I Became the Teacher of the Imperial Family’s Bastard

051. The City of Shadows (1)

Originally, that woman had no plans to get involved in this matter.

According to Rona Woodwich, the current owner of the Magic Tower, Beatrice’s ‘adjustment’ was not yet complete.

It was a wound inflicted by a demon.

She was in the process of healing the injury and implanting new power from it, so she was excluded from the immediate force for the future.

That was the plan, but Beatrice herself showed a willingness to participate.

According to the owner of the Magic Tower, she had completed the adaptation process so quickly that even she was surprised.

I vaguely remember the proud expression on her face.

Even so, I didn’t bother to say, “Isn’t she just a failure possessed by a demon…”

Anyway, now.

“Are you sure you can fight?”

“I’ve finished the urgent adjustments. The prosthetic arm, and the eye too.”

“Eye?”

“I implanted it.”

She doesn’t seem to want to explain in detail.

But since she says she can fight, we’ll see in the future.

When I nodded, Beatrice stared at me intently.

I narrowed my eyes.

“What.”

“…No, it’s just that you seem to be doing well.”

“Does this look like doing well to you? I’m about to die cleaning up after those troublemakers every single day.”

“……”

Seeing her shoulders flinch, it seems she knows it’s about her.

‘Shouldn’t she at least apologize?’

What is it with just bowing her head?

And why is she fiddling with her hair?

Watching her, I realized that the old saying was true.

‘Mages generally lack social skills and are not personable enough to apologize to others.’

I don’t know who said it, but that person was definitely a sage of the century.

Clicking his tongue, the Crown Prince spoke.

“Let’s save the bickering for later and get going first, shall we? Nice to meet you, Wizard Beatrice. No need for a separate introduction. I look forward to working with you.”

“…So, what should I do?”

Beatrice ignored the Crown Prince and asked me.

I could see a vein bulging on the Crown Prince’s forehead.

Still hasn’t fixed his sensitivity to being ignored.

“Hey. When someone speaks, at least pretend to listen…”

“Why is Your Highness throwing a fit after saying we should go? Let’s move. Just do what you’re told.”

I stopped the Crown Prince and urged us to depart.

The Crown Prince glared at Beatrice with veins still bulging.

Beatrice ignored the Crown Prince and stood by my side.

“…Nice to meet you.”

“Sure.”

“I don’t think I can say the same?”

“If you snuck out, keep your voice down. We’re still near the capital.”

The precarious situation made me uneasy, but what could I do?

‘…No need to be on good terms.’

As long as the job gets done.

With that thought, we set off.

I turned my gaze northward.

‘…Igrosia.’

The city of shadows lay at the end.

* * *

To talk about Igrosia, one must first understand the concept of the capital and its satellite cities.

Unlike its symbolic position as the heart of the human race, the capital is not very large.

At most, fifteen thousand.

That’s the number of people who can reside within the capital.

A thousand years ago, when the first human cluster created the nation, there was no need to build it large, considering the circumstances of the time.

But humanity continued to thrive after the founding of the empire.

The cluster grew larger, and thus the capital groaned under the strain of overpopulation around 200-300 years after the founding.

The emperor of the time devised a clever solution to resolve the issue.

– “We’ll build satellite cities.”

He planned to construct satellite cities in each direction, reachable within three days’ travel from the capital.

This was an attempt to alleviate population density, and it was successful.

Eight satellite cities were established in the eight directions from the capital.

The emperor designated specific commercial or production specialties for each city and relocated a large number of producers there, creating societies centered around them.

High-ranking nobles were appointed as lords of the cities to enhance financial liquidity, thus perfectly solving the population problem of the capital with the eight cities.

The minor disturbances that occurred over the course of three generations were not significant.

Returning to the main point, it is enough to know that Igrosia, now known as the underworld, was one of these cities.

So, how did Igrosia become an extraterritorial underworld?

To put it simply, the lord of Igrosia, a trade city at the time, caused a scandal.

