The Scoundrel Prince Sold Out the Empire - Chapter 54

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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 54 No Touch! No Touch!(7)
Send Winter to the Liberation Army and find out why they want to kill Zion Riobert in the future!
Zion’s last-ditch strategy, his final gambit, was flatly rejected.
Winter said the Liberation Army had indeed made contact, but he’d already turned them down and had no reason to see them again.
‘It doesn’t make sense knowing how that bastard thinks, but I can’t force him into it either.’
If it were anything else, I’d have pushed. But forcing someone into espionage is… different.
He’d never once doubted his own righteousness, but the Liberation Army was a rebel force, after all.
For this reason, even after returning to the Hotel, Zion’s troubles continued.
He sprawled across the bed, blankets tangling around him as he rolled restlessly from side to side.
‘So why are they trying to kill me?’
At some point in the future, the Liberation Army orders Winter to eliminate the Ninth Prince.
Winter would be at the Liberation Army’s beck and call, already acquainted with Reyanna.
‘The middle part is skipped over—skipped so completely. And the more I think about it, the more unfair it seems.’
These days, where could you find a citizen of the Empire as useful to Deber as Zion Riobert?
Crushed traitors, showered money on Krayner, gathered laborers and let them live in Paradise, and then killed Zion Bliège…?
For a moment he panicked, but then remembered that he’d already sent word through the Polaris Thread that the dead one was a fake.
“Phew.”
Even if assassinated, at least he wanted to know the reason—not that he planned to die anyway.
In any case, he wanted to know the reason.
“Reyanna. Come in here for a moment.”
The door took quite a while to open, and when Reyanna entered, her face was rigid as stone.
“…Did you call for me, Your Highness?”
An ice-cold voice. Eyes fixed straight ahead.
Waves of disgust rippled across her features.
What’s this? That’s not like her usual self.
Could it be a harbinger of Zion Riobert’s assassination?
‘…Ah.’
He’d figured it out.
Night. Summoned to a bedroom. Just the two of them.
Of all the combinations, it had to be this one.
“It’s a misunderstanding.”
“A misunderstanding? Suddenly, I’m not sure what you mean.”
“That little impression you’ve got right now, that assumption—it’s a misunderstanding. Sit down. I called you because I have something to ask.”
Hmm. Now that he thought about it, it had been ages since he’d seen Reyanna up close like this. More than a year had passed.
Usually she went about disguised as a suspicious figure standing two meters tall, wrapped in a black mask and cloak—a means of carrying as much explosive as possible.
But the truth was that Reyanna was quite small and below average height.
Merin’s younger sister. She’d always seemed like a little sister to Zion as well.
“I’m curious about my reputation. What are people saying about me these days?”
“I’m afraid it might cause you concern.”
“Tell me the harshest ones. If someone wanted me dead, what would be the reason?”
Reyanna’s eyes narrowed for a moment.
“…Why would you ask such a thing?”
He had plenty of excuses.
“You know the Crown Prince was attacked by terrorists not long ago.”
Reyanna, accepting this, held up four fingers.
For some reason, she seemed to feel that now was the moment to speak.
“If I may venture to list the reasons, there would be four.”
First: the assassination of Crown Prince Zion Bliège.
‘You all know that one’s a fake.’
Second: the exploitation of Deber citizens under the pretext of labor.
‘It’s not exploitation—I dressed it up as Paradise…’
Third: the retribution enacted by the families and relatives of Reizzo and Dechion.
‘Well, you’re stepping up yourself, Reyanna?’
“Finally, if I may be so bold as to say this: there are also not a few who harbor anger toward the alliance between one called the Five Thieves Inside the Palace and the Empire’s imperial prince.”
Ah. Could that be it?
On the surface, it would look like a disgraced traitor and a worthless prince fattening themselves together.
‘No. That’s weak. In Bliège’s name, I already gave word that Zion Riobert is a useful tool to be squeezed for everything he’s worth.’
