The Scoundrel Prince Sold Out the Empire - Chapter 63

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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 63: Wings of the Bat (8)
Reianna read the order she had received twice over.
‘Execute the traitor Remikoning.’
A single, terse line.
The problem lay below it: the name of the one who had issued the command.
Commander-in-Chief of the Liberation Army.
Crown Prince of Deber.
Zion Blitz.
“The Crown Prince… has called upon me.”
Her heart thundered in her chest.
Those days returned to her now — standing shoulder to shoulder with him on missions, returning victorious with laurels in hand.
Why had she striven so hard as to bear the title of Assault Corps Commander at so tender an age, why had she trained until blood ran in place of sweat?
‘To serve him. To repay the debt I owe.’
Now the time had come to run toward that purpose once more.
Reianna folded the order and tucked it into her breast.
She wound a black cloak around herself. She covered her face with a black mask.
The cloak bulged here and there as it settled, and the slender woman vanished, replaced by a towering figure two meters tall.
The Assault Corps Commander of the Deber Liberation Army.
The night visible through the window looked like black ink bleeding across a page.
Tonight, unusually, not a single light pierced the darkness.
And yet she found it comforting.
She had lived a lifetime in shadow.
The night claimed her, and she surrendered to it willingly.
The resolve she had honed over more than a year now honed its edge in silence.
“Commander.”
“You’re here.”
“Commander. We’ve arrived as well.”
People gathered beside her one by one as she walked through the darkness.
A man in common dress and a woman in shabby clothes.
A porter and a driver.
A laundress carrying a basket overflowing with washing.
All of them comrades bound by a single purpose.
“Take these, all of you.”
The laundress cleared away the washing and drew out Magical Artifacts and weapons from inside the basket.
“You all should have heard, but these are the Commander-in-Chief’s orders.”
A silent fervor roared through them.
“Tonight. We execute Remikoning. We gift the criminal the execution befitting his crime.”
The Secret Order members’ fists came lightly to their brows.
“For Deber.”
“It is our duty.”
“Sentiment later. Everyone to your positions.”
According to the orders, the place where the execution was to be held was the Slum Village.
The riverbank where the people of Deber, stripped of everything and driven to desperation, dwelt together.
That lowest and most wretched place would become the Marquis’s final resting ground.
* * *
It was already night when he entered Seiel.
He had meant to go straight up, but Winter had delayed him, so the schedule had slipped considerably.
‘At this rate I’ll miss the Marquis. Though, does it matter?’
It would only be a disappointment.
Either way, it would be Zion’s own hands that saw it through to the end.
Only the location would change.
On second thought, it seemed unlikely the Marquis would have fled before sunset anyway.
If he fled, wouldn’t that just be a nighttime escape?
A Marquis might well decide not to flee at all.
“Perhaps arriving at night was fortunate after all?”
No need to waste hours sitting idly, bored out of his mind.
With a shrug, he set his course for the residence of the Marquis Remikoning.
‘Even now, it’s quite grand.’
Likely one of the most imposing estates in the district.
Well, soon enough it would change hands, sold off to cover gambling debts.
From inside came the shrill screech of chaos, leaking out in waves.
Furniture toppling.
Crates splintering.
A servant being shrieked at in frantic bursts.
‘Looks like they haven’t finished packing yet. Going to take a while longer.’
I pushed off the ground with my toes.
Rising in a gentle arc, I settled onto the roof.
‘The stars are beautiful tonight.’
It didn’t matter what the Marquis scraped together or how much.
Everything in that house was forfeit anyway.
Or rather, I should call it repayment.
Restitution—settling a debt by reclaiming what was taken.
The Marquis had squeezed Deber’s people for plenty; the least he could do was repay it, even at a fraction of its worth.
I pressed a hand against my chest.
My inner pocket felt unusually thick beneath my fingertips.
The inventory of tonight’s collection was tucked in there.
In other words, a list of creditors.
“Marquis, what you have left may not even cover the interest.”
My murmur scattered into the darkness.
While waiting, I turned over the conversation I’d had with Winter that afternoon.
More precisely, when I’d told him about Rensuka’s hospitality arrangement.
“Did you really manage to secure Rensuka’s loyalty?”
Winter had asked, his expression still skeptical.
“More accurately, it’s a transaction.”
“Still, now you can get your foot in the door with naval smuggling, can’t you?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. I’m not counting on it.”
I clasped my hands behind my back.
“You know I don’t have connections in the navy.”
“Even if you did have them, after what you pulled yesterday, those ties are already severed.”
Winter let out a long sigh.
There was clear admiration in his gaze.
Though it was the sort of admiration that made one’s skin crawl.
“So you don’t seem surprised by the Crown Prince’s exceptional nature?”
It was like a cow backing up and accidentally catching a mouse.
“So the rumors are true—the Divine Clan is born under a destiny of great fortune.”
This bastard.
‘I’m not even a real Divine Clan member, so what’s he going on about?’
Yet inwardly, I’d quietly admitted it was true.
Getting Rensuka in my pocket had been half luck.
My original plan had been nothing more than vaguely evading taxes and smuggling pillaged gold overseas.
But Winter.
He’d immediately proposed a strategy targeting exchange profit.
Gold serves double duty—both as precious metal and hard currency, and as a strategic material in mage-craft engineering circuit inscriptions.
