Chapter 49 Prince Scheme
Chapter 49 Prince Scheme
Saint Solenne let out a long, weary exhale, the warm breath floating into the crisp morning air like a fading ghost.
"Another hero summoning...?" Solenne murmured, her holy mask wavering with genuine fatigue. "Your Highness, does the Valerium Empire truly require more otherworldly strength? We already possess the grand standing armies, the elite holy order, and the legacy of previous champions. Is our continent's military might not already more than enough?"
Prince Damien's lips curved into a sharp, lopsided smile. He took a subtle step closer, closing the distance until his golden coat almost brushed against her white robes.
He leaned down, bowing his head toward the side of her face. "Enough?" he whispered into her ear, his voice dropping into a raspy, venomous register that only she was meant to hear. "No, my dear Saintess... it is never enough. These 'heroes' from beyond the rift... they are not savior entities to us. They are immaculate, infinitely reusable tools of war. Tools meant to elevate our empire into absolute dominion."
A shudder ran down Solenne's spine. A look of visceral disgust flickered across her eyes, but before she could step back, Damien straightened up, smoothing the front of his velvet coat as if he had merely offered a polite greeting.
Standing a few feet away beside the carriage, Rael's eyes narrowed slightly.
(Tools of war, huh?) Rael thought, his curiosity spiking to an absolute peak.
The moment Damien had leaned in to whisper, Rael had casually channeled a fraction of his passive sensory perception. Without casting a single spell or raising any magical alarms, his hearing had magnified tenfold, allowing Damien's quiet, poisonous words to echo clearly in his ears as if spoken through a megaphone.
(Summoning heroes from another world to use as disposable military weapons...) Rael analyzed internally, his mind racing. (If they're summoning people from other realms, does that mean they're pulling ordinary humans from Earth? Or are they pulling entities from game dimensions like Echoes of Eternity? Either way, this imperial family is playing with forces way beyond their depth.)
Damien studied Solenne's frozen, disgusted reaction with an amused grin.
"Do not look at me with such judgment, Saint," Damien spoke in a hushed, casual tone, stepping close once more. "This is not merely my personal desire. It is the explicit command of my father, the Emperor. He wishes for the grand summoning ritual to commence without further delay. And I am merely here to deliver the message... to make sure you do not keep His Majesty waiting. Understand?"
Damien narrowed his bright blue eyes, leaning in one last time, his breath brushing against the shell of her ear.
"Or perhaps..." Damien whispered, his voice dripping with sinister malice, "...you would prefer for chaos to erupt within the Holy City of Valethia? Perhaps you'd prefer for the crown to strip you of your title and replace you with a far more obedient puppet? You are a smart woman, Solenne. You know precisely whether you have the luxury to disobey my father or not."
Solenne's hands trembled beneath her wide white sleeves.
The memory of the Emperor Damien's father loomed over her mind like a suffocating nightmare. Decades ago, the Emperor had been a core member of the legendary Hero Party that set out to subjugate the Demon King. Yet, through circumstances shrouded in dark suspicion, only two men had ever returned alive from that final, fateful expedition: the Emperor himself, and the party's strongest vanguard, Kael the Sword Saint.
Solenne's eyes drifted past Damien's shoulder, locking onto the tall, silver-haired knight standing silently in heavy plate armor.
Kael. The former hero who had once slain monsters with radiant, unmatched swordplay.
Now, he stood like a hollow, lifeless corpse. His pale face was emotionless, his posture mechanically rigid, and his striking green eyes were completely devoid of a soul like a broken marionette whose strings were held tightly by the Imperial Family. The Emperor had recently bestowed this legendary, hollowed champion to Prince Damien as a personal guard, a terrifying display of absolute dominance. The eerie, ice-blue mana wafting from Kael's broadsword served as a tragic reminder of a hero reduced to a leash-bound weapon.
Solenne bit her lip so hard she nearly drew blood.
She had no real choice. The Emperor held every card in the deck. Pope Malakai the current head of the Church of Radiance had long since bowed to the Crown's gold and threats. If Solenne dared to refuse the summons, the Emperor would easily orchestrate a scandal, replace her, and unleash a purge upon the Holy City. The hundreds of orphaned children sheltered in Valethia's cathedrals would be seized, dragged into dark underground laboratories, and used as raw catalyst fuel for imperial magical experiments.
Solenne swallowed the bitter poison rising in her throat. She closed her eyes, bowing her head in a gesture of utter, crushing defeat.
"As you wish..." Solenne spoke softly, her voice barely a whisper against the noise of the crowd. "...my lord."
Prince Damien's smile widened into a triumphant, radiant beam. He reached out, casually tapping her shoulder with his gloved fingers. "Now that is truly wonderful news, Saint. I knew you would see reason."
Satisfied with his victory, Damien turned on his heel, ready to stroll back to his golden royal carriage in front of the cheering public.
However, before he could take a single step-
"Wow. What a sweet little conspiracy."
The loud, clear, and thoroughly unimpressed voice cut through the street like a falling blade!
Prince Damien froze mid-stride.
The surrounding crowd went completely silent, bewildered by the sudden intrusion.
Damien slowly turned around. The warm, benevolent prince persona was still firmly plastered across his handsome face, perfectly maintained for the hundreds of watching commoners and nobles. He adjusted his coat, stepping back toward Rael with a soft, amused chuckle.
