[Welcome to the Shop!]
The thing that had sucked up every last one of the gold coins Allen pressed into my hand, coins as precious as blood.......
What should I call it?
A status window? A system?
Anyway, this crazy fortuitous encounter filled my entire field of vision.
But that was the end of it.
[Loading.......]
[■□□□□□□□□□(1%)]
"......Loading?"
I glared at the loading bar.
It crept upward in tiny little dribbles.
It looked like it would take quite a long time to fill to 100%.
Seriously, if that was the case, it shouldn't have wolfed down the money in the first place.
Robbed in broad daylight, I ultimately had no choice but to board the carriage without a single coin to my name.
Could the one consolation be that I didn't have to pay the coachman separately?
In front of the carriage engraved with the 'White Dragon,' the crest of the Imperial Household.
A coachman whose face was full of deep wrinkles, yet who still kept a sturdy build, took off his hat.
"It has been a while, Prince Abel."
It was Harben, regarded as the most senior of all the coachmen in the Imperial Household's service.
As could be seen from the way he honored me as 'Prince' rather than 'Deposed Crown Prince,' he was not one of Cassandra's underlings.
Well, that didn't mean he was on my side, either.
It would be more accurate to describe him as someone faithful only to his role as a coachman.
But in this Imperial Palace, simply being treated like a person instead of being scorned was something to be grateful for.
"It has been a while, Harben."
I, too, treated him courteously.
Harben smiled kindly and pressed his hat back onto his head.
Then, after glancing around once, he whispered in my ear.
"Allen asked me most earnestly."
"......!"
"So today, I intend to serve you not as the Imperial Household's coachman, but as Harben the coachman, Prince."
I had been burning up inside after the 300G evaporated out of nowhere.
Was it thanks to the warmth Allen and Harben had given me?
My irritation eased a little.
The road leading to the North.
At least its beginning wasn't half bad.
......Of course, it still pissed me off that the money Allen gave me had vanished.
***
About two hours had passed since the carriage left the Imperial Palace behind.
I came to understand, painfully well, what he had meant when he said that today he would serve me not as the Imperial Household's coachman, but as Harben the coachman.
"Ho ho, and so, you see—"
It felt a bit wrong to say this.
Harben, this old fellow.
'......So he was a chatterbox.'
The Harben I knew was a man who silently devoted himself to his own work.
Of course, that assessment wasn't wrong.
It was just that Harben was a man who drew a strict line between public and private.
A sense of déjà vu from my previous life flitted past.
The Harben reflected in my eyes right now was every bit a middle-aged taxi driver.
The type who couldn't resist chatting away at his passengers.
However, Harben's chatter wasn't something to let go in one ear and out the other.
"You are from the North?"
That was because Harben was one of the people from around here.
"Ho ho, that I am."
No wonder his build was anything but ordinary.
I decided to focus a little more on Harben's chatter.
"Then, by any chance, are there any manners that must be observed in the North?"
Just as one would learn a country's taboos or greetings in advance before traveling abroad.
I asked the question in all seriousness.
But what do you know?
"Pardon? ......Ah, hahaha!"
What came back was a hearty roar of laughter.
When I tilted my head, Harben gave me a kindly smile.
"Prince, do you know what they call Northerners in the capital?"
"......They call them savages."
"Ho ho, you are putting it quite nicely."
Just as he said.
'Savages' counted as wrapping it up in a fairly cultured way.
After all, in reality, most of the time the North was disparaged with slurs like 'beast bastards' or 'monster butchers.'
"Savages, is it....... Well, that is not exactly wrong."
It was an insult that lumped together his own homeland and bloodline.
Yet Harben didn't seem the least bit offended as he calmly went on.
"To be honest, we are ignorant and savage! Why else would the North hold the saying 'If your body is strong, your noggin never has to suffer' as accepted wisdom?"
"......Is it all right for you to say that?"
"I have been drinking the capital's water for decades, you see."
Now that he'd loosened the mood with a joke.
Harben started getting down to the main point in earnest.
"However, what the capital calls savagery is, in a way, no different from the highest praise for us. After all, it means we have splendidly inherited the blood and spirit of our ancestors."
"By ancestors, you mean......."
"The Barbarians."
Barbarian.
A word that referred to savages and outsiders.
