Chapter 83
The West Wing beside the main palace was the residence of the Second Prince, Valerius.
The corridor outside the private room was deathly silent.
Miriel stood before the door and took a short, steadying breath.
She had once walked about with her chin held high at Elterion Academy.
But the longer she spent here, the more keenly she felt that the air in the imperial palace was entirely different.
She hid the trembling tips of her fingers and signaled to the maid beside her.
“Please tell them that Miriel Adriane, the second daughter of House Adriane, requests an audience.”
“Please wait a moment.”
While the maid went inside, Miriel bit hard into the inside of her lip until blood returned to it.
Her father’s orders, the family’s honor, and her own ambition.
The weight pressing down on her shoulders was considerable.
“His Highness will grant you an audience.”
Before long, the door opened.
Miriel forcibly smoothed out her rigid expression and stepped inside, masking herself with the most elegant smile she could muster.
“...”
The moment she stepped into the room, the strong smell of whiskey and the fishy sweetness of perfume stabbed at her nose.
A sofa sat in the dimly lit inner part of the room.
Second Prince Valerius was lounging there at an angle.
He was not alone.
A woman in a diaphanous dress was curled in his arms, breathing in ragged gasps.
“Hmm?”
Prince Valerius looked Miriel over with half-lidded eyes.
“You’re Duke Adriane’s daughter... am I right?”
Starting from Miriel’s face, the prince’s gaze slid down her neckline and brazenly lingered on her chest.
“What I remember is something a little more... what’s the word, the bigger one. Bigger up top too...”
The prince snickered and roughly grabbed the woman in his arms by the chest.
“This one is big too, after all.”
The woman let out a breathy cry, but the prince’s eyes remained fixed on Miriel.
Vile.
Miriel clicked her tongue inwardly, but she kept her expression unchanged and lowered her head.
“The bigger one is my older sister, Liliana Adriane.”
“Then you are?”
“...I am the second daughter, Miriel Adriane.”
“Ah! Right, right. Duke Adriane has two daughters, after all.”
Valerius licked his lips, swirling his whiskey glass.
“Well, you’re not as good as the bigger one, but the smaller one isn’t bad either.”
“...”
“Take heart, young lady. Aren’t you bigger than that little brat who’s supposed to become an archmage this time? That’s more than enough to be above average.”
Miriel gripped the upper part of her dress tightly.
Her nails dug into her palm.
“Thank you for the compliment.”
Even if she showed her displeasure here, it would only give him something to pick at.
That man was nothing more than a pervert who enjoyed watching others squirm in humiliation.
When Miriel bowed her head as if it were nothing, Prince Valerius shook his head as if bored.
The prince gulped down the whiskey left in his glass in one go.
-Bang!
The empty glass slammed roughly against the table.
“So, if I hear the duke correctly... you know that brat who’s being invested as an archmage this time?”
“Yes. We’re senior and junior students at Elterion Academy.”
Miriel got to the point.
“After tomorrow’s investiture ceremony is over, I’ve arranged a separate time for you to meet Lady Lunaris. If Your Highness would personally extend a hand first...”
“Ha! I don’t like that.”
Prince Valerius’ face twisted into a scowl.
“Why should I bother matching that little wench? She ought to come find me first and bow her head, and even that wouldn’t be enough.”
“Your Highness.”
“That magic scrub who can only copy natural phenomena is so insolent. Does she think the royals are a joke?”
“Tomorrow is the day of the investiture ceremony, so the girl will likely be preoccupied.”
Miriel tried to persuade the prince in a calm voice.
“And rather than arranging a separate meeting for a private audience, showing magnanimity by extending your hand first in front of everyone would also be beneficial to Your Highness...”
“Ah, annoying. So annoying.”
Prince Valerius waved his hand with an irritated look.
His eyes were glazed with drink, but deep within them lay a chill so cold it was almost frightening.
“The youngest archmage, the empire’s greatest talent... it’s all futile.”
The prince’s gaze fixed on the empty glass on the table.
“Even so, one quick slash with a sword and you’re dead all the same, aren’t you?”
He had only lightly swept the side of his hand sideways.
The crystal glass was cleanly cut in half.
