Chapter 107 – Conversations (II)

In the northeast of the Lemmrousell Empire, on the border with the Queenseria Kingdom, lies the city of Old Lake. This city had been the royal capital of a country called Reimdow until seven years ago. The population was about 10,000. It was a small country with a combined population of only 30,000, and had been resisting the enormous pressure of the Lemmrousell Empire for many years, strengthening ties with the Queenseria Kingdom, a medium-sized country, and other small countries in the surrounding area. It was a region that had now been incorporated into the empire.

There was a hero in the fallen kingdom of Reimdow.

Her name was Lucrezia Horn Reimdow. She was the princess of the Kingdom of Reimdow.

In the year 265 of the imperial calendar. Queenseria, an ally of the Kingdom of Reimdow, was invaded by demons. While the country was in turmoil over the question of succession to the throne, Queenseria fell into a state of terrible confusion, as its countermeasures against the demon invasion took a back seat. Taking advantage of this, the Empire attacked the Kingdom of Reimdow.

The Lemmrousell Empire was a large country with a national power tens of times greater than that of Reimdow. When it invaded Reimdow, the only troops it mobilized were the Knights of the Eastern Sector, but in a single battle, the King of Reimdow was killed. Even so, the Knights of the Kingdom crowned the Crown Prince, then only seven years old, as king, and decided to wage war with the few reinforcements sent from the surrounding small countries. And the name of Princess Lucrezia Horn Reimdow appeared on the stage of history.

At the age of thirteen, Lucrezia had to replace her brother, the king, on the battlefield. With no hope of receiving reinforcements from Queenseria, they would have to fight, inflicting so much damage on the Empire that they could not ignore it, and then bring it to peace, extracting terms that were beneficial to the people of Reimdow, even if only a little, so that they could be incorporated into the control of the Empire. This was the conclusion of the war that would be best for the Kingdom. There was no hope of victory, though.

However, the Knights of Reimdow, led by Lucrezia, fought more than evenly against the Knights of the Eastern Sector of the Empire, who had an overwhelming advantage in numbers.

At the age of twelve, Lucrezia had studied at the Imperial Knight School in Simurgh. In just one year, she had noticed the gap between the noble knights, the commoners knights and the soldiers of the Imperial Order.

In the Imperial Knights Order, knights were referred to by their first name and rank, not by their surname, so that it would not influence their behavior. However, it was difficult to follow the discipline of the order when outside of it. After all, squadron leaders of the high aristocracy tended to convey their opinions to the captains. And that kind of unit was inevitably poorly coordinated.

While attending the knight school, Lucrezia had researched the personal relationships of the Knights of the Eastern Sector, who were likely to confront her if she fought against their country. Based on this information, she noticed that only units with poor coordination and little skill were selected to fight. As a result, she managed to capture several high-ranking nobles alive and created a negotiation path with the Empire.

In the Year 268 of the Imperial Calendar. Although the Kingdom of Reimdow was to be destroyed, it was to be relieved of its territory, to become the territory of the Empire. Lucrezia’s brother became Count Reimdow, an Imperial nobleman, and Old Lake, the royal capital, was no longer in danger of being burned by war. But Lucrezia herself would never be free. Fearing her military prowess, Emperor Alexei demanded that she be handed over as a hostage of the former Kingdom of Reimdow. He gave Lucrezia as a reward for the invasion of Reimdow to Marquis Welt von Cliffdorf, a prominent member of the imperial nobility and chief of staff of the Eastern Sector. Many of the sons of the Empire’s leading aristocrats were taken hostage, and although they accepted peace and were relieved of their territories, the Empire needed to show the outside world that they had won the war.

Thus, Lucrezia was appointed as Marquise Cliffdorf, an imperial noblewoman.

The year 270 of the Imperial Calendar. Lucrezia would have a son with Welt. The child was given the name Jade.

Year 276 of the Empire… in Old Lake. After the fall of the Kingdom of Reimdow, the city of Old Lake was ruled by Lucrezia’s brother as its lord in name only, and royal policy was carried out by the regent sent from the Empire.

