Crown Prince (2)
Crown Prince (2)
"I'll tell you everything: why I sent the Royal Knights to the Marquisate, and why I came here myself."
At the Prince's words, I quietly lowered the hand I had placed on my chest.
I never imagined things would turn out this way.
"When you get down to it, the reason is simple. It's because Ivana is my younger sister."
Was the conclusion I'd been piecing together actually correct?
In that case, Ivana wasn't a princess.
"As you might expect, she isn't a princess. She is a daughter born to my mother."
Gradually, the story unfolded just as I had anticipated.
"In the end, Ivana was buried in that grave over there, alongside my mother. Thanks to that, I've lost my entire family."
Huh? Wait, so the Prince's mother—the former queen—is buried here too?
I thought I understood why the Prince had paid his respects at the Viscount's wife's grave earlier.
Wait, hold on. Does that mean Ivana's father is the lord of this domain, Viscount Morena?
Don't tell me the King just let that slide?
"There's no way my father—no, the King—knew. If he had, he wouldn't have let it pass. This was a secret kept for a very long time. Only a few others and I know, and now you are included among them."
The Prince seemed to already consider me a dead man. That was probably why he was telling me everything.
And that assumption wasn't wrong either.
"As everyone knows, the story that my mother went to her hometown because of an illness and died there was a lie. Mother had fled from my father and faked her death. Fortunately, there were people helping her, so she was able to hide."
Who could have helped her convincingly fake the death of a nation's queen?
A sigh escaped my lips involuntarily. I felt like I was digging up roots, only to pull up bigger and bigger monstrosities along with them.
"Father didn't treat the new queens the way he treated my mother. He started getting sick around then."
No way... Does the King's illness have something to do with the Crown Prince too?
If it was connected that deeply, I'd have no choice but to throw my hands up in defeat.
"I suppose this should be enough. As for whether the Empire found out my secret, I can just interrogate the bastards we've captured. And now that your curiosity has been resolved, you must be satisfied, right?"
The First Prince smirked at me.
No matter how I looked at it, the First Prince seemed completely twisted.
Just the fact that he regarded his half-sister, who shared his mother's blood, as his true family rather than his royal relatives—and made his deceased mother's husband his subordinate—showed how far from normal he was.
On top of that, telling me all this just because he was going to kill me was weird too.
It wasn't as if I were some bamboo forest for him to vent to.
Whether power had twisted him or if he had been insane from the start was beyond me.
And now was not the time to satisfy that curiosity.
I had gathered all the information I needed.
It was regrettable that I couldn't learn more about the secret organization, but I decided to be satisfied with this for now.
I slowly stepped back and reached into my coat.
The Prince watched me with amusement, while the Vice-Commander guarding him glared sharply at me.
The Vice-Commander didn't subdue me right away.
It might have been to protect the Prince, or perhaps he was waiting for the other knights to gather.
Thanks to that, I was able to pull the items I wanted from my pocket.
I pulled out a ring and slipped it onto my finger, then brought out a necklace and hung it around my neck.
"Hoh, are you planning to fight here too?"
"It's not as if you plan to let me live anyway."
I wanted to make sure bad news wouldn't reach my mother, but seeing that the Prince intended to kill me, that seemed unlikely.
As expected, catching an Imperial spy wasn't enough to make up for it.
Now, all the more reason I couldn't leave this place alive.
Rather than becoming a fugitive and making my family worry, it was better to die here.
I continued pulling items out of my coat.
The Prince had watched with amusement until I pulled out a dagger, but when I drew out a greatsword, his eyes widened in shock.
"Are you some kind of former circus clown?! I've seen people pull swords out of their mouths, but this is the first time I've seen someone pull one out of their chest!"
The Prince even clapped his hands at the sight of me pulling out the sword.
But the Vice-Commander did not.
He dispelled the soundproofing barrier he'd set up and shouted loudly.
"Surround him quickly! He is an armed powerhouse! Do not attempt to face him alone!"
Surprised by the Vice-Commander's words, the Prince asked,
"He's at that level?"
Though the Prince had gauged my strength through mana sensing, there seemed to be a limit to his perception.
Yet the Vice-Commander didn't know my exact capabilities either.
