SBTMK Chapter 35

That wasn't because Simen was weak from the start. It was because the imperial authority itself had been weakened by years of prolonged war.

Simen's father, the previous emperor, was a war maniac chasing continental unification, endlessly swallowing the neighboring kingdoms.

War brought heavy losses in its wake.

Funds and supplies were perpetually short. And so the emperor had kept greedy, wealthy nobles close to him.

In exchange for financing the war's enormous costs, those nobles had begun, one by one, to seize the empire's highest positions.

The more the nobility's power expanded, the weaker the imperial authority grew, and the tyranny of nobles who feared nothing under heaven worsened by the day. His father had turned a blind eye to that tyranny too.

Those blinded by power had ceaselessly driven Simen, then crown prince, into living hell. They pushed him out as a commander for lacking enough knights willing to march into war and enter the Demon Hollows, and they made petty attempts at assassination and poisoning.

The assassinations were mostly entrusted to knights from kingdoms that had already fallen to the war.

Since only those who bore genuine hatred toward the Haenkan imperial house were sent, when an assassination failed, they chose curses and death over naming who stood behind them. For such petty reasons, uncovering the backers behind these attempts had failed again and again.

Only through the ceremony at the emperor's coronation could the familiar spirit sealed by the god Arzeka be inherited, and so the nobles' scheming to eliminate him for certain before that point had continued without end, sickeningly.

Sometimes luck had been on his side, but Simen had survived to the end. It was the result of training himself in swordsmanship to the point of death, all while staying out of the nobles' sight.

His father, obsessed only with war and indifferent to the empire's actual condition, had at least worried about Simen as the empire's sole heir, and so had secretly permitted him to build his own strength.

Simen had been publicly known as physically weak. Not knowing their true enemy, the nobles' assassination attempts had no choice but to fail.

They simply misread it as the outstanding skill of the crown prince's guard knights. Even as he stepped forward as commander of demon-beast subjugations, many had assumed he'd simply been lucky to survive.

As he kept returning alive from fields of death, the nobles eventually noticed that Simen was a tiger hiding its claws—but that had only made them more careful, more vicious, not less of a threat.

That was how long he had lived, surviving like a shadow in the night.

He had become emperor in the end.

Once he'd gained his familiar spirit, the meager mana he'd carried grew stronger, and assassination attempts had visibly declined.

But the faction that already had the palace firmly in its grip was not something Simen could handle alone.

Becoming emperor changed nothing.

He'd caught a few instances of the nobles' corruption and had slowly built up his own faction as a result, but its numbers remained meager all the same.

Aside from those in his inner circle, nearly everyone was in the nobility's pocket. Wary of them, Erne meticulously arranged the guard knights for every official movement.

Simen had told him he had strength enough to protect himself and not to make such a fuss over it, but Erne remained unyielding.

Given that, it was something of a miracle he hadn't killed Flora, that day he'd slipped out to the hunting grounds.

Even now, it seemed like he was still watching for a chance to do it, though...

〈Your Majesty.〉

"……."

〈A messenger arrived two days ago reporting that a demon-beast was discovered in the mountains of Marren County. Three civilians and two county knights died, and three more sustained serious injuries. In response to the county's request for aid, the Imperial Knights are preparing to form a subjugation force, with departure scheduled for three days from now. Commander Hakra will lead it.〉

"Hakra himself is going? Sounds like it's a fair scale."

Simen looked at Erne as he asked. Erne continued his report.

〈The terrain is rugged and the search area extensive, and on top of that the demon-beast has already escaped the Demon Hollow, so a larger contingent than usual is being drawn from the corps.〉

"Things had been quiet for a while, and now it's starting up again."

Erne, listening to Simen's displeased tone, checked his emperor's mood—unlike him.

Sharp as ever, Simen spoke first.

"If there's more, say it."

〈Dame Flora of the White Knights is among the subjugation force.〉

Simen's expression went cold in an instant.

Just as Kasin had said, the superiors who'd been giving Flora a hard time looked openly pleased to see her walking out toward mortal danger.

Some assumed she was fleeing because she couldn't stand the harassment anymore, and swaggered about it.

Most carried an easy, dismissive confidence—it would be nice not to have that thorn of a rookie around for a while, and no matter how skilled she was, what merit could she possibly earn out there anyway.

