Chapter 21

Marquis Clemens von Rottner was a man of mild demeanor with the refined features expected of a nobleman.

His hair, which had been golden in his prime, had now turned a pure white while remaining thick upon his head, and his wrinkled face was always graced with a soft smile.

As a bishop with the ability to soothe the hearts of others, he appeared to be a man of great character, perfectly suited to carry the weight of God’s prestige.

—At least, on the surface.

‘Good grief, summoned again? This fool of a prince.’

While cursing inwardly, Clemens maintained a mask of perfect composure as he stepped into the First Prince’s chambers.

However, Felix was nowhere to be seen.

Instead, a maid with a relieved expression hurried toward him.

She bowed low and began explaining the situation to Clemens.

“My sincerest apologies, Lord Marquis. After His Highness summoned you, he suddenly declared that he wanted to redecorate the room… We tried to stop him, but he insisted on rearranging the paintings and jewels himself. Right now, he is covered in dust while reorganizing the wine racks. I am deeply sorry that I could not prevent the sudden summons or the redecoration.”

“Not at all. You’ve had a difficult time as well.”

Clemens spoke gently to everyone, regardless of their station.

It wasn’t because he possessed a truly mild personality, but rather to ensure that the irritation and contempt overflowing within him never showed on the outside.

This maid was the daughter of a distant relative of his, whom he had recently installed as the prince’s personal attendant.

Following Felix’s ascension, he was gradually “replacing” the vassals, attendants, and maids with people under his own thumb. It was infuriating that these people, who were still unaccustomed to the First Prince’s idiocy, became flustered and bothered Clemens every time something happened.

‘Still, it’s impossible to expect insects to work like human beings. As the head of the Rottner house, I must be able to ‘cook’ these situations to my advantage.’

The House of Marquis Rottner were parasites who had clung to the late King’s favor and sucked every drop of sweet nectar they could.

In Clemens’s experience, the King—and the servants—were better off the more foolish they were.

A puppet, or a pawn, had no need for a thinking brain.

—Or so it was supposed to be.

“Ah, Clemens! You’re late! I wanted to consult with you, so what on earth were you doing? Thanks to your delay, I’ve already started redecorating the room.”

Hearing the poor articulation and childish, complaining voice, Clemens almost allowed a scowl to surface.

Turning around, he saw a young man standing there, his splendid garments soiled with dust.

This man, dressed in a manner unbecoming of nobility, was Felix von Ludendorff—the First Prince of this kingdom.

He had golden hair inherited from the legal queen, green eyes, and a slender build.

Up to that point, he was a reasonably handsome young noble.

However, his posture was unstable, and his expression was so lax it lacked any hint of intelligence.

Every time he spoke with him, Clemens felt as if the prince’s stupidity was contagious, leaving him utterly weary.

Even for a puppet, he couldn’t help but lament having to revere such a fool as his master.

‘I was preparing for your coronation, you know. That grand stage you so desired.’

Snorting inwardly, Clemens bowed his head with an apologetic air.

He knew that offering a clumsy rebuttal here would only complicate matters further.

During the previous “Great Wish,” Felix had said, “I want to hold a grand ball and invite everyone in the country.” It was an utterly ridiculous idea.

However, a “Great Wish” was still a “Great Wish,” no matter how rotten.

Clemens, recognized as Felix’s caretaker, had stepped in between the idiot prince and the nobles who were too stunned to speak, tactfully whittling the wish down to a feasible level.

Specifically, he interpreted “everyone in the country” as “men and women of all ages, regardless of rank or origin,” and defined the “servants of the palace” as a microcosm of that group, thereby inviting them to the coronation ball.

At the same time, he promised to open the outer perimeter of the royal castle to the citizens for three days surrounding the coronation.

With this, the nobles who had been agonizing over security issues and the budget finally breathed a sigh of relief. Felix also seemed satisfied; when Clemens delivered the report, he had beamed and said, “I hope everyone will be happy.”

‘What do you mean, “I hope everyone will be happy”?’

Recalling the chaos surrounding this affair, Clemens spat inwardly with bitterness.

A foolish monarch was preferable, but a human who was both foolish and strong-willed was problematic.

A King should always be looking at the Rottner family’s expression and deferring judgment, asking, “What do you think I should do?”

—Just like the late King.

‘In that regard, King Werner was magnificent.’

He had no will, was weak-spirited, and lacked both a sense of responsibility and the capacity for it.

Rottner only had to whisper softly in his ear to achieve his desires without ever dirtying his own hands.

