episode_0167

“It’s been a while, Dad.”

Raoul almost clicked his tongue when he saw his son smiling and waving. He had promised Camilla that he would love his children no matter what, but Charles had long since gone too far.

There was one time when he highly valued her talent and entrusted her to Rosie, but even Rosie, after a week, looked haggard and begged Raoul that he couldn’t take her.

“What’s going on? It’s an emergency right now…”

“Your cute little sister was kidnapped. As a proper older brother…”

“Did you intervene?”

“This is so sad. You’re suspecting me out of the blue just because something happened…”

“Half of the troubles that happen in this empire are because of your intervention or are aimed at you.”

“… It’s sad that I can’t deny this.”

Charles pouted his lips in regret.

With long, sky-blue hair that reached the floor and deep-set eyes, his appearance was like a treasure that had inherited only the superior qualities of his parents. Of course, on the inside, he was a monster who had picked out only the bad parts of his parents’ personalities and added sinisterness to them.

“Don’t ask me. But if something happened to Sharia, I wouldn’t just let it go…”

“At that time, I will also give up my life.”

Charles proved his resolve by pretending to stab himself in the neck with the cane he had received from his father.

“And one more thing. I’m not a pervert who likes to touch others. On the contrary, I think most humans, at least the humans of the Empire, are trash, so I don’t even want to touch them. ”

“Then why do you do this?”

“The expression on my face when people who think they’re something and fall into the abyss after falling into a really petty trap I’ve prepared before they can achieve their petty desires… The expression on my face when I desperately pray while holding onto the edge of a cliff… The pleasure I get when I see that expression and trample on it while laughing at it… I think that’s what makes me complete.”

“… Sigh.”

Raoul took a moment to think back to the past, wondering if he too had been a serious pervert when he was younger.

No matter how much I think about it, I’ve never seen such a pervert. Who on earth does that kid resemble?

“That’s what they call perverted.”

“I will listen carefully, Father.”

After saying that, Charles quietly turned his head and began to head deep into the mountains.

“Gasp… Huh…”

“… Do you want me to carry you?”

“I’m not a kid…”

“You are my child.”

“Because you can’t see things that you can only see when you’re on someone else’s back…”

Raoul began to wonder if this was a criminal mastermind who ruled the underworld of the empire, or his own son, who was not yet a teenager.

Both are correct, though.

“I’ll take care of this myself, so Dad, you can rest at home. I’ll bring you some good news today. Cool…”

“… I think I’ll hear your bad news before that news.”

“Cough… I’m fine…Cough.”

Raoul was seriously tempted to ask who this frail constitution resembled.

Camilla was also confident in her physical strength, although her physical strength in bed seemed to be several times inferior to hers.

I was worried that he would be able to properly inherit the family lineage if he was so weak. I had to somehow improve that problem, at least for the sake of the child. There was even a way to ask Heron to enroll him in the Imperial Army Training Center.

“Why do I have chills all over my body…?”

Inside the hideout of the rebel forces, including the Third Prince.

The nobles who followed the Third Prince bowed their heads in amazement as soon as they saw Charles, and Charles stared at them as if he was looking at cockroaches.

“To guide you.”

As Charles entered the hideout, he could see the third prince, Lilf Arvin, jumping out barefoot and welcoming him.

“Oh my, Confucius. Why didn’t you call in advance? If you had, I would have prepared some good tea leaves and made a place for you.”

“… I don’t really like tea time. ”

“Hahaha, that’s right. I guess I was lacking.”

“By the way, I heard you recently secured the crown prince. And his fiancée.”

I had to pretend to be indifferent to my sister by calling her the crown prince’s fiancée.

Even though I am as smart as a fox, this is a fox den. It would be bad to show displeasure to the leader of the fox pack.

And that kind of acting was one of Charles’ specialties.

“Haha… You had a sister too. But as you know, to tie up the Duke of Argos, you need a hostage that is just as effective…”

“Yes, it is essential. Not a hostage that was just taken. A hostage that should have been targeted from the beginning. If the two of them weren’t together, Heron Argos would have led the entire army to search for them by now.”

“That part… I, I apologize. I almost messed up.”

“Let’s check the hostage’s condition first. If there’s a problem with the hostage, that’s problematic in its own way.”