He secretly bought and sold slaves.

The empire strictly prohibits slavery.

Since the founding emperor himself was a former orc slave, there was a fundamental aversion to the institution.

What do you think happened?

The family of the lord of Igrosia, along with the ruling and administrative classes involved, were purged for three generations.

The city, left without leadership, fell into chaos, and the neighboring cities absorbed Igrosia’s functions and resources.

As a result, the city became a wasteland.

Even when administrators were belatedly sent in, they could not manage the lawless area that Igrosia had become.

Subsequently, criminals flocked to Igrosia.

The city, with no census of its inhabitants, became a perfect hiding place for criminals.

This situation continued for over a hundred years.

Unexpectedly, this led to a decrease in crime rates and the restoration of public order in other cities.

With criminals and illegal activities concentrated in one place, the other cities began to clean up.

Thus, Igrosia became a “necessary evil.”

A human trash can where garbage was gathered.

A cradle for the dregs of society.

Considering the human and material resources needed to clean it up, it was not worth the effort.

Moreover, due to its unique culture, the foreign goods and information flowing into the empire from there became quite profitable, eliminating the need for further cleanup.

Of course, the city itself was in chaos.

As a neglected city, the chaos only deepened day by day.

And then a man was born to bring order to it, and that man was Girgoor.

A poor boy born in Igrosia, now the ruler of the underworld.

To sum up his evaluation:

– A remarkable figure. With nothing but his wits, he established order in the midst of chaos. Who would have known? That a group formed by a boy of about ten years old would become their umbrella.

In just 20 years, the group ‘Observer’s Dagger,’ formed by the ten-year-old boy gathering the poor, became the ruling group of Igrosia.

Their method of dominating the underworld was ‘information.’

The poor scattered throughout Igrosia collected and managed the information they overheard.

With that, they dismantled hostile forces by sowing discord and recruited friendly forces to grow in size.

Someone once said,

If Girgoor had been born the son of an ordinary merchant, he would have become a tycoon shaking the continent’s gold coins, and if he had been born a noble, he would have become the center of the political world.

It was an achievement that had to be acknowledged.

The problem, as always, was one.

‘Even such a man was bewitched. By that devil.’

Now, this is what I know.

At thirty, Girgoor fell in love with Rebecca, whom he met by chance in the capital.

He showered her with all kinds of treasures and even reorganized the capital’s information group for her sake.

In showing such devotion, one day, he made a mistake.

– The political world is in turmoil. The nobles’ corruption is being exposed indiscriminately.

Girgoor lifted the information restrictions.

I don’t know the reason, but the phenomenon that occurred was too clear in its form to collapse the system.

The probability of nobles living purely is very low.

Generally, nobles often engage in illegal activities, and the existing policy was to hush it up.

Just as no one pointed out my crimes until I was marked by the crown prince.

From the trade of prohibited goods that I had also engaged in, to the tricks nobles played on hostile forces. Along with that, the distribution of illegal drugs and records of assassination contracts.

One by one, these major incidents began to be known to all the people, and as a result, chaos erupted among the noble families.

Here lies the biggest problem.

Once again, it’s the second prince.

Such things happened while that man was in power.

– The 2nd Prince ordered the complete purge.

– Was there no one to stop him?

– Sir Drenor and a few other royal nobles, including myself, submitted a petition. But…

The 2nd Prince was not a rational human being who would listen to such words.

The petition was neatly ignored.

The Crown Prince speculated that he wanted to rule with justice by winning the people’s hearts.

At that time, my sister first considered ‘succession’.

She needed the rights of ‘inventory’ and ‘companion’, which were only given to the head and sub-head of Pharos.

In conclusion, she couldn’t do it.

Before she could even finish her deliberation, the royal knights randomly slaughtered the nobles, and the only ones who survived the chaos were the 2nd Prince’s lackeys and the impoverished nobles like my sister who had nothing to gain.

There is no other tyrant among tyrants.

Aside from such sentiments, that was the case.

