"Every single person alive carries at least one thing they absolutely have to do."
For instance, having to care for aged and ailing parents.
Or being forced to study because falling behind your fellows at the academy earns you a scolding.
Or having a body that gains weight easily, so you always have to manage it.
Some people call that burden fate, or the trajectory of a life.
"But here's the thing. Even so, isn't the independence of one's homeland a bit much of a burden? My shoulders are heavy, and far too heavy at that."
Pitch-black hair. Deep blue eyes.
The distinctive traits of the Deber Kingdom's royal bloodline.
Though calling himself royalty meant nothing now, when the kingdom was reduced to a colony occupied by the Litania Empire.
"That's unexpected. I never imagined the famous Raven of Deber, the Crown Prince himself, would say such a thing. Well... I could see it from someone like me."
Zion shrugged. The recoil made the iron chains connecting both of his hands to the ceiling rattle with a clank.
"You're absolutely right, of course. But are you trying to lighten the mood, even if it takes a joke at your own expense?"
He looked steadily into the man's eyes. The man did not look away.
A knight of the enemy nation. The interrogator in charge of torture.
And... a comrade from the past who had once fought alongside him for the liberation of their homeland.
"That time we fled from the Empire's pursuers together. Do you remember?"
"Yes. How could I ever forget."
"The taste of that half of a wild potato we secretly roasted over a little fire and split between us was absolutely incredible."
A brief silence. Then the answer came.
"Is that so? For me, that was the exact moment I came to loathe, to the point of nausea, being reduced to swallowing something that tasted like mud."
That was why he had defected to the worst possible master among the enemy nation's high nobility, and why he now stood before Zion.
To faithfully carry out the order to torture his former liege.
"You know what? I understand you."
"......What?"
"Honestly, it's strange that the other comrades haven't turned to the Empire. Even I have wanted to throw this burden down more than once or twice."
The traitor's eyes went wide.
The symbol of the liberation movement and the independence struggle.
The sole direct-line royal of the Deber royal house, and its last legitimacy.
Words like that had no business coming from Zion Bliese, Supreme Commander of the Deber Liberation Army.
"Truly?"
"But my subordinates don't like the idea."
Zion's subordinates were also the interrogator's former colleagues.
"Indeed. Of course they wouldn't. As stubborn as they are stupid......"
Skreeeeek.
At the noise that came out of nowhere, the interrogator let his words trail off.
"Ah. I only acquired this recently. It hasn't been properly broken in yet."
Hasn't been properly broken in.
Hasn't been... properly broken in......
Zion smiled as he looked at the traitor.
'He's given up on being a Deberian.'
"Does the armor look good to you?"
Magitech armor. Battle armor exclusive to the Litania Empire's High-tech Knights.
"I'd heard that if the nerve cords inside are still alive, it can produce a friction sound. So the rumors were true."
"......"
A noise that sounded almost like a moan.
Like a fish still thrashing while being filleted alive, it was a malfunction caused by a 'component' that had not yet managed to die.
"Wearing magitech armor, you must have become a good two times stronger. How does it feel to hold a weapon ground out of your fellow Deberians as parts?"
Magitech armor was a weapon produced by carrying out live experiments on Deberians and, in the end, turning them into components.
To borrow the Empire's own phrasing, it was the glory of inferior flesh becoming one with superior technology.
The Litania Empire was that kind of nation.
"Imperials all share the same way of thinking: the one who got beaten was in the wrong for being weak. It seems defecting changed your attitude along with everything else?"
"......Save your provocations. You will regret them."
Well, I doubt I'll ever regret a thing.
Watching your face twist is far too enjoyable.
"Do you remember the Great Famine? Merin, I mean."
Years ago, the Empire had razed every wheat field in Deber and established large-scale cultivation grounds for special crops like mana herb.
Then came the severe drought.
The result that followed as a matter of course was the Great Famine...... and mass starvation.
"We both loved the wheat bread Merin baked for us. I loved it because she felt like an older sister to me, and you had no choice but to love it, since you were her fiancé."
Merin had been nothing more than a maiden of a slash-and-burn village, and in truth her wheat bread hadn't been anything special.
It had only tasted unbearably good because those were such hard times.
"And the two of us had to stand there and watch that same Merin starve to death, her body wasted down to nothing."
"Your Highness...... the wheat field my father gave his whole life to...... it's become a herb field."
That was the reason Zion had at the time carried out large-scale bombings on the mana herb cultivation grounds across all of Deber.
"That is what I hate. If I had defected to the Empire sooner, Merin wouldn't have died."
"Ah, so that's the logic."
Rage settled into the traitor's gaze.
