Chapter 212: The Tin Knight and The Forest of Deception (6)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 212: The Tin Knight and The Forest of Deception (6)
The black witch swung her staff.
To uncover the truth of the past.
To show the way forward for her wounded companion.
Fortunately, all the ingredients were prepared.
She drew a magic circle and gathered the souls.
The blood-red fissures of the past mingled with the witch's magic and grew.
The curtain rose on the story.
*
The Tower of Control. Its leaders held a long-cherished ambition.
To reclaim the Magic State Aeolia, a nation they once ruled.
To return to the days when a single royal family reigned, not this imperfect form with four heads.
It mattered little that the former Aeolia Kingdom and the current Magic State were entirely different nations in terms of territory and global standing.
After all, by that logic, the current Imperial Family of the Empire was merely the descendant of one of the many small kingdoms that once dotted the continent.
As long as the Magic State Aeolia was the successor to the Aeolia Kingdom, they, as the rightful heirs to the royal family, possessed the legitimacy to claim everything in the nation.
At least, that was what they believed.
And so, they built their power.
They nurtured talent, amassed wealth, and expanded their military strength.
But at the same time, they realized there was a limit to this approach.
The essence of power was initiative.
When a group united for a specific action, the one who led that action could seize power.
For the Tower of Control to take the reins of the other towers, it first needed to make the entire Magic State unite and focus on a single cause, rather than fending for themselves.
And the Tower of Control saw that path in an external threat.
That threat was the Empire.
The more the Empire bared its fangs and brandished its sharp claws at the Magic State, the more the Magic State would be forced to unite.
Once they were bound together as a single entity, it would become a matter of politics—the very field in which the Tower of Control was most confident.
And for good reason. The other towers, while possessing great power, were far from being political entities.
Foresight was full of scholars, Annihilation was full of fighters, and Protection was full of simpletons with their heads in the clouds.
While it might be different when each tower remained within its own fences, once the need to unite arose and their talents began to mix, it wouldn't be difficult to exploit the situation.
In the past, the royal family had been too weak to seize such opportunities, but now, the Tower of Control had more than enough power.
However, the most advantageous situation for the Tower of Control under this plan was ‘a state of tension where the threat of war loomed.’
In other words, an ‘actual outbreak of war’ was not what they desired.
While an actual war could be exploited in its own way, it presented far too many variables.
One day, as the tower's leadership agonized over this dilemma…
Jeras Rognir, a young man who carried the blood of the Aeolia royal family, heard of a certain plan from the tower head.
It was, in a word, a grand deception.
One: Secretly support the bandits in the borderlands between the Magic State Aeolia, the Lydia Empire, and the Ionia Kingdom, allowing them to run rampant.
Two: The targets of the bandits' plunder will include not only the Empire and the Kingdom, but the Magic State as well.
Three: When the subjugation force arrives, eliminate them along with the bandits. Secure the head of the force's leader, a member of the Lennart bloodline, and frame the Lennart family as the masterminds behind the bandits.
Four: The Tower of Control, posing as an innocent victim, will call for war and extract ‘concessions’ from the other towers that try to restrain them.
When Jeras first heard the plan, he found it difficult to comprehend.
Secretly sponsoring bandits and letting them run wild was not particularly difficult.
Even if the Magic State was plundered, the targets would be the common folk near the border, so it was no loss to the tower.
However, the part about the Lennart subjugation force arriving, only to be annihilated and framed, raised many questions.
This was especially true because the tower head spoke as if the enemy's strength and the timing of their attack were already set in stone.
From the tower head's demeanor, Jeras could guess they had joined hands with the Lennarts, but he couldn't understand why the Lennarts would agree to such a one-sided deal.
The tower head answered Jeras's unspoken question.
The truth was simple.
They weren't the only ones who wanted a war, a crisis to put the nation on edge.
The Lennart Ducal House. They, too, desired war.
The Lennarts had tried to hide the details, but the Tower of Control was not foolish enough to gamble based on someone else's word without grasping the full situation.
They deferred their answer to the Lennart proposal and gathered information separately, soon grasping the other side's circumstances.
The current Empress was openly hostile to the Lennart Ducal House. With the help of her close friend, the Witch of the South—the Empire’s Crown Mage—she was training mages in a clear move to replace the ducal family's position.
For now, the power of the Duke, the Guardian Lord of the State, and the Empress was balanced, but what if time passed and the Crown Prince came of age?
What if the enthroned Emperor wielded his power fully, ending the current precarious dual-power structure?
