Demon Follower

The man who had stopped the carriage approached Ferda.

He pulled out something he had hidden.

He was about to launch the sphere of mana wrapped around Ferda’s hand.

But he did not.

Just as the sphere of mana was about to fly, Ferda stopped it.

What he held was not a weapon but a piece of cloth.

“The Emperor has betrayed the faith of his subjects!”

He had ambushed the carriage to stage a protest.

“Ignoring the suffering of his subjects, he fills his own belly and continues his incompetent rule! Those who suck our blood are not sons of the light!”

The man’s actions drew everyone’s attention, just as he had intended.

Knight Commander Marco shouted, veins bulging in his neck.

“What are you all doing? Hurry and subdue him!”

“Yes, sir!”

The soldiers holding weapons climbed onto the carriage, dragged the protester down, and began beating him with clubs.

“Agh! Agh! Subjects! Rise up! We are not slaves!”

“You bastard! Shut your mouth!”

The man was beaten mercilessly and dragged away.

Blood streamed from him as he was taken off the main street.

The people standing in the capital turned away as though nothing had happened and went on their way.

“Oh dear, haha! I’m afraid you had to witness such an unpleasant scene.”

Knight Commander Marco apologized.

The knight smiled as he tried to smooth over the situation.

Rather than return that smile, Ferda kept his eyes on the man being dragged away.

“What is that man? He looked as though he had been wronged.”

“Looked wronged? You mustn’t be deceived by appearances. They are demon followers.”

“Demon followers?”

“Yes.”

Marco spoke solemnly.

“Now that we are entering a golden age, demons are trying to gain power. They have been shamelessly slandering His Majesty the Emperor with baseless propaganda.”

That was how Marco explained it.

But Ferda knew it too, and Marco himself knew it well.

‘That man isn’t a demon follower.’

He looked as though he had not eaten properly for at least three days.

He was starving, and with nothing he could do immediately, he must have come out, risking his life, to cry out against their atrocities.

Ferda decided to react no differently from any other noble.

“I see.”

He neither feigned surprise as though he had not known nor showed any sign of understanding.

Ferda merely gestured as though he had no interest in the matter.

Only then would they feel reassured.

The protest had been thwarted, and the carriage began moving again.

Ferda watched the prosperous capital pass by and thought.

‘Is an empire like this really necessary?’

In truth, Ferda did not care what happened to it.

Whether it collapsed, continued to rot away, or started a revolution.

He was content to let things go wherever they would.

But Valdrowa was different.

What kind of woman was she?

Her body had protected the continent of Cerdes through the roughest terrain, yet her mind was like a flower grown in a greenhouse.

She was a pure-hearted woman who wished for everyone to be happy.

In her eyes, the Empire’s actions were evil, things that could not be tolerated.

‘And yet she does not act.’

Because she devoted her mission solely to stopping the monsters.

Making her deal with something this complicated was practically abuse.

‘The Empire’s internal affairs are my responsibility.’

Ferda had to make the decision for Valdrowa.

That was why he wrote three letters.

They were all trash, and trying to rank them and choose the lesser evil was idiotic.

‘I’d be better off rolling dice.’

Ferda used the three letters in place of those dice.

He would go with whoever reached out first.

That was all.

The carriage entered the imperial palace, and Ferda got out.

Massive granite pillars and the splendor of a magnificent palace rose before him.

Everything was unrealistically enormous, to the point that it would not have seemed out of place as the dwelling of a god.

The Imperial Guard stood in formation to welcome their guest.

And at the end stood a member of the Empire’s exalted bloodline, waiting to welcome Ferda.

The moment Ferda saw that person, his expression hardened.

Surely not.

That couldn’t be.

Those words of denial desperately tried to block the reality forcing its way into his mind.

‘The one I deliberately didn’t choose…… has shown up…….’

That was because the person who had come to welcome Ferda was not the emperor.

Nor was it the First Prince.

And it was not the Second Prince, either.

“Good day, Regent Valdrowa.”

The imperial princess of the Arken Empire—the one person to whom he had deliberately not sent even a single letter.

“I am Olivia Arken.”

It was Olivia Arken.

“It is an honor to meet you, Imperial Princess.”

Ferda instinctively bowed in greeting.

With his head bowed, Ferda still felt as though he were being tossed about within a gigantic grasp.

‘Fate.’

There was a theory of mana fatalism: all mana was determined by fate.

Ferda had recently been thinking a great deal about that very fate.

And so, at this moment, he thought.

Could fate truly be predetermined?

The fact that a princess who had not sent him even a single letter was now answering him.

‘As expected…….’

His suspicions hardened into certainty.

‘The Empire must be destined to fall.’

* * *

Olivia Arken.

This woman, known as the Golden Rose of the Empire, was truly beautiful.