Chapter 270 : Chapter 270
Chapter 270 : O King, May You Enjoy an Era of Peace and Prosperity (3)
"Please come here, Your Majesty."
As he sat and weakly gestured with his hand, his voice was completely drained of vitality. It was to the point that it was difficult to listen to.
Lucian blinked blankly and pointlessly checked Batz's reaction next to him. Although he did not exactly have a similar memory, he thought that if he had a grandfather ravaged by illness, he would look exactly like that old man's current appearance.
"C-Chief Official....... Is it really you?"
Lucian cautiously took a step. He tried hard to look away from the coachman's severed head sprawled on the ground and approached as if possessed.
"Heh heh, who else would it be but me."
The majesty of the bigwig who had shaken this country just until this morning was nowhere to be found. Sitting on the tree stump, he looked precarious and pathetic, as if he would scatter and vanish into the cold night air at any moment.
"......Chief Official. Now, this prank—no, right. Please end this test here. You planned all this to raise me strong in time for the coronation ceremony, didn't you? Right? Yeah, I fully understand your intention. I've truly realized many things to my bones. So please, let's stop, okay? Let's go back to the royal palace now."
"......"
"Ah! Or is it that? A stratagem to purge that bitch Adel! Purposely inducing treason to set a trap and completely uprooting them at this opportunity...... Right? Am I right!"
A strange chuckle spread across Zisair's mouth as he gazed intently at Lucian. Following that, Batz, who was leaning against the carriage, cackled in response......
Soon, as if they had made a promise, the two men's shoulders heaved as they began to laugh uproariously.
"Hahahahahahahaha!"
Could the sound of laughter sound this terrifying? Having such a thought, Lucian studied the two men's moods. His neck could not help but shrink back like a turtle's.
"This too must be a talent and a blessing."
Zisair said, blowing air out of his nose. The laughter gradually dried up.
"God did not permit Your Majesty whole legs, but instead gave you a soul purer than anyone else's."
TAP—
Zisair placed his hand on Lucian's hunched shoulder.
"Only such a soul can embrace a great heart capable of cursing the entire world."
"A g-great heart......? Me......?"
The corners of Lucian's mouth twitched slightly. The sweet modifier of 'great' heavily filled his empty self-esteem.
Instead of pointing out such a foolish reaction, Zisair rather smiled benevolently as he looked at him. His profound gaze was as warm as a saint guiding a lost lamb.
"I have prepared the final stratagem."
Only then did Lucian's eyes widen. A bright complexion returned to his entire face.
As expected, there was no way this was all the end.
"You must listen carefully, Your Majesty."
Lucian quickly sat up straight. After letting out a few dry coughs, Zisair slowly opened his mouth.
"Do not become a King, but an Emperor."
"......! E-Emperor? You mean the Emperor, of the Empire......?"
Zisair slowly closed and opened his eyelids.
"As I see it, this Kingdom's unity is more fragile than a sandcastle, so it needs to be rebuilt. Something like today's event is ultimately a farce that occurred on such a flimsy foundation. Even if it were not this time, it was a misfortune that was bound to erupt someday, in some way."
Lucian nodded vigorously. He did not care about the other complex political situations. He was simply so glad it brought him to tears that Zisair's diagnosis attributed the ruin of his coronation ceremony to the Kingdom's inherently flawed system, rather than his own incompetence.
"I feel like I'm going to go crazy from the anger and injustice! When I bestowed so much mercy upon them......! Those ungrateful animal bastards dare stab me in the back? These sons of bitches wouldn't be enough to satisfy me even if I chewed them up—!"
Lucian firmly believed that this entire disaster was a treason carefully designed by Adeline and Gunt from a very long time ago.
"Curse of the crown? Hmph! Tell them to go fuck themselves! That kind of stuff is just an absurd ghost story babbled by those sewer rats!"
A shrewd guy like Gunt would be more than capable of exploiting the public's superstitions. With skills on the level of the Imperial Magic Corps Commander, casting a clever illusion magic on the crown to deceive the eyes of the crowd would have been nothing.
