Chapter 4 - A Sore Spot
9 min read ·
Royalty meant something a little different in the Holy Kingdom of Craven. Of course, belonging to the royal family of one of the continent’s strongest nations was special enough in itself, but there was more to it than that.
“Lester. Go keep watch.”
Special enough that they could send a paladin, one of the kingdom’s most powerful combatants, on a petty errand like this without much complaint.
“...”
Guarding royalty was generally a most noble duty, but that notion deserved reconsideration when the royal in question was an idiot like this.
The seventh prince, Daniel Craven. The wastrel considered the greatest headache in the Holy Kingdom’s royal family.
‘He’s been going on about wanting the Lionhearted for ages...’
Quite a few of the continent’s powerful figures probably coveted the position of the Lionhearted’s husband. Even so, Daniel had long been displaying such ugly desire for the knight hailed as the Empire’s greatest treasure that Lester wanted to hammer the words “know your place” into his skull.
The fiancé she had brought back was plainly no trained fighter. Daniel was clearly looking to take out his frustration on him.
“Your Highness. Surely that’s going too—”
The Lionhearted’s fiancé was naturally an honored guest. Toying with someone of his standing could escalate into a diplomatic incident between the two nations.
Of course, Daniel clearly wasn’t the sort to concern himself with such practical matters.
“To whom did you swear your vows to obtain the divinity you wield?”
Daniel’s vicious retort shut Lester’s mouth.
Yes. That was the problem.
Every nation’s combatants wielded different supernatural powers, each with entirely different properties. Yet all those powers ultimately came from a single source: the grace bestowed by their nation’s chief deity.
Every supernatural ability originated in the divine powers the gods of the pantheon had bestowed upon the mortal world.
The problem was that in the Holy Kingdom, most of that divine power was concentrated in the royal family. Even the power Lester currently wielded was merely “on loan” from this lout of a prince.
‘And yet he still managed to get himself banished to the Empire.’
For someone so valuable, responsible for supplying supernatural power, to be stuck in a distant foreign country spoke volumes.
This was exile in all but name. Go somewhere out of the way and come back once you’ve learned some sense—that was likely the message.
In other words, Daniel was such a colossal fuckup that even those privileges couldn’t protect him.
“What are you doing? I told you to keep watch.”
“...”
Seeing that Daniel was determined to cause trouble even under these circumstances, Lester screamed inwardly.
He had never had the option of refusing. However much of a lout the prince might be, he was still royalty.
“... As you command.”
Put another way, the divinity royalty could wield was so overwhelming that even the Holy Kingdom’s foremost combatants, its paladins, had to defer to their wishes.
‘Poor fellow.’
Lester turned away, offering a prayer for the soul of the man called Aiden.
▣
Daniel strode toward Aiden. As he did, divinity began to surge menacingly around his body.
Where Karva, the goddess of war, had granted her subjects the means to wield the energy within their bodies, Sier, the god of purification, had blessed his subjects with flames that could burn anything.
True to his reputation as the royal family’s greatest lout, Daniel had never learned a single method of wielding that divinity. It was a pearl necklace around a pig’s neck.
But a pearl necklace had value in its own right.
Finely honed divinity could serve as both shield and sword without any further shaping. Mere contact could easily melt an ordinary person’s body.
“...”
Aiden’s expression rapidly soured.
There was one thing everyone knew: when a royal of the Holy Kingdom brought out their divinity, it was as good as declaring that they intended to give their opponent a serious beating, at the very least.
It might be an even greater threat than when Gale had drawn his sword on him.
“I just don’t understand.”
Arms folded and divinity billowing around him, Daniel circled Aiden. His every step dripped with mockery and swagger.
“Why would a woman of the Lionhearted’s caliber go out of her way to marry such a worthless man? Hmm?”
“...”
“Tell me, you lowborn. Did you flirt with her? Play the gold digger with that pretty face of yours, despite being a man?”
Lester dragged a hand down his burning face. The insult spoke volumes about the level of Daniel’s intellect.
The surprising part was that he was only running his mouth, when he had seemed ready to turn violent with his divinity straightaway.
‘... Ah. So that’s it.’
He was deliberately provoking him.
Apparently, he meant to make the other man angry enough to strike first, then claim self-defense. So he wasn’t entirely ignoring the consequences. Even the prince would be afraid of pressure from the Holy Kingdom back home.
Of course, Daniel had started the trouble, but a royal of the Holy Kingdom had enough power to brush aside a minor flaw like that. Even a wastrel prince would have little difficulty ruining someone once he had been “attacked first.”
“I wish that were all it was.”
“...”
“Then I could at least introduce her to someone who could take my place.”
“...”
This was no ordinary man.
The same thought occurred to Lester and Daniel as Aiden answered curtly without batting an eye.
Of course, to Aiden, who had been kidnapped and dragged here, the position of groom genuinely meant no more than that.
