Surviving As The 5Th Prince Of Hellman Kingdom [EN]: Chapter 29

029

She has no name.

More precisely, she vowed to forget her original name and live under a new one until she rebuilt the family that had fallen with the collapse of the North.

Still, she needed a name for others to call her, so she asked to be called Luna, a pseudonym she found pretty…

“Oh, Jane? I heard you infiltrated the palace with Alphonso. When did you get back?”

She glared at the bandit who called her by the name of an old woman commonly found in villages of rural baronies.

“Huh? Wasn’t it Jane? What was it?”

“Luna. Originally, it was Kate, but she didn’t like it, so she changed it before infiltrating the palace.”

“Ah! That’s right. Sorry.”

The bandit smacked his forehead at the female magician’s words.

“Please be careful next time.”

Luna, with a prim expression, asked the bandit and glanced at the fox mask.

The blood relative of her master, who was the leader of the Northern Liberation Army.

The sole heir of the Saturn barony.

Neither she nor Alphonso, who trained together under the master, knew for sure whether it was a man or a woman. They had been wearing that mask since they first met. They said their face was badly injured?

The fox mask, meeting her eyes, said.

“Luna, although you haven’t worked at the Emerald Palace for long, you did infiltrate the palace with Alphonso. Tell everyone what you saw and heard about the Fifth Prince.”

“Oh, um. I can’t refuse a request from a senior, but could you at least tell me what’s going on?”

Luna didn’t know why she had been called to the executives’ meeting.

As soon as she heard the news that the Royal Secret Service was trying to capture Alphonso, she fled the palace without looking back and was on her way to the Northern Liberation Army’s headquarters.

On the way, she encountered a Hamel Empire reconnaissance team in the border area and was struggling when the fox mask suddenly appeared. It was good timing, they said, and swept away the reconnaissance team and dragged her here.

“That’s good. It’ll be more credible if someone who doesn’t know what’s going on speaks.”

“I think so too. Just tell us what you know about the Fifth Prince.”

The bandit and the eyepatch girl welcomed the situation. The black-clad man and the female magician nodded in agreement.

Luna scratched her nose and opened her mouth.

“Well, I heard you saw the Fifth Prince up close earlier, but I only saw his face from afar. I was just doing laundry without any proper affiliation, and Alphonso got me a job at the Emerald Palace, so I went there happily, but all I did was wash dishes… Son of a bitch! Anyway, all I did was wash dishes.”

“Luna, as you know, you and Alphonso are the only ones who have infiltrated the palace. What we’ve heard about the Fifth Prince recently is mostly rumors spread by palace servants while they were out. Tell us the vivid information you heard on the spot.”

At the female magician’s request, Luna frowned.

“Alphonso’s report, didn’t it come up?”

“The last one was about two months ago, saying, ‘The Fifth Prince has become strange. I will continue to observe him.'”

“Seriously, he’s so lazy…”

Luna grumbled softly.

“Well, okay. Ask me what you’re curious about. I’ll answer if I can.”

At her words, the executives were lost in thought, considering what to ask.

The bandit asked first.

“Did the Fifth Prince really beat up the Fourth Prince?”

“They were hush-hush about it at the time, but I think it’s true. A maid I knew said she saw that bastard being carried away from the Third Knight Order’s training ground, beaten to a pulp and screaming at the top of his lungs.”

“What was the Fourth Prince’s achievement at the time?”

“He was a 2-star knight. I’m sure of it. The Second Queen held a banquet to celebrate his achievement.”

“Hmm, there were rumors that he was holed up in the palace like a ghost, but he unilaterally beat up a 2-star knight? The Fifth Prince was 13 years old, right? It wouldn’t be possible if he neglected swordsmanship… Were the rumors false?”

“That’s what I’m wondering too. I’ve been infiltrating the palace for almost a year, and I’ve never heard the Fifth Prince training with a sword. I’ve heard him getting beaten up by that bastard a few times, though. But less than a month after revealing that he was learning swordsmanship, he beat up that bastard. How did he endure it all that time?”

