Two days later, the morning of Sterling’s royal capital—warm and peaceful in the southern part of the continent—was completely smothered beneath pitch-black clouds of terror.
Two hundred and fifty elite imperial cavalrymen had ridden like madmen, day and night, pounding the earth all the way from the Governor-General’s Office stationed in the southern Kingdom of Tur.
At the ominous killing intent they exuded and the thunder of their hooves, the border troops did not even dare resist, merely opening the road for them, and they charged straight on to the capital.
When the empire’s elite soldiers, armed from head to toe in heavy full-body armor of black steel that did not so much as reflect sunlight, entered as if smashing through the city gates, Sterling’s guards on the walls turned deathly pale and opened the way, not daring even to raise their spears.
The five hundred private soldiers of Count Hodeki who followed behind them radiated a murderous momentum, as though they had already become conquerors who had swallowed this country whole, and in an instant began seizing the key points within the castle.
At the sudden armed occupation by the imperial army, the interior of the royal castle fell into panic.
“Kill anyone who resists. Those who wish to live, stand aside at once!”
The soldiers of the Sterling Kingdom army all fled in terror, and so before the steps of Count Gray, who walked under the ironclad escort of the imperial army, there could be no restraint, no obstruction.
Without even throwing off the travel cloak stained with dust, he advanced straight toward the audience chamber where the king was.
Bang—!
The heavy oak doors of the audience chamber were flung open roughly.
The calm, seasoned chief advisor he usually was had vanished without a trace; Count Gray’s eyes burned coldly, as though he might slaughter everything before him at any moment.
“……C-Count Gray, Your Excellency? No matter that the empire is our suzerain, to arrive here armed without any prior notice…”
The King of Sterling, seated upon the throne, rose from his seat with a face drained white.
But Count Gray strode up onto the dais as if diplomatic etiquette or greetings were of no concern to him whatsoever.
“Is this truly the answer of the Sterling royal family to the Great Empire?”
Along with Count Gray’s frost-edged shout, two imperial cavalrymen leapt onto the dais and roughly forced down the king’s arms.
“Huk! Wh-what is the meaning of this!”
“Kneel, criminal.”
The count forced the king of a nation to his knees in the middle of the audience chamber, before the eyes of all.
Then, toward the frozen crowd, he hurled a thunderous declaration.
“I have personally discovered that the hostage the Kingdom of Sterling dared offer to the imperial family of the Great Empire—the brazen one even now being treated as a prince in the imperial palace—is a fake without a single drop of Sterling royal blood in his veins.”
“……!!”
“Ian Harper, was it? To deceive the emperor and disguise the second son of some remote baronial house as a prince, then throw him into the jaws of death. Have you lot truly lost your minds!!!!”
The moment the name Ian Harper burst from Count Gray’s mouth, the king let out a gasp, his eyes rolled back, and he collapsed on the spot, foaming at the mouth.
The audience chamber instantly turned into a scene of pandemonium.
The officials stared at one another’s pallid faces in utter shock, and many collapsed trembling, wetting their trousers where they sat.
And amid that extreme terror, cowardly and ugly resentment began to spill in quivering voices from the mouths of several rotten officials.
“I-Ian, that lowborn wretch…! Just how did he conduct himself in the empire for this to be discovered!”
“If he committed a crime worthy of death, he should have kept his mouth shut to the end and borne it alone. How dare he drag our entire kingdom into this state?!”
“We should never have trusted and sent that lowborn bastard in the first place!”
The instant he heard that nauseating blame, deep revulsion seeped across Count Gray’s lips.
They had dressed up the innocent son of a baronial family as a fake prince and shoved him into the hellish empire in order to preserve their own lives and their true bloodline, yet once the matter was exposed, they shifted all responsibility onto that young boy, saying he had been discovered because he had behaved poorly, and cursed him behind his back.
Count Gray was a man well accustomed to the empire’s cruel schemes, but the base selfishness unfolding before his eyes made him genuinely sick.
“……Shut your mouths. Listening to that ugly, cowardly wagging of your tongues makes me feel as though my ears are rotting away. What are you doing? Wake this bastard up!”
At the count’s cold order, a soldier hurried over carrying a bucket full of cold water.
Splash—!
Water like ice was mercilessly poured over the unconscious king’s head.
“Cough! Kheuk, keheuk!”
The king, choking and flailing, came to his senses and looked up at Count Gray with unfocused pupils.
The count looked down at the king sprawled on the floor as if at an insect, and continued his interrogation in a low, sunken voice.
