I Blasted the Crown Prince Away with Naval Guns (1)

Two days had passed since I received the Navy's report that they would soon capture the Crown Prince.

Unfortunately, my daily life had not changed in any significant way. After all, I kept seeing bureaucrats who committed corruption out of sheer habit, as though a massive state moved by inertia.

And it wasn't only the bureaucrats who were a problem.

We also needed a new weapon capable of breaking through that insane, gigantic triple defensive line. I needed to help conceptualize the weapon, too.

So in the end, that was my job as well.

It was deeply rewarding to watch the Empire, which had once been on the verge of collapse, grow strong again, but there was still far too much ahead of me.

I wanted to capture the Crown Prince, execute him, and hold the coronation of a new emperor, but even preparing my own coronation was my responsibility.

In a traditional coronation, the emperor hands the crown to the next emperor.

But the current emperor was in no position to do that, and I had no reason whatsoever to accept the crown from him.

As I was planning even that, I found myself wondering whether something interesting might happen.

Lucilla entered the room at precisely that moment.

"Some people introducing themselves as the children of House Arencia wish to meet Lord Kyle."

"Arencia?"

It was a family I had never heard of. Kyle Leopold, the owner of this body, had once been a member of the Empire's Imperial family, and as royalty, he had known the names of nearly every prominent noble family.

So I thought I knew most of the names of the noble families that might wield influence in the Central region...

"Lucilla, do you happen to know where House Arencia is from?"

"...I don't know. It's a family I've never heard of either."

That meant they came from some obscure provincial family. Why had people from such a house suddenly come looking for me?

I fell into thought for a moment, pondering that question.

In truth, many people knocked on the Imperial Palace's gates every day. Most were nobles begging for leniency or trying to win favor by offering bribes to the new emperor.

"Did the children of House Arencia leave any other message?"

"They said they had brought something Lord Kyle would find very interesting."

Normally, I would have ordered them dismissed at that point. "I've brought a gift" and "I have something interesting" were phrases I'd heard countless times.

But before I could, Lucilla added one more thing.

"And... they told me to say that it concerns Aria. They said the Grand Duke would definitely let them in if you heard that."

"Oh?"

News about Aria in a tedious life filled with nothing but work? It felt like it might provide a little amusement in a life that was already boring enough.

That was only natural, since our pursuit team had been tracking Aria continuously without finding even a trace of her.

It was as though she had simply evaporated.

"Let them in. I needed to capture Aria anyway."

I personally had no particular grudge against Aria. Aria had insulted Kyle Leopold, not me, and in the end, things had worked out well thanks to her.

Did that mean I intended to let Aria live?

Of course not. Personal feelings and political symbolism were two different things. Aria was the villainess who had ruined the Empire.

She was a woman who kept luring men in from who knew where and doing strange things with them. The sooner she was dealt with, the better.

With that thought in mind, I had them brought in.

Their shabby-looking clothes did not fit the stately, old-fashioned atmosphere of the partially restored Imperial Palace. But I was not the sort of person who paid much attention to things like that.

My experience of living as an ordinary person in the twenty-first century had helped me dispense with pointless affectation.

The excessive courtesy and dignity that other nobles went on about seemed like unnecessary procedures to me.

"Is this the 'gift' you mentioned?"

What they presented was a fairly heavy box. At a glance, I could see that it had been covered in a variety of spells.

They weren't the dangerous kind of trap magic, but preservation magic to prevent decay, temperature-control magic to keep it cool, and so on.

It was as though it contained a corpse...

Only then did I realize what they had brought.

"Hmm, you really did bring something interesting."

The corpse of Aria, the villainess who had ruined the Empire.

Judging from the size of the box, it was probably her head.

"What did you do with the body?"

"...We burned it all."

The man who answered had one entire side of his face completely burned away. I could tell why without asking too many questions.

Revenge could be a truly terrifying motive at times.

A burned side of the face. And a burned corpse. Those two clues alone were enough to tell me what kind of end Aria had met.

"Yes, burning witches at the stake had been the cure since ancient times."

I had no personal grudge against Aria. So I quickly organized my thoughts and turned my gaze to the two brave brothers of House Arencia.

Aria had been the Empire's most wanted criminal. Someone who had personally executed a criminal like that deserved an appropriate reward.

"Do you want anything?"

Money, an official position, whatever they wanted. If there was something they desired, I intended to grant it as a suitable reward.

I wanted to show that the Empire treated anyone who brought in a wanted criminal this well.

However, the answer I received was unexpected.

