Volume 4, Chapter 55 – Unfulfilled Desires and Hysteria

Time passed, second by second.

Every explosion in the plaza made Prince Schain’s heart leap. He prayed that he wouldn’t be spotted by the First Imperial Guard.

Out of fear, he didn’t even dare to breathe too heavily. The roars and screams were not far away, yet he felt the world was so quiet he could hear the pulsing of blood rushing to his face. He couldn’t tell if the liquid sticking to his skin was rain or sweat.

Then, he cautiously raised his head, staring at the battlements just a few meters above him, watching the distance close little by little. He was sure he had never been so afraid in his entire life. The Holy Tree was within reach, and the city wall was the final barrier. If he was stopped here, all his efforts would be in vain. But if no one stopped him, then the path ahead would be clear. He could even declare that he had already won.

It was for this reason that he began to fear a figure suddenly appearing on the battlements above. He had seen neither Erin Slate nor that silver-haired human woman on his way here. He couldn’t help but wonder if those bitches were secretly hiding behind the battlements, waiting for him. If he took one more step, would their detestable faces pop out?

The more he thought about this, the more sweat beaded on his body. His heart was so agitated it felt like it would jump out of his chest. Not only that, but his legs grew weak, his body became incredibly stiff, and even his lips turned pale. He stared at the battlements with trembling eyes, praying that Erin Slate’s damned face would not appear.

At this moment, he was like a fanatical believer. He made a wish in his heart, hoping that the Elf God could hear his plea and make all those damned people go away. If there was no one behind these battlements, then after he became king, he would willingly turn all of Silvar into a theocracy like the Milcandis Holy Kingdom, regarding the Elf God as the greatest deity on the continent, and even erect his statue in the audience chamber to praise his favor today.

These few meters felt as long as several kilometers. Prince Schain felt as if a full hour had passed before he reached the top of the wall. The moment his eyes cleared the battlements, he looked left and right. The top of the wall was empty. No one was hiding here.

Joy almost instantly flooded his face. He was sure that the Elf God had heard his prayer and had bestowed a miracle upon him. Those fools Erin Slate and the Prime Minister hadn’t even thought to set a guard here! Like a man who had escaped death, he ignored the possibility of being exposed, grabbed the battlement, and, with a heave of his arms, pulled himself onto the wall. Soaked to the skin as if he had just been pulled from the sea, he sat on the wall, panting heavily.

“Thank you, Lord Elf God… thank you, thank you!!”

Heartfelt gratitude poured out of him, but he did not waste any more time. He wiped the sweat from his face and quickly stood up, using [Flight] to rush at full speed towards the golden giant tree that soared into the clouds.

His men couldn’t hold out for too long. These people would be his confidants to consolidate his power after he took the throne; he couldn’t let them suffer too many losses. Besides, among them was his most trusted subordinate, Herian, who was like a brother to him. Even for their sake, he had to hurry to the Holy Tree.

That being said, the tension in his heart was rapidly dissipating. The fairyland-like scenery around the Holy Tree, with its blooming flowers, filled him with immense joy. There were no obstructions on this flat terrain; he could see with his own eyes that there was no ambush. Just as he had imagined, because few were qualified to walk before the Holy Tree, there were no guards here at all.

The heavy burden on his shoulders vanished without a trace. An irrepressible excitement and ecstasy had long since appeared on his face.

Through the golden giant tree, he could almost see himself obtaining the blessing and returning in glory. At that time, the First Imperial Guard would submit to him. Dofilia’s expression would surely be a sight to behold, wouldn’t it?

The thing that had belonged to her being taken away, a matter of course suddenly becoming a distant hope, just like when his own father had suddenly passed the throne that should have been his to Yelido. Now, he would return the pain he had experienced in the past to Yelido’s daughter, and he would return it tenfold, a hundredfold! Not only would he take the throne of Yelido’s family, but he would also take his consorts for his own. Even the two princesses would become his playthings!

At that time, he would definitely bring Yelido’s beloved Veronica to his grave, so he could have a good look at his wife’s miserable state. What a wonderful sight that would be!

Hundreds of years of painstaking effort, all for this moment. It had come so suddenly, and so delightfully!

Imagining the future, he couldn’t control his laughter. He flew to the front of the Holy Tree and landed. Gazing at the giant roots that were taller than a man, his heart surged with the thrill of vengeance. The pleasure and madness flooding his brain made his expression as ferocious as a madman’s.

Oh, Elf God, Elf God, you have treated me well. I will never be indebted to you in the future!