Either way, asking Reyanna any further wouldn’t be of much help.
“Thank you. Go rest now.”
Reyanna left, closing the door behind her, her expression oddly satisfied.
Zion flopped back onto the bed.
Hell. What does it matter.
If he tried to erase every reason to kill him one by one, there’d be no end to it.
‘Better to flip the table. It’s easier to create reasons to keep him alive than to eliminate reasons to kill him.’
He needed to remind them once more that living was the better option.
The method was already prepared, after all. Simple enough.
He would catch the traitor.
Spectacularly.
He’d sworn an oath to kill all ten traitors with his own hands—the Five Thieves Inside the Palace and the Five Thieves Outside the Palace alike.
‘Perhaps I should move up the schedule.’
That’s when it happened.
A low hum.
The vibration of the Ring against his skin.
And with it, the vision that unfolded.
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The Marquis Residence’s parlor. A man from Deber lay prostrate on the floor, trembling violently.
“Your Lordship, please show mercy… I truly have no money to give…”
“I don’t care about your circumstances—bring the money at once! If you have no money, sell your wife and brats!”
A blow followed. Remikoning tore up the Debt Documents and turned away, muttering to himself.
“If only the gold had come up… I’d make up for the loss this way, at least.”
———————————
The scene ended.
Brief, but sufficient.
“…….”
Zion’s fist clenched tight.
‘Marquis. It seems you must die sooner than scheduled.’
Now it no longer mattered whether the Liberation Army moved for his sake or another’s.
* * *
The Marquis Residence’s parlor. The perfume was suffocating.
The Empire’s most expensive fragrance—a mask, an attempt to erase the traces of Deber origins.
It made him sick.
“Remikoning… No. Father.”
It made him sick.
As Winter bowed respectfully, the cup in Remikoning’s hand froze in mid-air.
“What did you just say.”
“I know it’s improper. Still, I wanted to call you that, at least once.”
The voice was courteous, the gaze lowered half a beat too late, and in that half-beat stretched something that should never fit—forced in by sheer will.
The pokerface, now familiar to the Marquis, yet above it hung something desperate and achingly tender, whispering, ‘I cannot hide this.’
This was the deprivation of kinship, a young man’s plea toward his biological father.
‘Marquis. Be fooled.’
A fragment of childhood memory flickered through Winter’s mind.
“D-don’t… don’t do it… Please, don’t…”
Sickly though she was, she had been vibrant. Poor though they were, she had been tender.
Winter’s mother would sometimes fall into a spasm of terror.
‘I should have understood then.’
His mother’s fear. His mother’s frailty.
Where they came from.
Now he knew.
And so he prayed.
‘Be fooled. I beg you, Marquis. Be fooled.’
Slowly, the corners of the Marquis’s mouth lifted.
An abandoned seed that walked back on its own feet to find its father—how could he turn it away? Even if its birth was low, it was the Emperor’s right hand, surely worth accepting.
What difficulty lay in smiling for a moment and sucking the sweetness dry?
Remikoning, who had made a specialty of flattery since the days of selling out his nation, found this effortless.
‘Nothing is easier to manage than a bastard begging for affection.’
“What impropriety is there when a son seeks out his father? Haha. Sit.”
Son.
At that single word, Winter’s shoulders trembled faintly, and the Marquis exulted within.
“At last. At last you call me father. Winter. My son. Thank you. Truly… thank you.”
Then, wrapping it all in theatrical affection, he spoke words of warmth.
“So, what brings you here?”
In that moment, Winter found himself thinking something.
After claiming it wasn’t improper for a son to seek out his father.
It seemed a son needed a proper reason whenever he sought out his father.
An old serpent with no intention of acknowledging a lowborn as his son.
A face that believed a single title bestowed could fill him with gratitude.
‘I wonder if I’m the talented one, or if you’re simply inadequate.’
Ah, he understood now.
It was the father who was lacking.
