The Dragon as Bait
At Arendt's sudden pronouncement, Cantares made no immediate reaction. Instead, he called a brief meeting, summoning the man's direct superior—Laios—and Count Stadler, who had been staying at the imperial palace.
"……"
"……"
Having heard the whole story, both men wore expressions of utter disbelief. While they stood there, unable to find a single word, the unexpected first voice to side with Arendt came from Zereon, who had been quietly listening all along.
"It might actually be a decent plan, Your Highness."
"Zen, are you serious?"
When Cantares asked again, doubting his own ears, Zereon gave an awkward smile and nodded.
"I am. We've been unable to extract any information from the captives, so there are definite limits to tracking them down ourselves. In situations like this, provoking the enemy into coming to us is one option……" The aide trailed off, glancing sideways at Arendt. "Though it is the sort of idea no sane person would entertain."
"I'm perfectly sane, actually."
"Quiet."
As Arendt muttered under his breath, Cantares let out a low growl. Just then, Count Stadler timidly spoke up.
"But isn't this far too dangerous? They might bear a grudge and retaliate. If anything were to go wrong during the Founding Day celebrations, it would create a serious diplomatic crisis."
"They won't move so easily. They need time to rebuild their strength, after all," Cantares replied, dismissing the concern with casual ease.
The string of recent disasters had drained the cult's forces badly. They had lost Vincent and Blake, Rebecca—their vital funding lifeline—had been eliminated, and their ghoul army had been wiped out in droves. Besides, with dignitaries from home and abroad gathering for the occasion, every nation would be sending a substantial armed escort. They were hardly fools reckless enough to charge headlong into a trap like that.
"For the record, it won't just be the dragon on display."
"What?"
"You, Commander. The knight who hunted down a dragon, no less."
"I'm sorry, what?"
Visibly flustered, Laios looked to Cantares and Zereon as if begging for help—but the two of them merely averted their eyes, evidently unwilling to get dragged into it.
"I heard all about it from Senior Licht. That you threw your life away and leapt straight into the dragon's body while the battle was still raging."
"Hold on, that was——"
"Truly a paragon for the knights of our era. Such conduct befits the strongest knight of the Callion Empire, the Sword of the Imperial House, and guardian of the God Luce."
With a completely blank face, the apprentice knight delivered his monologue and then capped it off with a soulless round of applause—clap, clap, clap.
Laios's face flushed crimson.
"The public loves a hero. Put one hero on a pedestal and paint the enemy as a pack of villains, and public opinion against the Evil God Cult will only sour further. It's simple."
"And so?"
"They put their god at the front of everything, don't they? People might end up turning to their side sooner or later, so let's prevent that before it ever happens."
In other words: sell Laios to the masses now, and brand the cult as heretics beyond redemption. It was an extension of the clown act Arendt had once staged in the dining hall of an inn he happened to wander into.
Zereon, who had been listening in silence, finally opened his mouth.
"Come to think of it, quite a few people have grown curious about Commander Laios's condition lately. No doubt because of the recent incident."
"But, Aide Zereon——"
"That's true enough. The fact that Commander Laios achieved a great feat this time is beyond dispute."
Laios tried desperately to shut Zereon's mouth, but this time it was Cantares who nodded along.
"A knight who felled a dragon with his own blade? The dignitaries will lose their minds over it, won't they?"
"I don't think that's going to happen."
With a sly grin flashing across his face, Arendt probed him slyly, and Laios hastily put on a stern face. But not a single soul in the room was inclined to listen.
Zereon, efficient beyond all need, promptly laid out what had to be done.
"I'll begin by coordinating the schedule. I'll need to consult with Count Stadler as well—if we're to unveil the dragon's remains to the public, there will be a great deal of preparation required beforehand."
"Have a congratulatory speech ready in advance, Commander Laios. That's an order."
"……"
When even Cantares flashed a grin and clapped him on the shoulder, Laios finally buried his face in his hands.
"Aide Zereon."
