Chapter 267

“We can see Pellena, the Imperial Capital.”

At the adjutant’s words, the generals cheered.

“Once we take that, it’s over, right?”

“Finally, we can go home.”

They spoke as if the battle were already finished. But Pellena, the Imperial Capital, was still the Imperial Capital, and its defenses were formidable. The residential districts and farmlands outside the walls had been thoroughly burned to deny spoils, and in their place, dense thorny obstacles had been erected.

Just beyond the walls, encampments guarding the eastern, western, southern, and northern gates were packed tight. Cledwyn grinned, baring his teeth.

“The Princess and I don’t share the same tastes, but this time, we had the same idea. They’re aiming for a swift victory, too.”

Pellena, the Imperial Capital, was enormous, yet it had almost no farmland or orchards within its walls. It wouldn’t endure a long siege.

On the encampments and atop the city walls, the banners of the families still supporting the Imperial Family fluttered. A general who recognized some of them said,

“All the Imperial Family’s collateral branches have gathered.”

The adjutant tilted his head.

“Aren’t the collateral branches usually just riffraff?”

“They are. But right now, they’ll take any help they can get.”

Cledwyn fixed a fierce stare on Pellena, the Imperial Capital, in the distance, then turned.

“Stay alert. Report anything unusual immediately. First, we scout.”

❖ ❖ ❖

The Maindulante army had truly come to attack Pellena, the Imperial Capital.

Everyone had known it, in a sense. The Maindulante army had marched straight south. But with Pellena, the Imperial Capital, now before their eyes, some soldiers’ morale wavered.

“Even so… it’s still the Imperial Family.”

“Should we really be doing this?”

Those murmuring like that were soldiers from defeated armies—men who had accepted the complete edition of “Betrayal,” widely distributed by Maindulante, as mere propaganda. Sincere people who frowned when certain comrades, especially those quick to switch sides, loudly denounced Bistor’s Betrayal.

Watching the Grand Duke’s dazzling victories, they couldn’t help but feel something. They were relieved, too, that staying here meant they likely wouldn’t die. But even so… wasn’t this trampling the values they’d been taught since childhood?

The revulsion carved into them at the level of instinct lifted its head. Still, they couldn’t speak openly. The army was burning with the fervor of victory, and most people held the attitude that ‘as long as I’m on the winning side, it’s fine.’

In particular, a young soldier who had loved the stories of the Three Heroes since childhood finished his meal and searched for a spot away from his comrades. He found a secluded corner, squatted down, and let out a long sigh.

Someone approached and spoke.

“Would you mind if I sat with you?”

A familiar accent. This army, cobbled together from everywhere, spoke in all sorts of dialects and tongues. Thinking he’d met someone from a similar region, the young soldier nodded, secretly pleased.

“Yes. Of course.”

The newcomer wore the same rank’s uniform as the young soldier and had a pleasant, easygoing face. He sat beside him, looked toward Pellena, the Imperial Capital, and suddenly sighed.

“Hoo.”

“Is something wrong?”

The young soldier asked, sincere. The pleasant-looking man hesitated, then said,

“It’s just… a bit of a delay. The Three Heroes did so much for the people, and now we’re in a position to attack Pellena, the Imperial Capital, like this… I’ve loved the stories of the Three Heroes since I was young.”

“Ah… me too.”

The young soldier immediately felt close to him. A fellow countryman, with the same feelings, dragged into this army together.

“Is that so? When a troupe performing the Three Heroes’ stories came to our town when I was little, I’d run out at dawn and hang around them all day. When we played heroes, I always insisted on being brave Bistor.”

“Haha. Everyone’s like that at that age. I was, too.”

Warmth spread through the young soldier’s chest. These days, people in the army insisted that the contents of that novel were the truth, and they couldn’t stand hearing real history. Foolish, easily swayed people.

The pleasant-looking man smiled as the young soldier opened up. His kind face gave no hint that he had been observing this young soldier closely for days.

“To be honest, it’s too much. I get why Maindulante is lying, but…”

“Yes. It’s too much. It really is.”

The two men spoke indirectly, then exchanged a look and smiled like accomplices.

Lowering his voice as if whispering, the pleasant-looking man said,

“I’ve been thinking… do we really have to be there when they attack the Imperial Palace? Couldn’t we slip away a little?”

“Yes? Surely not desertion…”

The young soldier went pale.

“Oh, no. Of course not. I’m not saying we run away like that. I mean… even if we did and went back home now, what would the lord say? It’s not that. It’s just—our main force doesn’t expect anything from us. They just bundled us together, right? The main force is doing the real work. Besides, haven’t the MacKinnon family’s soldiers joined, too?”

Is that so? The young soldier didn’t understand the army’s overall situation, so he assumed it must be.

“Well… that’s true.”

“I followed knights a bit back home, so I can tell. This means His Highness the Grand Duke is just dragging us around for show. He doesn’t really know how to handle a large army.”

“Which knight did you follow that you learned army operations from…?”

“I caught some bandits. Isn’t that enough? Anyway, Maindulante won’t put us in anything important. People from different towns got thrown together, so we barely even know each other’s names in the unit. In the middle of it all…”

The pleasant-looking man lowered his voice even further.

“They won’t even notice if we slip away. Are they going to hunt us down at a time like this?”

Normally, even if soldiers from different towns were assigned together, the commander—and the soldiers themselves—would know exactly how many belonged to the unit. They would check, naturally, whether anyone was disappearing and when.

But the army had expanded too quickly. Some rank-and-file soldiers didn’t even know who was supposed to be standing next to them.

The proposal was tempting. The young soldier swallowed hard. Still, he was about to protest—because it wasn’t right in principle, and desertion during an operation meant immediate execution—when the pleasant-looking man continued.

