Chapter 13
Chapter 13
The spar was temporarily halted to treat Darius’s injured leg.
Watching it together with Parsi, I grew a little hungry, so I went down to the banquet hall and spent the time eating.
“…….”
As I did, I could feel gazes from all directions fixed on me.
Where there should have been feelings of contempt and disgust, interest and curiosity had newly taken root.
‘Not bad.’
At least here, there was no one calling me a cursed prince or the child of a prostitute.
Of course, completely erasing that stigma would be a matter for later.
“Then, we will begin.”
The third spar was my turn against Darius.
Perhaps his injury had fully healed, because he stood before me with a healthy complexion and once again let out a sharp aura.
…For some reason, he looked even more energetic than when he faced Carius.
[Do you have a way?]
Tyrfing, who had shown no interest until just a moment ago, casually asked.
Like I said earlier, I did have a hidden move.
I didn’t want to use it, but considering the gap between us, I would be forced to.
‘Even so, I want to clash at least once.’
The one who had tormented Leios the most directly was the fourth prince, August, but behind that were Carius and Darius.
If Carius had done it just for fun, Darius genuinely disliked Leios. Later on, he had even tried to kill him.
You could say it was because of the setting, but it was an undeniable fact that my chest had felt stifled, like eating sweet potatoes without water, every time I watched it.
Whirik—
Unlike his spar with Carius, Darius did not rush in with overwhelming momentum.
Like a seasoned hunter, he simply circled slowly, looking for an opening to cut off my breath in a single strike.
“…….”
The pressure emanating from him made my breathing grow increasingly ragged. If I showed even the slightest opening, he would pounce like lightning and tear out my throat.
As I had with August, I calmed my mind and focused on the system assist, but perhaps because my concentration wavered, nothing appeared before my eyes.
Paaat—!
Just as the standoff continued for a moment, when I blinked once because sweat dripped down from my forehead, I saw Darius rushing in along with the sound of air being cleaved.
‘Damn it!’
I had been focusing too much on his movements.
My reaction was a beat late, but Leios’s body barely managed to block the surprise attack.
Kang—!
As I blocked the sword Darius swung, a throbbing pain traveled up through my wrist.
In the martial arts novels I had read, the so-called masters would twist their bodies to disperse such force, but that was a distant matter for me now.
“Now it begins. Did I look as easy as August?”
When our swords met, Darius spoke to me with a terrifying expression.
I nearly got goosebumps at the madness flickering in his eyes.
This crazy bastard—he’s serious.
Thud!
Darius stepped forward forcefully. Using that momentum, he knocked aside the blades pressed together and burrowed back into my guard.
Slash—!
Several sword strikes were unleashed in an instant.
I barely blocked a few, but the area around my chest was sliced by his blade.
It must have been shallow, because I wasn’t wounded, but my heart dropped at the thought that with even a moment’s mistake, I could have been slashed across the chest.
“Show me that swordsmanship you used earlier.”
The Flower of Battle (Fiore di Battaglia).
He was demanding that I unfold the Fiore Style.
But I didn’t.
No—more accurately, I couldn’t.
Shamefully enough, without Tyrfing’s help, drawing out mana, let alone unfolding the Fiore Style, was impossible.
‘I’m truly powerless.’
Powerless, and my teeth ground at that powerlessness. I talked big, yet without the help of the demonic sword, I couldn’t even display a single technique.
If the one standing here were not me but the real Leios, he would have fought Darius far more splendidly and claimed victory.
But I was nothing more than someone wearing Leios’s shell.
“If you won’t come, then I will.”
Woom—
An unusual energy settled into his sword. It was a weight on a completely different level from the aura of August, who had been a sword user.
A crushing pressure pressed down on my entire body from all sides.
Swish.
I raised one hand. Seeing that, Darius bared a ferocious smile, as if asking whether I had finally found the will to fight, and swelled his momentum even further.
Without wavering in the face of his fierce aura, I used my hidden means.
“I forfeit.”
“…What?”
Darius looked at me with a bewildered expression.
The nobles watching the spar wore the same look.
With faces full of disbelief, they looked at one another and asked if they had heard correctly, so I drove the point home once more.
“I forfeit.”
Now that the difference in strength was clear, continuing the fight would be nothing but reckless bravado. If I got injured, it would obviously be my loss.
No matter how cleanly it could be healed, I didn’t want to be in pain.
“Winner, His Highness Prince Darius von Ribera!”
As murmurs gradually arose and the venue grew noisy, a Royal Knights knight who had received the emperor’s signal delivered the verdict.
Without hesitation, I turned my body and stepped off the stage.
“Bastard!”
From behind me, Darius’s roar came crashing in. When I glanced back, he was glaring at me with a terrifying expression.
“Do you truly have no pride in the name of Ribera!”
Ribera was the strongest and greatest name on the Artenia Continent.
Darius was condemning me for fleeing despite bearing such a name.
The other nobles nearby likewise nodded in agreement, sending looks of disappointment and contempt my way.
