Free Web NovelThe storm still lashed the Imperial capital, yet inside the Grey Rock Province's temporary residence in the city it was as quiet as if cut off from the world.
Remont sat beside the hearth, calm and elegant, looking as though he had not just taken part in a coup that had upended the Empire.
Unlike the Second Prince, whose eyes had been blood-red with killing in Yuchen Hall, not a single drop of blood stained Remont's fingers.
One could say Remont was the greatest beneficiary of this coup.
Years of planning had formed a vast chessboard, and the nobles, princes, and legion commanders were merely pieces pushed this way and that.
Lampard was too soft, Kalian too rash; only he stood outside the board, securing everything in the surest posture.
He even felt a faint pleasure in his heart—so vast, so ancient an Empire, yet grasped so easily by him alone.
And those imperial scions who prided themselves on their cleverness fought over a single chair without ever realizing where power truly originated.
Several freshly-issued appointment scrolls lay spread across the table.
One read: Remont Grace, granted the hereditary rank of Grand Marshal of the Empire.
The paper was cold and solemn; no noble had borne that title in five hundred years.
It meant he now possessed the legal right to mobilize every legion except the Praetorian Guard.
Not symbolically—this was the kind of power that made knight-captains saddle up the moment the order arrived.
At the other end of the desk lay a new imperial map.
Three commanderies had been colored in Grayrock's hue.
They were the fertile Triple Counties encircling the capital, the Empire's granary.
The Second Prince had kept his promise, handing over the richest soil in the realm.
Grayrock knights would garrison there, store grain, train troops, and raise the new legions they envisioned.
Yet Remont pushed those glittering grants aside.
Those scrolls recorded titles, medals, gems, lands—things the capital's nobles would tear each other apart to possess.
To Remont they were no more than sweets tossed to children at a festival, enough to coax fools who had never seen the wider world.
What he truly wanted was in an iron-banded chest to his left.
The first layer held every survey map the emperors had ever commissioned of the Ancient Dragon Ruins.
Each was detailed to the point of absurdity, marking mana flows, rock strata, and the exact positions of dragon-bone remains.
As Remont studied them, the calm in his eyes seemed to settle a missing puzzle piece into place.
In the second layer lay a fragile sheepskin volume, its cover bearing the mottled title: Dragon Blood.
It was the record of the serum extracted from ancient dragon corpses by the last several reigns.
The project proved the imperial line had spent a century trying to prolong life with dragon blood, even to break through to a new level of existence.
They had failed, because the “dragons” they possessed were only drakes, not true dragons.
Grey Rock Province's colossal dragon cadaver, however, was a genuine ancient dragon—the only key to completing the entire plan.
With these documents, the Dragon-Blood Warrior project—and his own draconization experiment—could at last advance.
Remont's breath caught for an instant.
Then he gently closed the sheepskin volume as though sealing a relic.
He shut the chest, rose, and walked to the window.
Thunder rolled outside. freewebnøvel.com
He gazed at the capital's nightscape lit by distant fires and exhaled softly.
The Second Prince believed he had won, that he himself would mount the Dragon Throne—but he was merely a puppet, one Remont had personally carved.
Remont murmured, “At last I have arrived.”
While the words still hung in the air, a cautious knock shattered the room's stillness.
He ~Nоvеl𝕚ght~ frowned in distaste, did not turn at once, and instead leisurely rolled the scroll and tucked it into the hidden pocket of his sleeve.
Only when all was in place did he turn. “Enter.”
In the doorway appeared the Second Prince's captain of the guard.
This man had strangled Duke Simmons on the execution ground, ruthless beyond compare, yet under Remont's gaze sweat beaded on his brow and his legs felt leaden.
“What is it?” Remont's voice was frost.
The captain swallowed, bowed deeply, and said, “Grand Marshal, the Regent... His Highness has urgent military news. He is in the command chamber, smashed two cups in rage, and insists you come at once.”
“Smashing cups?” Remont chuckled—the contempt of hearing a hungry cur yap inside its cage.
The captain did not dare raise his head. “His Highness says we must march immediately, but... he needs your instruction.”
Remont exhaled softly, as though confirming the beast on the far side of the board was still safely caged.
He smoothed his cuff, his tone terrifyingly calm. “Very well.”