If the two of them stood together to block me, could they really have stopped me if I decided to flee?
Not that I had any intention of running away.
Instead, I raised my greatsword and pointed it at the Vice-Commander.
"Come at me. If we fight over there, the Crown Prince will be in danger."
The Vice-Commander glared at me.
He seemed unable to understand my words.
Then again, there was no way he would understand.
"Hahaha! What an entertaining bastard. Go ahead and fight him. Viscount Morena has arrived anyway, so you don't need to worry about me."
I saw an elderly noble step out of the mansion. He was a nobleman who had aged handsomely.
He looked like a man who must have been extraordinarily handsome in his youth.
According to the Prince, he seemed to be Viscount Morena, the lord of this domain who was supposedly in the capital.
The mana emanating from him was unusual too. He wasn't a knight, but the ability he possessed didn't seem ordinary.
As expected, meeting high-ranking people allowed me to encounter powerful individuals I never knew existed before.
Once he stood beside the Prince, the Vice-Commander stepped forward.
"It is difficult to understand. You possess such skill at your age, yet you act like a child, completely ruled by emotion."
Wielding a sword to save the Princess and the Grand Archduchess, then selling out the companions you traveled with just to have your crimes forgiven.
And finally, pointing your blade at the Vice-Commander.
Did it seem like childish behavior in the Vice-Commander's eyes?
Well, since I wasn't an adult yet, calling me childish wasn't entirely wrong.
But I wasn't challenging the Vice-Commander out of mere bravado.
Though I had only received a few lessons, I had learned swordsmanship from the Duke of Ceuta, the advisor to the Royal Knights.
It was time to test whether the swordsmanship I had learned from him would work against the Royal Knights.
As the Vice-Commander and I stood facing each other, all the knights stationed here gathered around.
They formed a wide circle, surrounding both me and the Vice-Commander.
If they weren't all drawing their swords and glaring at me, they might have looked like knights spectating a spar between fellow knights.
He took his stance, and I assumed the stance I had learned from the Duke of Ceuta.
It was almost identical. The Vice-Commander's eyebrow twitched.
"I hope you aren't mocking me."
The Vice-Commander vanished from sight. As expected, the power of mana was on a whole different level.
At the level of the Royal Knights' Vice-Commander, human dynamic vision could barely keep up.
Clang!
But even if my eyes couldn't follow him, my senses could still pick him up easily.
My tilted greatsword blocked his blade.
Again, a similar posture.
The slight difference in posture was simply because I was wielding a greatsword.
"It's no mere imitation."
"I learned it from the Duke of Ceuta."
He would find out anyway, so I told him the truth.
"Don't tell me... the student the Advisor was teaching at the Academy was you?!"
So that line about him being a retired old man was a complete lie. Even the Vice-Commander knew what he was up to.
Clang! Clang!
Even as we spoke, our swords continued to clash.
As we exchanged attacks and defenses in similar styles, the fight began to resemble something close to a sparring match.
Something akin to admiration flickered in the eyes of the Vice-Commander and the watching knights.
But the Prince didn't seem pleased with the current situation.
"What are you doing?! I said it was entertaining, but I didn't tell you to mess around like this!"
At the Prince's words, the Vice-Commander's expression shifted.
They were closer than I thought, but the hierarchy between them was strictly maintained.
His sword technique changed. Mana surged, and killing intent burst forth.
Sparks flew as our mana collided around us.
I wanted to test out the royal swordsmanship a bit more, but this was enough.
I changed my swordsmanship style as well.
I channeled mana into the necklace and pulled out a dagger with my other hand.
A hazy shimmer flickered at the tip of the dagger.
Once more, we collided.
Boom!
A moment later, the surroundings erupted into chaos.
"Block him!"
"Don't let him get near His Highness!"
"Attack together!"
"Help the Vice-Commander!"
The fight turned frantic as the other knights intruded.
The Vice-Commander, who had been exchanging blows with me, was now covered in blood.
He seemed to have nearly lost his senses due to the necklace.
I remembered what had happened, so there was no issue, but it felt as if time had skipped ahead in a flash.
"To suddenly become this strong..."
Blood was trickling from the Vice-Commander's mouth too, as if he were gritting his teeth.
