Chapter 11

“……Miss. Are you all right?”

“Of course. Now then, we’ve chosen the clothes, so shall we head to the jeweler?”

“Yes!”

Ellen quickly wiped the emotion from her face at Hess’s worried look. Then she set off with Hess toward the jeweler.

Hess couldn’t contain her amazement there either.

“I never knew in my entire life that there were so many kinds of jewels.”

“Yes. That place is rather large.”

Ellen smiled quietly watching Hess fuss and exclaim. It was a massive jeweler with five chain locations across the Empire, but in truth it stirred little feeling in Ellen.

Leonid had piled jewels on her in more than enough abundance in her past life. So there was little that could surprise her anymore.

There, Ellen purchased a ruby necklace and a sapphire ring to wear at the debutante.

These jewels were absolutely necessary for her. Without them, she wouldn’t even be able to set foot in the Huan household. She wouldn’t be able to see so much as the Countess’s shadow, let alone meet her.

A simple introduction from Madam Bori alone would never be enough to make a woman of her standing agree to meet a shabby count’s daughter she had never laid eyes on. She would at least need to offer the jewels before the Countess would even consider seeing her once.

“That’s right. They said the setting would be done in four days too. Their work really is exceptional.”

“Indeed.”

Back at the lodgings, she leaned her tired body against the sofa while Hess drew water for the bath. A problem she hadn’t anticipated came to mind.

“Surely he won’t be attending the ball.”

Even without the book Deriel had given her, Leonid’s nature was widely known.

The cursed prince almost never made himself visible at official public events. Eliza En Dri, Leonid’s birth mother, would never have allowed it.

Eliza was doing everything in her power to place her firstborn son, Kayul Del Raphae, on the throne. So she wanted to keep Leonid’s existence buried as much as possible.

“For any reason, there’s no chance he would attend.”

Perhaps it was because she had run into him so unexpectedly. The thought that Leonid might appear kept drifting into her mind.

“No. That’s getting too far ahead of myself.”

What kind of treatment did he receive in the imperial palace. There was no way he would show up at a place where the entire imperial family gathered.

Ellen shook her head as she watched Hess emerge from the bathroom.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

“I won’t be much of a match for much longer. Your Highness.”

“You flatter me.”

“Ha ha, you know better than anyone that I’m not someone who says things I don’t mean.”

Leonid silently withdrew his sword. Knowing that was his way of agreeing, Philos Kazz’s eyes gleamed with quiet light.

“But. You seem a little different today. You’ve never been late before, and yet today you were.”

Prince Leonid considered coming here important. Given his circumstances in the imperial palace, that was more than understandable.

Of course, he too held his appointments with Prince Leonid in the highest regard. Even if the prince was condemned as a cursed being, to him he held a value that could not be measured in coin.

That was because of an ability unique to Leonid alone. No one else could replace that prince.

Philos bowed respectfully and slid his sword into its scabbard.

“That is because His Highness stopped to help someone on the way here.”

“Help someone? His Highness stepped in for another person?”

“Yes, I didn’t witness it directly myself.”

Philos asked with curious eyes at the words of Martin Joan, Leonid’s escort knight.

“Your Highness, just who could it be that……”

“It seems you have enough leisure to let your attention wander during a sparring match, Sir Philos.”

“That could hardly be the case.”

Philos gave a light shake of his head and passed his scabbard to his knight commander, then held out both arms.

The knight commander fitted Philos’s arms with smooth bracelet-shaped magic tools that amplified his power.

“When it is someone who takes the time to come here.”

Philos stretched his hand toward the sky and a blue magic circle formed in the air.

Leonid shook his head at the knight commander who approached him with a magic tool.

“I’m fine.”

“However, without this it would be difficult for you to use your power.”

“No.”

Leonid gave a light snap of his fingers. An emerald ring, the same as Philos’s, bloomed from his fingertips.

“Your Highness, you’ve succeeded in controlling your power without a magic tool!”

Philos waved his knight commander away and broke into a wide laugh.

“Ha ha, my eye is accurate as ever. Your Highness is the one who will revive the Empire’s essence that had been severed.”

The Empire’s essence. That was the term for the power of Atun Run Raphae, the founder of the Cavern Empire.

