**Chapter 49**
—
“Does the drink not suit your taste?”
Marquis Yuris asked, sipping leisurely from a glass brimming with blood.
“Y–Yuris? What… what is this…?”
“What is it that frightens you so?”
Elizabeth’s face turned pale as death.
“Are you afraid of dying?”
“P–please…!”
“Ah, please. Don’t be too afraid.”
The Bloodstained Marquis leaned in and kissed her—
upon the trembling nape of her neck.
*Crunch.*
His sharp fangs, gleaming scarlet, had emerged before she realized it, sinking gently into her skin.
“Death,” he murmured against her neck, “is a blessing.”
When the kiss ended, the Marquis drew back slightly.
“It is like a blossom—brilliant in its bloom, and beautiful in its fall.”
Before him now stood not the radiant young noblewoman, but a desiccated corpse, shriveled and gray, like a mummified husk.
“Compared to that,” the Bloodstained Marquis continued, glancing back at her lifeless form,
“a life without death—an immortal life—is truly fleeting, hollow, and filled only with meaninglessness.”
In the midst of ineffable emptiness and distorted pleasure, he whispered faintly—
“Like a weed that will never bloom.”
It was a lonely, ephemeral voice.
—
—
Some time later, in the Duke of Saxen’s study—
“Send me to the Imperial Capital.”
“It’s too dangerous.”
At Dale’s bold and unflinching request, the Black Duke slowly shook his head.
The Empire had sent word, praising House Saxen and its *Black Prince* for their valor against the Great Demon Migration—and inviting Dale to the Academy of the Red Tower to promote exchange between the two Towers.
No doubt the invitation carried the touch of Marquis Yuris himself.
“You mean to walk into the lion’s den of your own accord?”
“The Marquis of Yuris’s son is also to reside in the Black Tower for the sake of this ‘exchange,’ is he not?”
The offer was, after all, a *reciprocal* arrangement between both sides.
“Since we, too, hold the heir of the Red Tower’s master as a guest…”
Dale continued calmly,
“they won’t dare move rashly.”
“Have you already forgotten the Purifiers’ attack?”
“If they were to lay a hand on the heir of the Black Duke *within* the Imperial Capital—within the Red Tower’s own Academy, no less—Marquis Yuris surely knows what that would mean.”
Such an act would turn all four Towers against him, and ignite a conflagration that could engulf the Empire itself.
The death of a single heir to the Black Tower would not end there; it would mean that no other Tower could consider itself safe from the Red’s ambition.
“And besides,” Dale said quietly, “the one the Empire truly fears right now… is not me, but Father.”
At least for the moment, that much was true.
“……”
The Duke did not deny it. Dale’s reasoning was sound—undeniably so.
Even the Empire lacked the strength to strike down Dale and launch a *total war* against House Saxen. And if such madness did occur, the number of vassals who would turn their backs on the Empire would extend far beyond the Saxen domain.
“Then how do you explain the Purifiers’ ambush?”
“Most likely…” Dale replied evenly,
“if their intent had truly been to kill me, it wouldn’t have ended with just a dozen Purifiers.”
“Hm.”
“The Red Tower is merely… testing us.”
“Testing, you say?”
The Duke let out a short, incredulous laugh.
Indeed, as ever, it was Dale who remained coldly perceptive of the situation—unlike his father, whose heart, as a parent, could not help but waver.
“Then do you have another goal in going to the Capital?”
“I want to see the Empire with my own eyes.”
Not the northern fiefs or the Papal territories—but the Empire itself.
“And since the Red Tower has chosen to provoke us, it’s only proper that we offer an answer in kind.”
There, in the heart of the Empire—the Capital.
Against the Red Tower, that self-proclaimed executor of the Empire’s ‘spirit of the age.’
“…You are as unfathomable as ever,” the Duke muttered with a wry smile.
“I only think of what is best for you, for myself, and for House Saxen,” Dale said evenly.
Their words met, steady and familiar—
a conversation no different from any other between father and son.
—
—
The Imperial Capital.
And the Red Tower.
The Imperial Academy attached to the Red Tower held meaning far beyond that of any ordinary magical academy.
Its scale, curriculum, and prestige were unmatched—
a cradle of the Empire’s finest minds, and a nest of ceaseless social intrigue among the nobility.
Graduating from the Imperial Academy and becoming a mage of the Red Tower was the Empire’s ultimate guarantee of success—a golden ticket for any noble’s child.
They were the Empire’s most promising elite.
And so, the scions of its most gifted houses gathered there, competing with a fervor that knew no equal.
Even the graduation process itself was more brutal than any other Tower’s trials:
to leave the Academy, one had to pass the Red Tower’s *graduation test*—and even reaching the Third Circle was no guarantee.