"My, my..." Damien said, his voice melodic yet carrying an underlying edge. "Her Majesty's guest is remarkably outspoken... especially after offering such polite apologies earlier."
Damien stopped two paces from Rael, tilting his head with a patronizing, condescending smile.
"You know, Lord Rael..." Damien continued smoothly, "...eavesdropping on private conversations between royals and church officials is exceptionally rude. It seems your parents failed to teach you proper manners... so allow me to educate you instead."
Rael's eyes turned cold. A subtle, dangerous shift occurred in his posture as his mood instantly plummeted into the sub-zero range.
Bringing up someone's parents in a cheap political verbal spat was a guaranteed way to tick him off.
"Well, Prince Charming," Rael retorted dryly, his voice flat and laced with pure disdain. "Threatening a lady behind a fake smile is also pretty damn rude. You might want to take a note on that."
Internally, Rael's opinion of the crown prince sank straight into the gutter.
(Man... at first, I just naturally despised pretty-boy nobles like him,) Rael thought bitterly, scanning Damien's immaculate face and golden hair. (In every world, guys like this know their face is a lethal tool. They combine good looks with smooth words and wealthy backgrounds to manipulate everyone around them. But this guy? He's corrupt to the core. A sociopath playing the role of a saintly prince. I'm glad I caught his true nature early, or he might've tried to use me as a disposable pawn too.)
The surrounding commoners and spectators began to murmur anxiously amongst themselves.
"Did that man just accuse the Crown Prince?"
"Is he insane? Disrespecting Prince Damien in public?!"
"What is the Saintess's guest talking about?!"
Hearing the growing unrest among the populace, Prince Damien let out a loud, hearty laugh, placing a hand over his chest to project an air of injured innocence.
"Hahaha! Truly, what absurd misunderstandings you pull from thin air!" Damien announced loudly to the crowd. "You overhear a few harmless whispers regarding imperial security and immediately attempt to frame me as a villain in front of my beloved people? How terribly tragic."
However, as the word "tragic" left his lips, something sinister occurred beneath the surface.
FLASH.
Deep within Prince Damien's blue eyes, a faint, swirling pink luminescence flared for a fraction of a microsecond!
Without raising his hand or chanting a spell, Damien secretly unleashed an expansive, invisible shockwave of mind-altering energy [AOE: Charm].
It was a ancient, forbidden mental domination magic a taboo art scrubbed from modern history books, widely believed by scholars to be entirely lost to time. In his youth, Damien had accidentally stumbled upon an ancient, forbidden grimoire hidden in the deepest archives of the imperial vault, learning to wield the lost art to bend the minds of those around him without anyone ever realizing they were being controlled.
The pink magical shockwave expanded instantly across the entire intersection!
The commoners, merchants, and low-ranking imperial guards in the crowd blinked simultaneously. Their eyes glazed over with a faint, unnatural rose-colored hue. Instantly, any doubt or suspicion regarding Prince Damien vanished from their minds, replaced by an overwhelming, irrational reverence for the golden prince and an intense, burning hostility toward Rael.
"Yeah! How dare that stranger slander our Prince!"
"Seize him! He's disrespecting the Imperial Family!"
"Apologize to Prince Damien!"
Damien smirked inwardly, highly satisfied with the seamless deployment of his forbidden spell.
He knew the spell had taken full effect. He glanced at the people beside Rael to confirm.
Saint Solenne stood completely unbothered, though her face remained tense. Inside her soul, the divine, absolute presence of Goddess Vels acted as an impenetrable holy barrier, utterly annihilating the subtle pink charm magic before it could touch her mind.
Beside her, Vespara the Queen of Succubi succumbed slightly to a strange, tingling sensation. As a high-ranking demonic entity whose very essence revolved around charm and temptation, Damien's lost spell caused her eyes to flutter for a second. However, her inherent demonic status resistance and pure succubus physiology easily digested the intrusion, leaving her merely annoyed by the foreign mental tickle.
And as for Rael and Vhal'zhar?
To entities whose base stats, hidden titles, and status resistances were hard-coded into the realm of grand calamity, a mental charm spell cast by a mortal prince didn't even trigger a system warning box. It was equivalent to throwing a tiny drop of lukewarm water against a towering mountain of solid steel.
Completely unaware of the staggering power dynamic standing before him, Prince Damien stepped forward with ultimate confidence.
He flashed a dazzling, irresistible smile, raising his gloved right hand and placing it firmly on Rael's shoulder, asserting his dominance as he channeled a concentrated pulse of [Charm] directly through physical contact.
"And now..." Damien commanded in a low, hypnotic, smooth voice, staring straight into Rael's eyes, "...you are going to stand down, apologize to the public, and forget every single word you heard me whisper to the Saintess. Understood?"
Damien waited for the young man's eyes to go blank, expecting him to drop to his knees in mindless, brainwashed obedience.
Instead-
SLAP!
Rael raised his hand and casually swatted Damien's gloved hand off his shoulder as if flicking away an annoying housefly!
"Yeah... not a chance, pal," Rael said, his voice flat, completely unaffected, and brimming with absolute mockery.
Prince Damien's breath hitched in his throat. His dazzling, manipulative smile instantly shattered into an expression of sheer, horrified disbelief.
His eyes widened to pinpricks as cold sweat broke out across his forehead.
"W-What...?!" Damien gasped, staggering back half a step. "My... my Charm... didn't work?!"
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