Emperor's Alternate - Chapter 71
Even though he wasn’t going to meet a lover — no, nothing as romantic as that — Lecan rose earlier than anyone and moved with an uncommon sense of purpose. The commotion of the morning, the formal ceremony, the conferring of a ducal title meant nothing to him. It never had. Titles had always been empty things in his eyes.
All he wanted was to see her. Just once. Even from afar. It didn’t matter if they never exchanged a word. If he could only catch a glimpse of Leyesha standing at the Empress Dowager’s side, the knot in his chest might loosen, if only slightly.
“Do not follow me from here.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Lecan halted the attendant just short of a hidden door within the estate. When he stepped inside, the room was cluttered with the disassembled remains of magical equipment — artifacts stripped down to wire and crystal. These were the tools he had smuggled out during the proxy exams at Persi Academy, hoping to trace the sixth prince’s true identity.
Lecan had first found traces of Leyesha here. Scattered among the files obscured in ancient script were fragments of what he could only assume were her journals. Encrypted in dense, intricate formulae, the texts resisted easy interpretation. But Lecan had persisted, steadily unraveling their secrets.
“Only ten pages left now.”
He’d known, from a report, that Leyesha dabbled in magical theory during stolen moments of peace. But Lecan, too, in whatever scraps of time he could find, had buried himself in this room like a man nursing some illicit pastime, quietly decoding her work. It was through this obsession that he had deduced the likely location of the mage tower where she was believed to be staying.
Settling into the chair, he placed a monocle over one eye. With practiced ease, he began the slow, deliberate work of translation.
***
When they entered the mountains to hunt the Drakeshine, something felt wrong from the start. The air was off. Crows wheeled overhead in silence, heavy as a bad omen, and all the small animals — squirrels, snakes, even ants — seemed to flee down the slopes in panicked procession. As though some greater terror had stirred, and the entire mountain was bracing for catastrophe.
‘…An explosion, perhaps.’
The ground beneath Lecan’s feet was still warm with life — an active volcano that had not yet stilled. So the idea of an imminent eruption wasn’t entirely unfounded. Even so, he pressed forward, cutting down the Drakeshine as they appeared before him, one after another. It took days of grueling combat just to bring down a single one. And there were more than ten.
The chamberlain had advised him to take private soldiers along, but Lecan had declined. He’d needed to loosen his body anyway, and considered it a worthy trial to hone his skills. Besides, if danger came to his retainers in his absence, he wanted the soldiers to remain behind to protect them.
By the second fortnight of the hunt, his rhythm had begun to shift. What had once taken three days of killing a single Drakeshin became a task completed in two days, then one and a half. After a full month of this, Lecan found he could slay one in just a day.
And eventually, he uncovered the reason they had gathered here.
‘That must be the mana gem of legend.’
While rummaging through the creature’s lair, hidden beneath a cliffside waterfall, he’d found it — hovering in the mist, spinning lazily midair. The mana crystal was no larger than half his palm, but it radiated that distinctive, biting blue light, casting its chill glow over the stone and spray alike.
Only then did it make sense why so many Drakeshine, creatures rarely seen even alone, had gathered in one place. It was the crystal, the mana gem. Its power had drawn the beasts like moths to flame. And in turn, the lesser monsters, sensing the presence of the Drakeshine, had fled the mountain entirely, too frightened to remain.
‘It’s as though the power of the volcano itself has been condensed into this. A rare and lucky treasure.’
Shaped over centuries by the forces of nature, the gem had grown to this size through sheer accumulation.
When Lecan reached out his hand, the gem drifted to him as though it had been waiting — drawn by the call of his mana. If he chose to absorb it, he could leap in a single bound to a state that would otherwise take centuries to attain.
This waterfall, hidden down a perilous, narrow path few would dare tread, seemed untouched by human hands. Perhaps it had never been found. As he looked at the gem, its dangerous glow dancing across his palm, Lecan thought of Leyesha.
‘She hasn’t even opened her mana gate yet. But if I gave her this, she would ascend in an instant and become the strongest archmage on the continent.’
He could not understand why Leyesha still refused to break her barrier. But the brilliance of what could be, the possibility of her potential, struck him as something precious and wasted.
Lecan had no desire to claim the gem for himself. He already stood with few rivals, his strength nearly peerless across the empire. That was not what he sought.
Lecan already found himself encircled by wary eyes and cautious hands. If he returned bearing the fortune of a mana crystal formed over centuries, it would be plain to see how the world would respond. They would only greet him with more suspicion and fear.
‘Even with political power, she wielded it cleanly, without excess. If Leyesha came to hold such overwhelming force in an instant, she would not be overcome. She would use it well.’
As he tucked the crystal securely into his cloak, Lecan’s thoughts lingered. He could not give it to her now. Leyesha was not one of his, not bound by loyalty. But if one day she were to swear fealty, he would wait for the right moment. And then, offer it.
There was curiosity, too. A kind of quiet wonder. What would happen when someone so close to theoretical perfection in magic gained the strength to match?
‘What kind of genius would that be?’
If she willed it, he suspected, Leyesha could grow powerful enough to place a blade against his heart.
It was then the earth began to groan.
The sound rolled in from every direction — low, ancient, and ominous. And Lecan understood at once: the mana crystal he’d just taken had not been dormant. It had been a keystone. A link, perhaps, to the heart of the volcano. Severing it had changed something.
But before he could raise a hand to defend himself, the crystal flew from his cloak and leapt into the air of its own accord.
In that moment, it expanded, rotating once, twice, then forming a great sphere. Pure mana coalesced into an immense, flawless barrier.
The barrier, as if shielding Lecan by will alone, formed a perfect sphere around him. It was unyielding and luminous even as the volcano roared to life. Not even the eruption could fracture its gleam.
‘…So, she truly meant to kill me.’
At the heart of the explosion, Lecan could feel the unraveling of life around him. The dying screams of drakes not yet slain, fleeing in vain. Leaves hissing to ash as lava consumed the forest. The fluttering wings of birds, frantic and aimless beneath a sky blackened with ash. The avalanche of molten debris that swept down the mountain to swallow a village whole.
He bore witness to it all, untouched and utterly protected.
And from that stillness, clarity came.
There was no way Leyesha could have been unaware. Even someone like Lecan could not survive a volcanic eruption. Had it not been for the mana gem, he would have been devoured in silence, one more name lost beneath red stone and fire.
Perhaps, as the old stories went, the heavens had chosen him — had marked him for survival with a thread of fate.
Even Lecan could not say what he felt in the face of such a twist. Gratitude? Resentment? Something divine?
No. None of those.
Surprisingly, what he did not feel was anger.
What he did feel was the weight of Leyesha’s loyalty. And how terrifyingly unshakable it truly was.
