The Third Prince was a bastard who ranked among the very foremost of the Empire's princes for being merciless and unsparing.
A hawk and a hardliner. A militarist and imperialist who advocated building a cycle of national enrichment through the instrumentalization of conquest.
Which made the present situation all the more unexpected.
He had caused a scene and received praise?
'And here I'd been prepared to blow myself up along with the Third Prince if things went sour.'
Having taken his revenge for the late king he had no regrets left, and breaking the vanguard of the radical faction would be a gain for Deber too, so he had thought up a final move on that judgment...... like hell.
It had become utterly useless.
'Even better. Well done, is it? Then it stands to reason you'd hand over a reward, doesn't it?'
It was as he glanced at the Third Prince's mood and schemed about squeezing something out of him.
"Gebel neglected his overwork and ended up contracting a fatal illness, and it will be processed as him departing to convalesce. The stress arising from your handling did pull the trigger, but the cause itself is overwork. Your degenerate conduct ruined the First Prince's card, so I shall handle this much for you."
"Brother. Being praised by you leaves me at a loss for how to comport myself. To hear I have rendered a service makes me proud, hahaha."
"A service? A service, is it."
The Third Prince turned only his eyes to send him a sidelong glance.
A pathetic younger brother, a disgrace to the bloodline, a moron there was no use talking to, roughly that sort of existence, was the feeling.
'Feels like I'm not even treated as the same species, never mind a brother?'
"Have you forgotten?"
"Pardon?"
"Every time I look at you I realize there is nothing so meaningless as the mere wagging of a tongue."
By the look of it, when Zion Riobelt apologized he apparently accompanied it with some action......
Surely not?
"Having done it, I grew afraid...... I was not in my right mind, Third Prince."
He knelt. Only then did the Third Prince turn his gaze away.
So this was it after all. The reason he'd made the old butler kneel and slam his head down every time he apologized was entirely the Third Prince's influence.
'Zion Riobelt might well have been this bastard's handiwork.'
Third Prince Garon Riobelt. He seemed a far more dangerous breed than expected.
"Now that I think of it, since I have summoned you, there was something I meant to ask. Why did you go to the prison."
He was asking the reason he had gone to see his original self, that is, Zion Bliese.
'To kill me. And then I nearly killed him, and in the end he wound up having his body stolen by me.'
The reason he was asking this had to be that Zion Bliese had vanished.
There was no way he could guess that a grand magic on the level of a miracle had been involved, so it was obvious he assumed a jailbreak.
"I went to kill him....... They said the bastard who tried to assassinate me was still alive......"
"And apart from that, nothing, hm. Never mind. There is no chance of it being within your capacity."
It seemed he had been about to ask whether Zion knew anything about Zion Bliese's escape.
Then he apparently gave up, figuring what was the use in asking a mere piece of trash.
He'd felt it ever since beating the marquis, but living as trash really was unbeatable for sheer comfort.
It had its advantages, in a way?
"Get out now. Consider yourself lucky this time and conduct yourself with restraint. Should you cause an incident like today's without permission, this prince himself will be the first to hand down a 'punishment.' And a sentence of confinement will be pronounced three days from now, so be aware of it."
It seemed his business was concluded. But the words he tacked on at the end were awfully grating.
"Brother? Confinement... you say?"
He said well done.
Then even if there's no reward, at least don't punish me, you bastard.
"Was I not in the right?"
"You were in the right."
"Then why......?"
"The sentence of confinement is handed down pursuant to the laws of the Imperial house."
Ah, he was done for.
He had just realized the strengths this body possessed and meant to live throwing his weight around freely, and now confinement?
It wasn't prison, but either way he'd be shut in, unable to budge an inch?
"Might I ask how long the term is...?"
"Roughly three years."
Hm. Decided.
Three days from now, he said?
He couldn't sit quietly waiting for the sentence to be pronounced.
***
Three years of confinement.
In truth, it was not a heavy punishment. It had to be seen as excessively light, if anything.
He had turned a man, and a ducal-rank heavyweight at that, into a vegetable, and it was a mere three years of confinement?
'I already knew the Empire sanctifies and idolizes the Imperial bloodline as some Divine Race. But I hadn't known that even the Empire's worst piece of trash lives within an inviolable sanctuary to this degree.'
The people of House Gebel would be weeping tears of blood and beating the ground right about now.
Well. Not his concern.
'I can't be locked up for three years. Absolutely not.'
He lay on the antique, ornate bed, throwing a mana stone toward the ceiling and catching it.
For reference, he had quietly swiped one from the security magitech device installed in his residence.
"All right, decided. I'll get myself sentenced to exile."
Banishment from the Empire's capital. Ideally, exile to Deber.
He had come to want to be the only prince residing in a colony, after causing a scene big enough to earn exile despite being of the Divine Race.
'I need a surefire trick to aggravate the sentence. A trick for getting the opposite of a reduction is a bit laughable, but still.'
He'd always been on the resourceful side with petty schemes, so he'd have to turn things over in his head and consider this and that.
