Chapter 251: The Emperor’s Woman
“I will kill them all.”
There was no outsider who did not react to this statement.
Rather than sneering or trying to clear up misunderstandings, they immediately drew their swords and summoned blue aura from their cores.
‘They don’t seem to be just simple bandits.’
Shiron thought as he watched the group moving in formation.
No matter how strong the empire’s national power was, the Amur River and the great plain were undeniably foreign lands beyond the empire’s borders.
Under the emperor’s command, they carried out large-scale operations, so naturally, there were casualties, and there were thieves who specialized in looting armor or valuables from the bodies they couldn’t properly collect.
However, that did not explain why they could move so seamlessly. Aura could be drawn with a mix of talent and effort, but dozens of people charging simultaneously without a single one hesitating was extraordinary.
‘Geez, they don’t even bother to hide that they are trained.’
[Well, I think they have determined that you are a formidable warrior. If they don’t fight sincerely, they might all die!]‘…How kind of them.’
Shiron chuckled and narrowly dodged a sword strike. The flowing aura grazed his bangs, sending his black hair fluttering.
‘Let’s save just one or two.’
Apart from that, he decided to kill everyone else. With resolve, Shiron clenched his fist and charged towards the chest of the man who had just swung his sword.
Crack! His right hand pierced the chest.
The thick breastplate caved in. The imprint of his fist remained on the spot he struck.
‘Where is that guy who spoke the imperial language earlier?’
He quickly scanned his surroundings, but the men charging from all directions made it hard to see clearly.
Thump! Shiron jumped on the fallen man’s body. By then, he had two daggers in his hands. Swish! As he spun several times in the air, the metal fragments were shredded.
Flesh exploded and blood sprayed in an instant. Within that chaos, he saw the startled face of a man on horseback.
Slash! Thud! Crunch! Shiron quickly created corpses. Even the trained men hesitated before his terrifying momentum.
“Retreat!”
Sensing something was wrong, the commander turned his reins and whipped his horse. It seemed too late to decide to retreat, but he had no choice.
Barely a dozen seconds.
That was the time the brutal human butcher had slaughtered people with his mouth shut.
“Where do you think you’re going!”
Shiron grabbed the man on the horse by the back of his neck.
“Guh!”
“Leaving this one alive should be enough, right?”
Muttering to himself, Shiron lifted the man with one hand. Crack! A knee that was not supposed to rotate turned around. Snap! An elbow bent backward, making a gruesome sound.
“Arghhh!!”
“Wow, you have quite the voice.”
Shiron picked up a severed wrist of unknown ownership and shoved it into the man’s mouth. This was to prevent him from committing suicide.
Sighing, Shiron looked back at where he had come from. He had killed less than ten people, but Glen was the only one still standing.
“Impressive.”
It wasn’t just a figure of speech. Shiron genuinely thought he was impressive.
‘Was there really a battle?’
Glen looked so pristine that it was hard to believe he had been in a battle. Not a drop of blood stained his body, and there was no trace of his sword being drawn, with frost forming on the handle.
‘Lucia always ended up looking like a tomato after a fight.’
“…This is nothing.”
Haha. Glen scratched his cheek shyly at Shiron’s compliment. Despite being praised by demons and many travelers, the praise from his son was particularly special.
A deep sense of pride welled up from within his chest. Was this the joy one could feel between parent and child?
‘I envy my brother.’
As Glen’s face reddened slightly, Shiron took a few steps away from him.
“Hmm?”
Glen looked at Shiron with a smile. Shiron’s expression suddenly twisted.
“What’s wrong? I can’t read your expression.”
“…It’s nothing. More importantly, let’s conduct an interrogation.”
“Interrogation?”
“Yes, here…”
Just as he was about to hand over the captured man, Shiron stopped mid-sentence.
The person who had been struggling just a moment ago was now a corpse dyed in purple.
Shiron checked the mouth of the body but found no traces of poison.
“Is it a curse?”
“…Who knows. Whatever it is, we can’t interrogate now.”
“Hmm. I wanted to at least find out where these guys came from. Oh well.”
With a sigh, Shiron pointed at the scattered corpses.
“Strip them of their armor.”
“Sure.”
After a while, Glen approached with the collected armor.
“What are you going to do with these?”
“I need to figure out whose armor they stole, even if I don’t know where they are from.”
Shiron sorted through the relatively intact pieces of armor from the pile. Then, using magic, he created hot water and washed off the congealed blood.
An engraving inside was slowly revelaed. The image of two overlapping lilies was engraved in relief.
“…What is this?”
Shiron tilted his head.
It was probably a symbol representing a family or a knight order, but it wasn’t in Shiron’s memory.
But that didn’t mean there was no way to find out. Shiron took out a notebook from his pocket and opened a page listing various families and knight orders.
[Viscount Biscont]
‘What is this?’
Considering it wasn’t easy to remember, it must be a family not prominently featured in “Reincarnation of the Sword Saint”. The more he thought about it, the more uneasy he felt.
“Did you find it?”
“Yes… But it seems to be the possession of a provincial noble family, not a knight order.”
“A noble’s private soldiers, not knights… So they were forcibly conscripted?”
“Yes, it seems unfortunate but true.”
“Hmm…”
Glen recalled the emperor who had been unusually kind to his son.
