Kays Translations

Chapter 22: The Nightmare of the Crown Prince

The ground around the fort had turned to scorched earth.

Everything turned gray and soot drifted all around. The air was cloudy with smoke, and he couldn’t stop coughing with every breath.

The sorcerers under his command had burned down the enemy lines and taken back the land. One more fort to destroy and he could return to his country.

(Just one more. We’re almost there. –Then we will be victorious and my father will be pleased.)

This country, our ally, was like a breakwater. If it were to break down, it would inevitably cause damage to our country. It shouldn’t have been so difficult, but some of the allied troops suddenly turned to the enemy and we were forced to fight an unexpectedly difficult battle.

However, victory was already in sight.

There are many talented sorcerers in the Kingdom of Leia. There is nothing to be afraid of in Leia, which has specialized educational institutions for sorcerers and a powerful army of sorcerers.

For the sake of the country, no, more than anything else, he wants this achievement in his hands. In exchange, he had to convince his father.

(Liesel. Now we can have a future together. I’ve made you wait so long.)

He couldn’t imagine how frustrating it must have been for her. He must have made her anxious.

“His Majesty seems to be thinking of making the Saint the Crown Princess. Um…, should I step aside…?”

When she asked him in a trembling voice, he cursed himself for his inadequacy.

Every time he was ordered by the King to dance with the Saint at a soiree and every time he accompanied her on a horseback ride, he was reminded of how he had made Liesel’s position precarious.

(I’ll win this war, Liesel, and make you my queen….!)

And it was when they were attacking the last fort.

He took the lead in crashing into the fort and crossed swords with the enemy soldiers.

He may have been a little proud of himself because he could also use magic. No, he might have been overconfident. That carelessness was the downfall.

An enemy soldier, taking advantage of a momentary gap, swung his sword and his left arm was in extreme pain.

His elbow swung in the wrong direction and fresh blood spurted out of the cut, which was almost severed.

When he screamed out from the terrible pain, the scenery collapsed as if he had been thrown out of the scene and his consciousness became cloudy.

In the midst of his jumbled consciousness, which seemed to be painted in every colour, he realized that there was no sound in the area.

There was no sound of horses’ hooves, no metallic clash of armour and swords, no voices of soldiers.

When he opened his eyes in confusion, he found himself in his own bedroom in the silence.

(My arm, what happened to my arm?!)

He rolled up the sleeve of his left arm with his right hand as if he had been hit by something and checked. There was not a scratch on it, just his sweaty arm. 

(A dream. Did I have that dream again?)

Should it be a relief that he was not on the battlefield at the moment?

He returned home from the royal palace to his parents’ house in Lancaster in the early afternoon, but it was already evening when he woke up.

Through the curtains, he could see the sky turning orange. He must have slept longer than he expected.

Perhaps it was because he had taken a nap in the middle of the day, but when he woke up, he felt very bad. His shirt, sticking to him with sweat, was uncomfortable and he unbuttoned it with one hand.

While sitting on his bunk, he sighed heavily a few times before brushing his messy hair back.

As he looked around the room, he saw the light blue wallpaper with the yellow Lancaster family crest.

This was the room in his parents’ house that he had returned to after a long absence and the familiar bedroom where he had spent his time before entering the dormitory of the National Academy of Magic. However, Gideon hated this space.

It was the bedroom where he had once woken up from a nightmare and a new one had begun.

The springs creaked as he got up from his bunk. He slowly made his way to a mirror in the corner of the room.

In the large rectangular mirror with a silver rim, he could see his entire body reflected.

His hair was shimmering gold and his eyes were blue.

“Gideon Lancaster… Why? Why am I ‘you’? –of all people!”

His breathing became ragged and he clenched his teeth.

Looking back at himself in the mirror, he had a beautiful face, no doubt about it, but it was also the face of the man he hated the most.

Gideon Lancaster, the royal magician. This man had appeared like a comet on the battlefield where he had finally won and had told him the terrible situation that was going on.

“Your Highness’ lover, Liesel Crow, has been put on trial.”

The King had made sure that this information would never reach the Crown Prince’s camp. But Gideon had risked his own life to bring it to his attention.

“We cannot avoid execution at this rate. Let’s go back in time and change the future. I will have Iris, and Your Highness will have Liesel, this time, as your queen. Everyone but the two of us will forget everything when time returns, of course. It will all be as if it never happened.”

That’s what Gideon said for sure.

And so time went back, but somehow he woke up as a different person. Here in the Lancaster household.

This was not supposed to happen. The Three Wise Men’s Begging for Time was supposed to just rewind time. At least that’s what the Crown Prince knew.

He had never imagined that he would become Gideon.

He tried to reject his reflection in the mirror, but when he closed his eyelids tightly, what came back to him was the face of a girl with black hair.

“Liesel…”

He remembers well the day he first saw her.

At that time, he was alive as the Crown Prince. As he was busily walking through the corridors of the royal palace, he spotted a butterfly.

It was a butterfly of magic, transparent as crystal but shining with seven colours. As he looked across the corridor, he saw several butterflies fluttering out from the top of the building.