The cut surface was smooth as a mirror.
The sound of the severed upper half hitting the floor and shattering into pieces rang out a beat later.
Miriel inhaled sharply without meaning to.
The intangible blade gathered at the prince’s fingertips caught her eye.
The realm of shaping mana into a sword.
If you could take one more step beyond that and compress mana to the extreme to forge it into a fine blade.
If you could come to wield aura.
Only then would you reach the final realm every swordsman dreamed of: the Swordmaster.
Prince Valerius was a swordsman standing right at that wall.
One step.
He was also a tragic genius who had remained in place for years, unable to take that one step.
It was common knowledge among those in the know that the reason Prince Valerius drowned himself in drink and women and lived so decadently was that frustration.
Those who had gathered to raise the Second Prince to the throne had ultimately been drawn in by that talent.
Saying that he was merely wandering for a while, blocked by a wall.
Believing that once he regained his resolve, he was unquestionably the one most suited to the throne.
“Mages really do have it easy.”
Prince Valerius lifted the bottle itself and poured the harsh liquor into his mouth.
If he didn’t drink like this, his body, overflowing with mana, wouldn’t get drunk.
“There are answers everywhere for crossing that wall, aren’t there.”
The prince stared blankly at the bottle, which was already beginning to empty, and snickered.
“To see someone hailed as an archmage and all that for getting over a wall that’s barely even a wall is ridiculous.”
“...”
“A wall that even some little brat in his teens managed to get over, and yet I...”
A self-mocking murmur.
Miriel kept her mouth shut.
Rather than disgust, she felt a pang of sympathy.
If it were anyone else, maybe not, but this was coming from someone who was actually pounding away at that wall himself. The meaning felt all the more significant.
And even now, while drunk, he was belittling Lunaris’s achievements as if they were nothing.
In truth, the one who wanted to meet her more than anyone was Prince Valerius himself.
It was also the prince who had alerted Duke Adriane and the nobles of his faction to make contact with her sooner.
Because he was frustrated, he admired her.
Because he couldn’t have her, he hated her.
That contradictory emotion was shaking Prince Valerius back and forth.
“By the way, who will bestow the staff tomorrow? Will His Majesty do it personally?”
“I understand the First Prince will bestow it in your place.”
“My brother? Ha!”
The corners of Prince Valerius’ eyes twitched slightly.
But only for a moment, then the prince wrapped an arm around the shoulder of the woman beside him again and waved his hand dismissively.
“If you have nothing more to say, you may go. Or, well, young lady, would you like to have a drink with me?”
“...I’ll pass.”
“Tch. How dull.”
With his eyes half-closed, he waved a hand.
Miriel bowed and said she would see him tomorrow, then left the room with impeccable posture.
The moment she heard the door click shut behind her, strength left her legs.
“Haaah...”
Miriel staggered and braced herself against the corridor wall.
A long, heavy sigh spilled down to the floor.
The imperial palace really was no place for her.
Between Duke Adriane’s pressure and the Second Prince’s capriciousness, her stomach felt like it was turning over.
She drew in rough breaths again and again.
‘Still, tomorrow... tomorrow it’ll all be over.’
-Smack, smack!
Miriel slapped her own cheeks hard with both hands.
Red handprints were left on her once-pale cheeks.
‘Focus until the very end.’
She straightened her clothes, straightened her back, and lifted her chin.
Then she walked down the corridor again, masked as if nothing had happened.
*
A cold chill so harsh that even midsummer heat couldn’t penetrate it.
A bitter medicinal smell that stung the nose.
“...”
The Crown Prince—no, the First Prince, Kalian Belhardt, gripped his handkerchief tightly.
The knuckles of his fingers had gone deathly pale.
Though the season was clearly summer, his hand was ice-cold.
His throat was dry.
The prince lifted the glass of water on the table and brought it to his mouth.
The sound of him gulping down the water rang out especially loudly.
It felt like it was forcing its way into a torn esophagus.
“Cough, cough! Gahk!”
Coughs kept bursting out of him.
The prince hurriedly covered his mouth with the handkerchief and hunched over.
“A-are you all right?!”
The convulsive coughing did not stop for a while.