"At the time of the bombing, the entire Empire was thrown into shock. The appearance of a Grand Mage in his twenties. The return of Deber's Crown Prince, Zion Bliese. I was blinded by revenge and blinded by Your Highness's potential, and so I ended up making a foolish choice."
The rage of a man who had thrown away precious time in quantities that had to be measured in years.
More precisely, the rage of a man who had decided to rationalize it that way.
"I told you, didn't I. Our royal house's magic may be famous enough, but if it were truly so great, we'd never have become a colony in the first place."
The Deber royal house was what people commonly called a distinguished house of magic.
Which was why, during the magitech engineering revolution, they had clung stubbornly to pure magic.
The end result of an isolationism that turned its face from the turning point of an era was exactly this colonial status.
"Anyway. How did we get onto this subject? Ah, the reasons I can't defect to the Empire. The last one is the most private and personal reason of all. Revenge for my father."
"You mean the late King Exon XIII."
It was a reason the traitor knew perfectly well without needing it explained.
Well, that had been true of every reason Zion had listed so far.
"In the end I was captured without managing to kill that bastard Marquis Gebel. Such a shame."
Zion was the only survivor among Deber's direct-line royals.
That behind the chain of suspicious deaths in the Deber royal family stood Marquis Gebel, one of the Empire's powerbrokers, was an open secret.
"It would have been impossible anyway. It is impossible for a mere subversive to break through every defense and cordon and reach my lord."
The noble the traitor had gone to when he decided to defect to the Empire was Marquis Gebel.
He had taken the man who killed his liege's father as his new liege.
'That's why you have to die together with me.'
Zion smiled, hiding what was inside him. Then he asked.
"Now that I think of it...... what's the date today?"
"Three days have passed since the new year."
"So a whole year has already gone by since I was dragged in here......"
Tromp, tromp, tromp, tromp!
Clatter-bang! Clatter-bang!
A commotion came from outside. Someone's unhesitating footsteps. A crowd following behind.
"Where are you, you lowly thing of Deber!"
CRASH!
Someone kicked the iron door open and strode in. Bewilderment settled onto the interrogator's face, and joy settled onto Zion's.
He'd come, finally!
The day he had waited and waited for!
Blond hair like thread spun out of gold, and eyes as red and deep as blood.
The traits of the Imperial family's bloodline.
"Y-Your Highness. What brings you to such a squalid place......"
"What brings me? What brings me?"
The Ninth Prince let out a shriek.
"The bastard who tried to kill me is still alive, and you ask what brings me here!"
"......"
The failure of the operation to assassinate the Ninth Prince.
That was the reason Zion was being held here in the prison of the Empire's capital.
'I thought it was a good opportunity, and it turned out to be a trap.'
The Ninth Prince was a delinquent so notorious that even the Imperial family had washed their hands of him.
To what degree? To the degree that "delinquent" wasn't enough, and he was called the Trash Prince.
'He'd caused an incident and been thrown out of the palace, so I thought it was the perfect opportunity.'
To think a trap had been lying in wait that not even he, a Grand Mage, could escape.
Zion sank into thought over where exactly things had gone wrong...... or rather, he couldn't.
The developments right in front of him were far too stimulating for that.
SMACK!
His cheek flared hot in an instant.
'Stimulating in a bad way, though.'
The Ninth Prince, who had slapped Zion's cheek without preamble, sneered.
"Zion Bliese....... Ha, I feel as though my name is being defiled. Far too fine a name for a gutter rat."
That was right.
Perversely enough, the Ninth Prince's name was also Zion.
The only thing the two utterly different men had in common.
'Do you even know what the name means, blathering like that?'
What was the point in saying it out loud.
He decided to simply get on with what he had to do.
Today was the very day he had been waiting for ever since he was captured.
"Bitri, you damned bastard!"
Time to start acting. He shrieked, spitting out his fury.
"You dared deceive me! Why is the Ninth Prince here!"
Bitri the traitor immediately checked the Ninth Prince's mood.
Seeing the man's face go cold fast, he turned ashen.
"What on earth are you talking about all of a sudden. Your empty tricks won't work!"
"You said you'd release me! You said if I handed over information you'd let me live! Didn't you say it was for the sake of what we once shared, that we should stand together! And then you bring in the Ninth Prince? You dared make a fool of me!"
"When did I ever, haaah. Ninth Prince. I will explain everything. First of all, I serve Marquis Gebel......"
"Silence."
THWA-BOOM!
The traitor could not spit out another word.
His head had been pierced clean through by a ballista-type magitech device prepared for a Grand Mage, no less.
No one can keep talking once their mouth is gone. And so the traitor would never be able to clear his grievance either.
