Chapter 19
—
Some time after the commotion died down. The emperor’s people had left, and peace returned to the Saxen Ducal Manor.
“Your Highness.”
As proof of that peace, the maid Eve’s voice woke Dale early at dawn just as usual.
“Prince Dale, it’s time to get up.”
Her voice was softer than usual; he rose from a pillow stuffed with down. The light seeping through the window at dawn was very thin, and the room remained dim.
Still, the manor’s knights had surely already risen and immersed themselves in training.
“Thanks for waking me.”
“Yes.”
Eve bowed silently when Dale replied. As a maid, her duties ended there for now. But after bowing she hesitated, as if she had something to say and could not bring herself to leave.
Dale, reading the meaning behind her pause, smiled gently.
“Do you have something you want to say?”
“Well, um…”
The young maid Eve could not answer immediately and trailed off.
A seventeen-year-old girl spoke politely to a ten-year-old boy; Dale spoke to her without formality. They came from different stations. That was how things were here.
A person’s birth fixed their rank, and no one questioned that rank.
To men like Petro, she would be nothing more than a lowly thing to do with as they pleased.
“…Thank you.”
At last Eve found the courage to speak.
“It is truly an honor that someone like me may serve Your Highness.”
Had she hesitated so long just to say those words? Even after living a fair share of life in this world, Dale had not yet grown used to such a mindset.
Still, one could not help but adapt.
He was the first son of the ducal house of Saxen.
He understood, and would use, every ounce of power that name granted. Without doing so, the Empire could never be undone.
“Hmm.”
Dale only smiled quietly, and the conversation ended there.
—
—
That day, instead of fencing with the knights, Dale answered his father’s summons and went to the manor’s study.
At the very top of the castle, the Duke of Saxen’s study.
“You acted extremely recklessly, Dale.”
Barely had he entered than the Black Duke began, thinking over that day’s events.
A clash with the imperial nobles. Was this a rebuke?
“…I have no doubt you’re a clever boy.”
What followed from the Black Duke was different, however.
“Why did you choose such an action?”
It was a pure question—to test the vessel that held Dale.
‘At last the time has come.’
Hearing that question, Dale did not hesitate.
No—how long had he waited for this moment.
—For the day he would be treated not as a ten-year-old child but as a proper member of the ducal house.
So he answered. He explained the political meaning behind his act that day.
“That is not the whole of it.”
And Dale’s explanation did not stop there.
“—If the otherworld’s hero had not died in his fight with Sir Badel of the Sacred Sword.”
Dale continued matter-of-factly. He spoke the truth about the Empire he had learned while trained as a hunting hound for it in his previous life—truths even the Black Duke had not realized.
“Next, the victor’s sword would have been swung at our Saxen territories.”
“…!”
Dale had heard, in his previous life, of the imperial conspiracy secretly set against the Saxen house.
But the Empire feared the hero’s power above and beyond concern for Duke Saxen. If the leash called the Oath of restraint snapped and their hunting dog slipped from control—
That was why they disposed of Sir Badel right after he fell; the Empire’s plan to control the Black Duke with poison-by-poison had failed.
“…Such impious words,” the Duke replied sternly.
“Why are you so sure?”
He could not blurt out, “I heard it in my previous life.”
“In the past, even though the hero of another world defeated the Demon King, the Empire did not completely eradicate the darkness of the Demon King’s Realm.”
Dale continued.
“Rather, after driving back their main forces, they forced one-sided bleeding upon our house.”
He presented doubts and evidence that could be reasoned from history’s records.
“With the absurd command to turn the Demon King’s Realm into imperial land—”
“…”
Monstrous raids beyond the mountains, and high demons waiting in the darkness to rise again.
“As long as the darkness that inhabits that land is not entirely removed, our bleeding will never stop.”
Though men call it the Demon King’s Realm for convenience, a deeper darkness dwells there.
Even the Demon King he had felled was only a fragment of that darkness.
“The court, who knows that fact better than anyone, thus granted that land to your—our—house.”
There could be no clearer proof that the imperial court distrusted Saxen.
“And outside the northern borders, people call our house ‘the lineage of darkness,’” Dale added.
At the phrase “lineage of darkness,” the Duke of Saxen smiled bitterly.
“The Empire and those beyond the north plainly fear our power.”
Having said that, Dale brought out his trump card.
“Therefore, just as they abandoned the hero earlier, they will seek to eliminate internal risks that could threaten them.”
“Abandoned the hero…?”
At that, the Black Duke swallowed with startled surprise. Of course, he was one of the few who already knew the truth about the hero—that the hero’s fate was essentially the Empire’s abandonment and disposal.
But how did this child know such things?
Officially, the hero had supposedly chosen to die with Sir Badel for the Empire, so that truth was one of the Empire’s most shameful secrets.
“These are only my conjectures from reading the records in the library,” Dale answered. He had refined his experiences into reasonable suspicions that could be inferred from historical records.
“Reasoned correctly, they make sense.”
Dragged into an unknown world to fight for an unknown country; altered horribly and repeatedly; how much patriotism could one expect from such a person?
“Fortunately the hero is dead, and the Empire still suffers the aftereffects of the Unification Wars. Those aftereffects are far worse than the Empire first imagined.”