The radicals within the Lennart family wanted war and crisis.
They argued that if a war actually broke out, the military—and by extension, the Lennarts who controlled it—would earn great merits, making it impossible for the Imperial Family to act against them. And even if it stopped short of war, as long as the threat of the Magic State loomed, the Imperial Family couldn't possibly oust them.
Of course, not everyone in the Lennart family agreed with this insane idea.
The current family head, the Guardian Lord, was particularly lukewarm in his response to the radicals' cries.
The radicals condemned him. They called him a traitor, accusing him of being drunk on his personal position as Chancellor and neglecting the family.
The tower head explained to Jeras that the Guardian Lord, the core of the moderates, and the Council of Elders, the core of the radicals, were locked in an unseen conflict, and that the radicals were likely the ones who had initiated this proposal.
Jeras understood perfectly.
The Empire's internal strife and the Lennart family's internal disputes were of no importance to them.
What mattered was that their conflict benefited the Tower of Control.
As long as they cleanly erased all evidence from the scene, they could dismiss any future claims from their "partners" as baseless nonsense.
With a solemn expression, Jeras steeled his resolve.
He wasn't the only one participating in this operation; the other heirs were as well. This meant the outcome of this mission would be a stepping stone toward the position of the next tower head.
For the sake of that glorious throne, he was more than willing to bury a few morons who would walk into a trap, oblivious to being used.
*
The Chalice of Foresight conjured a new scene.
*
One day, not long before the date set for the ‘subjugation of the bandits who were kidnapping people across the three nations' borderlands’—a mission agreed upon by the Lennart Ducal House and the Ionia Royal Family…
The knights of the Friedel domain received a secret summons from their lord.
The lord of Friedel, renowned as the kingdom’s strongest, spoke to them.
“Officially, this mission is a simple bandit subjugation. However, His Excellency the Duke of the main family has given me a secret order. The Magic State is hiding behind these bandits. We must uncover their involvement and put a stop to their wicked scheme.”
The knights were surprised, but they soon nodded in compliance.
According to the original battle plan, the role of the Friedel domain’s army was strictly to subjugate the bandits within the kingdom's borders.
But the Duke's secret order required them to cross the border and enter the territory of the Magic State.
There, they were to rendezvous with the Imperial army, which would also be crossing the border.
The outline of the operation was to subjugate both the bandits and their Magic State puppets.
It was an operation that was politically explosive, regardless of its military implications, yet none of the knights objected.
On the contrary, some even welcomed this ‘secret operation.’
The Friedel domain’s army took pride in being the kingdom's strongest force, and they were filled with rage toward the bandits who plundered and kidnapped innocent people.
If the Magic State was truly behind such bandits, they had to be made to pay the price.
They believed this without a shred of doubt.
…If.
If, at that moment, they had been able to question the authenticity of the ‘Duke’s secret order,’ the fate that awaited them might have been different.
But the lord of Friedel, though an outstanding warrior, was far too upright and simple in nature.
His knights, too, revered their lord and focused purely on honing their chivalry and martial arts, having little to do with schemes or politics.
And by the time they realized their mistake, it was already too late.
Arriving at the rendezvous point, they found not the Imperial army they were supposed to meet, but a fully armed bandit group.
In the midst of their battle with the bandits, a feast of attack spells rained down upon their heads.
Only after witnessing the bandit leader screaming of betrayal with a look of despair, and experiencing the hellfire that swept down as if to annihilate everyone present, friend or foe, did they realize something was terribly wrong.
Amidst the pandemonium of the battlefield.
The kingdom’s strongest sword, who had been single-handedly holding off dozens of mages, commanded his knights.
To retreat.
To return to their home, Friedel, and report what had happened here.
They still didn't know exactly what was happening.
Whether Duke Lennart had betrayed them or there had been some mistake, nothing was certain.
But this much they knew.
If they were all annihilated here, their homeland would once again fall into a tragic situation.
Their lovers, their families, their parents would be used by someone, just as they had been, without knowing a thing.
That, at least, had to be prevented.
They had made a mistake.
They had failed.
But at the very least, those left behind could not suffer the same fate.
But their struggle was in vain.
The conspiracy surrounding them, and the ones weaving its threads, were too immense to be broken by the struggles and valor of mere knights.
And so, their story ended, never to be told to anyone.
*
Had the witch who commanded souls and the chalice that read the past not been here.
A story that should never have been told, was told.
*
And then.
A flame ignited in the golden lion's violet eyes.