“How could this happen…….”
Theodore and Marquis Williams wore expressions as if the ground had collapsed beneath them. They had never dreamed that the plan would go awry at the very last moment. Mina, who should have been serving in some distant, isolated post, had suddenly appeared and ruined everything from the roots up……. Marquis Williams spoke haltingly, his face hollow.
“Is this why they say human affairs are decided by the heavens?”
Theodore bit down hard on his lip, his face rigid.
“The water has already been spilled. There is nothing to be done. We must hurry and prepare countermeasures.”
Though he bitterly resented the crown prince for acting as he pleased, utterly forgetting their loyalty, Theodore forced himself to regain his composure.
‘Duke Perstein will certainly not sit still. This is grave.’
With a worried expression, he hurried away.
“Heh heh heh.”
Contrary to Theodore’s expectations, Duke Perstein was gazing at the plaza with a smile.
“I suppose I should say this has worked out well for me. Fortunately, Shannon’s life can now be preserved.”
He did not know why the crown prince had changed his mind, but there was nothing to regret. Duke Perstein looked rather as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
“Now I need only wait for the moment when the dragon appears, as planned.”
Of course, it did not matter even if the dragon did not appear. Since the plan had gone awry, seizing the imperial throne by force was the inevitable next step, and the duke was confident enough in himself.
“I have already resolved to play the villain, so what does it matter if I am cursed a little more?”
Duke Perstein stared fixedly at the crown prince’s face in the distance. On Crown Prince De Beers’s face lingered a smile, as though he had gained the entire world. Watching that, Duke Perstein murmured silently to himself.
“O Crown Prince. Your confession of love was most moving. I truly wish I could help you bring that love to fruition. But I cannot bring myself to do so. If you remain alive, I cannot usurp the throne completely. However, there is one thing I will promise you. I will see you buried in the same place as the one who loves you.”
The eyes of Duke Perstein, who had been looking out over the central plaza, were growing cold.
“Y-Your Highness. I-if you do this……”
Mina had no idea what to do. She had only thought to come quietly, see the crown prince one last time, and leave, yet unexpectedly everything had gone awry. To think the crown prince would boldly confess his love in front of so many people……. It was undoubtedly something to be happy about, but when she thought of her grandfather, her heart could not help growing heavy. Into Mina’s ear, the crown prince whispered sweetly.
“Do not worry about a thing. If it is to have you, then the imperial throne means nothing to me. In other words, even if I were to die tomorrow, I would have no regrets. Do you understand?”
“Y-Your Highness.”
Tears welled up in Mina’s eyes. Nothing came to her mind now. Her only wish was that this moment might last forever.
‘Y-Your Highness. This girl feels the same. Even if I were to die this very moment, I would have no regrets.’
With eyes filled with affection, the crown prince raised both hands and cupped Mina’s face.
“We will never be parted again. Even if the heavens try to separate us.”
Unable to hold back any longer, Mina burrowed into the crown prince’s embrace. The crown prince held her warmly, and at the same time, thunderous applause rang out as if it would sweep the plaza away. Amid the people’s fervent cheers, the two lovers shared a passionate kiss.
Philamones, the chief court mage of the Crossen Empire, was of course also in attendance at the selection ceremony. As the only 8th Circle Expert on the Arcadia Continent, with the level of Master right before his eyes, he was a great mage both in name and reality. Though his radiance had dimmed somewhat due to the recent appearance of a 9th Circle black mage, there was still no one who could match him in the school of white magic. Despite having long since passed a hundred years of age, he maintained a vigorous appearance, and now he was looking at the crown prince and the woman he had chosen with a troubled expression.
“So Administrator Theodore’s plan has gone awry like this in the end?”
Philamones, too, was on the side of the Crossen imperial family. Having devoted his loyalty to the Crossen imperial family for many years, he could not rashly be won over by Duke Perstein’s persuasion. Because of his particular temperament, he never offered overt aid, but from the shadows he had been secretly supporting Administrator Theodore. For that reason, Philamones could not help feeling deeply regretful that the plan had failed. Suddenly, he gave a bitter smile.
‘In any case, one must acknowledge the Crossen family’s peculiar stubbornness, if nothing else…….’
From his long experience serving the current emperor, Valensius III, he had already predicted this outcome to some extent. He understood well the peculiar disposition of the Crossen family, who, once they set their will on something, would never bend—a disposition that, in a way, made them no different from lone tyrants. Perhaps because of that, a deep smile hung at the corners of his mouth.
“At any rate, the Knight Commander must be in quite the awkward position. He cannot laugh, and yet he cannot very well cry either.”
Philamones, who had been muttering to himself and shaking his head, suddenly stiffened.
“T-this is……”
Philamones’s expression was growing more and more serious. Judging from the irregular light rising from the magic staff in his right hand, he seemed to be observing changes in the surrounding mana. A moment later, he sprang to his feet with a cry of shock. His body was trembling as though he had received a tremendous shock.