"Yes?"
"Forgive me, but could I have some stomach medicine……"
His stomach was churning with a dull ache.
A few days later, at the scheduled time for the Imperial Knight Order commanders' meeting, Diana and Kendrick regarded Laios with pity, his face having gone deathly pale.
"Are you alright?"
"……Yes. I'm fine."
The way he forced the answer out through gritted teeth, unable to bear Kendrick's concerned questioning, looked anything but fine. Diana gave a wry smile.
"Someone really ought to petition the Crown Prince. He must not be allowed to get too close to that boy."
"Well now, why don't you try it yourself, Diana? Knowing how you rage every time he claims you two have never been close, I imagine you'd fly into a fury."
"His Highness should start acknowledging it, at any rate."
Even as the two carried on their idle chatter, Laios's face only sank deeper and deeper into gloom.
"I want no part of empty praise."
"Oh, but it's a good thing nonetheless. And you did accomplish something truly remarkable, so don't brood over it so."
"……"
Even Kendrick's consolation failed to smooth the furrows from Laios's brow. A dejected Commander of the Third Knights was a genuinely rare spectacle.
It wasn't that Laios lacked such tendencies to begin with. He took responsibility without hesitation, and never balked at being the first to step forward before the enemy—but excessive praise for feats of his own achieving had always made him uncomfortable. And on top of that, to have been mercilessly mocked by Arendt until he couldn't take any more… the shock seemed to have struck deep.
"He truly hasn't changed in that respect since he was young."
"Has he not. It's not a bad trait, mind you."
Laios shot a resentful glare at the two men wearing fond smiles. The sight was so reminiscent of Laios in his days as a common knight that it only made things worse.
After laughing for a good long while, Kendrick changed the subject.
"So—the newly discovered artifact. It really is dragon bone? I heard Count Stadler examined it."
"Yes. Furthermore, he believes it was crafted quite recently."
Laios nodded gravely.
"There's no telling when the bone itself was extracted, but apparently it was refined only extremely recently. His guess is that they rushed to make it after losing several artifacts to us."
"Hmm. So it's come to this in the end."
It was now all but confirmed that dragons formed the backbone of the enemy's operations. A dragon was the kind of being that overturned history itself with every appearance in the human realm. If the day ever came when they had to face one head-on, no number of lives spent would be enough.
No—if it ended with the knights' lives alone, that would be a mercy. In the worst case, the Empire itself could be reduced to scorched earth.
"And in the middle of all this, he wants to provoke a dragon too…… How very like Sir Arendt."
Kendrick burst into another hearty laugh. It was equally astonishing that the Crown Prince had agreed to it so readily.
He had watched the boy for no small stretch of time, and still he remained a mystery. Reckless one moment, viciously calculating the next; seemingly selfish, yet always steering matters toward the outcome that benefited everyone in the end.
The real problem was that the man never deigned to say plainly what was going on inside that head of his.
Watching the young commander unable to mask his turmoil, Kendrick let out a long, refreshing laugh.
"Well then. The palace hasn't been this lively in ages."
Whatever else was true, the boy's fingerprints were all over this, so something interesting was bound to happen. Dragon or the god Tsiernion, it made no difference.
If they bared their fangs at the imperial house, there was only one thing to be done.
As a knight, Kendrick stood ready to give his life gladly to protect his nation, his lord, and his people. He steeled his resolve, running a hand over the sword that had been his companion for a lifetime.
Once the decision was made, events moved forward at a breakneck pace.
Preparations for the Founding Day festival kicked off in earnest, and it was settled that the dragon's remains—long dormant within the palace—would be installed first. One of the grandest halls was emptied out entirely, and the palace was thrown into an unusual commotion.
"Handle it with care, I said! CAREFUL!"
Count Stadler sprinted from place to place, shouting louder than anyone had ever heard him. The bloodshot rims of his eyes made it plain he hadn't slept a single night in days.