There was no comradeship in the voices telling her to be careful, but that was fine—she hadn't expected any to begin with.

Still, plenty of colleagues were warm, plenty of superiors looked out for her properly.

When Melia heard she'd been drawn for this subjugation mission, she wouldn't stop worrying. Several of the fellow candidates who'd taken the exam with her felt the same.

"You're really amazing. I mean it, you really are amazing but—Paul, Flora. Are you both really okay with this? I know it's something we'll all have to do eventually, but... honestly, when they offered it to me I felt scared first. They call it supporting the senior knights, but a demon-beast's already loose from its hollow—if things go wrong we'd have to fight alongside them, wouldn't we?"

She and the others had grown fairly close, enduring brutal training and the seniors' hazing together, and since they were fellow recruits, they dropped formal speech regardless of age.

Flora soothed Melia, who looked more frightened than the one actually leaving.

"It's fine. Paul's coming too."

Among the rookie knights, one other besides Flora had signed on for the subjugation force.

He was the man who'd spoken to her at the last exam—Paul Kartin.

Paul had said that after going through the second exam, he'd made up his mind to step forward for anything that might help the empire.

He'd been bitten by a demon-beast in the shape of a scorpion and felt the agony of his leg being severed—and having endured that nightmare and still carrying a knight's pride afterward struck her as genuinely admirable.

Flora made up her mind that if the demon-beast attacked, she would protect Paul no matter what.

When she stepped out after finishing lunch with her fellow recruits, the sky had gone red.

Whenever she saw the sky dyed entirely in orange sunset, Flora naturally found herself thinking of someone.

"Flora. Where are you off to now?"

"I'll walk a bit and catch up. Go on ahead."

"Doesn't get tired at all, seriously. Amazing."

Leaving her muttering colleagues behind, Flora walked toward the garden.

This was now her favorite hour of the day.

She hadn't seen Simen since joining the knight corps. It was only natural, maybe, but the hollow space that had settled in one corner of her chest wasn't easy to hide.

Regret kept pressing in too—she should have looked at him a little longer, back then, if she'd known it would turn out this way.

Of all things, the last feeling she'd had while looking at him had been loneliness, which made it worse.

Was Simen doing all right?

Worrying about other people was the most useless thing there was—but Simen wasn't just anyone. He was her lord...

Even knowing all along it would end up this way, she couldn't understand why her chest went so tight whenever she thought of him.

Was it because he's handsome...? Because she can't see that handsome mug of his anymore?

That kind of shallow reasoning wasn't nearly enough to hold back her feelings anymore.

It really was a ridiculous feeling. That she'd let someone into her heart over one warm hand offered once—even a passing ant would laugh.

She'd finally realized the feeling she'd never wanted to know, the one she'd tried so hard to deny—now what was she supposed to do about it?

Flora stopped walking, sat down beneath a large tree, and leaned her back against the trunk.

The garden at Haenkan Castle was fairly spacious, and she liked that she almost never ran into anyone here. It was perfect for thinking.

A cool breeze combed through hair like silver thread.

Nice weather, not knowing whose heart it was ruining. Pretty scenery—why. Everything looked twisted to her eyes.

Would the day come that she'd see Simen again?

Even a sun invisible to the eye was still something she had to serve—and yet these disloyal thoughts kept surfacing, and she felt filthy for it.

After a brief silence and a moment of thought, Flora let out a breath.

Regret and worry, she exhaled out with it.

After days of quietly stewing over it, she felt she'd more or less learned how to handle this feeling. From that, she'd draw the strength to get through tomorrow again.

It was just as Flora shifted her gaze from the ground back up to the sky.

A dark shape was approaching from a distance.

The silhouette of a man wrapped tightly in a robe felt familiar.

So familiar that with every step he took drawing closer, her heart seemed to beat in time with him—thud, thud, thud.

The man walking with the blazing sunset at his back was more than enough to set even her chest on fire.

Flora watched him as if time had stopped.

She didn't think to stand and kneel, didn't think to acknowledge him.

All her attention hung on the pounding of her own heart. It seemed to echo all the way up into her skull.

This timing, too, was perfect. Almost too perfect.

She couldn't tell if it was some god's joke, or some god's gift.