Chapter 112

The aftermath of the war was handled with remarkable speed.

Norbek was thrown back into the underground prison of the White Palace, and the soldiers accepted their new master without offering any real resistance.
Quite a few of them were even more pleased by the fact that they were now allowed to relocate to Asagrim.

Gares, whom Lucian had sent to occupy the territories, also returned before long with a bright expression, having completed his mission.

“Just as you said, Your Highness. They opened the gates so easily it made my worries seem foolish.”
“And how did the townsfolk react? Were they confused by the change in ruler?”
“On the contrary, there was about to be chaos due to the lack of security forces, and we had to suppress that first.”

As Lucian had predicted, Norbek had dragged in even the bare minimum of his security troops and committed them all to the war.
Naturally, that left a serious security vacuum, and the territory had been on the verge of falling into disorder.

Fortunately, the knight order arrived just in time, before things could descend into a riot, and prevented any major incident.

It was the right call to send the Blue Rose Knight Order ahead.

If he had been even a little slower, the administrators would likely have fled en masse, taking advantage of the confusion.
Rushing the occupation just in case had been an absolute blessing.

“With the absence of proper security forces being unavoidable, we temporarily recognized some of the self-defense militias organized by the townsfolk.”
“Self-defense militias? Are you sure that’s wise?”

Calling them a self-defense militia protecting their hometown sounded nice, but in the end, they were just a group of hot-blooded young men.
If authority was handed out carelessly, they could just as easily turn into a gang of thugs lording it over the townsfolk instead.

As if sensing Lucian’s concern, Gares grinned and spoke up.

“Don’t worry. I made it very clear what would happen to them later if they forgot their proper role and ran wild. If they have any sense at all, they won’t even dare to try anything foolish.”
“I see. In that case…”

At Gares’s words, Lucian was finally able to relax.
It was clear this wasn’t baseless confidence, but certainty born of experience.

Strange. The Blue Rose Knight Order should be directly under the imperial family, yet they’re handling postwar affairs with such skill.

Postwar management was extremely important—but it was also something knights particularly disliked.
After all, the glory of the battlefield lay in smashing the enemy from the vanguard, not in cleaning up after everyone else’s heroics.
Naturally, among knights, postwar administration was regarded as an unpleasant chore to be foisted off on others whenever possible.

For an imperial knight order, wouldn’t they usually dump this kind of work on someone else? Why are they so adept at it?

Lucian considered asking Gares, then decided against it.
If they had been saddled with work everyone else avoided, there was surely nothing good behind it.
Until Gares chose to speak of it himself, it seemed best to leave it alone.

“You’ve done well. You’ll have to head out again soon to stabilize the occupied territories, so get some proper rest.”
“Yes, Your Highness. Thank you for your consideration.”

At Lucian’s words, Gares bowed and left the office.
Left alone, Lucian leaned back in his chair and murmured quietly,

“With this, all the prerequisites are finally in place.”

The hostile forces that had remained in the north against Lucian were completely wiped out by this war.
With contact with the imperial court severed, no outside interference would come no matter what he did.
He had even formally received authority over magic directly from the Emperor.

Now I can truly devote myself to magical research—there’s no one left who can nitpick or interfere.

Lucian felt a pleasant itch of excitement in his chest and let a faint smile form.
It was finally time to unearth the legacy of the northern royal family, which had lain dormant in the dark underground for nearly a thousand years.

***

That evening, Lucian summoned his vassals once more.
The moment they arrived, they bombarded him with questions.

“My lord, I heard you gave Sir Felicia an incredible suit of armor? And that it was even mass-produced—where on earth did you get something like that?”
“Was the Grimaldi family’s legacy really that extraordinary? We’d heard the family had fallen—were you actually unimaginably wealthy all along?”

Lucian gave a wry smile at the barrage of excited questions from Hans and Ian.

“So you’ve already told them everything.”
“My apologies. The war was over, so I thought it was all right to reveal it…”
“No, you did well. I was planning to explain it anyway—that’s why I called you here. But before that, there’s someone I’d like to introduce.”

