Chapter 290: 152. The Approaching Darkness -2 (Part Two)
Translated by A Passing Wanderer
Edited by RED
A rebellion, was it? How could something like that even succeed in the first place?
The ruling authority of Aslan rested with the twelve feudal lords, but only half of them sided with Tina. The support of the citizens, as well as the Necromancers, was also going through the roof right now. Which wasn’t surprising, considering that Aslan had been saved by the World Tree she was looking after.
As such, turning her into a puppet should have been a pretty tall order. Not only that, the nobles would’ve found her difficult to defeat as long as she had her Elemental Spirits to help her.
While thinking about this and that, I finally reached the Imperial Palace’s audience chamber.
I calmed my breathing before entering. Although faint, I could sense the aura of divinity plus an odd pressure seeping out from the gaps of the doorway.
“…What is His Imperial Majesty the Holy Emperor’s mood like?” I asked Charlotte, but she couldn’t bring herself to verbalise the answer.
She instead raised both of her hands and silently formed a pair of horns sticking out over her head, a clear sign that the Holy Emperor was currently feeling greatly pissed off.
“Gee whiz. Gimme a freaking break.”
Seriously? I’m beyond ‘occupied’ with the task of raising an army right now, you know?
I opened the door to the audience chamber.
“His Majesty the Holy King, has graced us with his presence-!”
The grand chamberlain’s loud announcement was accompanied by the Paladins standing in perfect lines on the left and right side of the chamber proudly raising their heads high.
On the other hand, the nobles present all lowered their heads.
I silently walked down the centre of the audience chamber. My feet strode down the crimson carpet before I looked up at Kelt.
He was sitting on the throne, his face deeply distorted by rage. “Aslan has raised the flags of rebellion.”
“I have just heard it, Your Imperial Majesty.”
“They expressed their wish to escape the fetters of a vassal state by yelling out independence. They are also trying to besmirch the honour of the Imperial Family by claiming that this act was our doing. Perhaps, were you indeed involved?”
“Your Imperial Majesty, if I was really involved there, then Aslan would’ve been wiped off the map by now,” I deliberately replied with some exaggeration added in.
One needed to be unwavering when trying to convince Holy Emperor Kelt. Since there was the precedence of the Ronia incident up north, there was a chance that Kelt suspected me of actually instigating this whole thing.
However, my worries seemed to be for nothing because what I feared might happen didn’t happen in the end.
Kelt suppressed his anger. He rubbed his temples hard and coughed gruffly. A short while later, he shook his head as if he suffered from lightheadedness just now. “This matter… what are you planning to do about it, Holy King?”
He didn’t use my given name of Allen. He called me the Holy King for the record keepers, it seemed. He probably wanted to find out how I, not as his grandson, but as the Holy King, would deal with this matter.
I replied, “There is a good chance that Queen Tina has been turned into a puppet, Your Imperial Majesty.”
“I see. However, how is it possible for Aslan to wage a coup d’etat so easily like this?”
“It’s possible if vampires are involved.” The nobles present inside the audience chamber all visibly winced when I said that. “I’m assuming that the feudal lords have joined forces with the vampires.”
Kelt suddenly stood up from the throne and straightened his back slowly. The absolute sovereign walked down from the throne and approached me. It felt like tidal waves of divinity were flooding out with every step he took.
As he began speaking again, every word spoken in Spirit Speech reverberated powerfully in the audience chamber. Kelt, whose figure seemed slight and slender, but in actual truth, was a towering man, looked down at me. “Which means, Aslan as of now has fallen into the hands of the vampires.”
“…” I quietly closed my eyes. This… no longer could be helped. “Your Imperial Majesty.”
“You may speak.”
“I shall conquer Aslan.”
“…”
“Even though it hasn’t even been ten years, they still chose to point their swords at us. Even if they did so for the sake of their coup, it still clearly is an act of taking us lightly. Thus, allow me to trample on their territory, and turn their lands into…” Kelt narrowed his eyes, but I still finished the rest of the sentence. “…into the territory of the Theocratic Empire.”
This was unavoidable now.
Through this event, Aslan would end up as nice prey for the vampires. This wasn’t some faraway place we were talking about, but our direct next-door neighbour. We simply couldn’t afford to let vampires set up their base camp there.
Kelt formed a considerably satisfied smile. “Very well. I shall allow it. That’s right, even though you have inherited both the political standing and the necessary authority, I have not given you a suitable territory yet, haven’t I?” He stared deeply into my eyes and spoke up. “I shall hand Aslan over to you.”
I sucked in my breath. He wasn’t giving me time to interject here.
“Get ready to mobilise.”
“…Understood.”
“You may leave now. Get some good rest first.”
I bowed silently and stepped back.
