WeTried Translations

Translator: Nemui

Editor: Nemui

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◈ Friedrich's Battlefield

Chapter 156: The Defeated

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The battlefield after the Kingdom of Arelia's army had fled, after the Kingdom of Edelstein's army had pursued them, and after both armies had passed.

One corner of the plain was covered in the smell of blood and entrails, countless corpses lay scattered, and only the groans and cries of the wounded could be heard.

There, Cecilia sat on the ground in a daze, her armor so dirtied with blood and mud that the crest engraved on it could no longer be seen.

"...Hey, Celestan. Even you died, so why am I still alive?"

Before her, as she murmured, lay the transformed corpse of her loyal adjutant, trampled under the fury of battle.

Celestan had protected Cecilia with his own body from the charge of the Ferdinand Regiment cavalry unit. They had both fallen from their horses, and even afterward he had covered Cecilia as if shielding her. He must have been kicked and stepped on again and again by horses and soldiers. By the time the Ferdinand Regiment passed, he had become a sight too terrible to look at.

Cecilia, on the other hand, through the irony of fate or the mischief of God, was alive without any injury that could truly be called a wound. She had not been trampled by the Ferdinand Regiment, nor by the fleeing conscripts. Because she had been near the edge of the battlefield, she had also avoided being caught up in the pursuit after her allies fled.

She had survived through overlapping luck.

But she could not be glad.

What was there to be glad about?

Now she had finally lost even the loyal adjutant who had devoted himself to supporting her after she inherited the county of Fargiere as a child. With this, none of her father's former retainers remained whom Cecilia could rely on as a soldier.

And the Kingdom of Arelia had apparently lost. They had suffered a crushing defeat in a battle they absolutely could not lose.

What was she supposed to live for now?

She should have avenged her family, been slain by the younger brother who had become the son of that enemy, and let her life, this life that had only taken and been taken from, end in emptiness.

"Hey, that one is an enemy knight, right?"

"Probably. She's wearing a mantle, and if you look close, the armor is fairly... no, very high quality. She might be a noble."

Cecilia listened blankly as that conversation approached.

Then something occurred to her, and she took a small lock of hair from Celestan's corpse. There was no need to cut it or pull it out. It had separated from his split head along with the skin. She placed it inside her gambeson beneath her armor.

She could not take his body home. Then at least his hair.

"Take her with us. If we hand her to the kingdom army, she should fetch good money... Hey, Arelian knight. Come here."

"Covered in blood. Is it yours? Can you stand on your own?"

Without answering a word, Cecilia was captured by the mercenaries who had been searching for achievements, led away, and became a prisoner of the Kingdom of Edelstein.

......

Prince Emmanuel Arelia, the king's younger brother, had been entrusted with managing Arnsberg fortress as commander of rear support for the decisive battle. When he received the report that his army had lost, that the crown prince was missing, and that King Childebert had been gravely wounded and carried into the fortress, he hurried to his brother.

"Your Majesty!"

Emmanuel rushed into the room of the fortress's main building where Childebert had been carried, then fell speechless at the sight of his brother lying on the bed.

Childebert still had a short bolt piercing his neck. Perhaps his back was wounded as well, because flowing blood dripped from the bed and formed a pool on the floor. His breathing was weak. Of course it was, with wounds this severe. If anything, it was strange that he had been carried from the battlefield to this fortress in such a state and still had breath left.

"...It pains me deeply to say this, but there is nothing more we can do. One of the bolts His Majesty took in the back has reached his organs, and that bolt could only be broken, not removed. The bolt in his neck has also damaged an important blood vessel. If either is removed, I believe he will die within a short time... The fact that he survived the transport by carriage from the field camp to this rear position is itself a miracle."

The one who answered in a heavy voice was the royal physician who had accompanied Childebert to the battlefield camp.

If those were the words of the finest physician in the Kingdom of Arelia, Emmanuel had no choice but to accept them. He hesitated for a short while, then made up his mind and opened his mouth.