“Oh, of course!”

Reel hurriedly opened the passage leading to the dungeon and gestured for them to come in quickly.

“… I’ll just check the status for a moment, so you can wait outside.”

“If that’s the case…”

Charles entered the passage without any escort and inspected the prison.

The Crown Prince was lying on Sharia’s lap as a pillow, shivering, perhaps because the wound on his hand had gotten worse, or because he had fallen ill from sleeping on the cold stone floor.

And Sharia glared at her brother, who had appeared before her, as if she was going to kill him.

“It was oppa again?”

The question was whether his brother was the one who was manipulating things behind this incident, but the way he asked the question was a bit off, so Charles sighed.

“What are you talking about… Well, I think I know the general idea of the flow.”

Charles was also one of those people who could understand his sister’s words to some extent. Of course, in this case, unlike the Crown Prince, he was closer to understanding the context through the flow of events.

“Things just went a little wrong. I wanted those idiots to rush things and fail.”

“Why are you stupid?”

The question was, why did you involve this idiot, that is, Crown Prince Leonhard, in this matter… but if you just look at the sentence, it could easily be misunderstood as something like, “Why did you do that, you idiot?”

“I don’t know for sure… but why did you bring in the crown prince, right? There are so many assassins targeting His Majesty and His Highness the Empress that I don’t have enough stimulation. I don’t even bother tracking down the person behind such things anymore. The crown prince is the most suitable target. And even if the work were to succeed, he would be the target with the least repercussions. Well, if you have another child, that’s it. But the two of you are the pillars of the country. You have different values from that young master. ”

Sharia despised this aspect of her brother.

He has a great eye for people, but I absolutely hate the fact that he treats people based on his own standards of worth.

On that topic, the fact that he has his own kind of family love made me feel disgusted.

“Still, I didn’t expect things to turn out this way. I took measures to prevent myself from dying in the first place. No, I’m a little worried that things have gotten messed up. If this goes wrong, I feel like I’ll get hit in the air by my mother.”

The swing was a form of corporal punishment that Camilla used on her children when they had committed a serious misdeed. It was so painful that even Raoul had to cover his eyes.

There is no punishment greater than that, in that it leaves no physical harm, but leaves a great fear imprinted on the mind.

Having been on the trapeze 34 times, Charles knew better than anyone the fear of being suspended in the sky.

“To be honest, I don’t want my parents or His Majesty the Emperor involved. They all love their children, so they might hesitate because of the hostage and end up getting hurt. So, people who are ignorant about the hostage… Ah, the rest is spoiler.”

Charles tossed his brother a paper-wrapped sandwich and a bundle of crushed herbs.

“Then let’s meet again soon. My little sister who is not cute but adorable.”

Charles, who had escaped from the hideout, began coughing up bloody phlegm, perhaps because of the dust unique to the underground.

“Coolook..!”

“Are you okay?”

Charles’s subordinate appeared from behind a tree and covered Charles’ body with a thick coat.

“It’s still okay…”

Charles was barely able to support his body, which was trembling and about to fall, with the cane he had inherited from Raoul.

“It was my fault that things went this wrong… I think it’s right to take responsibility. As I said before, your father or mother knows that Sharia was taken hostage… If you do something wrong, there’s a chance that you’ll be captured in return because of the hostage… It’s not that I don’t know the two of you, but… Your love is deeper than your skills…”

Charles’ mother and father were such people.

My father, although somewhat reserved, loved himself and Sharia more than anyone else. He didn’t say anything, but I respected him to some extent.

Her mother was also violent, but she was a thoughtful person who worried about her sickly daughter more than anyone else. I couldn’t even imagine how she would react if she saw her daughter being taken hostage.

So he had to figure it out himself, even if it meant using people who didn’t know about the hostage situation.

“Can I have just one dagger?”

The subordinate handed over the dagger without saying a word, and Charles took it and said.

“From now on, please go to where Grandma Latri and Aunt Lizel are. The treatment will be roughly first aid. The wound will not heal properly.”

“Yes…?”

“You’ll need blood to stimulate those who have stepped down from the front lines.”

After answering thus, Charles drew his dagger and stabbed himself in the abdomen, narrowly missing the vital point.