Leinrant (2)
"Assassinate Helian…?!"
While checking troop deployments and encouraging the exhausted soldiers, I heard Laia ask again with a frown after hearing my words.
"You heard the news that the Imperial Army is moving toward Helian's main castle, right?"
"…!"
"She's probably planning to leave the defense of the main castle to the Imperial Army while she attacks this place herself."
Laia had already once fallen into the Empire's hands.
She naturally knew well that Helian and the Empire were working together.
Laia slowly nodded and answered.
"There was a report that all the defenders of the inner fortress were gathering in one place."
"That can't be all."
On the surface, the tide of war favored Helian, but looking deeper, it was another story.
"Originally, the Empire intended to hand you over to Helian and crush the resistance."
Paul Wyvern stood at the front connected to the Empire's western coastline and southwestern desert region.
It was never a land that could be left in chaos over some petty civil war.
"But once you escaped, the lords throughout the duchy began to stir."
Helian wielded absolute power, but she was still an outsider.
Now that the heir Hector was dead, her justification for controlling Paul Wyvern was not particularly strong.
Bringing in the Empire and imprisoning the border lords.
All of it stemmed from that anxiety.
A shallow tactic of replacing legitimacy with power and fear.
"At this point, Helian has no choice but to grow desperate."
"She'll have to end the civil war… as quickly as possible."
"Even if only to keep the Empire satisfied."
The pirates ruling the western seas and the nomads of the southern deserts.
Paul Wyvern's role was to stop their advances.
Right now, they were merely watching the situation closely.
But the moment the civil war dragged on, those waiting for an opportunity would pour into the territory.
Even from the Empire's perspective, this was not a desirable situation.
"My Lady."
As I spoke, Gordon appeared beside Laia and whispered into her ear.
"Yes. Helian is… the territory's people…"
Crunch!
Laia's tightly clenched fist twisted.
To end the disastrous civil war as quickly as possible, Helian needed more troops.
And for that, she crossed the final line.
She had begun conscripting the territory's civilians into the ducal family's internal conflict.
"My Lady, a preemptive strike is impossible at this point."
"That's right. We should reinforce the castle's defenses…"
The advisors and nobles surrounding Laia all voiced their opinions.
'That is the rational approach.'
They weren't wrong.
If Helian conscripted civilians into her army, she would gain superiority in numbers.
To minimize losses, it would be wise to hole up behind the castle walls and drag things into a war of attrition.
But that was only something one could say without understanding the true nature of war.
A swamp made of blood and filth.
It was the limitation of nobles who had only watched that mire from afar without ever stepping into it themselves.
"If you defeat Helian like that…"
Interrupting the nobles, I spoke to Laia.
"If you win that way, do you think this land will ever return to how it once was?"
"…?"
The moment I said that much, the nobles immediately frowned.
"Refrain from such presumptuous interference, Young Master!"
"You may be the Lady's ally, but this is still Paul Wyvern's—!"
"Are you saying Lady Laia should make the territory's people kill each other?!"
At those words, Laia's shoulders trembled.
"Will you order your citizens to kill fellow citizens of Paul Wyvern?"
"…!"
"T-That's…!"
At my single remark, everyone present fell silent.
"If people who once lived upon the same land are dragged into a war they never wanted and forced to kill each other."
The speech of a mere fifteen-year-old brat.
But the one speaking those words was a necromancer who had crossed countless battlefields and hells.
"If that happens, what do you think will follow?"
Seeing the nobles unable to refute me, I inwardly relaxed.
Any noble who felt nothing even after hearing this would've been trash no different from Helian.
"They'll resent each other. 'That bastard was in the wrong.' 'You people are the problem.'"
"You people."
The common ground of belonging to the same territory disappears, and people begin dividing themselves from others.
That distinction becomes kindling for hatred, and the hatred gives rise to new conflicts.
The grudges born from those conflicts leave behind sparks for yet more conflict.
Thus is completed a vicious cycle overflowing with malice, where resentment breeds resentment.
"This… is the beginning of division."
The resentment would eventually grow large enough to destroy families, villages, cities, nations—
and eventually, an entire world.
"The root of royal authority lies not in the king, but in the people."
Quoting the proverb of a king long gone, I continued.
"The moment we kill the conscripted civilians, they will abandon Paul Wyvern itself."
This wasn't some simple theory, ideology, or philosophy.
It was experience.
The experience of a villain who had watched countless dynasties and kingdoms struggle and collapse as he tore them down.
"…So this was the Empire's true aim."
Laia trembled as she spoke.
'Impressive. To infer that much.'
Unlike me, who possessed memories from a previous life, Laia was still only a young lady of the ducal house.
The burden she carried was far too heavy for someone her age.
"To be precise, it was the Emperor's intention."
Admiring her growth, I continued explaining.
"If Paul Wyvern begins dividing from within, it becomes much easier for the Empire to exploit the cracks."
The Imperial Army would then take control of a Paul Wyvern whose public sentiment had been boiled away by civil war.
The perfect justification to swallow Paul Wyvern whole while minimizing opposition from the other ducal houses and nobles.
The Emperor seated upon the throne had already foreseen all the way to this point.
"T-Then what are we supposed to do?"
One of the nobles finally directed a question at me.
"The inner fortress is already crawling with Imperial soldiers and Helian's forces!"
The other advisors also joined in.
"Even if we infiltrate with a small elite force, we still lack knights."
