The Scoundrel Prince Sold Out the Empire - Chapter 43

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 43: His Return (6)
Zion Blize was going to die today.
Governor Maizeraeon had no doubt about it whatsoever.
‘A pleasant morning, wouldn’t you say?’
The governor gripped the balcony railing and surveyed the plaza spread below with satisfaction.
Four iron gates, two drainage channels, six main roads—every position was already manned and ready.
Not a rat could slip through such an impenetrable cordon.
“You seem to be in excellent spirits, Governor.”
At Smarag’s question from the adjacent seat in the honored gallery, the governor’s lips curved upward.
Ten years exactly since he’d taken the seat of Governor of Deber.
All those years, the name Zion Blize had haunted him—the notorious Raven’s dark fame alongside it.
One of his predecessors had even lost his head to that man’s hand.
“I faced Zion Blize once before. Despite layers upon layers of encirclement, he toyed with me and vanished. Today, that head falls upon the scaffold. How could my spirits be anything but soaring?”
At the moment of execution, he would finally laugh his fill—the thought alone made his throat tingle.
“Your Excellency, you have spared no effort in arranging this occasion.”
The dignitaries gathered at his side all wore satisfied expressions.
For those in the First Prince’s faction, fortune was doubling down on this day.
It was gratifying enough that the Third Prince had yielded Zion Blize to the First Prince’s demands, but in doing so, they had also cemented substantial ties with both the Elpia Federation and the Eldrich Family.
One might fairly say the First Prince had taken two strides ahead in the race for the throne.
“A festival indeed.”
Caught up in his pleasure, the governor failed to notice the displeasure threaded through Smarag’s tone.
“A festival, yes. A rebel who produced such a spectacle has earned at least that much value in death.”
Smarag’s expression grew heavier still.
Days before, he had been taken to meet Zion Blize in captivity.
That was the very reason his feet had carried him to this distant place—to discover a way to cure his daughter of the emotion she had lost.
But what greeted him in the dungeons was a beast wearing a human skin.
Something tortured into the loss of all human condition.
He had turned away the moment he saw it—eyes empty and wandering through empty space, uttering only meaningless sounds.
‘The secret in that man’s mind is lost forever now.’
That day, Smarag had wanted nothing more than to lift a skyship skyward toward Elpia at once.
But a delegation’s head could hardly turn his back before the banquet had even concluded.
‘I should never have come.’
While all around him celebrated, Smarag’s heart remained as if attending a funeral.
“Father.”
“……Luna.”
His daughter took his hand quietly.
Her face was expressionless as always, bearing neither sorrow nor joy.
Intellectually, he understood—that was why she reached for his hand.
But her heart could not grieve alongside her father’s defeat.
In a withered heart, there remains no emotion left to suffer.
“Father. But I don’t see the Ninth Prince.”
Only then did Smarag remember the existence of the prince whose role had gone unfulfilled.
True enough—they had only been meant to walk together partway.
It was indeed strange that the prince, who should have been laughing joyfully by now, was nowhere to be found.
“But Governor, where is His Highness the Ninth Prince?”
“Ah, that is……”
Prince Zion Riobert, the Ninth Prince.
He had chattered for days about being able to witness the execution thanks to the Third Prince’s intervention—yet he showed not so much as his nose on the day itself.
The governor already knew where the capricious prince had gone instead of to the execution ground.
It was a place too awkward to speak of.
“He is such an unpredictable sort. It seems some other business must have come up.”
The governor trailed off vaguely and laughed it away.
That was when it happened.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
A slow drum beat pressed down upon the plaza.
The murmuring crowd fell silent as one.
Iron gates swung open, and a man bound in chains was dragged toward the scaffold.
“Now it begins.”
Zion Blize mounting the execution platform.
The governor’s smile stretched ear to ear.
* * *
Thump, thump, thump, thump!
The Crown Prince climbed toward the execution platform, each step labored and deliberate.
Aristh swallowed hard without realizing it.
Beside him, hidden within the crowd, Reyanna pressed close, her face concealed.
“……Vice-Commander. We cannot remain idle like this.”
“I know.”
Aristh’s insides burned black with rage.
‘I believed in him.’
That mysterious royal who had restored the Polaris Staff.
He had trusted too readily because the palace’s treasure had been returned.
‘Just yesterday, he was boasting that he could pull off the Crown Prince’s escape.’
Crunch—his teeth ground together.
Now there was no contact with him whatsoever.
He’d vanished without a trace after the failure, no doubt ashamed to show his face.
Thump, thump, thump!
With each beat of the drum striking the platform, Aristh’s heart sank deeper.
“Zion Blize! For crimes against the Empire numbering in the tens and hundreds, your charges are…….”
A torrent of accusations poured forth.
Treason. Arson. Slaughter.
After each count, jeers erupted and rotten vegetables flew toward the platform.
“Burn the Raven to death!”
“A thousand deaths wouldn’t be enough for this wretch!”