That’s why every nation regulates gold prices to some degree.
‘And he said the real profit was something else entirely.’
To smuggle in what cannot be smuggled in.
That was Winter’s line.
Only then did I grasp it.
During my Liberation Army days, the hardest part had been smuggling weapons.
In other words, now I had a means to freely supply the Liberation Army with arms.
‘If things play out this way, I might need to keep a closer eye on Rensuka.’
And for part of the gold smuggling, I was planning to put Reianna in charge.
So she could quietly skim off a portion of the gold being transported.
“On the surface, a tin mine. In truth, gold smuggling.”
My thoughts went no further.
The mansion door swung open with a bang.
‘Huh, startled me.’
The Marquis came rushing out in a panic.
I let out a slow smile, lifting one corner of my mouth.
Whoosh!
A fragment of pitch-black, translucent Mana scattered through the air.
‘The finale, then.’
* * *
The Marquis Remikoning pressed forward, quickening his pace.
One might think he should commandeer a carriage for a flight under cover of night.
But there wasn’t a single vehicle to be found.
They’d all been seized as collateral.
“I should never have set foot in that casino.”
A truth he’d grasped far too late.
He should have borrowed money without sparing a thought for interest.
The fatal mistake had been trying to claw his way out of crisis through gambling winnings.
Somewhere along the line, not a single aristocratic acquaintance would lend him money anymore.
His credibility had shattered.
Who willingly extends credit to a man mad with gambling fever?
‘This, too, must be what that bastard Winter orchestrated.’
It was likely the very reason he’d been drawn into gambling in the first place.
Dust kicked up beneath his feet with each hurried step.
The document case tucked under his arm held only hastily gathered trinkets and a handful of securities still holding some value.
There wasn’t a single precious person to bring along anyway.
He’d married a ghastly plain-faced bourgeois commoner from the Empire—and only for her money at that.
The only place left to feel any attachment was McAllister… McAllister….
Crunch-crunch-crunch!
“Winter Flowering. I will tear the living flesh from your body before your mother’s very eyes.”
It was the price for what he’d done to the Marquis’s heart.
What filled the Marquis’s chest was not self-reproach or regret.
It was hatred. It was a curse.
The prince who had made him this way—Winter Flowering, who’d dared engineer his downfall.
He cursed them both and fed the flames of his resentment.
He would repay them. He swore it.
This was not the end.
Once he crossed the border beyond Seiel, old connections still remained.
A spider has eight legs.
The Marquis had extended a few of his own beyond these shores.
Several northern houses owed him debts, and the officials at the gates to Gizkal would open back doors for him—he was certain of it.
“Mark my words, Prince. Do you truly think Aleon Remikoning will crumble here? I will make you rue this day.”
……The appearance of the man murmuring such things was, unknown to himself, strikingly familiar.
It resembled the man who’d fled under cover of darkness months ago and vanished without a trace—Dechion, one of the Five Thieves Outside the Palace.
“Zion, huff.”
His breath was growing labored.
Yet the Marquis did not cease his muttering.
“Zion, Leo, never, die, Zion.”
That was when it happened.
“You called for me.”
Whoooosh!
Behind him, something massive unfurled its wings with a sound like thunder.
The Marquis jerked to a stop.
Gooseflesh rippled down his spine.
……That voice was familiar.
At the same time.
It was a voice he desperately did not wish to hear.
And moreover.
It was a voice he should never have heard.
Because it belonged to one who was dead.
“Marquis. Let me see your face.”
An invisible force wrenched the Marquis’s head around with brutal force.
Whoooosh!
Black Mana rippled and scattered.
Like the wingbeats of a raven.
Hence the epithet that clung to him: the Raven of Deber.
Wings vast as any in Deber—yet fundamentally different from the Marquis’s own—wings meant for liberation.
“It’s been a long time.”
Zion smiled softly.
But there was no warmth in it.
Gentle and dignified, yet capable of a coldness that surpassed all others.
Such was the last royal of Deber.
“Dead, gasping. Dead…….”
The one reported dead—the Crown Prince—was alive.
And of all things, he had appeared before her eyes as she fled.
What could it mean?
The very fact that he had revealed himself so deliberately meant he had no intention of letting her live.
Understanding struck like a sudden blow.
“Surely… Dechion too……!”
“He was the first. You’re the second.”
She had to run.
But.
But it was too late.
Zion closed the distance in a single stride.
A shadow larger than flesh itself engulfed the duchess.
“No, release me! If you lay hands on me, the Empire will not…….”
“Release you? Your words lack substance. Well, since this is your final journey, do as you wish.”
Zion’s hand seized the duchess by her collar.
Pushing lightly against the ground, her feet lifted clean away.
In an instant, the earth fell dozens of meters below.
“…… Ahhh!”
“Stay quiet. We have somewhere to go together.”
Suspended in the void, the duchess gazed down in terror.
The height was vertiginous.
A fall from which not even bones would survive.
‘Off we go, to settle an old debt.’
She fixed her direction by the brilliant light.
Or rather, toward its flank.
The destination: the riverbank where the people of Deber gathered, those who had been stripped of everything they’d built and trampled underfoot.
The lowest, filthiest place in all of Seiel.
Slum Village.

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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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