A moment of silence flowed.

The black-clad man, as if understanding something, opened his mouth.

“He was hiding himself. Wearing the guise of a ghost prince. So secretly that no one, not even Alphonso, noticed.”

“Is that possible? And even if that’s true, why did he suddenly reveal himself?”

The female magician took over the eyepatch girl’s question.

“When Alphonso reported that the Fifth Prince had become strange, wasn’t it because he judged that the moment to shed his disguise had come? Considering that he later joined hands with the Second Prince in the royal trial and dealt with the bastard Fourth Prince, there must have been the Fifth Prince’s own standards that we don’t know about.”

“If that’s true…”

“Wow, I’ve got goosebumps. The Fifth Prince, it turns out he’s a really scary person. Wasn’t he 8 years old five years ago? Was he planning this since then?”

“Are you saying that even trying to contact us was all calculated since childhood…?”

The eyepatch girl shook off the goosebumps on her arm, and the black-clad man was lost in deep thought.

“Even if we don’t know anything else, it’s certain that he wasn’t a bookworm. Beating a 2-star knight unilaterally at the age of 13… That means he’s close to 3-star. That’s a remarkable achievement. After all, that blood didn’t disappear anywhere.”

The bandit closed his eyes for a moment, recalling the back of Richard Bayern, the Marquis, the great sword of the North.

Soon, he opened his eyes and spoke.

“Luna, is the Fifth Prince a trustworthy person?”

“Uh, yes? That’s… As I said before, from a distance…”

“Just tell me what you think.”

Luna recalled the stories she had heard about the Fifth Prince during her short time as a kitchen assistant in the Emerald Palace.

– Did you hear? Royce was wondering whether to buy some land that an acquaintance recommended to him? The Prince happened to hear and told him never to buy it. It turned out to be a scam. The Prince saved a person’s life.

– You know our youngest entered the Royal Administration School last time, right? There’s a book that Prince Evan told him to read for sure? Well, the exact same question came out of it. If he had gotten that wrong, he would have been eliminated.

– Big news! Big news! Prince Evan……

– Prince Evan……

.

.

.

The stories that the servants and maids who went back and forth in the kitchen were talking about. Luna, recalling her memories, found one thing in common.

She carefully opened her mouth.

“Uh… This is separate from whether you believe it or not…….”

“What is it? Tell me.”

“I mean, it seems like no one has lost money listening to the Fifth Prince.”

Trustworthy or not.

It was a word that determined the hearts of the Northern Liberation Army executives much more than that.

***

I visited the Third Knight Order’s training ground with Alphonso after a long time.

Some knights who found me bowed their heads. I nodded in response and looked around the training ground.

It was very different from when I first came.

The knights’ reactions were also reactions, but the most changed thing was……

“One.”

“Comradeeeeeee!”

“Two.”

“Loveeeeeee!”

The shaggy-haired man and the knight who used the greatsword, who were sparring when I first visited the Third Knight Order’s training ground. The two of them had their arms around each other’s shoulders and were doing the duck walk around the training ground, screaming in unison with the commands.

‘Wow, those two are even putting their arms around each other’s shoulders.’

In addition to the two, a number of probationary members were following behind them. It looked like they were being punished for fighting, with commoners and nobles putting their arms around each other’s shoulders.

“The sound is too small! One!”

“Comradeeeeeeeee!”

I looked at the knight who was glaring at them.

“Two!”

“Loveeeeeeeee!”

‘Senior Knight.’

Not long before the Royal Secret Service’s inspection department, a bomb, was delivered to the Emerald Palace, the senior knights, including the Knight Commander, who had gone on an expedition to the western region, had returned.

“Your Highness, the Commander is not here?”

“That’s right, you clearly said that he would be in the training ground with the members at this time.”

“Hehe, it was true. That’s what he did yesterday and the day before yesterday.”

