The soldiers’ eyes changed once more.

“Right. Sir Kyrie is right.”

“No matter if they’re lords of the Manseong Church, they can’t just take Lady Andromeda away as they please.”

“Yeah. We might be ordinary people, but Lady Andromeda is direct bloodline favored by the Dreaming Thunder Star.”

“Traysan should obviously be going to get Lady Andromeda back, but he didn’t. Why? Because he’s the one who locked her up. Sir Kyrie said that’s what it is, right?”

“We almost made a huge mistake ourselves.”

You couldn’t blame them as weak people who swayed like reeds.

House Astreos blood relatives truly were superhumans chosen by the Constellations.

Even in free cities where citizens elect mayors and councilors, “superhuman” capabilities like piety or being from a knightly house have a huge impact on vote share.

And this was Astrion Astreos, where superhumans chosen by the stars called lightning from a clear sky.

The words of a powerful Blue Knight were the will of the Constellations, and justice guaranteed by the stars.

Kyrie spurred his horse forward until he was within a hundred meters of Traysan.

He was so intense it was as if he were declaring he possessed the insight to see through the truth—even without the eyepatch that had once been the symbol of his recklessness.

So you won’t just let it happen.

Traysan watched him for a moment, then lightly kicked his horse’s flank.

“Your Highness!”

“It’s dangerous.”

Blue Knights and Knights blanched and tried to stop him.

“Me?”

“…….”

With a faint smile, Traysan shut their mouths.

Clop, clop.

He approached Kyrie slowly, until he was right in front of him.

The senior adopted heir and the youngest adopted heir faced each other from atop their horses.

“Shall we talk for a moment?”

Traysan toyed with a magi-device ring.

Humm.

Kyrie nodded, and Traysan poured mana into the ring and unfolded a sound-dampening barrier.

“It’s unfortunate. If you’d arrived a few days earlier, the winner would have been Andromeda.”

Traysan showed him a bitter smile.

“Don’t try to fish. Big Brother. If you had already won, you wouldn’t have come out in person over something like me.”

Kyrie didn’t smile.

“Haha. So you didn’t build a faction by luck after all.”

“Some people might. I’m not one of them. And I don’t even want luck.”

“Let me ask one thing.”

“Yes.”

“If, instead of Andromeda, I had backed you—would you be standing at my side right now?”

“…….”

Traysan looked off into the distance.

“In some ways, you and I resemble each other more than Andromeda and I do. You know it. I was born out there, too. I couldn’t even step on the shadows of the Blue Knights.”

Out there.

Not the Inner City where nobles lived, but the Outer City where commoners lived.

In a narrower sense, it could even refer to the red-light district that decadent Blue Knights frequented.

Rhetoric. Don’t get pulled in.

Kyrie realized Traysan was engaging in psychological warfare.

What would it have been like?

Even so, he thought about it once.

Was all of this really happening because of the hero’s journey oath?

“It wouldn’t.”

“Why?”

“Because, as you said, you and I resemble each other in many ways.”

It probably wouldn’t have.

“Kuhahahaha!”

Traysan burst into laughter openly.

“Yeah. That’s right. You resemble me.”

Half of it was acting.

“If so, you’ll understand my heart, too. No matter how strong we are, no matter how devoted we are, we’re still just adopted sons. We can’t become sons. I’d rather die than accept that.”

In other words, half of it was sincere.

“Is being an adopted son or a son really that important?”

Kyrie saw that as well.

“What?”

“I think what matters is ability, not a name. When you show the ability that fits the position, the position appears one way or another.”

So in that moment, he spoke at least half the truth.

“I offered my eye and showed the drive worthy of the top seat, and I held the top seat to the end. I crossed the border like a Stellar Seat and became a Stellar Seat. I gathered troops like an adopted heir and stood against Rykenta, and I became an adopted heir. I became a faction leader and a governor—not because someone made me one, but because I did it.”

In other words, half of it was psychological warfare.