‘He looked delicate and slippery, but he turned out to be a rather ruthless man.’
Though he didn’t consciously think about it, Glen’s opinion of Victor slightly dropped.
During the day, the climate was cool with a refreshing breeze, but the nights on the great plain were cold enough for frost to form.
Of course, most of the expeditionary force had been active near the snowy mountains close to the Demon Realm, so not a single person caught a cold or shivered, except for one individual.
Inside a luxurious tent, the number of embroidered designs alone reached tens of thousands.
It was an excessively luxurious place for a battlefield.
However, even that seemed inadequate to serve the woman inside.
“Sniff.”
The Empress, Louise Visconti.
With her pink-tinged blonde hair tied up and wrapped in a blanket, the woman shivering was none other than Victor, the current Emperor’s wife.
It was puzzling why the Empress was on the battlefield instead of the inner palace, but she had her reasons.
Shiron Prient.
A man who had a significant influence in making Victor, who was only third in line for succession, the current Emperor, and came from a family that was said to exist even before the empire was founded, a family worthy of fairy tales…
“A bad man…”
If that were all, Louise wouldn’t have called him with such sorrow in her voice.
The problem was that the Emperor was more interested in another man than in his own Empress. However, Louise couldn’t bring herself to blaspheme Victor.
“So it’s all because of that man.”
“Your Majesty, that man’s wife is right in front of you, though?”
Siriel looked at the woman criticizing another man in front of her with half-closed eyes.
Louise, with tears brimming from the sharp look, shrank her shoulders, but the emotions she held for Shiron and Victor were too heavy to be silenced so easily.
“I’m sorry, Siriel. But I have to say this because it’s partly your fault, too.”
“…My fault?”
Siriel even dropped the formal speech she usually used.
On the day she smoothly beheaded the barbarian chief, she heard that the forces led by the Empress were annihilated by an unknown attack.
Due to her status, Louise herself had no scratches as her lieutenant led the troops, but the fact that the forces brought from her hometown were wiped out in one day was shocking enough to snap Louise’s already thin nerves over the issue of heirs.
‘If it wasn’t for my father’s request, I would have hit her once.’
“Can I hear what I did wrong?”
Siriel held back the vulgar words rising to her throat and pretended to be calm. Louise, feeling like her heart would stop, tightly closed her eyes.
“…I didn’t say anything wrong. It’s because Shiron Prient, your fiancé, seduced His Majesty. He’s a homosexual, a pervert, a very lowly person.”
“Ah-ha? So, what did I do wrong?”
“…If you had kept him from going to the Imperial Palace! He wouldn’t have had the chance to seduce His Majesty, and they wouldn’t have gotten close.”
Louise, feeling the cold chill, burned with frustration.
The Emperor’s one-sided affection, which she could only call love.
Victor would smile broadly when Shiron Prient came to the palace.
When Shiron Prient left the audience room, Victor’s eyes would be filled with melancholy.
It was a look he never showed Louise.
The way Victor looked at Shiron was beyond a normal sovereign-subject relationship…
Of course, such judgments didn’t come overnight.
How could she suspect an affair between men, especially in the sacred Imperial Palace, a thought that could be seen as treason?
But Louise couldn’t help feeling this way.
Louise even wondered if she had paranoid jealousy and visited famous healers and received confession at the cathedral.
But their treatment methods all suggested confirming her love with the Emperor through sexual intercourse.
“Sigh.”
Feeling dizzy, Siriel rubbed her forehead and looked at the ceiling.
Knowing Victor’s true gender and dealing with the Empress, who continuously spouted such nonsense, was giving her a headache.
If she kept it hidden, Siriel’s mental state would be at risk dealing with Louise.
On the other hand, revealing Victor’s true gender could endanger Louise’s mental state and cause unforeseen consequences for the imperial family at the peak of the empire.
‘…No matter how I think about it, it’s not something I can solve right now.’
The expedition was still ongoing, and on top of that, she had to deal with the cause of the annihilation of the Empress’s forces.
As she pressed her eyes, trying to organize her thoughts, a voice made her heart pound from outside the tent.
“-…Uncle, I’m glad to see you’re well.”
“Oh, Shiron…”
A voice that made her heart flutter came from outside the tent. Siriel felt her hazy mind clear up instantly.
“Your Majesty.”
“…Yes?”
“I have an urgent matter and must leave now.”
“Siriel, I’m not done talking…”
Louise couldn’t stop Siriel from running out of the tent.
Feeling an urgent thirst, Siriel rushed towards the source of the voice.
“Brother!!”
“Siriel?”
Shiron widened his eyes at the approaching voice. Siriel rushed towards him, who was between Hugo and Glen.
Smooch, smooch, smooch, smooch.
Siriel, who pounced on Shiron, showered him with kisses in a mounting position. Dealing with the paranoid Empress until a moment ago made her head feel like it was splitting, but now all her fatigue seemed to vanish, leaving only refreshment.
“Brother. Why are you here! Did you miss me so much?”
Smooch! Smooch, smooch! Smack! Mwah! Mwah!
The more she kissed him, the more Siriel’s mind recovered, but conversely, there were two people whose minds were breaking down in real-time.
“…”
Hugo and Glen’s eyes twitched simultaneously at the sight of their nephew and niece exploring each other’s gums with their tongues.