Chapter 29
Alina watched the kidnappers laughing around the fire they had lit in the center of the cabin.
The rough-looking men cast sidelong glances at Alina.
“So you’re Count Eisen’s daughter, huh? Tiny thing’s got guts.”
The one-eyed man chewed on jerky as he marveled.
“Most girls her age would be busy wetting themselves and fainting, but look at her keeping her eyes wide open and holding out.”
“Exactly. I suppose you can’t escape a tough bloodline.”
The kidnapper with the split cheek clicked his tongue as he threw another log onto the fire.
“The grown woman next to her is the real problem. She’s been sobbing nonstop and making such a racket that I could go deaf.”
Their gazes turned toward another figure lying in the darkness beside Alina.
Alina carefully turned her head as well.
A woman with long, sunset-red hair lay collapsed on the floor.
She looked around the same age as Sister Kara.
But her presence was the complete opposite.
With her hands and feet bound and her mouth gagged, the woman trembled and sobbed incessantly, unable to overcome her fear.
“Uuugh... Ump...!”
Her face was smeared with tears and snot.
Her clothes were filthy with dirt and a complete mess.
The one-eyed man approached in annoyance and lightly kicked the woman in the side several times.
“Hey, Your Highness. Why don’t you watch and learn? Even that little girl over there is holding it in, but a grown woman is throwing away all her dignity.”
“......!”
Imperial princess.
Alina’s eyes widened at the word.
‘That big sister... is an imperial princess?’
The kidnapper smiled and grabbed the woman by the hair, pulling her head up.
“Aren’t you the noble Princess Elysia von Croa? Huh?”
Elysia.
The heroine of the original novel <The Bastard’s Snowflower Path>, and the Empire’s bastard princess.
She was currently being held in a kidnapper’s grasp in a wretched state.
“Umph! Uuugh!”
When Elysia shook her head in defiance, the one-eyed man clicked his tongue and roughly removed the gag from her mouth.
“There, will you be quiet now, immature princess? If you have something to say, go ahead.”
“Haa... Haa....”
The moment the gag was removed, Elysia drew ragged breaths.
And then.
“Waaaaaaaaah! Moooom!”
A wail loud enough to bring down the cabin erupted.
“Waaah! I want to go home! I’m scared! I hate this place! Waaah!”
Elysia cried out even more miserably and childishly than Alina.
The dignity of a noble princess had long since vanished, along with the sun that had sunk in the evening glow.
“......”
Alina stared at the princess with her mouth hanging open.
She was much older than Alina, but the way she cried made her seem just like a five-year-old little sister.
The kidnappers covered their ears with expressions of disbelief.
“Agh, you’re so loud! Hey! Gag her again!”
“She’s really something. She’s a princess, but doesn’t she have any dignity?”
The one-eyed man grimaced and shoved the gag toward Elysia again.
Elysia desperately shook her tear-streaked face and shouted.
“W-Wait! Just wait! I have something to say! Hic... Sniff!”
She sniffled and cried out urgently.
“I-I have lots of money! I have emergency funds from the Imperial Family! I’ll give you all of it! Please let me go!”
“Are you insane? Do you know how much your ransom is? You expect us to risk our lives for a few measly coins?”
“No! I really have a lot! I have more than a hundred gold coins! I-I hid them in my underwear!”
“......What?”
The kidnappers paused in bewilderment.
The princess had hidden gold coins in her underwear?
More importantly, the boast was so absurd that they were speechless.
How on earth could a hundred gold coins fit in someone’s underwear?
“It’s true! I’ll show you!”
The one-eyed man shoved the gag in with an irritated gesture, as though he had heard enough.
Of course, Elysia still had more to say and dodged the gag.
Left in the corner, Alina stared blankly at Elysia.
The fear she had felt moments ago seemed to have receded just a little thanks to that foolish big sister.
‘...Is she really an imperial princess?’
Even to young Alina’s eyes, Elysia looked like an utterly unreliable big sister.
The gazes of the two girls tangled in midair.
“Good grief. She’s a complete fool. And now she’s even learned how to avoid the gag.”
“All she does is go on about her underwear. Hey, just tie her up. Listening to this is making my ears rot. This is what a Croa princess is like?”
Then.
The moment the kidnapper called her by that name, her eyes changed.
Though her voice trembled, she opened her mouth firmly.
