Walter spotted me and made his way over.
"Well, well! If it isn't the strongest knight in the Empire and my own brother-in-law, Leo Kamishiro!"
God, his expository tone was grating.
Besides, I wasn't the strongest anything. I got thrashed every single time I sparred with Piggett!
I was only good for killing Zork!
Just as I was about to snap, Walter gave me a theatrical smile and pulled me into a hug. His performative movements were so irritating that I reached out, half-tempted to give him a spine-cracking bear hug and fold him in half.
But Wifey signaled me to stay my hand. I had no choice but to stand down.
I settled for a few dismissive pats on his back.
"Everyone! The Savior Hero has arrived! He is my brother-in-law, the man who shall flourish as my right hand in the future of this Empire!"
Oh, this bastard. Taking advantage of the crowd, he just tried to frame me as his subordinate.
"Prince Walter," Veronica interjected. "This man is my groom, the other half of our pair of lovebirds. Unfortunately, he will never be your right hand."
"Hahaha! Do not fuss over the trivial details!"
It wasn't trivial. I was about two seconds away from snapping his actual right arm.
I realized then that Walter and I were fundamentally incompatible. I absolutely loathed his audacity—the way he constantly pushed his own convenience onto everyone else.
"Until next time, then."
Walter walked away, wearing a look of practiced composure.
"Has he always been like that?" I asked.
"I am not close enough to him to know his past self," Veronica replied. "We siblings were raised without direct contact with one another. I was raised in the Inner Palace, after all."
Thomas nodded in agreement. "I grew up in the Palace itself. I heard Cyrus was raised in the Palace Annex, and Walter... if I recall, he was raised on a planet belonging to a Duke of the civil official faction."
"A Duke's planet? I'm getting a bad feeling about this."
"I share the Lord Groom's sentiment," Veronica said. "If the civil officials were as corrupted as the Duke Association..."
"If that’s the case, then why wasn't the military corrupted?" Thomas asked, voicing a simple point of confusion.
"The military was corrupted," Veronica clarified. "It is just that the upper brass was almost entirely replaced because so many of them died during the recapture of the Imperial Capital."
It was sheer luck that none of us had died. In truth, the Imperial death toll had reached a scale that was seriously impacting population statistics. In the military, casualties were so high that draft dodging had become rampant. Apparently, applications to join Veronica's Personal Guard were flooding in simply because people wanted to be assigned somewhere with a high survival rate.
I personally felt we’d just been lucky. By all rights, someone like me should have died during the initial raid.
The banquet ended without any major incidents.
At least, that’s what I thought.
[Leo Kamishiro Overwhelms Prince Walter. Did He Suppress the Nobility with a Single Glare?]
How did it end up like this?
The next day, the top stories on the Imperial net were dominated by my behavior at the banquet. They were packed with fabrications, written with such detail you’d think the reporters had been standing right next to me. The nobles who had fled at the sight of me were the Dukes—likely remnants of the Duke Association or the fence-sitters who had been playing both sides.
In the first place, Walter and I weren't rivals. The one competing in the Emperor race against him was Wifey. I was just Wifey's accessory.
I’m not the one becoming Emperor! Get it! Understand it!
However, there were certain factions that liked me way too much. Specifically, the media outlets that were using me as a free resource to fill their article quotas were showering me with praise. This smelled like a setup. They were definitely building me up just to bash me later. They’d probably interview someone like Kevin and run a headline like [Forbidden Love with a Busty Beauty].
I felt a surge of murderous intent. Then I realized they had already started.
[Leo Kamishiro: The Giant Kaiju Theory]
[Leo Kamishiro: The Underground Dweller Theory]
[Leo Kamishiro Having an Affair with a Male Student!? 'He was always looking at me with the eyes of a beast.']
Wait, that last one! I don't look at boys or girls with 'the eyes of a beast,' you morons! Who was the idiot who did the interview for a laugh?!
As I was stomping around in a rage, Wifey walked in.
"Ah... judging by your face, you have seen the articles."
"Who said that in the last article? I’m going to kill them right now."
"Calm down. It was my strategy... though I suspect I may have made a poor choice in personnel."
"Who?"
"The Fairy wrote the manuscripts, and the boys from the Academy sat for the interviews."
"Wait. Multiple boys?"
"Umu."
"Why would you do that?"
"You are being put on an unnaturally high pedestal, Lord Groom. I am using the gossip media to exert downward pressure on your public image."
It was true that being worshiped as a 'Warrior of National Defense' or a 'God of War' felt skin-crawlingly gross. The main reason for the worship was likely the total lack of other good news, but there were surely people doing it with malicious intent. Build someone up, then drop them. It was a classic move. By using idiotic gossip to apply a downward correction, the damage would be minimized when I was eventually 'dropped' by the public.
In this case, it was better if the world thought I was just some dumb student. It was their fault for demanding a noble character from me in the first place.
"Umu... they did go a bit too far this time. My apologies."
"Well, whatever. Don't you have anything better? Like 'setting off fireworks in winter,' or 'falling into a rice field on a bike,' or 'getting scolded by a fisherman for catching shrimp'?"
"What kind of fun-sounding gossip is that?" she asked, bewildered. "Anyway, regarding Alexia..."
"Did you find anything?"
"Not much yet. It has only been a day! I will tell you what we have confirmed. Duke Endo is an influential figure in the civil official faction. His territory is in the Imperial Capital suburbs. He graduated from the Imperial University before becoming a bureaucrat. His wife is the daughter of his former superior. On paper, it is a picture-perfect elite family with two sons and two daughters. Alexia is the youngest."
"Heh."
"Now, here is the important part. The other three children followed their father through the Imperial University and into civil service. Alexia, however, is a student at an Imperial Capital Private University."
"Heh."
"There are no records of her ever attending a single class."
"That just got very creepy, very fast..."
"Furthermore, since the recapture of the Imperial Capital, Duke Endo’s wife and their other three children have been missing."
"...And the Duke himself?"
"His work records show he has been at his post since the recapture. He is considered an indispensable asset to the administration."
So he was genuinely competent. Did that mean Alexia didn't actually exist? But why go that far?
"So, why did Walter have Alexia as his partner?"
"Supposedly, she has been unofficially selected as his fiancée."
A candidate for his wife. I wasn't the least bit jealous. My intuition was screaming at me.
"We cannot afford another outburst like Thomas had," Veronica said grimly. "If Walter were to launch some reckless expedition now, the Empire would surely crumble."
If she really was a Zork spy, we were in deep trouble. I had to expose her true identity, no matter what.