‘So I’m fucked after all.’
A suffocating tension hung over the imperial audience hall.
Ministers stood in endless rows on either side of the dazzling hall adorned in gold, while the emperor who had made this unreasonable decision radiated an ominous presence from the throne.
Yet his gaze alone was as sharp as a honed blade.
“Kaon, you depart for war tomorrow.”
Originally, this was a mission the Crown Prince was supposed to carry out.
That was how it had gone in the novel.
Reincarnation, transmigration?
Fine. Whatever.
But did the original story have to get wrecked right from the start?!
THUD!
Kaon dropped straight to his knees.
The first expedition in this trash novel.
Even the overpowered protagonist struggled through it, and he was supposed to survive?
This was basically an order to go out and die.
“Your Majesty! Your son has been frail since childhood and is utterly incapable of carrying out such a mission! I beg Your Majesty to show mercy!”
“Do not whine. The Crown Prince and the Second Prince both went on expeditions when they were your age. So did I. If you exercise your right to refuse, I shall take it as your renunciation of the right of succession.”
Kaon ground his teeth.
Renounce his right of succession?
The Third Prince barely had any backing to begin with.
The moment he gave up his right to the throne, would they really leave an eyesore like Kaon alive?
On the other hand, there was no guarantee he could survive if he went to war.
He had never so much as swung a sword in his life, and even being generous, the Third Prince’s martial talent was nothing special.
An average build with soft, untrained muscles.
He had spent his life doing virtually no training, so there was no way he could endure the brutality of a battlefield.
While Kaon kept his head bowed, the Second Prince stepped forward.
“Your Majesty’s profound wisdom fills your son with admiration. If he is someone who may one day ‘lead the Empire,’ then I believe it is only natural that he be tempered by a trial of this degree.”
‘You bastard, you’re only two years older than me……!’
A deep surge of rage rose inside him, but the law of the imperial palace was simple: without power, you got trampled. Even if he wanted to fire back with something satisfying, he first needed strength and influence.
The Second Prince was widely renowned as something of a swordsmanship prodigy, so even if Kaon challenged him personally, he would be utterly crushed.
Even as mockery poured in from around him, Kaon could not help thinking back.
‘How the hell did my life get this twisted……?’
It had all begun only a week ago.
***
Yunseong dragged his exhausted body home again that day.
The endless workload at the company and his boss’s constant bullshit had probably left him a little burned out.
Still, he had one modest hobby.
Reading web novels.
As Yunseong idly fiddled with his phone, his gaze stopped on a novel he could not decide whether to remove from his favorites.
At first, he had thought it might be decent. But between the frustrating protagonist, overwhelmingly powerful enemies, and a country steadily collapsing, readers who wanted satisfying victories gradually abandoned it.
Watching that happen, Yunseong had initially offered advice with good intentions.
The author immediately flew off the handle.
“What the hell does it have to do with you?”
Yunseong’s temper flared.
I actually thought this through before saying it, and this is how you take it?
He hammered at his keyboard and started fighting with the author. Ironically, readers even began flocking in because of the argument between Yunseong and the author.
At last, the author left one final comment.
“Then you do it yourself, bastard.”
Why had those words sounded like an auditory hallucination?
The very next instant, Yunseong was sucked into his monitor and dropped into the world of the novel.
And not as the protagonist, either, but as the Third Prince of a crumbling empire who could be killed off at any moment.
The first few days had been fine.
Yunseong, now Kaon, slowly began adapting to his new world.
But the peace did not last long.
The perfectly healthy protagonist, the Crown Prince, suddenly collapsed while coughing up blood, as if some fatal illness had struck him out of nowhere.
At that moment, Kaon understood.
Something—whether it was the system or that bastard author—was destroying the original story.
As if that were not enough, the previously sane emperor seemed to lose his mind and appointed Kaon, who had only just turned fifteen, as commander of the rebellion suppression force.
This meeting was not a discussion about who would command the suppression force.
It was a test of Kaon’s resolve.
***
‘There’s no way out now.’
He could not escape this.