“......No.”
“Huh? What do you mean, no? Are you going to spout more nonsense?”
“My name... isn’t Elysia von Croa.”
Elysia bit her bloodied lips and shot back.
“Elysia Spencer. That’s my name….”
“......Huh?”
The kidnappers looked at one another in bewilderment.
Spencer.
Not Croa, the surname of the Imperial Family.
The name of her commoner mother, who had been discarded after serving as the emperor’s partner for a single night without even becoming his concubine.
From the very beginning, it was a surname that was no surname at all.
Her mother, who had been a court lady, fell ill and died in neglect after giving birth to Elysia.
Everyone in the world called her Croa and pretended to treat her like royalty, but behind her back they pointed at her and called her filthy blood.
To Elysia, the name Croa was nothing but an empty shackle and the Imperial Family’s brand—the brand that had killed her mother.
The only thing she took pride in was Spencer, the name her mother had left her.
Even with death at her doorstep, the bastard princess refused to let go of that one source of pride.
But reality was cruel.
“Ha! That’s ridiculous.”
The man with the split cheek snickered mockingly.
“After all that, you’re correcting your name? Hey, did you hear that? She doesn’t like her royal surname.”
“Exactly. What a devoted daughter.”
The one-eyed man smiled unpleasantly and seized Elysia’s chin.
“Are you really proud of a whore’s name?”
“......!”
Elysia’s eyes trembled.
Just as she was about to retort—
Smack—!!
A sharp sound rang through the cabin.
The kidnapper roughly slapped Elysia across the cheek.
“Agh!”
Elysia’s head snapped helplessly to the side.
Blood streamed from her mouth, as though it had split inside.
“Where do you think you’re glaring? You seem to think you’re still in the palace.”
The kidnapper wiped his bloodstained hand on his clothes and roughly gagged her again.
“Umph! Uuugh!”
“Quiet. Stay put until the client arrives. I don’t want to damage the merchandise.”
The kidnappers snickered and returned to the campfire.
In the corner where a cold chill lingered—
Elysia glared at them with blood trickling from her gagged mouth, her eyes filled with venom.
And Alina had been watching everything.
Though trembling with fear, the girl slowly inched toward Elysia.
She wanted to comfort her.
But her hands were bound, so she could not reach her.
The gazes of the two girls tangled in midair.
“Uuugh! Ump!”
Even with her mouth gagged, Elysia struggled and mumbled as though protesting some injustice, but the kidnappers paid her no attention.
When no one took notice, she looked at Alina with a face covered in tears and snot, then winked.
Step—!
Beyond the forest, someone was approaching through the darkness.
It was the broker who had come to make a deal with the kidnappers’ leader.
The broker came pulling a cart, a smile slipping from beneath his deeply drawn hood.
The cart was loaded with black jars large enough for a person to curl up inside.
They were clearly meant for transporting living people, with not even proper air holes bored into them.
“Boss, you’re here.”
The man with the split cheek, who had been guarding outside the cabin, bowed his head.
“The goods have been checked. All that’s left is to load them.”
The leader said this as he ground out his cigarette.
The broker shook a heavy money pouch and asked sharply,
“Wait. I heard there was additional merchandise. A count’s daughter?”
“Yes. We got lucky. She got caught as a bonus while we were securing the target and escaping. You’ll have to pay a little more for her.”
“Hmm... Count Eisen. He may be an old man, but he’s a difficult opponent. How about this much?”
The broker threw down several gold coins and began haggling.
The disgusting haggling over Alina’s ransom was holding things up.
As the bargaining outside dragged on, the one-eyed man who had remained behind as a lookout yawned in boredom.
“Hmm... The bargaining is taking a while.”
He stirred the fire, then suddenly turned his gaze.
Toward Elysia, who was huddled and trembling in the corner.
A lecherous smile spread across his lips.
“Come to think of it... didn’t the princess say earlier that she had hidden gold coins in her underwear?”
“......!”
Elysia’s eyes widened.
The one-eyed man stood and slowly approached her.
“Whether it’s a lie or the truth, I can check for myself, can’t I? Once you’re sold off, you’ll never see those coins again anyway, so think of it as charity.”
He stretched out a filthy hand toward Elysia.
Alina watched him, trembling violently.
It was a situation far too horrifying for a seven-year-old child to endure.