Though, to achieve that state, he had put in his own fair share of effort.

The primary source of his power had been Waltzer Prison.

By bearing the construction costs on behalf of neighboring countries and actively accepting “criminals” that smaller nations couldn’t handle, he had made debtors out of the royal families and power structures of various lands.

Even within the Luten Kingdom, he had ruthlessly framed and imprisoned anyone inconvenient to him to ensure their silence.

He had placed a mentor under his thumb as a jailer there.

The man looked like a pig and was dim-witted, but he was a useful pawn who hadn’t complained once despite being stationed at the prison for over fifteen years.

Then again, perhaps he liked it because Clemens had thrown in a famously beautiful prostitute at the time of his appointment.

Waltzer Prison was a living hell.

The interior was filthy, overflowing with resentment, and echoing with the screams of prisoners subjected to gruesome torture.

The monthly reports were so gruesome they were sickening to read, and Clemens was highly satisfied with them.

Inconvenient truths would be lost among the voices of despair beyond the bars, never to reach the surface.

However, as his thoughts reached that point, he inadvertently associated them with the Second Prince, Lucas, and his mouth nearly twisted in a grimace.

Lucas von Ludendorff.

An eccentric, handsome man who showed no interest in politics or power and chose the path of the sword.

Until now, Clemens had left him alone, thinking, “A foolish man who does not understand the delicious taste of dominion.” But the situation had changed when Lucas granted pardons in Felix’s stead.

Waltzer Prison was Clemens’s sanctuary and the source of his power.

He feared that Lucas might have touched upon the internal reality—the inconvenient truths—within those walls.

‘So far, he hasn’t mentioned the presence of falsely accused prisoners or the rampant abuse inside the prison, but…’

It would be too shallow to assume he hadn’t noticed simply because the jailers were doing their jobs well.

Perhaps, precisely because he sensed something, Lucas was already contemplating his next move.

The Second Prince seemed to possess at least a modicum of wit.

‘The fact that he carried out the Great Wish of the pardons on his own, without relying on us vassals, is proof enough. He is certainly more capable than the First Prince. Hmph… if he weren’t a prince, I might have taken him under my wing, but as it stands, he is nothing but an obstacle.’

Clemens’s way of doing things was to use one unnecessary pawn to remove another from the board.

Initially, he had intended to mold Felix into a puppet, but the boy’s sheer stupidity and unpredictability irritated Clemens to no end.

Back in the late King’s era, Clemens had brainwashed his targets during every “counseling” session—such was his ability—yet when he faced Felix, the Prince’s nonsensical behavior made Clemens lose heart before he could even begin.

He would have the First and Second Princes play out a deadly feud and drag them both down.

It hadn’t taken Clemens long to begin weaving that script.

However—

‘Obtaining Viscountess Graz’s brooch ended in failure. Isolating the new head chef also failed. It seems my luck has been poor lately.’

At first, Clemens had planned to obtain the brooch belonging to the Head Maid, who was close with Lucas, and plant it at a scene where Felix had been harmed to spread rumors of an assassination plot by the Second Prince.

But the gardener boy had foolishly bungled the job, and for some reason, he remained stubbornly silent about the details. Clemens had been forced to scrap that plan.

There was no way the boy had realized he was being used to facilitate a princely assassination, yet he had been strangely terrified.

Conversely, Clemens then considered a setup where the First Prince murdered the Second. He thought of staging a poisoning incident under the new head chef Felix favored, but while he was busy isolating the man as a preliminary step, the tide had turned. Before he knew it, the kitchen had become a place of vibrant energy.

A unified organization was difficult to infiltrate.

To top it all off, there was the recent incident with Dennis.

Despite going out of his way to show a mere Baron’s son the First Prince’s collection to imprint the existence of the horseshoe in his mind, that fool hadn’t even hinted to those around him that the cursed tool was Felix’s doing.

Information was supposed to spread without passing through Clemens’s hands.

Clemens was frustrated.

‘I need a stage. A grand stage where the “fact” that the two princes are engaged in an ugly struggle for life and death becomes obvious to everyone.’

Yes.

Something like the coronation ceremony, or perhaps the ball—

‘What about a poisoning in the middle of the dance?’

Clemens’s gaze fell upon an antique painting hanging in the Prince’s chambers, and the idea struck him.

The painting depicted the nation’s founder offering wine containing his own blood to those around him, demanding their oaths of loyalty.

This was a scene known as the “Covenant of the Cup,” a ritual still reenacted on the eve of coronations to this day.

