Passing between the nobles who recoiled from him as though avoiding some filthy beast, Karl came to a stop in front of Ias.
Ias wanted to flee, but he could not.
“Brother.”
“…Ah, yes….”
Karl greeted him with an innocent smile, and Ias, unable to compose his expression, awkwardly smiled back and nodded.
Karl stood there looking up at Ias with his entire body slouched, as though he had forgotten every rule of etiquette the attendant had taught him.
He was the very image of an utterly ignorant, perfectly harmless, foolish, and feeble scarecrow of an imperial prince.
There were limits even to this sort of thing. Presenting himself as this thoroughly pathetic went far beyond merely demonstrating that he had no interest in the struggle for the throne.
At this rate, no one would even treat him like a person.
‘Why are you doing this? You are intelligent.’
Ias conveyed the thought with his eyes.
Karl’s mind worked far too well for someone who had supposedly spent his entire life confined to a room without learning anything. Five minutes of conversation with him was enough to recognize his intelligence.
And yet he was behaving like an idiot!
How was he planning to deal with the consequences?
“I survived because of you, Brother. Thank you.”
“……Is… that so? I’m glad…….”
Ias was now completely lost.
He had no idea what Karl was thinking.
He had come all this way just to say something like that?
A chill ran through Ias as he watched Karl smile with flawless innocence.
“Is Father not here yet?”
“Fath…!”
Ias recoiled in shock, and the murmuring nobles abruptly fell silent in alarm.
There was not a single person in the world who called Madius ‘Father.’
Not even his own children dared address him that way.
Madius was the supreme ruler of the thousand-year empire, the great emperor of every imperial subject.
His children were no exception.
Karl had thrown the entire party hall into chaos like a wolf charging into a flock of sheep. Amid the ruined atmosphere, only the musicians continued playing, sweating profusely as they exchanged anxious glances.
Ias wanted to escape.
He had absolutely no idea why this bastard had come over to him specifically to wreak havoc.
“Khup! ……Ahem….”
A desperately suppressed laugh rang through the party hall amid the tense music.
Everyone turned toward the sound, but no one could tell who had laughed in the middle of this dreadful situation.
“……Have you lost your mind?”
Gavianne whispered with a grave expression as she pinched the back of Aingir’s hand hard.
Aingir acted utterly bewildered, as though the shock had made him forget language itself, and tilted his head as if he could not understand what she meant.
Gavianne’s lovely brows drew sharply together.
“…His Majesty has not arrived yet.”
Ias finally managed to regain his composure and answered in a low voice.
Karl nodded enthusiastically with the expression of a child.
Then he shuffled away, dragging his slippers across the floor, and began stabbing pieces of food from the banquet tables with a fork and eating them.
“…….”
At this point, the absurdity had grown so overwhelming that Ias almost stopped caring what happened.
He did his best to straighten his ruined hair and approached his mother, Adne.
“Mother.”
“……Ah, Ias.”
Adne had appeared frightened by the rigid atmosphere, but when Ias approached and took her hand, her tension melted away. She smiled and clasped her son’s hand in return.
With her honey-colored hair elegantly pinned up and her bright hazel eyes, Adne hardly looked like a woman with a fully grown son when she smiled like that.
“…That is the Fourth Prince, is it not?”
“Yes, Mother.”
Answering Adne’s cautious question, Ias quietly watched Karl behave like a fool.
Without even transferring any food onto a plate, Karl stabbed chunks of cake directly with his fork and ate them. He sniffed at the alcohol, grimaced, then picked up a cup filled with a sweet drink and gulped it down.
In the eyes of royalty and nobility, he was nothing short of a barbarian.
……No.
He was exactly what everyone had expected him to be.
Karl, the Fourth Prince of lowly birth: foolish, incompetent, and pathetic.
“It would be best if we moved back a little.”
Gavianne was dumbstruck by Karl’s barbaric eating habits, which were unlike anything she had ever witnessed in her life.
Aingir, who had been the center of the party, quietly led her toward the edge of the hall.
“The Empire’s…!”
An attendant who had begun to shout abruptly closed his mouth, and the doors of the party hall swung open with force.
“…….”
Emperor Madius raised a hand to silence the attendant, then slowly surveyed the hushed hall with the imposing presence of a lion.
An unusual gleam appeared in his sun-like eyes.
Step.
“Y-Your Majesty!”
The instant Madius took a step forward, everyone bowed their heads toward him as though time, which had momentarily stopped, had begun moving again.
Karl’s bizarre behavior was nothing compared to Madius’s arrival.