Her heart screamed at her to close her eyes and cover her ears.
But.
Alina was Count Eisen’s daughter, and Lonas’s little sister.
‘I’m scared... But I have to look. I have to remember his face. That way, Father can punish him later.’
The girl forced her eyes wide open.
Tears welled up from fear, but she never looked away.
The moment the one-eyed man’s hand was about to touch the hem of Elysia’s clothes—
Sizzle—.
A pungent smell of burning began to spread from somewhere.
“......?”
The one-eyed man sniffed the air.
When he lowered his head, he realized that the foolish princess’s expression—the one that had been crying snot and begging to be spared moments ago—had completely vanished.
The tear streaks remained, but her gaze had changed.
Cold, sunken golden eyes.
Those noble eyes, said to resemble the founder of the Empire, were staring straight at the one-eyed man.
“W-what are you....”
Just as the one-eyed man faltered and tried to step back—
Elysia spat out the gag she had cleverly loosened in her mouth like a cannon.
Ptooey—!
“Aaaagh!”
The saliva-soaked gag struck the one-eyed man’s one remaining good eye dead-on.
Now blind, he screamed, clutching his eye and rolling across the floor.
Elysia used that opening to look at Alina.
Then she gave a short command.
“Little girl, close your eyes.”
Alina had kept her eyes open because she wanted to observe.
But the intense light pouring from Elysia’s body made her squeeze her eyes shut reflexively.
Fwoosh!
The thick rope binding Elysia’s arms behind her back instantly burned black and snapped.
The bastard princess’s freed hands began to glow red-hot.
A power awakened by only a tiny number of royals descended from Croatina I, the First Emperor.
The Sun God’s power, 「Incineration」.
With both blazing hands, Elysia seized the face of the one-eyed man, who was screaming while clutching his eye.
Sizzle—!
“Gaaaaaah!”
A horrific scream rang through the cabin amid the smell of burning flesh.
That power, which even the Imperial Family had dismissed as nothing more than a legend and believed lost, dwelled in the bastard princess whom everyone had scorned as lowborn.
The one-eyed man’s head burst into flames in an instant.
“What the hell?! What’s happening inside...!”
The leader and the broker, who had been haggling outside, turned around in horror.
Red flames and screams were escaping through the cabin windows.
“Fire! That crazy bitch!”
The leader cursed and tried to run toward the cabin.
That was when it happened.
Whoosh—!
A massive spinning object flew through the darkness, tearing through the air.
Bang!
“Hee-haw!”
With a dull impact, the head of the horse pulling the broker’s cart exploded.
The horse died on the spot, unable even to cry out properly.
The cart tilted to one side, and the jars in its cargo bed came tumbling down.
“W-what the hell?!”
The leader and the broker stumbled back in terror.
A bloodstained great double-bladed axe was embedded beside the horse’s corpse.
「First Snowflake」.
A massive man walked out of the darkness in the forest.
It was Varg.
* * *
I murmured inwardly as I looked at the horse that had been felled for no reason.
‘Sorry. You’ll have to sacrifice yourself today.’
Killing these bastards would be easy.
But if I wanted to uncover the mastermind behind this kidnapping, I first had to cut off their means of escape.
“W-who are you!”
The leader shouted as he drew his sword.
The broker also pulled a dagger from inside his coat.
The man with the split cheek dropped his sword, apparently too frightened to hold on to it.
But instead of answering, I launched myself forward.
With a beast’s roar, I charged into the leader’s chest.
Bang!
“K-kugh...!”
My knee drove straight into the leader’s solar plexus.
Crack.
The sound of breaking ribs echoed through the forest.
The leader collapsed foaming at the mouth without even managing to scream.
“Y-you monster!”
The broker swung his dagger in terror.
Swish!
The sharp blade aimed for Varg’s neck.
But I did not dodge.
Thud.
I caught the blade with my bare hand.
“......!”
The broker’s eyes bulged wide.
Blood ran down from my palm.
But I could not even feel the pain.
Rather, after so long without bleeding, it felt as though my heart was beating with joy.
Then I glared at the broker with an even more frightening gaze and tightened my grip.
Snap.
The steel dagger broke apart.
“E-eek...!”
The broker’s legs gave out, and he collapsed.
I lifted him by the collar with my bloodstained hand.
Then I growled low.
“Where’s Alina?”