(Who would do something like that in this royal palace?)

In the royal palace, magic is used to show off one’s power.

He wondered what the sorcerer who had created the dancing butterflies was up to. The Crown Prince couldn’t help but chase after the source.

Passing through a narrow, dark warehouse, he found himself at a garbage dump.

Stepping into such a place for the first time, the Crown Prince couldn’t help but cover his nose.

There was a stench in the air as the garbage from all over the palace was collected there.

In spite of this, many women and children were working diligently to wash the dirty tubs and sweep up the garbage.

A shady part of the opulent royal palace, hidden from the eyes of the nobles.

In one corner, a strange crowd had gathered.

At the center of all the smiling faces was a sorcerer in a purple robe. A young boy near her begged with an exuberant smile.

“Hey, please, do it again. Bring out the butterfly from before!”

At that moment, the sorcerer looked back at the boy and the crown prince could see her face.

The magician was still a very young girl. She had long, shiny black hair and really striking purple eyes.

The magician opened her hands and turned her palms upward.

She slowly inhaled and closed her eyes. She must be trying to calm her mind before manipulating the magic.

Then she called out to the sources of water in the air.

“Gather, water. Gather and show yourselves.”

When she opened her eyes, the drifting humidity turned into grains of water that began to gather in her palms in a whirlwind.

The grains eventually collide and become transparent butterflies.

“Add some color! Magician! We can’t see clearly if it’ s transparent.”

“Make it a beautiful color!”

As if in response to the excited voices of the people around, the butterflies gradually began to change color.

There were pink, emerald green and even gold butterflies.

The magician turned her hands upward as if she were a trainer. Then, nearly a hundred butterflies fluttered and spread across the dark, damp garbage dump.

The colorful butterflies fluttered, their bodies occasionally glowing translucently.

“Bravo, sorcerer! Really beautiful…”

Everyone held their chests in admiration and looked up at the butterflies.

The Crown Prince had withdrawn his hand from his blocked nose before he knew it. He was looking up at the butterflies from behind the warehouse.

The fluttering butterflies looked like a kaleidoscope. The butterflies, fluttering in seven colors, gave a dreamlike view to the dirtiest, hidden, darkest part of the shining palace.

He thought he had never seen anything so beautiful in his life.

The Crown Prince went to the garbage collection point the next day at the same time.

He was curious if the magician was here every day, performing her magic in between her work (considering the time, she had probably cut her lunch hour to come here).

As expected, the magician was here every day.

She was delighted to show her magic to the servants, who had never seen magic before, as they requested her to do so.

Before long, the crown prince was looking forward to seeing her. Not to see her magic, but herself.

Then that night came. The night he escaped the soiree.

He met her dancing with a tree in the garden.

Stupidly, the Crown Prince wanted to be that tree.

So he unintentionally approached her, exchanged a few words and asked her name…

The girl who had brought little joy to the nameless in a corner of the palace became the Crown Prince’s beloved.

“I couldn’t protect you.”

G-i-d-e-o-n groaned in front of the mirror.

He was supposed to have fought in the neighboring country to make her his queen. But this country had sent her to the place of execution.

After all that, what’s the result?

A dull pain hit his chest.

To save her life, he turned back time.　

He wanted to change the future.

But when he woke up, he found himself in this room with light blue wallpaper.

As a boy, the legitimate son of the Duke of Lancaster.

Surprised, he confronted Gideon, his former self, the crown prince, at the royal palace where he had been taken as a playmate.

But he, who was supposed to be the ‘initiator’, said,

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. You’re out of your mind, aren’t you?”

Even if a six-year-old boy claims “I’m really the crown prince,” no one would listen to him.

He wanted to start his life over again. –But he never expected to be reborn as a different person.

Perhaps this was God’s punishment for the foolishness of thinking of turning back time.

Thus, from that day on, he had to live the life of a completely different boy.

A strange mansion, a duke and his wife who suddenly became his parents. And maidens he had never seen before. He didn’t know left from right.

Liesel was too far away from him now.

When he became a teenager, his parents began to choose a candidate for his fiancée. At the time, the most promising candidate was Iris from next door.

Unable to bear it, he rushed to the province of Baral.

He saw her performing magic and flying a water bird in the forest. In her hand, she was holding a reference book labeled “Magic Academy Practice Test”. Soon, Liesel would be taking an exam at the Academy of Magic.

Thus, he forcibly directed the meeting and got to know her.

He learned where she was going to school and made sure that their distant lives overlapped. As one of her classmates, he wanted to get to know her and, if possible, become her lover.

Although, the thought of a man with this face and Liesel getting together was repulsive.

However.

At the magic academy, she evaded him as if she were a rabbit encountering a hawk.

Whenever he spotted the words “Second Place: Liesel Crow” in the corridor where the report cards were posted, it was always bad. She would glare at him as if he were a pest in the corner of the room.

He even heard her say, “I lost to that guy, that hateful Gideon.” He thought he had misheard her.

