Chapter 308
Walking in Twilight (2)
Adelia Bavaria looked at the face of the sleeping crown prince.
Thinking about it, 8 years ago felt so distant.
Back then, she was afraid to even make eye contact.
Now, she couldn’t be happier when his sparkling blue eyes gazed at her.
It was also a great pleasure for her to watch his sleeping face like this.
Adelia, who was smiling softly, quickly turned her head and looked around.
Then, she reached out and touched the crown prince’s cheek.
The skin under her fingertips was really soft.
The crown prince himself seemed quite dissatisfied with his lack of beard.
She giggled slightly.
But only for a moment.
Then the corners of her drooping eyes drooped even more.
From the bottom of his lips to his chin, a new scar had formed after they had all disappeared from his resurrection1.
When the crown prince had run out of the citadel that day, if he had only brought a helmet, there wouldn’t be such a scar.
She blamed herself.
Adelia suddenly remembered what had happened a week ago.
After the battle had ended, the crown prince who returned to the citadel had stood strangely still.
His face, which would normally have worn a happy grin after he had swung his sword to his heart’s content, was cold and frozen.
His deep gaze was also different from usual.
At first, she had thought it was because his excitement from the battle hadn’t subsided yet. Afterwards, she had thought it was because his anger toward the imperial army had yet to go away.
Maybe it was because there was so much blood on his hands that he didn’t feel good, she had thought.
She had believed that given time the crown prince would return to normal.
But that wasn’t the case.
Day after day, after day, after day, the crown prince’s sharpened spirit did not dull in the slightest.
His deep eyes and strangely cold expression remained the same.
The number of words he spoke also decreased drastically, to the point where sometimes he would go an entire day without saying a word.
He was the same as usual when he was asleep like this, but when he awoke, he became a completely different person.
Just like the time when he had been forced to leave Winter Castle while chased by the orcs.
Of course, it wasn’t exactly the same as back then.
At the time, the crown prince had seemed somehow sad rather than cold and sharp.
Now he was just cold and sharp.
It was an unpleasant change.
She wasn’t the only one who had noticed his change.
Others had also tried to talk to the crown prince with concerned faces.
However, the crown prince repeatedly said that it was nothing.
The only one he spoke to was Bale Balahard.
‘400 years ago, the founder of this country chose to defend rather than to fight. I had always been dissatisfied with that. But before I knew it, I was doing the same thing.’
‘It didn’t work. Repeating it would only lead to the same results. I realized this too late.’
‘What did I realize? I realized that what this country needs is not a holy sword, but a demon sword.’
‘What can’t I do? I already have the blood of over 20,000 enemies on my hands from that day.”
Adelia couldn’t fully understand their conversation at the time.
She just vaguely guessed that the crown prince was preparing something.
“Hmm?”
Adelia, who had been lost in thought, suddenly tilted her head while feeling a sense of incongruity.
And then she stiffened.
At some point, the crown prince had opened his eyes and he was staring at her.
“S-sorry! Your Highness!”
Why was her hand still carelessly resting on the crown prince’s cheek? Startled, she swiftly drew her hand back.
However, the crown prince gave no response to her fuss.
Swoop.
He just stood up silently.
Adelia, who had been restlessly checking his expression, shuddered.
The appearance of the crown prince belatedly entered her eyes.
The crown prince who woke up today was different from the day before.
However, the change was not good.
His cold, frozen face while talking yesterday was better.
At least the crown prince at the time looked like a person.
Not now.
The moment she saw his eyes which were as dry as grains of sand in a desert, she understood everything.
What the crown prince wanted to do, and what she should do.
Adelia went straight to her quarters, hurriedly put on her armor, and picked up her sword.
Then, with rattling armor that hadn’t been properly fastened, she ran toward the crown prince’s quarters.
By the time she returned, the crown prince had already changed his clothes and was putting on his armor piece by piece.
The crown prince glanced at her, and picked up the armor again.
“I will help.”
Adelia rushed over and helped him put on his armor.
Up to this point, the crown prince had yet to say anything.
Snap.
The crown prince finished equipping himself by fastening Twilight at his waist, and then he left the room.
At a time when the sun hadn’t even risen yet, the guards widened their eyes when they saw the fully armed crown prince.
A few of them slipped away toward the headquarters.
Regardless, the crown prince continued walking.
He was did not stop once as he found the stables, took out his warhorse, and rode it to the castle gates.
The first time the steps of the crown prince halted was somewhere near the gates.
A large old knight was sitting on a cart parked on one side of the main street.
It was Bale Balahard.
“Three are better than two.”
He, too, was fully armed, just like the crown prince.
The crown prince did not say anything even when he saw his maternal uncle.
He just started walking again.
However, he had to stop once more in the empty lot in front of the castle gate.
A group of armed men awaited him.
