Interlude: The Ferocious Crown Prince’s Creed
FIVE years ago, in the Kingdom of Kophe’s third largest city, Aniyim, Richard was in a tavern where laborers gathered. Curses, cheers, groans, and a whole host of sounds could be heard from the men using barrels as tables and downing cheap alcohol under the dim light cast by the lamps. Pale barmaids skillfully wound their way through the maze of tables as they delivered the drinks, like moths fluttering about.
Richard was in the midst of an arm-wrestling match with a muscled, bald man on one of the barrel-cum-tables.
“So ye ain’t just a pretty face, eh, laddy!” the man boomed.
“Heh. I’m all out of funds, so take it easy on me, mister!”
The spectators who had bet on the match shouted in excitement.
“Ooooohhhh!!! Get ’im! Do ’im in, redheaded sonny!”
“Don’t ya dare lose to him, Steel Arm Bob!”
The bald man, Steel Arm Bob, strained to push Richard’s arm down. In the meantime, Richard coolly assessed Bob’s strength while holding up against the pressure exerted by his opponent. Though his thick arms were superb specimens, Bob was being done in by a combination of his exhaustion from his work doing heavy manual labor and the alcohol. His stamina was less than the average of Richard’s subordinates. In his desperation to win against a new face, and a young one at that, Bob pushed himself too hard.
Winning would be easy. But the only reason Richard even went along with this child’s play was to gather information and build connections.
“Whoooaaa! Bob’s head is turning red!”
“Gooooo! You can do it, sonny boy!”
For a few moments, Richard feigned a strenuous performance to create the illusion of a close match before finally pushing Bob’s arm down. Bob offered a handshake, looking satisfied that he had committed every ounce of his energy to the seemingly even match.
“Well done, laddy! Ye trounced me good!”
“I appreciate it. Can I hope you’ll come to my rescue if bad guys target me?” Richard asked.
“Hahahahaha! Count on it!”
Laughter filled the air. Friendly matches that simultaneously allowed his opponents to save face while also enjoying themselves led to forging bonds. Furthermore, when Richard returned the winnings he collected from the bets placed by the onlookers and other rivals by buying them all a round of drinks, they always toasted him and went on their merry way with satisfied looks on their faces.
The ones who wanted to talk to him more remained behind, clustering around the table.
“Gave us a helluva good time, chap!”
“Hardly see red hair like yours ’round here. Take it you’re from the Empire?”
Richard smiled ruefully at the curious men and smoothly crafted a tale about his circumstances. “I argued with my older brother and left home. I just couldn’t handle the annoyances that come with being a second son. So I came here because I heard I could make a living. But I’m starting to get fed up with all the nasty jobs. How about you old dogs? What are your stories?”
After that, they were more than happy to give Richard the information he sought without him even asking.
“Don’t get on any of Lugley’s ships. Lotta rookies end up as bait for the sea monsters.”
“Unloading cargo from Ezeleya’s merchant ships is hard work, but they pay well and fast. Though they harp all the time ’bout being careful with the goods ’n’ all that…”
“Oh, yeah, sonny, let me tell ya about this one man…”
Lonely men like these were everywhere. They ran through the day’s earnings before the day even ended, drowning themselves in alcohol. So simply making a friendly overture was enough for them to open their hearts to someone.
Smiling, Richard lent them his ear, listening to their complaints, life stories, and epic tales. He kept plying them with the murky beer the whole time. The place might change, but the fundamentals of social interaction remained the same.
The question was, why did Richard need information? Because having been driven out of his country, he was searching for a place where he could hide his name and identity. There were plenty of people outside his homeland who would eagerly help the imperial crown prince, so it wasn’t necessary for him to play the part of a penniless mercenary. But Richard had chosen to abandon his identity. With his newfound anonymity, he finally had his chance to observe how the ordinary folk lived. If he was being honest with himself though, it was more than that. His choice was born out of desperation.
Richard cared deeply about his older brother. From a young age, he’d been a hot-blooded arrogant little shite who looked down on adults with both his speech and attitude. They had found him both impertinent and unpleasant. So for the boy Richard who had been feared, his calm, gentle, and compassionate older brother was an irreplaceable source of support. He possessed virtues Richard lacked. He was someone he loved and respected with all his heart.
Then their father died under suspicious circumstances on an expedition and their mother died giving birth to their stillborn younger sister. Which left his beloved older brother as an emperor in name only while Richard was forced by imperial advisors to meet with the daughters of the six most important bloodlines in the Empire. They believed his recklessness needed to be reined in by marrying him off to one of them.