In works of fiction, they are a race habitually depicted as gym-rat meatheads swinging axes while wearing nothing but a single pair of briefs.
But in this world, where aura and mana truly existed, the Barbarians were not imaginary beings.
They were said to have vanished into the back alleys of history along with the other races by now.
But the traces they had left behind remained fully intact.
"If I recall correctly...... the first Grand Duke dispatched to the North married the daughter of the Barbarian chieftain of the time and had descendants with her."
"That is correct. It is fair to say that most Northerners carry that blood. Ho ho, there is even a theory that the two of them had more than a hundred descendants!"
"Th-That's impressive......."
Harben glanced at me as I wore a dumbfounded expression.
"In any case, there is just one thing I wish to say. In the North, there are no troublesome laws or manners or anything of the sort. After all, it is a place where people are busy enough just scraping by from day to day. If you fussed over such things one by one, you would not live out your natural life. Ah, but that does not mean you may call people savage right to their faces, all right?"
"That goes without saying."
"Ho ho, I suppose that was not something I needed to tell you, Prince Abel."
Harben's words carried a great many meanings.
His good-natured laughter lasted only a moment.
"......Hmm, now that I think of it, there is exactly one thing that could be called manners."
With a short grunt, he put strength into the forearms gripping the reins.
Thick tendons bulged out, so stout it was hard to believe they belonged to an old man.
"Strength. In a way, you could call it both the law and the manners of the North."
"Do you mean that literally?"
"Yes. Is it any wonder the North even has the saying 'Weakness is a sin'? To put it bluntly, it is a place where, as long as you are strong, they will turn a blind eye even if you commit a serious act of treason. All while saying, 'With that kind of martial might, of course he can throw his weight around!'"
"......Then by the North's standards, wouldn't someone like me, with a shattered Aura Heart, deserve the death penalty?"
Mind you, this was a body that hadn't gone near a weapon since then.
"Well, they will not exactly look on you kindly, will they?"
"That's certainly welcome news."
"Ho ho, but even so, are you not about to become the husband of the Grand Duke, Prince? What is stronger than martial might is power. No matter how lax the laws of the North may be, that alone does not change."
There was no trace of flattery or hypocrisy in Harben's sly voice.
Come to think of it, I'd heard that, perhaps because of their barren environment, the North's loyalty alone was fiercely strong.
It was precisely because that blind loyalty was directed solely at the Grand Duke's house and not the Imperial Household that they were treated as troublemakers, though.
'......If I want to survive, do I have to win the Grand Duke's favor or something?'
Well, naturally, I didn't have the slightest intention of getting on my missus-to-be's bad side.
But that didn't mean I intended to actively court her, either.
'She's hardly going to welcome me in the first place, either.'
That the Imperial Household and the North were on bad terms was something the whole continent knew.
A political marriage, in a situation like that.
'And honestly, we're not in the same league.'
Of course, I was speaking from the Grand Duke's point of view.
She bore the unrivaled epithet of youngest Sword Master in history.
Why else would the news have reached all the way to the capital, even from the Northern territory, where there was hardly any exchange of information?
She was clearly far too good a person to be wasted on marrying an incompetent deposed crown prince.
And it wasn't important information.
-Still, that bitch they call the Grand Duke has a face worth looking at, at least. Good for you. Heh heh.
She was also a woman whose beauty had been certified by that bastard of a Crown Prince, whose womanizing went beyond excessive to downright pathological.
'If that guy would go so far as to say something like that.'
It meant it was fair to say the current Grand Duke was a peerless beauty, ranked among the finest on the entire continent.
How could someone like me possibly meet the standards of such a person?
"Haah......."
The more I thought about it, the more gloom washed over me.
"I do not think you need to worry too much."
"Pardon?"
"Because the current Grand Duke is not someone who treats her own people carelessly."
A tone imbued with a curious certainty.
With that single remark, Harben brought up the subject of the Grand Duke no further.
It was because he didn't want to plant any preconceptions in me.
"That aside, Prince. My granddaughter, you see, recently—"
......He was certainly itching to recount his own granddaughter's life story, though.
At any rate, the carriage kept moving forward, accompanied by Harben's chatter.
Time flowed by quickly.
I didn't remember much of what happened along the way.
I killed most of the time sleeping because of motion sickness.
And I didn't want to remember, one by one, the contempt slyly hidden in the eyes of the nobles who came out to greet me whenever we passed through their domains.
