Ch.1139To Fall Into One’s Lap.

“Nobles of the royalist faction who escaped from Panam have requested asylum. The royal army was defeated, the capital has fallen, and the current king, Evian I, has fled to the Empire…”

This was the report delivered to the cardinals who were busy governing the nation alongside Agnes.

The civil war between the royalist faction and the rebel army, which had stained Panam’s territory with blood, finally ended with the complete defeat of the royalist faction, unable to overcome the power difference.

The defeated royal army scattered in flight or surrendered to the rebels and disbanded. The key figures of the royalist faction hurried to escape and requested asylum in neighboring countries.

The Evian regime, which had essentially been a puppet government of the Empire from the beginning, thus met its complete and undeniable downfall.

“So it ended that way… And what about the movements of the… ‘Third Prince Faction,’ was it?”

The nobles of the self-proclaimed “Third Prince Faction” had started a rebellion with the claim of returning the throne stolen by Evian to its rightful owner, the Third Prince.

However, no one believed that the Third Prince Faction would actually hand over absolute power over all of Panam to the Third Prince as they claimed.

The Third Prince they put forward as the next king was merely a child not yet ten years old, and there wasn’t even confirmation that he was actually who they claimed he was.

Since King Danon was assassinated, the whereabouts of the Third Prince, left alone without parents, had been full of holes with nothing clearly established.

He was thought to be missing, then suddenly news of his survival came from under a powerful noble, then he went quiet again and was thought to be assassinated, only to reappear with another noble backing him.

It would have been abnormal if there weren’t voices of suspicion about whether this person was actually the missing Third Prince himself.

To put it bluntly, they might have just found a similar-looking child from somewhere and been lying that this was the Third Prince.

From the beginning, the Holy State wasn’t merely suspicious—they were half-convinced that the rebels’ “Third Prince” was a fake with no relation to the royal family.

By blood, Panam’s Third Prince was Emperor Leopold’s nephew, so if the “Third Prince” put forward by the rebels was actually the prince himself, the Emperor would have shown some reaction—that was their reasoning.

Eleonora had gone missing, Second Prince Karl and Princess Leonore had renounced their succession rights, and Leopold himself still had no children.

So, considering bloodline and qualifications alone, Panam’s Third Prince was actually the first in line to the imperial succession—the next heir to the imperial throne.

From the Emperor’s perspective, this meant he was someone who needed definitive action, whether elimination or securing.

However, Leopold showed no interest whatsoever in the “Third Prince” put forward by the rebels. As if it didn’t matter to the Empire whether he lived or died.

If he were truly of imperial blood, could that have been possible? Not at all.

Therefore, the Holy State judged that the rebels’ “Third Prince” was fake, and speculated that the real Third Prince was either already dead or secretly secured and hidden by the Empire.

They believed that the nobles of the rebel army knew their Third Prince was fake, but were keeping quiet about it to gain legitimacy for seizing power.

…Well, it wasn’t as if the Holy State was planning to intervene in Panam’s civil war because of this, so from the rebels’ perspective, it didn’t matter whether the “Third Prince” was real or fake.

Had they lost, it would have been a truly disgusting deception and a treasonous act… but if they won, that was all that mattered, wasn’t it?

Anyway, their “Third Prince” was now able to ascend to the throne after driving out Evian, and the queen mother who should have governed in place of the young king had long since disappeared.

The rebel army, having occupied the royal palace, believed without doubt that their era was now beginning.

Other nations who heard the news also naturally expected things to unfold that way.

“About that… the Third Prince Faction has been annihilated.”

…Until they heard the unimaginable outcome that followed.

“What…? No, how? Didn’t you just say they were victorious?”

“According to reports, they did capture the capital and occupy the royal palace, but the moment they completely took over the palace interior, the entire palace collapsed along with the cliff it stood on.”

The cardinals murmured in bewilderment at the messenger’s explanation.

“Burning the palace would be one thing, but the entire cliff…? It’s not like they had a dragon—how could they possibly bring down such a massive cliff?”

“It might be some royal family secret. Perhaps the very reason they built the palace on a cliff in the first place was to prepare a trap for situations like this…”

“So it was the royalist faction’s doing?”

“Isn’t that obvious? Who else could it be? Surely not a natural disaster?”

The inference was that the cornered royalist faction had utilized some secret trap installed during the palace’s construction to bring down the cliff.

If the royalist faction had possessed a superhuman like Haschal or a weapon capable of destroying a cliff single-handedly, they wouldn’t have lost in the first place. For the cardinals, the secret royal trap theory was the most plausible explanation.

“…No. Though the truth is unclear, the nobles who requested asylum testified that the incident had nothing to do with them.”

However, there’s often a huge gap between “plausible explanations” and reality.