As a royal, he knew how to enter the Holy Tree. He familiarly placed his hand on its root and offered the most sincere prayer to the Elf God in his heart. He was sure that this was the most devout he had ever been in his entire life. The Elf God was surely watching him in the dark, watching Its most devout believer.

However.

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“What’s going on?”

Like missing a step on a staircase, his heart skipped a beat.

He was still standing outside the Holy Tree. A full minute had passed since he had placed his hand on the root. By now, he should have already entered.

“This is impossible.”

Muttering to himself, anxiety began to burn in his heart like a flame. He started to think that he hadn’t touched the right place, so he took a few more steps and prayed in a different spot. But after half a minute, he still had not been summoned.

His heart tightened violently. Unease and panic spread through his chest like a plague.

If he couldn’t enter the Holy Tree, he couldn’t get the blessing, and the coup would be impossible to succeed. He had never thought about what to do if he couldn’t enter. In the hundreds of years of his life, nothing like this had ever happened with the tree.

His mind went blank. He didn’t know what to do next. He, Aldrich, had contingency plans for many things. If Plan A failed, he could still implement Plan B, Plan C. But only on the matter of entering the Holy Tree had he made no preparations. In his mind, entering it was a matter of course, just as the sun would always rise the next day. No one would doubt that daylight would not come.

In the back of his mind, a possibility emerged.

The news that no one could enter the Holy Tree might not have been a reason for Dofilia to seal it, but the actual truth.

“What a joke!” he roared, his face flushed. Like a madman, he kicked the root of the tree with all his might, but the only feedback was a sharp pain in his foot.

Then he thought that perhaps he wasn’t being forceful enough. If he had enough authority, he might be able to gain the tree’s recognition. Perhaps it wanted to see his strength. So he began to chant spells, using all sorts of magic, even taking out a Fifth-Rank magic crystal and smashing it on the tree. But after a series of explosions, the surrounding flowerbeds were scorched, but the root of the tree was not damaged in the slightest. There wasn’t even a scorched mark.

It still shone with a dazzling, brilliant light.

“Dammit, dammit, dammit! Open up for me!!!”

Like a child who had lost his toy, Prince Schain tried all sorts of things but was helpless. His eyes were bloodshot. He even disregarded his image and bit the root with his teeth. But even when he bit so hard that blood filled his mouth and his teeth came loose, the tree did not move an inch.

“Bastard!!!”

He roared, the fear of death making him unwilling to give up. He suddenly remembered that he still had his sword. He spat out the mixture of teeth and blood in his mouth, raised his sword, and hacked at the root.

But with a clang of metal, he felt his hand go numb. Then, a strange force surged from behind him. His body felt light, and his head was thrown forward uncontrollably. Then, the pain of his chest hitting the hard root made his breath catch. He wanted to scream, but because the air in his lungs had been squeezed out, he could only open his mouth with a ferocious expression, unable to make a sound. The suffocation and impact made his head ring.

He had been ambushed.

His dull brain realized this. He immediately jolted and turned around in a panic. And then, he saw a figure that made his blood run cold.

Not just one, but several.

His gaze first fell on the woman who had just kicked him in the back. A vicious woman with emerald green hair tied into twin tails, possessing the elegance of a demon lord.

In the past, he would have only found this woman with her impressive figure to be breathtaking. But now, this figure only brought him fear, like a will o’ wisp floating over a grave, a shadow moving in a castle’s oil painting.

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As if grasping at a lifeline, he grabbed the root of the tree beside him and, while backing away, looked at the others behind Erin Slate.

—A black-haired, red-eyed elf, and some people he found familiar but could not name, such as a young woman in a maid’s uniform with her short golden hair tied in a side ponytail, and a mature woman in the uniform of an Imperial Guard officer with long golden hair.

However, when his gaze swept to the person at the very end of the line, the terror and despair in his eyes suddenly turned to joy. As if he hadn’t seen Erin Slate, he shouted maniacally.

“Loca! Godley! Help me! We can kill them if we work together! As long as they’re dead, we can still succeed!”

Just as he said, the people at the end of the line were the red-haired Loca and the middle-aged, slender Godley.

In response to his invitation, Godley was expressionless, while Loca frowned with a look of displeasure. In that instant, he felt a chill. He inexplicably felt that she seemed to want to get rid of him.

How could this be? Aren’t they my people?!

“Loca! Godley! Are you deaf?! If I die, you won’t have it easy either! Don’t just stand there!”

“You have no right to speak here, Diego.”

“Don’t be so impudent in front of Lord Thanatos, you pig.”

