Chapter 181: 180

Chapter 180

Montpellier! Oh, Montpellier! (1)

The first to notice the signs was Crien de Burgundy Montpellier. He was, officially, under house arrest.

In actual fact, there was no reason to restrain him from conducting his personal affairs, for he had already converted to the cause of the Leonberg Kingdom. However, his transference of loyalties was still a classified secret, so he had to play the captive in his current position.

This was the situation to outside eyes, but the truth of it was that he could leave his house anytime he wanted. And on this day, he was studying the atmosphere of the royal capital as he walked through its streets, firmly wrapping himself in his cloak.

“If it wasn’t for that damned fire dragon…”

He couldn’t even use a carriage, and he was grumbling all the time about having to move about on foot.

He only stopped walking when he saw a familiar face in the crowd.

“Huh, why did a knight come to the capital?”

The man was obviously an imperial knight. Montpellier recalled his face with clarity, as they had cooperated several times in previous operations.

‘Shd~’ the knight turned his head toward Montpellier.

“Huk,” Montpellier hurriedly lowered his hood and bowed his head, and swiftly stepped back.

Fortunately, the knight didn’t seem to be following him, and he hadn’t seemed to recognize his face. Montpellier almost sighed in relief, but he found another familiar face before him – there wasn’t just one knight. At first glance, they were dressed like common citizens of the capital, but they were all knights of the empire. And many of them: The swords of the emperor that served directly under a duchess of the imperial family. Montpellier went to his house before they recognized him.

Before returning home, he checked many times whether he was being tailed, and he even went around to another road and changed his clothes in one of the stores there.

Montpellier’s heart pounded. Perhaps they had recognized him, and if they did, they would be suspicious of seeing him wandering around in broad daylight when he should be detained in his house. Perhaps they were assassins sent to recognize his betrayal, sent to punish him.

Countless horrible scenarios came into Montpellier’s imagination, and he was so terrified that he stayed up all night. No assassins came, and a sense of relief rushed into his head. Only once he regained his composure did Montpellier realized his thoughts were too delusional.

They couldn’t have known that he was a turncoat – they must have come here once the war broke out to rescue the ambassador being held prisoner.

“Wait… Right now, there is no monstrous prince here in the capital,” Montpellier mused. Now was his chance to escape from that horrible prince. Unfortunately, he couldn’t take the opportunity.

Even if they had come to rescue him, they still had to reach the mainland. By the time that Montpelliers’ enemies drew their swords, these knights would scatter like smoke and abandon him.

“How could I have become like this?” Montpellier lamented. He hated the prince and resented the kingdom. His situation was ugly, so he swore at himself and cried again and again.

Then Montpellier finally decided to admit it: Adapting to Leonberg’s needs was the only way for him to survive now. He had to avoid returning to the empire and being punished by his political opponents. For him to survive, Leonberg had to persevere in this war against the empire.

The probability of that wasn’t very high.

However, Montpellier knew that rather than having his head struck off in vain by the guillotine that his political opponents have prepared, he was more likely to live a little longer by remaining on the side of the kingdom. And as things stood, he expected his chances of survival to be ten percent, even by siding with the side that offered him the highest odds. Montpellier just wanted the kingdom to stand strong, and as he thought about the war, he suddenly remembered that which he had forgotten.

“Have you ever seen such a crazy man! Forgetting that important thing!”

He started fiddling with a secret cubbyhole in his bedroom, and soon, the hidden space was revealed with a clicking sound. There was a magically sealed document there – the one secret he had never revealed under the harsh beatings of the prince. The imperial ambassadors always knew it to be unlikely, but in the event of war breaking out with Leonberg, they had to act according to a specific protocol.

The sealed document contained such instructions. Montpellier had always believed that there was no possibility that a small country located on the fringes would dare to rebel against the empire, so he had completely forgotten about the existence of the protocols. Montpellier hesitated for a moment and then opened the seal on the document.

‘Pshoo~’ a strange light flashed and spread through the air. Montpellier looked around for a while, his body taught. Fortunately, nothing happened. With a sigh of relief, he pulled out the papers and read them.

The documents contained guidelines and future actions for the empire’s ambassadors to take in the event of a war breaking out.

“Tcha, the emperor is more thorough than I thought.”

Montpellier trembled, for the emperor had been diligent in preparing for the unlikely secession of the kingdom. For a brief moment, Montpellier thought about whether he should escape the capital and act as if his loyalty had never wavered. That’s when the prince’s face came to mind.

The moment he remembered the evil prince, who drew his sword whenever he got the chance, Montpellier’s trembling – strangely – stopped.

“If there is a monstrous emperor in the empire, there is still that evil prince in the kingdom.”

He took control of his quivering heart, and then he thought about it for a while.

“There is nothing else I can do.”

When he finally made up his mind, he called his servant and made arrangements.

Even if the documents he held in his hand were little more than a few sheets of paper, their weight was too great. When someone saw them and misunderstood, then Montpellier knew he would be erased from the world without leaving a trace.