There was no question about the talents of sword and magic given to Dale.
“Even so… the Empire will not stop until its ambitions are fulfilled.”
To see so clearly into a country tangled with incomprehensible desires—that was another matter entirely.
‘Does this child possess, in addition to talent, the wisdom of years that talent cannot buy?’
After a silence, the Black Duke asked, “Are you denying the Empire’s justice?”
“Do you believe the justice the Empire pursues is truly right, Father?” Dale countered, thinking of the countless people who had to die by his hand in his past life.
“….”
A response was unnecessary.
As Dale was the son of the Duke of Saxen, the Duke was Dale’s father—and after watching his son for ten years, the Duke was no man to accept the Empire’s supposed justice unquestioningly.
“In my father’s library I read countless books recording the Empire’s history,” Dale said.
“The Empire’s justice is, in the end, the oppressor’s justice—one that uses violence to seize and crush weaker nations.”
He had cleverly reframed his own past experiences into the historical record.
The Black Duke knew that fact only too well. In the past, the Saxen house had justified its existence as the Empire’s shield against the Demon King’s Realm.
But after the Demon King fell to the hero and the value of that shield vanished, the power held by the Black Duke and the Black Tower became too dangerous for the Empire.
Control of armies is the power of rulers.
A powerful mage can wipe out a single army.
A necromancer of equal level can raise one.
And the Black Duke, said to be at the pinnacle of necromancy—
“Then what, in your view, should our house do?” the Black Duke asked.
“We cannot coexist with the Empire,” Dale replied.
“At this time, our house is the Empire’s greatest internal danger.”
The Black Duke knew this too—indeed, he perhaps understood it better than anyone within the Empire.
“The Empire’s ambition will not cease, and after the war they will purge internal risks.”
He had endured ten long years for this moment.
“Therefore—”
He spoke plainly, in his own voice.
“—we must destroy the Empire.”
A chill.
“….”
For an instant it felt as if the air itself had shifted.
An ominous black power flashed through the room.
“Do you know what you’re saying?” the Duke asked, his expression stiff, as though writing off Dale’s words as childish recklessness.
“I am not saying we should raise our banners and start a rebellion right now.”
But Dale shook his head quietly.
“Ten years.”
He said it plainly.
“Ten years?”
“The time it will take the Empire to recover from the aftereffects of the Unification Wars and raise its blade against the Saxen house.”
Across the continent separatist resistance forces still declared independence for their homelands.
Dukes who, like the Duke of Saxen, feared the Empire might one day turn its blade upon them.
The economy and trade were stalled, civilians suffered from wartime devastation, numbers of roving bandits grew by the day—though many years had passed since unification, the aftereffects had worsened.
“By then we will have built up the strength to protect the house against the Empire.”
—Could words like these truly come from a ten-year-old?
“We will aid resistance forces operating in the provinces, rally the nobility, and even win over the urban bourgeoisie to seize control of the Empire’s economy.”
Dale laid out his full plan—an idea he had refined since the day he was a baby—to topple this country.
How to shield the Saxen house from the Empire’s claws.
“…What do you think?” he asked when he finished. Outside the window, a violet night sky had already unfolded. It was deep night.
The Duke of Saxen was quiet.
“Truly.”
After a pause, the Duke suddenly laughed.
“You are beyond measure in the reach of your talent.”
He sounded delighted.
“It seems you can see a landscape I cannot even glimpse.”
A hint of pride shining through.
“I am so proud that you are my son.”
He did not hide the pleasure in his voice.
“I am your son, after all,” Dale replied softly, smiling.
“From now on you will not merely be the eldest son of the ducal house, nor a ten-year-old child,” the Duke nodded.
“From now on I will regard you as a head of the house—the person who will one day lead the Saxen family.”
The Duke said it.
“Your age does not matter; even the fact that you are the eldest son is irrelevant.”
“…Father.”
Dale bowed, realizing the weight of those words.
As a person equal to a person, as a head to a head—the right to converse with the Duke of Saxen as an equal.
“Therefore your words will be the Saxen house’s words.”
He had waited for this day.
“Your actions will be the Saxen house’s actions.”
Not a ten-year-old boy, but the heir and agent of the ducal line.
“Your will be the will of the Saxen dukedom.”
—Thus granting him the authority to move the house’s power with his own hands.
He had advertised himself as a prodigy and unfolded his talent unceasingly for this moment. His deeds, words, and actions had all been set as pieces in preparation for today.
He had not expected the moment to arrive so soon.
“Speak without hesitation, Dale.”
A sense like interlocking gears brushed along his spine.
“At this moment, what decision will you make for our house?”
“You said you would treat me as an equal head of the house,” he replied.
So there was no room left for hesitation.
“Then permit me to take the Tower Trial in the Necropolis.”
The Duke showed a slight ripple of unease at the meaning of the phrase “Tower Trial.”
“Not as the son of the Duke of Saxen, but purely as the Black Duke’s disciple—”
The continent’s foremost black magician, who had broken his vows to accept a child prodigy as his pupil.
“I will prove in front of everyone that I am the rightful heir to inherit the Black Duke’s domain.”
