[CHE] 001. CHILDREN OF THE HOLY EMPEROR

The 17th Holy Emperor of Delcross, Nathaniel Klein, Nate.

He was a monarch with so much power that no precedent could be found except for the First Holy Emperor.

With enormous divine power befitting the position of God’s representative, he is the unofficial youngest Sword Master and the continent’s strongest swordsman.

Under his reign, Delcross enjoyed extremely stable prosperity, and relations with neighboring countries were also friendly. He deserved to be praised as the unprecedented star of the century.

However, he was more famous with another nickname than star, and that was [The Unprecedented Playboy Holy Emperor in History].

When he ascended to the throne at the young age of 21, he already had three wives, one lover, and five children.

Now, after 12 years in power, only seven officially known children have passed, and no one knows how many hidden illegitimate children there were.

Due to the stoic image as [God’s Representative], the Holy Emperor of Delcross from generation to generation did not have a large number of children.

It is known that only the first Holy Emperor had more than 15 children, but considering that he, who is said to be a demigod, has been in power for more than 300 years, it is not an incomprehensible number.

Given the circumstances, even this young and capable Holy Emperor could not prevent the image of a playboy from sticking to him.

Everything must be the result of the immaturity of youth. Holy Emperor Nate was determined to humbly accept the responsibility and take full care of his children within his power.

So, he ordered the chief chamberlain to report the condition of the children carefully, and put off his busy office hours to spend time alone with his children.

However, despite such efforts, parenting was never an easy task, because growing children seldom obey their parents’ wishes.

Babies sometimes acted in ways that their parents couldn’t understand, even though they were children inside of them.

Take, for example, the first child, First Prince Owen.

He was a child who was only discovered when he was a grown boy, and at first he seemed very happy to meet his father after hardships.

But one day, he suddenly started talking nonsense about seeing something strange like a document in the air.

“Father, I want to become stronger with the power of this status window.”

Then he left for the southern front on that road.

There were many things he wanted to do with him as much as he had belatedly picked up in his arms, but isn’t he a mean-spirited son who doesn’t care about his father’s feelings at all?

The second, First Princess Amelia, was not much different.

A pitiful daughter who lost her mother, who was the illegitimate child of the Marquis, and later found her father after being revealed to be a princess.

Even so, a lovely girl who hid her sadness under a bright smile and talked about her concerns to her still awkward father.

His daughter, who was like a single rose, also became strange at some point.

One day, she woke up crying as if she had a nightmare, and suddenly the amount of food she ate decreased and she became very depressed.

Concerned, they had tea time together and he asked the reason, and the daughter suddenly shed tears in front of him and spat out words like thunder from the sky.

“Your Majesty, I… retured from death to the past!”

The sudden story made Nate to fall in a daze.

Afterwards, the daughter’s complaints, which poured out like a waterfall, were roughly summarized like this.

The shiny-faced Second Prince of Rohan, Leonard, seduced his daughter into a wedding ceremony.

However, it wasn’t because of love, but was a ruse to solidify his throne by borrowing the power of The Holy Emperor.

After forcing the marriage, he took several concubines and abused the queen, Amelia.

And it wasn’t long before he ended up confining her to a tower alone.

“Your Majesty, enraged by that fact, tried to save me even by raising a holy war, but Leonard killed me in the end. Cruelly, he wanted me to die in front of Your Majesty’s eyes.”

“…….”

“Ah! Your Majesty was so against it from the beginning, but this foolish daughter of his ruined everything!”

He stared blankly at his daughter, who started to sob after talking to that point.

He married you, imprisoned you, and murdered you?

But daughter, aren’t you alive in front of me right now?

“So this girl will take revenge. I will pursue him to the ends of hell. I will crush all his hopes and utterly ruin them. I won’t forgive anything that gets in my way!”

“…….”

Nate sensed a light flicker in his daughter’s wet eyes and involuntarily drew in his breath.

The daughter who was only pampered and looked after like a tender bud suddenly became a poisonous rose full of thorns.

At this point, Nate couldn’t help but admit that he’d taken parenting pretty lightly.

Do all parents on the continent raise their children in this agony, or is it only his own children that are so eccentric? The young holy emperor wrapped his head around the headache.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Of all Nate’s eccentric children, there was one that worry him the most: his fourth child, the third prince, Morres.

Prince Morres was the child of the exuberant First Queen Lisabeth, and he was an extremely ordinary child, except for being a mischievous child.

Unfortunately, compared to his other siblings, he is not very special, and he is just an ordinary kid who can’t live up to his mother’s expectations.

Thanks to this, Morres had to suffer from a rather harsh early education under the empress, who was struggling to make her son the crown prince.

When he was young, he just wanted to follow his mother’s will.

However, at some point, he began to riot against the servants of the palace, and by the time he reached puberty, he had become a pig who could not be controlled at all.

Neither the empress’s hysterical threats nor her tearful pleas were of use.

Nate, too, couldn’t find a solution, so he had no choice but to wait quietly for the child to come to his senses again, but he ignored his parents’ concerns and the prince’s foolishness increased as the years went by.

Like that, it seemed that the child would remain as a stain unprecedented in the history of the imperial family.

Change came unexpectedly. Suddenly, after almost dying from a fever and coming back to life, the child who woke up has become a completely different person than before.