It was one thing for him to simply meet them. But the young ladies literally threw themselves at Richard, who was still a boy back then. They would contrive to be alone with him during the day, and it wasn’t uncommon for them to threaten to tell others that Richard had taken advantage of them. At night, he was so afraid of them trying to take advantage of him through a fait accompli while he slept that he often suffered from insomnia.
The knights of his personal guard were the first members of the Special Forces he established, the group which would eventually become the Flame Corps. With this order of knights, he undertook missions to dangerous places starting in his teens. He did this work for his brother’s sake, as well as to escape the daughters of the aristocracy.
But those young noblewomen, ordered by their parents, still chased him all the way to the frontiers. Regardless of their high social aspirations, most of them had grown up in sheltered environments, leaving them naive to the world’s realities. They complained endlessly about the places they pursued him, calling them dirty and backwards. All in front of the people in those very lands who had their homes destroyed. They never bothered to conceal their disgust, not with their words or their expressions.
The girls also forced the exhausted knights to accompany them everywhere, as if the warriors were their servants to be ordered around. Not to mention their nasty attitudes toward young ladies from destroyed nations whom Richard and his knights protected, because the daughters of those six houses labeled those poor young women their rivals. The same so-called aristocratic daughter who clad themselves in sheer silk gowns at night and tried to seduce him with their charm. He could accomplish so much for his country with the money they spent traveling to chase after him and the negligees to seduce him. To him, their actions reflected on his nation’s aristocracy as a whole—filthy, self-righteous, and unpleasant.
Why did his mother and younger sister have to die when disgusting girls and women like them still lived? Endlessly plastering themselves against him wearing their beautiful clothes and shameless smiles.
In order to vent his bitterness and frustration, Richard fought recklessly as he pleased throughout the Empire. Even then, his actions backfired. The ones in power who feared his ever-rising achievements spread false rumors that they suspected him of revolting against his older brother.
All he had ever wanted was to protect his brother’s standing. When Richard realized that he had instead inadvertently become a weapon the opposition could use to overthrow his beloved older brother—he renounced his claim to the throne and fled the country.
After entering the Kingdom of Kophe, Richard decided to hide himself for a while in Aniyim because of its large population of outsiders. Once his time there ended, he wandered from port town to port town since they too attracted many outsiders. It was the best way to maintain his anonymity. Sometimes he worked as a mercenary on monster hunts and other times as a bodyguard for merchants. Occasionally, nobles sought him out, attracted to his striking appearance, but he always refused them to conceal his true identity as the emperor’s younger brother.
Abusing his body with brutal work day in and day out gave him a chance to clear away the dark storm of emotions inside him from his life in the Empire. At least that was how he felt.
Then, one day, as he lived such a life on the brink of despair, a fisherman approached him in a port town where Richard was working. On one of his free dives to collect sea urchin, the man had witnessed Richard’s skill in exterminating monsters. Missing a few teeth and showing signs of liver disease, he was a thin, frail old man with skin tanned from long years in the sun.
“’lo, redheaded boyo. I seen how good ya are with yer sword. Whaddya say to goin’ out to Mayga Cieux, the forest of monsters? Ye’ll find the strongest monsters in the country there, and they’re always lookin’ for foolhardy younguns like yerself to fight on the frontlines.”
“Really? Do tell.”
“Yea, don’t matter none if yer an outsider or someone runnin’ from their life ’cuz of a guilty conscience. ’s long as ye can fight, ya don’t ever have to worry about money or food. Though ’s also why only women with a checkered past live there. So if yer looking for a fine woman out there, yer shit outta luck, sonny.”
The old man howled with laughter then, his wide-open mouth displaying the gaps in his teeth. Richard chuckled too, lured in by his infectious laughter.
He thought the old man’s suggestion sounded like a good opportunity.
Whenever he was in search of a place to stay on his travels, he often stayed in brothels. He would choose an idle woman who couldn’t attract customers and borrowed only her bed and bath to rest his body because it was convenient. So the sort of place in the farthest reaches of the country where only women with checkered pasts stayed would be perfect for gathering information.
After casting off his mantle as the imperial crown prince and living such a harsh life every day, at some point in time, Richard had begun devising a plan to return to the Empire. Right around the time the season for sea urchins ended, he boarded a stagecoach bound for Mayga Cieux. When he finally reached his destination at the end of the long journey, the first thing he saw at the scene filled with shouts and roars was the lone figure of a priestess strenuously healing others. The one he would call Saintess.