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The Meaning of Dawn (3)

Adelia hugged me to her, then broke through the window, throwing my body out of the room.

‘Kruung!’

I heard a roar and took one terrified step onto the fluffy grass.

“Uh?”

Almost at the same moment, my palace collapsed. It didn’t just collapse—it exploded.

‘Dang Dang Dang!’

Not even a second later, I heard the urgent clanging of a bell.

“Palace knights, gain an immediate grasp of this turmoil!”

“It’s the Crown Prince’s palace!”

Shouts sounded from all over. At the same time, I heard footsteps echoing.

“Find your lord and serve him!”

“Royal knights, lock and guard the gates! Palace knights, search for intruders!”

The royal palace became noisy as if there was a war on. Only then did I realize what I had done.

‘Tak tak.’

Adelia got up, brushing the dirt off her body.

“I know just by listening that at least half of your Highness’s palace must have collapsed.”

Her voice sounded as if she would burst into laughter at any moment.

“Your Highness, I’m glad you’re safe.”

Adelia was simply relieved about my safety.

My mind felt so vacant.

“That child! Where is the prince!”

The king came to my palace with angry shouts. Usually, if there was trouble, he would only appear later, so why was he here so quickly today? The king passed through the main gate of the palace, looked at me, and widened his eyes.

“Are you okay! Do you have any injuries?”

The king ran screaming to me from a distance, finally coming to a stand before me.

“What the hell is that blood?! What happened to your palace?!”

He looked at me, his face pale, and made a fuss.

“Was it the imperials?!” Vincent demanded, looking at me with a sharp glint in his eyes. Arwen, whom I had not seen enter, looked in all directions with her sharp eyes. Carls and the other palace knights all held shields, and they surrounded the king and me as if we were in the middle of a battle.

“I’m asking you what the hell is going on! Are imperial agents really attacking your palace?” the king asked me, his face still pale. My mouth was stuck as if glued closed, and I could not readily speak. I pretended to be injured for a very short time but then became worried about lying down.

“That-”

I repeated the same word and rolled my eyes. In my mind, I was searching for a way to escape the crisis. Even if I said the sky collapsed, or that a hole rose from the earth—there must be a way.

“It’s not an imperial raid!”

I thought I could manage it, at least until Adelia opened her mouth.

“You are telling me that he ruined the palace!” the king bellowed. Adelia could have noticed his anger several times, but it would have been useless. She was simply overwhelmed by the fact that I could wield my sword again, so she told the entire story to the king.

“His Highness suddenly gripped his sword!”

She spoke of how dangerous my energy with the sword was, how I attacked compared to the past, and how the palace collapsed—every useless detail.

“So that means you drew your sword and ruined the palace.”

Everyone looked at me at once. I could see on their faces that they had not yet grasped the situation properly.

‘Shh!’

I silently lifted Twilight and channeled mana into it.

‘Wow’

A dim light bloomed, a clear sword aura.

“Oh oh!”

The knights cheered in joy. Arwen subtly twisted her mouth upwards, Vincent smiled, and Carls was clenching his fists, looking thrilled. Maximillian shouted cheers for his elder brother. The king’s face also showed rare excitement.

“You’ve crossed a slope! You’ve crossed a slope!” The king congratulated me on my recovery by shouting the same words again and again.

“But why the hell did your palace collapse?” he asked me as the excitement subsided. I kept my mouth shut.

“What the hell is all that blood?”

Instead of answering, I let Twilight’s handle shimmer. I did it repeatedly, letting dim black light bloom and fade.

**

After that, Adelia continued to explain the situation. The problem was that she was praising me more than explaining anything. Soon, the king began looking for someone else to investigate the affair.

It was my uncle who came out, then. He explained the situation clearly as if he had seen it with his own eyes.

“He recovered his body, and then he got excited and broke his palace.”

His account was oversimplified, but in any case, it helped to clear up the situation far more than Adelia’s rambling litanies could have. The king looked at me with complicated emotions in his eyes. I could see he was glad that I had recovered but also worried that I would run as wild as I had before.

“Since your body has recovered, you have become healthy. There is nothing more important than that.”

Contrary to my expectations, the king did not reproach me greatly.

“You’ll need a place to stay, so for the time being, you’ll use an empty palace.”

Rather, he even comforted me by saying that I should endure even if I would live roughly for the time being.

“It’s a hundred times better to wield and strike compared to being like a sick chicken,” Vincent said. When his own castle had collapsed, he had cared about nothing else, I thought.

“It’s a good thing. It’s really good,” Arwen smiled gently and offered her congratulations.