The proof was that the Crown Prince favored this Winter Flowering so highly.
“The Crown Prince has transferred full ownership of the casino business to me.”
“Is that truly so? What of the shares? If he transferred it, it should be more than half—?”
“One hundred percent.”
“Huh…….”
An involuntary exclamation escaped the Marquis’s lips.
That greedy fool of a Crown Prince handed over a hundred percent?
The ash-haired lowborn before him must be receiving considerable favor indeed.
‘This works well for me.’
“The fact that you bring this matter to me, your father…….”
“Yes. I need your help, Father. The Crown Prince does enjoy cards—that is the reason for his favor toward me. So if I build the casino as magnificently as possible and present it to him, he will surely bestow an even greater reward.”
The Marquis read the ambition gleaming in Winter’s eyes.
‘A casino. The Crown Prince’s venture. The name will be in that one’s hands. I thought it merely a bridge to reach the Crown Prince, but now it seems I’m to pick up the coin that falls from it as well.’
In any case, the Teragrad Gold Vein expedition team had been silent far too long, and frustration was beginning to gnaw at him.
But a casino, no less.
The Marquis, whose primary revenue came from usury.
A man who loved gambling-style ventures—throwing money down to make more money.
“How much do you need? Tell me.”
“……Yes?”
“My son wishes to realize his ambitions. Would money be an obstacle? Whatever the sum, I will invest. Speak.”
Even so, the Marquis was careful not to say he would simply hand it over.
“One month. The goal is to complete the casino within one month and host the opening ceremony with the Crown Prince as our guest.”
One month. That meant mobilizing all cutting-edge magical engineering technology.
Construction costs would surely run several times the normal amount.
“Excellent!”
He consents heartily and readily. In exchange, he naturally guides the conversation toward drafting a contract.
Thus the Marquis obtained a secret contract in which he would invest construction costs using the casino shares as collateral.
“Do not mention this matter of shares to the Crown Prince. This is merely a father adding to his son’s venture.”
“Yes, Father.”
“Father. Such a pleasant word to hear. Will you continue to call me that whenever we are alone together? It is my single request.”
Only when the two of them were together.
A nauseating request.
“Father…….”
Winter grasped the Marquis’s hand with apparent emotion.
Then he continued in a voice slightly higher in tone.
“You must also come to the opening ceremony without fail. I will have a place prepared for you in the VIP room.”
Winter winked.
“Father. This son has learned to play cards rather well. Truly, quite well.”
“Ha ha. I look forward to it.”
The Marquis laughed pleasantly, and Winter laughed along with him.
The two laughed in unison, yet their true intentions ran in opposite directions entirely.
* * *
As the mine took on proper form and the casino raised its skeleton.
Zion set foot in Teragrad at the Marquis’s request.
“Marquis. It has been a while.”
Zion restrained his smile with effort.
The Marquis Remikoning’s eyes were bloodshot, as though he hadn’t slept in days.
Well, it was only natural. Gold still had not been found.
“Your Highness. From the land you gave me…….”
Straight to the point, then. The Marquis seemed to be grasping reality at last.
“Wait. I didn’t give it to you—you chose it yourself.”
“…….”
After a moment, the Marquis’s lips twitched, and he continued.
“……Gold. Not a single ounce has been extracted.”
The Marquis gestured, and the mining expert standing beside him unrolled the blueprints, beads of sweat glistening on his brow.
“The, the Gold Vein appears to be…… bent in the most peculiar way. Gold ore should be discoverable in this abundance, yet…… I’ve never encountered terrain quite like this before.”
Well, that’s because he’d drawn it deeper with magic and then activated a seal on top of it.
“Curious indeed.”
“……Is there nothing more you wish to say to me, Your Highness?”
Zion nodded slowly.
“What misfortune. Chin up.”
Zion, for his part, was practically bursting with satisfaction — his shoulders itched to dance.
The Traitor pays to lay the mine roads, the Traitor pays for the equipment, the Traitor pays generous wages to the laborers!
