Benedict did not answer.
Submerged in the sound of rain, he was only calmly looking somewhere.
“What, this is truly preposterous!”
Marquis Heisilt stood up abruptly.
“That’s right.”
The Regent Duke answered.
“It is truly preposterous.”
Then in a serious tone, he again spouted that joke-like claim that Benedict had lost his magic power.
“I’ve been speculating for some time now whether His Highness the Prince might have suffered an unexpected accident. So it’s come to this after all. If you truly have no magic power, Your Highness, you will have deceived the people of the Empire.”
“Wait a moment, Your Grace! I don’t understand this at all!”
Like Marquis Heisilt, I too couldn’t understand. Benedict was an imperial family member born with magic power so mighty that even the masters of Linlisgo’s Tower clicked their tongues, and countless military achievements continuing since his boyhood had proven it. Even this year alone, he’d demonstrated magic several times within the capital.
“Fortunately, since His Highness Benedict is present, I think I can skip the long explanation.”
But the Regent Duke was confident.
“Please prove it, Your Highness.”
The Regent Duke said to Benedict.
“Fortunately, there is a wide forest beside the great mansion. I request a magic demonstration. You won’t say you can’t do it because it’s so sudden, will you?”
Benedict still said nothing. He only sat without a single sign of discomposure, listening to the Regent Duke’s incomprehensible attack.
I bit my lips thinking ‘surely not,’ when ‘Joachim, Joachim!’ Mikhail urgently whispered from beside me.
‘Has His Highness the Prince really lost his magic power?’
When I pretended not to hear, I could hear wicked muttering about how he knew this would happen, how he’d bought an already-mined gold mine, how imperial family members without magic power didn’t leave even a single line in history books.
‘You dull fool, say something! Even now, urk!’
I jabbed the whispering Mikhail’s side with my elbow to make him quiet.
“Proof! No one can make such a rude demand of His Highness the Prince! That His Highness Benedict has willingly shown magic until now was his goodwill! It was not to be evaluated or proven by you people!”
Meanwhile, the debate was continuing.
Benedict still had a calm face. Even if he actually took no damage from this kind of thing at all… my heart ached.
“Your Highness.”
The Regent Duke still had a face smiling with conviction.
“I merely wish to be certain. You have been praised as being born from Linlisgo’s magic tower with ‘the eternally burning flame.’ I remember that His Majesty the Great Emperor Relliuro also protected the Empire’s borders with the might he was born with. As one citizen of the Empire, I only wish to ask whether you can fulfill such responsibility.”
Benedict finally opened his mouth.
His face was peaceful, like one who would willingly offer water even to an unexpected visitor who had barged in.
“Yes, I have lost my magic power.”
It was an admission.
Marquis Heisilt collapsed into his seat as if drained. The venue was engulfed in shock.
Facing a mass of gazes that must be very burdensome, Benedict calmly continued.
“However, I can protect the Empire.”
“Since when?”
The Regent Duke pressed in.
His yellow-tinged gray eyes gleamed.
Unfortunately, there were many nobles in this place who supported the Regent Duke, or precisely, the Empress. That snake-eyed coward must have arranged it.
“Since the beginning of this year.”
Benedict answered.
Spring.
It was the time I’d returned to the past.
Suddenly I resented myself for having guided Benedict to necessarily come to this place. But then I became confused, thinking that wouldn’t it have been worse to learn of this trick later, as the Regent Duke intended. I still couldn’t judge anything.
And gradually, as the confusion cleared, hurt began to fill its place.
The past, present, and future I’d experienced unfolded like a kaleidoscope.
‘I have lost my magic power.’
The current Benedict said he’d lost his magic power.
But there was no such thing in the past. Until the point five years later, right before I returned, there was no doubt that Benedict had protected the Empire with mighty magic power.
Now that I’d become so happy,
He had actually lost something important.
“Your Highness says you can protect the Empire even without magic. So, with just a sword.”
At the Regent Duke’s sneering voice, I looked at him with a momentary surge of hostility, but it was a meaningless act.
The Regent, who had turned his back on Benedict, looked around at the audience.
“You all know this. The Augentier imperial family, with purely their innate magic power alone, erased the ‘dangerous’ from the modifier ‘most dangerous and fertile’ of this land.”
My return and Benedict’s loss of magic power phenomenon might not be related.
Even so, I wanted to reverse it. I wanted to reverse everything and compensate kind Benedict for his loss.
“But now that His Highness the Prince has lost his magic power,”
At the very least, I wanted to run and embrace him. Like he had done for me, I wanted to make it so he couldn’t see or hear such sneering or cold gazes. But I was too insignificant to do so. My heart burned with terrible helplessness.