“In fact, many royalists also perished in the collapse while retreating…”

The messenger refuted the cardinals’ inference based on the testimony of the asylum-seeking royalists, and continued with more detailed reports to support this.

“That can be investigated later… so what happened to the Third Prince Faction? Surely they didn’t put all their personnel in the palace.”

“Certainly… while the damage must have been significant, it’s hard to imagine that alone would completely annihilate the entire faction.”

“About that…”

The messenger glanced down at the report he was holding, his face suggesting he found the following content hard to believe himself, and continued hesitantly.

“The main force deployed to occupy the palace was completely wiped out. Until then, the command center itself was safe… but undead monsters suddenly appeared behind them and attacked the confused command center, completely annihilating it.”

“Undead monsters…?”

The cardinals’ expressions became even more peculiarly distorted.

Their faces showed disbelief rather than surprise. They were reacting to the sudden mention of monsters as if it came out of nowhere.

“Come to think of it… didn’t the Third Prince Faction gain the upper hand because the royal army suffered heavy casualties from undead monster attacks?”

“So they rose by monsters and fell by monsters. What irony.”

“No, what blasphemous talk is that! Irony? When monsters harm people, it should properly be called a tragedy!”

“That’s not what I meant…”

The final fate of the Third Prince Faction was polarizing even among the cardinals.

While it was truly despicable that they had seized the opportunity when the royal army was weakened from fighting monsters, it was difficult to criticize them since they had ultimately been destroyed.

Moreover, since the decisive blow came from undead monsters, they couldn’t even suggest it was deserved retribution or divine punishment.

“…Panam seems to have unusually frequent monster appearances.”

“Indeed… while monster appearances have increased significantly recently, even considering that, this frequency seems abnormal.”

Perhaps for this reason, the cardinals stopped discussing the Third Prince Faction’s demise and naturally shifted the topic to monster trends.

“Isn’t their behavior peculiar too? How they remained quiet until forming such a large group, and how they attacked the army instead of civilian houses…”

“And they scattered and disappeared right after annihilating the Third Prince Faction? That’s completely different from typical monster behavior.”

“…Are you suggesting someone is behind this?”

The behavior pattern of the undead monsters involved in Panam’s civil war had more than a few suspicious aspects from the cardinals’ perspective.

This meant that these monsters might not have been acting on their own instincts, but perhaps moving under someone’s control.

“That might be the case. In the past, I would have dismissed it as speculation, but things are different now. There are at least two beings capable of such feats, aren’t there?”

Someone who could control thousands of undead monsters and use them as subordinates.

Two years ago, this might have been unthinkable, but now the cardinals knew it was possible and were aware of the identity of those with such power.

The demigod of death whom the Goddess of the New Star and Dawn, Lady Median, had warned them about: the Undead Duke, Aurelius Garmerlic Pendragon.

Though somewhat different from undead monsters, there was also the apostle of the old gods who had invaded the Holy State with an army of the dead raised through necromancy: Peirus Haransior.

Either of them could have controlled over a thousand dead beings according to their will, driving Panam’s civil war to end in mutual destruction without a victor.

“…Are you suggesting that apostate Peirus might be in Panam?”

“Might have been, we should say. If his goal was to drive Panam to mutual destruction, there’s no reason for him to remain now that he’s achieved it.”

“Was it even him directly? It could have been the work of other apostles he’s gathered.”

The cardinals exchanged various opinions with increasingly serious expressions.

From the Holy State’s perspective, anything related to the apostate Peirus was a matter of utmost importance, like touching their reverse scale.

It might not have been Peirus’s doing at all, and even if it was, there was no guarantee he was still in Panam…

“Either way, I think it’s worth investigating. Do you all agree?”

“I agree.” “Yes.” “No objection.”

…Even so, this wasn’t something they could simply overlook or dismiss.

The cardinals of the Holy State unanimously agreed to the proposal to infiltrate Panam with elite intelligence agents to investigate the detailed circumstances and track the culprit’s movements.

—-

“Things have worked out very well. I can’t thank Garmerlic enough.”

In an ancient ruin that remained intact despite thousands of years passing, within an altar-like facility located at the lowest level, Peirus looked at three glass tubes before him with a satisfied smile.

These cylindrical glass tubes were large enough to fit two people with room to spare.

Dozens of runic inscriptions and complex mana circuits were engraved on the surface and at both ends of the tubes, and the insides were filled with a bright red liquid, making them opaque.

– Groooooan…

The red liquid bubbled with ghostly face-like droplets, emitting wailing sounds as thousands of spirits—souls of those sacrificed in Panam’s civil war—dissolved into it.

Thump, thump, thump.

The hearts of the Valkyries, which had been submerged in the blood of the dead and stopped for thousands of years, began to beat again as they absorbed the blood.