"What a pitiful and pathetic child."
Lucian's trembling fist came to an abrupt halt. His head turned to the side.
The old man's gaze was as pitiful as his low, sunken voice.
"Deformed, incomplete, and without even getting a chance to mature....... You were thrown out alone into a cruel world far too early."
"......"
Lucian had always been alone, and a sinner from the moment he was born.
To his father, the previous king, a child was either a tool to uphold the throne or a stumbling block to be cleared away.
A son who could not even stand on his own two feet despite killing his mother in childbirth was merely a failed byproduct in the eyes of a madness-soaked usurper.
"C-Chief Official......"
Lucian's eyes turned bright red. The acknowledgment of a father he had craved his entire life—that thirst heated his chest.
In a world that had always been unkind to him, his mental barriers crumbled at the unconditional sympathy and comfort from a man old enough to be his father, whom he had faced for the first time.
"May I hug you one last time?"
Zisair opened his arms. Lucian curled his body up as much as he could and burrowed into his embrace like a puppy meeting its owner.
"......It's warm. It's incredibly warm."
With his face buried in Zisair's shoulder, Lucian finally burst into sobbing, hiccuping.
"Ah, yes....... Cry to your heart's content. Once those tears all dry up, Your Majesty will be equipped with the majesty of an Emperor that no one will dare covet."
After shedding tears to his heart's content, Lucian barely pulled his face away.
Zisair extended his hand to Lucian. Resting on his palm was a black half-sphere. Its smooth surface absorbed the moonlight, gleaming wickedly.
"What...... is that?"
Lucian asked in a hoarse voice. Instead of answering, Zisair forcefully placed the black half-sphere in his hand and folded his fingers one by one, making him grip it tightly.
"Consider it the final calling this disloyal subject offers to Your Majesty."
"......Chief Official?"
"I have already told Batz everything about what comes next—"
Lucian looked back in bewilderment. Batz nonchalantly shrugged his shoulders once.
Just then, a sound of breath abruptly stopping was heard. Lucian's head hurriedly turned back around.
"......Please achieve an era of peace and prosperity."
Zisair's head dropped. Lucian wailed and shook the old man's bony shoulders wildly.
He did not even realize that the half-gemstone he had gripped in both hands had vanished without a trace.
***
"Do you know the origin of 'Defying the Heavens'?"
"As a rule, a man risks his life for someone who recognizes his worth."
"I had three such people."
"My father, who was the family head, the Emperor of the Empire, and Aria."
"They were all people like the sky to me."
"I had promised a lifetime together with Aria."
"But was it a trick of the heavens that she caught the Emperor's eye of all people and was chosen as a concubine?"
"To find out whether it was heaven's mandate or a scheme, I had no choice but to jump over the Imperial Palace's walls."
"In a single night, I severed the necks of three hundred Imperial Guards. It's a bit awkward to say this with my own mouth, but it was an unprecedented incident."
"Not since the ancient Empire, whose records have been erased, would the gardens of the Imperial Palace have ever been dyed so red."
"I reached the front of the Emperor's bedchamber in one breath."
"But what I faced there wasn't the Emperor and his royal guards."
Don't tell me—
"Yeah, that's right. It was Aria, who had already grown cold. Choosing death over enduring disgrace, that is the spirit of the Empire's women. It's different. Unlike the faithless ones in the Kingdom."
"Anyway."
"After that, my memory is hazy. Even now."
"When I suddenly came to my senses, the barrier of the Imperial Capital, known as the Sky Path, was collapsing right before my eyes."
"By the single sword held in my hand, that is."
"That is why this body came to be called the Martial Artist of Defying the Heavens."
......Cool. If only I had that kind of power too!
"The collar Zisair put on me?"
"Do you know this? Surprisingly, dogs tied to a collar are happy."
"The exhaustion of having to find one's own path, the agony of having to take responsibility for one's choices—"
"All you have to do is shift it all onto the master."
"Only those who have experienced it know how tranquil a life it is to just look at the tips of the master's fingers and swallow only the permitted joy."