"Use the medicine."

"...Understood."

Grasping what medicine meant in this situation, the physician took out a small medicine bottle.

It was a medicine that temporarily made the consciousness of a person on the brink of death clear. The bottle was brought to Childebert's mouth and tilted, but Childebert could not swallow all of the medicine that flowed in and spat it out. Medicine mixed with blood spilled from the mouth of the weakened hegemon king.

"...! Haaah! E-Emmanuel! Goh! Wh-where is this!?"

Even so, perhaps some of the medicine entered his body, because Childebert, who had looked as though he might expire at any moment, suddenly breathed violently and spoke.

"Brother, I am at your side. This is the fortress in the rear. This place is safe."

"It hurts! Samuel... Ah, it hurts, it huuurts! Wh-where is Mother!? Ah, Mother, please help me..."

From those words, Emmanuel understood that because he had spat out so much of it, the medicine was not enough after all. Their mother, the previous queen, had died of illness when Emmanuel was young, and he knew that Childebert's words calling for her were delirium before death.

"Brother, please calm yourself. Please..."

Emmanuel held his hand and spoke to him, but Childebert would not remain calm. In his confusion, he shouted delirious words, called for his mother like a small child, and a bubbling sound of blood came from his throat.

He was in no condition to give any final words.

Though Emmanuel stood beside his monarch's death as chancellor, there was nothing he could do.

No, before that.

Seeing this final form of his brother, who had continued to be strong as the hegemon king, made Emmanuel feel as if his chest were being wrung.

"Hah, hah, hah... Th-that's right! The war!? What happened to the decisive battle!? Loire, Myurei... no! The decisive battle against the Kingdom of Edelstein!? Emmanuel!"

Suddenly, Childebert's awareness sharpened another level and he spoke. The confusion still seemed to remain, but he showed that he understood he had escaped the battlefield of the decisive battle and that the one before him was his younger brother.

At his brother's question, Emmanuel agonized over how to answer. Should he tell the truth, or...

After several moments of conflict, Emmanuel made himself smile.

"Brother, please listen to the bustle after victory."

As he said that and gestured toward the window, the physician, reading the room, opened it.

The confusion of the fortress defense unit caused by the dying hegemon king being carried in, and the chaos of survivors who had routed and begun reaching the fortress, could be heard. Childebert, who turned empty eyes toward the window, would not be able to understand what the noise meant.

"After retreating once, our army reorganized here at Arnsberg fortress and once again faced the forces of the Kingdom of Edelstein in decisive battle. We drew the enemy to the fortress, and a detached force waiting in the field struck the enemy headquarters by surprise and slew Queen Claudia Edelstein. Now the fortress is filled with the joy of victory."

"...? ...!?"

"We won, Brother."

When Emmanuel told him again, simply, Childebert finally seemed to understand his younger brother's words, and his expression grew calm.

"I-I see. We won..."

"Yes. We won. Please be at ease."

As he spoke, Emmanuel held back the trembling that threatened to enter his voice. His own hand, gripping his brother's, naturally tightened.

He was glad Childebert believed him. He truly thought so from the heart.

"We won. Then you... Father will not kill you."

"...Yes. You protected me again, Brother. Thank you."

"It is all right. I am your... brother. I will... protect you..."

With a gentle voice unlike the hegemon king. With an expression like a boy's. He murmured those words, but did not reach their end.

There was no longer any light of life in Childebert's eyes.

Emmanuel sensed the physician quietly leave the room, and only he and Childebert remained.

"...Brother."

Emmanuel gently stroked his brother's eyelids shut, then clung to the body with its peaceful dead face and wept without sound.

He had gone.

Tossed about by fate, driven down the path of hegemony, and at its end, gone in such a painful form.

After living in fear of their father's curse and remaining bound by his sense of mission as an elder brother, he had left such words behind.

Originally, it was Gilbert, the previous Arelian king and the father of both brothers, who had raised the banner of conquering neighboring countries and expanding territory. In the time of their grandfather, when Gilbert had still been crown prince, the Kingdom of Arelia had been a weak country, repeatedly invaded by neighboring countries, its borderlands ravaged.