‘The Traitor does the development, and I reap the rewards.’
Was there ever a more beautiful division of labor in all the world?
“Your Highness. I beseech you to show mercy…… Grant me mining rights to another location.”
The Marquis’s back came into view.
His spine bent nearly to the floor.
Suddenly, the past surfaced.
Once, this man’s back had always been supple and limber.
His head, too, had turned left and right with remarkable freedom.
Which had earned him a name.
‘Deber’s greatest wing.’
Zion nodded readily.
“Why not.”
“Th-thank you! Your Highness’s magnanimity truly knows no bounds…….”
“But.”
Zion held up one finger.
“Business is business. This time, you cannot choose. I’ll give you a region whose prospects for gold are slim — one pushed back in the queue — but if you’re still willing, go ahead.”
The Marquis’s face twisted in an instant.
‘This…… this greedy, worthless dog.’
Should he sue?
Report it to the Governor’s office as a tin mine?
No — either way, the losses ahead were certain to be far worse.
The Marquis swallowed his rising curses behind a smile and began to calculate.
The development costs already poured in would be matched again. Money would hemorrhage like mad.
But…….
“Your Highness. Surely you’ll grant me the right to refuse and withdraw?”
“Of course.”
“Look. You said this morning that what you claimed would be true. If you’re wrong again, you’ll have no ears to call your own.”
The expert, his complexion ashen, answered hastily.
“It’s true. A Gold Vein of this magnitude would show…”
“That’s enough. Stop there.”
Even in a low-priority region, the probability of finding gold was dozens of times higher than elsewhere.
That was what the expert had told him this morning.
“I understand. Please inform me of the location.”
“Good thinking. Winter.”
“Yes, Your Highness. I’ll handle the paperwork. This way, my lord.”
After creating distance, Winter busied himself with the documents and bowed apologetically.
“I’m sorry, Father. I did my best to convince His Highness, but…… from the start, he refused to give up anything at all.”
“One question. Did the Prince mean to seize my money from the beginning? Was finding gold in that place merely theater?”
“No, Father. It was all coincidence.”
All coincidence.
In other words, the Marquis’s own misfortune.
His teeth ground together.
“Father. Still, I arranged the contract terms as favorably as possible.”
Favorable or not, it remained a staggering sum — in the current situation, an expenditure he could scarcely bear.
The contract that had made him responsible for every cost of mine development now loomed as utterly ruinous.
‘Money. I need money.’
To cover the losses, he would have to attend to his main business.
Debt Documents spread across all of Seiel — he would need to wield loan-shark claims like a blade against those cash-rich swine, squeezing them dry as they squeezed him.
‘Even funding the casino construction. It’s hardly surprising that cash is running dry… Hmm. A casino.’
The casino was on the verge of opening. Winter possessed a base talent for base ventures, or so he’d said.
He’d never cared before, but now that things had come to this, even a half-breed mongrel might prove useful.
‘Through Deber’s rabble and the casino, I’ll manage. I’ll endure. Until gold comes…!’
The Marquis’s bloodshot eyes began to gleam with fervent intensity.
The gaze of one who runs headlong into his own ruin.
Zion watched him from a distance and let out a low chuckle.
‘Marquis. You should learn something from your son.’
Winter’s eyes, by contrast, were ice itself.
He was the architect of all this, so beneath that facade his heart must be singing—and yet it showed nothing.
‘Still, I’ll need to finish this before the Marquis starts mining.’
Thin though it was, a genuine gold vein did run through the territory being granted anew.
With enough time and money, actual ore could be extracted and profit made.
‘Well, Winter will handle it.’
He looked at Winter’s eyes again. Winter was watching Zion at that very moment.
The same emotion pooled in all four pupils.
Not a single piece of the royal legacy would ever fall into that author’s hands.
The man who sought to kill the woman carrying his child, the traitor who sold his nation to fatten his own belly—he would meet his just end.

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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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