“H-how in the world can such a thing be……. I simply cannot believe it.”
Philamones, who had been repeating that he could not believe it, suddenly came to his senses.
“T-this is no time for this.”
Having finished his thought, Philamones gathered mana to the utmost and shouted.
“An emergency has occurred. Everyone must take shelter!”
At the sudden shout that rang out, everyone’s gaze focused on Philamones at once. The people were staring at him with dumbfounded eyes. But he paid them no mind and continued shouting. Because he had used voice amplification magic, his cry was clearly heard in the ears of every person present.
“In a short while, a meteor shower will fall upon this place. Someone has cast Meteor Swarm with this place as the target!”
There was not a single person who was not startled by those words. A court mage standing nearby asked back in astonishment.
“I-is that true?”
Philamones answered without hesitation.
“Unfortunately, it is. It is a Meteor Swarm cast by a being at least on the level of a dragon. Even I cannot measure how powerful it will be. So everyone must take shelter immediately.”
After finishing his words, Philamones shouted once more to the guard knights protecting the crown prince.
“You must evacuate His Highness the Crown Prince at once. In a little while, a rain of hellfire will strike this place.”
Disbelief spread over the faces of the guard knights, but they did not hesitate. The one who had sounded the warning was the chief mage of the Crossen Empire, so they did not dare doubt him.
The place soon turned into utter chaos. At the words that the terrifying meteor shower, Meteor Swarm, would explode there, people competed to escape the central plaza. But that was by no means easy. There were far too many people gathered, and the central plaza itself was too vast. As a result, scenes of madness unfolded everywhere as people became entangled with one another and fell. Those who fell could not escape being trampled under the feet of the panicked crowd.
“Aaagh!”
Just as those who had set off first were nearly out of the central plaza, the Meteor Swarm Philamones had warned of finally descended upon it. The prelude announcing it began with the surroundings growing as dark as night. The sky had been completely blackened by blazing rocks that fell through the clouds.
Shrrrrrr.
With a terrifying sound of air being torn apart, the first fragment of meteor struck a corner of the central plaza. Since a meteor flying at tremendous speed collided with the earth, a dreadful explosion inevitably erupted, and with it, a powerful shockwave spread in all directions. The shockwave was so intense that it annihilated the bodies of the people nearby without leaving a trace.
Kwa-kwa-kwa-kwa!
There were not even screams. Severed arms and legs flew in every direction, and blood gushing from corpses formed streams in a scene of sheer atrocity. Waves of meteors fell one after another. Along with explosions erupting in succession, the central plaza of Felzentin was slowly becoming a hellish pandemonium.
The terrifying Meteor Swarm continued for about five minutes. The survivors were flattened against the ground. It was an instinctive action they took after witnessing several times how those standing were struck by fragments and turned into beehives. Though the danger was somewhat reduced, they could not be completely free from the explosions. If a meteor exploded nearby, their bodies would surely be crushed without leaving a trace, and whether they lived or died depended solely on luck. The people squeezed their eyes shut and waited for the terrifying meteor shower to pass. And as they did, one question rose in their minds: why?
—Who in the world had cast Meteor Swarm on so many people, and why?—
It was truly a bolt from the blue. Such wide-area slaughter magic aimed at an unspecified multitude was something no mage with a normal way of thinking could ever cast.
After that time of breathless terror passed, the sky at last began to brighten.
Once sunlight shone again, the central plaza revealed itself to be, quite literally, a scene from hell. Charred pieces of flesh were strewn everywhere, and the blood and bone fragments soaking the ground made one unable to help doubting whether this place was truly the human world or hell. The once beautiful fountain was filled with blood, and within it were countless arms and legs that had once belonged to living, breathing people. The various statues beside the fountain likewise could not escape the fate of being horribly destroyed. It had become a place one could not even imagine had, only moments before, been filled with finely dressed young men and women from all over the continent holding a festival.
Once the terrifying Meteor Swarm had passed, the survivors began rising here and there. Not a single one of them was unharmed. Some had lost arms or legs, while others had wounds on their heads and blood streaming down. Groaning, they began struggling desperately to get out of the central plaza.
“H-how could this happen……”
The crown prince was looking around at the devastation with his eyes wide enough to split. In his arms, Mina lay unconscious, her forehead drenched in blood. Around them lay the corpses of guard knights whose entire bodies had been crushed. From the situation, it seemed they had thrown themselves forward to protect the crown prince. With his face darkened as though death had seeped into it, the crown prince looked all around.
“W-who on earth? For what reason would anyone commit such a horrific atrocity……”
The answer, unexpectedly, came from the sky.
“That Meteor Swarm just now was cast by none other than me, Crown Prince of the Crossen Empire.”
