Grandeum Imperial Palace, Imperial Residence
The usual atmosphere of the palace was one of busy activity, yet the ambiance here felt as if it had been isolated from the outside world—utterly serene.
“Haa…”
A faint wisp of mist rose into the air, surrounded by cubes formed from mana.
These cubes ranged from hexahedrons to octahedrons, dodecahedrons, and even icosahedrons.
Dozens of them transformed repeatedly, a process of refining and organizing.
This was the stage for a mage advancing to the next level after building their magical tower.
“Huu…”
As she exhaled, the cubes began to scatter a blue powder.
The mana, which had been drifting out the window as her concentration wavered, was swiftly reabsorbed into her body.
Epherna had reached the point where she could seamlessly handle mana both inside and outside her body.
Paradoxically, this enabled her to distinguish between the mana she would store and the mana she would let go.
“…”
Epherna felt it.
The sheer volume of mana flowing into her body was extraordinary.
The once finite capacity of her mana circuits now seemed immeasurable.
Did she succeed?
Her relentless training in magic had expanded her knowledge and allowed her to transcend her limits in mana capacity.
At last, she had achieved what was thought impossible: surpassing the natural energy storage limit of the human body.
She had become a mage who had transcended this threshold, growing stronger at that very moment.
This was what she had been waiting for.
For the past three years, she had sustained herself in place of a lost power source, all in anticipation of this moment: her ascension to a state where she no longer required an external power source.
In that instant, Epherna sensed an anomaly occurring within her body.
She initially thought it was the rebound from surpassing her limits that would restructure her body again, but no—it was something else. Something within her was trying to emerge.
The source that had sustained her life, the power core tethered to her predetermined lifespan, was now attempting to leave, its necessity rendered obsolete.
Epherna did not resist the process.
She couldn’t, even if she wanted to. Moreover, she judged this expulsion of a foreign element to be beneficial rather than harmful.
Golden energy began to scatter like flower petals.
The wild energy that had previously defied her control now coalesced and started forming a shape.
It was a form deeply familiar to her: her personal guard, lost alongside him once upon a time.
Perhaps that’s why Epherna, speechless, could only stare blankly.
*****
Slash!
Blood splattered.
Without turning back to check the severed flesh, she thrust her blade forward.
Gripping a short dagger barely 20 centimeters long, she acted on sheer instinct. Her foot pressed against the soft ground, her blow lacked power, but she used it as a feint to create an opening.
Ignoring her surroundings, she detonated a spell. When she hurled her dagger at the shadow of her retreating enemy, a crimson line appeared across the crumbling wall.
The enemy stared forward with bloodshot eyes, catching sight of the blade embedded in their own thigh.
“Stop it.”
Unlike her ragged breaths, his voice was calm and composed.
She was aware of him, fully conscious of his presence, yet she couldn’t give up.
Pulling the dagger from her thigh, the woman hurled it.
With her remaining leg, she mustered all her strength for one final strike.
But—Thud.
The blow, which she thought had her very soul behind it, collapsed along with her failing body.
“…”
“I don’t know your reasons, but with that skill, you can’t even attempt a t*rrorist act.”
“…Shut up.”
“Does that sound like a lie? Or do you simply wish to deny reality?”
“…”
“Hah.”
Ern raised the woman.
Casting a simple healing spell on her blood-dripping leg, he supported her and began to lead her somewhere.
“Don’t even think about ambushing me. Next time, I’ll kill you for real.”
The chill in his voice silenced the woman.
She could sense it—the natural killing intent embedded in his tone.
She couldn’t help but be surprised.
A man skilled enough to lace his voice with killing intent?
Reluctantly, she abandoned thoughts of resistance.
When she went limp, his tension dissipated as if it had never been there.
“Why is a decent-looking woman like you messing with bombs in broad daylight? Do you have a grudge against the Imperial family?”
“…”
“Looking at how clueless you seem, there’s no way you and a few others made those bombs. That means you’ve got backing. Not that you’ll tell me who…”
Hmph. What should she do?
Why did he mutter aloud as if he wanted her to hear? Did it mean he was confident in his deductions and skills?
What a peculiar man.
The woman assessed her situation.
Her right leg, though healed, was unusable.
The bomb plot she had meticulously planned had fallen apart, and she had no idea where her comrades, who were supposed to take over in case of failure, had gone.
