I Became the First Prince

The Difference Between Enemy Ships, Rewards, and Loot (3)

The Marquis of Bielefeld could only shake his head, for the first prince was a surprise that just kept on surprising. He had expected the prince to act utterly in self-interest when asking for a gift. The only gift the savior of the north – who had stopped tens of thousands of monsters from ravaging the south – asked for was a single sword. It all came as a relief to the marquis, who had expected the prince to ask for something unreasonable. The king had been worried about the political implications of any gift that he would give his son. Big gifts meant greater influence for Prince Adrian; smaller ones would gain the ire of a man who had the northern army behind him.

Considering the already testy political atmosphere in the kingdom, the giving of the gift was no trivial matter. The first prince had eased all such concerns as he publicly demanded nothing but a sword.

Even if he asked for the sharpest sword in the kingdom, it would still be a moderate gift, and if the prince was given a shabby sword, well, that is what he had demanded.

If Prince Adrian had made an unreasonable request, the situation would have been difficult. Thanks to his request, everything was easily solved.

But once more, the Marquis of Bielefeld had judged the situation prematurely.

“I have heard that you possess a sword granted to you by the famous master swordsmith. As it had been a royal sword in its very conception, I can’t think of a blade better than it. Will this gift be fair to you?”

“That’s right, it’s what I asked for.”

The marquis noticed that there was something the prince already had in mind.

“Come then, speak, don’t drag this out.”

The first prince did not refuse his father’s command.

“The sword I seek is the sword that Gruhorn Leonberger used to kill Gwangryong, the great dragon. That’s the sword I want.”

The banqueting hall’s atmosphere had frozen in an instant. The king stared at the first prince, his face as hard as stone.

“Am I correct in stating that you speak of the Dragon Slayer?” the king asked in a tone of voice as rigid as his expression.

“Yes, the sword that had pierced into my stomach,” the first prince responded, his face possessing an innocent virtue as if wondering why everyone was so surprised that he wanted but a single old sword.

“Do you know what it means, if you ask for this sword?”

“I seek a piece of history, I seek to carry the names of those who have been forgotten by their descendants, those who have not been written of in this age.”

The Marquis of Bielefeld closed his eyes as he heard the prince’s answer.

“You don’t know what you’re asking for. If you knew, then you would never have asked for it!” the king stated in an overwhelming voice. “The black king had inherited that sword from the king before him, who had passed it on the next generation. It had come to me through my father.”

The Marquis opened his eyes again.

“It was that black sword that you had taken and swung about without permission, it’s an object that you never should have touched.”

The Marquis studied the first prince’s face as the king spoke on.

“It is the sword wielded by successive monarchs of our kingdom.”

The virtuous expression that the king had maintained started to crack.

“It is itself a symbol of the royal Leonberg throne.”

The final ground had quickly been covered as the king had made this statement. The prince’s expression was no longer as casual as it had been before. Somehow, the first prince’s face had taken on an unnatural and awkward mien. After a long silence, the first prince spoke – his voice as silent as the buzzing of a mosquito.

“Can’t I just take the sword? Can you just give me the sword, instead of the throne?”

“Huh … Huhahahaaaahaaahaha!” laughed the king, finding his son’s words to be utterly absurd.

He wasn’t even angry at the absurdity of Prince Adrian’s statement; he merely laughed again and again.

But his mirth only lasted for a while.

The king’s expression hardened, and his face became more rigid than it had ever been before.

The Marquis of Bielefeld fully understood the embarrassment that had been thrust upon the king.

The first prince had demanded a sword that stood as a symbol of the throne before numerous nobles. The prince had even had enough balls to press his demand after the king had made clear what the sword represented. If the king rejected the request there and then, it would be nothing short of a declaration that the royal family had stricken the first prince from the line of succession, denying him the throne.

The question of whether the prince would ask for only a sword had never been something that the nobles had expected.

No one would have taken such a request seriously. Born as the eldest son, Prince Adrian had still succeeded in driving his father from him and repulsing the general aristocracy, so much so that a point had come where he was not recognized as the legitimate successor to the throne. The Marquis of Bielefeld had also held such opinions of the first prince at first.

