The Scoundrel Prince Sold Out the Empire - Chapter 61

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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 61: Wings of the Bat (6)
“Winter, why are you doing this to me……?”
“You still don’t understand? Or is it only now that you’ve thought to ask?”
Winter let out a derisive laugh and fell silent.
“I’m the one who squeezed every coin from you—for the gold mine development, the casino construction, all of it. I made you an addict and pushed you into smuggling. Now you ask why?”
The Marquis’s eyes flew wide open.
A sickening weight of betrayal crashed down on the back of his neck.
They hadn’t descended like jackals to feed on the corpse of his ruin.
He was the one who’d been shot and fallen. They were simply here to harvest their prey.
“You……!”
“Ah, don’t forget this either. Every choice was yours, Marquis. I merely made the worst card look like the best.”
“Why!”
Even bound by rope, the Marquis hammered his fists against his own thigh.
“Why did you do this! What couldn’t I have given you!”
His face twisted as he screamed.
“What couldn’t I have given you! What wrong have I done you!”
The cry was thick with outrage. Winter’s reply was colder than ice.
“My mother passed away from a cold. Because you were afraid to take her to a hospital even once.”
The Marquis’s indignation deepened.
“What did I ever do to your mother!”
“True—you didn’t do much of anything. Just that one time, when Mother found out she was pregnant and gently tested you. You beat her with a club and threw her out.”
……
The Marquis had nothing to say in his defense.
It was a memory lost in the haze of decades past, a trivial matter to him.
Who remembers what they had for dinner more than thirty years ago?
“You did all this for something so petty?”
“Petty. Petty? Petty!”
Winter bared his teeth.
“That blow you struck was a lifetime of pain for my mother, Marquis. So severe that sometimes when fear seized her like a fit, she couldn’t even breathe. And each time, she would murmur like this.”
Subject Recognition. I must recognize the subject.
Winter. Subject Recognition…… we are such contemptible blood.
“When you were sober, you smiled more gently than anyone. You destroyed that. So it’s only fair that I destroy you in return, isn’t it, Marquis?”
The Marquis was too overwhelmed by rage to answer.
His mouth was too small to hold such immense feeling.
Even that sight repulsed Winter.
“Remikoning is famous for his stingy hands, and you joked with the woman carrying his child about what to do. I was curious why you treated her so cruelly. After Mother died, I looked into it.”
The reason was pathetically simple.
An Imperial wife.
Fear that she would divorce you.
“You must have been disappointed when your son was born with ash-gray hair. Or were you proud? It meant he carried Remikoning’s blood strong.”
Suddenly Winter realized his hand was in his pocket, rolling a chip.
An old habit.
“You and my mother met at the casino. You seduced a maid bound there with promises to reduce her debt. You should have kept your word.”
If you had, this moment might never have come to pass.
Young Winter would never have grown up treating gambling as a plaything.
“So I decorated your final moment with cards and chips.”
The Marquis glared at Winter as though to kill him, then turned his gaze to Zion.
“……Your Highness. Surely you don’t mean to fall for this wretch’s smooth words. You mustn’t forget what use and service this Remikoning has provided. Without me, the gold mine and casino could never have yielded profits so quickly.”
Zion’s reply was brief.
“The documents—I prepared those myself. Winter didn’t even know.”
If he’d fallen for flattery, he would have had Winter handle it.
“Your Highness! How can you treat me this way!”
That was when.
Winter grabbed the Marquis’s shoulder roughly, preventing him from even looking at the prince.
“How dare a scoundrel lay hands on a noble without permission!”
“Why should I care? That title will be mine soon enough anyway.”
“Nonsense! Show respect to an Imperial Marquis! Even my patience has limits.”
With his characteristic smile, Winter replied at once.
“Marquis. This son is beginning to feel the limits of his patience as well. Choose—whether you’ll die by the military or cling to life. I’ll count to three. One.”
“You dare let loose that gaping mouth! A wretch who doesn’t even recognize his own father!”
“Two.”
Winter gave the Duke no chance to sputter further obscenities.
“Three……”
“I’ll do it! Argh! I’m handing it over, I tell you!”
The Duke’s eyes had gone crimson as though blood vessels had burst, tears streaming down his face.
His expression was a tempestuous blend of rage, resignation, sorrow, and a dozen other warring emotions.
Yet regret, yes—repentance, decidedly not.
‘His regret isn’t remorse for the wrongs he’s done. It’s only the wish he could undo his choices. But none of that matters anymore.’
Winter snatched the documents from the Duke’s grip and examined them with meticulous care.
Everything was in order.
“Congratulations, Duke Winter Remikoning. Or rather—Duke Flowering, I should say.”
At the First Prince’s jest, Winter’s eyes widened.
