-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: uly
Chapter: 11
Chapter Title: The Crown Prince's Bet
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Lark took the canteen handed to him by the knights and quenched his thirst while brushing back his sweat-soaked hair.
The midday sunlight pouring into the training ground shone down on him like a spotlight, making the light shatter and sparkle over his fine silver hair.
"Ugh...."
"What, what is it? It's so dazzling. What's up with today's weather?"
The knights who had been staring blankly at Lark all covered their eyes and grimaced one by one. It surely wasn't just the sunlight being too intense.
This man standing in the center of the training ground, posing like he was shooting a pictorial—he had captivated the gazes of even the burly men. Lark van Rashumah Decard.
To men in the Decard Empire, he was the 'man they wanted to resemble,' and to women, the 'man they wanted to possess.' The empire's top heartthrob.
"Shall we take a break, Sir Victor?"
"Ah, yes."
Victor, who had been eyeing his gaping fellow knights with pity, nodded awkwardly and complied.
"Well, I won, right?"
Lark smirked as he plopped down carelessly in the shade.
"Yes, well."
It was the glorious Decard Empire Imperial Knights Order, a gathering place for elites that not just anyone could join.
And among them, the only equal for Vice Knight Commander Victor Diorus, who boasted peerless skill, was Crown Prince Lark.
"I trust you haven't forgotten our bet."
"Ahh."
Victor nodded at Lark's question.
Today's spar had a wager on the line. The loser would grant one request from the winner.
"But what on earth could Your Highness possibly request from me?"
"It's just that lately, things have been getting awkward for me at noble council meetings. Every time they see me, they nag about when I'm going to get married."
"Ah, well, Your Highness is quite late to the game."
Crown Prince Lark was still unmarried, and the Crown Princess seat remained vacant.
When one recalled the precedents of past imperial family members, who customarily married at such a young age that the sword at their waist dragged on the ground...
'Now that I think about it, why hasn't he done it and kept bragging?'
It was certainly odd that Lark, who was nineteen this year, still hadn't taken a Crown Princess.
Victor tilted his head and asked.
"...Just get married then. Why? If you lined up all the noble ladies dying to tie themselves to Your Highness, it'd fill ten laps around the capital with room to spare, no?"
"I can't just bring in anyone."
Victor flinched in surprise at the unexpected reply, turtling his neck inward.
"W-what? Unsuitably? Don't tell me it's that you want to pledge your life to a commoner girl you're passionately in love with?"
"Me?"
Lark scoffed incredulously at Victor's wild swing.
"Talk of love or whatever feels so cringeworthy it makes my fingers curl, so let's skip the childish stuff."
Of course. Victor let out a deflated sigh.
Crown Prince Lark van Rashumah Decard. He was regarded as the most perfect successor in the history of the Decard Empire's Imperial Family.
By around age ten, he had mastered imperial studies, showed promise in politics and economics, and excelled in diplomacy as well. When he was just thirteen, he negotiated a friendship treaty with the Kingdom of Roben, the hub of maritime trade.
And that was hardly all.
What did the people of a great nation most desire from their leader?
No need to elaborate: national defense (*preparing against foreign invasion and defending the homeland*)!
Lark was also a soldier without equal.
'As long as His Highness is around, any war means certain victory....'
The spirit Lark commanded was an earth spirit of the highest tier. Thus, any battlefield he set foot on inevitably became a stage tilted in the Imperial Army's favor.
Rugged canyons flattened into plains, denying the enemy any chance to ambush, and even when cornered, sand soldiers could rise at his command. Truly limitless firepower.
It was only natural that everyone praised this paragon of perfection that was Lark. All voices united in anticipation of his reign ushering in the empire's golden age.
And Lark...
'He'll probably live his whole life for the empire.'
He was a man obsessed with the compulsion to always be perfect, in order to live up to those expectations.
'Boring guy.'
Victor shook his head as he thought.
A freak who slept exactly four hours a day and never flinched at a murderous schedule of state affairs and training!
Yet he viewed this harsh existence as the duty of one born to be successor—a man utterly devoid of any sense of fun!
"Ah!"
Suddenly, Victor let out an exclamation.
He had a vague inkling of what 'that' Lark wanted to request from him, enough to even wager on it.
'The reason he suddenly brought up marriage to me of all people....'
