I Became the First Prince

How Will Spring Come Without Winter’s Passing? (1)

“Please, save me.”

The voice was so faint at first that I could not know who it was. I did tremble for a while, and then I found out in no time at all.

“Please take me out.”

His voice possessed a strange terror. He sounded urgent, as if he was being chased by something. I looked around, pretending not to hear anything. Knights and soldiers moved around me, but I couldn’t see anyone who paid particular notice to me: They were all tending to the corpses.

Only my own knights were looking at me, awaiting orders.

“Let’s go back,” I said. I then led my knights to the First Palace.

“You can hear me, right? Please take me out. Please. If you hear me, just answer me.”

‘Chookluk,’ I locked the door after I had walked into my room. And then I spoke.

“Anything, just get me out of here right now. Please.”

Even after I had spoken, he just repeated his pleas as he asked me to get him out.

“Please, get me out right away!” the guy shouted in extreme terror, and then suddenly fell silent. I waited for him to speak once more.

“Please…” I heard a voice that came so faint that I had to concentrate to catch it.

“Please take me out…”

As I listened to him cry like a terrified child, I became convinced.

“There is something in there.”

There was something in my true body, and it wasn’t the idiot Adrian.

It was an unidentified being that had awakened the sleeping sword to a limited extent, enthralled the little prince, and finally sucked him dry as a sacrifice.

“Tell me. Is there anyone else in there, other than you?”

The idiot didn’t answer me. That made me think that he was afraid of something eavesdropping in on us. It felt as if he was afraid that something would get angry if he spoke too loosely.

I became more confident in my assessment.

It was obvious that Adrian was terrified due to the fact that something had taken over my body, pretending to be Dragon Slayer.

“I need to know the situation so that I can help you,” I calmly said as I tried to comfort the ugly guy. Currently, my body treated me as if I was someone else. I couldn’t study the situation inside my body without using the idiot as an intermediary. However, I first had to calm him down if I were to figure out what was going on.

After soothing him for a long time, he finally spoke.

“There is someone in here with me.”

“Who is it?”

“Oh… I don’t know. Me, I just hid. I suddenly got scared and hid. If I get caught, I think something bad will happen…”

I listened to the helpless guy, then asked, “So where is it now?”

“It disappeared after you spoke, But it’s definitely still here. I can feel it.”

I asked him many more times, but I couldn’t gain a clear answer.

He just told me of vague feelings, saying that something was in there with him and that that unknown something was terrible.

My head began to hurt. Something was obviously happening, but I couldn’t know what it was. My thoughts felt cramped. I quietly racked my head for answers. However, no matter how much I worried, no answer came. I’ve never imagined that someone other than I would be in my true body. I was greatly surprised even when I found out that the idiot’s soul had entered it.

As I was struggling with my own thoughts, the idiot whispered to me, “Ha… not alone.”

“What?”

He had whispered, but now he gave the mental equivalent of a shout as if having a seizure, “What’s in here!? Not alone! It’s so cramped in here! There are lots of strange things here!” #

My mind went blank as I listened: As if I had been struck in the head.

“No, it didn’t come in suddenly … they’ve been in here from the beginning. It must have been from the moment that I came inside — No, maybe long before that! I can sense it clearly! You can’t even imagine… Please, take me out… please, please! Please! Just get me out of this hellish place…”

The stupid guy, who had been so silent for a while, now poured his thoughts and pleas into my mind. The only things contained in him were unclean emotions: Fear, paranoia, and confusion. Just listening to him made my head reel. Then, in a moment, his voice stopped.

A sudden silence entered my mental realm.

“Are you there?” I asked the idiot. “If you hear me, answer me.”

His voice was no longer heard. I made sure to speak with him until the night was over, but he gave no reply. The day dawned bright.

“Your Highness.”

I was sitting on the sofa and looking at the light that crept through the curtains when Adelia came to me. She entered, and then visibly stiffened when she saw that I sat alone in the dark room.

“Have you sat there all night?” she asked with some concern.

Now, why would this bother her?

