Chapter 280
Chapter 280
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 280
Chapter Title: The Falcon Takes Flight (1)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
“You bastard.”
“It was just a relationship of convenience anyway. A mere paper position I created to secure a connection with the Pope...”
“Bad... you bad bastard...”
Rene sniffled the whole way. Fernandez, uncharacteristically flustered, struggled to continue speaking.
“And no matter what, your ascension to the throne won’t change. It’s the only solution for you, for me, and for the Pope right now.”
“Do you think... that helps right now?”
“Hmm.”
-Hahahaha! Uhahahaha!
Ignoring Feizashi’s ear-splitting laughter as best he could, Fernandez fell silent, gripping the reins.
Affection, he had thought. He’d never formed a bond intimate enough for physical relations, nor had there been time for it.
The only sound was the clip-clop of horse hooves on the imperial road of Paltennoia. As the gates of Paltennoia faintly came into view, Rene muttered in a voice thick with tears.
“Why?”
“...What do you mean?”
“Asking that question itself makes me feel unbearably pathetic, so you know exactly what I mean—don’t make me say it. Why? Because of those women? Why do you draw such a hard line?”
Rene’s words brought everything to a halt. Fernandez pulled on the reins to stop his horse and turned to look at her. She had her head bowed, clutching the reins so tightly her knuckles were white.
“Am I that unappealing?”
“Duke of Carbellier.”
“Rene Philippa. My name is Rene Philippa.”
“...Rene.”
He gazed at her with sunken eyes. Her red hair glowed like it was aflame in the sunset.
“Relationships with intent must remain cold.”
“...Even if you don’t know, I...!”
“No.”
He cut her off coldly. Letting their relationship sour would be a catastrophic strategic blunder on a grand scale. But leaving room for hope, exploiting her goodwill—even if it was a calculated decision—would be an even greater disaster for her personally.
“What you’ve fallen for isn’t me.”
The outsider who saved a territory dying from famine and poverty before and after the war.
The war hero who led them to victory with overwhelming force, strategy, and quick thinking.
The schemer who, in a mere half-year, raised the fallen House of Carbellier to become the empire’s strongest warlord.
The high priest who avenged a dead father by punishing the corrupt emperor.
A heavyweight with ties to power blocs across the empire—and perhaps from the east to the continent’s heart.
The man Rene had fallen for was an illusion born from those traits. And that was merely the surface Fernandez had orchestrated to appear as such.
“You’ve fallen in love with a hallucination. A feverish delirium or a fleeting dream. It’s improper. The man you showed favor to could look entirely different tomorrow, or take yet another form the day after. Chasing mirages is a privilege of youth, but a ruler must carry a compass even then.”
An emperor has no heart. Buried in Sarto’s soil now, but once, along the path from the palace gates to the throne room, stood bronze statues of past emperors.
Ancient emperors adorned with splendid jewels and ornaments. Despite their different attire, faces, and builds, they shared one trait: none had a heart carved into their effigies. Just empty chests.
An emperor’s scales cannot hold emotion. A leader’s scales are like that. Fernandez didn’t dislike King Vicente’s righteousness. Yet he believed Vicente could only ever be a great knight, never a truly great king.
The politics of noble society are alive. And they are cold-blooded. An emperor ruling over it needs only ears to hear the people’s sorrow and eyes to behold their tears. No heart to pulse hot with their grief.
“And the reason I accepted your demands was closer to coveting the other powers the empress position would bring. Nothing more than wanting a stronger weapon to back the tasks I must undertake. For you too, the authority of the Beitasser Church solidified by marriage with me surely wasn’t irrelevant to the match.”
“It wasn’t.”
Rene lifted her head to look at Fernandez. Her eyes sparkled, streaked with tears.
“Not at all. As you say, there were countless reasons to like you. You saved my territory, avenged my father, killed the emperor, and earned power and authority I don’t even know about, recognized by the world. But surely you know there are just as many reasons to be wary of you when viewed coldly?”
No matter how magnificent a lion’s mane, you can’t keep a lion you can’t bridle by your side.
Being enchanted by a mysterious outsider was advice for naive noble ladies with flower fields in their heads. Rene wasn’t foolish. She had endured too much on her own to be that naive.
“How do I know what kind of man you are? It’s barely been half a year. Even less time face-to-face. Did I seem like some brainless housewife, foolish enough to hand over all the powers of the empress position to a man like you, capable and powerful as you are?”
Even just the abilities Fernandez had shown on the surface—if given enough time and power, toppling the imperial family, even seizing the empire itself, wouldn’t be impossible. That was Rene’s judgment.
Yet even so, she couldn’t stop the marriage to Fernandez.
“That night in Libye. The night you crossed the crumbling walls to save me. Guarding your bedside as you slept—that moment was the only true glimpse I’ve had of you. And that was enough time to fall for you.”
“Being captivated by a knight who appears in crisis is only natural at first glance...”
“Shut up.”
At Rene’s sharp rebuke, Fernandez closed his mouth. She glared at him, seething for a while, then turned her horse and spurred it onward.
