I Married the Dragon I Killed [Novel] Chapter 254

Chapter 254: A Choice Between Two

My beloved citizens of the Empire!

We gather here today because countless stars have fallen.

The Kingdom of Heinkel was manipulated by the hand of evil, and it abandoned both God and humanity in favor of its own greed.

History is a textbook written so that we do not repeat the same mistakes, yet they ignored the records written in the blood of their ancestors.

Because of that, we lost many knights and soldiers.

And most grievous of all, the brightest star has fallen.

My bravest younger brother, a great hero who could not tolerate injustice and drew his sword to march onto the battlefield, was martyred at the hands of demons.

My beautiful younger sister Olivia wept openly in grief at the site of his death.

Those who remembered his valor burned with anger.

And so I, Alexander Arken, declare this proudly before you all.

Citizens of the Empire!

We live in an age of prosperity built upon the blood and flesh of our ancestors.

Never forget that the fertile lands overflowing with grain were made possible because the blood of invaders and the blood of those who were once someone’s child and someone’s father became fertilizer for the soil.

Remember that the blood of ancestors who fought against injustice runs through your veins.

Our enemies hide in darkness.

We saw them hiding in cracks untouched by light and dismissed them as nothing more than the remnants of a defeated enemy.

Look at what our complacency has cost us!

Our mistake has led this many people to their deaths!

What, then, must we do?

We must become the Light of Alte.

Beneath the Light of Alte, all are judged fairly and the weak are protected.

We must show the demons just how great that light truly is.

We must destroy every shadow where they might hide from the light and exterminate their seed completely.

This mission will continue until not a single seed of demonkind remains, in honor of my younger brother, the great commander Ureas Arken.

The Arken Empire!

May it endure forever!

My father, His Imperial Majesty!

May he endure forever!

Citizens of the Empire!

May you endure forever!

* * *

“Alexander has practically declared war outright.”

It was ironic.

Until Ureas departed for the Kingdom of Heinkel, he had been the greatest threat to Alexander’s position as Crown Prince.

With his rival dead, Alexander was probably pleased that his younger brother was gone.

Even more satisfying would have been the fact that he could exploit that death.

The murder of an imperial prince was not an incident anyone could ignore.

It was a cause no one could dismiss.

It granted Alexander’s rage a legitimacy that left no room for interpretation.

The only person who had ever spilled imperial blood and survived was Baldrova.

Several things could be inferred from the long-winded speech.

‘The nobles have reached the point where they must choose one of two sides.’

After the Doppler incident, there had been no reliable way to clearly distinguish Dopplers, so accusations and purges repeated endlessly.

Some people tried to exploit the chaos.

The person who used it most effectively was Grand Duke Golt.

He had clearly intended to expand the forces beneath him and consolidate them into a single faction.

Had Akard Dvelung not been dealt with, the empire would most likely have ended up centralized beneath the Grand Duke.

Alexander, whose weakness had been seized, had also appeared to be handled like one of Golt’s subordinates.

Then something unexpected happened.

Ureas died.

As a pure warmonger, he had never taken a spouse.

His endless conquests had produced countless illegitimate children, but not a single one survived past the age of three.

The empire showed no mercy, as though to prove just how important the purity of the imperial bloodline was.

As a result, no bloodline descended from Ureas remained, and Alexander suddenly had grounds to restore his legitimacy as Crown Prince.

Wasn’t there a saying that even a cornered rat would bite a cat?

Alexander had clearly hardened after this incident.

Once the confrontation became unavoidable, he appeared to have decided to settle matters once and for all.

And there was a reason he could act so boldly.

‘Count Rooster.’

Count Rooster was said to have accepted a commission to arrange Ureas’s death.

In the end, Count Rooster himself had died instead, but there was no denying that such a conspiracy had existed.

The rumor was already circulating among the nobility.

Only a month ago, they would have dismissed it as common nonsense.

Now the nobles seemed inclined to believe it might be true.

Ordering the assassination of imperial blood was a crime punishable regardless of motive or rank.

Even if the accused was the great Grand Duke Golt himself.

‘That is why Alexander has the nerve to act like this.’

Alexander was forcing everyone to choose.

Would they bow their heads to the Grand Duke, or would they join him?

‘Normally, they would side with Grand Duke Golt.’

But the rumor could no longer be ignored, so openly supporting the Grand Duke had become dangerous.

That was also why the memorial ceremonies were being held at nearly the same time.

‘In that sense, Grand Duke Golt truly is an extraordinary man.’

Akard Dvelung and Oldin Rooster, the two men who had effectively served as his arms and legs, were dead.

They had represented military force and problem-solving ability for the Grand Duke.

Their brutal deaths had left a tremendous vacuum.

If he were an ordinary duke or noble, people might have abandoned him immediately.

Waldemar Golt.

A descendant of a great war hero who had now become an even greater Grand Duke in his own right.

With both the fame of his lineage and his own reputation combined, the man possessed overwhelming support among the common people.

Among the nobility, powerful elders fawned over him, while ambitious young nobles competed to display their abilities in hopes of becoming his closest followers.

Support from the nobility mattered.

But to Ferda, something else mattered more.

The direction taken by the Alte Church, the state religion.

‘The Church seems to be siding with Alexander.’

It would be difficult for the Church to demonstrate its influence immediately.

Its credibility had already cracked after the Pope was revealed to be a puppet of demons.

To restore faith, they needed someone whose identity was unquestionable, someone devout, and someone capable of becoming the face of the Church.

