The Villain’s Aide Has Run Away - Chapter 36.1
To prevent Count Robert Camilo and the Empress’s faction from interfering with Wisley Academy, monitoring agents had to be dispatched.
But then the Crown Prince’s reckless younger brother had been sent there instead. It was a move never discussed beforehand.
Now, the Academy was saddled with an international issue as well.
Kailos had always thought the day would come eventually, but the problem had arrived far earlier than expected.
And would Empress Tera remain quiet in such a situation? After a short deliberation, the Crown Prince chose to send Leslun away entirely.
Since Count Camilo considered Leslun someone he could exploit, Kailos decided to turn that plan against him.
Kailos deliberately put Leslun out in the open. On the surface, Count Camilo would be satisfied thinking he could track the situation easily since Leslun was attending to Prince Tarensiu. But in reality, he wouldn’t be able to get close at all.
Prince Tarensiu might have seemed to bring only a handful of guards with him, but in truth, many more were secretly protecting him.
The Kingdom of Vancor had long been infamous for its aggressiveness. Who could possibly slip past them to approach Leslun in secret?
And yet, when Leslun could no longer be seen, Kailos felt a sharp unease.
“…I really must have gone mad.”
He muttered in a low voice.
That such words had even escaped his own lips, he pressed a hand to his forehead, as though disbelieving himself.
He hadn’t imagined he would be shaken this much in just a few days. The Kailos he knew should have handled things with far more decisiveness. If necessary, he would not have hesitated to use a newly recruited servant as bait.
But because of one man, Leslun, a fissure had appeared.
Unforeseen ripples had surged in from a direction he had never anticipated. No matter how he tried to reason it out, he could not tidy it away.
“All of this…”
Kailos’s sharp gaze shifted to one side.
There, curled neatly with his long tail wrapped around himself, lay Blue.
Blue yawned widely, feigning indifference, though he knew perfectly well why he was being watched so intently.
In truth, Blue was not in the best of moods either. He had wanted to follow Leslun as usual but had been stopped.
“This is your fault.”
At the weight of emotion in Kailos’s voice, Blue gave a dismissive snort and turned his head away.
“You’d best put things back the way they were, while I’m still asking nicely.”
If not, every time he saw Leslun, his body would react before his mind could catch up. He could not live like this.
Blue ignored him entirely. As if to make his defiance clear, he leapt through the window to another perch.
For a moment, Kailos even considered catching him then and there and smacking his rear. But before he could act, Robin entered the room, his face pale after receiving a report outside the door.
“Your Highness.”
According to the report, Prince Tarensiu was not at the Academy at all—but in the city.
***
Wings spread wide, carving precise paths through the air. Even from a distance, the majesty of it was overwhelming, and Leslun felt himself utterly transfixed.
It was not merely large—it was colossal, this hawk.
Each feather overlapped like the plates of a steel helmet, and its eyes gleamed with the predatory focus of a beast that pierced straight through its prey. Spread to their full span, those wings looked as if they could engulf Leslun in an instant.
In the tense moment when it seemed the massive hawk might descend upon him at any second, an ironic realization struck him.
The man standing before him was not the second prince of Vancor—the one infamous as a debauched scoundrel.
“Someone else has come.”
Until his arrival at the Imperial Palace, the highest-ranking figure Leslun had ever met had been a count. Even then, there were countless commoners who lived their entire lives without ever meeting one.
For Leslun, encountering the Crown Prince himself had already been something of a miracle. But now, on top of that, to stand face-to-face with the Crown Prince of another nation—someone who, in the original story, was the most crucial ally of the protagonist—was simply astonishing.
‘The Crown Prince of Vancor.’
This was not the second prince who was supposed to come. It was the Crown Prince himself.
‘No wonder he didn’t seem like a scoundrel at all.’
That truth was evident just from the sight of the soaring hawk.
Typically, guardian beasts did not pledge themselves until their chosen one ascended the throne. But this hawk had remained inseparable from the Crown Prince since his youth.
Vancor had only two princes, yet both the guardian beast and the second prince had rejected one another.
Because it was a matter that touched on the dignity of the entire kingdom, strict measures had been taken to ensure no rumors spread. And yet, Leslun had come to understand it.
“Why has he already entered the Empire?’”
In the original timeline, he should not have made his move until much later—after first meeting Prince Cassian of the Empire.
Why conceal his identity as the Crown Prince to come here now? And how many people even knew the truth?
Did Kailos know?
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