How many days had passed like that?
Clatter, clatter!
The carriage began to shake more violently, as if the road was getting rougher.
And cold air began to seep into the carriage.
So much so that my breath came out white, even though the carriage had the finest heat-retention magic running.
I could tell that we had finally entered 'the North.'
"It's definitely cold."
The moment I pulled the collar of my fur coat a little tighter at the chill raising goosebumps on my skin.
"Hm......?"
I heard Harben make a puzzled sound.
"What's the matter?"
I stuck my head out toward the coachman's seat.
The blizzard had grown so fierce that not even an inch ahead was visible.
"I believe it would be impossible to advance any further, Prince."
"So it seems."
"But...... originally, it was agreed that we would join up around here with the welcoming party the Grand Duke had sent."
Harben furrowed his brow.
"There is not so much as a glimpse of them."
"Couldn't the rough weather be delaying them?"
"Mm, it would be fortunate if it were simply the weather......."
Harben's face scrunched up sullenly for a moment.
Then he took up the reins again.
"It cannot be helped. We cannot camp out in the middle of the snowfield like this, so we will head for a nearby village first."
"Is there somewhere to stay?"
"It is not large, but it is a place where one can stay for a night."
I nodded.
Not knowing the geography of the North to begin with, I was in no position to object.
Clatter, clatter.
The carriage moved once again.
Since it was hard to see anything, Harben drove the carriage very carefully.
Thanks to that, there was almost no shaking.
"......."
Was it because my motion sickness had faded?
I remembered something I had forgotten.
[Loading.......]
[■■■■■■■□□□(73%)]
The loading bar had passed 70 percent before I knew it.
Hm, was it just my imagination?
'Seems like the loading speed has picked up?'
[■■■■■■■□□□(75%)]
As if to prove my guess.
The number climbed in an instant.
[■■■■■■■□□□(78%)]
It wasn't my imagination.
From the moment the carriage's wheels touched the soil of the North.
The loading speed had been accelerating.
'What is this?'
Until now, there had never been any connection between me and the North.
And yet this golden system was rapidly finishing its preparations to unlock its functions the farther I advanced into the North.
As if it were saying that my heading here was 'right.'
"No idea."
A riddle whose answer I couldn't yet know.
Well, there didn't seem to be any need to rack my brain over it.
[■■■■■■■■□□(80%)]
At this rate.
After all, it didn't look like it would take very long before I learned what this thing really was.
***
We arrived at the village around the time the full moon had risen high in the sky.
'Strange. Does the moon look blue in the North?'
A fierce blizzard was raging.
But the brilliant blue moonlight shone down with great clarity.
Thanks to that, the whole view of the village came plainly into sight.
And I.
"This is...... a village?"
I passed a harsh judgment.
I couldn't deny that, having lived steeped in the splendor of the Imperial Palace, my standards had risen without my realizing it.
But that didn't mean I had any intention of revising my judgment.
Huts thrown together on the frozen dirt by patching logs and animal hides over one another.
Even those were riddled with holes here and there in their walls and roofs.
The light leaking through the gaps looked so precarious, as if the snowy wind might sweep it away and snuff it out at any moment, that it added cruelty to an already desolate scene.
"What in the......?"
But Harben was the one who was even more aghast than I was.
It seemed the village he remembered hadn't looked like this.
The moment the two of us were staring at it, dumbstruck.
"Who......? Harben? Is that you?"
An old man steeped in long years of experience appeared.
He gave off an impression far too shabby and frail for a Northerner.
Before long, his gaze swept over me.
"......I never thought I would meet a noble personage of the Imperial Household in such a humble backwater as this."
The old man, who had recognized the imperial attire, gave a nod of greeting.
Naturally, there wasn't the slightest bit of loyalty in it.
No, if anything, I sensed hostility.
"Look here, what is going on? Why has the village ended up in this state?"
After asking my leave, Harben hurriedly began talking with the old man.
From the bits of conversation I caught, the old man in front of me seemed to be this village's chief.
"You....... Didn't you hear anything from Layla?"
Layla. A name I'd heard until my ears hurt on the carriage ride here.
It was the name of Harben's beloved granddaughter.
"Since the year before last, the monsters have all turned ferocious and are running wild. The whole North has become a pandemonium reeking of blood."
