Chapter 34
※ This episode is a side story.
[Go to sleep, my baby, my adorable baby]
[May the Demon God protect you in your dreams tonight]
[Go to sleep, my baby, safe and sound through the night]
[Sleep well, dreaming sweetly of paradise]
* * *
‘At last, I’m being appointed the imperial family’s official physician!’
Farewell, all those days of persecution.
Aslan’s steps felt unusually light today.
The previous court physician, Isaac Petrovich, had abruptly retired and gone to recuperate in some distant countryside, leaving Aslan to serve as his replacement.
The term of an imperial physician was short to begin with, so Aslan had not been particularly concerned by the personnel change.
What mattered was that the colleagues who had looked down on him would not be able to say a word to him from now on.
To the public, the imperial physician seemed bound by the strictest duty, destined to be executed if anything happened to a member of the imperial family—but reality was different.
Unless the physician was at fault, punishment was carried out only as a matter of form, and he could even return to his post after taking a short vacation, once the time was right.
Above all, the greatest advantage of being the imperial physician was that one could be granted an official noble title.
Aslan could not keep the corners of his mouth from stretching all the way to his ears.
To make things even better, the person placed in his care was said to be the fourth princess, whom the Kaizen Empire had kept hidden.
Since she was so far from the line of succession, this actually pleased Aslan.
He would not have to get caught up in pointless political struggles, either.
Live a long, quiet life—that was Aslan’s motto.
“Princess Estasha. Please excuse me for a moment.”
“...”
“I’m Aslan Yevadov, the court physician. I’ll be in charge of treating you this month. I look forward to working with you.”
“...”
“May I... remove the bandages?”
Despite the young man’s gentle question, the little princess remained silent.
Without the patient’s consent, Aslan could not proceed with the treatment.
Daring to lay a hand on the imperial body was itself an act of irreverence, so guards or knights of equivalent rank always accompanied the treatment process.
An examination under such a solemn atmosphere was no longer enough to make Aslan tremble, now that he was approaching his fifth year.
But this case was a little different.
[Why are members of the Dark Star... here...?]
[Spare your words. Focus only on what you must do.]
The ‘Dark Star,’ a special unit directly under the emperor.
No fewer than fifteen of its members surrounded them on all sides.
They carried out such secret operations that even a Kaizen noble might see them once in a lifetime—or never at all, and they were never seen in public.
“I heard you have a tumor. I’ll need to see it with my own eyes to treat you, so please forgive me for touching your head.”
“...”
The princess’s silence. In the end, Aslan turned around.
One of the Dark Star members nodded.
Taking it as permission, Aslan slowly unwound the bandages wrapped around the princess’s head.
Bandages wound so tightly that they must have been wrapped around it twenty times.
A child, and already she had a tumor.
If it was merely a sebaceous cyst, that would be a relief, but a basal cell carcinoma would make matters complicated.
Especially given its location, it looked rather large; he could only hope it had not grown near the brain.
The outer edges gradually came into view, and Aslan swallowed a groan.
‘This... this isn’t a tumor...’
Before he had time to be surprised, a masked man placed a saw of horrifying proportions in Aslan’s hands.
“Please cut off both tumors, leaving no more than one finger joint of height.”
“Th-these... are horns...!”
“They’re tumors, Sir Aslan.”
“Ah... yes...!”
It was a real saw, jagged and sharp-edged, its teeth honed to a cold blue gleam.
Compared with the princess’s fist-sized head, the saw, about the size of an adult man’s elbow, was grotesque beyond belief.
Aslan’s head spun from vertigo.
Am I dreaming right now?
I wish it were a nightmare instead.
“Please hurry.”
“Haa... haa... yes...”
Pressured by the Dark Star members, Aslan had no choice but to bring the saw down.
The princess did not so much as flinch.
A black horn, protruding no larger than a pinky finger.
When Aslan pulled his arm back, the teeth scraped sharply against its wall.
Scrape.
He had barely made a single scratch.
The horn was remarkably hard, but the saw was no ordinary tool, either.
Scrape.
Clenching his eyes shut again and thrusting his clasped hands forward, he made the blade graze the crack, producing an unpleasant sound.
Scrape
Scrape
Scrape-scrape-scrape-scrape-scrape
“Haa haa haa haa...”
