The Dragon's Parting Message
Once the dust had mostly settled, Alois was carried off to the infirmary, and an exhaustive investigation of the scene began almost immediately.
Fortunately, there had been hardly any casualties.
The guards accompanying the various national delegations had all been resting in their lodgings, and Victor—forewarned by Cantares—had firmly instructed the servants and nobles staying within the palace not to set foot outside their rooms.
The representatives of the nations whose leaders had witnessed with their own eyes Alois going berserk in his attempt to kill Arendt threw themselves straight into emergency councils.
Laios was in the thick of the aftermath, assisting Cantares and Crown Prince Victor, while the 3rd Knight Order, their duties complete, was shown into a spacious drawing room to receive treatment.
Barely after Arendt's group had stepped into the drawing room, the other knights of the 3rd Order, who had gone off to deal with different enemies, began trickling in one by one, trailing wounds behind them.
"What the hell were those things? Something about them felt off."
The knights grumbled, their expressions made all the more savage by the cuts and gashes studded across them.
Arendt, sprawled alone across the drawing room's large sofa, pressed firmly along the bridge of his nose and answered with irritation.
"Probably not even human. Couldn't tell you what they were, though."
It was only thanks to Laios appearing in time and pinning Stel down that they'd managed to stop Alois's rampage at all—without that, they might have failed.
Having applied simple treatment to the knights' wounds, the healer finally filled a cup to the brim with a potion and handed it over to Arendt.
"Thankfully, no one's seriously hurt. Sir Arendt, if you drink this, your internal injuries should settle down a bit."
Once the healer bowed and withdrew, leaving the knights alone at last, Arthur—his face plastered with bandages—raised the question on everyone's mind.
"So what actually happened back there? That wasn't the cult's doing, was it?"
The other knights, evidently of the same mind, turned to Arendt with wary nods.
They'd all clearly reached their own conclusions during the fight.
Richt, his face clouded with turmoil, spoke next.
"When the crown prince went berserk... behind him, I saw what looked like the wings of a dragon."
"Then don't tell me—"
"That's right. A dragon."
As someone let the word trail off, Arendt cut it short with a terse confirmation.
Dragon.
Hit all at once by the sheer enormity of that presence, the knights found themselves unable to speak.
Arendt, meanwhile, was locked in a staring contest with the sloshing potion in his cup.
"I can't say for certain, but that's what I believe. And from the looks of it, you all think the same."
"Explanation aside, why don't you hurry up and down that thing first?"
"...Haah."
At Arthur's dry interjection, Arendt let out a short sigh, squeezed his eyes shut, and gulped the medicine down.
"Blegh, that's foul. Anyway—if the one behind this is a dragon, then it makes sense why they'd want me dead."
"Can't argue with that."
Ryder nodded reluctantly.
After all, it had been none other than Arendt who'd come up with the lunatic idea of putting dragon remains on public display, on the grounds that they might provoke the surviving dragon.
The event had been held in the imperial family's name, but Arendt was entangled in so many affairs of one kind or another that a little digging would have made it easy enough to identify whoever stood behind him.
"I had a brief word with His Highness the Crown Prince earlier. For now, we're covering this up as an atrocity committed by the Evil God Cult. That's the official story—remember it, everyone."
The cult is a more realistic culprit than a dragon, after all. Besides, the dragon's side seems just as eager to pin everything I did onto those bastards.
Glenn, who had been sitting quietly, threw out a question.
"This dragon lurking in the background... is there any chance it's working hand in hand with the cult?"
"Probably not. Though I can't swear to that either."
"If it were, Nephele would already be nothing but a smoking ruin."
Arthur added that after Richt's answer.
Draining the rest of his potion with a scornful look, Arendt set the cup down on the table and muttered.
"Given that it merely imitated the cult's handiwork and didn't just flatten the Nephele royal palace outright, you could even call it moderate, in a way."
"Moderate?"
"Well, I suppose flattening an entire kingdom would be well within a dragon's power..."
At someone's skeptical echo, Ryder gave an ambiguous nod.
Rather than blasting the kingdom to pieces, the dragon had settled for pulling the strings of their most troublesome crown prince.
And with the other minor pests withdrawing the moment Alois was subdued, it seemed the dragon hadn't even seriously intended to attack in the first place.
Which meant... that dragon might simply have been toying with them, the way a cat plays with a mouse.
He was drifting into thought when—knock, knock—a tap sounded at the door.
Arthur went to open it, revealing a dignified, elderly servant standing there with a communication crystal ball in hand.
"Forgive the interruption to your rest. There is an urgent communication for Sir Arendt von Eckhart."
"From whom?"
"Prince Llewellyn, Third Prince of the Kingdom of Everan, sir."
Arendt scowled at the answer.