The man in the lead shot a glance behind the crown prince and glared.
“I knew you would do this.”
“Ahem.“
Bale Balahard cleared his throat.
Looking at his father acting like that, Vincent Balahard clicked his tongue and said to the crown prince.
“I didn’t come here to stop you. Trying to block your way would just make my mouth hurt, so why should I bother?”
Then he added bluntly.
“If you’re going, take the knights with you.”
The man standing in the back, Gwain Gust, and the knights around him glanced at the crown prince and mounted their horses.
Kkrrig!
Then the gates opened.
Adelia looked at the top of the castle walls.
The kings and the military leaders were there.
It wasn’t just them.
In the early hours of the day before the sun had even risen, countless soldiers stood at the top of the walls.
“Good luck to His Highness the Crown Prince!”
“May there be only victory in the future of the God of War!”
They raised their swords and spears and unison and shouted.
“Do what you will and return safely.”
Said the king.
Adelia looked up at them, then turned her head to glance at the crown prince.
Clank.
The crown prince lowered the visor of his helmet.
People were difficult to understand. It was baffling.
Soft grumbling came from inside his helmet.
It was his usual voice, neither dry nor sharp.
* * *
The imperial army, which had temporarily retreated, began to advance once more.
Although the final words of the executed soldiers were very unpleasant, the army had no choice.
The new emperor had issued an unconditional order to advance.
There could be no opposition.
All of the imperial forces gathered here had previously participated in the civil war.
They were now in a position where they could wash away the stigma of helping wizards plan a rebellion and the guilt of helping a political opponent of the current emperor.
The corps commanders glanced toward one corner of the ranks.
A group of soldiers with their visors down were there, silently looking forward.
They were the knights and corps under the direct command of the emperor, who had yet to participate in battle.
The corps commanders were sure that they were watchmen sent by the emperor.
They couldn’t act too passively in front of them.
Of course, it was not easy for the soldiers to put aside their accumulated resentment from the civil war just because they now shared the same goals.
In the end, the leaders decided to divide the unit into two, split between the northern and southern forts.
They completely disregarded the possibility of a God of War who had destroyed an army of 20,000 alone.
The world collapsing when a sword was swung, the horrors of hell engulfing the troops, these were stories that even a child would not believe.
The leadership judged that the annihilated units must have been caught in a trap and attacked with fire. The survivors’ testimonies were dismissed as the nonsense of madmen who were unable to stand the brutal battlefield and became deranged.
“They say that the rangers in Leonberg are quite competent. It must have been their work that our forces suffered, so eliminate the threat by putting the rangers and light cavalry in the vanguard.”
Both of them were good at reconnaissance, so putting them in the front would allow them to be prepared for any threats.
They couldn’t help it if they were caught off guard, but they were confident that the same thing would not happen again.
It was a very rational decision.
“The God of War is a rumor created by the weaklings in the eastern army.”
“It’s obvious that those Leonberg guys barely won against some cannon fodder and came up with, what, a God of War? They’re exaggerating too much.”
They had never heard of a knight defeating an army of 20,000 alone.
Even considering the warriors in history, no such monster existed.
There were records of knights who were like one-man legions, but that was hundreds of years ago.
In other words, those were unreliable records closer to folklore or fairy tales.
They were fictional stories that a child dreaming of becoming a knight would enjoy listening to during bedtime.
However, war was real.
“We will show the Leonbergs what real war is.”
The commanders split the troops in the north and south into even smaller groups.
Among them, the relatively larger units were responsible for simultaneously attacking the fortresses on the forefront, and the smaller companies were in charge of attacking the supply chain behind the enemy lines.
It was a wide-range, deep, and omnidirectional attack that the Empire liked to use with its overwhelming forces when attacking its enemy countries.
Enemies with weaker armies usually collapsed without being able to endure the widening regions of conflict.
It would be the same this time.
The total strength of the Leonberg Kingdom was at most 15 legions, 10 of which were stranded in forts across the front lines, and the remaining 5 scattered across rear bases.
Whether the front or the rear collapsed first, the Leonberg army would never be able to block the entirety of this expansive attack.
In the process, a few small victories of the God of War would have no impact on the overall war.
The imperial army was confident in their victory.
Their confidence was by no means unfounded.
Indeed, the Leonberg Kingdom had collapsed several times in the face of such extensive attacks by the Empire.
Even 400 years ago, when their national power had flourished enough to threaten the empire by winning several consecutive battles, they could not withstand the omnidirectional attack and eventually had to retreat to the harsh northern soil.
However, the kingdom then and now were not the same.
400 years ago, the Dragon Slayer chose to remain as a shield to protect the kingdom and its people.
Today, the God of War chose instead to become a sword to protect the kingdom.
And not just any sword, but a demonic sword.
Note: It’s hard to give an image hint for the next chapter, but Arwen shows up for a bit
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