“It makes no sense!”

Marquess Duriel was just as shaken. But he immediately shook his head.

There was no way that could be real! How could something like that suddenly appear, of all times, at a moment like this!

The First Emperor’s seal?

“Where did you get such a fake—!”

He shot to his feet and shouted, but he never managed to finish.

As if he had expected that reaction, Crown Prince Edsen drew his sword.

“W-What are you—!”

Did he mean to kill him here?

But Marquess Duriel’s prediction missed the mark completely. Crown Prince Edsen, sword in hand, cut his own palm without a moment’s hesitation.

Blood ran down his hand in heavy drops and fell onto the seal.

At that moment—

KUUUUOOOOOO—!

“Ghk!”

“Urk!”

Everyone barely managed to swallow the screams bursting up their throats. A horrifying cry had poured out from the black seal.

They understood at once what that sound was.

The cry of the Black Dragon!

There was a legend tied to the First Emperor’s seal.

If the blood of one who inherited the First Emperor’s bloodline touched the seal that contained the Black Dragon’s lingering spirit, the cry of the Black Dragon would ring out from it.

“My God!”

“That sound is definitely...!”

To think that story had actually been true!

The sound was no longer as ear-splitting as it had been at first, but the faint cry still continued to seep from the seal, and everyone could only stare at it with their mouths hanging open.

T-This is impossible.

Marquess Duriel’s eyes shook without pause as well.

Was that truly the First Emperor’s seal? Why, why had it appeared now of all times!

THUD!

At the sound of the wooden box closing, everyone flinched and only then snapped out of their stunned daze.

With the dragon’s cry gone, the meeting hall fell into a silence so deep it was almost unnatural.

Not a single person could easily open their mouth. As if by prior agreement, everyone’s gaze was fixed on the wooden box.

This isn’t a dream, is it?

That seal really...!

The First Emperor’s seal. It had returned after 500 years!

“Well then, let’s move on to the next agenda item. What else is there?”

A moment later, Crown Prince Edsen broke the silence in the hall with a bright smile.

But there was no one who could answer his question. They could only stand there, still out of their minds, mouths hanging open in shock.

*****

[Thank you.]

A male ghost who looked to be in his early forties kept letting out long sighs of relief as he thanked Camilla again and again.

“Yes, please be very grateful.”

Camilla accepted the ghost’s words with obvious indifference.

Of course you should be grateful.

Do you have any idea how many mana stones I burned through because of this? Do you know how much money that is if you convert it into cash?

The moment Camilla stepped into the imperial palace, she pressed her fingers hard against the space between her brows because of the ghosts crowding around her and refusing to leave her alone. My head hurts....

This is seriously too much pressure.

She could not simply ignore them either, because those ghosts were former emperors and princes of the Fable Empire.

Bold as she was, once she learned that fact, she could not help feeling more than a little burdened.

More than anything, that man who looked the oldest among them, the one in his forties. That man was...

[I am truly relieved that I was able to return the First Emperor’s seal to my descendant.]

The emperor who had first had his body stolen by John Carter, Alberto de Fable, smiled faintly.

Emperor Alberto said that before John Carter stole his body, he had sensed that something was wrong.

Late at night, the chief attendant had suddenly come to him and informed him that the three dukes were requesting an audience.

[I «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» had a bad feeling.]

The first thing he did after sending the chief attendant away was hide the First Emperor’s seal.

It was not as if the three dukes had never come to see him without warning before, so he still did not fully understand why he had felt that way on that particular day.

He had simply moved as though possessed by something and quickly hid the seal in a secret space that only he himself could open.

And that premonition had not been wrong.

“When do you think it started?”

[Who knows.]

The chief attendant who had served him for a long time had already had his body stolen by John Carter.

[I can’t tell you how relieved I felt just before I lost consciousness. It was horrifying enough that that bastard had taken my body, but the thought that he might have gotten the First Emperor’s seal as well was beyond words. If that had happened, I might have turned into a vengeful spirit the moment I regained my senses.]

Even so, he grumbled that he had never imagined no one would be able to find it for 500 years, and Camilla shook her head.

“If you hide it in a place like that, I don’t think anyone would find it even after 1,000 years.”

[Is that so?]

She had tried her best to ignore him, but he had gone on and on, wailing that how could he possibly leave without handing the First Emperor’s seal he had hidden to his descendant.

In the end, Camilla had no choice but to throw up both hands.

[Hmm, did I hide it too deeply? Was that the problem?]

“No. The location, the location....”

He had hidden it inside a subspace created by magic and even locked it with an activation phrase, so who could possibly have found that?

In the end, this time as well, possession had been the only option. Emperor Alberto entered Camilla’s body and personally cast the spell to take the seal out of the subspace.

My precious mana stones!

The problem was that there was no mana stored in Camilla’s body at all.

She had thought it might work this time too, the way it had when Xeno or Arena possessed her, but perhaps magic operated on a different principle, because it simply would not work.

So what she came up with was mana stones. Fortunately, she was able to open the subspace by creating a magic circle using mana stones.

Of course, she had then ended up bedridden for several days again from the aftereffects of possession.

“Ugh, what a life.”

Still, what else could she do? It was not just anything. It was the First Emperor’s seal. And it turned out to be a far more important object than she had expected.

She had already heard that Crown Prince Edsen’s position was in a very difficult spot as it was.

Of course it would bother them.

The leader of Eva Faith had stolen the lives and bodies of countless people. And the heir to the throne had been born from the body that had housed that soul.

She had heard that even the people who followed Crown Prince Edsen could not hide their discomfort over the situation.

That was exactly why the seal was needed all the more. It would firmly establish that Crown Prince Edsen really was a descendant of the First Emperor, so that no one would be able to keep picking at his legitimacy afterward.

Emperor Alberto said he had tested it himself while he was alive. The cry had definitely come from the seal.

This is exactly the item needed right now.

For those people running their mouths about whether he truly carried the royal bloodline, what better proof could there possibly be than this?

The soul?

So what if the soul changed? Would that change his genes too? Just because the soul was different, where was that blood supposed to go?

Saying that he no longer inherited the royal bloodline because the soul had changed was honestly ridiculous.

If this were modern times, it would be over with a single DNA test, yet here they were fighting to the death and making all that noise over it. It was pathetic.

“Well, anyway, the item was delivered safely.”

Crown Prince Edsen would handle the rest himself, right?

A man with a talent for tearing other people apart greater than anyone else was now holding that seal. She did not even need to see it to know how thoroughly he would turn his opponents inside out.

Camilla leisurely lifted her teacup and took a sip.

Remembering Crown Prince Edsen widening his eyes and failing to hide his emotions for quite a while after receiving the First Emperor’s seal, Camilla let out a small laugh.

“So that man can make that kind of face too.”

She had thought he only ever wore that obnoxious expression of his. Seeing him stand there so dumbfounded he almost looked innocent had been fairly refreshing.

Since she had seen something so rare, she decided to let the cost of the mana stones slide.

[Only now does my mind finally feel at ease.]

Emperor Alberto still looked deeply moved as he gazed around the palace again.

It had changed a great deal from the days when he had lived there, proving how much time had passed, yet even so, he found familiar things within it and smiled wistfully.

[I really did hide that seal well.]

That bastard, John Carter, the one who had stolen his body.

If even the imperial seal had ended up in that bastard’s hands, how infuriating would that have been?

And if that were not enough—

[What if that precious object had vanished forever because of me?]

It was enough to make his skin crawl.

[Even in death, I would never have been able to close my eyes in peace.]

...Excuse me. Even now, you still can’t close your eyes in peace.