“Let’s wait for now.”

I crossed my arms and looked at the training ground, recalling why I came here.

‘Bert Lyon.’

The royal family of the Lionel Kingdom, excluding the King’s direct line, uses the surname ‘Lyon’. Bert Lyon is the King’s full-blooded younger brother, and can be said to be my great-uncle.

He was the former Commander of the Third Knight Order and can be said to be the representative of the six members of the Royal Committee who claim neutrality.

If I went to see him directly, the First Prince’s camp would glare at me and try to dig into the reason. I was worried about how to contact him secretly, so I visited the Third Knight Order’s training ground.

‘Gert Lyon, the current Commander of the Third Knight Order, is his son.’

My idea was to try to make secret contact with Councilor Bert through him.

‘Will he be the same person I’ve heard about?’

The cases where the royalist councilors who followed the late King were not purged were largely divided into two categories.

One, their abilities were too valuable to be purged.

Two, they were not interested in factional fights.

I know that Councilor Bert falls into both of these categories. The majority of people say that he is a person who only moves for the sake of the country.

‘I’ll know when I see him in person. To do that, I need to meet the Commander of the Third Knight Order first…….’

I was spending time thinking about that when someone approached me.

“I’ve been wanting to meet you, Prince Evan. I haven’t seen you for a while, but you’ve finally come.”

“Lady Reina?”

Why is this woman here?

“I was able to avoid returning my knight title thanks to Your Highness. Thank you.”

Is she talking about how she was almost court-martialed?

I knew that it was canceled quietly as Acard’s self-made drama was revealed.

“No. It’s just that Lady Reina got caught up because of me. I’m embarrassed to be thanked when I should be apologizing.”

She scanned me up and down with sparkling eyes.

“Are you here to train?”

“Ah, not today. I’m trying to meet someone…… By the way, why is Lady Reina here?”

“I’ve been dispatched for knight order exchange.”

Was there such a thing?

She gave me an answer as if she had read the question in my eyes.

“Ah, it’s new this time.”

“I see. When are you going back?”

“Um… I don’t know. They say they’ll call me when the time comes.”

Well, it seemed like there was a backstory that I didn’t know about. I was curious, but I didn’t have the time to pay attention to it enough to find out separately.

“Then, what do you do after being dispatched?”

“It’s the same as when I was in the Second Knight Order. Eat, train. Ah! I also had sparring sessions.”

“Sparring?”

“Yes. No one has asked me to do it since the first day, so I’m a little bored.”

Reina said with a bright smile.

I was curious about the result of the sparring.

“If you don’t mind, the result is……”

“I struggled against some people, but I was lucky enough to win all of them.”

I think I knew why the Third Knight Order members didn’t even look this way after Reina approached.

“Have you ever sparred with the Commander of the Third Knight Order?”

“…… I lost. Cleanly.”

The emotion of being upset was clearly read on Reina’s face.

Talking with her, I felt that she was pure? It felt like that. It was like talking to an innocent child.

I was curious about what kind of personality she would have, as she was called a monster at the Royal Military Academy and even after becoming a royal guard, but it came as a refreshing surprise.

“Um… If you came to train, I could have watched you a little.”

My ears perked up.

Reina was the first to make me such an offer. There was no reason to refuse. However, the timing was not good.

I smiled and opened my mouth.

“I have something bothering me these days, but if I get rid of that, I’ll definitely ask you. Definitely!”

“I’m looking forward to it. Ah, but who are you here to see?”

“The Commander of the Third Knight Order.”

“Ah, the Commander.”

“Do you happen to know where he is?”

“He’s been over there since earlier.”

I turned my head to where Reina’s eyes were pointing. A middle-aged knight who reminded me of a solid shield was looking at me with his arms crossed.

‘Hmm……’

For some reason, it felt like even if I used [Evan-style Agari Art – a technique to gain favor], with all my might, it wouldn’t leave a single scratch.