And it was precisely a few weeks before that test that the Empire’s greatest prodigy—the young heir of House Saxen—arrived.
At the height of competition, into the fiercest crucible of all.
—
—
Years had passed since the Emperor had last appeared in public, secluding himself from the world.
Thus, when the young heir of Saxen entered the Capital, his procession—led by the Black Duke’s Night Raven riders—cut a dark path through the streets.
It was the Emperor’s proxies, not the Emperor himself, who came to greet him.
“Ah, welcome! We’ve been expecting you.”
The nobles of the Imperial faction, led by Marquis Yuris—men so repulsive they seemed to reek of grease and corruption—greeted him with smiles.
“The young Lord of House Saxen has braved quite the journey to come here!”
Their laughter was sickly, their flattery nauseating.
And between their serpent tongues stood a red-haired man, handsome and smiling faintly.
How could one ever forget that face?
“…Marquis Yuris.”
“I’ve been waiting for you, young Lord of Saxen.”
The man who ruled over the pinnacle of the Red Tower—
the one called the Bloodstained Marquis.
A red mage whose power could stand shoulder to shoulder with Dale’s father, the Black Duke.
“It is an honor to meet you,” Dale said evenly.
“An honor? Not at all! The honor is mine—for you to have accepted such a sudden invitation.”
“I’m grateful for the Red Tower Master’s hospitality.”
“I have heard much of your exploits during the Great Demon Migration,” said Yuris, smiling pleasantly.
Dale bowed politely, expression unreadable, and the Marquis’s smile deepened.
“To see one who doesn’t remain a scholar bound to his study, but takes to the battlefield himself! Truly, your courage is a tale that resounds throughout the Empire.”
“……”
But Dale did not respond immediately.
He merely stood silent—remembering.
The twelve Purifiers who had ambushed his cavalry along the upper Saxen River.
The man responsible—was standing right before him.
This man, who had colluded with demons to send the Red Tower’s Purifiers into Saxen lands—who had drawn Dale and his Night Raven knights into the inferno.
He remembered the men who burned to ash that day.
He bit down lightly on his lip, smothering the seething hatred beneath a mask of calm.
“Whenever tales of the *Black Prince* reach us,” Yuris said softly, “I cannot help but be amazed.”
“Stories tend to grow in the telling.”
“Ah, surely not.”
Yuris chuckled lightly, flashing his slender white teeth.
“The Empire’s greatest prodigy! I can hardly wait to see what wonders you’ll show us at the Academy.”
Dale bowed again.
“Dale of Saxen, humbly greets the servants of His Imperial Majesty.”
Behind him stood Sir Vale and the elf mage, Sephia—
as Dale, in the guise of an innocent eleven-year-old boy, bowed with grace before the abyssal malice that lurked beneath Yuris’s smile.
—
—
The young heir of House Saxen was invited to the Imperial Academy of the Red Tower for a “mutual exchange” between Red and Black.
And when word spread that he would be joining the *Third Circle’s Advanced Department*—just weeks before the graduation exams—the shock that rippled through the Academy’s noble students was indescribable.
Dale of House Saxen—
at only eleven years of age, he had reached the Third Circle and cleared the twentieth layer of the Tower’s Trial.
But his renown as the *Black Prince* went beyond mere magic: he possessed both intellect and might, enough to win the Battle of Black and White and halt the Great Demon Migration, felling an Orc Warlord with his own hands.
The Academy’s students, of course, knew all these tales—because the whole Empire wouldn’t stop talking about them.
And precisely *because* they knew, they couldn’t bear it.
The Academy’s Advanced Department was a gathering of the Empire’s brightest nobles, the very starting line of their paths as elite mages.
Their pride was beyond measure.
And from their perspective, Dale’s fame was nothing but hollow exaggeration—
a myth swollen by rumor.
He might be the heir to the Black Tower’s master, but he was still only an eleven-year-old child.
Could a mere boy from the far northern hinterlands have truly achieved the Third Circle?
And even if he had—was it through genuine discipline, or by riding his father’s coattails?
What was the rotational speed of his circles? Surely not even a hundred revolutions per minute.
And the Tower’s Trial?
He must have received special treatment for being the Black Duke’s son.
The victory at the Battle of Black and White, the halting of the Great Migration—
those must have been his knights’ doing.
A reputation built solely to glorify House Saxen—
a lie dressed up as legend.
That was what most of the Academy’s students believed.
No—*had* to believe.
For to accept the truth of the Black Prince’s genius…
was to deny the worth of their own lives.
As the Empire’s elite, their pride was all they had.
And so, acknowledging Dale’s brilliance was the same as shattering their own sense of worth—
and it didn’t take long for that pride to begin to crack.
