The Weaver and Descendants of the Weaver (1)
The two men had been shouting in low voices.
They spoke neither in Supreme Imperial nor in Leonbergian.
If they spoke in one of the aforementioned tongues, they would have taken greater care for me not to overhear them. If they had known me to have the power of [Third Ear], allowing me to eavesdrop, as well as centuries of knowledge as a sword, they would have been more modest in their talk.
But alas, they were unaware of this.
“That’s why I’m not trembling. Will it be still a while?”
“Is that important right now?”
They were sharing their secrets in my presence.
“Looking at him, I noticed it. I’m not sure though, so let’s stop it.”
“That’s the way it is now.”
“Is there a better way?”
“No.”
“Then you can do it? Or must I?”
After talking for some time, the two men finally reached a conclusion and looked at me.
“It was nice to meet you. Let’s talk again next time we get a chance to.”
“We have held onto Your Highness for long enough, and we might have been rude.”
After hurriedly saying goodbye, they turned around, wishing to leave.
I had no intention of letting them escape.
“What? Are you going already? You said you would like to meet our knights.”
“After I thought about it, it doesn’t seem polite to bother people who have just arrived, not having had time to rest. You and the knights will need to take a break after your travels.”
“No? Okay. But if you want, we have time right now.”
“Ah, no matter then… Huh?”
Doris Dotrin was befuddled, his eyes wide.
“But you speak our language?”
They only then noticed that I was speaking in their language.
“It’s uncommon for people to know our tongue,” Jin Katrin said in admiration as he touched his forehead.
“Stupid prince Dotrin – and I mean it now.”
Hi bit his lip, and his words were full of resentment.
* * *
When we returned to the dorm, I asked the knights to be on the lookout and immediately walked into my room and locked the door. Then I seated myself across Prince Dotrin and his attendant.
The prince was distracted as he studied my room, while Jin was staring at me with a puzzled look.
He was surely wondering how much I knew.
And since I wasn’t in a hurry to talk about it, I made up my mind and changed the subject.
“What can I call you?” I asked. I knew that the personage of Doris Dotrin, a prince from a small country that didn’t even know which side of a shoe was the forward-facing one, was nothing but a disguise.
“Can I call you Your Highness Dorothes Dortmund?”
The moment that the true name of the prince was uttered, as well as the ancient name of the Dotrin family, Dortmund, energy suddenly flared up in the room.
‘Pwoo!’
The hidden mana summoned by Jin Katrin surrounded me.
‘Schuuk!’
Gunn’s blade touched Jin’s throat as she appeared from her hiding place.
“You’re driving me crazy. You even have fucking elves,” Jin grumbled as he stared at Gunn and her sword upon his throat. “What on earth are you?” Jin demanded.
“Whatever my identity is, it isn’t as surprising as that of your prince,” I replied as I glanced at Jin, and then looked at Doris.
The prince hadn’t been surprised by Gunn’s sudden appearance, and even with her sword at his man’s neck, he didn’t seem the least bit agitated. On the contrary, it seemed as if Doris believed himself capable of saving Jin from death if the need arose.
And it was true: The stupid-looking prince had that ability.
This was because the Dortmunds, now the Dotrins, were elven nemeses.
In the past, humans had been nothing but livestock to the non-human races.
sword to kill the Giant King Eda, liberating the northern lands. There were four more great heroes in that time who had achieved equal feats, all of them being the Five Predecessors.
The prince before me was one of their descendants, a hero who led the Knights of the Sky, who were a hundred wyvern riders.
That great knight had forced the arrogant elves to wield bows instead of swords and made them fear the sky and hide in the lush forests.
[The Sky Blade, Umbert Dortmund]: Doris was the blood heir of that great warrior.
Unlike Adelia Bavaria, who had forgotten her family’s roots and traditions, here was a descendant who had almost completely inherited the feats and traditions of his ancestors.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that he had reached the same [Mythic] level as his ancestor. Nevertheless, he still had the traits of Umbert, up to a certain level.
This alone was enough for him to tear up Gunn.
I didn’t want anyone, human or elf, to suffer such a death, so I ordered Gunn to withdraw her blade and step back.
Gunn did so and quickly disappeared. Jin Katrin, once freed, asked me, “Putting aside the question of how you knew our identity, what do you want from us?”
