HTRE 02

Chapter 02

“I greet the Sun of Franz.”

After returning to the Imperial Palace following the operation, Derek Halshaltar, the Emperor of Franz, dismissed his attendants.

It had been an exhausting day.

The Duke of Claudis, whom they had intended to arrest for plotting treason, had been summarily executed.

“If Claudis becomes an obstacle to the future of Franz, I will gladly accept my death. However, I have one final request. Please record that the destruction of my family occurred because I lost control of my power. It is the final wish of a servant who has devoted his entire life to the Empire.”

The Duke had lived his entire life for Franz alone.

He probably did not want the disgrace of treason to be left behind in his family’s history.

The Emperor believed that granting the final request of his longtime friend and rival would be his last act of mercy.

And so, he granted it.

Now, everything was over.

“Your Majesty, His Highness Prince Kyleve has arrived.”

Despite the exhausted Emperor’s condition, the prince had not forgotten to visit his father.

He was an unwelcome guest, but the Emperor had no choice but to receive his son.

Kyleve Halshaltar.

He was the Emperor’s youngest son and the person who had contributed the most to the destruction of the Duke of Claudis’s family.

Prince Kyleve came to see his father late at night.

His golden eyes shone brightly through the darkness, as though they could see through everything.

The Emperor was afraid of that gaze.

But he could not back down.

“Yes, my son. Did everything go well?”

The father’s voice trembled ever so slightly—hardly the voice one would expect from a father addressing his son.

“They were all burned to ashes.”

“Good work. You have saved the future of Franz.”

“More precisely, I saved your future, Father.”

Kyleve stared directly into his father’s eyes.

His posture did not waver in the slightest.

“Then keep your promise to me now, Father.”

The Fourteenth Prince of Franz was making a deal with the Emperor.

With an Emperor who had already lost his power and was nothing more than a figurehead.

“Step down from the throne.”

He was only twelve years old.

The reason the Franz Empire had been able to possess the greatest power on the continent of Quellton was thanks to the blessing of the god Galamiann.

Those chosen by Galamiann’s blessing were granted a Divine Power.

Among them, the Halshaltar bloodline possessed the strongest connection to that power. There had never been a generation without someone who inherited it, and the Halshaltars had ruled the Franz Empire for six hundred years.

But Derek had lost his Divine Power more than a decade ago, and he had gradually become powerless.

He had once been hailed as the Emperor with the greatest ability in the entire history of Franz.

If the truth became known, factions seeking to overthrow the Emperor would inevitably emerge.

Unfortunately, Derek could not keep the secret from Kyleve.

“If you do not want anyone to find out that you have lost your Divine Power, step down.”

The Emperor had no choice but to do as his son said.

Honor mattered to Derek as well.

Just as the Duke of Claudis had not wanted his family to be branded with treason, Derek did not want to lose his position through rebellion.

“All right. I will do as you say.”

And so, Derek was forced to abdicate the throne because of his young son.

Before she was reincarnated as Eroica, the youngest daughter of House Claudis, her name had been Shin Yejin.

Her family had been desperately poor, buried beneath a mountain of debt.

Yet her parents had loved her dearly.

Her mother was beautiful like a flower blooming in an unbearably wretched environment.

Her father was a pitiful man whose only way of providing for his beloved wife and daughter was to work as a laborer and bring home whatever money he could earn.

He would return home late at night, after the sky had already turned completely dark, and leave for work again before sunrise.

The scars on his back grew day by day.

Even when her exhausted father became bedridden after falling from a construction site, Yejin refused to let go of her attachment to life.

She had thought things could not possibly get any worse.

Yet, somehow, her family’s circumstances continued to sink lower and lower.

Debt collectors came knocking on their door almost every day, and their household belongings were sold off one by one.

Her father, who could not even receive proper care because they could not afford his medical expenses, passed away when she was thirteen.

Her mother, who spent every day sleeping because she was overcome by helplessness, took her own life exactly six months after her father’s death.

Yejin did not resent her.

She herself had wondered several times a day whether she should follow her mother.

There were no relatives she could contact, so the still-young Shin Yejin was placed in an institution.

She tried countless times to adapt to her new surroundings.

But perhaps the people there simply did not like her.

Having entered the facility at a relatively late age, Yejin became a target for the other children, who found her presence irritating.

“You’re disgusting.”

“You stink.”

All she had to endure was contempt disguised as concern.

Her peers constantly tore into her, while the adults remained indifferent.

The hellish days repeated themselves over and over.

Even so, she stubbornly continued living.

Then, when she turned twenty-one, Shin Yejin decided to leave this world and join her parents.

