The emperor who waited 300 years in one place for a woman who left, forgetting even death.
Leticia met the unfocused purple eyes of Herta and whispered his name again quietly. In ‘her’ voice.
“Herta. Have you been waiting long?”
She pitied this man.
Even though he was the culprit who had made Basilinte barren for the past 300 years.
Just as ‘she’ had said, one couldn’t really blame a child who had only grown physically.
Leticia hesitated before reaching out her hand. His cheek, still warm as if alive, touched her hand.
She gently stroked his hair and cheek, just like ‘she’ had done in Herta’s memories.
Finally, she whispered the words he had been waiting to hear for so long.
“I’m here.”
She could have used magic to destroy the form before her.
But instead, Leticia spoke, imitating ‘her’ voice.
“I’ve come back to you.”
At that moment, his hair beneath her fingertips began to scatter into ash. Herta’s form crumbled into dust.
She quietly watched it happen.
Soon, ‘Herta’ completely disappeared, leaving only ashes on the floor.
It was an anticlimactic end for such a great founding ancestor.
With just her as the sole witness, 300 years of waiting had ended like this.
In that emptiness, Leticia wondered if she should have told him she loved him in ‘her’ voice.
As she stood there, contemplating the subtle bitterness, she heard something.
“-, -!”
A faint voice came from somewhere. It sounded like shouting.
Leticia looked around, then bent down and put her ear to the floor.
There seemed to be an empty space below, from which sounds continued to echo.
Leticia tilted her head curiously, then used her magic to make a small hole in the floor.
Before she could peer through the hole into the dark basement, a familiar scream hit her ears.
“Kyaaaaaaah! Your Highness! Help me! Your Highness!”
“…Aina?”
Why on earth was Aina here?
With a bewildered expression, Leticia broke through the floor and jumped down into the basement.
Just in case, she absorbed the moisture in the room and created a few defensive water droplets floating around her.
“Your Highness!”
Aina, terrified as if she’d seen a ghost, ran to Leticia and crashed into her with a thud. Not a soft ‘poof’ but a hard ‘thud’.
The embrace, which was not romantic at all, was essentially a body tackle that knocked Leticia backward.
“Oof!”
She ended up sitting down hard on the basement floor.
Aina’s face was a mess of tears.
Leticia sighed and grabbed Aina’s shoulders.
“Aina, what’s wrong?”
Aina’s shoulders trembled beneath her grip.
Leticia looked around the basement.
Because she had slightly broken the floor above to come down, some light leaked into the basement through that hole.
Thanks to this, she could clearly see the boxes filling the basement.
The neatly stacked boxes were large enough to easily fit a person.
And as if people frequently came in and out, there was no dust anywhere, and most importantly, there was a door. A well-oiled door without a hint of rust.
“Let’s leave, Your Highness. L-let’s get out of here quickly.”
Except for the darkness, it looked like an ordinary warehouse.
However, Aina trembled in fear, and finally, Leticia asked her.
“Do you know where we are?”
“I’ll tell you after we get out, after we get out.”
“Aina. How can I leave when I don’t even know where-“
“It’s the Imperial burial ground! The d*mn Herta Imperial burial ground!”
Leticia fell silent, remembering that Aina’s father had been the caretaker of the Imperial burial ground.
He had managed the burial ground as a collateral royal family member before being killed by the Emperor’s hand.
Aina seemed to regain her senses after shouting and fumbled to wipe her messy face with her sleeve.
“I’m sorry, Your Highness. But I’d like to get out of here as soon as possible. As quickly as possible.”
“Alright. Let’s leave quickly, just as you say. Aina, which way should we go? Can you walk? Should I carry you?”
Without waiting for an answer, Leticia promptly picked up the staggering Aina. The considerable height difference made it not too difficult.
At first, Aina mumbled that she was fine, but soon hung her head and pointed to the door.
“Just open the door and go out. Straight ahead, until you reach a fork in the path.”
As Aina said, a corridor extended beyond the door. Just leaving that warehouse-like place seemed to have calmed Aina considerably.
“…I think you can put me down now, Your Highness.”
“No. If we encounter someone else, this position makes it easier to defend.”
“We won’t encounter anyone. Only blind servants and the royal family members who manage it are allowed in the Imperial burial ground.”
Aina finally got down from Leticia’s back and walked briskly ahead, guiding the way.
After passing the first fork, several more appeared, but there was no hesitation in Aina’s steps.
Leticia followed without asking anything, and after a long silence, Aina finally spoke again.
“That place back there was Herta’s coffin.”
“Not anymore. Since Herta has disappeared.”
“…Has the curse been broken?”
“Yes.”
Aina’s mind processed Leticia’s words very slowly.
She thought of all those who had been sacrificed countless times to maintain that ‘curse’ and inadvertently smiled.
A sense of relief that such things would no longer happen slowly welled up inside her.
“How- no, never mind. There must be some magical thing I don’t understand anyway. I’d prefer to live without knowing things others don’t know. But… it wasn’t impossible after all. That.”
Aina muttered emptily several times that she had thought it would be impossible.
And finally, at the end, she opened up about the underground storage beneath Herta’s coffin.
“That basement is where they keep the coffins of royal family members who can’t enter the Imperial burial ground. The family of the master I served is also there.”
Not all royal family members can claim a place in the Imperial burial ground. The coffins of so-called ‘lower-ranked’ royals all end up in the basement.
“They collect and stack them all in the basement? All of them?”
Leticia refrained from adding “like objects” out of consideration for Aina, but Aina replied nonchalantly.
“Yes. Like objects, not as noble royal bodies. They’ve gathered the blood of the first Herta that flows in the royal family members’ bodies and kept it all in one place. In case the curse might fade. But if the curse has disappeared as you say, Your Highness, it doesn’t matter anymore.”
Aina sneered with evident amusement at that fact.
The more Leticia listened to her words, the less she understood.
“Why would they go that far?”
Leticia’s mumbled question, almost to herself, was her biggest doubt at the moment.
The Herta Imperial family had been maintaining the curse too systematically. Even going so far as to collect the bodies of royal family members.
She wondered if they wanted Basilinte’s power to weaken, but the Imperial family didn’t seem particularly interested in Basilinte.
The arrogant Emperor that Leticia had seen in the past seemed like someone who would consider even showing that much interest in Basilinte an insult.
“Why did they go that far? Actually, I was planning to tell you about that after the incident at the Rocky Mountain was over.”
As if answering her question, Aina spoke. Saying that she needed to keep at least one final card in hand, just in case.
“I didn’t expect it to end so strangely, but well, since it’s over now…”
“….”
“If one side is artificially made barren, then one side is artificially made prosperous.”
The most prosperous land on the continent was the Empire.
As if blessed by the gods, it boasted unparalleled productivity compared to other countries, no matter what was planted, and natural disasters never occurred-
Suddenly, Leticia recalled the drought she had experienced in her childhood.
And where she had experienced that drought.
“Can the Emperor choose which land becomes barren? Even if it’s not the Grand Duchy?”