“I’m sorry, your Highness, I should have been there for you.” Carls apologized to me, saying he was sorry for not being able to be with me during an emergency. The more people wrapped around my faults like this, the more uncomfortable it made me feel. I would rather want to shake the whole incident off quickly and quietly instead of listening to their harsh scolding. However, I couldn’t hold onto that which had forever passed. Because I was like this, I decided I would get out without shame. My palace had collapsed anyway, so there was no reason for me to regret it now. Rather, what was important was that I had finally regained my strength. I quietly checked my body.

Although more than half of the mana was consumed to regenerate my body, a huge amount of it was still vibrating in my heart. The nature of the boiling mana seemed similar to the type I knew, but it was different. I couldn’t figure out what the difference was. The same was true of when I swung my sword through the air, and I knew that there was only one way to learn the difference.

‘Shh!’

I rolled my eyes until Adelia, Arwen, and the other champions finally came into sight. All of them were strong warriors of the kingdom, but they weren’t who I needed now. I turned my head again. An old white-haired knight stood before me.

“Uncle Bale?”

Looking at my uncle’s face, it seemed as if he knew what I wanted.

“Is it really true when you say that just because someone has a penta-chain doesn’t make them a penta-knight?”

I wanted him to affirm that the Nightmare Knights were not true penta-knights.

“If you can’t believe me, try it out for yourself.”

My uncle laughed, revealing his teeth. His face was as arrogant as it was on that day when our swords had clashed here. It had been a long time since I had recalled this old thought.

“Are you okay?” I asked my uncle, lifting my chin as high as I had on that day, provoking him.

“You look like a mouse who’s worried about the cat,” my uncle said and laughed.

“Don’t think I won’t beat you, even if you are my uncle?”

“Don’t worry—do you think I’ll get beaten by you?”

My uncle subtly favored my challenge as if he was curious about my power to defeat a penta-knight. The king, watching our exchange, deflated his mouth as he sighed.

“It might be better to go back and rest for a while,” the king suggested with another sigh, and he seemed exhausted after observing my body for a while. Just after the king spoke, Maximilian opened his mouth.

“It’s been a long time since you’ve come to my palace, brother. Why don’t you stay in my palace while yours is like this? You can also duel in my training room.”

I shook my head as I looked into his eyes, which seemed to be filled with burdensome emotions.

“I might visit later. Now, I want to duel. You don’t have to go to your palace either.”

I then glanced at my ruined palace. There was no place more suitable than here, within the collapsed ruin that could sustain further damage. The king stepped back with a face of utter resignation. The palace knights quickly cleared away rubble and created a large empty space. Meanwhile, Adelia had led my uncle into the middle of the ruin.

“Thank you.”

“It was nothing.”

My uncle curtly thanked Adelia, then drew the sword buckled at his waist. I held my sword in front of me as I faced him. I moved my sword back and forth in front of his eyes, but he didn’t respond.

“Are you really okay?”

I was worried about whether he could properly clash his sword with mine.

“Has the meaning of dueling changed while I was away?” He asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I asked whether it has become fashionable to clash with words instead of with swords.”

My uncle didn’t know how strong my heart had become, and he condemned me for being chatty.

“I really worry about you as much as I can.”

“You first suggested this duel.”

“That’s so, but don’t go resenting me afterward.”

“Who said I was going to do that?”

Looking at my uncle, who was speechless, I put my hand to my mouth and slowly widened my eyes.

“Let both persons end the battle without injuring each other’s bodies,” the king declared, trying to defuse the rising tension by reminding everyone that duels are not life or death affairs. His efforts were useless.

The knights were already breathing excitedly as they considered the fact that my opponent was a penta-knight who now wielded his sword after a long time.

“If you’re going to do it, win with fire!”

Vincent even took the final step and outright cheered for me.

“I don’t care about my father, who does not take care of his body. He said that raising a child is useless, and that’s exactly what I am right now.”

“As my son, would you not support me in my battle against his Highness?”

“…”

I laughed happily as the two noble men held an affectionate conversation.

“Please be careful not to harm your body.”

“Do not get hurt, Your Highness.”

I smiled as I heard Arwen and Adelia’s requests. Carls and the palace knights cheered me on more carefully. Well, then there was Maximilian. From the first moment, he became lost in the excitement, openly cheering for me.

“I have devoted myself to the kingdom for decades, but no one here is on my side. It is useless, it is ephemeral.”

As I heard my uncle speak in a sad tone, I gently raised my sword. Now was not the time to be getting drunk on old memories or to be joking around. After drawing my sword, I thought I would enter the duel with all seriousness—even if my foe was my dear uncle.

“Woo.” My uncle, after measuring my mana, gave a long exhalation.

