My Slain Dragon Bride

Chapter 254. One Choice or the Other

Dear citizens of the Empire!

The reason we have gathered here today is because countless stars have fallen.

The Heinkel Kingdom was manipulated by the forces of evil, and they chose their own greed over God and humanity.

History was meant to be a textbook written so that we would not repeat the same mistakes, yet they ignored the records written in the blood of their ancestors.

As a result, we lost countless knights and soldiers.

But what grieves me most is that the greatest star has fallen.

My bravest younger brother, a great hero who could not tolerate injustice, drew his sword and marched onto the battlefield. He met his death at the hands of the Demon Race.

My beautiful younger sister, Olivia, was overcome with grief and wept bitterly on the spot.

Those who remembered his bravery were enraged.

Therefore, I, Alexander Arken, will proudly declare this here today.

Citizens of the Empire!

We have risen upon the blood and flesh of our ancestors and now live in an age of prosperity.

We must never forget that the land overflowing with abundant grain was cultivated with the blood of invaders and the blood of those who were once someone’s children and fathers, used as fertilizer for the soil.

Remember that the blood of our ancestors who fought against injustice flows through your veins.

Our enemies are hiding in the darkness.

We thought that those hiding in places untouched by the light were merely remnants of those who had already been defeated.

Look at what we have lost because of that complacency!

Our mistakes have led so many people to their deaths!

What is it that we must do?

It is the Light of Alte.

Under the Light of Alte, everything is judged fairly, and the weak are protected.

We must show the Demon Race just how magnificent that light truly is.

We must shatter every shadow in which they can hide from the light and eradicate their very bloodline.

This mission shall continue until the seeds of the Demon Race are eradicated, in honor of my younger brother, Ureas Arken, the great Supreme Commander.

Long live the Arken Empire!

Long live!

My father, His Imperial Majesty!

Long live!

Citizens of the Empire!

Long live!

***

"Alexander has outright declared war."

It was ironic.

Just when he had set out for the Heinkel Kingdom, Alexander had been the most dangerous factor capable of threatening the position of Crown Prince.

For Alexander, whose rival had died, he must have been pleased that his younger brother was gone.

Moreover, he must have been extremely satisfied that he could make use of his brother’s death.

The murder of a member of the Imperial Family was an incident and justification that could never be ignored.

It gave Alexander’s anger an unquestionable legitimacy that allowed for no other interpretation.

The only person who had survived after shedding Imperial blood was Valdrova.

Several facts could be discerned from this lengthy speech.

’The nobles have reached the moment when they must choose one of two sides.’

Ever since the Doppler incident, there had been no reliable means of clearly distinguishing Dopplers, resulting in repeated false accusations and purges.

There were also those who sought to exploit the chaos, and the person who made the best use of it was Grand Duke Golt.

He had shown every intention of expanding and consolidating his forces under his command.

If Akard Dvelung had not been dealt with, there was a very high possibility that the Empire would have come under the Grand Duke’s control.

Alexander, who had been caught holding a weakness, also seemed to have been handled as one of Grand Duke Golt’s subordinates.

But something unexpected had happened.

Ureas had died.

Since he was a pure warmonger, he had never taken a consort.

Countless illegitimate children had been born through his numerous conquests, but every one of those children had been eliminated before reaching the age of three.

It was as though the Imperial bloodline was that important to him; he showed no mercy.

Thanks to that, Ureas’s bloodline no longer remained, and Alexander gained a justification to be reinstated as Crown Prince.

They say that even a rat will bite a cat when cornered, don’t they?

Alexander had also become much more ruthless because of this incident.

Once the confrontation between the two sides had taken shape, he seemed to have decided to drive a nail into the coffin once and for all.

There was a reason he could be so brazen.

’Count Rooster.’

It was said that Count Rooster had been ordered to arrange Ureas’s death.

Although Count Rooster had ultimately lost his own life instead, the fact that such a plot had existed was undeniable.

And that rumor had begun circulating among the nobles.

If it had been only a month ago, it would have been dismissed as nothing more than a common rumor, but the nobles now seemed to believe that there was credibility to it.

Ordering the assassination of a member of the Imperial Family could be punished regardless of the reason or rank of the person behind it.

Even if that person was the great Grand Duke Golt.

’That is why Alexander is acting so boldly.’

Alexander was forcing them to choose.

Would they bow their heads before the Grand Duke, or would they join him?

’Normally, they would go with Grand Duke Golt.’

But the situation had reached a point where they could not simply ignore the rumor, making it impossible to blindly support him.

That was also why the memorial ceremonies were being held almost simultaneously.

’In that sense, Grand Duke Golt is truly an extraordinary man.’

Akard Dvelung and Oldin Rooster, who had been his right-hand men, were dead.

The brutal deaths of the two men who had represented his military strength and ability to resolve matters meant that a significant void had been created.

Had he been any other duke or noble, they might have abandoned him without hesitation.

Valdemar Golt.

A descendant of a former war hero, and now an even greater Grand Duke.

The man, whose past reputation had been combined with his present prestige, enjoyed overwhelming support from the citizens.

Among the nobility, the senior elders fawned over him, while ambitious young nobles openly displayed their aspirations in hopes of becoming his trusted followers.

The support of the nobility was certainly important, but Ferda was different.

The most important thing was, of course, which way the support of the Alte Religion, the state religion, would lean.

’It seems the church is leaning toward Alexander.’

For now, it would be difficult for them to demonstrate their influence.

Their credibility had already been damaged after it was revealed that the Pope had been a pawn of the Demon Race.

To regain the people’s faith, they needed someone whose identity was beyond question, someone devout who could become the face of the church.

That person was Olivia.