Now the marquis stared at Prince Adrian’s eyes, and he was surprised to see the embarrassment in them.

I thought that the royal family did not know the true value of my body because it had not seemed as if they had looked after it all that well. Moreover, I had even thought that the sword’s existence was considered a mere trifle because the idiot of a prince had come in at will, freely brandished me, and swung me about like a tree branch.

Now I learned that I had symbolized the throne throughout all those centuries.

I had figured that my request to the king was not difficult, for I had asked for the one thing that they did not need or use. What I had instead done was to demand the throne out of the blue. My situation had become difficult.

“Can’t I just take the sword,” I asked, immediately becoming embarrassed by the bullshit that I had spouted.

The king’s face also clearly showed his embarrassment at the situation. He had looked at me with a grim face.

So great was his abashment that he had even forgotten his hatred and anger toward me. I looked around and saw that the nobles had become uppity. The sound of their conversation had gained momentum.

They said that I had attained an unrivaled position, for I had obtained my very own Spire, and that I had now become the greatest enemy to the king. They all believed that I sought the throne. I did not, or at least, not in this manner.

And even if I inherited the throne, I did not want to do so by bargaining for it like some cheap trinket. The king dared not refuse my request now, and he thought that I was trying to force him to admit before all that I would be his heir. It looked as if I had planned this entire affair as a cheap attempt to claim the succession.

I had not intended the current situation at all. I watched the king. It would be better for him to refuse my request with a single word, but he seemed to be struggling under the choices. He faced a plethora of unforeseen outcomes that he would have to worry about in the future.

“Well,” the king said as he raised his head after he had been agonizing in the uncomfortable silence. His cold gaze bore into me, and it felt like the frigidity of it sank into the very tips of my toes.

And a voice just as cold rang out in the hall. Damned it all, it seemed that claiming my original body would have to be delayed for a bit longer. The king was anxious, for a while he could not reject me outright, he couldn’t dare grant me such a powerful symbol of the throne.

I thought he would reject me; I definitely thought so.

“Good,” came his voice.

I was wrong.

“You said that you wanted it.”

The king granted my request.

“You shall get it, however, I shall not give it to you right now.”

He had brought an unexpected element into the equation.

“You shall gain this sword only after you have accomplished a single task. Upon completion, you will have what you desire in your hands.”

Although he had set conditions that required my compliance, I still had a chance to regain my body.

“If you cannot accomplish my quest, the Dragon Slayer shall never become your sword.”

I felt lost and very much out of shape. The king’s mindset had changed in that single day, so I was forced to change my attitude. Still, my embarrassment was only momentary. After the king had spoken, I immediately realized what he wanted from me. He wished to put me through a great trial to justify my wielding of such a status symbol.

The task that he would give me would be a difficult one for a prince to complete. If I failed, it would be in his full right to formally strike me from the succession. All in all, he was testing me, all the while fervently hoping that the candidate would fail the test.

“Hahaha!” the king laughed as he studied my features. It was ridiculous that this man now laughed at me. I had believed him to be a scarecrow king, sitting on his throne every hour of the day just to keep that seat.

Still, this king still seemed to possess some qualities of a king.

Even if he had been unable to overcome the turbulence in his realm, he was more than capable to at least overcome a prince who had not yet grown up.

“Now, this is fun,” I muttered, for rather than being angry, I was motivated. I suddenly recalled a wager that I had in the past, a bet with a certain quad-chain knight who had stated that my usage of a mana heart was crude.

And what had happened after that?

I laughed, for I had enjoyed that bet, and so the king’s challenge seemed like it would be fun.

After I had awoken in Adrian’s body, everyone had looked down on me. No one had admired me, and they had all considered me to be boorish and doltish. It had been an interesting journey to overturn their expectations and see their expressions as they realized what I had become.

My heart was pounding already. Whether it could be called a bet or a test, and even if it had not yet started, I already looked forward to the king’s expression upon my success. I was greatly excited, imagining my smiling self standing before him.

“Congratulations, brother,” Maximilian said as he approached me.

“Now everything seems to have returned to normal.”

