TPWTL 106

#106. If It’s the Princess’s Order, With Pleasure.

“Truly troublesome and trivial things,”

“Ugh. I’d take a crafty political struggle any day — at least then you can predict someone’s moves. You can hedge your bets, trade one piece for another.”

Exactly. If an opponent is roughly on your level, a little better, or even a bit worse, you can anticipate their moves from your knowledge and common sense. If you can predict, you can prepare — and you can even find openings to strike and topple them.

But…

“What on earth are they thinking?”

Olivia moaned and pressed her temple.

The enemy was literally unknown. Not “unknown” because they were mysterious in a romantic sense — no, they were formidable. They were the kind who could sweep everything away by sheer power alone.

They’d drown the whole continent in blood under the guise of purification anyway; if they had that much power, why would they bother scheming? Plotting and building long-term plans is the business of people who hope for a future.

“No backing? That’s really a headache. If at least it were a continental conquest, things wouldn’t be so uncertain. Well…”

She paused and scanned Cryer up and down.

“When you went to war, you didn’t exactly bring any fancy tactics either. You just stood at the front and bulldozed everything.”

One person charging through the center with a single sword, cutting down dozens, hundreds of knights, breaking through instantly, and altering the entire left and right flanks — it was a spectacle tantamount to a natural disaster. She didn’t feel the need to add any more.

“A disaster, then.”

“You don’t even have to say it; you already know.”

They didn’t need to communicate with words just to understand each other. Olivia, who narrowed her eyes in a huff, swept the papers aside.

“Fine. If it’s come to this, we’ll meet force with force. Order whatever escort you like. If they’re relying only on brute strength, we’ll press harder with greater force. So —”

Olivia stepped toward Cryer, lifted her chin, and called loudly.

“Go! Cryer!”

At her vigorous point, Cryer snorted and, with a hint of amusement, took her fingertip and lightly kissed the nail.

“If it’s the Princess’s command, gladly.”

Olivia’s proud face, looking down at him, immediately softened with a groan from her tight shoulders. The warm breath from his fingertip colored her ear slightly, but whether fortunate or not, the pain in her shoulder allowed her to resume what she’d been about to say.

“In any case, we won’t know what they intend by sending an escort until they make a move, so let’s stop overthinking that. There’s the real matter to discuss, isn’t there?”

“Right. That’s why I waited until tonight.”

His voice low and measured, the dim lighting settling around them, created an easy, languid hush. Olivia, growing impatient, opened her mouth.

“Were you — in the past — professionally someone who seduced people and manipulated them for schemes?”

Despite the anxious edge hidden beneath words meant to shatter any pretense of romance and sentimentality, Olivia’s cheeks had already flushed, and her eyes warmed.

“You react to everything and yet you egg people on.”

“What? Who’s egging whom!”

“I didn’t do that professionally. Though apparently people tended to be drawn to me anyway.”

When Olivia frowned at the vague answer, Cryer gently smoothed the crease from her brow with his fingers.

Olivia lowered his hand and asked, taking hold of his fingers.

“Be specific. ‘People were drawn’ — do you mean you wielded that much power to influence and shake things? Or some special ability? Or… could it really be a crime…?”

Olivia’s mouth quivered as she eyed him suspiciously, and Cryer, without hesitation, bent the finger that had been rubbing his brow and flicked her round forehead lightly.

“Fortunately, I wasn’t the sort of monstrous criminal who would be erased from history. If anything, I had power — a lot of it — and abilities to spare.”

A past where he had overflowing power and the authority to gather people like ants. Cryer had been one of the great pillars holding the empire together before Bolsheike became its master — so big that the emperor had felt he needed to bury that pillar, the sharpest sword and sturdiest shield, by his own hand.

Who was this distant figure from a time so remote that even face and name had faded from memory? What did they mean to him? He didn’t remember at all, but he had a peculiar certainty: it probably meant nothing to him.

Those who accepted such an end and feared death would have raged at the prospect of resurrection. Lost in his private thoughts for a moment, Cryer spoke again.

“If we rank which came first — power or ability — power likely came first. After all, I was the emperor’s cousin.”