'No. Bitri, I'd rather you didn't dare feel wronged at all. Repent your sins. I'll be following soon enough.'
That aside, that Ninth Prince bastard was something else.
To think he'd fire without a shred of hesitation.
"Ninth Prince. You kill a marquis's knight and don't even worry about the consequences. I envy the license you enjoy."
It was mockery, but more than half of it was sincere.
Because Zion had always wanted to be free.
Because he had wanted to escape his heavy duty and feel unburdened for once.
He had never been able to, and today his life would end.
"Did dragging this out for a whole year annoy you? So you came to kill me yourself."
The Ninth Prince put on a cruel expression.
"It will not do for a bastard who dared try to kill this prince to stay alive for a whole year."
He seemed utterly unconcerned that the reason for it had been to extract information through interrogation.
A way of thinking fitting for the worst piece of trash in the Empire.
"I pledge it on the honor of the Imperial house. I shall grant you the most agonizing death in the world."
Instruments of torture lay strewn all over this place, and he had experienced the Empire's torture techniques thoroughly over the past year.
But.
Even so, Zion was calm.
"Kaironi really is something. He was right again."
"What did you say?"
"You know what? I've been waiting for you, Ninth Prince."
The reason he had endured a year of disgrace.
As head of the Liberation Army, it was to carry out the operation to assassinate the Ninth Prince all over again.
"What nonsense are you blathering all of a sudden. Have you gone mad?"
He still didn't seem to grasp the situation. Then again, it would be laughable to feel any sense of danger here.
It would be stranger to be frightened of a subdued mage wearing a mana-sealing restraint.
'......is what the people of this era would think. And generally speaking, that's even true.'
But.
But, you see.
It had been a hundred-odd years since the magitech revolution.
Zion was effectively the only purist mage left in this era.
Which was why no one knew.
That a Grand Mage could do anything at all, if he was prepared to sacrifice.
Whoosh!
A gentle breeze blew. Even though this was a sealed prison, an underground detention facility.
"Quere Stellam Orbita"
The instant the wind pushed up the Ninth Prince's golden bangs.
CRACK! CRACK!
Mana surged.
Like a gale, and like a great boulder.
Both iron restraints shattered at once.
Zion brushed off his hands, and the other Zion's hugely widened eyes held nothing but shock.
"H-how, how......?!"
"There's a clever kid in our order called Kaironi."
A pervert who calculated all the way down to the worst case. Which was why Zion tended to call him Coward Kaironi.
"He told me this. If you're captured, think only about surviving."
He had said the Ninth Prince would come around after about a year, and to seize that chance.
'Kaironi, that kid nailed it again. His head really is worth something.'
Magical intelligence and strategic intelligence run on different tracks.
Which was why Zion had stopped thinking for himself and trusted only Kaironi's words.
That was how he had endured a year.
"Unlike magic, I'm a tin can when it comes to strategy. Though I do go in for petty tricks. I had no choice but to trust him. So the time to be repaid has finally come."
And while he was a tin can at strategy, put the other way around.
In magical intelligence alone, Zion was a genius who ranked among the very few across all of history.
CRA-CRACK!
The Deber Liberation Army, an organization struggling for Deber's liberation.
Crown Prince and Supreme Commander. The Raven of Deber, Grand Mage Zion Bliese.
The bounty hanging on that name came to a full 10,000,000,000 Luon.
Zion was a criminal who walked around with a bounty equal to a nation's annual budget hung around his neck in place of a necklace.
The highest bounty in the Empire's history proved just how dangerous he was.
"Mana, take shape once more."
The moment he intoned the word of power, one of Zion's sleeves flopped empty. His arm had turned into a blade of blue light.
At the same time, the Ninth Prince thrashed in protest.
"I asked you how you are using magic! Answer this prince's inquiry!"
Did he really want to use that manner of speech in this situation.
"You curious?"
"It is an order, you wretched thing!"
"It's a secret, you wretched thing."
Even gripped by terror, the Ninth Prince's face burned bright red because he couldn't master his own temper.
Ridiculous.
"Sorry, but I don't have a hobby of satisfying my enemy's curiosity right before killing him. Let's wrap this up quick. Once I kill you I've got the capital to bomb."
It was a miracle that put his death up as collateral.
So the Ninth Prince alone wouldn't be enough.
Bombing the capital ought to at least get it written in the history books that Zion Bliese's final flame burned rather hot.
Fwooosh!
From somewhere came the sound of a crow beating its wings.
Black-hued mana surged.
Mana that was like a shadow, yet felt cool and translucent.
It was the reason Zion tended to be called by the byname The Raven, the Great Crow of Deber.