Godley and Loca silenced him one after another. Then, “Godley” made a move that made Prince Schain’s breath catch. He saw him wipe his right hand across his left cheek, and his face was peeled off. And under the human-faced mask was a face he was extremely familiar with. This was a man from the military, and the one who had attended the last meeting in Godley’s place before he had gone into his feigned death.

He stared blankly at this man disguised as Godley, unable to utter a single word for a long time. Then, he suddenly let out a sound that was either a cry or a laugh. His shoulders twitched, and his face, filled with madness and hysteria, looked at Fia, who was expressionless, her magnificent, ruby-like eyes showing no emotion.

Just like the Dofilia of the past, cold, majestic, and forever impossible to guess what she was thinking.

“Heh… heheh… so you were playing me from the very beginning? From the false intelligence about the memory loss being passed to my spy, to pretending to leave the Royal Castle, all of this was something you made up?”

Prince Schain leaned against the root of the tree, holding his sword with one hand. Although he was a grown man, in front of them, he looked like a short, frail old man. He pointed the tip of his sword at Dofilia, his features twisted at a terrifying angle, tears streaming down his wrinkled face.

“Dofilia, oh Dofilia, you are so vicious! What good does it do you to play me to this extent! Why didn’t you just kill me earlier!”

“You have no place to speak here!”

Before he could even see what had happened, he felt his legs give way. His forehead was forcibly pressed to the ground, and his entire body was forced to kowtow before Fia. But even as he was being pushed into the mud by Erin Slate, he still tried to raise his bloodshot eyes, his voice squeezed from between his teeth as if from hell.

“I won’t let you go!”

“Fool. To think that Lord Thanatos had no way of returning to the capital. Have you ever heard of teleportation magic?”

First, she snorted at him. Then, Loca, who had a figure similar to Estelle’s and red hair, stepped forward and bowed her head to Fia.

Unlike when she had faced him and her father, there was not a trace of arrogance in her now. Her eyes were only filled with deep respect and submission, and a hint of admiration.

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“Lord Thanatos, the crystal has already recorded his crimes. We can kill him at any time—please allow me to do it, so as not to dirty your hands.”

Hearing her voice, he struggled even more.

“Loca! Your father and I have treated you well! You—!”

“Shut up, you pig,” she retorted sharply, her eyebrows raised, her eyes filled with nothing but disgust and revulsion.

“From the moment Reinhardt threw me out of the house because of the Darkborn Disease, our father-daughter relationship was severed by him. He said he was fostering me in the Cold Moon Alliance, but do I not understand what he was thinking? He was afraid that my disease would cause him trouble, that people would say his family was involved with the Darkborn. If not for Lord Thanatos taking me in, I would have died long ago in the ever-chaotic Cold Moon Alliance. No, I would have died at the hands of that beast-kin family. And then, after discovering that I still had some use, he came to apologize. How shameless!”

“But what good does it do you to help Dofilia! Your father participated in the rebellion; you won’t have it easy either!”

“Father?” Loca sneered. “You overestimate his importance. When he abandoned me, if he had shown even a shred of an intention to visit me, I would not have treated him as an outsider. But what was the result?”

As she spoke, she wrapped her arms gently around Fia’s neck with an intoxicated expression, her movements as gentle as if she were treating a lover.

“The old Loca is already dead. It was Lord Thanatos who gave me a new life. Lord Thanatos is my parent. Although I will lose my identity as Loca after this, Lord Thanatos has already arranged for me to go behind the scenes. Put away your boring attempts to sow discord. Don’t forget that it was Lord Thanatos’s mercy that has let you live to this day.”

“You—urgh!”

Without giving him a chance to speak, Erin Slate’s boot pressed down hard, sinking half of his head into the earth. And Loca, as if sensing Erin’s unfriendly gaze, shuddered and quickly let go of Fia, standing properly.

Erin’s gaze returned from Loca. She respectfully requested of Fia.

“Lord Thanatos, do you wish to kill him? If so, I would like to boldly ask that you leave him to me. I have some personal scores to settle with him. He is not worth your time. In the end, you didn’t need to show up personally. Such a small matter can be left to me.”

In response to her request, Fia looked up at the Holy Tree towering into the clouds, then nodded lightly with an expressionless face.

“Since the matter is already over, do what needs to be done. As you like.”

Receiving Fia’s approval, a look of joy immediately appeared on Erin’s elegant face. She bent her impressive body and bowed deeply.

“Thank you, Lord Thanatos.”

“Colita, we’re going back. Loca, Renee, and you, Amo, you will follow Erin Slate’s arrangements—don’t forget to retrieve the fragments of the puppets controlled by Laplace’s Demon before the Imperial Guard discovers them.”

