to watch my tongue around His Highness Austin."
As he said it, Shiron slung an arm around Victor's shoulders.
"If we're being honest, from where I stand, Your Highness Austin doesn't have a single thing over Victor."
"I see."
"You understand me clearly, I hope? If you've nothing more to say, we'll be on our way."
"Very well. I was an unnecessary interruption."
"Where was that balcony again?"
Without so much as a glance back at Austin, Shiron turned on his heel and walked away.
Not a secluded balcony, but a private annex off the banquet hall. Shiron dropped onto the sofa and scowled.
"Why does he run his mouth like that. Makes me want to beat the hell out of him."
Still muttering the curses he hadn't finished saying, Shiron knocked back a hard drink. It wasn't theatrical anger. Austin's needling presence was irritating enough, but the girl sitting next to him concerned him far more right now.
Shiron turned his head toward Lucia.
She hadn't said a word for a while, and that alone put a slightly ominous feeling in his gut. Even now, the fists resting on the skirts of her dress were trembling just enough to look like a time bomb about to go off.
If I hadn't stepped in, would she have hit him?
The Imperial Palace Duel Event.
In Reincarnation Sword God, Shiron had of course ended up crossing blades with Austin — for no reason other than that Lucia was close to Victor.
The two of them clashed at every turn after that, endlessly thrown into situations of the "so which Prien is the better fighter?" variety…
Shiron Prien got beaten by Lucia, whose anger issues recognized neither time nor place. Lucia Prien, instead of being thrown out of the palace, earned Victor's trust.
Maybe because the past got rewritten. She's holding it in pretty well.
Having sorted his thoughts, Shiron patted the anger-management disaster of a girl on the shoulder.
"Good job."
"…With what?"
"With holding back."
Shiron exhaled a sigh thick with the smell of liquor.
"Staying quiet earlier, and not charging in and beating Austin to death."
"Y-You— what do you take me for?"
Lucia bristled and half-raised a fist toward him — then lowered it again. Even as a joke, if she hit Shiron here, the future in which she got branded as someone whose fists flew faster than her words was entirely too easy to picture.
"You're the one who…"
She hung her head and went on.
"You went and picked a fight right out in the open."
"What are you talking about now? When did I pick a fight?"
"…You could have just ignored him. Stuck-up people acting like they own the place isn't anything new."
"?"
What was this? Lucia was making sense. Shiron blinked, unsettled by the dissonance.
Lucia, for her part, gazed at her glass with distant eyes, as if lost in thought.
— The hero who represents all of humanity is a savage? That's going to be a problem.
— A savage. Can she even read?
— Her origins are far too low. At the very least she should be taken in as someone's adopted daughter if she's to represent us, no?
Lucia knew full well how infuriating the people who patted their full bellies in the rear lines could be.
They weren't worth a single sword stroke, not even a single punch — but the violence of numbers always overwhelmed the individual. It had been no different five hundred years ago, and her patience had always been put to the test.
— Ignore them. They're just scared that a newly risen hero will threaten their comfortable power.
…She had endured it.
So this time, too, Lucia didn't step forward first. Regardless of Victor's status, she had given up long ago on understanding the insides of powerful men.
It's someone else's business.
"Victor getting bullied because he can't stand up to his older brother — that has nothing to do with us, right?"
Lucia stared at the empty sofa. Victor, who should have been sitting there, had left them in the annex, saying he would go fetch drinks and snacks.
Not knowing what she was thinking, Shiron took both of her hands and pulled them toward him.
"That's cold. Is Victor a stranger to you?"
Between her restlessness and the constant fidgeting, the specially made dress she had worn for the occasion was already a mess of wrinkles.
"He's been our childhood friend since we were little. Maybe if I didn't have any power. But how am I supposed to sit still when a friend is being openly humiliated in front of everyone?"
"Even so…"
"Then what about you? If I were in Victor's position, would you not step in either?"
"You're different."
"How am I different from Victor?"
Lucia's reaction diverging from the original story was still bothering him when her appearance caught Shiron's eye.
This was a girl who looked better in trousers than a skirt — and yet she had come out with manicure on hands callused and torn from swinging a sword every day, hands that were usually nothing to look at.
How much she had been looking forward to this banquet was painfully easy to see.
"You're… my little sister."
…So it was "little sister" for now? The corner of Shiron's mouth tugged upward.
"Since when have you ever treated me like an older brother?"
"…Never."
"Look at you even now. Always talking down to me like a brat, and the second you get a chance it's 'hey, hey,' trying to act like equals. Anyone watching would think Siriel was the little sister, not you."
"……Do you want me to treat you like an older brother that badly?"
Lucia looked up at him with a sly expression. Her restrained eye makeup and the rouge on her lips caught the light and glittered.
"…Don't change the subject. That's not what matters right now."
"Oppa."
"Don't."
"Why not, oppa. You said you wanted to be treated like one. Then I'll call you oppa from now on."
"When did I ever say that? Cut it out, it's giving me chills."