The words were soft, yet they sent a chill down the captain's spine.
Remont studied the trembling officer, a flicker of amusement and appraisal in his eyes, as though watching a rain-drenched pup struggle to stay on its feet.
He knew Kalian's state all too well.
A mad dog that had just tasted blood, skittish and savage, eager to proclaim itself the new king.
That swelling sense of power would make Kalian deadly for a short while—and also remarkably easy to use.
Kalian still needed that madness to purge the civil officials, to bear the title of tyrant for him, and to fight other factions on the future front lines.
If Kalian sensed he was being sidetracked or manipulated now, the dog might turn and bite its master—so every step must be cautious.
“Give him face,” Remont told himself. “Let him strut a few more days, let him wallow in this hollow glory.
Once he has slaughtered all dissenters and ground the legions to dust, I will quietly replace his guards, cut off his funds, slip the poison into his food.
The August bloodline has already rotted; the Empire of the future does not need a crippled maniac on the Dragon Throne. It needs a true dragon coursing with dragon blood.”
A thousand schemes twisted through his mind, yet what showed on Remont's face was the resigned gentleness of a loyal vassal.
He stepped to the door and clapped the captain's shoulder. “Lead on. As a subject, I cannot keep His Highness waiting.”
...The Second Prince's command chamber blazed with light, candle-flames leaping in the draft, casting the huge imperial sand-table like a beast being torn apart.
Kalian stood with his back to the room, shoulders rising and falling with each breath, a volcano on the verge of eruption.
Anxious tension filled the air; every knight and scout stood rigid along the walls, none daring to speak.
Only when Kalian slowly raised his hand did he rasp, “Say it again.”
The scout's voice quavered almost out of shape: “Your Highness... Fifth Prince Lampard has fled to Southeast Province! Yesterday, backed by the heretic church, he proclaimed the founding of the Holy Eastern Empire!”
The room fell deathly still.
Golden Feather Flower Church—the heresy Iron-Blood Empire regarded as an eternal foe.
Kalian spun around, voice exploding like thunder: “He dares ally with heretics? He dares plant their flag on imperial soil?!”
The scout shuddered and went on: “The Fifth Prince issued an Edict of Rebellion, accusing Your Highness and the Fourth Prince of assassinating the Regent... Southeast Province has opened every pass to the church's army.”
The sand-table shook, dust flying.
Kalian slammed a fist down, teeth clenched, chest heaving: “That spineless wretch! To save his skin he'd sell even his ancestors' ashes to heretics!”
Remont slowly rolled up the scroll and lifted his gaze.
He glanced at the seething Kalian, then at the scout kneeling on the ground, the corner of his mouth slowly curving into a faint smile.
"Your Highness summoned me late at night for such a trifling matter." He walked to the sand table and picked up a glass of red wine.
"Lampard thinks a few bottles of holy water, a few heretic bishops, and the Calvin Family's ambiguous stance can prop up a kingdom? He's simply gathered the empire's traitors in one direction so we can set them all ablaze."
Remont gently swirled his cup, not even glancing at the newly planted Golden Feather Flower banner in the Southeast: "Ignore it. Once I consolidate the Central Army and digest Rhine's remaining forces, next spring I'll personally lead the knights to raze those heretics' temples.
Kalian's fury churned in his chest; Remont's calm manner steadied him a little.
Yet the next moment, violent commotion burst outside the door.
"Urgent military intelligence! Northern frontier dispatch!"
A guardsman entered, dropped to one knee in perfect salute, and raised a frost-covered Storm-Bird message tube above his head.
The bronze casing showed tiny cracks from the long flight; touching it felt like the wind from ten thousand li away.
This was emergency correspondence used only for the highest level of warfare.
Kalian lifted a hand, signaling to read it aloud.
The guard drew out the thin letter; rune-ink glimmered in the candlelight.
He drew a deep breath and recited the report line by line:
"Urgent! Count Louis Calvin of the North has marched south with an army. In the Greyrock Fortress sector he engaged the Empire's Seventh, Fourteenth, and Seventeenth Legions."
Remont's nerves, taut from the Southeast rebellion, slackened at the news.
He gave a soft laugh: "Has Louis lost his mind? Ten thousand regulars hold that fortress—what can his meager force do but smash eggs on stone?"
