A Kingdom Ablaze, A Hunt Begun
The Academy was a heaven built on earth. Renowned as one of the kingdom's three greatest architectural marvels, it welcomed countless noble children every year, pouring astronomical sums of money into satisfying their every whim. Since the Academy did not actually generate any revenue, the expenses poured into it were practically equivalent to dumping gold and diamonds straight into the trash.
Such was the heaven on earth they had created. A land of milk and honey so extravagant that some nobles refused to return to their own estates, choosing to remain at the Academy even during vacations. And now, that very place was burning.
"You parasites feeding on this kingdom!"
The revolutionary army that had raided the Academy was being pushed back by the royal army. It was only natural. The revolutionaries were a ragtag group who lived in the shadows of the capital, relying on the charity of citizens and training themselves in secret. On the other hand, who was their opponent? The royal army, backed by the kingdom's vast resources, trained in time-honored swordsmanship and physical conditioning. In combat skill, physical prowess, equipment, and organization, the royal army was superior in every way.
Under normal circumstances, the revolutionaries would have been wiped out in no time. Yet, they managed to hold their ground using the state-of-the-art weapons they had brought along. Gunpowder developed in foreign lands. Bombs made from that very gunpowder. Though they had already exhausted their supply, the revolutionaries fought as if they still had more, which made the royal army's movements somewhat hesitant. Fearing massive casualties from a concentrated blast, the royal soldiers kept their distance from one another, inadvertently leaving themselves vulnerable to the revolutionaries' pincer attacks.
Furthermore, they had managed to acquire three matchlock muskets—referred to as "miniature cannons"—and brought them along for the raid. These were weapons from across the sea, technology that neither the kingdom nor its neighbors had yet developed. Under the protection of their allies on the rooftops, three revolutionaries worked quickly, just as they had been trained. They poured gunpowder down the barrels and rammed it down with ramrods to compress it.
Once the powder was loaded, they dropped iron balls into the barrels, lit the matches attached to the locks, and aimed at their targets. Pulling the trigger released the hammer, bringing the burning match into contact with the priming powder. The main charge exploded, sending the iron ball flying.
Bang! A deafening roar echoed, and a royal soldier collapsed.
"D-Damn it!"
"What kind of attack is this?!"
The royal soldiers could not begin to comprehend it. While the royal army held the advantage in quality and numbers, the revolutionaries held their ground with their few superior weapons. And at the very center of this battlefield stood the mansion built by the prince.
Bang!
"Aaaah!"
"Wh-What was that?!"
At the sound of the gunshot, Tiara, who was running through the mansion, collapsed to the floor in terror. The prince running beside her was no different.
"Found him! It's the prince!"
Having somehow bypassed the mansion's guards, a group of revolutionaries rushed toward them.
"Tsk!"
The startled prince stumbled backward. Just then—
Crash!
The window shattered, and a royal soldier leaped through, throwing himself at the revolutionaries.
"Your Highness! Run!"
"Right, of course!"
"Wh-What? Wait!"
The prince grabbed the bewildered Tiara and ran.
"But—but that man!"
"He'll be fine! That is his duty!" the prince shouted back, heading toward a secret passage he had secretly commissioned when the mansion was built.
Looking back, Tiara saw the royal soldier fighting desperately. Though he managed to take one enemy down with him, he was ultimately pierced by spears and swords, collapsing in a pool of blood. Vivid, crimson blood pooled at the tips of the cold, gleaming blades. Blood poured. Men fell. Death. The peaceful days that should have continued forever had come to an abrupt end, and death was now baring its fangs at Tiara.
Why did it have to be like this?
Why was she, a mere commoner, targeted by the revolutionaries? Why was she, as the prince's fiancée, dragged into this nightmare? The reasons were clear, but Tiara lacked the intellect to connect the dots. The ability to think critically and deduce facts stems from education and experience. Thus, she could not understand.
Winning the prince's love. The disappearance of Monia, who had tormented her so terribly. Becoming the prince's official fiancée. Through these events, her status had shifted by a hundred and eighty degrees. She had plunged headfirst into a filthy world of political intrigue buried beneath the glamorous facade of the nobility—a world where people coated their tongues in poison, smiling to your face while driving a dagger into your back. She had absolutely no idea what she had gotten herself into.
While Monia had learned the harsh realities of hunger and thirst on her very first day of exile on the Floating Island, Tiara, who had known nothing but bliss since being chosen by the prince, had no way of knowing just how cruel the world she had entered truly was. And now, death unfolded right before her eyes.