"Perhaps that's why......"
"I took the bait on that sweet proposal."
"To rebuild the world."
"If the heavens took your lover away, let's create a new world completely without heavens."
"If it's a place filled with the screams of the living, let's instead build a peaceful paradise where the dead are the masters."
"Therefore, Your Majesty, listen closely."
"This is a funeral for Aria."
His eyes snapped open abruptly. His consciousness, which had been drifting across a boundless ocean, seemed to suddenly find its place.
'A dream......? N-No!'
It was the opposite. He was forcibly tumbled into reality from a dream that felt like he would never wake from.
'......!'
What unfolded before the awakened Lucian's eyes was—
A massive wave of the Shadow Legion, undulating endlessly beyond the horizon.
A black ocean that swallowed the earth was churning vastly.
'B-Batz!'
Below his neck felt chilly. It was a sense of foreignness that was hard to describe.
What entered his vision was an unfamiliar breastplate speckled with silver.
'What is this......?!'
His gaze moved slowly as if swimming through the air. It was independent of his own will.
Only then did Lucian realize.
The fact that his head was resting upon the cross-section of the Headless Spectral Knight's severed neck.
"O King—"
Embers that would not die out surged over the blackened cloak.
From atop those burning shoulders, Lucian looked down.
Batz was kneeling on one knee and looking up at him. The Shadow Legion spread out behind him surged like a black tsunami. He felt like he would suffocate at that overwhelming sight.
"May you achieve an era of peace and prosperity."
Batz stood up and placed a helmet over Lucian's head.
CLANK!
The metallic sound swallowed Lucian's final death throe.
Just like that, the King of Embers was born.
***
My eyelids stung.
'......'
The low chirping of birds tickled my ears. What brushed past the tip of my nose was the smell of wet dirt.
'Did it rain last night?'
After raising my upper body, I interlocked my fingers and stretched my hands hard toward the sky.
CRACK!
It felt like death. I didn't even know how many days it had been since I started sleeping rough in the middle of this field with just a single cloak spread out.
'I severely miss Janson and Bill, the masters of camping.'
I let out a long yawn and scratched the back of my neck. I looked around. Well, there were no abnormalities last night.
I stood up from my seat and silently stared at the full view of Grimbalt Prison submerged in the fog below the hill.
'......'
'It's about time they show up. The Solari friends are taking care of the underground and putting in the hard work for now, but—'
'There's only one path for those bastards to come out.'
'Grimbalt Prison.'
'Meaning that very Grimbalt Prison is the gateway to hell that will spew out the swarm of Demonic Beasts.'
'The problem is when that gate will open.'
I suddenly turned my head and looked behind me.
'......'
Was it an auditory hallucination? It felt like the faint sound of bells had flown in from the Imperial Capital, riding the wind.
'......It should be around this time on that side too.'
Adeline's coronation ceremony. Not a farce stained with the blood of a fake, but the real coronation ceremony where the rightful owner finally takes her proper place.
I closed my eyelids.
I wondered what kind of expression that blunt and clumsy young lady would be making right about now.
Whether that face of hers, usually as cold as frost, would be warmly melted all day long, at least on a day like today.
A breathtakingly splendid formal attire, and the golden crown that would settle down even heavier than that.
The melodies, cheers, and grand shouts that would echo throughout the hall.
And Adeline, who would be shining nobly all alone above all that commotion.
'I miss her.'
I opened my eyes.
The wind blowing from the Imperial Capital shook my hair as it passed by. Could there be an answer more pleasant to hear than this?
"......Revere the Queen, and protect her country."
I recited it.
The first rule among the chivalry the old knight from my past life had told me. And it was also the last remaining rule for me, which I had not yet been able to realize in this life.
The rumbling of the ground beneath my feet gradually grew more violent.
Just then, the fog cleared and it began to reveal itself.
A black wave was swallowing Grimbalt Prison.
"O King."
I readjusted my grip on the hilt of my sword.
"May you enjoy an era of peace and prosperity."
I could no longer hear the bells of the Imperial Capital.