I answered him in a straightforward manner.
“The enemy of my enemy might be my ally. So, let’s join forces. If we can give each other aid in the future, let’s do so.”
Jin discarded his last vestiges of pretense after he heard my words.
“I think it would be better for us to make your plans known to the empire, giving us a reasonable advantage.”
I snorted at Jin’s words. It was the dumbest thing I’d heard since waking up, and the least funniest joke of them all. I knew how empty his words were.
Even if all the kingdoms on the continent fell flat before the empire; even if Leonberg lost its will to resist and submitted; I knew that there existed four families that would never bow before the emperor.
These were the ancient guardian families of north, south, east, and west, including the Dotrins.
For them, the emperor was only worthy of being torn apart and his flesh thrown to the dogs to feast upon. There once was a hero from the Burgundy family, who became the first insurrectionist lord on the continent. He was termed ‘The one who came after foresight.’
After the Great War, Ganwoong Burgundy broke the oath of the elite electors and put the peace and prosperity of an entire continent in ashes.
He was the first great human who chose to wage war on his fellow humans.
For a descendant of Umbert Dortmund to stand on the side of those of Ganwoong Burgundy was inconceivable, unbelievable, impossible.
The words Jin Katrin had spoken deserved only scorn.
“True. Our interests are aligned,” the descendant of the Sky Blade quietly said.
The persona of the foolish and stupid prince no longer existed. Here was a man who had inherited the fury of the sky from his ancestors.
“It is true, we know that our purpose is not different from his.”
At the words of his prince, Jin humbly bowed his head and said, “I was guarding the heritage and actions of a family that has always been overly secretive. please forgive me.”
“I understand. Without such thoughtfulness and prudence, you would never have been able to reach Hwangdo safely. There is nothing to blame.”
The prince had been listening to me sternly, and then said, “The enemy of our enemy is our ally.”
“Or maybe we can even be comrades.”
Doris shook his head at my words.
“I know a much better word for it,” the prince said with a grin as he reached out to me.
“Let’s be friends.”
I grasped his hand without hesitating.
Even though the concept of friendship was unfamiliar to me, it was more than enough to become the comrade of the descendant of the Sky Blade.
“We are friends now.”
The prince shook my hand.
“Secret friends that the empire is unaware of.”
Even though it was such a good moment, all the words sounded so unfamiliar to me. I held onto his hand without knowing why.
* * *
The descendant of Umbert was serious for a bit, but his face quickly took on the easy-going appearance that it had on our initial meeting. He entrusted all further matters to his attendant.
It was through Jin that I learned their true reasons for visiting the empire, and those reasons were no different than mine.
They wished to overheat the successional contest between the principes and so sow chaos in the empire. They had also settled upon the third princeps to be the wellspring of the confusion.
After all, it seemed that anyone like that seemed a good way to cripple the empire.
The only problem was that not only we had realized this. The emperor and his nobles also knew the traits of the third princeps, and that his ascension would mean the ruin of the realm.
Jin pointed that fact out to me.
He was skeptical about all the practical possibilities, even if he would be happy if the empire would self-destruct was the third princeps to rise to power. Still, the boy couldn’t play the game for the throne all that well, and would probably be quietly purged by his brothers.
Jin was correct. Only if someone supported him could the third princeps become the empire’s disaster. Unfortunately, those who served them did not seem like great men who could plant their princeps’ banner atop the palace.
If the situation turned against them, they would betray him without a thought, and when someone paid them for the head of their master, they would deliver it.
Both Niccolo and Jin told me that they would start thinking up countermeasures.
I knew how to fight with valor upon the field of battle. Fighting from the shadows with schemes and tricks was not to my taste.
There were experts around me that were suited to such work, and so I left it all in their hands.
Swords belong in the hands of warriors. Let the assassins grip the daggers, the schemers their pens, and the diplomats their tongues.
On one side I had Niccolo Marchiadel and Siorin Kirgayen, and on the other, Jin Katrin.
Entrusting the covert work to them, I devoted myself to my own very important duty.
“Bring me a drink!”
I played the idiot who disrespected his hosts, forgetting that they were a powerful realm.
