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The memory of the earth ended when Aden was about to cut off Emperor Marcus’s head with his sharp-edged black greatsword, another symbol of the Dark God. Then the world became bright once again, and… as if he had woken up from a long dream, Kiser shook his head as he opened his eyes. No, it wasn’t just Kiser, because numerous knights were trembling as though they were suffering from hypothermia.
“This is… the truth?” Kiser blankly mumbled, still as a statue.
“The truth is always cruel,” Joshua said.
Kiser’s eyes blazed up with fury. He gritted his teeth and turned to Joshua.
“You bastard…” he growled. “You shouldn’t stay so calm if everything we saw is true.”
“That’s why I told you in advance…”
“Shut up!” Kiser roared. “Can you really not tell how serious the situation is? When someone kills their parents, they get executed. When they commit treason, their grandparents and children also get executed. If someone murdered none other than His Majesty, the entire family will be exterminated!”
“No one knows if His Majesty was killed at that moment,” Joshua mumbled, still maintaining his composure.
“You shameless bastard!” Kiser burst into anger. “What are you doing? Arrest the criminal right now!”
The Imperial Knights drew their swords without hesitation. One hundred silvery blades rasped against their sheats, and then all were pointed in the same direction.
“…You don’t understand what I meant.” Joshua examined the swords pointed at him with cold eyes. “Didn’t you say you want to know the truth?”
“The truth? Are you seriously talking about the truth right now?” Kiser growled.
“We haven’t seen what happened at the end yet,” Joshua reminded him.
“Be quiet!” Kiser stood before Joshua and scowled.
“I didn’t like you in the first place!” he shouted. “You, a part of the Imperial Family? You share the same blood as us? Nonsense! You’re mixed blood—no, a mutt. You can never be considered one of us! On top of that, half of your blood is from Kunir, the archenemy of my Britten family!”
“…As expected…” Joshua slowly curled up one end of his mouth. “Why didn’t you say that from the start?”
“What?” Kiser narrowed his eyes.
“You didn’t want to know the truth—you just wanted to see reality as you wanted to see it.” Joshua sneered.
“You son of a bit—”
“Now I can see that you actually resemble His Majesty the most amongst you and your brothers.” Joshua shook his head disparagingly.
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Kiser came to a halt.
“I… resemble Father?”
“In the end, you’re a Britten.” Joshua shrugged.
“Do you think you can say anything you want just because I let you speak!?” Kiser turned to the Imperial Knights. “Imperial Knights, do you plan on standing around and watching him babble?”
“Stop!” Joshua menacingly yelled before the knights could move. He released his energy, and it hit Kiser and the Imperial Knights like a storm.
“Urgh…!”
His energy was so overwhelming that the Imperial Knights could feel their knees weakening in spite of their inhuman endurance.
“Do you really think you should be the one getting angry?”
Joshua didn’t even call Kiser prince anymore.
“You seriously…!” Kiser shook his head in anger.
“Can you still not tell?”
Joshua took one step forward.
“If I wanted, I could overthrow this Empire on my own—right now.”
Despite the pressure on his entire body, Kiser wanted to yell, “Bullshit!” But he couldn’t because he could feel an instinctive fear rising from deep within his heart.
“The only reason I’m not doing that is… because I wanted to give you all a chance.”
“A… chance?” Kiser blankly repeated.
“Because I can see ‘it’. The ancestor’s karma passes down to their descendants. For generations, the karma has piled up, so one death isn’t enough to atone for it.”
Kiser’s eyes widened.
Suddenly, the door slammed open.
“We have a pr-problem!”
A knight ran into the bedroom but flinched when he saw his colleagues holding drawn swords. On top of that, a man was confronting the knights; it looked to the newcomer like they also had a problem.
“Wh-what is this…?” The knight looked around, bewildered.
“…What’s the problem?” Kiser quietly asked, trying to change the air.
The knight pulled himself together.
“It’s treason!” he quickly answered. “You should take shelter, Your Highness!”
Kiser’s eyes became even wider as the unexpected news struck him.
“Wh-What? Did you say ‘treason’?”
“From the Second Prince’s Palace—! We don’t have time! His Highness Kaizen is in danger!” the knight reported.
There was someone who reacted faster than Kiser.
Joshua disappeared from the room like the wind.
* * *
Inside the Second Prince’s Palace, exactly half of the nobles within the palace were collapsed on the ground, bleeding out; the remaining half were huddled up together, trembling with fear. They surrounded Kaizen, whose back dripped with sweat.
“You son of a bitch…!” he cursed.
On his opposite side, Kaiser was watching them with a scarily expressionless face.
“I definitely didn't expect you to pull off this kind of crazy stunt… What are you trying to do?” Kaizen asked, but Kaiser was still silent.
At first, Kaiser’s request to have a meeting with all the nobles on Kaizen’s side and be accepted by them made Kaizen think that Kaiser was a really distrustful man, but he’d never thought Kaiser had been scheming like this.
“Answer me, Kaiser!” Kaizen insisted.
Kaiser finally broke his silence.
“Isn’t this a good moment to start something?”
“…What?” Kaizen couldn’t believe his ears.
