The Reverse Scale

In the Holy Kingdom of Craven, being royal means something a little special.

Royalty of the Holy Kingdom, one of the mightiest powers on the continent, would be special enough on that count alone, of course, but even allowing for it, the family is a little out of the ordinary.

“Lester. Go keep watch.”

How special? Special enough that ordering a Paladin, one of the kingdom’s highest powers, off on an errand this petty raises no particular objection.

“…”

Guarding royalty is, as a rule, a tremendously noble duty. When the royal in question is a moron like this one, though, the proposition deserves a second thought at the very least.

The Seventh Prince. Daniel Craven.

A libertine, and by common reckoning the single biggest headache in the Holy Kingdom’s royal family.

He’s been going on about wanting the Lionhearted for himself for a while now…

Even the continent’s men of real power probably coveted the place of the Lionhearted’s groom, and coveted it badly. Daniel, though, had spent years flaunting an ugly appetite for the Knight they called the Empire’s greatest treasure, the kind of appetite that made a person want to hammer “don’t even dream of it” into his skull. And the fiancé she had brought home this time was, at a glance, obviously no trained fighter, so the prince clearly meant to vent his temper on him.

“Your Highness. Even so, that is—”

The Lionhearted’s fiancé was naturally an honored guest, and pulling a stunt on him could easily grow into a diplomatic incident between the two nations. Daniel, of course, was plainly not a man to trouble himself over practical problems of that kind.

“The divinity you handle. To whom did you offer your vow to get it?”

Daniel’s savage retort silenced Lester.

Right. That was the problem.

Each nation’s fighters wield their own supernatural power, and no two of those powers share the same properties. Yet every one of them traces back to a single source: the grace bestowed by that nation’s chief deity. All supernatural power originates in the authority the gods of the Pantheon sent down to the world below.

The trouble was that in the Holy Kingdom, most of that divine authority was concentrated in the royal family, so much so that even the power Lester wielded was nothing more than something ‘borrowed’ from this wretch of a prince.

And even so, he gets packed off all the way to the Empire.

Shutting away so precious an asset, the very source of their power, in a foreign country this far from home said a great deal. It was exile in all but name, a message to go out to the back of beyond and come back with his head on straight. Daniel, in other words, was enough of a wretch that not even privilege like that could shield him.

“What are you doing? Go keep watch, I said.”

“…”

Faced with a man dead set on going through with it, Lester screamed inwardly. Refusal had never been an option to begin with. Wretch or not, the prince was royalty in the end.

“…As you command.”

Put another way, the divinity a royal could wield was formidable enough that even a Paladin, the very face of the Holy Kingdom’s might, had to give ground before a royal word.

Poor man.

Lester turned away at last, offering up a prayer for the repose of the man named Aiden.

Daniel strode over toward Aiden. At the same time, divinity began to surge threateningly along his body.

Where Karva, the goddess of war, gifted her subjects the art of wielding the energy inside their own bodies, Sier, the god of purification, bestowed on the Kingdom’s people a flame that could burn anything.

True to his standing as the royal family’s foremost wretch, Daniel had never learned a single way to handle that divinity, which made the whole thing a pearl necklace on a pig’s neck. Still, a pearl necklace is valuable in its own right. Well-forged divinity serves as shield and sword at once with no further working, and a mere touch would easily melt an ordinary person’s body.

“…”

Aiden’s face twisted at once.

Everyone knew this much: a royal of the Holy Kingdom who draws out divinity has, at the very least, as good as declared an intent to actively work the other party over. If anything, it was a graver threat than Gale drawing a sword on him the other day.

“I don’t understand it.”

Arms folded, Daniel circled Aiden again and again, every step of the loop thick with mockery and swagger.

“A woman of the Lionhearted’s caliber. What reason would she have to take a shabby sort of man like this for a spouse? Hm?”

“…”

“Speak up, low-born. Did you wag your tail at her? I am asking whether a man like you played the gold digger with that passable face of yours.”

Lester scrubbed a hand down his burning face. The insult was exactly as deep as the mind behind it. The only surprise was that a man who had looked ready to lash out with his divinity on the spot was doing nothing more than running his mouth.

…Ah. So that’s it.

This was deliberate needling. Daniel meant to goad the other man into losing his temper and laying a hand on him first, so he could plead self-defense. He hadn’t entirely forgotten about the aftermath, then; even the prince himself would find pressure from the Holy Kingdom back home frightening.

Of course, their own side had picked the fight, but a royal of the Holy Kingdom had power enough to stamp a minor flaw like that flat. Wretch of a prince or not, once he could point to the ‘first strike’, burying the other party would hardly be difficult.

“I rather wish that were what it had been.”

“…”

“Then I could at least have lined up some other fellow to do it in my place.”

“…”

This one was no ordinary piece of work.

The answer had come back blunt, without so much as a blink, and Lester and Daniel had the same thought at the same moment. Of course, to Aiden, who had been kidnapped and dragged to a place like this, the groom’s seat meant exactly that much and not a scrap more.