The emperor, who should have mediated the situation, was forcing Kaon onto the expedition like a man possessed, while the Second Prince’s faction happily voiced their support.
The Crown Prince’s faction alone remained neutral, but they ultimately belonged to the emperor’s camp, so they had little choice in the matter.
The Third Prince might have had almost nothing worthy of being called a faction, but he was still in the line of succession.
The nobles wanted him gone as soon as possible so the rivalry could settle into a clean two-way contest.
A complete dead end.
Kaon’s mind raced.
‘If the author is interfering, then the imperial palace is a tiger’s den. If I stay here, I won’t even live out my natural lifespan. So I’ll get results on this expedition and get the hell out.’
Now that he was an imperial prince, he could not live forever completely detached from central power, but he at least needed territory where he could build up his own forces.
If he wanted to screw over that author and shut the mouths of the Second Prince and the ministers currently sneering at him, his only option was to make the expedition succeed.
But ‘how the hell am I supposed to do that?’
In that brief moment, the plot of the original novel unfolded through his mind like a panorama.
Since he knew the future, there had to be an opening he could exploit.
It had been a sloppy trash novel to begin with.
If the author was only that smart, there had to be a way through.
‘Rapid advance!’
Most of the imperial army consisted of infantry.
The enemy would assume the same and expect the march to take at least fifteen days.
Kaon’s thoughts came to an end.
“Your Majesty! I fully agree that, as an imperial prince, I must fulfill my duty. However, the plan your son has devised requires cavalry. I humbly ask that my troops be replaced with mounted soldiers.”
“Cavalry?”
The emperor’s eyebrow twitched.
Raising cavalry required an enormous amount of money and effort.
Of the three hundred thousand soldiers in the Imperial Central Army, only thirty thousand were cavalry. That alone showed how difficult they were to maintain.
Naturally, the emperor was reluctant to hand over such precious troops.
Before he could say anything, Kaon cut him off.
“Two thousand! Grant your son only two thousand cavalrymen, and I shall defeat the rebels!”
Murmur, murmur.
The ministers stirred.
Duke Langpine, commander of the imperial army, stepped forward.
“Your Highness the Third Prince, war is not child’s play. The traitors already number twenty thousand, and their ranks continue to swell. Yet you ask for only two thousand cavalry? By the time you arrive, their numbers will have grown even further!”
The duke’s argument was perfectly reasonable.
Duke Langpine belonged to the Crown Prince’s faction, but the relationship between the Third Prince and the Crown Prince was not particularly bad, so he spoke out of genuine concern as well.
Marquis Weiss, the supply commander and the Third Prince’s great-uncle, also objected.
“Your Highness, this time the commander-in-chief is correct. Take ten thousand infantrymen with you. The feudal lords along the way will join your forces as well, and you will be able to annihilate the rebels in one stroke.”
Objections continued one after another, while the Second Prince’s faction kept their mouths shut and simply watched.
From their perspective, nothing could be better than the Third Prince removing himself for them.
And the emperor’s reaction?
Silence.
He merely watched the direction of public opinion and waited with an expressionless face.
Kaon stepped closer to the emperor, then dropped to one knee.
THUD!
“If your son fails on this expedition, I shall relinquish my right of succession and live the rest of my life as a common farmer!”
“What!?”
The emperor, who had been watching events unfold behind an unreadable mask, jolted in shock.
‘That boy?’
The emperor’s role was originally to mediate between the various factions and maintain their balance.
That might have been different if imperial authority were still at its peak, but the Empire was approaching a transition of power.
With the Crown Prince collapsed, the emperor had tried to interfere as little as possible so he could determine which prince was truly capable.
His role should have ended with receiving a revelation(?) and placing the Third Prince on the testing ground.
Even the emperor could not help being flustered now.
“Are you in your right mind? How can you speak so lightly of surrendering your right of succession?”
“Your Majesty, I merely intend to make use of an opportunity that has presented itself. Would I make such a declaration if I were not confident of victory?”
“Hah……”
Another shock ran through the hall.
Kaon’s words implied a great deal.