Someone at the staff table couldn't help snickering, obviously thinking it a mere reckless probe.
But the next sentence slashed every smile like a blade.
Yet the guard's voice, though trembling, pressed on: "The clash lasted only one day; all three legions... routed. Greyrock Fortress fell on the third day... now lost."
Clack.
As the cup hit the floor, Remont's face seemed split by a cleaver—one half still aristocratically cold, the other twisted with rage and shock.
This time he dropped all elegant pretense, roaring: "Absurd! Ten thousand pigs couldn't be slaughtered in a day!"
The guard steadied his breath and finished: "Final section: the Northern army has mustered and is driving south, officially entering Grey Rock Province... report ends."
Candle-shadows shivered on the walls of Yuchen Hall, while the chamber itself lay silent as a vacuum.
Then Remont's expression changed utterly, for he finally grasped Louis's true aim.
Not to champion the emperor, not to vie for supremacy, not to annex the North—but Grey Rock Province.
There lay three centuries of his house's hoard, vaults enough to arm ten legions, countless secret contracts, and the dragon-blood experiment that could redraw the empire's military map.
Should those fall into Louis's hands... Remont's chest heaved, but no longer with hysteria.
He slowly lifted the letter, forcing down his roar, dragging his mind back to reason.
He stared at the dispatch date: seventeen days.
Greyrock Fortress was vast distances from the capital; a Storm-Bird needed a full seventeen days.
Which meant that, even as this letter reached the capital, Louis's host had already marched deep inside Grey Rock Province for at least seventeen days.
Remont's brows knitted as if pierced inch by inch by an ice-awl. His lips trembled, voice barely a whisper:
"Seventeen days... he's been gone seventeen days..."
Instinctively he began tactical calculations—both a soldier's habit and a way to anchor his fear.
Self-reassurance surfaced first: his main force was in the capital; Grayrock was vast, layered with defenses; the knights he'd left behind might still hold.
Losing the fortress was grave, but the whole province wouldn't be swallowed in one bite.
Wrong.
Remont shut his eyes, temples bulging: "Wrong. Why dare he strike now?"
Slowly his eyes widened, as though seeing the nightmare's true shape.
Twenty days ago, to back the Fourth Prince's coup, he had secretly stripped Grayrock of every elite regiment.
The move was so secret the Censorate knew nothing, the capital knew nothing; even his confidants held only fragments.
Only a handful of hand-picked death-sworn and his eldest son knew the whole plan.
Yet Louis, far away in the North, a lord supposedly fighting just to survive, had launched his assault on the very day Grayrock was emptiest.
Remont's throat bobbed; cold sweat trickled down his neck, soaking his inner garments.
A traitor? Impossible.
Everyone who knew the plan was at his side—except his heir... so why had Louis moved now?
The thought made his scalp crawl, as if icy fingers clutched his throat.
Louis wasn't gambling; he was playing his cards with Remont's hand revealed.
Then, like a wolf baring fangs, he had sunk them into Remont's softest, deadliest spot.
Perhaps... Louis wasn't the only one flashing fangs at him.
Southeast Province, Fifth Prince Lampard's rebels, the Calvin Family, the new regime crowned by heretics and backed by the Church.
If the Fifth Prince and Louis joined forces, linking North and Southeast, those lands would fuse into a colossus rivaling the Second Prince's domain.
They might be gnawing his foundations from opposite ends, carving corridors through his territory.
Once Grayrock fell to Louis, the Southeast rebels would push north.
Only a valley would part them; they could share supply lines, reinforce each other, even pool the centuries-old resources of the Remont house.
And Remont himself would be hollowed out, turning from hunter into prey torn between two wolves.
Meanwhile, another crucial figure in Yuchen Hall stood in the shadows, the corner of his mouth twitching faintly.
He watched Remont—the man who had once pulled his strings, crushed him, used him, dragged him forward.
Now caught by the throat in an even deeper, unseen hand.
In that instant Kalian felt a long-lost balance.
He knew he would suffer for it, knew Grayrock's fall would send the empire's war spiraling out of control.
Yet it did not stop a scorching, almost imperceptible thought from flaring deep inside:
Perhaps... this was a chance to break free of Remont.
He even felt a strange gratitude toward that wolf-king of the North.
