Chapter 207

 

* * *

 

“S-stop…!”

Samuel struggled with a pale face.

If the Emperor continued to question him like this, the Baldwin family might be harmed.

As Samuel began to thrash around while lying on the ground, more knights rushed in, grabbed his legs, and pressed his shoulders to the ground.

“You’ve already killed enough! Now you only need to kill me, don’t you?!”

Until the end, he twisted his wrists wildly, trying to avoid touching the orb.

“I’m saying, just kill me, the one you hate, brother!”

Samuel lifted his dirt-covered face and looked up at his brother.

He couldn’t control his trembling body. After a long while, the Emperor scolded Samuel.

“You… You must have hated me!”

The Emperor shouting like that was crying.

Tears that he had never shown in front of anyone began to burst out, flowing down his cheeks and chin.

“That hatred deepened, and you tried to kill me, didn’t you?!”

Samuel was equally surprised to see his tears for the first time.

“…No.”

He barely answered the truth in a dazed voice.

But unfortunately, his fingertips weren’t touching the orb, so that truth was not proven.

“No, absolutely not. I have never once desired your position, brother! I never hated you either…!”

“Those words…”

The Emperor swallowed his tears and shook his head.

After his conversation with Loretta, the Emperor tried for the first time to believe his younger brother’s words.

But the answer he got back only raised more suspicions that Samuel was still hiding many things.

“I can’t believe it. I really…”

The Emperor shook his head and uttered the words he had been repeating for several years now.

Even if he continued the conversation with Samuel, there was no way a different answer would come out at this point.

“Place Samuel’s hand on the orb.”

“…Brother!”

“I don’t care if you break his arm! I will continue until I find out about the child and the family that betrayed me! I will kill them all!”

Soon, with a crunching sound, Samuel’s arm went limp.

“Aargh!”

At the end of that scream, his hand finally touched the orb.

The Emperor randomly called out the names of noble families he remembered.

“Is it Freya? Or Hatfield?”

“Uh, ugh. Ack!”

Samuel only groaned in pain, but his emotions were clearly revealed through the orb.

When the Emperor glared, Magician Miguel gently shook his head with a terrified face.

“It can’t be.”

For a moment, the Emperor’s face darkened.

A family that he thought could never be involved had come to his mind.

“…It’s not them, right?”

At the Emperor’s uneasy behavior, changes began to occur in the orb touched by Samuel’s hand.

“No way… Really, Baldwin…”

As everyone stared at the orb in tension.

A green light that came flying from somewhere quickly snatched the orb touched by Samuel’s hand.

“Who is it?!”

The Emperor and his subjects all turned their gazes to follow the flying orb.

Jeremiah, who had dismounted from his horse, was catching the orb while adjusting his glasses.

“Magician Baldwin, how dare you!”

“I apologize, Your Majesty.”

Jeremiah bowed briefly with an expressionless face.

“The Magic Tower Master said he does not want the Magic Tower’s research to be conducted in this way.”

“This… way?”

When the Emperor asked about that part, Jeremiah approached Samuel and quietly answered.

“Yes. In this way.”

“I am the Emperor. How dare you interfere with my use of my magician’s power?!”

“You already know that the final authority for that lies with the Magic Tower Master.”

The Emperor frowned and faced the brazen Baldwin.

“Indeed. Is your family involved with this man… Is that it? Then you’d need to stop it even by using your teacher’s name.”

“I was just telling you the truth.”

“No matter what I do, as if Owen would care?!”

Jeremiah didn’t answer.

There was no need to.

From the city wall, a carriage with the Magic Tower’s emblem was fiercely racing towards this place.

“…Owen?”

The Emperor muttered with a face of disbelief.

 

* * *

 

After Claude’s visit to the Magic Tower, Magic Tower Master Owen was in deep anguish.

Fortunately, others didn’t notice his distress. They just thought he had no energy due to his worsening illness.

But Jeremiah’s eyes couldn’t be deceived.

On a day when Owen had mustered some strength and was taking a walk near the Magic Tower, Jeremiah quietly asked a question.

“Did my brother Claude happen to be rude to you?”

“How… could that be.”

“But it seemed like you were worried about something ever since my brother’s visit.”

When he paused for a moment, Jeremiah also stood in place and waited for his answer.

“Jeremiah.”

“Yes, Master.”

“By any chance, is something unusual happening in the Baldwin family?”

“That’s…”

Jeremiah fiddled with his glasses for a moment, lost in thought.

He was quite perceptive, so he had known for a long time that his father and brother were engaged in something dangerous.

They had even come to secretly borrow the power of magic.

“I don’t know the details either. But I think it’s not a bad thing, even if it’s dangerous.”

“You’ve come to truly trust your brother.”

“You helped make that happen, Magic Tower Master. Of course, Ronny worked hard too.”

At Jeremiah’s added remark with a grin, the Magic Tower Master thought of the second son of the ducal family, who was very shy.

“He’s an excellent young man, no one can surpass him in taking care of his family.”

“Yes, he didn’t give up and kept trying even when there was a misunderstanding between me and Claude.”

The Magic Tower Master knew how courageous that action was.

Trying to persuade both sides meant being prepared to be hated by everyone.