Charlotte followed me outside the audience chamber.
The moment the doorway was closed shut, I couldn’t help but blurt out some choice words. “That damn snake-like geezer!”
I could more or less guess what Kelt had been angling for just now.
He probably wanted to see the person about to become the next Holy Emperor, the one designated as his successor, achieve a massive feat and earn a territory through his (my) own hard work.
He probably wanted to witness everything happen with his own two eyes before he kicked the bucket, in other words.
Before all that, though… hitting Aslan at this stage wasn’t going to be easy. Sure, them going on and on about independence or whatever, and them stationing an army by the border region were enough pretexts to start a war, but even then, we couldn’t just hit them for just those two reasons.
Rampant fake news was being spread around at the moment, and as such, it’d be pretty hard to avoid the subjects growing distrustful of the war itself.
Surely the other nations would stoke the flames of misunderstanding, the one about us raising an army to conquer the rest of the continent under the pretext of a war against the vampires.
Kelt was planning to see how I would go about resolving all this. All the plans I came up with were circling down the drain because what was going on.
‘My… my peaceful life, it’s…!’
Just as I held my head and began groaning unhappily, something else happened.
“Your Majesty!” Hans hurriedly ran up to us with a deeply pale face. He dashed towards me so quickly that he actually ran out of breath by the end. He then grabbed my shoulders and shook me around. “Your Majesty! Sir!”
Charlotte must’ve found this scene too insolent to tolerate, because she suddenly grabbed the scruff of his neck and pulled him away from me.
“What is it this time?!”
Right now my mind was a complicated mess. I just didn’t have the mental leeway to listen to Hans’s whining. I needed to get ready for war, and come up with a way to safely rescue both the Aslan citizens and Tina.
Hans flailed his arms about and gasped out. “H-he’s here, sir!”
“He? Who?”
“Y-yes, you know! That person!”
I furrowed my brow. Hans sneaked glances around us. Maids, manservants, and ladies-in-waiting were walking around minding their own business, while guard soldiers were standing here and there.
He scanned all these people, then shook off Charlotte’s hand on his neck before whispering in my ear, “Damon! It’s him! He’s here!”
My eyes bulged at the news.
**
(TL: In 3rd person POV.)
‘I feel better already. Although the stench is disgusting, this healing potion is indeed the real deal. As expected of His Majesty the Holy King’s potion, it’s truly wondrous.’
Damon stared at the gourd-shaped bottle containing the ‘wonder drug’ and fell into a reminiscence of the past. He recalled the events of him and Tina getting dragged away to the Black Order’s headquarters as slaves, then the battle between Nasus the Lich and the Holy King, the intense confrontation against the black dragon, and even Aslan’s revolution, as well.
‘I must inform him of the truth.’
Damon had secretly slipped past the border wall and stepped into the Theocratic Empire. In that process he had overcome several close brushes with death.
He stole a horse and injected divinity into it. When the horse collapsed from fatigue, he’d steal another one from passing merchants. He had continued to travel without a moment’s rest.
Eventually he had arrived in the capital, Laurensis, and infiltrated into the crowd of people living here. He was once the instructor of the hashashins, so such a thing proved to be rather simple to pull off.
However, he didn’t dare infiltrate the Imperial Palace. His path was blocked by the skilled Paladins guarding the palace, so he resorted to writing a letter, instead.
The recipient of the letter? Hans Jerurami.
Since he and Damon were acquaintances, the Alchemist would surely help him out, or so he reasoned.
And so, he did get to meet with Hans and received this wonder drug, then found a quiet little street by Laurensis’s slums to sit down and wait in.
‘Meeting with His Highness in this situation will only complicate matters.’
Damon was being labelled as the instigator of the rebellion, acting under the orders of the Holy King. So him meeting His Majesty openly in the current situation could turn the false rumour into the real thing.
While he was thinking that, he heard footsteps closing in. Damon raised his head and noticed that someone was standing tall before him.
This someone was wearing a robe. He was someone he hadn’t met for the past three years or so, and had shed his previous boy-like visage. He was now an imposing young man.
Damon instantly felt an irrepressible happiness and guilt the moment he saw this young man. He urgently went down on his knees. “One of the twelve feudal lords of Aslan, Damon…” He brought his hands together in the gesture of offering a prayer. “…pays his respect to Lord Angel!”
Damon then bowed his head deeply.
But then, Allen suddenly opened his firmly-shut mouth. “I’m sorry about this, Damon. But your Aslan…”
Damon flinched a little and raised his head.
His eyes shot open wide at what he saw. The Holy King and his indifferent face were now standing before him.
“…will have to be destroyed now.”
< 152. The Approaching Darkness -2 (Part One and Two) > Fin.