“Most of the Imperial Knights are at the colosseum, and the knights that were left to protect the palace are all in the council chamber, where the imperial seal is currently stored”
“You know very well that I’m not asking that,” Kaizen growled.
“Why am I doing this?” Kaizer shrugged. “It’s simple: because I already promised to help Kiser.”
“Ha!” Kaizen chuckled dumbfoundedly. Although he wanted to say more, he knew that it was meaningless. He looked around for a moment and gritted his teeth. “Where did this many people come from?”
The masked men were surrounding Kaizen and the nobles with swords in hand, but those men’s clothes were truly bizarre. If they were from the same group, they were bound to dress the same, but they didn’t. Exactly half of those men were wearing black, yet, like water and oil, the other half’s clothes were white.
“Don’t take it so badly because it’s not like I haven’t kept up the end of my bargain at all,” Kaiser said.
Kaizen came to a halt. “What?”
“But then again, the Tower Master rejected my offer… He already reached Class 8, so he doesn’t need a spellbook. In addition to that, he also said that since he’s that damned Joshua Sanders’s friend, he can’t do something that will cost him his pathetic friendship. If I knew things would turn out this way, then I wouldn’t have bothered leaking the information to you…”
“The one who leaked the information about the spellbook… was you?” Kaizen’s lips trembled.
“How else would you have found out about the spellbook when it’s well-hidden in my bedroom?” Kaiser sneered.
Kaizen quietly groaned. It was clearly his mistake. He should have thought about it before he proceeded, but the anxiousness in the corner of his heart landed him in this situation.
“…We’ve wasted too much time.” Kaiser’s eyes turned cold. “Don’t spare anyone.”
“Yes, Your Highness,” one of the masked men quietly answered.
The nobles trembled like aspen leaves because although there were at least fifty masked men in this place, the masked man that had just answered was the one who had killed all the dead nobles. The nobles had seen with their own eyes how surprisingly skilled an assassin the man was—in fact, he was as good as the Imperial Knights of the great Avalon Empire.
“N-no! I can’t die like this.”
“Your Highness Kaiser, please at least spare us our lives…!”
“Please don’t kill us, Your Highness!”
The nobles’ desperate cries filled the room.
‘Is this my end…?’ Kaizen soon gave up and looked straight ahead.
The masked man that had answered approached Kaizen and held his sharp-edged sword high up in the sky. Unable to look anymore, Kaizen shut his eyes, and…
…that was when something unexpected happened. Kaiser had stepped aside to watch the situation, but now, his eyes in surprise. One of the nobles had blocked the masked man’s sword, an attack from a man who was considered as skilled as a captain of the Imperial Knights.
However, the problem was that the noble who had stopped the masked man was someone that no one anticipated. Among the nobles, he was the only one who was wearing a robe, but he took off his hood now, revealing his identity.
“…Babel von Agnus?” Kaiser muttered in disbelief when he saw the man’s face. “How did you…?”
“Are you surprised that I’m alive?” Babel glanced at Kaiser as he was still blocking the assassin’s blade. He chuckled. “You ought to be curious since I should be in hell after the War God killed me.”
“That means…?” Kaiser trailed off.
“It’s simple: I’m not the one who died.” Babel grinned.
In an uncharacteristic break from his usual poker face, Kaiser’s shock was plain to see.
“It hurts my pride so freaking much to be saved by the person I never wanted to lose against…” Babel frowned.
“No way…” Kaiser mumbled in disbelief.
“Still…” Babel fixed his grip on the sword and smiled brightly. “My brother is better than you. From now on, I’ll stop you even if it costs my life.”
After Babel finished speaking, he drew up as much of his mana as he could.
An ear splitting explosion rattled the entire palace.
* * *
Joshua had been darting forward, but he came to a halt and flinched when he heard a ground-shaking explosion from close by.
“…Is it from the Second Prince’s Palace?”
“Master!” someone shouted.
Joshua’s eyes widened at that moment. He wasn’t sure how they had found him, but two people were approaching him.
“Cain?” he wondered, bewildered. “And behind you is…?”
Using magic, Theta appeared right before Joshua and smiled happily.
“Long time no see.”
“How are the two of you here…?” Joshua asked.
“Now is not the time to exchange greetings, master!” Cain hurriedly shouted. “The two empires simultaneously started mobilizing their armies near Reinhardt just now!”
Joshua’s eyes widened.
“The Swallow and Hubalt Empires?” he quickly asked.
“Yes, they’re not moving their armies towards each others’ lands; they’re headed to a different place, as if they formed an alliance again…” Cain trailed off.
“Wait…” Joshua narrowed his eyes.
“Among the two empires’ armies, the Swallow Empire’s army is expected to hit none other than our Avalon,” Cain reported. “It looks like they’ll soon join their grand army on the border!”
Joshua gaped blankly at him, so Theta quickly added, “I got the report from the mages of my Magic Tower that surveil the entire continent, so I’m certain of the information’s credibility.”
“It’s basically the Second Continental War right now! Icarus already went off to meet Lady Charles to return to the merchant group!” Cain said.
Joshua’s eyes turn colder than ever.