‘I… in my youth, I…’

Didn’t have that courage.

Now he was the Magic Tower Master respected by everyone, but in the past, he was just a powerless imperial prince with a bit of magical talent.

And as far as he knew, in the history of the continent, it was rare for the Emperor’s brothers to properly survive.

Most of them were used and died, whether it was rebellion or false charges.

When he was young, he thought such a painful history would not apply to him.

But after Earl Grimes rebelled with Samuel on his back, the situation changed rapidly.

His kind brother had become a monster who killed people.

Amidst the execution orders issued every day, Owen just wished for this time to pass quickly.

‘I was… afraid. Because of the thought that my brother’s hand might reach me someday.’

It was fortunate in misfortune that the desire to live further awakened his magical talent.

He was able to use it as an excuse to prepare a foothold to escape to the Magic Tower.

It was around that time that a Records Keeper who had visited Earl Grimes’ territory on the Emperor’s orders came to find Owen.

The Records Keeper silently held out letters. As Owen checked them one by one, his face turned pale.

The letters were all written by Samuel to Owen.

They were densely filled in a report format with stories about the number of private soldiers in Grimes Castle and how they trained every day.

He jumped up from his seat.

“Th-this is evidence that Samuel knew nothing. I must show it to my brother right away and clear up the misunderstanding!”

But the Records Keeper shook his head.

“Then Your Highness will also be in danger.”

“That can’t be. If my brother just reads this!”

“Your Highness. Even a servant boy who briefly talked to Prince Samuel was executed. Let alone these letters.”

“B-but…”

“What if His Majesty suspects there is another code hidden in here? Those loyal fools will surely insist there is a different meaning to Your Highness, even making up a code on their own.”

At the Records Keeper’s words, Owen couldn’t shake his head. There was a good possibility of that.

When he said nothing, the Records Keeper finally made a suggestion.

To erase the records, hide the truth, and quietly live on…

‘Thanks to accepting that proposal, I was able to live safely in the Magic Tower, but…’

It was impossible to live with the truth hidden forever.

“Magic Tower Master. May I dare ask about your contradiction, foolish as I am?”

That day, Claude’s point was astonishingly accurate.

Owen was happy to unravel the relationship when his beloved Jeremiah was estranged from his brothers.

Writing a reply to Ronny’s letter asking about Jeremiah’s preferences.

Gently pushing his disciple’s back, telling him to go to the Baldwin family party.

And watching the three brothers, who had been estranged for a long time, share each other’s cooking.

He rejoiced in all of it as if it were his own.

‘Perhaps that was…’

What he wanted to do with his own brothers.

‘But now it’s…’

It was too late. He couldn’t even properly take care of his own health.

In the end, they also became ordinary imperial brothers. Killing, hating, and being wary of each other like the people in history.

“You can… tell me anything, Master.”

Perhaps knowing he was hesitating, Jeremiah cautiously spoke first.

“It’s not like that, Jeremiah.”

“No, please tell me, Master.”

When he answered in a slightly stronger tone, Owen looked at the disciple in front of him in surprise.

The child who was barely tall enough to reach his waist had now become a large young man he had to look up to.

Anew, that growth was surprising and grateful.

“I think it’s my turn to reach out to your brotherly relationship this time, Master.”

 

* * *

 

Before long, the Magic Tower’s carriage approached and stopped where the Emperor was confronting Samuel. When the door opened, Owen and Claude Baldwin appeared in turn.

The Emperor was surprised to see Owen’s sickly appearance, but he deliberately looked away.

Now was not the time to worry about such things.

“You drove out all my people, and now you’re taking Samuel’s side too, Owen.”

“…I couldn’t take Samuel’s side, brother.”

“You’re not taking his side?!”

The Emperor shouted, glaring towards Jeremiah. Meanwhile, Claude helped Samuel, who had collapsed on the floor, and Owen healed his wounds.

“Ha, this is absurd. Are you saying that the Magic Tower and Baldwin are simultaneously rebelling against me now?!”

“No one…!”

Owen shouted in a cracked voice.

“No one here is rebelling against you, brother!”

But the Emperor shook his head with a pale face. He looked almost like a madman.

“Don’t lie, don’t you lie to me too! Please!”

“…Brother.”

“What did I do wrong?! What sin did I commit against you?! I, I’ve been…!”

Seeing that, Owen felt his fault even more.

It wasn’t just Samuel who suffered from his concealment of the truth.

His brother, whom he thought was as scary as a monster, must have lived a long time in the same agony.

He could see it in those eyes that had almost lost their reason.

“I…”

Owen dropped his body on the floor.

“…I lied. Not Samuel.”

Owen took out a few old letters from his bosom.

Although the ink had faded with time, there was no problem recognizing the contents.

“I could have told you the truth right then, brother! I could have saved Samuel…!”

He raised his arm and held out the bundle of letters.

They were letters he had tried to burn countless times until today. But in the end, Owen had cherished them.

Even though he said he would never reveal the secret for the rest of his life, perhaps he had hoped for a day like this to come.

“I… abandoned you and Samuel. To live alone…!”

As he looked at Owen with a confused face, Owen held out the letters again.

Soon the Emperor accepted the bundle of paper with trembling hands.