"We... want the restoration of House Arencia's honor and proper graves for our parents."

"Hmm..."

The story I heard afterward was quite familiar. Aria's evil deeds in destroying an innocent family to achieve her own ends. I had experienced the same thing myself.

"Lucilla, mobilize the military honor guard and fulfill the brave Arencia brothers' long-held wish. Give them a generous reward as well."

I pulled the box on my desk toward me and grinned.

"Theodore, I just acquired a gift to give you when you're dragged back to the Empire."

***

Meanwhile, at that very moment.

Former Crown Prince Theodore was looking out at the sea from aboard a ship.

The ship the nobles had acquired was a fairly large coal carrier. The official reason for the departure of the roughly 4,000-ton coal carrier was to purchase coal.

But that was merely a cover. These men were smugglers who used coal carriers as a shield while smuggling all kinds of goods.

It had originally been a smuggling route operated by one of the nobles for trafficking drugs.

"Duke Alpera, I will certainly remember your contribution."

"Thank you, Your Highness!"

The sea was dark beneath a thick fog. Even the damp, gray mist he usually hated was something he felt genuinely grateful for at that moment.

You could not see well through sea fog. And if you could not see ahead, that meant you were safe from the moment you reached the open sea.

Unaware that Southern Intelligence agents had spent the past several days combing these waters and had already discovered the disguised coal carrier, they thought so.

"It seems even the heavens are trying to help me escape."

Thinking that, Theodore waited aboard the ship.

A thick tension hung in the air aboard the ship as they passed out of the Empire's territorial waters. Everyone worried that they might have been discovered.

But those worries proved groundless when the captain brought good news.

"We've left the Empire's territorial waters! From here on, we're in international waters!"

International waters—in other words, from here on, this was no longer Imperial territory.

It meant they were in a safe place where Imperial patrol ships did not sail.

"Whew, so it really was just needless worrying."

"Haha, those stupid Southern bastards probably never imagined we'd use this route."

The nobles stepped out of the cabins, sighing in relief.

Theodore, too, set aside his unease and stepped outside the cabin-

...Huh?

And there, he saw something in the fog.

It was the silhouette of a gigantic fortress. A fortress made of enormous steel, which had no business existing on the empty open sea.

As the steel fortress approached, cutting through the thick fog, its form came fully into view.

It had a steel bridge as tall as the Imperial Palace and was equipped with twelve insanely huge naval guns.

Its bulk was enormous too. If a monster from mythology appeared in reality, would it be this large? Even the Tusoteuthis he had seen once before hadn't been this big.

Stunned by the sight of the monstrous battleship Albion, the Crown Prince unconsciously staggered backward.

[ This is the battleship Albion of the 1st Battleship Squadron. Stop the vessel immediately and surrender unconditionally ]

The officer's voice rang broadly across the sea, chilling as a reaper's scythe.

"H-How did the Southern bastards...!"

"We definitely weren't discovered, were we?"

"Th-This isn't the time for that! Run, run! Turn the ship around, quickly!"

"Are you insane!? How can you say that after seeing those naval guns!?"

"Then should we just stand here and die? Are we supposed to kneel to those lowly commoners!?"

The greatest weapon of war in human history merely looked down at them in the indifferent light of its searchlights.

Yet the nobles felt like dwarves standing before a giant.

There was no way they could fight and defeat something like that. It was a living monster from myth. If they wanted to survive, they had to run.

While Theodore, paralyzed by fear, could say nothing, the nobles each put forward their own opinions.

At that moment.

Amid the clamorous voices, the court mage's roar rang out.

"You fools!"

By then, a fireball as large as a house was already in his hands. The seventh-circle mage glared down at the nobles and shouted in an enraged voice.

"You're nobles, yet you're spouting nonsense about kneeling to mere commoners or running away!"

Those who realized what the court mage intended tried to stop him all at once, but it was already too late.

"The Empire's nobles do not kneel!"

With those words, a fireball fired at tremendous speed slammed into the side of the battleship.

In an instant, the starboard armor belt and starboard secondary guns were swallowed by smoke.

But the armor had never been something that could be breached by a mere area attack like that.

[ The foolish nobles are determined to kick away Lord Kyle's mercy ]

Ruuumble...

The enormous turret rotated toward the coal carrier. The sound of the steel barbette turning echoed across the somber sea.

The captain, finally realizing that everything had gone horribly wrong, hurriedly tried to flee, but it was already too late.

With a cannon blast like the collapse of heaven and earth, the 406mm naval guns of Turret No. 1 belched an enormous sheet of flame.