I Transmigrated into the Nameverse, and My Name Came with a Time Limit - Chapter 5

Clank, clank!

Cutting through the blaring fanfare, heavy silver sabaton boots thudded against the wax-polished ballroom floor, making it boom. A figure, large enough to feel threatening, began striding straight across the hall.

With each step, silver armor rattled loudly beneath his cloak. Long black hair that hung down to his shoulders whipped proudly like a lion’s mane over a blood-red cloak trimmed with gray wolf fur. In the man’s arm was a large silver helmet engraved with a cross-shaped slit. The moment Mina spotted the familiar helmet, her eyes grew as wide as saucers.

‘Ack! That helmet!’

Memories from just a little while ago surged in like a flood. The threatening shape of the man who had brutally clamped her nape as if he were about to snap it, along with the rough feel of leather.

When that bitter musk scent, which had turned into the smell of death, came rushing back like a hallucination, her heart pounded wildly, like it had gone mad. Still consumed by the terror of almost being killed without even understanding why, after being mistaken for a spy, her whole body stiffened in an instant.

As Mina barely held herself up on trembling legs and stared as if bewitched at the hellish reaper of a man approaching this way, people gathered in small clusters began whispering at the appearance of an uninvited guest who didn’t fit the ball at all.

“Good heavens, so that’s the Grand Duke of Tessen! The one who wiped out those northern barbarians this time?”

“Exactly. I almost didn’t recognize him. Didn’t His Highness go off to the battlefield when he was a fourteen-year-old child? It was so long ago, my memory’s hazy.”

“And to think someone like that has returned as such a fine young man! Time really does fly. It’s fleeting.”

“But if we’re talking about fleeting, does anything compare to the death of the previous Grand Duke and Grand Duchess?”

“Shh!”

The ladies chattered excitedly behind their fans. In particular, the voice of a plump noblewoman standing right in front of Mina kept rising with excitement. Another noblewoman beside her urgently signaled her to stop, but it seemed it was already too late.

Leonhardt, who had been striding past them, whipped his head toward their group. A burning red gaze flashed dangerously and poured down on them.

“Eek!”

Following the startled noblewomen, Mina also shrank her neck in a hurry. Those blazing red eyes, as if they could pierce her whole body, were chilling like laser beams.

“……!”

In that split second, it felt like those red eyes looked straight into Mina’s blue-green eyes. Her heart dropped with a loud thud. His flashing eyes overlapped in her mind with that helmet engraved with the cross-shaped slit.

‘No, w-wait. Leonhardt?’

That bastard who was wandering the garden in armor under the moonlight earlier? The shocking realization slammed into her.

As far as Mina remembered, Leonhardt was this novel’s most powerful hidden mastermind, and its villain. Not only did he constantly obstruct the female lead Rose, he also fought the male lead Leopold viciously over the imperial throne.

‘No, the original plot doesn’t matter. What really matters is…’

That Leonhardt could also be ‘Leo’. Her thoughts, which had frozen from shock, finally started spinning fast again.

Leonhardt was Wilhelmina’s childhood friend. Well, even if their friendship had come to an end the day she declared a break with him because of her engagement to the Crown Prince, after he was dragged off to the northern battlefield. Still, as long as she had that useful connection of being a childhood friend, maybe she could approach him again?

While Mina ran through possibilities, Leonhardt swept past them without a glance and headed straight for the Emperor. On the dais, Emperor Karl spread his arms wide toward him as he strode closer like a great beast.

“Leonhardt! My proud nephew! Your steps are faster than a victory cry. What joyful news I have long awaited!”

Despite his delighted face and theatrical gestures, the Emperor didn’t move an inch from where he stood. Leonhardt’s response was quicker. In just two steps, he closed the distance and grabbed the Emperor in a tight embrace.

“Thank you, Uncle.”

A cave-low voice poured out from Leonhardt.

“Oh my. Yes, yes, my brave boy!”

The Emperor, awkwardly held in the arms of a nephew far larger than him, patted his back stiffly. He looked like a fat cicada clinging to a massive old tree.

Yet even at the sight of the Emperor dangling from his hunched nephew’s waist, no one had the nerve to laugh.

“Even if it did take quite a long time, you succeeded in the conquest, so you should be rewarded accordingly. Yes, if there’s something you want, go on and tell me.”