「Don’t mess with me…… don’t you dare mess with me!」
After who-knows-how-many furious outbursts, the door that kept taking his punches had turned a dark reddish-black.
Blood dripped from his tightly clenched fists and splattered across the floor.
「What’s the difference between me and you two!? Just our mothers, right!? So why this treatment!? What the hell is this!? What did I even do!?」
He hadn’t done anything.
To be exact, he hadn’t managed to do anything yet.
The plan was exposed while still in the preparation stage, and he was captured along with his mother’s entire family.
For about half a year after that, he was locked in a room deep beneath the castle, screaming his hatred day after day and pounding on the tightly sealed door.
But a few days ago, that door opened.
The door he had started to believe would never open again actually swung wide.
Standing on the other side were his two older brothers.
What they brought him was not hope. It was pure despair.
『You have two choices left. One is to swear loyalty and obedience to the royal family. The other is…』
His eldest brother spoke coldly, while his second brother quietly placed a small jar on the floor.
『Drink that poison and end it yourself. Choose whichever you want.』
That was all.
They shoved two paths in front of him that both led only to ruin, then turned and left.
He knew. He had always known.
No matter how hard he tried, he could never catch up to his brothers who earned high praise even from other countries.
He understood that better than anyone. It hurt so much it felt like his chest would tear apart.
That’s exactly why he went along with his mother’s family and tried something that looked like rebellion.
He just wanted, even a little, to prove his own strength to his brothers.
「Don’t mess with me…… don’t mess with me!」
He collapsed to his knees, slammed the floor, and let tears fall freely as he slowly reached out.
Toward the jar that had been placed there.
「Heh…… ahaha. You really think I’m just going to drink this? If I die, this country is the one that’s screwed. Every member of the royal family knows that, don’t they? You probably think the stupid, useless little brother will obediently do what his elder brothers say and choose to live with that monster, right? Don’t mess with me! Like hell I’m going to dance on your palm and die!」
He ripped off the seal and gulped down everything inside the jar in one go.
A burning pain scorched his throat. Intense agony set his insides ablaze.
He coughed up blood and rolled across the floor.
「Now suffer. Just like my ending…… let this whole country suffer with me!」
Along with a clump of blood, the third prince spat out his final scream.
-0-
「You guys!」
Seeing the king desperately holding back his fierce anger, the king let out a small sigh and scratched his head roughly.
「It can’t be helped, right, father? The real problem is that we kept the guy who plotted to assassinate aniki and me alive for so long」
Normally he would have been publicly executed, but because their father the king begged for his life, they hid him away in the basement under the excuse of 「illness」.
But that truth would come out eventually.
「So we gave him one last chance. Marry Noie or kill himself. Those were the only two options」
「…And the result?」
「He drank the poison」
The body lying on the platform used to be their little brother.
Thanks to something called 「ceremonial magic」, decay had been stopped, and he still looked exactly as he did when alive.
「What I’m angry about is… how exactly are we supposed to marry this corpse to Noie now?」
「…….」
「I understand how you both feel. I really do, it hurts. But sometimes a king needs the generosity to forgive even someone who tried to assassinate him. And yet you handed him poison and pushed him into a corner. You should have known he’d actually drink it!」
Unable to find anywhere else to direct it, the king slammed his raised fist into his own thigh.
「Who’s going to marry Noie now? Deep down, didn’t you two think 『Argusta would never drink the poison』 and got careless? That carelessness caused this. If you’re going to stand above the country, use your heads more」
「…Using heads is aniki’s specialty」
Cursing his absent eldest brother who was away on a provincial inspection, he stared straight at the king.
「But he was that stubborn. If we left him like that, he wouldn’t have listened to any persuasion, right?」
「…As long as he was alive, we could have done something. We could have used hypnotic ceremonies or drugs」
「As a father, isn’t that kind of wrong?」
「It can’t be helped. This is an emergency」
Both options would leave serious aftereffects on the body, but they had no choice but to use them.
That’s why the king was thinking about what this small country needed to survive.
「Halfren」
「Yeah?」
「Gather the mages」
「Sure, but what are you planning?」
「…First we’ll use revival ceremonial magic」
「Father? I get how you feel, but…」
The king raised one hand to silence his son and quietly continued.
「We’ll fix this body. Then we’ll use possession ceremonial magic」
「…That’s forbidden spells back to back. If other countries find out, we’re seriously screwed」
「But we have no other way. Besides, right now no country can move enough troops to start a war」
The king peeled away the white cloth covering his son’s face and looked at the silent boy.
Probably because he had gulped down deadly poison all at once, the skin and flesh from his mouth down through his throat and chest were burned and rotted away.
The sight of his son, who had kept reaching far beyond his limits to catch up with his two overly brilliant older brothers only to lose everything from under his feet, was simply too cruel.
「We’ll find a soul that fits this body and make it settle inside. Then have him marry Noie. That’s the only way left.」
「…Father, are you sane? Is there even one weird person in this world who’d willingly marry Noie?」
The king had no answer for that basic question.
They were in this ridiculous mess precisely because no such person existed.
「Since we’re already breaking taboos, let’s go beyond possession and use summoning magic to call someone from another world.」
「…Are you actually serious, Father?」
「When we have something to cling to, we cling to anything. There’s no other choice.」
Seeing the king’s resolute expression, Halfren gave up resisting.
「Halfren, I order you. Use every means possible. Make a person who will marry Noie inhabit this body.」
「Yes, Your Majesty! As captain of the royal guard, Halfren, I shall obey the king’s command.」
He bowed deeply and accepted the order.
「Well, for starters, should we at least add 『a starving virgin who gets excited by anything female』 to the selection criteria?」
「Not a bad baseline, but… pick someone with enough intelligence to act properly as a 『prince』.」
「True. Even rotten, he’ll still end up as my little brother, after all.」
With a weary sigh, the second prince shrugged his shoulders.
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