“An interesting perspective.”

“In my view, Big Brother, you still look like the Senior Adopted Heir.”

“……!”

Traysan’s eyes wavered for the first time.

He still looked like the Senior Adopted Heir.

The unspoken ending was: Not the Sub-patriarch.

Kyrie knew it, and Traysan knew it.

Traysan swallowed the curse rising in his throat.

For a split second, he almost shouted, What do you know?

And that would have been the most vivid proof that Kyrie truly did know something.

“I came down with empty hands and returned with an army.”

“But it’s hard to say whether that army would have gathered if you hadn’t received the adopted-heir position. A name is as important as substance.”

“If you could obtain only one of the two, which would you obtain?”

Traysan acknowledged there was nothing more to gain from continuing.

He had thought Kyrie was only Andromeda’s blade.

It seemed he should rate him one notch higher.

“See you again.”

“Then I’ll be the one to come find you.”

“It won’t take long.”

Traysan withdrew the sound-dampening barrier.

I still lack justification.

Recalling the reactions of Kyrie’s soldiers, he turned his horse around.

If I’m using Andromeda’s collusion as my justification, then I absolutely must find the Elixirs of Sacred Light.

“We’re returning.”

“Yes!”

The thousand cavalry turned as they were and headed back toward the Outer City gate.

Only after Kyrie watched the sight to the very end did he turn his horse around.

He kept his back straight, his chin tucked, smiling with confidence, all the way until the moment he rode up the hill and entered the camp.

“Kyrie! Kyrie! Kyrie!”

“Long live the Lightning Blade!”

The soldiers cheered for the commander who had protected their pride.

“Kyrie, Kyrie! You were seriously amazing! But never do it again. I almost got wrinkles on my face!”

“What a bastard.”

“My lord! Fuck, that was incredible!”

Blue Knights, Knights, adjutants—every one of them jumped and shouted.

“For Lady Andromeda!”

Kyrie raised one hand and shouted.

White teeth flashed inside his wide-open mouth.

Thought I was going to die. Try making me do that again.

At that moment, he was thinking something that would have made everyone around him recoil if they had known.

He’s strong. I thought I’d gotten pretty strong too, but he’s really strong. I need to reinforce my force even more.

I went to Erica first.

Traysan’s momentum was considerable.

If Erica escaped from here, threw herself into Traysan’s arms, and made some kind of deal, Andromeda and I would be forced into a terribly difficult situation.

I made mutant beasts with Lady Andromeda, the Sub-patriarch. I used them to cultivate Elixirs of Sacred Light, but the Sub-patriarch intended to use them as a weapon. When our intentions split, she sent Kyrie to kill me.

I couldn’t let it become that.

Never.

“Princess.”

“I saw.”

“Worth watching?”

Erica was sitting outside the tent under the shade of a large parasol, drinking a beverage.

“In Rykenta, they would have pointed at it as vulgar behavior—needlessly risking danger.”

She gave a thin smile as she offered her review.

I honestly thought so too, but as one of the leaders of those vulgar bastards who needlessly risk danger, I couldn’t exactly say that.

“I’ll take that as meaning it was insanely cool.”

“Think whatever you want.”

Erica shrugged, then looked at me like, So what’s the point?

“I don’t know exactly how your oath works, and you won’t answer anyway, but I understand it as: you won’t strike first at a force that has surrendered.”

“So?”

“Senior Adopted Heir Traysan and I are on different sides. Even if you attack him, you’re not attacking my forces. So if you get ambushed, you can counterattack as much as you want.”

“…….”

“You’ve seen it until now—you know I keep my promises. To us, you’re just a victim who got swept up by elders and heretics. But Traysan will turn you into a monster who colluded with Andromeda.”

I fired it off like a machine gun.

By the principles of negotiation, I shouldn’t have laid my cards out like this.

But I was too pressed.

Even as I spoke each word, I had a brief thought of, Is this really okay?

Fwoosh!