The person they had chosen was Olivia.

The entire empire already knew that she never lost her smile and devoted herself to serving the weak.

The deeper anyone dug into her past, the more good deeds they found, while the occasional flaw was treated as proof that she still possessed ordinary humanity.

The clergy calculated that if such a woman qualified as Saintess, public resistance would be much lower if they later attempted to move the empire toward theocracy.

The senior priests likely also suspected that Olivia’s innocent demeanor was a mask.

‘But they won’t be able to measure how deep that mask goes.’

They would never realize that even allowing them to believe they understood her had itself been designed several moves in advance.

Olivia would place them in the palm of her hand and move them as she pleased.

‘As expected, if the empire is to shake, Grand Duke Golt must fall.’

How could Ferda land a decisive blow against that old man?

He was thinking about that when someone arrived.

“Greetings, Regent. Regina Pallenge presents herself.”

Garnet Swallow, or rather Regina Pallenge of the Merchant Guild, offered a polite bow.

Wearing the refined clothing of the wealthy upper class, she approached with the perfectly composed face of a merchant.

“These are the minutes from the latest regular citizens’ meeting. I will provide a separate summary as well, so if you find any problems, you may bring them to the Administrator.”

“The Administrator must be very busy.”

“Between the refugee issue and discrimination against them, it seems she has quite the headache.”

Those problems were always present.

Still, Isabella was not the sort of person who would send a substitute merely because she was busy.

And sure enough…

Among the papers was one sheet marked with a conspicuous black label.

A black mark.

It meant that the document was not being delivered by Regina Pallenge of the Merchant Guild, but by Garnet Swallow, head of the covert organization that handled matters in the shadows.

Documents delivered in that capacity were on an entirely different level from ordinary complaints or petitions.

“You are aware that several magitech rifles and magazines went missing, correct?”

Garnet had mentioned it before.

Once the siege of the Kingdom of Heinkel ended and the cleanup began, they confirmed that several rifles had disappeared.

In war, where soldiers advanced over corpses, the loss of military supplies was hardly unusual.

But Garnet was speaking about something else.

The reserve equipment that had been stored in the vehicles in case of an emergency.

Objects did not grow legs and flee on their own.

They had unquestionably been stolen.

Ferda quietly nodded.

“We have finished tracing the route through which they leaked.”

Ferda looked satisfied.

“So someone took the bait properly.”

Ferda had promised to provide enough magitech weapons to organize Ureas’s personal guard.

He had spoken as though pressure from others had forced him to agree, but from the beginning, some of the magitech weapons used in this siege had been intended to disappear.

They were among the weapons attracting the most attention in the empire.

Any experienced commander who saw them used in actual battle would understand their value.

Even at the cost of their lives, someone would try to take them.

Ferda had deliberately allowed them to leak for two major reasons.

‘Innovation.’

History was a fascinating thing.

Looking back, the past could seem so primitive that one wondered how such an era had ever existed.

The history of magic contained an age when the Fourth-Rank spell Magic Blast had been praised as divine magic.

Then humanity climbed higher.

Now people believed Eighth-Circle magic represented the absolute limit a human could ever reach.

‘Knowledge works exactly the same way.’

It destroys the world one knows and rebuilds a new one in its place.

If that knowledge ceased to be the exclusive property of nobles and spread all the way down to the lower classes, enormous chaos would follow.

The empire had survived for centuries by leaning on the pillars of the past.

What it needed now was a powerful shock.

“So, did you achieve anything?”

“Whether the result proves meaningful remains to be seen, but it certainly moved in the direction you wanted, Lord Ferda.”

“Meaning the weapons did not end up in the Imperial Palace or in the hands of a great noble.”

“Correct. They were taken toward the sewers beneath the slums.”

Whoever stole the magitech rifles would want to dismantle them, steal the technology inside, and develop something independently.

It was one of the most dangerous crimes possible.

Even slight involvement could result in three generations of a family being exterminated.

No high-ranking noble could risk moving openly and being identified.

So the research would most likely be disguised as the work of a criminal organization, making it easy to cut off loose ends.

The slums were the perfect location.

‘Even if a massive explosion happens, the people who die won’t be nobles.’

Human life could be treated as something that cheap and meaningless.

“Were you able to identify the organizations involved?”

Ferda asked.

Garnet answered with such confidence that the question itself almost sounded insulting.

“Yes. I recorded every detail regarding the local gangs and everyone participating in the research.”

Ferda had not expected much.

When one stuffed a fish trap with bait, how often did one truly catch something enormous?

He began reading the list with the assumption that even if something had entered the trap, it would merely be small fry.

Which was why…

“Hm?”

Ferda found a result that satisfied him completely.

He had caught an enormous fish.

‘This is exactly why I arranged the leak.’

People said that, from time to time, geniuses capable of overturning an entire era appeared in Escolleia.

But a true genius would shine even from inside a filthy sewer.

“Did someone catch your attention?”

“Yes.”

Ferda remembered a woman from before his regression.

While Marquis Burnell had proudly used magitech to produce household conveniences, she had been the pioneer who began weaponizing the technology in earnest.

The woman who created the first magitech grenade.

Using components scavenged from garbage dumps, she built high-explosive weapons capable of assassinating nobles.

When she was eventually arrested, she introduced herself by a single name.

‘Gae Bolg.’

A spear that could pierce through anything.

In the years to come, she would become the godmother of crime who shook the entire Serdes Continent.