“—Also, in order to hide his own shame, His Highness Benedict neglected the safety of the Empire’s citizens and carried out personal appointments.”
The vile attacks continued.
“Although not suitable personnel for the capital, for personal reasons Your Highness brought in someone who should be at the front lines to the capital. I don’t know the specific method, but it’s clear that there was help from that person in His Highness Benedict’s plausible magic demonstrations. I heard she’s a magic swordsman.”
Duke Yorick’s fingertip pointed somewhere.
It was where the imperial knights who had arrived with Benedict were. Miss Sana among them was singled out.
“That female knight is someone who should be at the very front lines.”
Benedict, who had been silently listening to arrows of criticism directed at him aside from questions, opened his mouth for the first time.
“I cannot force anyone to spend a lifetime of difficult times fighting monsters.”
His voice was calm, but his eyes had sunk coolly.
The Regent Duke, who had hesitated briefly, asked back.
“Then how are we to fill the dangerous gap created by that female knight’s departure?”
“For now, it can be filled with Your Grace’s concern.”
Benedict answered.
“I’d appreciate it if you would personally lead the Grand Duke’s knights and visit the northern gate.”
After fumbling several times, the Regent Duke returned to his original argument.
“Anyway—”
He raised his eyes again to look at the nobles.
“I wish to hold Your Highness accountable for losing your magic power.”
“I object.”
A hand shot up right next to me.
It was Mikhail.
“I don’t understand why you’re bringing up such talk at a gathering where foreign guests have visited.”
I looked at hyung with startled eyes.
I’d wondered why he’d suddenly become quiet from earlier, and it seemed he’d been thinking of arguments to refute. A prepared Mikhail was a decent debater.
At the mention that he was undermining the Empire’s authority, Marquis Heisilt and several others voiced their agreement.
Duke Yorick answered Mikhail.
“I thought the truth needed to be revealed as quickly as possible.”
“Well, I feel there’s no real difference between today or tomorrow. Yesterday might not have mattered either.”
Mikhail refuted.
“And I cannot agree with your statement that His Highness Benedict should be held accountable. Who here dares to hold him accountable? You all know well that the famous generals of the border pledge their loyalty to His Highness Benedict. It’s because he’s the one who, working hard since childhood, has allowed the northern Empire’s citizens to face the night with peace of mind.”
The hurt I’d felt toward Mikhail earlier was melting away like snow.
This was the first time hyung looked good. “Wow, hyung, you’re like Count Rolang right now.” I muttered in a voice moved without realizing. Mikhail’s voice became heated.
“Who is the one who has protected the Empire from monsters, from barbarians? Who is the one who has erected an invisible shield by showing the Empire’s strength against indirect threats from other nations? I ask one last time. Who here can take their place…… —why is everyone like that?”
Mikhail looked back in bewilderment. I too followed the gaze of the people across from us and turned my eyes over my shoulder.
Through the large window, I could see the garden where the rain had thinned.
No, something pitch black and huge was flying above it.
Everyone stared in that direction, entranced. Too fast, we could only sit as we were and watch that thing happen.
One large window rapidly darkened. Before anyone could say anything, I reflexively pressed down Mikhail’s head urgently and lowered my head. Crash, along with the sound of the window shattering, people’s startled screams were heard.
After a moment, I slowly raised my head.
At a distance of less than ten steps before my eyes, ‘it’ was there.
Over glass shards scattered like a fountain, the thing that had smashed through the window and burst in lay sprawled on the floor.
It was, gigantic.
It looked like a tattered black canopy torn to shreds.
The thinned rain scattered in the wind. A bitterly cold, damp wind blew. The thing that was half-caught in the window frame getting rained on flinched and trembled.
The pitch-black canopy squirmed and rose.
Shadows fell over people’s faces, over tables. Crunch crunch, glass powder and rainwater, black debris fell down, and giant wings tilted open. Over a thick body, a long, sharp head crushed on one side was revealed.
Someone opened their mouth.
“Wy… wyvern……?”
Only then did I recognize that it was a wyvern whose body was completely damaged.
At the same time, both wings spread completely. It was a size that filled one side of the venue.
The meeting venue filled with screams and shock. People fled like ebbing tide to the opposite side of the monster. I hurriedly joined that gap together with Mikhail.
Then, I saw someone stepping forward before the monster as if going against the current.
“Your Highness!”
It was Benedict.
The terrifying wyvern’s eyes, with sunken eyeballs, turned toward him. Its ferocious front paw with exposed bones struck down as if to butcher him.
The sound of stone breaking was heard.
When someone’s scream stopped, the wyvern’s front paw embedded in the venue floor, tearing the carpet, was visible.
Benedict wasn’t there. At some point, he was leaping toward the wyvern, gripping his sword.