If we fought using the same swordsmanship, there was barely any gap in skill between the Vice-Commander and me, but that wasn't the only thing in my arsenal.
Before long, the Vice-Commander was pushed back sharply, and the other knights rushed in.
And I was enduring the combined assault of those knights.
I could also see a knight lying collapsed on the ground.
He was a knight who had tried to launch a sneak attack from behind. Unfortunately for him, my senses picked him up in advance, and I cut him down.
Since I had slashed him with full force, he was probably dead.
Though I was putting up a good fight, defeating all of them was unfortunately too difficult.
My mana was draining rapidly.
Still, holding out this long against the Royal Knights and their Vice-Commander was something I wanted to pat myself on the back for.
And it seemed there was someone else who had the exact same thought.
The Prince clapped his hands.
"Impressive. Truly impressive."
He barked an order in a loud voice.
His voice, infused with mana, resonated across the ruined backyard.
"That is enough. Cease fighting."
The knights and I all wore bewildered expressions.
Regardless, the Royal Knights could not disobey his command.
The knights slowly fell back. The bloodied Vice-Commander dragged his feet as he moved to the Prince's side.
The Prince's expression was no longer bored. He smiled at me.
"Your gamble to meet me directly paid off. With skill like that, you are worth keeping alive. I shall make extensive use of you."
As expected, the Prince was out of his mind.
To misunderstand my actions like that.
At the Prince's words, the Vice-Commander and the knights all grimaced.
It wasn't just one or two people who had been injured by me.
The Vice-Commander was a bloody mess, I was drenched in blood myself, and on top of that, there were knights lying dead on the ground right now.
And yet, he suddenly wanted to recruit me?
It was natural that the Royal Knights found it hard to digest.
The Vice-Commander tried to say something to the First Prince, but I burst out laughing first.
"I have no intention of working with you, Your Highness. I've already accomplished nearly all of my goals here. Now there is only one thing left."
At my words, the Prince frowned. He seemed unable to comprehend.
"What do you mean by that?"
"Unless you plan on getting your head chopped off, Your Highness doesn't need to know either."
I threw back the exact same words the Prince had said earlier.
The Prince stood dazed for a moment at my words, before his face flushed bright red.
Indeed, once his sluggish posture changed, he looked much better.
Though he looked a bit uglier, he was so full of vitality—how wonderful.
"To insult me, the Crown Prince! Kill him immediately!"
Before the knights could move, the Viscount standing beside the Prince raised his hand first.
I had been waiting for this.
Ivana's ability certainly must have come from her mother or father.
I had never heard of the deceased queen possessing an ability similar to Ivana's.
Then it had to have come from her father.
I wanted to test it out once before dying, and right on cue, he made his move.
Thrum.
As he raised his hand, a heavy thud seemed to echo.
It wasn't a sound from outside. It felt like a sound vibrating inside my body.
My body grew heavy.
Was it gravity or telekinesis? No, it wasn't that.
My already dwindling mana completely vanished.
My senses dulled, and strength drained from my body.
It felt as if I had returned to my weak past.
'My god, a Debuff Ability User?'
The Viscount's ability was definitely something that weakened others.
Though my combat experience remained and my trained body was still intact, fighting like this was nearly impossible.
On top of that, with the last bits of my mana wiped out, I was even feeling the effects of mana exhaustion.
At this rate, it would be tough to handle even a single knight.
I thought about making one final struggle, but decided against it.
The Vice-Commander clicked his tongue as he saw me lower my sword, but he did not stop his advance.
Before the other knights could approach, he swung his sword first.
"Next time, may your mind mature as much as your skill."
At his final words, I let out a smirk.
Who was he trying to lecture while serving a prince like that?
If I ran into him next time, I'd have to give him a piece of my mind too.
The blade passed through, and a sharp pain hit my neck.
My vision flipped upside down and plummeted downward.
In my inverted field of view, I caught sight of the Prince's face, flushed red.
My vision faded to black.
...
...
The light brightened.
When I came to, I was looking at the wall of my room.
A room in the Academy Dormitory.
I was standing there, holding a black sword.
<You have died. Restarting from the Automatic Save Point.>
Today was the evening of the opening ceremony.
Once again, I had returned to the past.