I shook my head in reprobation, despite my stiff neck, but I later realized why she had asked it.

I had been sitting alone in a dark room, wearing dusty clothes and my combat gloves, and holding a sword. Perhaps it was not such a good image for others to see.

“I will fetch water for bathing,” Adelia said as she opened the curtains wide. She then left without awaiting my response. When she reappeared, she was holding a basin of hot water and had brought clean clothes.

Adelia stared at me as she carefully wiped my face with a damp towel. I noticed she had something to say.

“Your Highness,” she finally said as she bowed her head several times. “It’s not Your Highness’s fault. As her voice crept into my mind, I realized that she had been worried about me all night long. It wasn’t unexpected.

In the eyes of others, what I went through last night must have been a bitter experience. Even if our relationship had been bad, any man would feel terrible if he were to sever his brother’s arms.

To be truthful, I didn’t feel very good, but my pain did not lie where Adelia thought it lay.

I was compassionate, sure, but my relationship with the third prince had not been so deep that I mourned his death.

“Adelia, you’ve grown up a lot,” I said as I caught a few strands of her hair and playfully wrapped them around my finger, finally releasing them.

“Your Highness!” she shouted, confused by my sudden change in behavior. I was surprised myself.

“Adelia,” I said as I stared at her, “if you want, you can stay in the capital.”

She raised her head and looked at me blankly.

“Your whole family is here.”

Due to the harsh northern climate, Adelia’s family had remained in the capital. I now regretted that I had called her family to the capital and then dragged her to the north.

“If you want, I can make sure that you stay here.”

Even if it was a whim, it was my whim. It was also something I would never have done had I not looked into the eyes of a father who had lost his son a scant few hours ago.

Yet, I was serious: I wanted to give Adelia time to spend with her family until I returned to the capital. Adelia stared at me. She didn’t seem very happy with my offer.

“Your Highness must visit His Majesty,” she said, not answering my proposal. Her voice had become somewhat cold. “You must get ready.”

Before I could say anything, she undressed me and then dressed me in the fresh clothes.

“Ouch,” I said, as she tied my hair somewhat rougher than usual. “That was a little painful.”

“Sorry,” she said, and I was not sorry to hear that voice. It was absurd, for even if there was pain, I was happy at the same time. It was a great wonder that Adelia, who trembled whenever I looked at her, and who had reluctantly followed me for the sake of her family, treated me this much.

The karma that still had to be balanced between us existed like a spanned net, but it felt like the knots had begun to loosen. I laughed at the thought of it.

I felt a sense of liberation from her rough touch. It felt like my heavy head was getting a little lighter.

Suddenly, her hands stopped fixing my hair. She began to massage the muscles in my neck and shoulders. She did so with her usual gentle touch.

“Ah, that feels cool,” I muttered.

The stiffness and tension in my neck became greatly lessened relieved.

The worries that filled my head also faded.

* * *

With Adelia’s help, I felt ready to face the king, and so I went straight to the palace.

The atmosphere in the palace was still confused and cluttered due to the turmoil that had occurred last night. The servants who went to and fro, in and out of the palace, all wore crushed faces. The bearing of the guards and the knights was strict, and they were more alert than usual.

It was natural.

The chaos of last night was nothing more than a domestic scuffle if viewed on a small scale, but on a larger level, it was no different than an attempted coup.

The strange thing rather would have been if the aftermath was insignificant, seen as just a small rebellion caused by a single prince, and easily suppressed.

I walked through the upheaved palace until I came before the hall. The palace knights who were guarding the entrance saw me and immediately expressed their courtesy. There had never been a time when the palace knights had treated me wrongly, but that doesn’t mean that they had honored me more than was required. As palace knights, they had just discharged their formal duties toward a prince of the country.

However, the palace knights somehow seemed very reverent toward me now. I do not know whether it was because of my actions as a Sword Master the night before or due to something else.

They were as silent and inscrutable as always.

“His Highness the First Prince has arrived.”

“Enter,” came a heavy voice from inside the hall.

“Please enter,” the palace knights said as they opened the doors wide.