The man chained before them didn’t blink once.
Like a puppet.
His unfocused eyes groped at nothing but empty air.
No recognition in his gaze, no fear of death.
On the opposite side. Far from the execution platform.
Where grey-haired heads had gathered, the atmosphere hung thick and somber.
Their reasons for coming here had been different from the start.
Though forbidden from drawing near, they had come to offer their final respects from a distance.
To bear witness to the end of the Crown Prince who had given everything for them without hesitation.
That was why the grey-haired people of Deber had assembled.
“Therefore, the Empire decrees the execution of the criminal Zion Blize!”
The death sentence rang out, shrill and cutting.
“Vice-Commander. There’s no more time for hesitation. We must act now.”
Two executioners flanked the Crown Prince on either side.
Any moment now, the blade would fall.
“Reyanna. I give the order.”
The rescue operation remained unprepared.
Knowing it would demand a steeper price the longer they waited, he had held back until now.
But he had to move, even at this moment.
Even if it cost him his life.
There was only one existence worth protecting at any cost, through any sacrifice.
And that precious person was Zion Blize, their sovereign lord.
“I will lead the charge.”
Aristh gripped the sword at his waist.
More precisely, a magical artifact shaped like a blade.
“What? Vice-Commander, that’s too dangerous…….”
“Silence. Deliver the order at once.”
“……I accept the command.”
The faces of his comrades hidden throughout the square flashed before his eyes.
Another face beside them. Then another.
Dozens of lives, each resolved to embrace death for the sake of one man alone.
‘Empire, you shall never harm our sovereign.’
Aristh Leshial—he too was a mage who carried within him the secret magics passed down through generations of his house.
In the moment he gathered his mana, gripping the blade at his hip with firm resolve.
Whoosh!
Aristh’s movements froze abruptly.
‘This mana is……’
It was a Mana as black as pitch and translucent.
Mana that resembled raven feathers scattered across the Execution Ground, staining it a deathly black.
A symbol and mark that no member of the Society would ever forget.
‘Your Highness…?’
Aristh Leshial’s eyes widened in shock.
* * *
A place where the execution rite was visible in full.
The very summit of the Governor’s Spire—the tallest point in the entire palace of Deber.
At that dizzying height, a figure had appeared without warning.
Whoosh!
Jet-black hair danced in the wind.
Deep, intense blue eyes shone as though cradling starlight.
Black and translucent Mana flowed and wrapped around the entire body.
A flesh that had once dissolved into particles of light, yet now stood on its own feet atop the spire’s roof.
“An execution, you say?”
Two groups trembled simultaneously.
Members of the Liberation Army hidden throughout the Execution Ground.
Officials of the Governor’s administration who had faced Zion Blize more than once before.
Both were certain.
It was unmistakably Zion Blize.
The Zion Blize at the Execution Ground.
The Zion Blize above the Spire.
Deber’s Raven had become two.
“Speak again!”
Raven feathers traced a pattern of their own, then swiftly crystallized into a colossal Magic Circle.
“Quere Stellam Orbita.”
Every mage possesses their own unique incantation.
Quere Stellam Orbita.
Words of power that only the Crown Prince could voice.
“Polaris Staff, answer my call.”
Space twisted, and a silver staff materialized before him.
The sacred treasure of Deber, now held in the rightful hands, blazed with radiance.
“I said speak again, Empire!”
Whoooosh!
“Execution? Who dares execute whom? Hahahaha!”
Crystalline laughter split the azure sky in two.
At that very moment.
A black circle formed by raven feathers began to engulf the Execution Ground.
“Quere Stellam Orbita!”
Boom!
A single spell pierced every magitech defense and shattered the execution platform.
Only then did everyone snap to their senses.
“It—it’s Zion Blize!”
“Aaaaaahhh!”
Screams engulfed the plaza.
Panic-level chaos erupted across the sprawling Execution Ground.
The moment the Empire’s greatest criminal, Zion Blize, had returned.
It was only natural that such chaos would attend his arrival.
“Seize him! Go and take him down!”
The Governor shrieked with frenzied desperation.
Memories of past humiliations at Zion Blize’s hands resurfaced like a traumatic wound.
“Get moving, you fools! Kill him now!”
“Your Excellency, but the man is currently atop the Governor’s building!”
“Damn you! Don’t my words mean anything?”
The former palace of Deber, now the Governor’s headquarters. That Zion Blize had revealed himself from its highest spire carried unmistakable mockery in it. He had to be neutralized there and then, before he could escape elsewhere.
He must be forced down to the ground like a bird shot from the sky, unable to flee to safety.
But.
But.
It was beyond their reach.
“Hahahaha!”
The black-haired, blue-eyed prince threw himself into the void, grinning wide.
“You know full well that petty attacks like yours can’t even graze my fingertips?”
Humans are two-legged beasts, incapable of flight.
This was nature’s law.
Whoosh!
And yet the prince soared through the sky, black Mana unfurling like wings at his back.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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