The collapse of the Magic Tower, the massacre of the Holy See.

That incident, combined with the war, was the catalyst for the Empire’s downfall.

Moreover, at the end of that incident, Girgoor met a mysterious death.

The Igrosia he left behind screamed in greater chaos, and the lawbreakers imprisoned there eventually spread throughout the system, creating internal turmoil.

It is said that those who killed Girgoor were the families of those who had fallen to the chaos he created.

I had a similar opinion.

Anyway, to summarize without the backstory, that’s the story.

“I can see Igrosia.”

That was the incident I had to stop.

After about two days of running, using mana generously, I arrived here.

At the end of my sight, I could see the gloomy black walls.

* * *

A boy with black hair walked through the gloomy black city.

He appeared to be about ten years old, accompanied by a tall, gaunt old man.

The boy surveyed the city, cooling his heart.

Then he murmured in a pleasant, clear voice.

“It’s thick. Very.”

A city carries a scent.

The air trapped within the high walls of the fortress encapsulated the way of life there, conveying that life through the sense of smell.

The boy’s Igrosia also had such a scent.

…No, calling it a scent would be misleading.

A stench mixed with the smell of decay and filth.

This was the pervasive smell of Igrosia.

But the boy didn’t mind.

For it was this very air that he loved.

The only unfortunate thing, as he had mentioned, was that the smell was too strong.

It signified that Igrosia was sick.

Wasn’t it true that the intensifying stench and foul odor meant that many people were dying?

It was the boy’s own way, but it was close to the truth.

The boy, with a furrowed brow, soon stopped walking.

What his retina captured was a girl withering away in a corner of the alley.

The boy approached the girl.

With a truly sorrowful expression, he placed his hand on the girl’s forehead.

“How pitiful.”

His voice even carried a hint of tears.

The girl’s gaze turned towards the boy.

Her trembling lips were clearly asking for help.

The boy smiled sadly.

And then, finally, he shed tears.

“Alright, as you wish.”

And so,

Crack!

He killed the girl swiftly, leaving no time for her to feel pain.

For in this place, salvation existed only in death.

Silence fell.

The boy, holding the girl’s corpse, murmured softly.

“…Rabon.”

“Yes.”

“I must have been mistaken.”

There was a hint of a smile, but that made it all the more precarious.

The old man, called Rabon, bowed his head deeply.

The boy spoke.

“I thought it would be fine. So I gave it to that child.”

The boy’s gaze was fixed on the center of Igrosia.

“My place, my name, everything of mine.”

A deep abyss settled in the boy’s eyes.

He was coldly furious.

“It went wrong. Where did it start?”

“…I believe it was after those outsiders appeared.”

“Then should we get rid of the outsiders?”

“That alone won’t be enough.”

“Yes, it’s not enough. It’s far from enough.”

The boy spoke as if chewing his words.

“That child who planned all this, those who agreed with it, those who stood by. Everyone is wrong. Igrosia has rotted away.”

“What do you plan to do?”

“We must cut out the rotten parts. If that doesn’t end it, we must uproot it all. We must purify it. I will plant new seeds there. I won’t think of any other way.”

“As you wish, master.”

“Yes, as I wish.”

The boy stood up.

He uttered words that might have sounded grandiose.

“It was mine, so everything will go as I wish.”

He walked, holding the girl in his arms.

Into the deep shadows, into the darkest part of the city.

And he asked the old man.

“Those people?”

“They should be arriving soon.”

“Did you lose track of them?”

“They have a wizard with them.”

“Excellent. You’re well-prepared.”

The boy smiled.

He felt a faint sense of gratitude.

If he hadn’t been curious about their information in the first place, there would have been no reason to return to Igrosia at this point.

If it weren’t for them, he wouldn’t have been able to properly cleanse this city.

“Rabon, let’s prepare to welcome our guests.”

The boy.

Once called Girgoor, the man who had abandoned that name gave such an order to the old man.

＜ City of Shadows (2) ＞