Her distrust of humanity and resentment toward the world led her there.

“It must be really cold…”

It was winter, and the wind was so fierce that her ears ached from the cold.

Without giving it much thought, she bought a train ticket and traveled to a seaside town as far away from the facility as possible.

In the pitch-black darkness of midnight, the only sound she could hear was the waves mercilessly crashing against the rocks.

“Mom, Dad. Please wait for me just a little longer.”

When the cold seawater touched her feet, the freezing sensation was painfully vivid.

But she could not stop.

Salty tears wet her lips, and her vision blurred until she could no longer see anything.

The chill of the seawater pierced her skin as the waves gradually rose higher and higher around her.

By the time regret began to creep into her heart, she was already being swallowed by the sea.

Ah… So this is the end.

She struggled desperately against the pain, feeling as though her lungs were about to burst, but the only thing that happened was that her legs grew heavier.

As she sank helplessly into the depths of the sea, a thought crossed her mind.

If I am ever born again, I hope my next life will be different from this one.

She knew it was a ridiculous thought to have on the threshold of death.

Yet, for the first time in her life, she had allowed herself to think completely honestly.

And then she prayed.

There probably was no god.

But if one did exist, she wanted him to appear before her.

She wanted just one chance.

After struggling for what felt like an eternity, just as she began to lose consciousness, a white light appeared before her.

[Child, open your eyes. I shall grant your wish.]

She felt a warm voice enveloping her.

Although she could not clearly see his form, somehow she could feel his smile.

Before she knew it, he had completely engulfed Shin Yejin in a radiant warmth.

“Waaahhh!”

And when she blinked her eyes shut and opened them again, she had been reborn under the name Eroica Claudis.

The Divine Power of the Halshaltars alone had not been enough to transform Franz into a great empire.

Even so, there was a reason Franz had won countless wars and risen to be praised as an imperial nation.

That reason was the other Divine Power possessed by House Claudis.

It was not a power passed down through every generation.

However, whenever a child born with this Divine Power appeared in a generation, people would whisper that the child had the potential to swallow not only the Empire, but the entire continent.

That was the kind of family House Claudis was—the family Eroica had been reborn into.

After her reincarnation, she lived a life of luxury.

She had parents and siblings who showered her with more love than she could have imagined, and her family was so wealthy that it was almost difficult for her to adjust to it.

It was completely different from her previous life, when she had never once had everything she needed within reach.

There was only one strange thing.

Her father forbade her from leaving the mansion until she turned thirteen.

“Eroica, we have guests visiting the mansion today, so stay in your room and don’t come out.”

And so, she had been confined to a room located in the deepest part of the mansion.

She had questions.

But she had no complaints.

Occasionally, she thought about her parents from her previous life.

Still, her parents in this life were undoubtedly kind people as well.

She even dreamed that when she became an adult, she would repay them for everything they had given her.

And then, when she reached the same age she had been in her previous life—thirteen—

Everything was taken from her once again.

Eroica felt as though she herself were the root of all this tragedy.

Perhaps God had not reincarnated her because He wanted her to be happy.

But she could not simply spend her days resenting fate.

Eroica was too young.

There was nothing she could do right away.

Yet there was one thing different from her previous life.

This time, she had Soma and Tiller beside her to protect her.

And there was also the name Claudis, the name her father had given his life to protect.

She could not abandon it so easily.

If she ever met the people who had stolen her happiness again, she would drag them down into the abyss.

And she would reclaim Claudis.

That was what she believed she had to do.

The Duke of Claudis had devoted his entire life to protecting the safety of Franz.

Yet the Emperor of Franz had betrayed him.

Because of that, Eroica’s anger was directed at all of Franz.

A burning desire for revenge.

It was the first emotion Eroica had ever felt so desperately.

Why didn’t Father use his power?

She did not know why the Emperor had betrayed her father.

But even if he had to turn the entire Franz Empire against him, her father’s power should have been more than enough to stand against the Emperor.

“Father wouldn’t have simply allowed himself to be defeated for no reason.”

At the sound of Eroica’s voice, Tiller stopped what he was doing.

Soma, who had been suffering from seasickness, also immediately turned toward her.

It was the first time they had heard her voice during the entire voyage.

The ship was just about to arrive in Palestian.

Unlike Franz, which was in the middle of winter, Palestian enjoyed warm weather throughout the year.

As they drew closer to the kingdom, a warm breeze gently brushed against them.

Eroica’s hair fluttered in the wind like ripples dancing across the surface of the sea.

She rose from her seat, her expression filled with determination.

“I’m going to keep Father’s final words. No matter what.”