There was no time for delay. If he took one misstep, the ship of his life, which always sailed with full sails, could sink in an instant. Montpellier headed straight to the royal palace, for he had discovered the new greatest enemy to the kingdom.

“Are you not afraid of the emperor’s gaze? His Highness said you should act like a prisoner,” said the Marquis of Bielefeld, but Montpellier banished such thoughts from his mind and went straight to the main topic.

“Look at this.”

“What is it?”

The marshal’s face grew stiff as he recognized the seal of the Burgundy imperial family. He quickly read through the document, and when he had read it all, he looked worried.

“Is this true?”

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“I’ve already seen several imperial knights in the center of the capital. I have to say… I have to say that the great plan has already started.”

When Montpellier had spoken his frightening words, the marshal called out to the knight outside the door.

“Are you there?!”

“You called me, sir?” Bielefeld’s knight, who was now assigned to the Supreme Marshal’s office, dashed into the room.

“Go tell the Knights of the Palace to bring all the royal family members into the heart of the palace! Tell the commander of the palace guard to lock all the palace gates immediately, gather the defenders, and prepare for battle! The capital will also need to be closed off right away. And you must make sure, along with other knights, that all commanders from the deputy-commander level or higher gather in the conference hall of the royal palace!”

The knight widened his eyes at the sudden orders.

“It’s a fight against time! Hurry up!”

The great peril in the marshal’s voice made the knight’s face scrunch up in surprise, and he pounded out of the room. Bielefeld jumped up from his seat.

“Follow me,” he said, and Montpellier silently followed the marshal.

* * *

“What is all this about a large offensive?” the queen asked, meeting the marshal and Montpellier in the conference hall.

“Is it possible that your Majesty has not received my message?” asked Bielefeld.

“I got the news. Everyone else is hidden deep in the palace, so there’s nothing to worry about. I am only here to represent the royal family in the absence of his Majesty.”

It was surprising that the queen was here in the hall and not safely with the others, but Bielefeld was not here to persuade her to go into the heart of the palace.

“Let’s hear what’s going on first,” the queen said.

“The empire has hidden swords under the chin of Leonberg in preparation for war with us since long ago. The knights who have infiltrated the capital is the first sword, and the soldiers of the Imperial Army who have marched with them, camping near the capital, is the second. The third sword is those nobles of Leonberg who have converted to the empire.”

The marshal glanced at the Marquis of Montpellier, who spoke.

“Yesterday, I encountered people familiar to me several times. That means that they are already active.”

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“You didn’t know about their presence right away?”

“I didn’t even know of this since yesterday. In fact, we’ve worked together a few times, but I only realized yesterday that they had not been dispatched to the mainland. I didn’t know at all that they were lurking in the capital.”

“Hmm.”

The queen stared at Montpellier.

“Believe me,” he urged.

“When you return to your home country, all that awaits you is the guillotine?” the queen asked, “I’m not so sure that you won’t take the side of the empire again.”

Marquis flinched and then trembled because it felt as if the queen’s words were stabbing into his heart. He wanted to express the sincerity of his loyalties toward Leonberg, but the queen spoke again before he could.

“My son has already eliminated the threat of the traitor nobles, so that’s good.”

The current situation was surprising, but the queen’s voice was consistently calm. The marshal spoke.

“The problems now are the imperial knights who have infiltrated the capital and the imperial soldiers who will soon flock here. The purpose of the knights is to open the gate and cause confusion, and the soldiers will take that gap to enter the capital and finally capture the royal palace.

“I have locked each gate tightly and now plan to strengthen our defenses. In the meantime, I want to find out where the knights are who have infiltrated so that we can sever cooperation between the imperials inside and the imperials outside.”

Bielefeld’s response ran along the lines of classic methods. However, the queen pointed out that it was insufficient.

“Now that the royal palace and the capital’s gates are locked, these knights must have realized that we have come to know of the existence of the operation. It will be quite difficult to find them if they hide.”

“The other actions were most urgent, so I could not arrange a search, your Majesty. This stupid old man has done wrong, so punish me.”

“I’m not trying to blame anyone. I know that you, as Great Marshal, have taken such measures because the defense of the capital has to be prioritized. I just wished to give you a little bit of advice,” said the queen and then began telling a story about the north.

“Monsters never leave injured people alone once the fight is over. They rather fill their stomachs by eating them all, whether the injured are their own or their enemy. But sometimes, after battling with them, the injured rangers survive and reach Winter Castle.”

The queen’s sudden story of her homeland might have seemed absurd, but the marshal listened to it without showing displeasure.

“It’s harrowing if you can only look at an injured comrade who grunts in pain,” added the queen.

“Was it not possible for the brave soldiers and knights to save them, instead of looking at them?” asked Bielefeld.

“You can save them, but there are times when you cannot.”

The marshal looked at the queen, who was lost in memory, her eyes shining.

“Because they know the moment that they open the gates and rush out to save the bait which is their allies, countless hidden orcs will rush at them,” said the queen as she gazed at Montpellier.

He did not know the meaning of her gaze or her words, and he could not stop himself from trembling.

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