A majestic voice suddenly resounded from the sky. As if cast together with voice amplification magic, that voice rang clearly in the ears of every person present. The moment those words ended, everyone’s gaze turned to the sky at once. And they were able to see it: the figure of a gigantic red dragon flapping its wings among the clouds.
“A-a dragon?”
“I can’t believe it. Why in the world would a dragon……?”
The crown prince barely managed to collect himself. Though they were the most powerful beings on the continent, were they not a race that had almost no dealings with humans? Why would such a dragon commit this atrocity? Of course, the answer would exist only within the mind of the dragon in question. He opened his mouth in a trembling voice.
“I want to know the reason.”
“…….”
“I said I want to know why you had to slaughter innocent young men and women so cruelly.”
Perhaps the crown prince’s bold response was unexpected, for the dragon floating high in the sky remained silent for a moment.
However, the silence did not last long.
"Crown Prince. Does one need a reason to trample to death the swarm of ants crawling beneath one's feet?"
"………."
"You humans are less than mere ants to us dragons. Of course, you surely do not think so at all."
At those words, a furious light flared in the Crown Prince's eyes.
"Then you mean to say you drove them into the pit of death for no reason at all? Is that truly what you are saying?"
"There is a reason."
Though it came from high up in the distant sky, the dragon's answer rang clearly in everyone's ears. The Crown Prince trembled and shouted.
"Then state that reason."
The Red Dragon, beating his wings, slowly nodded.
"First, I shall introduce myself. My name is Verkis. I crossed over from distant Truvenia to deal with you. Had you lost your life to Meteor Swarm, I would never have shown myself before humans like this, but your life proved more tenacious than I expected. Though, of course, it is a life that will soon fade……"
"You still have not given the reason. State the reason. The reason."
The Red Dragon Verkis, who had finally revealed himself in Arcadia, silently nodded. The Crown Prince's courage in not shrinking even before a dragon was admirable, but Verkis was not one to be moved by such things in the first place.
"It is exceedingly laughable and absurd, but I came here on a contract from a human."
"A c-contract, you say?"
A look of incomprehension flashed across the Crown Prince's face. Just who had dared place a contract with a dragon? By all the common sense he knew, a dragon was not an existence that would ever accept a human's commission.
"Do you think that makes any sense at all? Fine. Then reveal the name of the human who made this contract."
"That is not difficult. That human's name is Fershtein. Among you humans, I hear he holds the rank of duke. He was the one who contracted me to kill you."
Thud.
Everyone could only stand aghast. Duke Fershtein, who could be called the undisputed power behind the Crosen Empire, had dared commission a dragon to assassinate the Crown Prince…….
The people's gazes soon focused in one direction. It was where Duke Fershtein stood.
'H-how could this happen…….'
Duke Fershtein looked as if he had been struck. He had never dreamed that the dragon with whom he had made an agreement would so nakedly reveal the fact of his commission before everyone. He had no idea how to respond. As he kept silent, the Crown Prince's voice, brimming once again with towering rage, rang out.
"Why? Why did you accept his commission? What could a dragon, the strongest existence on the continent, possibly lack?"
There was not the slightest trace of emotion in the dragon's voice as it came from high above.
"Exactly one year ago today, Fershtein sent one of his subordinates to my lair. Through him, he conveyed a message that he would give me many treasures if I dealt with you. At the time, I truly found it absurd. When I thought that these lowly insects dared try to use a solemn existence such as a dragon in their petty, insignificant struggle for power, anger surged up in me and I could hardly contain it. But before long, I changed my mind. I am an Ancient-class dragon who has lived for long ages; I thought it would not matter to grant one absurd wish of a trifling insect. To put it simply, I accepted this contract as a diversion."
Having finished speaking, the dragon glanced at Duke Fershtein, who stood utterly motionless.
"Of course, I have no intention of receiving payment. Accepting treasures gathered by insects would only wound my pride as a dragon. So for now, I am satisfied with having granted the earnest wish of a single insect. Has your curiosity been satisfied?"
"Y-you…… you……."
The Crown Prince, whose rage had risen to the very top of his head, glared at Duke Fershtein as if he would devour him. For a duke of a nation to dare instigate a dragon and commit such a heinous act…… The others gathered in the square felt the same.
Clang.
Marquis Williams drew his sword without hesitation. Behind him, the members of the Crosen Knights, their fury soaring, prepared to fight. From their eyes, rage poured out in streams. They looked ready to cut Duke Fershtein in two at any moment.
"Protect His Grace the Duke."
In response, the Duke Knights also drew their swords as one. Whatever the circumstances, they were men who offered Duke Fershtein their sincere loyalty. They could not simply stand by and watch the duke be struck down.
The Crosen Knights and the Duke Knights. The two armed forces that could be considered the strongest on the continent of Arcadia soon moved into a hair-trigger confrontation. It seemed that if even a single spark flew, a bloody battle would begin then and there.