What if, during the ball, the Second Prince collapsed after drinking wine offered by the First Prince?

If he layered the rumors of the cursed tools on top of that, “the First Prince’s murderous intent” would gain considerable credibility.

Desecrating the sacred ritual of the Covenant would inevitably trigger a public backlash. It was a rather good move.

Of course, it would be difficult to actually mix poison into a bottle of wine opened on the spot, so it might be more realistic to simply “prick him with a poisoned needle” at the moment he drank.

Clemens considered this while looking at the Prince’s gemstone collection displayed next to the painting—specifically, a ring with a hidden needle that had belonged to the previous consort, a woman infamous as the “Poison Queen.”

“And so, I wanted to consult you, Clemens. On the day of the ball, the star of the show needs a fitting amount of glamour, don’t you think? I want you to issue a notice that all the beautiful noblewomen should essentially stay by my side. If you don’t, that fellow Lucas will just steal them all away without showing any respect for his older brother.”

“…I see. In that case, we shall surround Prince Lucas with male servants so the young ladies find it difficult to approach him.”

Even as Clemens’s mind raced, Felix made another absurd demand.

It wasn’t that Lucas was “stealing” women; it was simply that no woman wanted to get near the First Prince, who was rumored to be a fool. Felix himself seemed oblivious to this.

Clemens almost looked toward the heavens, wondering if the “consultation” was really something so childish, but he quickly corrected his thinking. This, too, could be used.

He would have one of the male servants play the role of planting the poisoned needle in the Second Prince.

If beauties gathered around Felix, even a dull prince would attract some attention—meaning more witnesses.

If Felix offered the wine at that exact moment and the Second Prince collapsed immediately after, it would make for quite a dramatic performance.

“Also, since this is a ball hosted by me, I want it to be of high quality—something that will go down in history. Instead of the orchestra we have now, I want to invite the best musicians from the capital of the arts, Jaderood. You know, that musician who was rumored recently… what was it, Svalbard? Someone like him.”

“…Are you referring to Mr. Joran Svalbard? But he is—”

“A genius violinist loved by God, right? He’d be perfect to add color to my ball.”

There was no way a “solitary” genius violinist, famous for his transcendent technique, would want to spend his time playing waltzes as a mere backdrop for a dance.

A ball and a concert were two entirely different things.

The urge to shout at Felix reached Clemens’s throat, but he suppressed it.

He would use this as well.

He would give Svalbard a moment to shine.

Clemens would give him a signal, and the moment Svalbard played a specific cue, the servant would strike with the poisoned needle.

By using Svalbard as a buffer, Clemens wouldn’t even need to make eye contact with the servant, ensuring that suspicion would never fall on him.

A truly capable man secures his own interests by incorporating even the most ridiculous demands into his plans.

‘Blather all you like, you dullard prince. Since it is your final wish, I shall grant it with the utmost care.’

In Luten, regicide was strictly forbidden, even for a King.

If it were proven that he murdered the Second Prince, Felix could be stripped of his throne—or perhaps even imprisoned in Waltzer.

If that happened, the next era would belong to Clemens.

While the greedy old Marquis followed the Prince with a peaceful exterior, his mind was busy making various calculations.

“U-Um, Prince Felix…”

After Clemens had departed, the maid spoke up timidly as she watched Felix reach for the antique painting he had just finished rehanging.

“If you wish to adjust its position, we will do it for you. Please, you shouldn’t be doing this kind of labor—”

“I’m not adjusting it. I’m throwing it away.”

“Huh?”

He had gone out of his way to pull an antique painting into a prominent position, only to say he was discarding it.

The maid frowned, unable to grasp his true intentions, but Felix merely laughed lightly in response.

“Its role is already over.”

“Excuse me…?”

As usual, she didn’t understand a word he was saying.

Ignoring the bewildered maid, Felix rolled up his sleeves and resumed his “redecorating.”

This time, he began gathering seemingly unnecessary items in the center of the room, apparently intending to conduct a thorough purge of his belongings.

Among the discarded items were the painting from earlier and even rings set with expensive jewels.

“Um, Your Highness! Please, surely this is enough…!”

“No way.”

Felix continued in his usual drawling tone to the clinging maid.

“You see, I absolutely hate tidying up. But when I do it—I’m the type who wants to get rid of every last bit of trash.”

His green eyes were unfocused, looking somewhere far off.

But if one looked closely enough, there seemed to be a chillingly sharp light flickering within them.