Having heard the full story from the Count, the Neumann Merchant Guild spared no assistance either—supplying workers and providing the goods to adorn the reception hall. For ten straight days, as countless artisans lent their hands and Count Stadler worked himself into hysterics, the project carried on.
At last, the dragon was reborn in the form of a great beast spreading its massive wings wide and crying out skyward.
The tips of its wings brushed perilously against the ceiling of the reception hall, and with its jawbone flung open and head bowed low, it looked ready at any moment to unleash its breath upon the crowds below.
"If this hall had been even the slightest bit smaller, we would have faced disaster."
Count Stadler, the light gone black in his eyes, gazed up at his masterwork with profound satisfaction. Even posed in a crouch, body lowered and tail curled beneath it, the skeleton all but filled the entire hall.
"It really is magnificent."
At the news of the installation's completion, Cantares came running ahead of everyone else and let out a genuinely awed exclamation. To think Laios had cut this creature down with only three subordinates at his side—it drove home, once again, just how formidable a knight Laios de Winfried truly was.
"Ahh… who could have imagined the day would come when I would examine a dragon's skeleton bone by bone? If the skeleton alone is this beautiful, I can hardly wait to see how majestic the living creature must have been as a species."
"Uh, Count? That 'majestic species' is currently plotting to trample our Empire, you know."
"And look at that spine—simply exquisite, isn't it? There, see! The fifth cervical vertebra bears a wound. It resembles a bite mark—likely sustained in combat against another dragon."
Cantares attempted awkward small talk, but it seemed not a word of it reached the Count's ears, drowned as he was in euphoria.
And so the palace staff all bustled about their work. The capital's shopping districts, too, began preparing to receive the flood of tourists about to descend, and the merchant guilds scattered across the nation gradually converged on the capital, leaving it several times livelier than usual.
A few days later, the list of dignitaries attending the banquet was delivered to the Imperial Knights, who would be handling security for the event.
Having hovered persistently at Laios's side until he finally succeeded in getting his hands on the list, Arendt went straight back to his room and began carefully combing through the sheaf of papers.
The first page held the Empire's own notable figures—names, almost without exception, that he recognized. And then, on the following page, Arendt found the name he had been looking for.
Just as I expected.
Llewellyn Charles Everan.
The third prince of the Everan Kingdom, an ally of the Empire.
In The Blue Knight of the Sacred Sword, he had been no more than a minor character, and frankly not a particularly likable one at that.
When the Callion Empire had been engulfed in the flames of war, the allied nations had each sent reinforcements. The man who had led the forces of the Everan Kingdom was none other than this fellow.
The guy who mouthed off at Commander Laios and got put in his place, wasn't he?
For a child of royal blood, he was recklessly free-spirited—if anything, a Hyper-Arendt von Eckhart, in a manner of speaking. After arriving in the Empire, Prince Llewellyn went mad for drink at every opportunity and caused one incident after another at gatherings of the dignitaries, single-handedly claiming the title of second-biggest troublemaker after Arendt himself.
But that hadn't lasted long either. He was a man ill-suited to the battlefield, and he could never see eye to eye with someone as rigidly upright as Laios. In the end, Llewellyn traded heated words with Laios, escalated it all the way to a duel, and was forced to leave the Callion Empire in disgrace.
A thoroughly rotten character, by any measure—and yet Arendt felt certain he could somehow be put to use in the current situation.
Llewellyn Charles Everan… the third prince of the Kingdom. But there was another name by which he was known.
Llewellyn the Explorer.
All that talk of provoking the enemy had been, at most, a secondary objective. The dragon was nothing more than bait to hook this man.
Why else would someone who despised appearing on official stages crawling with nobles insist on attending the Founding Day festivities? The man's body was surely itching at the chance to see a dragon with his own eyes.
Welcome.
He was a brat with no manners whatsoever—so it was only proper to lavish a little affection on him and whip him into shape.
Only then, once he stepped onto the stage, would he move exactly as his role demanded.
A wicked smile crept across Arendt's lips.