Right before his eyes stood a statue commemorating the empire’s founding emperor.
Was it because of the pent-up fury?
Fel pulled out the whiskey hidden in his bosom.
Downing all the remaining alcohol in the flask, he raised his hand to hurl the empty bottle toward the statue.
It was at that exact moment.
“Uk!”
Fel hastily pulled his reins to a halt at the shadow of someone lunging right in front of him.
Philip, dismounting from his horse with a flushed face, immediately began to scold a boy sprawled out by the roadside.
It was a thin, scrawny young boy.
“What kind of madness is this? If you block the path of His Royal Highness the Crown Prince…!”
“I’m, I’m sorry.”
A single loaf of bread was clutched tightly in the boy’s hands.
Judging by the menacing-looking man chasing from behind the boy’s back, it looked like he had stolen bread from a shop.
‘No need to look, he’s just a penniless beggar.’
Just as Fel thought that and tried to ride past, something caught his field of vision.
It was a rusted pendant hanging around the boy’s neck.
[ Ethan grasped the magic stone he had obtained from the gray wolf and smiled broadly. Then, he pressed a kiss to the pendant hanging around his neck. It was a keepsake left behind by his late mother. The pendant, set with a blue jewel, glittered brightly under the sunlight. ]
A paragraph from the novel flashed through Fel’s mind.
At that moment, the pendant hanging around the boy’s neck flashed, reflecting the light bouncing off the statue.
‘It’s blue.’
What had looked dull and caked in dust flashed brightly in an instant.
His heart hammered at the blue jewel neatly embedded in the center of the pendant.
Fel caught his breath and let slip the name he had been repeating endlessly over and over again.
“…Ethan?”
The boy, who had been busy wrangling with the bakery owner, opened his eyes wide.
His dirty face, heavily smeared with grease and grime, held an enigmatic emotion.
It was the exact expression of someone thinking, ‘How on earth does His Royal Highness the Crown Prince know my name?’
“…How do you know my name?”
When the question finally spilled from the boy’s lips, Fel leaped off his horse and bolted straight toward him.
His face was as overjoyed as someone who had just found their savior for life.
“I’ve been waiting for you.”
“…”
“Hurry up and kill me.”
Fel thought he could finally return to reality.
Facing Ethan with unfocused pupils, he then firmly gripped the boy’s shoulders.
Even though he had kindly placed a sword in his hand and told him to kill him, Ethan didn’t take any action and just trembled.
“I said, hurry up and kill me?”
“Why, why are you acting like this…?”
The chunk of bread clutched in Ethan’s hand crashed to the ground. Before long, tears welled up in his black eyes.
Ethan—who was described in the novel as fearless and tearless—burst into tears right in front of Fel.
“I’m sorry. I-I have a sick mother at home… who’s been starving for two days…”
Ethan carefully handed the sword he was holding back to Fel, wiping away his tears with the edge of his sleeve.
The way his whole body trembled looked quite pitiful.
Yet even so, Fel could not understand Ethan.
Why on earth was Ethan—the very person who would relentlessly sever his neck in the future—hesitating?
No one would blame the novel’s protagonist for killing the villain.
“You must have heard the rumors too, that I’m the mad crown prince. Kill me. Then you will become a hero.”
“…A hero?”
Fel ‘s wildly glittering eyes were fixed solely on Ethan.
My savior. My very own murderer. The hero of this empire. The protagonist of this novel.
Ethan’s lips parted as if he were about to say something.
If Ethan asked for money in exchange for killing him, Fel intended to give it.
If Ethan asked for honor, Fel intended to bestow a title upon him.
However, Ethan let large, fat tears drop continuously as he replied:
“How could I possibly become a hero by killing Your Highness? E-Even if Your Highness granted permission, I wouldn’t be able to escape death. I would merely be a lowly bastard who murdered the Crown Prince.”
Someone stepped in to restrain Fel, who was listening to Ethan’s words in a daze.
It was Philip.
“If you were trying to scare the child, that is already more than enough. Let us return now, Your Highness.”
It wasn’t anything like that.
If he had intended to scare him, he would have chopped off the boy’s wrists so he could never steal again, or threatened to kill his mother.
Fel had spoken with absolute, total sincerity.
‘Please, just kill me. This persistent breath of mine—please, just cut it off.’
Only then did Ethan’s tattered clothes enter his sight.
Next, he saw the bakery owner behind Ethan’s back, waiting only for Fel to leave, and finally, the crowd pointing fingers at Ethan and scolding him.
“That beggar brat, daring to block His Highness’s path…”
“My goodness, it looks like he stole bread and ran off.”
“Those kinds of people are a blight on society.”
Hearing the murmurs of the crowd, Ethan shrank back.
It was the complete opposite of the Ethan in the novel, who was loved and respected wherever he went.
Fel felt as though he had been struck on the head with a blunt object.
He had believed that simply meeting the protagonist would solve everything.
After all, the novel’s plot wouldn’t change just because a villain who was destined to die died a little earlier.
But that wasn’t it.
The situation where Ethan killed the emperor of an empire yet was hailed as a hero was something that could only happen when every single piece of the puzzle fell into place.
Emperor Felio failing to rule the empire properly; rumors of a bloodthirsty monster spreading even to neighboring countries; the emergence of forces seeking to kill the emperor; Ethan’s outstanding swordsmanship; the fact that he was the illegitimate son of Duke Soliar; and the death of Duke Soliar.
“Right. That’s it…”
Only when all of those elements came together could Ethan become a hero.