“The power of that great founder of Cavern is the very foundation of the Empire! If Your Highness can revive that sacred ability……”

“That’s not what it is.”

Before the words were even finished, a blue energy gathered at Leonid’s fingertips. Without hesitation, he unleashed it toward Philos.

“Sacred power, you say.”

The emerald energy that spread before him in an instant made Philos amplify the power of his magic tool and form a barrier. A flash of light burst in the air as the two forces collided and tangled together.

Philos watched the powers cancel each other out and disappear, then noticed the prince had appeared directly in front of him in an instant and leapt back.

“Isn’t it the opposite.”

“……You knew?”

At his question, Leonid tapped the magic tool fastened to Philos’s arm. His power flowed through the bracelet and seeped into Philos.

“Ngh.”

Philos gritted his teeth and endured the power coursing through his body. A moment later, the nightmarish force slowly faded.

He had not yet properly transmitted it, and yet Leonid had wielded the power of the holy Emperor Atun Run Raphae, however faintly.

“H, how did you……”

Leonid curved one corner of his mouth watching Philos’s flustered expression. He gave Philos a light pat on the shoulder and returned to where he had been standing.

“Your Highness. Then, does that mean you knew from the beginning?”

“I doubt there’s time enough right now to explain that.”

“Hmm.”

It changed nothing whether the prince knew. No, if anything, knowing made things more convenient.

As Prince Leonid had said, the power of the holy Emperor Atun Run Raphae, founder of Cavern, was not sacred in the way the world believed. How could a power that healed people have ended a hundred years of blood-soaked war and built an empire?

“You are quite right. There is still a long way to go before mastering the power the holy Emperor used.”

Philos was the Empire’s sole mage, but his magical ability was weak, and he could barely imitate it even with magic tools. That was not enough. He had an enormously ambitious plan.

So he had concealed his own power and sought a different path. Philos looked at the path he had found and spread a magic circle.

“Your Highness’s learning has only just moved past the beginning stage.”

“Is that so.”

“Yes. Knowing how to wield magical power alone is not enough. But your progress is swift, so within a few years you should be able to accept the power.”

“Accept the power.”

“Yes, that’s right. The very power the holy Emperor used.”

“That is my choice to make.”

“Of course.”

Philos’s eyes shone with a peculiar light.

If things went as he wished, Prince Leonid would bring a tremendous storm of blood upon the Empire. No, he would make certain of it.

The circumstances surrounding Leonid would force that choice upon him. Even if the end of it meant Leonid’s own ruin.

‘If by any chance the prince were to succumb to the power and run out of control, only a wretched end would await.’

Even if that end was not ruin, the power itself was extraordinarily dangerous.

Even Atun, the founding Emperor, had ultimately lost himself to that power.

The power of the holy Emperor Atun Run Raphae was called the Sacred Light. It was a name given because a brilliantly white light, like pure snow, swirled around the power. But Atun had called that power by a different name.

The White Demon.

The power the founding Emperor had used was dark magic.

The world believed the Emperor had vanished without a trace not long after establishing the Empire, but in truth he had simply become a madman consumed by the power, unable to control it.

Having lost his self and his ability to control the power, the mad Emperor was ultimately eliminated in secret.

He had been brought down by the founding meritorious retainers who could have easily dealt with him had he kept his sanity and simply controlled the power.

Afterward, the retainers who had succeeded in their revolt announced that the Emperor had disappeared. Atun came to be celebrated forever as the founding Emperor.

And the secret of the founding Emperor became an eternal secret known only to successive Emperors and a select few.

This was the future Philos Kazz dreamed of. The Kazz family, meritorious retainers who had helped found the Empire, had long gone without the recognition their contributions deserved.

The founding head of the family, who should have been treated on par with a grand duke like the other retainers, had been granted only the rank of marquis due to his lowborn origins, and had been discriminated against in the distribution of territories as well.

That had remained a deep, long-held grievance for the Kazz family.

‘But not anymore.’

A prince who possessed the same power as the founding Emperor.

The reason Philos was now teaching Leonid magic had one purpose alone, to lead him to accept dark magic.

To use that power to seize the Empire alongside Leonid and reclaim the glory the family had lost.

For the long-held wish of the Kazz family, Philos was capable of anything.