Lucian gave a light clap.

At that, someone standing outside hesitantly stepped into the room.

“A mage…”

Hans muttered under his breath the moment he saw Colin.
Under the barrage of gazes coming from all sides, Colin lowered his head, his face taut with tension.

“It’s a pleasure to see you again, everyone. This is the first time since the Sword Saint visited the White Palace.”
“Hmm.”

The vassals returned the greeting, but none of them relaxed their sharp stares.
They had heard that Lucian valued his abilities highly enough to grant him the position of court mage.
Even so, being employed by Lucian and being invited to this gathering were entirely different matters.
It meant being regarded not as a merely useful subordinate, but as one of Lucian’s truly trusted vassals.

This suspicious mage is now supposed to be one of us?

That question was plainly written in the vassals’ eyes.
Unlike them, who had served Lucian since his days as the third son of the Valdeck family, Colin was an outsider.
Worse still, wasn’t he someone who had been hired for an assassination attempt by the Count of Calyx before surrendering?

Even an ordinary knight would have drawn suspicion—let alone a mage of unknown origins.

“I recognize your face. You were beside His Highness when he came to receive me.”

It was Aizen who rescued Colin, left stranded in the heavy atmosphere.
Stroking his beard, Aizen spoke in a gentle tone.

“You look so hunched even while greeting people that it was rather painful to watch. I almost told you to straighten your back and speak with confidence.”
“M-My apologies.”
“You seem to have a fair bit of pride in your own abilities, yet in front of me you lose all backbone. Am I that frightening?”

At Aizen’s blunt question, Colin hesitated for a long while.
As the silence dragged on, Lucian answered in his stead.

“It seems he was afraid that Sir Aizen might look upon him unfavorably. Especially since there are stories about your participation in the witch hunts.”
“I more or less expected as much. So it really was because of that. The witch hunts… not exactly a pleasant memory.”

Seeing Colin frozen stiff, Aizen gave a bitter smile.
It truly didn’t seem to be a good memory—there was a trace of discomfort on his face.

“They called it a witch hunt, but most of those involved were half-baked mages who couldn’t even put up a proper fight. They were nowhere near witches—barely qualified to call themselves even a mage’s apprentice.”

It wasn’t as though cruel and monstrous mages didn’t exist at all.
There certainly were mages who could spew fire from their hands or freeze entire rivers, wielding absurd levels of power.
But such figures were exceedingly rare. The vast majority were so weak they couldn’t even kindle a single spark properly.

“A woman abandoned by her master after being taught magic and deemed talentless, a child who had learned a little by chance and could only manage to float a faint glow of light in the air, a man who had quit magic but lacked the skill to conceal his own mana—every one of them had a different story.”

In Aizen’s eyes, most of those mages hadn’t turned to magic out of greed or made corrupt choices.
They were simply people who had stumbled into magic by chance—people who would have lived quietly without causing trouble if left alone.
But the witch-hunt units were people who knew no mercy.

“Even if I wanted to let them go, I couldn’t. No—I was forced to move together with the witch-hunt unit, so there was nothing I could decide on my own. As a result, I saw far too many things no one should have to see.”

“…”

“When people hear that I took part in the witch hunts, many imagine heroic tales of slaying dangerous black mages. In reality, it was nothing more than hunting—and slaughter.”

At Aizen’s words, the vassals bowed their heads with somber expressions.
Felicia, unexpectedly, remained calm, but Raymond sat with his mouth half open, as if dazed.
It seemed the truth behind the stories he had once believed to be heroic tales in his childhood had come as a shock.

“You—your name was Colin, wasn’t it?”
“Y-Yes! Ah, yes!”
“Mind your conduct at all times, and be grateful to His Highness. This is salvation that came like a miracle. If, through needless ambition, you drag yourself and your kin back into the abyss, you won’t be able to bear the weight of that sin.”

At the stern warning, Colin’s body trembled.
It wasn’t from pressure, but rather as though he were deeply moved by the concern and consideration coming directly from the Sword Saint himself.