They were still bickering back and forth when—
Creeeak—
An irritating sound made both their heads snap toward the door at once. Victor pushed in a cart loaded with drinks, snacks, and more.
Lucia watched the approaching Victor with a distinctly sour look. She had finally caught Shiron off balance for once, and now an interrupter had walked right in.
"You got back faster than I expected."
"Thanks to the scene you caused earlier, not a single person came over to talk to me."
Reading the strange atmosphere in the annex, Victor gave a bitter smile.
The air in the room was oddly warm, and both of their faces were flushed. His eyes landed on Lucia's rumpled dress before he deliberately shifted his gaze to Shiron.
"…I'd like to finish the conversation we couldn't because of a certain interrupter. Is that all right?"
"Stop stalling and just talk already."
Shiron poured liquor into the glass set in front of Victor.
"That bastard. What the hell gives him the right to openly snub you in a place this public. Just watching it turned my stomach."
The language was a little rough. But Victor didn't take issue with Shiron's behavior. The fact that the person he trusted most was still solidly on his side, getting angry on his behalf — it was so moving he could have cried.
Victor looked at the full glass, then drained it in one go.
The rims of his eyes were already red, as if tears might spill at any moment. Even just watching had clearly cost him a great deal of emotional strain.
Swallowing hard against the tightness in his throat, Victor opened his mouth.
"Hyungnim…"
"Hold on."
Shiron raised a hand and cut him off. Whether from the drink or something else, thick veins stood out on his slightly flushed face.
"Wh-Why?"
How many times had he been interrupted today already? The accumulated hurt was enough to bring tears. But Victor was more frightened by the face that looked ready to explode than by anything else, and he forced the tears back down.
Hiding the moisture already gathered at the corners of his eyes, though, was beyond him. Seeing that, Shiron let out a heavy sigh.
"You idiot. You've really turned into a complete fool while I was gone. Hyungnim? Hyuungniiim?"
Lucia's matter could wait for now.
Victor came first.
A man supposedly competing for the throne, this soft… The plan to make Victor the next Emperor was already starting to creak, and the realization sobered Shiron right up.
"You're the one who keeps ducking your head even when that halfwit isn't around. That's why he gets so full of himself and crosses the line."
"…"
"One more 'hyungnim' out of you… and you'll get hit before Austin does."
This situation is going wrong.
Lucia's improved patience he could live with.
An Emperor who looked like he could die tomorrow without anyone being surprised.
A Victor soft enough to fold in half.
And Austin, who had dared to openly slight a Prien in public — that was worth making an issue of.
Lucia being obedient is fine. But Victor like this is a problem.
The Emperor had to be Victor, not Austin. Shiron's goal was the subjugation of the Evil God, not some petty political feud.
Just look at the way Austin was acting. Already blinded by power and trying to check Shiron, who was Victor's man!
If Austin becomes Emperor, I won't be able to focus on hunting Apostles.
Shiron quickly ran through what the best move was in the present situation.
A moment later, he pulled a heavily folded sheet of paper from his coat and spread it on the table. Then he began writing down, one by one, the names and affiliations of the people who had attended the banquet.
If he had his way, he would have crushed Austin's face and deposed him on the spot. But with political foundations this weak and a disposition this soft, Victor would never properly catch a free meal handed to him — so Shiron kept his temper reined in a little.
In its place, he laid out a plan as meticulous as they came.
People he could make allies of right away.
People who at least harbor a little goodwill toward me.
And everyone else.
His hand moved fast.
The next Emperor would be Victor. How much effort had he poured into getting close to the future sovereign since childhood, only for things to fall apart like this?
Originally, Austin was supposed to compete with the Second Prince, Henry, for the throne and die of declining health. If you start something, you finish it. Shiron could not simply stand by and watch a situation twisted by the Second Prince's elimination.
Before long, a web of power relations as tangled as a spider's threads lay complete on the page. It was only natural that Lucia's eyes went wide as she watched — and even Victor, reconfirming things he already knew, couldn't close his mouth.
When did he put all this together…
Victor felt a cold sweat run down his spine.
He had heard that Shiron had been away from Rihnn for five years. And yet the contents of the paper were remarkably granular. Even the information Victor himself had scraped together by practically living in high society was all written down.
Victor lifted his head and looked at Shiron's face, half in shadow.
No — not in shadow. The glittering chandelier hung behind his head, and it looked almost as if a halo were shining around him.
"If I memorize this…"
"I'm not finished talking yet."
Shiron tossed the words out and brushed his hair back.
"Check the names written in red."
"I checked them."
"Those are traitors."
"…?"
At Shiron's words, Victor looked over the scarlet names again. Traitors… that many people were reverse-traitors trying to sell out the country?
Every last one of them is hyungnim's people…
"Just know that."
"?"
Shiron spoke with complete calm as he looked at Victor. The way the boy's unclosed mouth kept working made him look like a simpleton.
"Aside from them — recruit them into your faction, or handle it however you want."
With the plan set, Shiron began counting the shards of black glass.