It was as though the sun itself had risen, as though a supreme being who ruled over insignificant beasts had entered the room.
The disorderly atmosphere instantly snapped back into perfect discipline.
Without sparing so much as a glance for the nobles bowing before him, Madius walked straight ahead and stopped before Karl, who was eating like an animal.
Karl, who had now abandoned all pretense and was picking up food with his bare hands like a true barbarian, continued chewing as his eyes slid sideways.
After a brief moment of consideration, he turned to face Madius with a fistful of food still clutched in one hand.
Karl vigorously chewed while lowering his head.
He glanced around, then awkwardly bent at the waist after imitating what the other nobles were doing.
“Hello, Father.”
“…….”
Everyone who heard him broke into a cold sweat.
As the others stood frozen, uncertain what to do in response to Karl’s absurd greeting, Madius slowly opened his mouth.
“Why have you lowered your head?”
Why was he asking that?
Just as the thought occurred to everyone, Karl answered without a care.
“Brother Ias told me to.”
Ias, who had been slowly retreating while holding Adne’s hand, felt an overwhelming urge to scream.
Startled, he cautiously raised his head and found Madius staring directly at him with those sun-like eyes.
“I see. You are fulfilling your role as an elder brother well.”
“……Thank you, Your Majesty.”
Caught off guard by the unexpected remark, Ias hesitated before answering quietly and lowering his head once more.
He could not understand what either Karl or Madius was thinking.
“Well done, Ias.”
“…….”
Goosebumps rose across Ias’s skin at Madius’s praise, leaving him unable to move.
But as he tightly held his mother’s hand—Adne was so terrified that she could barely breathe—Ias answered with his characteristic broad, easygoing smile.
“I merely did what I should for my younger brother, Your Majesty.”
Madius slowly nodded.
Then, wearing an inscrutable expression, he spoke with barely a movement of his lips.
“Even so, preserving the blood of the Imperial Family is no small accomplishment. Is there anything you desire?”
Without realizing it, Ias glanced toward Karl.
Karl, however, still wore the same innocent expression. Avoiding Madius’s gaze, he was secretly stuffing the cake in his hand into his mouth.
“How could I dare covet anything belonging to the Imperial Family?”
It was a statement that could be interpreted somewhat……
politically.
“Is that so?”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
That was the end of it.
Madius turned his attention away from Ias and looked at Karl once more.
“Why have you come here dressed in such a manner?”
“Hm? Is something wrong?”
Karl ran his filthy hand over his pure white nightshirt, making it even dirtier.
Then, wearing an expression of complete ignorance, he looked directly at Madius….
Yes.
He met his eyes precisely and stared straight into them as he spoke.
“This is all I have. I didn’t know I was supposed to wear different clothes.”
Madius slowly nodded at Karl’s answer, then spoke impassively.
“To allow one of Imperial blood to walk about dressed in such a state. The discipline of the Imperial Family has fallen into disgrace.”
Everyone stopped breathing in terror as though thunder had struck the hall.
“Punish the one responsible.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
Orten, the chief attendant, immediately bowed and answered.
Cecile was the only person who actually cared for Karl, but in accordance with imperial protocol, an attendant had technically been assigned to him.
It had been Madius who wanted that attendant used for other duties, and Orten, understanding the emperor’s wishes, had reassigned him elsewhere.
Yet the attendant would be the one forced to bear responsibility.
“Karl.”
With the same expression, presence, and voice he had maintained since entering the party hall, Madius spoke Karl’s name.
“This gathering was arranged to celebrate your recovery, yet judging by your present appearance, it seems you are unqualified to remain here.”
“Ah, I only came because I heard there would be food. I’ll be going now.”
Karl answered lightly, as though he truly knew nothing.
And he savored this moment.
Everyone else had their heads bowed, unable to look at him.
Only Madius was staring directly at Karl.
Karl had decided that, for now, there was only one piece of etiquette from the attendant’s lessons that he truly needed to know.
It was for this exact moment.
Just as the attendant had taught him, Karl drew his left foot backward, placed his right hand over his chest, and inclined his head in greeting.
The movement was disciplined, courteous, and elegant, without the slightest flaw anyone could criticize.
And then there were his eyes.
The eyes of a predator crouching among the brush, lifting its gaze as it prepared to fill its starving belly.
Karl stared directly at Madius as he offered that greeting.
Despite his shabby appearance and filthy clothes, the presence he displayed was unquestionably something befitting the offspring of a lion.
Karl proved that Madius’s eyes had not been mistaken.
He engraved clearly into the mind of the great emperor of the thousand-year empire that he belonged in this place more than anyone else.