"S-spare me. I was wrong. Let me live......!"
"No. You're worth more dead than alive."
Well then, shall we begin the execution.
"Ninth Prince. You said the name Zion is too heavy for me."
You're right. It's far, far too heavy.
I've suffered under a fate and a trajectory I never asked for.
"The one who leads. The one who protects. The guide. That is what our name means."
Far too fine a name for a Ninth Prince who enjoyed license beyond freedom.
So he would lead the bastard to his death and advance Deber's liberation by even a single step.
"Go on ahead and squabble with that bastard Bitri. I'll be following soon."
Amid mana fluttering like crow feathers.
He released the bowstring.
It was the moment the blade of mana bored into the Ninth Prince's heart.
————!
————!
A sensation came over him without warning.
'......—a......ah—!'
It felt as though his whole body were melting away.
No.
It was breaking apart.
Particles of light, his body, had become them.
It was flowing.
——————!
——————!
His field of vision crumpling like paper.
The sensation of being squeezed and pressed as though forced through a narrow gap.
And then, an unfamiliar voice reaching him.
————————!
————————!
「The hour of the covenant has come, and thus I declare its fulfillment.」
——————————!
——————————!
It reversed.
It flipped over.
The moment he felt that.
→→→→→ □ ←←←←←
→→→→→ ■ ←←←←←
=======
→→→→→ ■ ←←←←←
→→→→→ □ ←←←←←
His vision blacked out.
He lost consciousness.
***
"Haaugh!"
Zion drew in a great breath, resuming the breathing that had stopped, and pushed himself upright.
"What happened to...... huh?"
His voice was different. Utterly unfamiliar.
The place was a luxurious bedroom instead of a torture chamber. And a mirror happened to be set directly in front of him.
He could see his face.
"Blond hair...... and blood-red eyes?"
An Imperial prince and a notorious piece of human trash. Ninth Prince Zion Riobelt was inside the mirror.
"......my body's been... switched......?"
'I definitely pierced his heart throug....... Ah.'
The sensation of melting and merging together.
That voice he had heard at the very end.
"......The hour of the covenant has come......"
And thus I declare its fulfillment.
What covenant? What fulfillment?
Even with a Grand Mage's knowledge, he couldn't begin to work out the circumstances or the cause.
"This is absurd. An independence fighter from a colonized nation becoming a prince of the occupying nation."
Knock, knock, knock!
The sound of knocking. As he tensed sharply, a butler with white hair and a white beard appeared.
"Your Highness. I have come to have your formal attire for the New Year's banquet inspected."
What was he supposed to answer.
Something delinquent, for now?
"I don't recall telling you to come in."
The old butler dropped to his knees as smoothly as flowing water and slammed his head into the floor.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
'Uh, uhh?'
What was he doing? Had he lost his mind?
Ah. Surely not.
Had the Ninth Prince ordered him to apologize like that as a matter of course?
'What an utter piece of trash.'
If he really had ordered that, well.
Then he'd earned being called trash.
'I don't have his memories. What am I supposed to do.'
While he was deliberating, the butler poured out a stream of words, pleading his case.
"Your Highness, I beg you to look upon me with mercy. It is a matter of urgency for your attendance at the banquet, and so I have presumed upon your patience. Surely you know that this New Year's banquet is a matter of the gravest importance, one that will determine the Empire's next several years."
He didn't know. He didn't have the faintest idea what the man was talking about.
'What now? Play the Ninth Prince for the time being... would I even get away with it? And if I have to live in the Ninth Prince's body like this from now on, ugh, disgusting. Let's knock him out first and buy time to think......'
"In particular, as it doubles as the inauguration ceremony for Marquis Gebel as Colonial Governor-General of Deber......"
His thoughts cut off dead.
Gebel?
"Hold on. Wait. Who becomes what?"
Marquis Gebel, the bastard who got the last king of Deber killed.
He was becoming Colonial Governor-General of Deber?
"Butler. I've changed my mind."
This was no time to be sitting around deliberating.
For now, he had to move.
"If I go to the banquet, I could manage a word of greeting to Marquis Gebel, couldn't I?"
"Of course, Your Highness. Marquis Gebel would be delighted as well."
'Heh heh heh heh. All this time I wanted to kill Gebel and couldn't even get near him in the first place.'
Just to see his face once, he'd had to stake his life.
And now the butler was begging him to please go see the man's face.
"I'm going. Of course I'm going."
He was going to be able to meet his father's murderer.
There was no reason to hesitate.
......And on top of that.
Zion looked into the mirror once more.
'So I get to meet Gebel with this face.'
Blond hair, blood-red eyes, and the noble prince was smiling spitefully.