They had been keeping their acquaintance under wraps, exchanging messages almost exclusively through personal communication orbs—so if Llewellyn had gone to the trouble of placing a direct call to the Kingdom of Lucain, it had to be something serious.
"What's this? Why's Prince Llewellyn calling you?"
"We're, ah... somewhat acquainted."
Aside from Arthur and Richt, the knights knew nothing of the dealings between the two.
Arendt briefly considered taking the call outside, but the purpose of Llewellyn's call was obvious anyway—if they were going to share the situation with his comrades, better to do it right here.
When Arendt took the orb, the servant bowed briefly and stepped aside.
"What is it?"
"Things blew up on our end too, so I haven't exactly had time to take calls. What is it?"
"Wasn't it urgent?"
An exasperated retort flew out of him before he could help it, but Llewellyn paid it no mind.
"...This is killing me, seriously. Fine. What. What's the problem?"
As Arendt pressed hard at his temples, casual banal speech slipped out of him quite naturally, and the knights beside him all nearly jumped out of their skins. The Llewellyn on the other end of the orb, however, sounded rather satisfied.
"Just get to the point."
"Er... probably."
Arendt paused for a beat, then shot a sidelong glance at his seniors.
"..."
The knights drew in their breath at the unexpected news. Arendt, on the other hand, nodded flatly, as if he'd fully expected it.
"How did that happen?"
While Alois and Matthias hadn't noticed a thing, the princess who had remained at the palace seemed to have caught on that the dragon wanted something else entirely.
"So it withdrew without a fight? And His Highness is unharmed?"
"..."
What is this—poison the wound, then sell the cure?
Arendt's face twisted.
"Go on."
That part was a matter for the Kingdom of Nephele to resolve internally.
"And?"
Llewellyn paused for a moment before his voice came through again.
"...Apparently someone's in the mood for a game of hide-and-seek?"
That, apparently, was why he'd called in such a hurry.
Now it was certain. That accursed dragon clearly intended to catch the fishing line Arendt had cast in its teeth and play tug-of-war.
"Perfect timing. You've just got more work to do."
A baffled squawk came back through the orb, and Arendt tossed off a single matter-of-fact remark.
"That thing is the dragon. I've been pouring money into you to find a dragon, so you ought to earn it, no?"
He'd been the one to cast the bait, true—but there was no law saying he had to run the errands himself. He fully intended to shovel every last nuisance onto this guy's plate.
Click.
Llewellyn was just beginning to flail in protest when Arendt cut the connection.
The knights, who had been listening blankly to the exchange between prince and apprentice knight, stared at him in stunned disbelief.
Arthur asked, faintly.
"...You're friends with a prince?"
But Arendt only shrugged with perfect nonchalance.
"He says he'll enter Nephele in his capacity as a prince and asked me—begged me, really—to come along. Anyway, keep this between us. It'd be inconvenient if word got out that I have connections."
What are we supposed to do with this man.
The knights felt a faint dizziness come over them.
"Can't believe anyone would voluntarily befriend that lunatic."
"Prince Llewellyn's tastes are truly something else..."
Someone murmured the words with a hollow laugh.
Perhaps there really was a law of nature that oddballs attracted oddballs.
Watching the uncontrollable third prince of Everan latch onto Arendt like a burr left them utterly dumbfounded.
Alois opened his eyes two days later.
The moment he came to and saw Matthias's face hovering above him, he blinked blankly—then, spotting Cantares and Arendt beside him, he promptly burst into a groan.
"...Damn it all..."
Reaching instinctively to touch his face, Alois caught sight of his empty shoulder socket and broke into a ghastly, pallid laugh.
His memory had blurred near the end, but he remembered the situation well enough.
His own screams, the mana that had surged through him without warning—and the insolent apprentice knight who had worn the same expressionless face from start to finish, even as he approached Alois with something almost desperate in his eyes.
"Damn you... am I even supposed to thank you for sparing my life?"
"Regrettably, the moment you opened your eyes, you ceased to be crown prince. You've been deposed. Return to your homeland with Prince Matthias and answer for your crimes. From this day forward, you will live the rest of your life as a criminal."
Even as Cantares delivered the news flatly, Alois showed no particular reaction.
He simply stared vacantly up at the ceiling.
Laying hands on the king was a crime deserving of execution—yet the fact that it had ended with nothing more than deposition must have been the monarch's final mercy, extended to him as a father rather than a sovereign.
Where, exactly, did it all go wrong?
The moment he'd heeded Lexion's words? The moment he'd set out to deal with a disrespectful apprentice knight, confident it would be easy?
No—perhaps it had gone wrong far earlier than that.
Like a man who had lost his mind, Alois let out a long, wheezing laugh.
Arendt crossed his arms and looked down, unmoved, at the man who had once been a crown prince.
Thus closed, in tragedy, the story of a young man who in the arrogance of his burning ambition had fancied that one day he would command the world.