“Thank you for the advice. I will carve your words into my bones.”
“Ha—don’t thank me. Thank His Highness instead.”

At Aizen’s lighthearted remark, the heavy atmosphere eased a little.
The vassals’ gazes toward Colin were no longer as severe as before.
Thanks to the story just shared, some of their prejudice against mages had softened.

“If we’re going to share secrets, it’s better to take him in fully as one of the vassals.”
“Since our lord trusts him, we’ll put our faith in him as well.”
“If he has any sense of shame, he’ll repay our lord’s trust with his life.”

Raymond, Hugo, and Felicia each added a remark.
Unlike the vassals who had joined recently, their words suggested they knew something more.
Before another question could be asked, Lucian rose from his seat.

“Come. I’ll show you the royal family’s legacy.”

Lucian led his vassals toward the throne.
They didn’t move in secret, so they passed a few servants along the way, but nothing came of it.

There’s no point in hiding it too carefully when it’ll all come to light soon anyway.

The relics hidden underground weren’t things Lucian could simply stash away for personal use and take out whenever he pleased.

Technologies that could only reveal their true worth once unveiled to the world and developed through open research.
If he kept everything hidden and only took out what was immediately usable, not even a tenth of their potential would ever be realized.

That said, it’s not like I intend to let just anyone into the storeroom itself.

After dismissing the people around the throne room, Lucian took out a key.
Just as he had when opening it before, the moment he brought the key close, a flash of light flowed along his wrist.

Shrrrk.

“This is…!”
“Come on. Let’s go in.”

Lucian gestured toward the astonished vassals as they stared at the door beneath the throne.
With Lucian leading the way, three vassals followed him inside, and the rest trailed after them with stunned expressions.

“This is unbelievable…!”
“What is this? A dream?”

“…”

Hans and Ian were half out of their minds the moment they laid eyes on the treasures.
Colin was nearly on the verge of fainting, unable to even form proper words.
The only one who managed to keep his composure was Aizen, who had already glimpsed a fragment of the treasury before.

“I think I finally understand where Your Highness obtained such treasures.”
“Just a bit of ancestral inheritance I was lucky enough to come by.”

Lucian spoke with modesty that was—or wasn’t—truly modest, lightly tapping his vassals.
Only then did the dazed group snap back to their senses, quickly scattering toward whatever caught their interest.

Hans headed straight for the piles of gold coins and gemstones, while Ian began examining the saplings and medicinal herbs.

After watching from the side for a moment, Lucian soon headed toward Colin, who was skimming through the books.

“Well? Can you make out what’s written in there?”

When Lucian had checked before, what was written inside had clearly been instructions for crafting magic tools.
However, there were so many magic-related terms that it had been difficult to grasp the details.
If it was Colin, a specialist, he should be able to read even the parts Lucian had glossed over.

“M-My lord…”

Colin turned to Lucian with trembling eyes.
He seemed even more shaken than when he had first seen the treasury, his gaze unfocused.
Taken aback by the stronger-than-expected reaction, Lucian frowned slightly.

“What is it? Is what’s written inside really that impressive for a magic-tool crafting method?”
“…This isn’t a magic-tool crafting method.”
“What?”
“What’s written here is an artifact creation method. Not for sturdy weapons or the like, but for ancient weapons that could erase mountains and evaporate rivers!”
“…What?”

At the word artifact, Lucian was struck with shock.
Ancient weapons that were said to imitate the feats of the gods themselves—feared even in ages long past.
The pinnacle of ancient technology, rumored to be capable of annihilating a nation in a single day or reshaping entire landscapes.

And this was a method to recreate such artifacts.

“The materials required to create an artifact—!?”

Lucian shouted urgently.
What the artifact actually did could wait until later.

What mattered was whether the materials required for its manufacture could be obtained in the present age.
If the materials could be acquired, the rest could be completed even through repeated trial and error.

Colin answered in a voice brimming with excitement.

“A dragon’s horn, a giant’s heart, fairy dust, and the essence of a mermaid!”

Lucian barely managed to force his clenched fist back down before it could rise on its own.