There were people who had arrived in the hall before me. Some of them were known to me, others not.

“Your Highness,” the Marquis of Bielefeld and Gung Jung-baek welcomed me as they slightly bowed their heads.

“Hello, brother,” the bandaged Maximilian said as he greeted me.

“Hm,” I mused. Even if they pretended not to, girls and boys of noble blood were staring at me. I had never before seen them, but as I studied their faces, I could see that Leonberger’s blood coursed through their veins. I looked at the princes and princesses and then headed to the dais.

I looked upon the king, who was staring at me.

“I’ve been calling you for a while, but you’ve only come now,” he said after a time, and his behavior was as unpleasant as usual. So, I responded as usual.

“I came as soon as possible to this place.”

* * *

The Marquis of Bielefeld heard of the uproar of the night before a bit later, after it was all done with. On a lesser level, a son had tried to kill his father and his brother. On the greater stage, a prince had tried to wrest the throne from the monarch.

It was a terrible tragedy, a blasphemous and disrespectful event.

The Marquis couldn’t help but feel sad. However, there remained one comfort.

It was the fact that the first prince had drawn his sword in the dead of night to save his father and end the coup.

The power the first prince had revealed in the process was enough even to elicit praise from Count Stuttgart, who was beyond stingy with his praise. The marquis could see a subtle change in the relationship between the first prince and the king, attitudes he had never noted before. The marquis guessed that he had not punished his old body in vain the day before when he had told the first prince of the troubles that the king had gone through.

The marquis expected that the two royal men would now clear up the discord between them and publicly make peace. He had run to the hall at the king’s call with his brutal hungover just to witness such a reconciliation.

“His Highness the First Prince has arrived.”

And Prince Adrian finally entered the hall.

The marquis watched as the two royal men greeted one another.

“I’ve been calling you for a while, but you’ve only come now.”

“I came as soon as possible to this place.”

But what? The conversation between king and prince was completely different from what he had expected!

“Isn’t the First Palace the closest one to my hall?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never been to other’s people’s palaces.”

“Huh! So you want to tell me that the messenger heading to the First Palace was particularly slow?”

“Perhaps.”

The Marquis of Bielefeld closed his eyes, no longer wanting the see the king and the first prince growl at one another. Not one of them was giving an inch to the other, not one of them stepping back. The two royal men had not changed at all. They still didn’t like one another, and it still seemed as if they were anxious to punch each other.

It would have been glorious if all the past discord could have been resolved with just a few words from the king. The marquis began to resent himself, feeling that his emotions were running too wild at his old age. If I hadn’t expected it in vain, I wouldn’t have been so disappointed.

“I expect that my eldest son, a member of the royal family, should know how to be ashamed in front of his brothers.”

The Marquis of Bielefeld had been struggling with his sorrowful heart but now opened his eyes. The king immediately came into his vision. Unexpectedly, the man’s face had the same unpleasant expression as usual. The Marquis thought that he must have heard wrong due to being less than awake. Surely, the king couldn’t have said the first prince was a member of the royal family? Had the words ‘eldest son’ really come from the king’s mouth?

“If you fail as a member of the royal family one more time, you will be punished.”

The Marquis of Bielefeld opened his eyes. He hadn’t heard those words wrong. Surprisingly, the king had told the first prince, who he had always considered as a traitor, to act as a member of the royal family, and he had said it twice.

Besides the overt message, what was the hidden meaning? At first glance, the words sounded like a reprimand, but they held a clear presence of forgiveness. The king had said that he would punish the prince if his conduct failed to be proper. The marquis studied Prince Adrian. He hoped that the first prince could understand the true meaning of his father’s words. He stood waiting, his mouth agape in anxiety.

“I am a member of the royal family,” the first prince said as he laughed. The moment the marquis heard that laugh, his heart rattled into a higher gear. His face took on the expression someone would have the moment before a major accident. The Marquis of Bielefeld hurried forward, hoping to prevent the inexperienced eldest son from rejecting the olive branch his father had extended to him. However, before the marquis could intervene, the first prince spoke.

“Well, Your Majesty…”

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