Day after day, I fooled around and caused a fuss.
The imperial nobles pointed at me in disgust, but they didn’t come over and scold my behavior. The power of Montpellier’s name still had value, but greater still was the support of my new imperial brother.
“Wow! Remember this day, brother! Even though you now stay in the fifteenth palace, I will ensure that you get moved to the tenth palace later.”
The third princeps, without prior arrangement, came and laid back with me.
If I had been on my own, I would have drunk moderately and raised my voice as an act. Thanks to the princeps visiting each day, I was able to properly put up my facade of debauchery.
Vandalism was a mere bonus of my sublime, drunken performance.
“Your Highness’s notoriety spreads throughout the imperial palace,” Carls informed me with a disapproving face, saying that my excesses were now common gossip.
Still, I drank like a dog; acted like a fool who did not know the reality of things, who did not know that Montpellier controlled the whole of Leonberg.
The knights had become very displeased by my reputation, and they regretted that I was doing things that did not fit my noble temperament.
It wasn’t a hard act at all.
The liquor I drank without tasting it anymore started to flow down my throat at a greater rate, and as I kept hitting the bottle, my stress was relieved and my worries floated away on drunken clouds.
I even started to feel addicted to that strange pleasure of indulgent liberation.
“Arwen, this is what you said,” I told her with some excitement in the midst of my partying. Arwen was confused.
“Never say it,” she said, and rebuked by her stern reply, I lit up a cigar.
Living like a human was a difficult thing for me, but of course, that was not important at all right now. Even though I usually enjoyed cleaner pleasure than this base entertainment, I didn’t slow down. I constantly reminded myself that this was the right place and time.
Even if I tried to forget myself, I couldn’t.
There were so many hidden eyes that monitored by every move. How could I ever forget the truth of my situation?
After two weeks of acting like an idiot for those invisible spies, the drunken third princeps told me an unusual story. The reason our delegation had been relegated to the fifteenth palace was that the emperor himself had commanded it to be so.
I realized something the moment I heard that: Even if Leonberg had been trampled; even if we had been driven to the point where we could not resist; even if the kingdom had been backed into a corner——the emperor still hasn’t lowered his guard.
He was a thorough person and kept a tight reign on his power. He was also a cunning schemer. As the drunken third princeps told me all these things, I started to get an idea as to the emperor’s plans. It was a masterpiece that I could now see clearly.
The emperor must be curious to see how I would handle it, and I knew if I curled my tail like a coward dog, he would laugh at me.
If I bared my teeth like a wolf, he would rush to pull them from my maw.
He had considered all the possibilities regarding me and had set up contingencies.
The same counted for me; I had also come up will all sorts of tricks and tactics.
Among them was the situation that I had now crafted through the weeks.
I had kept my discovered answers closed to my breast. Whether my moves were right or wrong would only be known over time. That time wasn’t long in coming.
The new year’s banquet was fast approaching.
And then the day finally dawned.
It was the same as in Leonberg: Those of lower rank entered first, so I, as a denizen of palace fifteen, was there very early along with the delegation.
Nobles stared at me as if I was but a monkey in a cage. I waited for the emperor to appear.
“Huhuhm.”
After the Marquis of Yvesinth, who stared at me with hate, entered, the attendant cleared his throat and then made an announcement that should be rights have ruptured his throat.
“Emperor Ortega de Burgundy and his family, the magnificent ruler of Burgundy, nobler, wiser, and more compassionate than anyone else, will now enter!”
The atmosphere froze in the banqueting hall. Everyone bowed, including me.
‘Jkikiff, jirkiff,’
I heard footsteps approaching.
It had been clearly announced that the entire Burgundy family would enter together, yet I could only hear a single set of footfalls.
The nearer the footsteps, the more rapid my breath. My body felt aflame.
However, before I really did burst into flames, the energy dissipated and my mind flashed.
Only then did I realize that someone was firmly holding my hand. A hand smaller and softer than that of other knights.
“Thanks, Arwen.”
“It’s nothing.”
Her hand slipped away.
The footsteps of the emperor, which had sounded nearby, had once more receded.
A low-key voice announced, “Everyone can lift their heads.”
As I straightened my back, I looked straight up at the dais.
There was the Emperor of Burgundy.
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