“Flowering… Duke, you said?”
“If Remikoning displeases you, what do you say to changing the family name from Remikoning to Flowering? A fresh start.”
Winter couldn’t keep the tremor from his voice.
“That’s… possible?”
“Possible or not, I’ll make it possible. I swear it on my name as First Prince.”
If that accursed father’s house were erased, buried beneath his mother’s name—
There could be no sweeter revenge.
“……”
As Winter fell silent, the Duke suddenly cried out.
“No—no, Your Highness, that cannot be allowed…!”
The Duke wore the expression of a man who’d been battered senseless and then struck once more across the back of the skull.
“To change the name Remikoning, borne through generations—such a thing is absolutely intolerable. Reconsider, Winter.”
Deber’s mightiest wing belonged to House Remikoning, and that wing bore the shape of a bat.
What had driven him to sell his nation, bear infamy upon his shoulders, and claw his way through life?
Had it not been to preserve the family name and its power at any cost?
“Winter… you, too, carry Remikoning blood. The name—the family name alone must endure.”
“Blood means nothing, Your Highness. You may go.”
Business concluded, there was no reason to linger before that hideous face a moment longer.
Winter left the Investigation Office with the First Prince, brushing past the Duke’s pleas as though they were nothing.
“No—no, I’m telling you it cannot be…!”
McAlister heard his father’s screams and closed his eyes.
‘Our family has long been sparse in issue. Save for my father, I have no blood kin at all. Yet it seems Father’s children were never limited to just myself.’
Opening his eyes once more, McAlister regarded the Duke briefly, then turned away.
The informant son and the accused father.
It was the son who departed the Investigation Office first.
Thus only the Duke remained, or rather—only a wretched old man no longer deserving of the title Duke.
* * *
They had taken the Imperial August.
Winter at the wheel. Zion claimed the passenger seat.
Behind them, the handmaiden Dien and bodyguard Reyanna.
For a luxury dwarf-made automobile, the interior was spacious and comfortable, though four passengers did make it seem rather cramped.
‘Should I acquire another?’
“Your Highness. Was all of this merely to transfer the Duke’s Peerage to me?”
Winter murmured the question while Zion was contemplating whether to visit Kraina again.
“Thanks to Your Highness’s intervention, I have indeed gained the title. Yet as a result, my father escaped the ruin I had planned for him. Stripped of fortune and rank, he may be destitute—but his life remains.”
“Because of you? No. I simply found the Duke insufferable. I couldn’t let a man who dared refuse my service and dabble in his own schemes simply die at your hands.”
Beneath Zion’s characteristic arrogance, Winter heard something else entirely.
Thus the Duke’s death could not be your burden.
He had not perished by your hand, nor through the destruction you had wrought.
…Someone’s concern was an oddly foreign, ticklish sensation for Winter.
“So you saved him, execution already confirmed, merely to spare me from self-reproach.”
A mask somewhere between composure and blankness.
Words both businesslike and oddly curt all at once.
Perfectly, unmistakably Winter.
Yet Zion caught the faint shame Winter was trying so hard to conceal.
“Not because of you, I said. Besides, the Duke will be meeting death soon enough.”
“At Your Highness’s hand?”
He shook his head.
“By those who owe a debt. By those who wish to repay it.”
An ambiguous reply. Somehow, it left Winter feeling oddly vertiginous.
To Winter’s mind, the prince bore little resemblance to the scoundrel whose notoriety was so widespread.
“Why does Your Highness bear such a reputation?”
“Why? Because I’ve earned it, haven’t I?”
“Are you truly a scoundrel, sir?”
Zion glanced sideways at Winter, gauging his reaction.
What’s he so flustered about?
“Today, Your Highness traveled a considerable distance personally to spare one of your subordinates a single regret.”
“You could have taken the train, yet you preferred a carriage, wasting three or four times as much time in the process.”
Reyanna, whose backside had ached during the drive, interjected, but Winter ignored her and kept his focus on Zion.
“True, you beat Marquess Gebell half to death earlier this year—you’re a brute if anyone is. And yet, observing you like this, I find myself thinking certain thoughts.”
How on earth did this man acquire such a notorious reputation as the Empire’s worst scoundrel?
Even if someone had spread vicious rumors born of deep grudge, surely those who held genuine admiration for the prince would have defended him all the more vigorously.
“No matter how reckless you are, how willful, how troublesome—dumping every headache onto your subordinates’ shoulders, bouncing about like a rubber ball whenever the mood strikes—”
Followers would be impossible to lack.
That was what Winter had observed of the prince over these past months.
“Dien. Reyanna. Would you leave us?”
At Winter’s firm request, the two hesitated, then closed the carriage door and stepped out.
Reyanna’s face in particular bore an unmistakable look of regret.