‘Go-oh-oh-oh!’

Explosive energy flowed out of his body. It felt as heavy as iron and as strong as a fortress. A pile of rubble that had not been cleared away quaked and the dust that had barely settled on the floor bloomed into the air again. Actually, my uncle hadn’t moved his sword once.

“That’s it…” I said in an admiring tone, but that was all I could feel. Although his energy was incomparable to other Ring Knights, it was what I had expected to encounter up to this point. But when my uncle gathered energy on his blade-

‘Shin!’

Things changed. His energy, as magnificent as steel, remained the same. The only difference was that this energy was now radiating out from his body. I straightened myself in a hurry, stiffening to protect myself.

“Uncle… why am I feeling so wrong now? I’m very confused,” I told him with a frown.

Uncle Bale laughed, asking me out loud, “You think it’s an illusion?”

It was as if he was reading my mind.

“It doesn’t make sense,” I replied, “unless I’m making a mistake.”

“In this world, there are ridiculous things going on.”

“No matter how much-”

“There’s nothing worse for you than when it comes to things that don’t make sense.”

“That’s what I mean…”

My uncle merely laughed.

“The only thing I could do for the last seven years was to recite the poem, reliving endless battles against the Warlord in my mind,” my uncle suddenly told me in a subdued tone. “I naturally got it after I recited it over tens of thousands of times.”

“That’s not so natural a way of getting it.

“But I got it.”

“So? I’m not saying I’m going easy on you.”

“If you’re already surprised, you’d be in trouble.”

“You have become weird while you haven’t seen civilization. Moreover, you keep mimicking my tone.”

“That’s because I don’t have someone else to talk to. I think it’s become a habit.”

“No. If you say that again, I feel-”

‘Shin!’

Before I was done speaking, my uncle aimed his sword at me.

“If you test it for yourself, all your questions will be answered.”

‘Pchk!’

My skin was tingling and my spine was cold. Just him pointing his sword at me was too much, but how wonderful would it be if I actually met him blade-to-blade?

My heart started hammering like crazy and my body heated up. My mind, in contrast, was cold.

“Haha,” I couldn’t stop myself from laughing. Uncle Bale forced his smile away and gripped his sword as he fixed it before him.

“It will be uncomfortable for you to move, so I’ll go first.”

My uncle didn’t answer me. I also didn’t crack jokes anymore. I just-

‘Fwa!’

I charged across the floor. At that moment, the tangible energy surrounding my uncle collapsed in toward me. It was like a landslide. I cried out as I struck out with my sword despite that heavy feeling as if being crushed by a great mountain.

“That’s right! Orcish fervor!”

“This isn’t fervor, it’s the Warlord!”

“Either this or that!” my uncle laughed, chuckled, then lowered his sword.

‘Qawah!’

The heavy tragedy of my ignorance felt like it would split my head open.

‘Bang!’

The shock that had been transmitted through our meeting of blades shook the inside of my body. I forced myself to endure it and tried to move forward, but suddenly stopped again. There were five clear scratch marks right in front of me. There were five on my side of the floor and none on Uncle Bale’s side.

“It’s only your words that are loud—you’re still a young man.”

While I looked at the floor blankly, my uncle tried to put some medicine in his words.

‘Warak!’

My face crumpled into a frown.

“Hey now, I just woke up from bed. I’m still getting used to the new state of my body.”

“Let’s see—I can barely see with borrowed eyes. I have only one arm. My feet are limp. But, my body is still good enough.”

Hearing my uncle’s words, I shut my mouth. After all my joking around, I had lost sight of my true purpose.

“Woo.”

I tried to correct my face as I fixed my sword before me.

“Be careful…”

Then I collected a flash of light at the edge of my sword.

“Because it’s not only uncles who can learn new tricks.”

‘Wow!’

The light of dawn came to the blade the swordmaster had forged with his soul. My uncle lowered his posture and prepared for my attack. Looking at him, I stood still, not rushing forward as I kept pushing mana to the edge of my sword. I channeled it, again and again.

‘Ooh ooh ooh ooh.’ Twilight cried, trembling in my grasp—as if it wanted to charge into battle right away. But I still stood firmly, with both my feet on the floor, not moving a single step. I just kept channeling mana into my blade. My heart hammered like crazy, spewing out more mana. It was the mana I had accumulated in my life as a sword. Ten years, twenty, fifty—it was power gained over a century. Mana flowed endlessly to the edge of my sword.

‘Qaw ahhh!’

A terrible wind began to rage around me. My uncle’s expression hardened.

“What the hell now…”

It was hard to read his face. I looked at him triumphantly.

‘Wow!’

Suddenly, my heart caught fire.