‘Was the Third Prince deliberately living a life of debauchery because he had no power?’
‘Bullshit. You are not actually going to believe a man like that, are you? Anyone can make a grand declaration.’
Tap. Tap.
The emperor’s contemplation could be heard even from where Kaon knelt.
He rhythmically tapped the throne with one finger while studying the ministers’ reactions.
But he had no real choice.
The competition between the princes had to be fair.
If the balance tilted even slightly in one direction, then after his death, the Empire—already on the verge of division—would shatter into pieces.
Now that the Third Prince himself had spoken those words aloud, it would be difficult to reverse them.
After a long consideration, the emperor nodded.
“I shall give you two thousand cavalry. The rebels have currently advanced as far as the Grakal Territory in the south-central region of the Empire. The Central Army is still preparing. Your role is to seize that area and buy us time. Do you understand?”
“I understand completely.”
“If you truly have a method, I commend your spirit. However, the word of imperial blood is heavier than a thousand pieces of gold. If you fail to drive the rebels out of the Grakal Territory, it shall be considered a failure, and your right of succession will be stripped from you.”
THUD!
Kaon struck his forehead against the floor.
“I humbly obey the imperial command!”
By then, word had already spread far and wide that Kaon would depart on his expedition the very next day.
Some said the ministers intended to cast out the weakest and most incompetent Third Prince and completely establish a two-way struggle for power.
The central nobles whispered that the emperor himself must have agonized over the matter after the Crown Prince suddenly collapsed while coughing up blood.
If the Crown Prince crossed the River Lethe in his current condition, either the Second Prince or the Third Prince would have to be appointed as the next Crown Prince.
That was why the situation had taken on the form of a contest.
The problem was that the Third Prince’s faction was extremely weak.
In truth, it barely deserved to be called a faction at all. Given enough time, the Second Prince’s ascension to the throne was practically guaranteed.
Under those circumstances, Kaon had declared before the imperial court that he would form his force primarily from cavalry rather than imperial legionaries.
And with only two thousand men, he had proclaimed that he would crush the enemy.
Naturally, not only the emperor but every noble in the hall had been stunned.
Some said the pressure had driven the Third Prince insane, while others claimed he was staking everything on this one gamble.
Of course, Kaon had not thrown down his challenge with the mindset of a desperate gambler.
“Your Highness! Ask for infantry, even now!”
“That is right! Two thousand cavalry? The enemy numbers thirty thousand! Our only chance is to advance with infantry and draw in feudal lords hungry for military glory!”
The knights directly under Kaon—the Imperial Third Knight Order—crowded into the Third Prince’s palace and shouted as though staging a protest.
There were only around thirty knights in total.
If rotten luck caused the expedition to fail and Kaon lost his head, not only would they all lose their livelihoods, their honor would also be dragged through the dirt. Naturally, they were prepared to risk their lives opposing the plan.
It was one thing for the knight commander to act like this, but even his adjutant, Sir Mitchell, had veins bulging in his neck. Apparently, Kaon’s strategy really was that outrageous.
“You’re going to make my ears fall off!”
“That is not the problem! The infantry formation was almost complete already. If cavalry are assembled in such a hurry, do you really think they will be elite troops? There are bound to be common soldiers mixed in!”
Sir Jerome, commander of the knight order, was completely serious.
Kaon understood how they felt, but he rejected every objection.
“All of you, shut up and get ready! Do I look like an idiot to you? I have been sharpening my blade for this day all along. I have a way, so prepare to march.”
“…….”
People said the Third Prince’s stubbornness was tougher than an ogre’s sinew.
This was yet another moment that proved it.
The knights left with miserable expressions to make preparations because they had no other choice.
If they were going to depart at the crack of dawn, they were already short on time.
Only Sir Mitchell remained behind, making one final earnest plea.
“Your Highness! Please!”
“If you’re going to nag me too, then get lost.”
“Why?! What is the reason? I need to understand before I can support this. Just give me one reason!”
“Yeah, it’s nothing complicated. The author is a fucking idiot.”