“A royal? If you were former royalty….” Olivia trailed off, probing the old empire’s royal line, and Cryer waved his hand.

“That detail doesn’t much matter. Ultimately, the power I had by birth was reinforced by ability.”

“You do realize you’re talking about your past, right? You know how it sounds — you saying you were great with your own mouth?”

“It’s not even a memory I can claim. Honestly, it’s as if I’m speaking of someone else.”

Truly true — if not for meeting Olivia, he wouldn’t have bothered to probe his past. For one who was sinking with an unwanted resurrection and the stigma of a branded slave into a bottomless swamp, the past had been meaningless.

Then a white hand appeared. A voice filled with certainty told him if he took that hand, he’d be pulled out of that mire. He took it and followed that voice to the present. Because Olivia took an interest in his past, he willingly sought the past he’d otherwise have ignored.

“That ability — might it be…?”

“Yes. They said I was a strong enough presence that the fate of the whole continent could hinge on me, beyond common sense or perception.”

Not human, perhaps. At once, Olivia accepted this as plausible.

Indeed. Who better than she to know that the man before her had surpassed humanity. A strength to dominate the continent alone — wait.

“Oh my. So you’re not getting stronger;” Olivia exclaimed, “you’re just recovering what you once had?”

“Yes. I’m regaining what belonged to me.”

“If Greta knows your past, then is she simply stalling for time to let your strength come back? But if she holds a card like you, why bother with anything else? If you could raze the entire continent, there’d be no need to shake the empire… ah.”

Olivia, spilling a flood of thoughts, sighed.

“You never shook the empire, did you.”

In this life, Cryer was by Olivia’s side and strange things were happening around the empire; in his previous life, no one even knew of his existence until war broke out.

“So it’s really a matter of time.”

The moment Cryer fully recovered his past prowess, who knew what would happen?

“That brand — do you feel anything each time you regain strength?”

“Hm. Like I said, my power doesn’t come from some cursed god, so I don’t particularly feel anything.”

“Then that’s a relief.”

Olivia, turning things around in her head, felt as if steam might come out of her skull; she decided to focus on what she could do now. As always, it was better to take steady steps on what was possible than cry and worry over what couldn’t be done.

“More importantly, why couldn’t we find you in the history books? We checked the records of the old empire thoroughly. If you were even remotely royal, there should be grander, more detailed records.”

“A traitor.”

At that, Olivia’s lashes fluttered like a butterfly’s wing in a storm.

A rebellion. A reason so decisive that even if one hadn’t committed some heinous crime, one could still be scrubbed from history. Why had she not thought of that possibility earlier? It was so obvious.

Olivia opened her mouth and let out a short breath.

“A traitor… If he was a traitor to the former empire, Bolsheike surely would know. Why couldn’t we find anything in the family records?”

Even if a traitor’s entire family, person, and history had been erased, surely there’d be some trace left in Bolsheike’s annals. That was why the countless historians brought in all shook their heads — the person simply couldn’t be identified. He wasn’t even recorded in Bolsheike’s histories.

But the answer came quick and simple.

“There was no contact with Bolsheike.”

“What?”

“It seems the head of the Bolsheike house at the time closed his doors and took no interest in the empire.”

“Oh…”

Olivia blinked, dazedder than before, and then nodded wryly.

“That’s possible. There were plenty of ancestors who didn’t care how things ran outside their walls.”

“Even if Bolsheike’s chronicles are vast, they reflect the chronicler’s interests.”

“Right. That blind spot explains it.”

Olivia slumped into the sofa as if all her energy drained away, letting out a short sound and then letting out a brittle laugh. An onlooker might think she’d gone mad. Cryer simply watched her quietly.

She kept laughing softly and then spoke.

“So you weren’t some epochal criminal after all. I thought you might have wiped out a nation to resurrect the Demon King or some such. I imagined the ancient god would escalate that and drag the whole continent in to slaughter everyone.”

“You’re astonishingly specific.”

“Well, thinking about you makes me imagine all sorts of wild things… wait, wait.”

Before she finished the sentence, Cryer’s breath, so close as to almost touch her nose, brushed her lips.