When the coughing finally subsided, a red stain had spread across the handkerchief he had pulled from his mouth.
“Your Highness...”
The servant’s face went white as a sheet.
“You should go in and rest for now...”
“Enough.”
Kalian calmly folded the handkerchief and tucked it into his pocket.
It was practically part of everyday life.
“More importantly, are preparations ready?”
“Yes. As you instructed, we took the item out in advance.”
At the servant’s signal, two knights entered the room carrying a long box between them.
It wasn’t particularly heavy.
Still, it was a very dangerous object for one person to carry alone.
The chains wrapped tightly around the box, and the floating runes made it even more ominous.
The Innocent Hunger, Arche.
Inside this box is the staff left behind by the “Witch of Gluttony,” who is said to have wiped out an ancient kingdom whose name was erased from history in just one week.
Even the founder of the Belhardt Empire, who slew that witch, could not destroy the staff and merely sealed it away.
The archmage investiture ceremony was, after all, a ritual to feed mana to this dangerous staff, sate its thirst, and lay another seal upon it.
“What a cruel ritual,” Prince Kalian said with a wry smile.
Anyone with poor control over mana wasn’t even allowed to touch it.
A mere touch would drain away all their mana and life force, leaving them mummified.
In fact, several archmage candidates who were not fully qualified had even lost their lives in this process.
This examination procedure was also the Belhardt Empire’s way of warning mages in the name of the imperial family.
Do not covet power.
It was a message warning that excessive greed would lead to ruin.
Through a tiny gap in the box, red mist began to seep out, slowly rising in a hiss.
It looked almost like a parched snake flicking its tongue.
A vicious hunger.
Watching the red mist, Kalian felt a strange sense of kinship.
“You’re hungry for mana too, huh.”
Just like me.
A bitter voice echoed through the room.
He was born incompatible with mana.
His body did not even possess an organ capable of containing mana.
The problem wasn’t merely that he couldn’t use magic.
The mana of nature present in the atmosphere.
That power, a blessing to all humanity, was deadly poison to Kalian, burning his lungs and melting his organs.
A miserable life in which simply breathing shaved away at his lifespan.
Most people with mana incompatibility died before they even turned twenty.
Even so, Prince Kalian had managed to keep his futile life going into his mid-twenties because he was a member of the imperial family.
Not only did he protect his body with all kinds of artifacts, but he had also set barriers around the area where he resided.
Even so, he could not completely block the mana, and he was slowly dying.
Could he even make it to thirty? He might well breathe his last before the emperor, who was currently ill, did.
The reason the struggle for the throne had become this fierce was precisely because he, the legitimate eldest son, was terminal and could collapse at any moment.
Prince Kalian felt responsible for that fact.
“As planned, I will be the one to oversee the investiture ceremony.”
So long as his body could still move, he intended to fulfill his duty as the First Prince.
“Your Highness, please reconsider. If you approach Arche with the seal lifted, surely...”
“The moment someone other than me stands in this place, the already knife-edge struggle for the throne will truly begin.”
Kalian straightened his clothes with trembling hands.
There was an order he had to protect, even if it meant sacrificing part of the time left to him.
“Fortunately, the Tower Master is coming personally this time, isn’t she? She said she would watch over me from beside me.”
“However...”
“Stop worrying about me.”
Kalian looked down at the box bound in chains.
“I’m more...”
The prince’s eyes darkened.
“worried about that girl who will undergo the investiture ceremony at daybreak.”
Lunaris Evermoon, was it?
He had heard she was only sixteen.
They said she was a genius unprecedented in imperial history, but her opponent was a witch’s cherished staff that had been passed down from ancient times, hundreds of years ago.
Of course, it might have weakened somewhat over time.
But it felt like far too cruel a trial for a teenage girl.
“From what I can see, the verification at the Magic Tower wasn’t properly carried out.”
He couldn’t shake the feeling that, blinded by the youngest-ever title, they were placing too heavy a burden on a frail girl.
The red mist wavering through the gap in the box grew thicker and thicker.
Come to think of it, the last archmage investiture ceremony had also been held more than a decade ago.
Could this vicious hunger really be borne by that young girl?