"Since I've been given confinement anyway, damn it, should I actually go into a vault once?"
...He'd only been joking to himself in high spirits, but it was more plausible than expected?
And as it happened there was one item he wanted to steal.
No. An inheritance he wanted to reclaim, he ought to say.
"Heh heh heh heh. The Imperial treasury is a vault too, if we're calling things vaults. Indeed."
Just thinking about it was a delight. It was simply, wildly fun.
How to put it, it felt like life was worth living.
Was it because wearing this body meant that whatever he did was freedom itself?
Laughter came unbidden. As the habit remaining in the body dictated, the line of his mouth twisted.
'Zion Riobelt. The license you enjoyed, I'll enjoy it in your place!'
Many thanks, you bastard.
Thanks to you I get to tour the Imperial Palace's treasury and reclaim the kingdom's stolen inheritance and have my chicken and its eggs too.
"Hold on, does this mean that treason against Litania amounts to patriotism toward Deber? Heh heh heh."
Now then, shall we go.
To tour the Emperor's treasure storehouse.
***
The next day, Zion moved for his purpose right away.
"Butler. I'm going to the Imperial Palace, so make preparations."
From the residence to the Imperial Palace was about thirty minutes. Thanks to the automobile bearing the Imperial crest racing down the main road, he was able to arrive in no time.
That said, he had no idea where his destination was.
"Hey. You."
He called over an Imperial guard standing nearby.
"A subject of the Empire greets a member of the Divine Race. What is the matter, Ninth Prince?"
A respectful attitude, but an expression bearing unconcealable disgust.
Thanks to it, the notoriety this body had built up became viscerally clear.
Presumably he already knew about yesterday's assault as well.
'But so what if he harbors disgust, what's he going to do about it?'
This side of things was a prince, if you please.
"I shall be going to the Imperial treasury. Guide me."
"The Imperial treasury, you say? Have you received authorization?"
"A direct member of the Imperial house enters the Imperial house's treasury, and I need permission? Do you dare presume to obstruct this prince's will?"
When he put on a ferocious scowl, the guard asked cautiously.
"Then might I inquire as to your business?"
"Denied. If you do not lead the way this instant I shall hand down a punishment."
Rather than wrangling over whether to report to his superiors, the guard silently moved his feet.
Instead, another guard who had been eavesdropping nearby headed off somewhere.
Presumably going to report to a higher-up.
'Can't leave that be.'
"Hey, you."
The other guard, who had been moving off, flinched and turned around, and Zion smiled nastily.
"Follow me. Ah, and both of you turn your communicators off."
"...I obey Your Highness's command."
After moving for about ten minutes, the guard came to a halt.
"Your Highness. This entire palace building is the Imperial treasury."
Enormous. They said the great powers were tearing treasures out of every corner of the world, and it seemed they'd piled up a fair amount indeed.
'Including our Deber's relics.'
"Go tell them to open the door. I shall enter at once. No, you would surely get up to something, so I had best go myself."
Striding on in, he saw three or four guards assigned to sentry duty. The guard who had led him this far ran over and began to wag his tongue.
"Squad Leader, His Highness the Ninth Prince says he wishes to enter the treasury."
One of them apparently held the rank of squad leader.
The treasury guard squad leader's face hardened immediately.
"Your Highness. With my apologies, without authorization from His great and ever-great Majesty, no one at all may enter the treasury regardless of station."
By common sense he was correct. There was no way one could enter the Emperor's treasure storehouse as one pleased.
However much of a son you were, rifling through your father's pockets could only be an impertinence.
Of course, a trash prince does not concern himself with such things.
Especially not when he had come with the express intent of causing an incident.
"Have you forgotten that the Grand Mage Zion Bliese, that worst criminal of the Empire, tried to kill this prince. I shall come out having taken only a few magitech devices for self-defense. Move aside."
"I understand a thorough security system to have been established at Your Highness's residence."
He had asked nicely and the man hadn't moved aside, so nasty words were next in line.
"So you are a traitor who wishes to see this prince assassinated?"
The savagery felt in his manner of speech. The guard squad leader's face hardened fast.
"Th-that is not so."
"Not so, indeed. To think I would discover a traitor within the palace grounds."
He snatched away the spear a guard had been holding.
"If you do not move aside. I shall enter even if it means killing you."
A warning from human trash. Judging by the guard squad leader's expression, he seemed to be feeling a threat to his life.
'Why is he so tense over just this much? Working within the palace means he's the elite of the elite, and he's a coward.'
There was a reason. Zion didn't know it, but the Ninth Prince had an actual record of having killed a guard.
"...Do as you will. However... with my apologies, removal of items from the treasury is strictly forbidden. Furthermore, I am obliged to report to those above that Your Highness paid a visit, so I beg your magnanimous understanding."
He was saying he would go fetch an order from someone of high enough station to stop the delinquency.
He'd be thinking that whatever Zion took, they could simply confiscate it.
"Fine. Do as you please."
Achieving his purpose was a matter of the moment he entered anyway.
Krrrrrrrrk...!