“Stop scheming.”
“What are you talking abou—”
“Your comrades were the same, you know.”
“…!! You…! What did you do to my comrades?!”
“Pretty much the same thing I did to you—stabbed their legs with a blade.”
They’re probably tied up unconscious by now.
The woman felt a fleeting sense of relief. She had feared her comrades might have been mutilated or rendered permanently crippled.
Yet, the man had shown more mercy than she had expected.
“…Thank you.”
“Forget it. Explain something to me. Why are you self-proclaimed revolutionaries so sloppy—weak skills, poor resources?”
Roughly ten.
That was the number of revolutionaries Ern had subdued with minimal effort, starting with a particularly inept one. For a group aiming to spark a revolution, their competence was laughably low.
Rather than feeling threatened, Ern found himself puzzled. The woman spoke in a hollow voice.
“Why do you think?”
“I don’t like riddles.”
“Because all that remains is an empty husk. A pitiful, accursed shell, trapping pigs so bloated they can’t even step outside to graze.”
“…”
Her tone was heavy with resentment.
She seemed unaware of her own emotional outburst, her head drooping as she spoke.
“Do you know this? In any nation of a certain size, revolutionaries are an inseparable part of the system.”
“I’m aware.”
As long as the Empire’s society remained a monarchy, there would always be dissenters.
Forces seeking revolution were an inevitable fixture in any country.
“Have you heard of the imperial family that used those revolutionaries as a political tool?”
Ern nodded silently.
“Good, then this will go quicker. We were a group funded by the late Emperor—may that damned old man rot—for the sake of forging alliances with the nobles.”
“…”
It was a story Ern knew bits and pieces of.
Before the onset of war, the Empire had faced a critical need to unify the Imperial family and the nobility.
The power and resources held by the nobles were indispensable for waging war on multiple fronts.
However, the Imperial family lacked a justifiable pretext to draw on the nobles’ private armies.
Simply initiating hostilities wasn’t enough to rally support against an external foe that didn’t yet exist.
To address this, the late Emperor resorted to an unacceptable strategy.
He created a radical revolutionary group that directly threatened the lives of nobles and commoners alike.
Using the pretext of suppressing this revolutionary army, he secured military support from nobles who suffered at their hands.
Initially, the revolutionaries were used purely for suppression campaigns.
But as the war escalated, the nobles’ forces were diverted for “other purposes”.
Once the war ended, the revolutionaries were deemed obsolete.
…No, “obsolete” was not the right term.
“After the war ended, we were freed from the obligation of uniting the Imperial family and the nobility.”
It could have all ended there.
The fake revolutionaries had served their purpose; they could have faded into history, leaving everyone to enjoy the ensuing peace.
However, like a karmic debt for unnecessary sacrifices, problems arose.
Who could have predicted it?
The fake revolutionaries—originally a theater act—had somehow turned into real revolutionaries.
Only a handful of people knew that the revolutionaries had been created by the Imperial family.
These included the late Emperor, the Second Prince, a few of their loyalists, and the revolutionary leader.
The leader, who had known the revolutionaries’ true purpose, died during the war.
The late Emperor and the Second Prince fell into an eternal sleep, cursed by the Winter Blizzard.
At the time, even Epherna Grandeum, then a First Princess, was unaware of their existence.
That ignorance had consequences.
The remaining revolutionaries came to believe their cause was genuine.
As time passed, this belief solidified into an unshakable conviction.
By the time someone uncovered the truth, it was already too late to undo the damage.
Her comrades, having sacrificed their loved ones while crying out for “revolution”, could not abandon the cause.
“Do you know why our skills and tools are so inadequate?”
“Because the Imperial family cut off your support.”
“Exactly. A few of us found evidence of this—a secret stash of documents in our leader’s private vault, proving the Imperial family had supported us.”
Perhaps it was deliberate—a safeguard for the revolutionaries’ survival after they were no longer useful.
“Of course, no one believed us. Time had eroded the truth, and the commitment to revolution became an indestructible faith.”
The fake cause had become their life’s defining struggle.
And so, they had taken this reckless step.
“The leaders decided: before our revolutionary army collapses from within, we must achieve revolution at all costs, to prove that our lives were not built on lies.”
Their target was none other than the coronation banquet of the current Empress, Epherna Grandeum.
