Imperial Turmoil (1)
Wearing her usual formal attire, Ludmilla calmed her fiercely pounding heart and smiled with deep meaning. She felt happy. At the same time, she felt a pang of regret. What if they had entered the banquet hall together while she wore that elegant dress? The nobles would surely have burst into applause and cheers, officially recognizing her and Edanant as a couple.
Perhaps it was the sight of Edanant’s utterly spellbound expression that had done it. Her desires began to snowball, growing larger by the second. But she soon shook her head. She had a duty to protect the imperial family and the citizens of the empire. Neglecting that duty for the sake of personal happiness was something she could never allow.
“Hehe, Edanant looked completely stunned. Wasn’t that the first time you’ve seen him so lost?”
Elizaveta grinned mischievously at her older sister, who was letting out a short, heated breath. Ludmilla cleared her throat.
“Ahem! In any case, I’m returning to my duties now. Liza, I’m entrusting my sister to you.”
“Yeees.”
She tried to sound curt, but inwardly she felt deep gratitude toward her younger sister. If Elizaveta hadn’t stubbornly insisted that she try on the banquet dress, she never would have witnessed Edanant looking so adorably flustered.
The experience had given her confidence. As if to prove it, Ludmilla squared her shoulders.
“The Seven Swords are to maintain strict vigilance around the banquet hall. Not even the smallest incident will be tolerated.”
Soon the seven knights representing the Valtaria Empire assembled. The Valtaria Seven Swords. The kin of the red dragon saluted with perfect discipline and accepted the strict order.
Because high-ranking nobles with immense power had been invited, security was tighter than ever. Ludmilla’s subordinates kept the troops under iron control as they guarded the imperial palace.
Once the banquet ends safely, Edanant will be waiting. We did promise to dance together, after all. I absolutely cannot embarrass myself in front of him…
As a princess of the imperial family, she had learned dance from a royal tutor, but that was far in the past. It would not be an exaggeration to say she had become completely uncoordinated.
What if she stepped on his feet? If she showed him a truly hopeless performance, he would definitely lose interest.
—You call that dancing?
—As expected of the rough-mannered tomboy princess; she can’t even keep the beat…
Anxiety was already creeping in. The image of Edanant turning ice-cold flashed through her mind. Maybe she should hand command over to her subordinates right now and start practicing her steps. The same anticipation she felt for Edanant was matched by an equal measure of fear that now threatened to overwhelm her.
“Auntie! Big trouble, auntie!”
“……”
While she was staring into space and wrestling with her worries, the girl’s bold voice grated on the red dragon’s nerves.
“Edanant told me to deliver a message! The demons are invading!”
“…What did you just say?”
The demons were coming. It was not something she could dismiss lightly. Edanant had said so? Then it could not possibly be a joke. Ludmilla’s knights wondered if the tomboy was simply playing a nasty prank. But the girl’s deathly pale face made it clear this was no jest.
“Your Highness!!”
A desperate shout rang out like a signal flare announcing crisis. The captain in charge of the imperial capital’s gates came sprinting toward Ludmilla.
“It’s a rebellion! A rebellion has broken out in the capital!”
“……”
Unknown forces were pouring in one after another, turning the streets into a battlefield. The captain urgently requested reinforcements. Reports from the other gates arrived in rapid succession, all confirming that a revolt had erupted.
Ludmilla first ordered the Seven Swords to defend the imperial palace, then burned with hostility as she declared she would personally annihilate the rebel forces that had assaulted the capital. She mulled over Edanant’s message about the demons’ appearance and reminded herself how grave the situation had become.
The fate of the empire now hung by a thread. As if to prove it, a fierce explosion tore through the air and a crimson pillar of fire shot skyward. It had erupted in the capital’s streets. The demons Edanant had warned about had finally launched their assault.
Pillars of fire soared from the city streets. Just how long had they been preparing this?
Edanant clicked his tongue as he watched the explosions erupt simultaneously across the city. The nobles hostile to the Valtaria imperial family had clearly colluded with the cultists. The imminent street battle—where countless troops tangled together in a scene straight out of hell—made that obvious.
“Goddammit!”
If the imperial family and the rebels clashed now, the empire would destroy itself. He had to stop it. He could not allow this to escalate into full-scale war. Yet he had no leeway to deal with the chaos unfolding in the streets. The blades of the knight-priests who worshipped the Calamity Gods had already reached his throat.
“Die, Holy Sword user.”
“In the name of the Calamity God, we will exterminate the dog of the Earth Mother.”