Along with a heavy mechanical sound, an enormous iron door opened.
Seen from the side, its thickness came to a full one meter, and all manner of mana circuits were engraved upon it.
'Whew, stringent indeed. Look how densely packed those circuits are. No one in the world could ever have broken through this.'
But, right now.
He gave a little hop!
That alone was enough.
Krrrrrrk, thud.
"Hah, to think a moment would come when I would see Litania's Imperial treasury with my own eyes."
In Zion Bliese's body he could never have gotten in, not if he died and came back.
Grand Mage or whatever, never.
An age assessed as being in the midst of a magitech engineering revolution.
Unlike in the past, an ability an individual obtains through cultivation can never surpass a developed technical system.
'The instant I manifested magic to try breaking through in the first place, I'd have been caught by the detection sensors. Because it's that kind of age.'
Presumably before long someone capable of stopping a prince's outrage would come storming in.
Even so, he had time enough for one round of sightseeing.
"Wow, how much would this go for? Looks like a Gizkan relic."
Look this way and it was gold, look that way and it was treasure.
Artifacts producible only from top-grade mana stones, dozens of times more expensive than gold of the same weight, lay strewn all over the place.
If he stole just one and sent it to the Liberation Army, it would yield several years of operating funds at minimum.
Well, it would all be confiscated the instant he left the treasury.
"Pie in the sky. Our royal family's relics are... ah, over that way?"
An area where Deber's relics alone had been gathered and displayed.
The first thing to catch his eye was a resplendent staff.
A sacred object beyond any possible appraisal of value, usable only by Deber's kings, generation after generation.
"The Stem of the North Star...... if only I could take it out with me."
Manifesting magic with that staff would double its power at minimum...... but it too was pie in the sky.
Because it would obviously be confiscated the moment he left.
Therefore the item he had to take here was only one.
"Ah, found it."
An old ring that did not suit the place had been set down in a corner.
'The Ring of the Guide... shoved in a corner, of course. I'm finally reclaiming it.'
Deber's kings are granted royal authority by wearing the Ring of the Guide.
The Ring of the Guide was one of the two great sacred objects, paired with the Stem of the North Star.
'This isn't an item to be left neglected like this. Well, from the Empire's standpoint it's nothing but an old ring.'
The Ring of the Guide is also an artifact that grants immense magical advantages to one born of Deber's bloodline.
So from the Imperial house's standpoint, wouldn't they have been in agony over having seized this precious artifact and being unable to make use of it?
"...The problem is that the current me is in the same position."
Since this was not a body of the Bliese bloodline, the ring probably would not bestow its efficacy.
The taste in his mouth was bitter.
'From the start the purpose was to commit the crime of plundering the Emperor's property on top of intruding into the treasury. Still, it is a bit of a shame.'
No, in truth it was an enormous shame.
What if the finger wearing the ring had been Zion Bliese's rather than Zion Riobelt's?
He would have been able to enjoy every last one of the ring's efficacies.
'I'll likely go through similar things from time to time going forward.'
For instance, from now on every Deberian would look upon Zion himself with eyes of hatred.
Forever.
"...Quere Stellam Orbita."
Intoning the activation words for manifesting magic, he slid the ring onto his middle finger. This one thing, at least, might not be confiscated even when he left.
"Come, fate. The rightful............"
An incantation passed down only to the legitimate line of the royal house. Mana surged and the ring began to shine.
If the incantation finished, the ring would fix itself to his middle finger and would not come off until he died.
"In order to lead... one must rightly follow......"
It could be defeated by cutting the finger off, but they didn't seem likely to cut off a member of the Divine Race's finger over a single piece of junk shoved in a corner.
"To the one who goes forward guiding the way......"
It was as he continued the incantation, sunk in thought.
He abruptly realized something.
That the ring was shining unnaturally brightly.
"Hm?"
It was at that very moment.
「I hereby bring into effect the third article of the covenant. Walk thou the blank.」
A solemn declaration coming from the sky.
The very voice he had heard when his body was switched.
'This voice......?!'
"Gkh...!"
A groan escaped him despite himself.
Because a magical upheaval was raging from inside his body.
It was a violent yet quiet change.
'The surging of mana... the traces of magic manifestation......'
Shock like a tidal wave engulfed his body and mind.
His hands trembled from the realization bearing down on him.
"Quere Stellam Orbita. Illuminate."
Without the slightest precursor, a small flame sparked.
...Quiet.
Wait as long as he liked, there was nothing but stillness.
Even though the magic detection sensors installed in the treasury obviously numbered at least a thousand.
His eyes were hot.
He closed them.
'It cannot be felt.'
The mana had vanished.
No, erased would be the correct word.
'Even the sensors are failing to detect my mana.'
It had been a hundred-odd years since the magitech revolution.
An age that regarded magic as a symbol of the outmoded.
An age in which the title of mage had degenerated into a vulgar joke.
'I can now use magic without being caught by anyone at all, by anything at all.'
A miracle he had never once even imagined had fallen into Zion's hands.