“Your Highness, surely between us there is no need for such formality?”
“…What kind of relationship do you think we have?”
“Master and dog. That is what you said.”
When the scoundrel prince and the back-alley gambler first met, they had defined their relationship thus.
The prince commanded: become my dog. And the gambler resolved: if I’m to be a dog, I’ll be the dog who receives the largest meat portion.
And now here these two stood.
The prince had gained a steadfast right hand; the dog had achieved his life’s ambition.
Winter placed a hand over his heart and bowed his head.
“My revenge is complete. Now I wish to become the dog who obeys your every command—to fetch when you say fetch, to run when you say run. But for that, I must now understand. What is the next prey your leash-holder seeks, and by what method do you wish to hunt?”
Watching the prince’s face—which clearly showed his displeasure with this turn of conversation—Winter refused to yield.
He had received a debt of gratitude that a lifetime would not repay.
And precisely because of that, he had to press further.
“Therefore, I ask you. Your Highness. What is your true nature?”
For a brief moment, Zion’s mind swung back and forth across the scales some thirty times over.
Should he tell? No.
Would it be unwise? Absolutely.
‘What do I do? This bastard Winter’s fixating on the wrong thing. Surely he hasn’t figured it out? He’s terrible at this kind of thinking, damn it. In this situation, I need to—oh wait, it’s Winter I’m dealing with.’
His deliberation was deepening.
Knock. Knock.
“Your Highness.”
Reyanna announced a visitor.
“Chairman Eitar requests an audience with Your Highness.”
Perfect timing.
“Ahem, I cannot keep such an honored guest waiting. We’ll talk later, Winter!”
In truth, there would be no later.
A faint ticking sound seemed to echo in his ears.
As if a clock were counting down, the deadline shrinking in real time.
‘Before Winter brings up conversation again, I have to do something to dispel suspicion with some outrageous scoundrel act…!’
* * *
“A subject of the Empire pays respects to one of the great Divine Clan.”
Eitar offered a bow of respect.
Once Aincen’s third great merchant magnate and now the inaugural chairman of the social club bearing the prince’s name, he appeared noticeably more vibrant than he had several months prior.
“Your complexion looks well, Eitar.”
“Hehehehe! It is entirely thanks to Your Highness. Even this old body finds itself full of vigor when kept so busy.”
Eitar was no longer the Secretary-General of the Aincen Merchants Association.
No longer the chairman of the Deber Agricultural Securities Investment Research Council, nor an official member of the Deber Economic Federation, nor one of Aincen’s three great merchant princes.
All those titles had been replaced by a single position that now represented him.
Inaugural Chairman of the Zion Social Club.
Having obtained the standing he had so long desired, there was no help but that his spirit overflow.
Of course, his loyalty to the one who had bestowed this standing grew deeper with each passing day.
‘Just a single modifier placed before a name, and yet this old man reacts like that. He’s quite something indeed.’
It was both amusing and impressive—something about Eitar simply had the power to shift one’s mood the moment you looked at him.
For someone like Zion, who had never given much weight to formality, there was no helping it.
“Ah, Eitar. How’s the club doing? I’ve been too caught up in business to give it much attention.”
“With how busy you’ve been, you can leave the smaller matters to me! The club receives inquiries about membership every single day. It’s no exaggeration to say that every notable figure from Aincen and the surrounding regions has come flooding in.”
All those who had harbored resentment toward the social clubs of Seiel, which were typically exclusive to outsiders, had turned their attention here instead.
“However, Your Highness. The reason I asked to see you today is not about the club’s affairs.”
“Hmm? Then what?”
“Director Rensca wishes to see you taken care of well, it seems. He’s asked me to put in a request through connections.”
Director Rensca—one of the high-ranking officers who had been at the Investigation Office.
“…Taken care of well? It hasn’t even been two hours since he was red-faced and carried on over me.”
“Having seen Your Highness’s face with his own eyes just now, wouldn’t it be natural that he’d want to enjoy the honor of serving at Your Highness’s side as I do, hehehehe.”
There was no way that was true.
Though he’d only glimpsed the man’s face briefly, Rensca was certainly not the type to regard the Divine Clan with reverence at mere sight, unlike Eitar.
So if he had to name a reason—
“Winter.”
“Yes. Things are becoming quite interesting.”
Winter’s eyes were already gleaming with that distinctive glint of danger.
Suddenly, the falsehood Winter had spoken to the Governor came to mind.
The formation of a new faction, drawing together scattered forces.
One of those forces mentioned at the time had been the Naval Headquarters.
‘Is this the chance to turn the lie into reality?’
By coincidence, the thought occupying Zion’s mind was precisely the same one Winter had harbored just hours before while watching the Marquis.

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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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