"Other than Lady Laia's Blue Holy Spear Knights, there's no one capable of matching Helian's knights…"
After taking control of Paul Wyvern, the thing Helian devoted the most effort to was the knight orders.
Money, honor, and if that failed, even threats.
As everyone voiced their frustration over the situation, I opened my mouth as if I had been waiting for the moment.
"That's precisely why I came here, isn't it?"
"…Pardon?"
The nobles were just beginning to ask what I meant—
Bwooooooo—!
A trumpet blast echoed from outside the fortress walls.
"This is…?"
"It's a knight order's trumpet!"
At those words, the nobles who had been deep in discussion all turned their gazes in one direction.
"T-That is…!"
Roughly two hundred knights were approaching the fortress from afar.
At the head of the formation, advancing alongside the sound of trumpets, a military banner bearing Leinrant's crest fluttered in the wind.
'Their timing really is incredible.'
Watching Heinkel and Delline approaching in the distance, I thought to myself.
"I report to Lady Laia Ren Paul Wyvern, rightful ruler of Paul Wyvern."
But only for a moment.
As a member of the Leinrant Knight Order, I placed a hand over my chest and spoke.
"Two hundred thirteen members of the combined Black Shield, Red Chariot, and Thorn Hammer Knight Orders under His Grace Duke Heinkel Leinrant."
Laia turned toward me with widened eyes.
A gaze filled with shock, as though asking if I had known this from the beginning.
Calmly accepting it, I spoke to her.
"We wish to join your camp against our common enemy. Please grant us permission."
"Thank you for answering such a sudden request, Lady Laia."
"It is an honor to stand on the same battlefield as Leinrant."
The head of Leinrant and one of the Empire's Three Great Dukes.
The entire fortress focused its attention on the arrival of Heinkel Leinrant.
"His Grace Heinkel Leinrant…!"
"The continent's strongest soldiers are on our side!"
"We can win! If Leinrant fights with us…!"
The loudest reactions came mainly from the soldiers and knights.
A legendary knightly house that had stood at the forefront of the Imperial Army and led every supposedly impossible battle to victory.
Not only had its leader personally joined them, but the knight orders themselves had come to aid them.
"We have also prepared supplies for the people of the fortress, humble though they may be."
And since they had brought mountains of provisions such as rations and arrows, smiles bloomed brightly across the quartermasters' faces as well.
"We are grateful for your goodwill. If we are able to punish Archduchess Helian, our main house will surely—"
"We shall do everything in our power to ensure that happens."
A conversation between the head of a ducal house and a young duchess.
Yet Heinkel never forgot decorum and etiquette while addressing Laia.
By personally acting this way, one of the Three Great Dukes was openly declaring his support for Laia as the next ruler.
'There's no way Father would willingly put on a show like this himself…'
He probably intended to skip all the flowery words and simply do what he was assigned.
The one who likely instructed him to perform this sort of political gesture was probably Archduchess Priscilla.
The two of them had cooperated like this for a very long time.
'He's completely different from how he acts around me.'
As I stood behind Laia, smirking at the fake smile plastered across his face—
"Klein."
Heinkel turned toward me and spoke.
"I heard the reports. Until we arrived, you handled everything alone—"
"I merely did what needed to be done."
With so many eyes watching, he couldn't treat me casually like he did back at the estate.
As I answered with my head lowered, Heinkel's expression briefly clouded with mixed emotions.
"…Is something wrong?"
"No, nothing. It's just…"
As he spoke, Heinkel's gaze fell upon the sword hanging at my waist—Nordvind.
'So he recognized it after all?'
Just like back at the estate, Heinkel stared at it absentmindedly for a moment.
As I wondered whether I should've just left it stuck in the mausoleum, I heard him mutter quietly.
"…Claire's words have truly become reality."
"…Pardon?"
Claire?
Why was my dead mother suddenly being mentioned?
"No, it's nothing."
As I stared at him in confusion, Heinkel shook his head and spoke with a smile.
"Thanks to you, we were able to accurately grasp Paul Wyvern's situation. The battle is near, so prepare yourself."
"Ah… yes…"
Speaking in a strangely hollow voice, Heinkel turned his back and walked into the fortress.
"Klein!"
As I watched him leave, Delline—who had arrived afterward—waved at me with a grin.
And standing beside him was—
"Dunkel."
Dunkel, fully armed for the first time in a while, gave me a bitter smile.
"Young Master!"
"I heard you've been causing all sorts of trouble while we were apart?"
I smiled back at the two of them warmly greeting me.
"Every day's been chaos."
"The Rudel Fortress side is on the verge of exploding too."
"The branch families?"
When I asked, Delline nodded.
"At the same time Helian started moving, chaos erupted everywhere. They demanded we dispatch a rescue force for Helian…"
"And Father answered them like this."
Helian's name had already been erased from the family registry.
The moment Helian was brought down, the branch factions that had been seizing the family's interests would lose their rallying point.
"As instructed, I kept it safe."
Interrupting my thoughts, Dunkel extended something toward me.
A long bundle wrapped in cloth.
"Right. The time has finally come."
As I said that, I unwrapped it and drew out the object inside.
"What is that?"
"A dagger."
Answering Delline's question, I pulled the hilt free.
Sshhhhhhh…!
Cold air spread out together with white mist.
The blade drawn from the sheath was not made of steel—
but ice.
"What is this? A transparent blade…?"
"Snowflower Crystal."
A substance brought from beneath the Ice Fortress, forged into the shape of a blade.
"The weapon that will kill Helian… my trump card."
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