"Escape, Your Highness!"
A blood-soaked Academy guard collapsed. A revolutionary's cold blade swung. The fallen guard dragged himself up, plunging a dagger into the revolutionary.
"Gurgle...!"
Spitting up bloody foam, the revolutionary swung his sword one last time, killing the guard. They spilled each other's blood, desperate to slaughter one another. There was nothing noble here. Their ideologies, their logic, their resolve, their justice—surely something existed behind it all, but to Tiara, it looked like nothing. It was just mutual slaughter.
Something far removed from the natural law of "killing to survive" was taking place. An "ideological conflict"—a horror that only humans, out of all the beasts on this earth, could perpetrate. For Tiara, who had lived her life without a single deep thought, a glimpse of an incomprehensible, unacceptable world was laid bare. She was terrified by the reality of it—by the fact that people were murdering each other over things she could not even begin to grasp.
Jordy and Tiara ran through the mansion, drenched in sweat, as blood, blades, flames, and arrows flew all around them. The mansion was vast. Unnecessarily, ridiculously vast.
Why did he build such a massive mansion?!
Tiara, who had once lived here so happily, screamed in her mind. She had never imagined that what once seemed so beautiful and blissful could turn into something so inconvenient and infuriating.
"Found it, it's here!"
The moment Jordy opened the secret passage on the first floor, the revolutionaries burst in.
"Ah?!"
While Tiara froze in shock, Jordy, who had already slipped into the passage ahead of her, shouted,
"What are you doing?! Hurry up!"
"Oh—ah!"
Staring blankly at Jordy, who was already running far ahead, Tiara scrambled to follow. The revolutionaries made to give chase, but at that exact moment—
Squelch!
"Argh!"
One of the revolutionaries drove his sword straight through his comrade's heart, then slashed another's throat with a dagger.
"Y-You...! You traitor!"
The revolutionary with the pierced heart gasped, blood spilling from his lips. The killer merely shrugged.
"Traitor? Hardly. I drew my sword for my true master."
"What...!"
"We can't have the prince captured here and let this chaos end so quickly, can we? We need everyone to bleed a little longer."
At first, the goal had simply been to destroy the Academy and capture the noble children, including the prince. However, conflicts born of ideology have a way of rapidly escalating, paralyzing human reason and driving men to madness. The flames of war and insanity, which would have been extinguished in an instant had the prince been captured, would now burn until one side was completely annihilated. The spark that could have ended it all was gone.
The man pulled out a bomb, lit the fuse, and slipped away. Moments later, the bomb detonated, burying the secret passage under a mountain of rubble along with the corpses of the two revolutionaries.
"A shame we lost the pig," the man—a knight of the Duke posing as a revolutionary—said nonchalantly as he cut down an Academy guard rushing toward him.
Unaware of this, Jordy and Tiara kept running through the pitch-black passage, their lungs burning as if they were about to burst. Into the darkness, into the darkness. They ran deeper and deeper into the shadows.
"Damn it! It got away!"
"How is it so fast?! It's just a pig!"
Chester and Monia stared at the pig fleeing into the distance. Despite being struck by Chester's arrow, the beast was running at full tilt.
"Hurry, let's go after it!"
"No..."
Chester watched the pig vanish without a trace and gave up the chase.
"If I were alone, I'd go. But with you here, it's impossible."
"What?"
"I can't leave you behind."
Monia was left speechless by his words. A grin threatened to spread across her face, but quickly suppressing her body's involuntary reaction, she asked,
"Th-Then what about the pig?"
"It's fine. As long as it's on this island, we'll hunt it down eventually."
Seeing Monia's anxious expression, Chester patted her on the back. It was his usual gesture whenever he praised her. Surprisingly, the simple touch actually calmed her down.
"If we catch it, we catch it. If we fail, we fail."
"...You're surprisingly relaxed."
"Well, losing a pig isn't fatal. Sure, it'd be nice to stockpile more food, but it's not like we're starving today."
Chester showed her the smoked meat in his basket. Failing to catch the pig didn't mean they would go hungry or suffer today.
"Of course, that pig would be exceptionally delicious... but other than that, it doesn't hold much value. It's not a necessity of life."
A pig was just a pig—nice to have, but no big deal if they missed it. It didn't matter to Chester.
"...But what if I say I absolutely want to catch it?"
"Then should we?" Chester replied nonchalantly.
"But not me. You, Monia."
"...What?"
"You're going to hunt it."
Monia's eyes widened at Chester's words.