“Why do you think I lack pride.”
“What did you say?”
At my retort, Darius asked back in a sharp voice. I answered him with a cold sneer.
“I sincerely hope, as your younger brother, that you take a long, hard look at whether it is not you yourself who lacks pride in Ribera. Even if our mothers are different, as someone once said, we still share the same name of Ribera.”
“······.”
Perhaps he had never imagined I would say such a thing, because Darius stared at me with a blank expression.
The nobles, too, were visibly flustered.
I found all of it nothing but loathsome.
In the end, it was they who had created the monster called Leios.
All the spars came to an end.
After sparring with Darius, Leios also declared forfeiture in his match against Carius, and as a result, two losses piled up.
But he did not mind at all. After all, there had been that single victory he took from August.
Carius claimed total victory.
Darius suffered one loss in his spar with Carius, and August was completely defeated.
The four princes lined up before the emperor.
While the others’ expressions were calm, the fourth prince, August, was unable to hide his dazed look, as if he still had not escaped from his defeat at Leios’s hands.
“As promised, speak of what you desire.”
The emperor said this to Carius, who had achieved total victory.
At those words, Carius opened his mouth with a faint smile.
“Please appoint me as Crown Prince.”
“······!”
At that, not only Darius and August but even the nobles stirred.
The position of Crown Prince was still vacant. The emperor had delayed the appointment, saying that it was not a seat one could take merely by being the eldest, but one that required fitting ability.
“Hmm······.”
At the audacious request, the emperor fell into brief silence with a faint smile.
Carius likewise maintained his smile, but the fist he clenched below trembled finely.
“The Crown Prince, you say. Is that not too heavy a seat to decide merely because you won a spar.”
“···Is that so.”
At the emperor’s words, the other princes and the nobles belonging to their factions let out sighs of relief, while the nobles of Carius’s faction let out small sighs of regret.
“Anything else?”
“There is nothing.”
At the resolute answer, the emperor nodded with a satisfied expression.
“The Crown Prince is too much, but giving something halfhearted would also be lacking.”
After thinking for a moment, he nodded as if a good idea had occurred to him.
“How about one of my territories. A place called Düsseldorf—you must have heard of it.”
“······!”
At the name Düsseldorf, the eyes of nearly everyone present, including August, widened like lanterns.
“Your Majesty, that place is······.”
A noble close to the emperor hurriedly spoke up in protest, but the emperor dismissed it with a light wave of his hand.
“It is my land. Is it not my will to do with it as I please.”
“···Your grace is boundless.”
Carius knelt on the spot and bowed to the emperor.
Düsseldorf.
It was a place that held the empire’s largest mithril mine.
Every year, one-fifth of the mithril released into the empire came from Düsseldorf, and that alone brought in astronomical income, making it the choicest of prime territories.
To give such a place to Carius was, in a way, an even more certain token than promising the seat of Crown Prince with words alone.
“It is only right that those who seize victory receive a reward. What do you desire?”
“Me as well?”
The emperor now turned his gaze to the second prince, Darius.
Caught off guard, he looked flustered, but soon, as if making up his mind, he hesitantly continued.
“···I desire Your Majesty’s guidance.”
“Ho?”
Darius desperately wracked his brains, pondering what would be most beneficial, and soon arrived at a conclusion.
The emperor’s guidance.
Aside from public duties, the emperor devoted all his time to his own training.
No one dared to meet him privately, and that applied equally even to his sons, the princes.
That was why Darius wanted time with him.
“That, too, is excessive.”
But the words that followed were negative.
As Darius lightly bit his lip, the emperor nodded with an indifferent expression.
“Well, it should not matter much. I will send word in the near future.”
“I am deeply grateful.”
Though it was not immense wealth like his brother’s, at gaining time alone with the emperor, Darius quietly clenched his fist.
“To you as well, who claimed victory even once, opportunity should be fair. Is there something you desire?”
And now the turn passed beyond the two brothers to the third, Leios von Ribera.
In truth, the nobles rarely had the chance to see him.
Leios had avoided public activities, and only foul rumors had spread, so that was all they had known.
Among the nobles gathered here, there were even those seeing his face for the first time.
And now that all the spars were over, some nobles thought that the rumors had been wrong.
The child of a prostitute, the cursed prince, the height of incompetence.
Leios von Ribera’s handsome appearance and the talent settled within his very being were in no way inferior to the other princes.
Not only had he splendidly defeated August, but he had also managed, if only briefly, to withstand the second prince Darius’s sword.
In particular, there were even those who were impressed by the sight of him calmly brushing aside Darius’s anger-filled provocation at the end of the second spar.
“···I.”
Everyone focused on his words.
The first prince Carius, the second prince Darius, and even the many nobles lined up behind them.
What, indeed, would he demand.
Would he ask that the oppression and discrimination he had endured thus far be erased, and that his authority as a prince be established.
Or would he, like the first prince Carius, ask for immense wealth.
If one had to choose, his answer was closer to the latter.
“Please open the Imperial Palace Treasury to me.”