Afterwards he stopped fighting and devoted himself to basic training at the training ground every day, he lost weight to the point where he couldn’t be recognized, and his swordsmanship skills, which had always been stuck in place, began to increase rapidly.

As if his ordinary qualities had completely changed, he now learned how to radiate quite sharp momentum.

The son’s change was certainly a good thing, but Nate was feeling a little uneasy inside.

It might have been nice to have a frank conversation with Morres earlier. However, since the condition of his child seemed a little unstable, he had no choice but to treat his son with the same care as before.

And the result of that indecisive response was a huge irreversible storm.

* * *

Crash!

Suddenly, the imperial palace shook as if an earthquake had occurred, along with the roar of a mountain falling from outside.

The cardinals and ministers, who had just finished their morning government meeting, rushed out into the courtyard of the imperial palace in a panic.

What caught their eyes was a huge black mass that had been randomly thrown to one side of the courtyard.

Large wings with no film remaining and a large body with tattered rotten flesh. Along with black magic that emanated from the whole body.

“Bone Dragon……”

“This… What the hell is this…”

Why did the devil species that are rampaging in the eastern region suddenly fall in the middle of the imperial palace?

While the cardinals stuttered in confusion at the unexpected situation, the Royal Guard and the Order of the Holy Knights rushed in and surrounded the Bone Dragon.

It was because despite the shock of the fall, it was still wriggling intermittently as if it had not completely lost its breath.

However, at that time, they were unable to approach it recklessly because of the terrible magic flowing out of it.

“Uh, I didn’t mean to make a fuss… Come on, take a look.”

Along with an innocent bullshit, a boy wearing light armor appeared from near the head of the dragon. Pale Grayish light blonde hair and fierce eyes, and a mischievous expression.

“… Your Highness Morres?”

Despite the trembling question of the Knight Commander Balthazar, the voice of the boy called Morres was very clear.

“The exorcists of the subjugation party said that, unlike other types of demons, even if you defeat this one, it will not be completely reverse summoned and the corpse will remain. So I heard that in order to purify it, it must eventually moved to the royal capital, where father is?”

“……”

“But if I catch them far away in the east, the soldiers and villages on the way back will be contaminated with demons… .”

In short, in order to minimize the secondary damage that would occur during the transportation of the body of the demon species, it was driven to this place and then suddenly dropped to the main palace where the Holy Emperor resides.

“This crazy……”

One high priest involuntarily uttered a blasphemous sound, but no one dared to cross it.

The same thought were running through everyone’s heads at that moment.

That pig trash prince, they said he evolved into a crazy nutjob!

-Kieheek!

The Bone Dragon howled with all its remaining strength and struggled to shake off the prince.

As the black demonic energy swayed more violently and spread out in all directions, the knights surrounding it flinched and took a step back.

However, Prince Morres, who was in the middle of that terrible demon, pulled out the sword from his waist with a nonchalant expression.

Soon, the aura of the dark enemy began to emanate from his sword, The Nutcracker.

The outside air clearly formed on the surface of the sword.

Considering the young prince’s age, he was at a remarkable level, but the nature of his blood-black Aura was quite sinister.

At least it shouldn’t be an Aura that should be seen from someone such as the prince of the Holy Empire.

“Now catch him. Be careful, Magi.”

With a calm voice.

Thunk.

The sword of the prince was immediately lodged in the dragon heart that had turned black with demonic energy.

Soon after, the dragon heart cracked with a crackling sound, and dark magic began to pour out explosively from there.

Hwaaak!

In an instant, the body of the dragon and the prince were wrapped in black smoke and disappeared.

“Aaaagh!”

“Your Highness Morres!”

“Your Highness!”

The demonic energy that seemed to cover the imperial palace courtyard at once was blocked by a transparent, shining silver curtain before it could even reach the knights who were besieging it.

In that short time, the holy emperor had opened a huge divine barrier that completely surrounded the Bone Dragon.

Shaaaaa.

The barrier filled with demonic energy seemed to become a pitch-black hemisphere in an instant. However, Magi was purified and became hazy after being touched by the divine barrier of the holy emperor, and after a while, it began to turn transparent as if it had never happened.

Eventually, only the clear air and the skeleton of a huge creature that had turned white remained inside the barrier.

“What about the prince?”

An undead type of demon that is said to rot and corrode away normal people just by touching it.

It was not something a young prince without even a handful of holy power could handle, and he was in the middle of a magic explosion.

Contrary to people’s worries, Prince Morres was fortunately safe. The boy, who appeared soon after his barrier disappeared, slowly walked towards the castle with his Aura covering his entire body.

A carefree appearance, as if Magi could not pose a threat at all. Dark red aura flowing from here and there in the prince’s body.

If an uninformed person saw it, it would be confusing which one belonged to the devil’s family, the prince or the dragon.

“… Your Majesty, I might be presumptuous, but are you saying that the prince’s power is truly not the devil’s?”

Cardinal Benitus, who was standing by the Holy Emperor, asked in a trembling voice.

To dare to speak of the devil over the prince of the Holy Empire, it would not have been enough if they were charged with blasphemy or treason. It seemed that this lanky old man had lost his mind half with shock that he hadn’t realized it.

Nate, who had been watching this absurd series of events in silence, before long slowly raised one hand to cover his face and let out a low sigh.

Yes, Morres.

The child, who was just an immature fool, was becoming the eye of a new storm that would bring a huge causal wind to Delcross.