“I’ll be going now, Father.”
Karl immediately returned to the face of an innocent child who knew nothing.
Then, completely disregarding imperial etiquette, he walked past Madius and left the party hall without even receiving permission from him.
Madius watched Karl’s small back disappear with an unchanged expression before opening his mouth.
“I was so distracted that I forgot to speak. You may raise your heads.”
Only then did the nobles finally lift their heads.
Even so, no one dared meet Madius’s gaze, and they merely stared down at the floor.
Madius strode leisurely among those who avoided his eyes like a tiger among lesser creatures, then seated himself in the place reserved for the emperor alone.
Madius had already known that Karl intended to participate in the struggle for the throne.
He had also long since seen through the fact that this was some strange new Karl, utterly different from the one who had existed before.
But even Madius had not known how drastically this new Karl might reshape the board.
And now the weak, insignificant creature who had once been beneath notice had stood proudly before Madius and said:
‘I have nothing, so there is nothing I can do with what I possess. I suppose I will have to take a few things from you, since you have so much.’
Madius spoke in a low voice, yet the deep resonance of it carried throughout the entire party hall.
“Why are none of you enjoying the party?”
Reading the atmosphere, the nobles cautiously approached him. Beginning with those of the highest rank, they bowed before Madius.
In accordance with imperial etiquette, they presented themselves to the emperor and formally paid their respects before anything else.
‘Did he see through it? My intentions?’
Madius accepted their greetings without any change in expression as the thought crossed his mind.
From Madius’s perspective, it was a natural conclusion. There was no way he could imagine that Karl already knew all of his plans through Han Changin’s memories.
The First Prince, Balos, already behaved as though the empire belonged to him.
The Second Prince, Aingir, possessed the greatest ability of all the princes, yet had tried to do nothing.
The Third Prince, Ias, enjoyed the military’s support thanks to his cheerful nature and formidable martial prowess, yet did nothing but roam beyond the palace.
And now the ‘failure’ who had spent sixteen years with one foot in the grave, accomplishing nothing, had suddenly overcome every adversity, risen to his feet, and stared Madius squarely in the eyes.
‘That throne will be mine.’
Madius found it rather entertaining.
He had originally intended to strengthen Ias and use him to alter the balance of power, but now he had another piece he could play.
If Karl possessed sufficient ability, there was no harm in giving him enough power to let him run wild.
‘Balos already possesses considerable power, while Aingir is reaching out from the shadows. I will raise Karl to preserve the balance, and use Ias as a counterweight whenever that balance begins to collapse.’
Of course, Karl would first have to prove that he possessed the necessary ability.
If he turned out to be nothing despite all his bravado—if he was merely an insolent flea swollen with arrogance—then Madius would simply discard him.
Afterward, he could proceed with his original plan: use Adne as a hostage to raise Ias into a viable contender and establish a three-way struggle.
‘How far can you go?’
Seated high above everyone who looked up toward him, Madius gazed down upon them all and leisurely made his next move.
***
The following day, Karl received a reward from Madius for displaying arrogance befitting a member of the Imperial Family.
The price of that reward was having Karl’s life placed upon the scales.
One week later, Karl was to leave the Imperial Palace to suppress a massive outbreak of monsters in the Barony of Hilpin in the northern region of the empire.
It was a duty personally bestowed upon the Fourth Prince Karl by Emperor Madius himself.
Madius had openly demonstrated his intention to give that weak, lowborn brat—little better than a wild beast—an opportunity to seize power.
But the fact that Karl, who until only a few days ago had been on the verge of death and could barely even breathe, had been entrusted with a monster subjugation could also be interpreted in the opposite way.
Perhaps Madius simply found him troublesome and intended to dispose of him by sending him to his death.
The development had been so sudden that no one could judge his intentions with certainty.
No one except Karl.
Originally, this subjugation mission had been given to Ias in the original story.
Ias had taken the knights and mages of House Beria with him and wiped out the monsters almost immediately.
Then, after remarking that ‘it was not particularly impressive, so it was not even entertaining,’ he had rejected Madius’s attempt to grant him greater power and influence.
But it would not be nearly so easy for Karl.
Compared to Ias, a genius who would reach the realm of Master within a year, and the swords and staves of the enormously wealthy House Beria, the current Karl was scarcely better than a newborn infant.
He could die.
But Karl had to pass this test.
If he failed, he would die anyway.
‘This is exactly what I wanted.’
Karl gritted his teeth against the immense torrent of fate that ceaselessly drove him toward death.
At last, he had taken his first step.
Now he truly could not stop.
He had no choice but to keep running forward without end.