“Now then, if you have a mouth, explain. How do you intend to pay the price for this enormous deception with your paltry lives?”
It was then.
From within the trembling crowd, Count Frederick, an old retainer of the Sterling royal family, staggered forward and prostrated himself flat at Count Gray’s feet.
“Y-Your Excellency…! All of this dreadful affair was devised solely by this old man on his own! Blinded by my petty loyalty to protect the royal family and the house, I deceived His Majesty… I planned everything. Please, take my head and make it a token of apology to the Great Empire!”
But what returned to that desperate cry was only Count Gray’s cold snort.
“If this were something that could be covered up with one worthless neck of yours, I would not have personally led a cavalry force all the way here.”
“Y-Your Excellency…”
“This is not some clumsy independent act by a count from the frontier. It could not be, and you had no authority to do so.”
“……”
“This is an act of high treason that will be recorded in history, in which everyone from the king to the lowest official conspired together to insult the empire and deceive His Great Majesty the Emperor. In any case, on suspicion of insulting the imperial family, I intend to burn this entire kingdom whole and reduce it to ashes, so whether you die by my sword now or burn to death soon makes no difference at all. Therefore, I shall not bother dirtying my hands.”
At the dreadful declaration that he would burn the entire kingdom, the audience chamber was engulfed in a deathly silence.
The count paid it no mind, and with a jerk of his chin toward the imperial cavalrymen, declared,
“The true bloodline those bastards have kept so carefully hidden—Joseph Sterling and Amy Sterling, was it? Drag those two wretches out at once and take them into custody.”
“No, Your Excellency! Please, anything but that…! What sin could those children possibly have committed! Please spare them!”
The king crawled across the floor, sobbing in anguish, and tried to seize the hem of the count’s trousers.
But the count coldly kicked the king away with his military boot and thundered mercilessly.
“Did you dare send a fake to the imperial family of the Great Empire and still fail to foresee a result this gruesome? If you presumed to gamble against the empire in a rigged game, you should at least have been prepared to stake the lives of your own brats as the ante.”
Had the king’s screams stirred their emotions?
Several of the Sterling royal guards nearby instinctively gritted their teeth and placed their hands on the hilts at their waists.
The instant Count Gray noticed that minute movement, a chilling killing intent flashed in his eyes.
“……You may draw your swords if you like, but think about what comes after.”
Count Gray murmured softly.
“The moment even one of you draws a sword, the moment even a single drop of the Great Empire’s blood flows onto the floor of this filthy audience chamber, the name Sterling will be erased forever from the history of the continent, from its bloodline to its territory. I guarantee it on my name. But if you put down your swords and flee now… who knows? With luck, perhaps you may survive.”
At that vicious warning, the cavalrymen’s razor-sharp black-steel spearheads were all leveled at the soldiers’ necks at once.
Crushed beneath overwhelming fear, the Sterling soldiers turned pale and let their grips fall weakly from the sword hilts they had been clutching.
A short while later, the inner door of the audience chamber opened, and the two true royals, Joseph and Amy, who had been raised delicately like flowers in a greenhouse, were dragged out by the imperial soldiers by their hair, pulled along like dogs.
“Aaaah! Father! Father!!”
“I-it hurts! It hurts—! Father!”
Seeing the wretched backs of his children, their hair being torn out as they screamed and rolled across the floor, the king howled like a beast, but Count Gray’s gaze had already left those trash-like royals entirely and turned elsewhere.
“And.”
Count Gray called to a halt the cavalry captain who was leaving the audience chamber.
“Bring Baron Harper and the former baroness as well. I hear they are staying in a remote detached palace of this castle. They will be escorted to the empire.”
“Yes, Your Excellency. Shall I drag them here like the others?”
Count Gray, who had been giving the order, stopped speaking for a moment and sank into deep thought.
He had been about to order that they be dragged in like luggage, just the same as the royals.
But in that moment, the astonishing ability and extraordinary tact that the fake prince Ian had shown in the middle of that blood-drenched imperial palace flashed through his mind, along with the beastlike tenacity with which he must have silently endured while bearing the secret that he was not of the true bloodline.
At the very least, the family of that fake prince, who had earned trust through his own ability alone, deserved to be treated far better than those selfish, weak pieces of Sterling royal trash.
“……No.”
Count Gray corrected his order in a low and respectful voice.
“Baron Harper and his wife are different from those wretched royal bastards. Do not be rude to them or treat them coercively under any circumstances. Have a carriage prepared and bring them here with the utmost courtesy and respect.”
“As you command!”
The cavalry captain gave a heavy salute and disappeared.