“Are you feeling any better now?” Rose softly asked Maximilian.
“Yes. I’m so sorry you had to see me like that, Lady Rose.” Maximilian had told them all about the danger coming to the kingdom. About how the Western Empire was using a horrifying weapon, a teleportation magic circle, to invade. It was likely that the Skyte region, where they’d been sending their monsters, was already in ruins. Then, to truly put the nail in the coffin, they were going to send the Western Imperial Army directly to the capital using the same circle. “It’s only a matter of time before the capital falls into the Western Empire’s hands. And father is probably already...”
No matter how strong his father was, there was no way he could possibly survive against those monsters. Maximilian plummeted into the depths of remorse over the kingdom’s imminent destruction. The Skyte region was quite far away, and even if they got enough knights together to respond, they wouldn’t make it in time. Even if they could make it, the results would be the same. There was no way the kingdom could stand a chance against the might of the Western Empire. There was nothing they could do.
“Max...” The queen held Maximilian in her arms as he agonized over their imminent destruction.
“It can’t be...” The prime minister fell to his knees. First the cannons, now the monsters and the Western Imperial Army?
“It’s just unthinkable...” The captain clenched his fists. How could they be so powerless?
“Hee... Hee hee.” Rose gave a little laugh, as though she’d gone mad over it.
“I’m so sorry, Lady Rose... I know Edward’s in Skyte too...” Maximilian only realized when he heard Rose laugh: It wasn’t just the king attending the field trip that year. Rose’s son, the second-born prince Edward was participating as well.
“Rose...” The queen looked worriedly at her.
“Hee hee. It’ll all be fine. Please don’t worry, Queen Victoria.” Rose smiled so brightly, it could dispel the dark feelings that had come over them, and she held Victoria’s hand in her own. “And you as well, Lord Maximilian!” She took Maximilian’s hand in her free hand. “Now, I don’t know if this was intentional or not, but that...teleportation magic circle thing? Well, I believe the Western Empire is going to regret having made the Skyte region its destination.”
“Please, spare me the pithy comforts,” Maximilian muttered as he shook his hanging head. Even that kindness only brought him more pain.
“Do you have some reason to believe that?” the queen asked Rose, who was still smiling. She was deathly serious.
“Mother?” Maximilian took notice of his mother’s expression.
“Max, a king must never let any possibility pass him by.” The queen wasn’t telling him to cling onto every tiny possibility; she was telling him that he should prepare himself for anything so he could cope with whatever transpired.
“Well, because Emma’s in the Skyte region right now!”
“What.”
Rose’s assurance hardly sounded like even a tiny possibility.
“George and William are with her too!”
“Uh...?”
“And even Count Stewart and his wife are there!”
“Okay...?” Even the queen was wondering where she was going with this.
“Lady Rose, what could five people possibly change about this situation?” Maximilian couldn’t comprehend it.
“The Stewart family will be able to help,” Rose insisted, doing her absolute best to hide her own worries. The Stewart family had defeated slimes, so surely they could defeat any monsters the Western Empire sent their way. She just had to tell herself to believe that they could even beat the Western Empire’s Army. That way, the king and Edward would come home safely. She knew it was a heavy burden to place such hopes and pleas on the family, but she wanted to believe. She wanted to believe that Emma could solve any problems, no matter how impossible, with that angelic smile of hers.
“The Stewart family...?” They ruled over the rural Pallas region, which had recently and very rapidly grown quite prosperous. That was about all Maximilian knew.
“Come to think of it, the Stewart family was the one who discovered the way to defeat a slime while actually facing one, saving the whole kingdom from danger.” The queen didn’t disagree with Rose’s outrageous statement. After all, the reason the queen knew about slimes in the first place was because she’d read the reports about the localized barrier crisis. There was no monster more dangerous than a slime, according to the report. Yet the family who had defeated three was now in the Skyte region... If that was the case, then it really was a glimmer of hope.
“But it’s still not that simple...” Maximilian murmured. It was already a certain fact that the Western Empire was invading the kingdom.
“Max, if the situation’s already come to this, then why not try to think positively?” The queen had already made up her mind. “If the kingdom’s already been invaded, then the royal family will be executed before anything else. There’s no point thinking about what happens after we’re dead. So instead, wouldn’t it be more fun to think about what we can do if the Stewart family does pull off some miraculous feat?”
“Fun?”
“I didn’t get involved with politics because I became queen. I became queen so I could be involved with politics. This is the first time anything like this has ever happened in the world, right? Let’s come up with a perfect charge for restitution that’s so ironclad, they’ll never even think about attacking the kingdom again.” The queen’s face was filled to the brim with determination.
“Lady Victoria, that’s a splendid idea!” Rose said, raising their still clasped hands in the air.
The queen extended her free hand toward Maximilian. “Max?”
“Ha... Ha ha ha... Yeah. That does sound pretty fun.” His mother was right. The Western Empire would never let the royal family live. If, as Lady Rose said, they were able to do something about all this, the information Maximilian had come across while the Western Empire was controlling him would come in handy. With his information, they could make a demand so airtight that the Western Empire would have to pay whatever price they set. Maximilian took his mother’s hand. He gave both the queen and Rose a look, one after the other, and made up his mind. He thrust his two mothers’ hands up in the sky as well. “Let’s do this!”
As a result of their preparations that day, Maximilian Lewin Royale’s name would go down in history as the Great Negotiator who made massive contributions to the kingdom’s growth and solved countless national crises with his superior wit, information gathering skills, and courage when push came to shove...but that’s a story for another time.