"S-Something like that happened? Layla only told me not to come home for a while......."
"She must have kept it secret because she was worried about her old grandfather. After all, with your temperament, if you had heard the North was in chaos, you would have come running long ago."
The village chief clicked his tongue.
"By the way, why has the Deposed Crown Prince come here in person in times as grim as these?"
The village chief's hoarse voice, as he stole a glance at me, was laced with blatant wariness.
Deposed crown prince, though.
That was a title the Empress and her closest aides used to sneer at me, yet I never expected to hear it in the North too.
'So the hostility earlier wasn't my imagination.'
But it didn't seem to be hostility toward me personally.
To be precise, it was hostility toward the Imperial Household itself.
If I were the one to speak to someone like that, it would only needlessly tangle things further.
I asked Harben to explain in my place.
"......His Highness the Deposed Crown Prince and our Grand Duke are holding a state wedding?"
Even so, he still tacked on 'His Highness.'
He didn't seem to have said it consciously.
'What on earth did he use to do?'
My doubts about the village chief lasted only a moment.
Soon his brow furrowed menacingly.
"Hah, the North is in an uproar, and far from sending aid—"
The village chief glanced at me and turned his back without finishing his words.
"Follow me. It is a hovel so shabby you might freeze to death in it, but you should be able to rest there for a night."
The village chief's retreating figure vanished beyond the blizzard, hazy as dust.
Just then, Harben spoke to me, fidgeting restlessly.
"I am sorry, Prince. That friend of mine has always been a crooked, foul-tempered fellow......."
"It's fine. From the looks of it, the situation in the North is unusually serious, so we should be thankful he didn't throw us out on the spot."
Whooo—!
With perfect timing, the bitter wind howled even more grandly.
'The monsters have collectively turned ferocious, huh.'
The story that had grazed my ears weighed on my mind.
Did it have anything to do with the North's climate, which had become far harsher than what I'd heard?
'No way to know right now.'
I couldn't deduce the exact circumstances the North currently faced.
But it seemed obvious, at the very least, that some enormous upheaval had struck this land.
'But.......'
Yet word of this had never reached the capital.
Even though I had lived practically confined to the Imperial Palace, major events on the continent were bound to reach my ears.
'If not even a rumor of it made the rounds, let alone reached my ears, across the entire Empire.......'
It meant someone was deliberately controlling the information.
There was no need to rack my skull over whose doing it was.
'Cassandra.'
I didn't know why she had done this, though.
'The already dangerous place has gotten even more dangerous, and she sent me here anyway, huh.'
With my stepmother coming at me this blatantly, a stubborn defiance surged up from deep in my chest instead.
I wanted to cling to my lifeline tooth and nail and survive, no matter what.
It had always been that way.
But now, I didn't even want to think about giving up.
'Back when I was shut away in the Imperial Palace, I was helpless and couldn't try anything.'
But not now.
Now that I'd finally escaped my stepmother's clutches, shouldn't I struggle with all my might?
"Let's go."
"Ah....... Yes, understood."
I led Harben and followed after the village chief.
After all, I needed to grasp the current situation first.
As I walked, I brought up the golden status window.
[■■■■■■■■■□(99%)]
The loading bar had reached its critical point.
There was not much time left before I would witness the answer to whether this was truly worth 300G.
In the meantime, I'd pry even a little information out of that prickly village chief.
Information that would help me survive, if possible.
***
After Abel entered the village chief's house.
Whooooo—!!!
The blizzard grew incomparably fiercer than before.
At the same time, the full moon embedded in the sky gave off an even more brilliant radiance.
That bizarre spectacle almost looked like a whip lashing this harsh environment onward.
But the weather was not the only thing the moonlight affected.
"Krrrrr......!"
A howl carried on the snowy wind.
Bloodshot pupils, steeped in the bluish moonlight, fiercely locked onto the human settlement.
A village torn to rags by several raids.
"Skreee......!"
The bastards split their twisted snouts wide and laughed uproariously.
A doghouse of a place, worse even than the hamlets they themselves inhabited.
Within its shoddy fence, only withered, scrawny things were huddled together, trembling.
There was no sense of any warriors' might that could stand against them.
"Skreeeeek......!!!"
At last, the bastards began to move.
Within the blizzard.
Very slowly.
Tightening their encirclement.