Chapter 89
By then, Revenant too seemed to sense something wrong with the shadow looming overhead. After lightly deflecting Sian’s sword swing that could have split her in two, Revenant briefly looked skyward and frowned for the first time.
In the black mass blocking the sun, a pair of red beast-like eyes emitted a bright light.
“Brita!”
Brita, who had retreated to the back, spread her wings wide and flapped them at Revenant’s sharp cry. Black energy surged in the sky as a massive droplet-like light rose.
“Spread your dragon’s wings!”
Revenant finally realized Sian had summoned her dragon and roughly pushed away Sian’s sword. Not a chance. Sian gritted her teeth and closely pursued Revenant trying to create distance.
KWAGWANG!
At that moment, the black dragon’s breath gathered in the sky poured down toward the palace like a catastrophe.
* * *
“…Of course, I could never match my young nephew in swordsmanship.”
The Marquis sneered openly. Hendrick glared at him with disbelief. But there was more that was hard to believe. His shoulder burned as if on fire.
“The stronger one is, the more they tend to let their guard down, trusting in their own power. There’s a big difference between you and me, nephew – you relied on your authority and abilities without making other preparations, while I, knowing my inadequacies, prepared thoroughly in advance.”
Hendrick easily succeeded in breaking through the soldiers’ melee to approach the Marquis. He swung his sword intending to cut down the Marquis, but Hendrick’s blade, imbued with Nathan’s magic, was helplessly blocked by the solid armor hidden beneath the Marquis’s collar.
The Marquis, instead of dodging Hendrick’s sword swing, took it with his whole body, and as if he had been waiting for this opening, struck down at Hendrick’s shoulder with a knife hidden in his sleeve.
The pain of having his shoulder pierced by the dagger grew clearer with each passing moment. Moreover, without adapting or subsiding at all, it gradually became an intense and vivid pain that enveloped his entire body.
In pain that made even breathing impossible, Hendrick glared at the Marquis while desperately gasping for air.
“My, you seem to be in great pain.”
The Marquis looked at Hendrick with a detestable frown.
“I imagine so. What’s embedded in your shoulder isn’t an ordinary dagger, but the same cursed weapon that attacked your younger brother.”
“…Uncle.”
A pierced shoulder shouldn’t have been fatal. Yet Hendrick panted for breath from pain as intense as if his heart had been pierced.
He might have been able to swing his sword, but his body couldn’t move a finger, as if it had been completely impaled by a spear.
“Throughout your brother’s reign, I always despised Red Dragon King Elena, but in the end, she provided me with such great help. Our Crown Prince is so clever, knowing everything. With his cold judgment and decisive action. He’d lack nothing as Emperor, so he must have known well. Whatever happened to the younger prince, I couldn’t let the Crown Prince live.”
The Marquis looked down at the collapsed Hendrick with cold eyes, chin raised.
“If you want to blame something, blame that cursed law of primogeniture.”
Then, without any intention of removing the dagger from Hendrick’s shoulder, he grabbed a spear from one of the nearby soldiers.
The white spear tip. Red energy flickered roughly like flames from the weapon made of Dragon King Elena’s bones. To think he’d be backstabbed by his uncle, not even Idelin’s master Carl.
Hendrick bared his teeth, more dumbfounded than afraid. The Marquis pressed his lips together and raised the spear high. His eyes looking down at Hendrick clearly held the killing intent.
THUD!
Though he couldn’t attack, he could barely move his body. Hendrick rolled with all his might to avoid the Marquis’s spear. However, before he could steady himself after rolling once, his vision went black and he staggered.
The Marquis ground his teeth in anger that Hendrick had dodged his spear despite his pierced shoulder. As he raised his angry eyebrows and was about to swing the spear a second time at the staggering Hendrick—
“Daniel.”
A solemn voice gripped the Marquis’s arm. Even Hendrick, gasping from pain that made his vision go black, barely regained his senses at the voice that reached his ears.
Was he dreaming? Was he already dead? All sorts of thoughts crossed his mind.
The voice he heard was one he had resigned himself to never hearing again.
CLANG!
The Marquis, who had been about to strike down Hendrick, dropped his spear and stumbled backward as if he’d seen a ghost.
“Bro… Brother…!”
Before the back door that the Marquis had secured and blocked after taking the Emperor, stood a man. His hair was white, and his cheeks were sunken without a trace of color, worn down by long illness.
“How… How…!”
Though not as terrified as the Marquis, Hendrick was equally bewildered. The Emperor, with his corpse-like complexion, stood improbably straight and raised his eyes toward Daniel.
The Emperor’s eyes, normally teal like Carl’s, were bright red. And their pupils were vertically elongated like a beast’s. Hendrick narrowed his eyes.
Was this truly Father?
Though it was unmistakably the Emperor who had long been bedridden, those red beast-like eyes full of ghostly resentment were infinitely similar to Dragon King Elena’s, not the Emperor’s.
But it was strange even if the Emperor had taken on Elena’s consciousness. Elena had already died in agony with ten pieces of bone carved from her body.
Moreover, when a dragon’s master took on their dragon’s consciousness, their eyes usually shone with pure golden magic, the color of magical energy itself, not the dragon’s eye color. Yet the Emperor before them had Elena’s eyes as clearly as if he had become Elena herself.
“You dare raise rebellion and attack my sons?”
The Emperor burst out in rage, his otherworldly red eyes flashing with killing intent.
“Heek!” The Marquis swallowed in terror at that sharp presence. But instead of kneeling and repenting, he rather grabbed the dropped spear again and pointed it at the Emperor.
“Brother, Brother…! I had no choice! Because of that cursed law of primogeniture, even though I too am a dragon master, I never even had a chance!”
With trembling hands, the Marquis seemed ready to stab even the Emperor.
“Greedy thing!”
The Emperor raised his hand with a hoarse voice. It was identical to the red energy flickering from the spear tip.
“Huk…!”
Like a magnet to iron, the spear in the Marquis’s hands trembled slightly and was drawn toward the Emperor’s outstretched hand. The Marquis bulged his eyes, swallowed, and tried to resist by bracing his legs, but it was not a force humans could oppose.
Hendrick too barely suppressed a scream that was about to escape by biting his lips as the pain enveloping his entire body sharpened. The dagger he hadn’t dared to pull out was slowly extracting itself, tearing through flesh.
“Kugh…!”
When the blood-spraying dagger had fully extracted, Hendrick finally let out the groan he had been holding back.
The unadaptable pain wrapped around his entire body once more. But the next moment, Hendrick realized breathing had become easier. Though blood poured from the wound the dagger had torn in his shoulder, that burning pain was all there was.
The pain from the cursed weapon made of Elena’s bones was gone. Hendrick clutched his shoulder with a bewildered face and looked at the Emperor.
In the Emperor’s hand, wielding Elena’s eyes, were all the weapons made from Elena’s bones that had been in the room. All of them – the installed daggers dripping with Hendrick’s blood and the dozen or so spears that the soldiers and Marquis had been holding.
“I will execute you here for the crimes of assassinating the Dragon King and treason.”
“What… What is this! Brother! I…”
The Marquis, having lost all his weapons and thus any power to resist, and caught in the act of attempting to murder the Crown Prince with no excuses left, screamed with his limbs trembling.
But there was no mercy left in the Emperor’s expression as he emanated a fierce glare.
The weapons in the Emperor’s hands rose into the air, each wrapped in magical energy the same color as his red eyes, as if possessing their own will.