“... The Lionhearted would make you pay if she heard that. Do you have no sense of honor? I really would have been a better choice than this wretch.”
His answer had prompted none other than Daniel to start prattling about honor. Yet Aiden’s eyes lit up instead.
“Do you want to take my place?!”
“...”
The response was so devastating that Daniel, the one who had picked the fight, was left utterly speechless.
‘... What the fuck is this guy?’
He acted as though marrying the Lionhearted really was nothing more than an unwanted burden. An opportunity any man on the continent would envy.
“—”
And that, unmistakably, wounded his pride in its own right.
Wasn’t this man treating the very thing Daniel had desperately wanted, yet never come close to obtaining, as something he could happily do without?
That was probably why the words he ground out through clenched teeth were filled with more resentment than he had expected.
“Shut your fucking mouth, you vermin. Born to a lowly family, and every bit as ill-bred! You couldn’t show royalty any greater disrespect!”
“About that. Let’s leave my family out of this. If you’re royalty, you ought to uphold at least a bare minimum of honor.”
Oh.
Wait.
That seemed to have struck a real nerve.
Daniel thought this in surprise at the sudden chill in Aiden’s voice. It was the polar opposite of his response to comments about his relationship with the Lionhearted.
But a triumphant smile soon spread across his face.
“Honor? Honor, you say?”
If this was what made him angry, all Daniel needed to do was steer things in the right direction.
“You’re nothing but vermin with the foul blood of a lowborn father and a lowborn mother. How dare you lecture royalty on nobility?”
“...”
Wow.
The words were so utterly vulgar that even Lester forgot his duty for a moment and sighed.
And after hearing that, every trace of expression vanished from Aiden’s face.
“What’s wrong, lowborn? Can’t argue because every word is true? Hmm?”
This time, rather than reply, Aiden silently looked Daniel up and down. He seemed to be making some calculation in his head, as though sorting out his thoughts.
“... This should be fine.”
He muttered those words, then immediately began gauging the distance between himself and Daniel with a careful eye.
“...?”
A seasoned warrior, Lester recognized roughly what that movement meant, and his eyes widened.
It was, well... the look of someone unfamiliar with fighting trying to work out how to hit his opponent where it would hurt.
Of course, nothing would come of it when the man so clearly lacked any proper training.
“...??”
Something was wrong. Something.
He had a feeling something terrible was about to happen, and that he ought to stop it.
“Wait, Sir...!”
But before he could intervene...
“Your Highness.”
Aiden grinned as he spoke, baring a healthy set of gleaming white teeth.
Yet somehow, to Lester, it was a terrifying expression, tinged with the peculiar relief of a man who had let go of reason.
“I sincerely hope you know a good dentist.”
“... Huh?”
Before Daniel could even begin to look as though he understood, pure-white energy erupted before his eyes.
Considering how things had unfolded, this was exactly what Daniel had intended from the start. He had, after all, succeeded in getting under the other man’s skin and making him strike first.
The problem was...
‘Wait, what...!’
It had worked really, truly, far too well.
A fist tore through Daniel’s high-purity divinity like cardboard and slammed violently into his left cheek.
—!
Without question, it was a beautiful blow—beautiful enough to send a dozen or so white teeth scattering through the air at once.
▣
There were more than a few questions that needed answering.
How was this man wielding the pure-white energy that was the Lionhearted’s trademark? And if he could do that, why did he look like an ordinary, untrained civilian who had never learned a single fighting technique?
But there was something more pressing than any of that.
“... Sir.”
Lester addressed Aiden in a trembling voice. His head was spinning.
Daniel was right beside them, embedded in the wall and bleeding profusely all over, but the shock of what had happened took precedence over dealing with him.
“What on earth have you done...?”
Once someone had been beaten this thoroughly senseless, it was no longer a simple matter of “striking royalty.”
At best, a diplomatic dispute. At worst, all-out war.
The continent had yet to recover from the aftermath of the last war. And now an honored guest of the Empire had beaten a member of the Holy Kingdom’s royal family to a pulp?
No matter how you looked at it, this wasn’t something anyone could brush aside...!
“First, drop the ‘Sir.’ I’m not a knight.”
“...”
How could someone who wielded pure-white energy not be a knight?
Lester opened and closed his mouth, trying to voice the question, but Aiden cut in before he could.
“More importantly, hurry up and get someone. He’ll die at this rate.”
“Pardon?”
“We need to clean this up.”
“...”
His voice was remarkably calm for someone discussing a mess of his own making.
No, not calm. Cold.
He called it cleaning up, but it almost sounded as though he were asking for the means to smash the other man’s head in more thoroughly.
“This is a very serious matter. Shouldn’t we make sure everything is properly settled between us?”
Watching his eyes gleam as he spoke, Lester understood one thing for certain.
This man apparently became an entirely different person when he was angry.