“On second thought, I can’t find any more reasons not to love you. Divorce papers? Ridiculous. We’re not even married yet. Forget it—I don’t need that scrap of paper.”
“...I will leave.”
“Then go! Just leave!”
Rene spurred her horse toward the gates without looking back at Fernandez following her.
“If you appear again to claim me, only to reject me, then you’ll have to found an empire to do it. Sir Fernandez Cerned. This is the last gracious imperial advice from the emperor to you.”
Rene rode faster and faster. Even in the wind, her voice cut into his chest like a sharp blade, clear and piercing.
Youth, Fernandez thought, chuckling softly. He could feel his thinking growing sluggish. Youth, indeed. Wasn’t he still only in his early twenties?
Hearing his chuckle, perhaps, Rene snorted and dug in her spurs hard. Her innocent horse let out a long neigh and bolted.
It was evening, as the sunset draped itself below the horizon.
* * *
That night, Fernandez spent time handing off piled-up reports to the Carbellier ducal staff before finally entering his room in the late hours before dawn.
Fatigue crashed over him. These were days of overwork that exceeded not just human limits, but even those of a clear Religiosa Demonica body. In truth, when he handed over the tasks he’d organized as much as possible, the staff lost even their forced smiles, their hands trembling.
“Phew...”
Fernandez sighed, undressing and hanging his clothes on one side of the room. In the dim moonlight filtering through the window frame in the early dawn, he walked toward the bed but suddenly stopped.
“You’ve grown dull, Fernandez.”
A figure rose from the shadows by the window frame. Golden hair, soft as a field of wheat, swayed in the breeze from the open window. It was Abel.
“What brings you here?”
“Do I need a reason to seek you out?”
“It’s late.”
“Your outing with the duchess didn’t seem enjoyable. I heard late. May I ask what happened?”
Abel slowly sat across from Fernandez. Her eyes sparkled. But it wasn’t the gleam of someone hearing good news—more like pity.
“I met the chairman of the Aseas Council. I wanted to publicize the political honeymoon between Duke Carbellier and the chairman to noble society.”
“What did he tell you?”
He had no intention of deceiving her, nor was it easy to do so. Fernandez thought as he looked at Abel. From a single fragment of information, she had already inferred the chairman’s involvement in the current situation.
“He said the world is ending.”
“...What?”
“Whether what we’ve done was futile, or the achievements we’ve made have caused some kind of ripple. Or perhaps it’s all fate. We can’t know, but in his vision of the future, there is only apocalypse.”
“Was he a prophet?”
“Of a sort.”
Fernandez continued. The immortal who could see past lives. What Orcis had said. The reality racing toward ruin despite all efforts.
“The bigger problem is we can’t gauge who the agent is. Apocalypse and downfall. If demonic destruction of the world is imminent and we can’t avoid it... then ‘someone’ must become that agent. Demons can’t descend into the material world on their own.”
It had been the same in his past life. Great demons kept mortals as their vice-commanders. A symbiotic relationship. To summon a great demon into the material world required a mortal of that caliber and wisdom.
Like Fernandez had. Someone must become the agent of doom. Even if civilization crumbled on its own, someone had to place the final period on the clock ticking toward extinction.
But could such a being exist?
“Any likely candidates?”
“If there were, they wouldn’t be alive now. Among the cultists under me in my past life, I’ve killed or imprisoned most active in this era. There might be those not yet born or whose locations are unknown, but none capable of fully annihilating humanity.”
He wouldn’t call them small fry. But no individual, however powerful, could destroy the world alone. A sufficiently organized group, perhaps—but if such a group were active, it couldn’t escape Fernandez’s surveillance net.
It felt like a dead end. Dukeシャル’s raven crown. That was the only clue, but... how to find an artifact that didn’t exist even in his past life?
“Then you shouldn’t leave her side all the more, should you? Fernandez. Is there a better tool than imperial power to find the artifact of the empire’s founder?”
“If an artifact to avert the apocalypse could be found with imperial power, the Empress Carbellier of my past life would have used it already. I preserved the empire under nearly identical conditions to the past life, but that’s what’s holding me back now.”
If it was impossible then, it likely was now. Knowing the limits and best efforts of imperial power, the imperial throne held no further allure in this situation.
Thus, Fernandez had decided to leave.
“So what now?”
“To find what didn’t exist in my past life, I need the power of those who didn’t exist then.”
“...Those who didn’t exist in your past life...?”
“The elves.”
This was the conclusion Fernandez had reached after much deliberation. The elves of the main world were unfriendly to humans and vanished the moment the apocalypse began—unknown folk.
He didn’t know what end the main world’s elves met. It didn’t matter. What he needed now was aid from those absent in his past life. And there was one who could provide it almost for free.
“You mean to go meet that woman?”
“Will you come with me?”
“I don’t want to watch you get entangled with yet another woman alone. As always, you lead.”
I’ll follow. Abel smiled softly as she said it. She gazed into Fernandez’s eyes for a moment, then teased.
“By the way, it seems you’ve wounded that girl deeply.”
“She said she won’t give up.”
“Haha... no, she must.”
Abel’s expression hardened in an instant.
Dragons were territorial creatures.