“It’s not that we don’t want to fight. I’m scared, too, even though I’m here just to survive. God is watching all of us, and aren’t we attacking Bistor’s successor—the Monarch he chose? If we die, what if we go to hell? No, we definitely will. We’ve sided with a fake who claims to be descended from the hero…”

The young soldier, who never missed temple on Sundays and had deep faith by nature, drew in a sharp breath.

The pleasant-looking man smiled and stood.

“Ah, I guess I said something unnecessary. I was frustrated, and it all spilled out. Get some air, then go back in.”

Before the young soldier could respond, he left.

It was easier to handle someone who believed they had chosen for themselves than someone who believed they had been pushed. And conclusions reached after ‘deep consideration’ were always harder to reverse.

In a place no one could see, the pleasant-looking man—an Imperial spy—smiled.

‘A fool who thinks speaking indirectly makes desertion not desertion.’

The same work was already underway throughout the army. Persuasion aimed at those who were especially sincere and devout—yet lacked tact and wore their dissatisfaction on their faces.

These men didn’t even know where they were being dragged. As obstacles to slow Maindulante’s advance during the attack, as a vanguard to strike the Grand Duke’s camp… they would fulfill the Imperial Family’s needs without ever realizing it.

Some lower-level commanders were already secretly communicating with the Imperial Family, waiting for the moment to surround the Grand Duke. They had been defeated and subjugated by Cledwyn, but they were either so deeply religious they couldn’t deny the Imperial Family founded by the first Pope, or they had lost loved ones in the war and nursed a desire for revenge.

‘They pulled in people from such wildly different backgrounds without thinking, and now they’ve stabbed themselves in the foot.’

Soon, the Imperial Family’s counterattack would begin.

Thinking that, the spy returned to his barracks in high spirits.

The nearly full moon rose early and quietly shone overhead.

❖ ❖ ❖

“It’s fortunate Hilbrin reached the canyon in time. There were no casualties among our people.”

Nerys, uneasy that Marquis Tipion had been killed as if to flaunt the assassin’s presence, tracked the enemy’s movements as closely as she could. And the moment she grasped what the enemy stood to gain by intimidating the subordinate lords within the Marquisate, she sent Hilbrin.

She would have preferred a different route, but there was no time. The secret passage was the quickest way to move.

It was regrettable that the passage’s direction had been exposed. At best, it was only the direction—but if Silver Moon caught the clue properly, it wouldn’t take long to uncover the entrance, too. How could hundreds of cavalry rushing through leave no traces?

Still, that was no reason to let innocent people die.

Over the Communication Device, a voice tinged with laughter came through.

[It’s fortunate you moved quickly. Blow up the secret passage.]

“I already did.”

If there was even a chance Silver Moon had learned its location, it was better to collapse the route completely. Now there was no reason not to use the formal entrance.

Cledwyn chuckled. Nerys stared at empty air for a moment, then asked,

“Did you complete the siege of Pellena, the Imperial Capital without issues?”

[Yes. I’ve also finished preparations for the attack.]

“Be careful not to get hurt. You know what matters most, right?”

[I know. Releasing the Eye of Pheros comes first. As we discussed, I’ll go to the secret chamber first.]

“Okay. The nobles who fled Pellena, the Imperial Capital said there have been strangely few people in the Emperor’s Palace lately… I still think Camille took the Ja’an power the Emperor had. If it’s power that can be granted artificially, it can also be taken away. And then, in the worst case, with that additional power…”

[She could create another Ja’an owner. I know. I agree with your guess.]

The Imperial Family had already produced at least one Ja’an in each generation. Until now, every Imperial child born with blue-gray eyes had their Ja’an awakened from birth, so everyone had believed it naturally.

That the Ja’an was something you were born with.

But Nerys—who awakened her Ja’an at eighteen—had proven that wasn’t necessarily true.

Then how could anyone know whether a child who was never meant to be born with blue-gray eyes had been altered before birth by magic, ‘changing’ into blue-gray eyes?

“Camille could wield that power exactly as it is. Either way, don’t panic. Since neither of us knows anything about magic, anything can happen. Only one thing is certain.”

[That it ends once the dragon is released.]

“Seeing how the Dragon Lair in Dreykum was affected when I awakened, it’s certain the Seals influence one another. We only need to make a small gap, so investigate the Imperial Family’s emblem as we discussed.”

Nerys’s eyes sharpened as she pictured the secret chamber.

“The fact that there’s ‘deliberately’ only one object symbolizing the Imperial Family in a magical place with no other decorations, and that it overlooks both altars at once… it has to mean something.”

[I know. Don’t worry. I also think there’s something wrong with that emblem, but even if there isn’t, it doesn’t matter. If we smash everything in our way, we’ll find the answer eventually.]

Nerys smiled.

“Okay. …Are you busy? Let’s end the call and head to the meeting.”

Cledwyn made a whining sound, but cut the connection anyway. A knock came at the quiet bedroom door.

“Madam, did you call for us?”

“Come in.”

Ellen and Gilbert entered, faces tense. Nerys gave them the main point first.

“From this moment on, restrict access to the central areas. Thoroughly verify the identity of everyone entering or leaving.”

It was something she could have entrusted to the head maid and the butler, yet this sudden order made both of them look startled.

Nerys explained.

“Camille has definitely sent someone. She’s not the type to stake everything on uncovering one secret passage.”

And Silver Moon would enter White Swan Castle somehow—using expensive magic and methods so sinister they could scarcely be imagined.

Because Camille wasn’t the type to spare means when staring at the end.

Still, that was no reason to make it easy for her.