Driven by a sense of mission, their father had personally led the army as crown prince to defend the borderlands. There he saw ravaged villages and the corpses of subjects who had suffered horrific violence, again and again. And he thought. A weak country was trampled. If the country remained weak, if the royal house remained weak, it could not protect its people.

Their father became a young monarch by all but driving the weak-willed grandfather king from the throne. He worked to strengthen the army, then launched counter-invasions against the neighboring countries that had until then violated the border. After several failures, he finally achieved conquest. He did not stop there, and to make the Kingdom of Arelia still stronger, began walking the path of hegemony toward further conquest of the surrounding nations.

The strong king welcomed by his subjects, however, was cruel as a parent.

He clung to making the country strong, clung to strengthening royal power, went to war, and then lost the queen who had been his sole comfort. At the end of that, Gilbert became a man who believed strength was supreme and the only value.

To such a father, Crown Prince Childebert was a capable candidate for successor, but Emmanuel, the sickly and fragile second prince, seemed to be something terribly ugly.

Emmanuel had trained desperately to soften his father's disappointment even a little, but his weak body would not obey him. One day, his father, having reached the peak of disappointment, tried to cut down the second son who was nothing but an eyesore.

Emmanuel himself gave up everything and tried to accept his father's sword. But Childebert protected him with his own body.

"I will work hard for Emmanuel's share too! I will answer your expectations perfectly, Father! So please, forgive him!"

He could still clearly remember that scene and his brother's words. Faced with Childebert's desperate persuasion, their father, who seemed to have finally found use for his frail second son, began using Emmanuel as a hostage to force Childebert into brutal effort.

It was a life of training and study far too harsh to impose on a boy who was still young. When Childebert failed, their father struck Emmanuel instead, pointed his sword at Emmanuel, and threatened Childebert that way. Childebert tried to protect his younger brother, and then gradually took on the same nature as their father. The same eyes, the same voice, the same thoughts as their father.

Even when their father, who had burned his life on the path of hegemony, died young, Childebert was not freed.

The great hegemon king who had changed the Kingdom of Arelia still watched over this country and his successor, the new hegemon king, from God's side after death. The hope spoken by retainers and subjects became a curse for Childebert.

Father is still always watching us. That is why I must inherit Father's will and continue answering Father's expectations for my whole life. Childebert came to believe that. And the thoughts of a hegemon king, carved into him with fear since childhood, would no longer leave his heart.

No matter how Emmanuel spoke to him as a younger brother, it had no effect. Childebert had already become a creature called a hegemon king. Emmanuel's brother had become this way because of him. Then at least Emmanuel too had to walk the same path as his brother. He had to aim for the end where Childebert would realize the ultimate ideal of continental unification, where the vast sacrifices caused by the invasions until now and those yet to come would gain meaning, and where the continent would obtain peace worthy of those sacrifices.

Even if that path of hegemony would lead to ruin with a single misstep, he had to go with his brother to its very end.

He had resolved himself and continued forward.

And today, ruin had come.

His brother had been defeated and died. The path of hegemony had ended.

The moment a mighty conqueror was defeated and died, he became nothing but an invader. From here, history would turn its hand over. The entire western continent would change, and the evaluation of his brother would be overturned.

Even so.

"I know. I will speak of it. Your life. That you were not born a hegemon king. That there was another side to you."

A tyrannical hegemon king who carried out invasion after invasion through endless ambition and was finally slain. The world would see you that way and speak of you that way.

That was why, at least, Emmanuel himself would speak of how Childebert had not been a hegemon king drowned only in his own ambition. He would write it in books and convey it to people. Even if their sins could never disappear, he would at least convey correctly why they had committed those sins.

So please. Now that you have finally been freed from the curse.

"Rest peacefully, Brother."

Saying that, Emmanuel gently kissed Childebert's forehead.

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