After the war, the lives of the inhabitants were not outraged, but still a good many concessions were given to the Empire, and new and heavy taxes were imposed. There was no mercy at all. For the empire, the Kingdom of Reimdow was the one that captured many nobles although it was able to annex it, caused more damage than expected and filled their faces with disgrace as a nation.

Discontent burned among the inhabitants of the former Kingdom of Reimdow. However, their lord, the Count, was surrounded by imperial officials, and the heroic princess was sent to a distant mansion as the wife of an imperial nobleman. The inhabitants of Reimdow had no choice but to obey, despite their pent-up frustration.

The reason Lucrezia was allowed to return to her hometown this time was to show the people that the princess had become an imperial noble, and to make them more aware of her existence as a hostage; to show that the Kingdom of Reimdow had surrendered to the Lemmrousell Empire. And for one more reason… It was also to show Lucrezia that the people of her homeland were being held hostage.

Immediately after her brief return, Emperor Alexei ordered her to join the Continental Anti-Demon Alliance as a general of the Imperial Army and take command of reinforcements. This was the result of Lucrezia’s husband, Welt von Cliffdorf, selling Alexei on his wife’s military prowess. She was the second person in the empire to arrive, after General Zaunas von Layfes.

At that time, Lucrezia took Jade to visit her hometown for the first time in his life, and even as a young boy, Jade remembered being confused by the gloomy atmosphere of the town.

The town, once a small but thriving royal capital, was now covered with fallen leaves from the trees, and the branches neglected and overgrown with weeds. Grass grew between the cobblestones that had been laid on the main street. The stores and houses facing the street were also noticeably empty. Due to the war with the empire, the city’s population, which had once exceeded 10,000, had dropped considerably. When Jade realized that her mother’s hands were shaking as she hugged herself, he looked up into her face, he would always clearly remember the tears in her eyes as she took in the view of the city outside the carriage.

At that moment, the power of the demons was overwhelming. Countries and races from all over the continent had sent their armies, but they had been defeated in many battles. Of course. As the Lemmrousell Empire and the Kingdom of Reimdow demonstrated, although they formed the Continental Anti-Demon Alliance to fight the demons, the same people were also waging war against each other behind the scenes. The demons were attacking people as if they were trying to get a cut out of an alliance that was not monolithic. A large number of people were dying every day in the war.

Then Jade’s mother, Lucrezia, was sent to serve as a general for the Empire.

By then, Lucrezia’s name had already been inscribed on the list of the dead. Lucrezia von Cliffdorf; she was twenty-six years old.

Jade’s mother, Lucrezia, lost her life without getting any reward for it. To protect the inhabitants of a small country, she fought against the threats of the great Lemmrousell Empire and sacrificed her life. This time, to protect his former enemy, she went to the harsh battlefield and did not have enough strength due to her allies crawling back and forth, but she still fought hard… and died on the battlefield. For Jade, the empire was the one who killed her mother, and also became his target for revenge. And indeed, as Jade saw it, the empire was so corrupt that he doubted very much that it would have been worth her mother’s life to protect it.

The Lemmrosell Empire certainly had plenty of supplies and soldiers to match its position as a power. However, perhaps because of the tranquility that came with being a large country, many of the foolish high-ranking nobles were not used to war and sought a peaceful life. This caused Emperor Alexei himself to abandon his political duties and let his subjects do as they pleased.

In the past, Lucrezia saw the reality of the empire within the Eastern Order and made the empire end up licking its wounds by taking advantage of it. Jade was using the high position he had held from the beginning, as the son of Marquis Cliffdorf, to try to take down the empire as his mother once did. He could not take Princess Cornelia into custody, but he could make Prince Neumann a puppet emperor. Then Jade would seize power in the empire that had trampled her mother and her homeland. That was Jade’s revenge against the empire.

NA: Although there were no conversations…

Frizcop: And this, my reader friends, in my opinion, gives this novel a different dimension to what we were already seeing. Jade is no longer a simple villain, he is now a more Machiavellian character, it seems.