“Yes, Lord Thanatos.”

Although Erin thought that if the Imperial Guard were so lax that they couldn’t even discover Prince Schain’s arrival, they deserved to die, Fia felt that it was better to avoid casualties if possible. Since their side had grasped the opponent’s movements in advance, they should naturally minimize casualties as much as possible. Therefore, the guards he had killed along the way were almost all puppets in guard armor, temporarily created and controlled by Laplace’s Demon. These puppets had almost no combat power, which was why he had felt all along that the guards had no resistance.

Before leaving, Fia glanced at Erin Slate again.

“And, Erin Slate, come back early.”

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“As you command.”

Without any further delay, Fia, without even looking at Prince Schain, walked down the slope accompanied by Colita. And the remaining three, Loca, Renee, and Amo, after saluting Erin under her cold gaze, dispersed in different directions.

Soon, only Erin Slate and the prince, who could only earn a bone-cracking pain for his struggles, were left under the Holy Tree.

Erin kicked him in the waist without any mercy. His entire body was sent flying, and he landed on his back, facing the sky. At this moment, his face was already covered in blood and mud. Snot, tears, and saliva mixed together. His filthy clothes had no trace of a prince’s image.

At this moment, the intense pain and the threat of death had made him forget what dignity was. Taking advantage of the fact that only Erin was here, he curled up and got up, pleading with a trembling voice.

“E-Erin Slate… it’s just us here. S-spare me. I’ll give you all my assets. I promise never to appear before you again—”

As if she had heard something funny, Erin snorted.

“Spare you? Have you misunderstood something? For the sake of you having put on a good show with Lord Thanatos, I’ll let you die knowing.”

As if to deepen his fear, she put away her longsword and instead took out a sharp rapier from her storage item. While gently stroking the blade with her delicate fingers that unbefitting a warrior, she spoke in the manner of a superior, deliberately showing him the sharpness of the rapier.

“Loca is one of us. Godley died in prison the day you feigned death. His begging for mercy was no different from yours now. Yelido’s death was a rumor I spread, taking advantage of the time difference for the news to reach the south. The letter with your brother Gwyn’s seal was also a forged document. It’s not difficult to steal a seal, copy it, and put it back.”

“We could indeed have killed you much earlier. But there are too many naive fools like you and Godley. To deal with you one by one is troublesome and would make Yelido suspicious. It’s better to give you hope and let you all gather together to be wiped out in one go. If you hadn’t rebelled, I would have had a headache.”

“Originally, you would not have been able to reach the Holy Tree. The First Imperial Guard would have been your burial ground. But I didn’t expect that Lord Thanatos would become even stronger after losing her memory. Not to mention that you can’t even enter the Holy Tree. Even if you had gotten its blessing, you would be far from being a match for even a single hair of Lord Thanatos. You should be grateful for your foolishness. This good show you’ve put on—this stupid look of unfulfilled desire has dissipated much of my anger. From overjoyed to at a loss, and from at a loss to hysterical, how does it feel to fall from heaven to hell, Diego?”

“You…”

Prince Schain was speechless for a moment. He knew he had been played from the very beginning, but he hadn’t expected to be ridiculed to this extent by a servant of the royal family. He wanted to curse and even beat her, but the threat of death was hanging over his head. He could only suppress his anger, his whole body trembling, and grovel on the ground, hoping she would spare him.

“Spare me… Erin Slate… I have countless treasures! I’ll give them all to you, all of them!!”

Unfortunately, Erin had no intention of listening. She flicked the rapier in her hand, took a step with her long, shapely legs, and her golden eyes, which were glancing at him, were filled with disgust and hatred.

“I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time, Diego. In this world, only Lord Thanatos can look at me. What are you? The mere sound of your names makes me feel disgusted—starting with these eyes, I will, for Lord Thanatos, exterminate all you scum.”

Although she had the delicate features of an elf, at this moment, she was like a demon from hell. Her black gauze dress and horn ornaments only emphasized the terrifying atmosphere.

“Offer your thanks to Lord Thanatos. She told me to come back early, so you will suffer less.”

Seeing the approaching Erin Slate, the last bit of hope in his heart was extinguished. He understood that she would not let him go. The fear of death spread through his chest, and his body moved subconsciously, crawling away from her on all fours.

“Y-you can’t do this! I am a royal! I am a royal!! As the Captain of the Imperial Guard, you can’t—aaaaaaaaahhhh!!!”

With the sound of the rapier plunging into flesh, Prince Schain and his faction came to an end in the dark night.