Chapter 36
‘If only I didn’t have an older brother.’
If that were the case, he could have pardoned the Duke’s crimes as Crown Prince.
Turning this impossible thought over and over, Mikhail found it hard to tear himself away.
“…See you next time.”
Forcing himself to ignore the bitterness in his mouth, he left the place of exile and headed back to land, where Marcel spoke up in a mocking tone.
“As Your Highness is well aware.”
Mikhail, knowing exactly what would come next, covered his ears as if to block it out. But Marcel was undeterred.
“The Duke doesn’t see Your Highness as a man. It’s more like the gaze of an old man who knows his days are numbered looking at his grandson, or a teacher about to retire watching over a favorite pupil.”
“…….”
With a familiar motion, Mikhail ignored Marcel. Where else could there be such a passionate and lonely one-sided love?
Claiming he couldn’t leave the Duke’s loneliness unaddressed, Mikhail was in fact the one suffering alone, holding tightly to his own solitary contradiction.
When he first came here, the prince had been smaller than the Duke, but now he had caught up in height.
He was growing more manly by the day, but beneath the comically large glasses, his face remained strikingly beautiful, enough to draw anyone’s eyes.
“Next time, let’s come when the weather’s a bit milder. It really is too cold in the dead of winter.”
As before, Mikhail completely ignored Marcel’s continued complaints and walked toward the nearest Gate, having no inkling of what would happen the next month when they returned to Frigid.
The route that Mikhail and Marcel took to the Ice Lake was usually the same.
They would first head to the Agrini North Gate, the nearest Gate from the imperial palace that could be reached on horseback.
Although the palace had the largest teleportation Gate in the Empire, there were simply too many people coming and going, so it was better not to use it in order to keep their absence as secret as possible.
After making a detour in Agrini to another city, they headed for Parinell, the Gateway city to Quillan.
The reason for this cumbersome process was partly to minimize exposure of the prince’s movements, but Marcel’s personal interests couldn’t be denied either.
Marcel’s fiancée, Feodora, who was well past marriageable age, lived in Agrini.
Sometimes they’d stop by to bring her a gift, and even if they stayed a day, Mikhail never really complained, so it worked out well for both of them.
So this time, as usual, they were planning to pass through Agrini and another city before heading to Parinell.
“Hmm?”
While inputting the coordinates in the teleportation Gate, Marcel frowned and reset the Gate’s communication terminal.
“What’s wrong?”
Mikhail, standing a step behind in a robe, asked in a curious voice. Marcel lightly shook his head as if it was nothing, fiddled with the reset terminal’s screen, then tilted his head in confusion again.
“Why is it doing this?”
Even after paying the required communication fee, an error kept coming up, saying the coordinates for the Parinell Gate were inaccessible.
There hadn’t been any problems as recently as last month… So why now?
Was the Gate broken, or had it been attacked?
Marcel removed his hand from the magic panel and answered Mikhail.
“One moment, please. The Parinell Gate is showing as currently inaccessible.”
Parinell was a city that had declined along with Quillan’s downfall.
There were barely a hundred households living within its walls.
Given that the imperial capital boasted a population of hundreds of thousands, it was no surprise if the Gate had been closed for lack of profit.
“I’ll find out why the Gate’s closed.”
Marcel quickly reached for the communication sphere used among investigators.
Even at a faint touch, the sphere promptly activated, ready to transmit Marcel’s voice.
“This is Investigator Humphries. Is there any official notice regarding the closure of the Gate? Please share if available.”
A short while later, Marcel checked the response returned through the sphere and let out a long sigh, his brow furrowed deeply.
“There’s been a major dungeon break at the Quillan border, so the Gate is under temporary, indefinite closure until things settle down.”
Discussion
0 CommentsReactions
No comments yet.