I shook my head upon hearing his heartfelt celebration of my ‘victory’.

I was only willing to receive congratulations later – when I had won.

I wanted to be congratulated while staring into the king’s dumbstruck face.

*

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*

The nobles approached and also congratulated me. They flattered me as if I was already a king.

On the surface, their words could have been praise for me having regained my position in the succession, or they had merely flattered me in hopes of gaining some future reward from it.

Whatever their intentions, it was clear that my status was different than before.

Still, some better understood the king’s heart and his strong position. They were the great lords, and their words of praise toward me were more distant than ever before.

They probably factored in the possibility of my imminent failure and disgrace. These nobles knew that if I passed the test, I would become the successor to the throne, yet I would be thrown to the wayside if I failed.

I could see into their scheming hearts as they planned on how they would position themselves after either one of the outcomes.

“Your Highness, were you truly unaware?” the Marquis of Bielefeld asked me after I had escaped the tedious nobles and returned to my palace. After hearing of Adrian’s sins from Montpellier, I had gone to the trouble of researching the first prince’s perverted past. I knew that it would be better for me to know what this body had done before getting caught in any traps again. “It was something my father had told me,” Vincent had once recounted to me in great excitement as he had laid out the pathetic deeds of the idiot Adrian. Yet, while I had learned of my current body, I had never known that my original body had acted as such a strong symbol of the throne.

It wasn’t difficult to guess why I had become a great regal artifact, and no one had told me because it was such common knowledge. It had just been my bad luck that an idiotic prince named Adrian had not known a single thing about the symbols of the Leonberger dynasty, and I had therefore been fooled into believing that the people of this age had forgotten my worth.

As I thought of such things, the Marquis of Bielefeld continued his incessant nagging, telling me that I had been too rash. I wasn’t happy with his presence, for he had been moaning in my ears for two days straight now. It seemed that he had proclaimed himself as my political tutor. I had had enough of teaching, listening to the ramblings of Niccolo.

I reached a point where I believed that Bielefeld’s nagging would never end.

“If Your Highness is given the assignment, do not accept it immediately. Only make a decision after careful discussion and consideration.”

Finally, the Marquis had left after he had delivered his final reprimand. Soon after, the queen came to my quarters.

Her presence was always the most unbearable of trails for me. Everyone in the world had ill feelings toward Adrian, and no one valued him. Therefore, I could treat them all with caution and deal with them from a distance, not hesitating in the slightest to overpower them. It was because so few of them would shed a single tear were the first prince to die.

Such was not the case with the queen.

She truly cared for her son, and if I had still been a sword, with Adrian dying as he spitted himself on me, the queen would have been the only person to shed any tears.

Because she was such a type of woman, I always felt smothered by her presence.

I had tried to avoid her ever since coming to the capital, but it didn’t work out so well this time.

Carls was very happy with expelling numerous nobles from my abode, but he and his knights did not dare chase Her Majesty the Queen away.

“Why didn’t you look after yourself before returning to the palace? What are all these wounds?”

I had to suffer such questions and worries and reprimands for a long, long time.

“It’s all right, my Adrian, not everything is bad. Come here, dear.”

In the end, I had to endure the indignity of that woman stroking my hair as if I was a little boy.

I managed to get her out of my chambers at last. While I was trying to calm my breathing, another person visited.

He was the same old man who had come to me when I had first awoken in the body of the obese and perverted prince. Nogisa told me to follow him, and he guided me all the way. Contrary to my expectations, he did not take me to the king’s offices. No, Nogisa led me to a different place entirely.

“Touch nothing, and do nothing,” he commanded me as we walked ever deeper into the tunnels and dungeons and cellars that existed under the palace like the diggings of prairie dogs. We came to a place, a secret place that none knew of.

“Just look with your eyes, not your hands.”

There, before me, and just out of reach, was mounted a sword.

It was my body that I so dearly longed to recover.

“Huh?” was all that I managed to say.

No matter how many times I looked away and looked again, the black blade before me was definitely my body.

It felt so strangely familiar.

I rubbed my eyes, blinked, and rubbed them again.

The sight before me never changed.