Childish love games were, by Lark's standards, the most unnecessary and pointless element.
Naturally, the Crown Princess role was merely a means to an end for him—a tool to become the perfect leader.
So what would be the ideal condition for the Crown Princess that Lark desired?
'Obviously, a woman who bolsters his own power.'
A woman from the Diorus Ducal House, rivaling the Imperial Family itself, would surely appeal most to Lark as a Crown Princess candidate.
"You mean you want me to introduce you to my sister?"
"Oh, I do love how quick on the uptake you are, Sir Victor."
Lark beamed.
"I can't leave the Crown Princess seat vacant any longer. Lately, that Nathan's been acting suspicious too...."
"Nathan—you mean His Highness the 2nd Prince? Why? No, more than that, why bother asking me for this? If you want to see Lillia, it should be easy, right? She's out hitting every noble tea party under the sun every day...."
To be precise, Lillia was Victor's aunt, but since she was three years younger, everyone conveniently treated her like a little sister.
Lillia, the youngest of the Diorus family, hailed as the family's 'swan.'
Even at her young age, she was already the talk of high society.
She perfectly resembled her mother Molga, who had secured the duchess position through beauty alone—and was staggeringly beautiful for it.
'Lillia really would light a fire in this guy's eyes as a Crown Princess candidate.'
Yet, contrary to Victor's expectation, Lark frowned and shook his head.
"No, not her."
"...Pardon?"
"Lillia's a duchess—and your aunt, no? I'm talking about your blood sister."
Victor drew in a sharp, startled breath.
If one meant 'little sister,' then technically...
There was one more. So to speak.
"...You don't mean Rubettria?"
At Victor's shocked question, Lark immediately nodded and countered.
"Why? Any problem?"
* * *
"Why? Any problem?"
Casting the empire's top celeb, the Crown Prince himself, as a model.
I'd taken Wishit's pretty solid advice—use my second brother Victor, who's close to the Crown Prince—as the first step toward achieving that grand feat, and roughly sketched out a plan...
"There's a problem?"
But for some reason, Wishit, the one who'd suggested it, now looked dubious.
"There is. Think back to when you were Juliet Karénine. If the owner of a brand-new clothing shop came begging you to model, would you?"
"If the terms were right? I was always generous about sponsored gigs."
I formed a circle with my thumb and index finger, mimicking a coin, and added.
"Because it paid."
"Ah, right. Sponsorships. So you pay the model to wear the clothes and promote them?"
"That's it."
"So the flaw in that sponsorship idea."
"What?"
"The Crown Prince doesn't need money."
"Ahh!"
That was the worry?
Wishit clicked his tongue, staring at me like I was an idiot as I exclaimed.
"You have all of Rubette's memories, yet you don't know much about the Crown Prince? This guy's almost...."
Wishit pointed at his own face—currently the spitting image of the Crown Prince—and narrowed his eyes.
"Like a manufactured leader, you could say? The boring type obsessed only with the empire's prosperity. His image is the Imperial Family's image, so he obsessively polices his every move. I felt it every time I saw him in person—such a suffocating personality—"
"So he'd obviously refuse if I asked him to model?"
I cut off his rambling and asked. Wishit stared at me like I'd stated the obvious.
"But I'm not going to pay him for a sponsorship."
"What?"
"Money obviously won't move the Crown Prince. You think I wouldn't have considered that?"
"Then what, you have some other leverage? Something to make the Crown Prince budge?"
Wishit asked with zero expectation in his eyes.
Status, wealth, connections... The Crown Prince already had it all. I couldn't buy him with money, nor sway him with power.
But.
"If I save his life, wouldn't he naturally agree to model?"
"...."
Wishit paused, then asked sharply.
"...You mean save him? The Crown Prince?"
"Not a bad deal. Save the Crown Prince, secure a model. Killing two birds with one stone, right?"
I glanced pityingly at Wishit, who wore the Crown Prince's face.
"Honestly, letting a face like this go to waste for a few years would be a national loss."
That was right. Crown Prince Lark van Rashumah Decard—tragically, was fated to die soon.
In the bloody power struggle at the heart of the Decard Empire's Imperial Family.
Because the 2nd Prince, Nathan van Rashumah Decard—who had long coveted the successor's seat—would succeed in assassinating the Crown Prince.