These foes were on an entirely different level from the enemies he had faced before. The knight-priests’ sharp blades drew elegant arcs as they aimed for his life.
He deflected the strikes, then drew his gun and took aim.
Bang! Bang!!
Gunshots rang out in rapid succession. The knight-priest who took the bullets was only pushed back for a moment.
How am I supposed to fight all these knight-priests—who are on par with the Holy Kingdom’s guardian knights—at once? Am I supposed to be some kind of Maximilian? And where the hell did these bastards even come from?
The old man watching the battle with a chilling smile was undoubtedly an Apostle of the Calamity God. Edanant furrowed his brow. Just why? How was he still alive?
After winning the racial war, the empire and the Holy Kingdom had hunted down every last follower of the Calamity Gods and wiped them out, severing their bloodline completely. The few remnants who had barely survived should have been eliminated by the Saintess Party in the latter half of the original story.
“You seem quite curious about how we managed to survive such relentless pursuit.”
“Yeah.”
Edanant answered while swinging Aldebaran in a wide arc. At the same time, one knight-priest collapsed, spraying blood.
“But I won’t tell you. The older one gets, the heavier one’s tongue becomes.”
“…Who the hell is this old bastard mocking?”
The moment the words left his mouth, another killing strike filled with murderous intent came flying. But the situation had changed completely. Edanant, who had been on the defensive against the knight-priests’ prowess, had launched a counterattack.
His swordsmanship transformed. Sharp strikes rained down simultaneously, threatening the knight-priests who had him surrounded.
The Calamity God’s forces hiding in the Chaos Realm did not know about Maximilian—the man who had always stood at the forefront of the Saintess Party. They had no countermeasures prepared against the Hero Maximilian’s sword style.
“This is dangerous. Invoke the blessings.”
Continuing the fight like this would only increase their losses. The knight-priests activated the Calamity God’s blessings without hesitation.
Blackish smoke surged upward and clung to the knight-priests. Their physical abilities and reflexes skyrocketed. Their eyes began to glow with an ominous red light.
That was not all. The sword energy they unleashed now carried the jet-black hue that symbolized the Calamity Gods.
These guys are seriously annoying. If they’d shown up in the early parts of the story, even the Saintess Party would have been in trouble. But now that Part One is over, the Saintess Party would obviously counterattack and crush them.
He felt troubled that the knight-priests had immediately gone all-out to end the fight. Yet at the same time, he saw a chance that he might be able to defeat them easily.
They didn’t know. Had they spent all their time in closed-door training inside some cave? The enemies before him lacked even the most basic information about the Saintess Party. To wrap themselves in the Calamity God’s divinity and challenge Aldebaran was nothing but suicidal ignorance.
“……!”
Edanant moved. Wielding Aldebaran, now clad in pure white radiance, he launched a fierce offensive. If he kept up the pressure, victory would be his. The knight-priests responded instantly, like veteran hunters facing a wild beast.
Slash!
The bolder the attack, the more openings it created. The knight-priests exploited those gaps and swung their blades at Edanant. His collar tore. Scratches began to multiply across his body. Though he dodged instinctively to avoid fatal blows, he would not be able to keep it up forever.
Even as the extreme offensive put him in a precarious position, Edanant did not stop. He even displayed the advanced technique of wielding the Holy Sword in a reverse grip.
“Urgh…!”
A knight-priest whose nape had been lightly sliced by the tip of the Holy Sword retreated. Pain meant nothing to him. He had suffered far worse injuries battling monsters in the Chaos Realm. The other knight-priests were the same. Each of them had sustained wounds both large and small from Edanant’s daring assault. Yet they ignored their injuries and continued pressing him.
“Cough!”
One knight-priest cried out in agony and dropped his sword. The others fared no better. They trembled violently as if poisoned and collapsed to the ground. Aldebaran’s holy power had invaded their wounds and was tearing their bodies apart from within. The Calamity God’s blessing that had been strengthening them resisted fiercely, creating a vicious backlash.
It was precisely Divine Clash.
The bodies exploded. It was not a metaphor. They burst apart like water balloons dropped from the sky—the direct result of the clash between the Creator God’s divinity and the Calamity God’s divinity. Every knight-priest who had allowed Aldebaran’s holy power inside them met a miserable end without exception.
“Using possession against Aldebaran… You lunatics. Just where the hell did you come from?”
Edanant fired a pure white slash. Taking advantage of the surviving knight-priests’ momentary retreat, he aimed straight for the Apostle of the Calamity God.