Erica snapped open her fan and hid her face.

I flinched, half expecting a storm to erupt from that fan.

I knew she couldn’t strike first, but it still wasn’t easy to stand firm.

“You’re unexpectedly kind.”

It was the funniest thing I’d ever heard.

“What?”

“I didn’t think you’d even worry about me.”

Between the ribs of the fan, I caught a glimpse of her cheek.

A bright blush had spread there.

I truly couldn’t understand the human heart.

“Kyrie.”

“Hm?”

After I “talked Erica around” and returned to the command tent—

I had no idea whether it counted as talking her around, but I had to think of it that way.

Nereus spoke.

“In the name of House Tonatio, I sent letters to each cadet branch and major city. What are you going to do now?”

He said he had carried out my words immediately.

I wanted to shout, Since when do you listen to me so well?

“Lady Andromeda—no. Lady Andromeda, the Sub-patriarch—made preparations. I plan to carry it out.”

I opened my mouth feeling like my nerves were burning to ash.

“Ooh!”

“As expected of Lady Andromeda!”

“My lord! So you had a plan after all? I always believed in you, my lord!”

“Kyrie, Kyrie. Not bad?”

The Blue Knights and Knights all cheered at once.

It was a lie.

There were no preparations.

“So what are the preparations?”

Frey asked with a bright smile.

I barely managed to break up the gathering by saying I would think a little more about how to carry it out.

“……, ……!”

Then I returned to my tent, bit down hard on the cloth, and screamed like a rabid boar.

【“You’re afraid?”】

The Stigma shone, and the Constellation’s voice came to my ear.

I almost snapped back, What do you think?—then realized just how frayed my nerves were.

“Yes.”

【“But you didn’t give up.”】

“I can’t just sit down and die, can I?”

More than anything, I began, and continued.

“If it weren’t for me—more precisely, for me receiving your grace—the southern border would have been scorched into nothing by mutant beasts. And in the middle of the civil war between my sister and Traysan, it would have spread to Astrion Astreos as well.”

【“Yes.”】

“If that happened, what you showed me would unfold. That can’t happen.”

If the world became that, then the happy life I could build atop rational choices would be over too.

At best, I’d be digging some hole underground and living like an insect.

I’d rather die fighting.

【“You resemble that child, and yet you are different.”】

The Constellation laughed faintly.

Resemble, and yet different?

At that moment, a single hope began to circle inside my head.

I headed back to the command tent again.

“Elixirs of Sacred Light.”

“What?”

“Huh?”

“Lady Andromeda, the Sub-patriarch, foresaw a situation like this and hid over a hundred bottles of Elixirs of Sacred Light she has made so far, along with a higher-grade product: a Stellar-Body-grade Elixir.”

Traysan framed Lady Andromeda as colluding with Rykenta.

He could tack on the reasons later, but physical evidence didn’t work that way.

Right now, there were two major pieces of physical evidence that would “prove” collusion.

Princess Erica of Rykenta, and the Elixirs of Sacred Light made from mutant beasts.

If he found the Elixirs of Sacred Light, he could build the logic that she artificially bred mutant beasts to manufacture these on a large scale and increase her mana.

The crime of offering subjects as beast sacrifices, the crime of trying to use beasts—those went without saying.

The moment a direct-bloodline pureblood touched heresy instead of focusing on training lightning-craft, she was already disqualified from being Sub-patriarch.

Then Erica wouldn’t even be necessary.

In other words, the fact that it hadn’t turned out that way yet meant Traysan hadn’t found the Elixirs of Sacred Light.

“We infiltrate the city, find the Elixirs of Sacred Light before Traysan does, and drink them all.”

If we drank it all, the evidence he needed would disappear, and our mana would multiply severalfold.

Blue Knight strength, Knight strength—this balance would tilt, even a little, to our side.

“Who’s going?”

“You, me, Frey.”

“Just three of us?”

“Scared?”

Chapter 110

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