“…The Lionhearted would give you hell if she heard that. Have you no sense of honor at all? I would have been a far better choice than the likes of you.”

Daniel, of all people, was the one bringing up honor, yet if anything, Aiden’s eyes lit up.

“Do you want to do it instead?!”

“…”

The reaction was so disastrous that Daniel, who had picked the fight in the first place, was left speechless.

…What the hell is this bastard?

Everything about the man said that marriage to the Lionhearted really was a millstone around his neck, nothing more and nothing less. And this was an opportunity any man on the continent would envy on sight.

“—”

Without question, that stung Daniel’s pride in its own way. Here was the prize he had craved beyond measure and could never come near, and this man was treating it like something he genuinely had no use for. No doubt that was why the words he ground out carried more resentment than even he had expected.

“Shut your trap, you maggot of a thing. True to a man born to a base house, you could not be more rude to royalty if you tried!”
“Actually, about that. Let’s leave my family out of it. If you’re royalty, you ought to keep at least a minimum of honor.”

Oh.

Well, now.

Now this. This felt like a nerve well and truly struck.

That was what went through Daniel’s mind as the chill that had seeped into Aiden’s words threw him for an instant. The reaction was the exact opposite of the one any mention of the Lionhearted had drawn. Before long, though, his expression changed into a smile full of triumph.

“Honor? Honor, you say?”

If this was what made the man angry, all that remained was to steer it in the right direction.

“A maggot who inherited nothing but the musty bloodline of a base father and a base mother. Where do you find the nerve to lecture royalty about nobility?”

“…”

Wow.

The words were strung together so vulgarly that even Lester forgot the duty at hand for a moment and sighed.

And with that much said, every trace of expression vanished from Aiden’s face.

“What is the matter, low-born? Nothing but true words, so you can’t talk back? Hm?”

This time Aiden gave no answer. He only kept silent and looked Daniel up and down, with the air of a man running numbers somewhere in his head, putting his thoughts in order.

“…I think it’ll be fine.”

The moment he muttered that, Aiden began carefully measuring the distance between himself and Daniel with his eyes.

“…?”

Lester, a seasoned warrior, had a rough idea what that movement meant and went wide-eyed. This was the look of someone unused to fighting, working out how to land a blow where it would hurt most. Not that anything would come of it, when the man had plainly never trained properly.

“…??”

Something was wrong. Something. It felt as though something big was about to happen, something that had to be stopped.

“Wait, Sir…!”

Lester never got the chance to step in.

“Your Highness.”

With that, Aiden grinned, a brilliant smile that put a row of healthy white teeth on vivid display. Yet somehow, to Lester’s eye, it was a terrifying expression, with a glimpse in it of the peculiar relief of someone who has let go of the thread of reason.

“I sincerely hope you are acquainted with a good dentist.”
“…Huh?”

Before Daniel’s face could even register what he had heard, pure-white ki flared up right in front of him.

Judged by the process alone, this fell exactly in line with what Daniel had intended from the start. He had, at any rate, succeeded in getting under the other man’s skin and drawing out the first strike.

The problem was something else.

Wait, what…!

It had worked rather too well, really. Far too well.

A fist came flying, tore through Daniel’s high-purity divinity like cardboard, and slammed violently into his left cheek.

— CRACK!

There was no question about it. The blow was beautiful enough to embroider the air with a dozen-odd white teeth all at once.

There was a lot to take issue with.

How was this person handling the pure-white ki that was the Lionhearted’s own trademark? And why, on top of that, did his body look like an untrained ordinary man’s, as though he had never learned a single fighting technique? More pressing than any of that, though, was the matter right in front of them.

“…Sir.”

Lester called out to Aiden in a shaking voice, head spinning.

Daniel was right there beside them, lodged in the wall and bleeding freely from his whole body, but the shock of the situation itself came before dealing with him.

“What in the world have you done…?”

A beating this thorough would not end as a simple matter of ‘he struck a royal’. At minimum, a diplomatic dispute; at maximum, all-out war. As things stood, the continent had not even shaken off the aftershocks of the last war. And now an honored guest of the Empire had beaten a royal of the Holy Kingdom to a pulp? However anyone read it, this was not a matter that could be let go…!

“First off, drop that ‘Sir’. I’m not a Knight.”

“…”

How could someone who handled pure-white ki not be a Knight? Lester’s mouth opened and closed around the question, but Aiden spoke first.

“More to the point, go fetch someone, quickly. He’s going to die like that.”
“Pardon?”
“We have to clean up after it.”

“…”

For someone talking about a mess of his own making, he sounded remarkably calm. No, not calm so much as cold. Cleaning up, he called it, but it sounded more like a request for the means to crack the other man’s skull open more thoroughly.

“This is a very big deal, so shouldn’t we square things between us properly?”

Looking at the gleam in his eyes as he said it, Lester could at least grasp one fact.

This person.

When he got angry, he plainly turned into someone else entirely.