Everyone in the nation already knew that she never lost her smile and devoted herself to helping the weak.

No matter how deeply one dug into her past, only tales of virtue emerged, while the occasional flaws were regarded as signs of the humanity she still possessed.

The clergy calculated that if she became qualified to be a Saintess, there would be less resistance when attempting to transform the Empire into a theocracy.

The leaders of the church must also have guessed that Olivia was using her innocent appearance as a mask.

’But they won’t be able to fathom how deep it goes.’

They would not even realize that the fact that she had understood them was itself the result of several layers of planning.

Olivia would have them all rolling around in the palm of her hand.

’As expected, if the Empire is to be shaken, Grand Duke Golt must fall.’

How could he land a decisive blow against that old man?

He was thinking about that when—

"I greet the Regent. Mejina Pallange of the Merchants’ Guild offers her respects."

Garnet Swallow—or rather, Mejina Pallange of the Merchants’ Guild—politely bowed.

The woman who could be called the face of the merchants approached him politely, dressed in the clothing of the wealthy upper class.

"These are the minutes from the latest regular Citizen’s Meeting. I will also provide you with a separate summary, so if there are any problematic sections, you may address them to the Administrator."

"The Administrator must be very busy."

"The refugee issue has become quite troublesome now that discrimination has been added to the mix."

That was nothing unusual.

Someone who was genuinely that busy would never use it as an excuse to send a representative.

As expected.

Among the documents was a sheet of paper bearing a conspicuous black label.

A black mark.

It meant that this was a document being delivered not by Mejina Pallange, the head of the Merchants’ Guild, but by Garnet Swallow, the leader of the Shadow Division that operated in the darkness.

Documents delivered in her capacity as the Shadow Division’s leader were on an entirely different level from the ordinary complaints and trivial matters that merchants usually brought forward.

"You are aware that the Magitech Rifles and ammunition have gone missing, correct?"

It was something Garnet had mentioned before.

When the siege of the Heinkel Kingdom had ended and they had begun the cleanup, they discovered that several rifles had disappeared.

In a war where soldiers advanced while stepping over corpses, it was only natural for military supplies to disappear.

But the disappearance she was talking about was different.

She was referring to the reserve supplies that had been loaded onto automobiles in preparation for an emergency.

Unless the objects had grown legs, they could not simply run away on their own.

It was undoubtedly theft.

Ferda quietly nodded.

"We have finished tracing the entire route through which they were leaked."

Ferda looked satisfied upon hearing that.

"The bait took the hook."

Ferda had promised to supply enough Magitech weapons to organize Ureas’s personal guard.

He had made it sound as though he was only giving them the weapons because he had been pressured into doing so, but from the beginning, those Magitech weapons had been scheduled to disappear through this siege.

They were the weapons receiving the most attention in the Empire, and experienced commanders had learned their value through actual combat.

Therefore, even if it meant risking their lives, they would have tried to secure those weapons.

Ferda had deliberately leaked them for two major reasons.

’Innovation.’

History was truly a strange thing.

Looking back, the past was so primitive that one could hardly believe such an era had ever existed.

When looking into the history of mages, there had been a time when Fourth-Tier Magic, Magic Blast, was praised as the magic of the gods.

But as they reached higher realms, people now believed that Eighth Circle Magic was the highest realm humanity could reach.

’Knowledge was exactly like that.’

Destroying the world I knew and constructing an entirely new one.

If that knowledge spread beyond the exclusive possession of the nobility and reached even the lower classes, the situation would become extremely chaotic.

What the Empire needed, after enduring for so long upon the pillars of the past, was a powerful shock.

"So, did we get any results?"

"It remains to be seen whether the results are truly meaningful, but they certainly went in the direction you wanted, Lord Ferda."

"You mean they did not fall into the hands of the Imperial Palace or the great nobles."

"Yes. They moved toward the sewers in the slums."

The reason they had taken the Magitech Rifles was presumably to dismantle them, steal their technology, and develop their own weapons.

It was the most dangerous of crimes, and even the slightest involvement could result in the extermination of three generations of a family.

They could not act carelessly and risk implicating someone from the upper class.

Therefore, they would conduct their research under the guise of a criminal organization so that scapegoating would be easy if the operation were exposed.

And if they entered the slums, it would be ideal.

’Even if a massive explosion were to engulf them, it wouldn’t be the nobles who died.’

Human life was truly this cheap and meaningless.

"So, did you succeed in identifying those organizations?"

Ferda asked.

He spoke with an extremely confident expression, as though the question itself were an insult.

"Yes. We have recorded the identities of the local gangs and everyone involved in the research without exception."

Ferda had not expected much.

Just because one filled a fish trap with bait, did that mean a large fish would be caught?

Even if there were fish inside the trap, he read through the list expecting nothing more than minnows.

That was why—

"Hm?"

Ferda found a result that satisfied him.

He had caught an enormous fish.

’This is why I carried out the leak operation.’

They said that geniuses capable of overturning an entire era occasionally appeared in Escolleia.

But a true genius could shine even in a sewer filled with filth.

"Is there anyone who catches your attention?"

"There is."

Ferda remembered a woman from before his regression.

Back when Vernel Marquis was ambitiously using Magitech products to manufacture nothing more than household goods, she was a pioneer who weaponized Magitech in earnest.

The woman who created the first Magitech grenade.

Using parts she had assembled from a garbage dump, that woman created a high-explosive weapon capable of assassinating nobles.

When she was arrested, the woman called herself—

’Gáe Bolg.’

A spear that could pierce through everything, she claimed.

Later, she would become the Godmother of Crime, whose existence would shake the entire Cerdes Continent.

Read more here - Apexnovelhub.com