The thing dangled there.
With only one more stroke remaining, Aslan suddenly stopped his arm.
But as if unwilling to let him rest,
the masked young man seized the princess’s horn with a firm grip and casually yanked it free.
“The other side, please.”
The cut surface of the horn was etched clearly into Aslan’s eyes.
At the same time, a dizzying smell of blood reached him.
But the liquid flowing from the cut surface was not reddish at all; it was a perfect black.
The viscous liquid slowly ran down her head, brushing past the corner of the princess’s eye.
At the same time, the princess’s eye blinked unnaturally.
Did it not look as though the princess were shedding a tear?
At the sight of black water—the water of original sin—flowing down, Aslan nearly lost consciousness.
“Hurry.”
Yes, this had to be a dream.
“Hurry.”
Aslan picked up the saw again.
Even as the liquid spurting from the princess’s head splashed onto his face,
he continued sawing.
Scrape-scrape-scrape-scrape-scrape-scrape-scrape-scrape-scrape-scrape
* * *
The Demon King had broken the truce, and the people of the empire had assumed black clouds would once again spread across the world. Fortunately, the situation was brought to an end when the Demon King decided to turn back without crossing the border.
The nobles, who wanted no further chaos, pressured the imperial court and military, demanding to know what on earth had happened, but they gained nothing.
“It’s only a stopgap. Taking a hostage... is no solution.”
Keeping Princess Estasha alive instead of killing her had bought Kaizen more time than expected.
Of course, as Vargo had said, this was merely a stopgap to suppress the Demon King’s fury, like a dam that could burst at any moment.
Airogen was not unaware of that fact.
“Demons have no familial affection by nature. There must be something about Tenevbreia. We simply don’t know what that ‘something’ is.”
“I’ve just commissioned the Dark Star to investigate.”
Airogen fiddled with the horn in interest.
“The cross-section isn’t smooth.”
“A demon’s horn is a blood-and-bone growth, essentially a protrusion of the skull. Since nerves and blood vessels run through it, it’s extremely hard, which made cutting it off difficult.”
“It must have hurt quite a bit,” Airogen muttered.
“Fifteen years... Fifteen years is probably the limit of his patience.”
“Do you really think he’ll wait that long?”
“What else can we do? We hold the cards.”
Airogen gave a derisive smile.
‘Tenevbreia, and Estasha.’
What on earth are you two?
The emperor recalled a woman who had come to the imperial palace three years ago.
She had been heavily pregnant when she requested a private audience with the emperor.
Relying on a single token the emperor had left her, the woman had traveled to the capital from the countryside without even a carriage and settled in the most remote corner of the imperial palace.
The child she gave birth to had golden hair, and the emperor became certain that she was the woman Tenevbreia had so desperately sought at the time.
And someday,
someday, he had planned to welcome them openly as members of the imperial family,
but the sorrowful lullaby Tenevbreia sang at night reached the ears of the Dark Star,
and the emperor could no longer delay investigating the mother and daughter.
‘There is nothing in this world that is easy.’
The woman who had saved him from the flames of war had turned out to be the Demon King’s daughter,
while the person who had been his father’s sworn enemy when he was young had now become his own attendant.
‘There is truly nothing in this world that never changes.’
To fail to change was to be left behind.
In other words, to disappear.
In other words, to be forgotten.
The emperor still found his position burdensome.
But if not him, no one else could do what had to be done.
Airogen clenched the hand holding the horn into a fist until it bled.
For the time being, he could only hope the Demon King would content himself with playing with his granddaughter’s horn.
“Vargo.”
“Yes, Your Imperial Majesty.”
“Send a letter.”
“Yes, a letter? Where to...?”
“The Holy Kingdom of Alphenheim. Include a statement that the Empire wholeheartedly supports the twenty-year grand strategy to defeat the Demon King.”
* * *
[Go to sleep, my baby, my adorable baby]
“Mom.”
[May the Demon God protect you in your dreams tonight]
“I had a bad dream today.”
[Go to sleep, my baby, safe and sound through the night]
“I dreamed that everyone in the world hated me.”
[Sleep well, dreaming sweetly of paradise]
“You won’t abandon me, will you, Mom?”
[......]
“Even if I can’t walk, even if I can’t see... please don’t leave me.”