In his first joust with her in spear class, he even felt a “killing intent” from her when they played against each other.

The look on her face as she stared at him for inviting her to his graduation party, was not one of confusion, but annoyance.

When Mac and Cynthia thoughtfully left him alone with Liesel, he couldn’t help but kiss her on the cheek, but her reaction was worse than he expected. She avoided me with a face full of blatant disgust and turned her head away.

On top of that, she shook off Gideon’s hand, bewildered. At that moment, he felt as if his own heart had been shaken off as well.

Mac, who was always hanging out with her in the trio, seemed to think he was a nuisance, too. But he didn’t care about Mac. The problem was Liesel.

Like all the others, Liesel should have no memory of her last life.

For him, the feeling of the sword piercing Liesel’s chest was still fresh in his right hand.

Her purple eyes widened in astonishment and despair as she looked up at him.

It is too terrifying to think that she has a memory of being stabbed to death by the Crown Prince himself.

He had tried to avoid making Liesel dislike him as much as possible and hopefully show her that he cared about her. And yet, it has all backfired.

In the jousting class, whether the shield is broken or the spear is broken, the match must be continued until the jouster falls off their horses.

If he went hard on Liesel, he would end up hurting her by spearing her again and again.

He didn’t want to do that.

That’s why he really poked her, trying to make her fall off the horse in one shot.

It seemed that it was a wrong thing to do and Liesel hated him even more for showing her the difference in power.

The truth is, he didn’t even want to point the tip of his spear at her. He didn’t even want to see the delicate girl wearing the heavy armor.

But if another man were to take her on, he might injure Liesel. Because spears always injure.

Then things took a sudden turn.

Suspicion turned to certainty when the employment regulations of the National Academy of Magic were changed by the powers that be.

–It was a lie that the former initiator, Gideon, had no memory.

To top it all off, Liesel had been appointed as a Konoe Mage.　

As the current Gideon Lancaster, who was only a child, gained the power of two sorcerers and made a name for himself at the Academy of Magic, Gideon, who was in the Crown Prince, became worried.

That’s why he took advantage of the personnel situation to tell him implicitly. He told him not to do anything rash and that Liesel’s life was in his hands.

“I like the color of your hair.”

When he complimented her on her hair, he remembered her purple eyes shining with joy as she looked at him. He also remembered that her pretty cheeks were flushed.

“I love your gentle chestnut hair, Your Highness.”

She had said many times that she loved his chestnut hair.

Even with the color of his hair, he was sure that Liesel would never be able to love him now.

When he thought about it, he couldn’t stop his raging passion.

“Why! Why did this happen!”

The clenched fist swung down on the golden-haired man in front of him and with a cracking sound, the man scattered into pieces.

The shards that hit the ring flew in all directions and struck his cheek with heat.

Lukewarm blood dripped down his cheek.

“Gideon! What are you doing?!”

It was only moments later that someone burst into the room and let out a shrill.

The soft body of Iris bumped into him, desperately holding Gideon’s right hand.

As she continued to look up at Gideon’s face, Iris’s honey-colored eyes widened in astonishment, and she screamed again.

“Your face, your face is injured!”

“I’m fine, don’t make a fuss.”

However, Iris would never accept that the beautiful Gideon would have a scar on his face.

His right hand, which Iris held down with a trembling hand, was smeared with blood from the shards of the broken mirror, pieces of which had found their way into the wound.

“No, I don’t like this!”

Iris trembled with confusion and impatience.

He needs to be healed somehow.

Gideon’s wounds, they must be healed.

Iris felt the blood in her body heat up as it throbbed. As she wiped the blood from Gideon’s hands and removed the shards of glass, she prayed with all her heart, as if she were begging God.

“I wish to heal Gideon’s wounds!”

At that moment, she saw Gideon gasp. Immediately after, he shouted, “Stop, Iris.” But it was too late.

Iris had never studied magic, at least not before and she didn’t think she had any. She had never even read a magic book. But in the back of her mind, she had a feeling that she knew how to heal a wound.

Out of instinct and without logic, Iris searched desperately for it deep inside her body and pulled it out.

Her whole body became warm, and Iris watched in wonder as a soft yellow light shimmered out from her fingertips. The light clung to the wounds on Gideon’s hands, filling them brightly as if tracing them. As the light converged, the wound closed up as if nothing had happened.

“The wound is ……?”

Iris touched the back of Gideon’s hand where the wound had been and rubbed it gently. The only thing there was a trace of blood and the skin had smoothed back to normal.

By this time, the maids had gathered around them, perhaps having heard the commotion.

“Iris-sama, did you perform a healing technique?”

“It’s a miracle…”

“This is… no way.”

The maidens whispered to each other that a saint had appeared. Gideon looked up at the scene with disdain. Iris reached out to do something about the scar still on his cheek.

The second time was easy.

The faint light from Iris’s fingertips closed the wound on Gideon’s cheek.

One of the maidens exclaimed in admiration that it was the light of mercy.

This was the moment of the discovery of the saint who had appeared in the Kingdom of Leia for the first time in a hundred years.

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