The Crown Prince In Hiding

Cutting over to Princess Nora, who was deep in conversation with the Demon King Byleth.

He had shared his perspective with her. She fell silent for a moment. She thought.

Then she lifted her eyes to look at him.

She asked back.

"Your Majesty."

She slowly exhaled.

Then asked.

"...How can you be certain that no one is secretly building a 'cave within a cave' to deceive even you?"

How do we know that we are the ones casting the light... and not prisoners staring at shadows inside an even larger cave?

The moment the question ended, he tapped the table lightly with unmistakable delight.

The smile on his face was not one of mockery. It was the smile of an eagle who had just discovered a fledgling bold enough to fly straight into the sun.

"Fury knows how to grind an enemy to dust. But he would never have conceived this question at your age."

His gaze pierced deep into the eyes of the future Empress.

"My answer is: no one knows. This world is far too complex for anyone to monopolize the role of fire-keeper forever. I will teach you a discipline found in no textbook: the art of destroying reflections, so that you will never become a prisoner in anyone's cave."

My three rules.

First: do not watch what they "perform." Watch the resources.

The heart of any nation is its resources. The flow of resources will speak for itself. Keep a close eye on the movement of gold, minerals, and energy. If those resources are being moved and hidden somewhere beyond your knowledge... stop believing every word.

Second: nurture your "true opposition" as though they were your own children.

The secret society we are building consists of young people who think like us, who work for us. But that is also the most dangerous blind spot. If these people decide to betray us, they will lie to us in coordinated, systematic fashion. The solution is to build a second network in the shadows. A network of people who despise our secret society with every fiber of their being.

"Wouldn't that defeat your entire purpose?"

"Quite the opposite."

They need never know that we are the ones secretly feeding them resources. Let them watch, let them dig, let them attack our people. Information free from the bias of friendship is at its purest when it falls from the mouth of an enemy.

"Likewise... the one who knows you best is not yourself, but your enemy. So raise them the way you would keep a venomous snake in a cage."

These are the people who will serve as the finest mirror of yourself, one that even you cannot replicate.

And the final rule.

Third: be prepared to be the "one who destroys the cave" at any moment.

"The most important rule of all. You must never become attached to the system you have built. The day you begin to feel that the mechanisms of the cave are too perfect, the day you start to grow complacent... that is the day you may have already become the cave's newest prisoner without realizing it."

Should you ever detect warning signs that the reality on the cave wall has warped beyond your control, do not hesitate to tear it all down. Dismantle the old system and let the world plunge into temporary chaos, forcing everyone to step out and face the light together, all at once.

Byleth drew a circle in the air with his finger.

"And everything begins anew."

Being a ruler is not sitting back and admiring the illusion you have created. It is standing in the midst of the storm, knowing which things are stone and which are shadow.

This was something only Byleth could impart to her. Not even Fury could.

Nora Ophilis fell silent for a long while.

"Your Majesty... there is one thing that still weighs on my mind."

"By all means, Princess. I have the entire night."

"As a future Empress... what should I do with the humans who 'refuse to wake up'?"

Byleth listened in silence. A cold smile appeared on his face. He raised a hand and lightly stroked his chin.

"The ignorance of the people is not refuse. It is a treasure of the highest value, if you know how to mine it."

Do not try to wake those who wish to sleep.

Our duty is not to mercifully unshackle anyone. It is to manage this "cave" so that it remains safe for us.

If anyone awakens and attempts to destroy our shadows,

create "new shadows" to divert their attention.

If they begin to suspect that the shadows on the wall are strange, your duty is not to explain the truth. It is to project a shadow more frightening than the last to take its place.

If the people begin questioning their livelihoods or an unjust system of governance, create an "imaginary enemy." Stoke hatred, or fabricate a false catastrophe, so they are afraid and turn to curse an enemy that does not exist. Humans gripped by fear will stare harder at the wall, and surrender their power to our control far more readily.

"Since I've said this much... there is one more thing I believe you should know."

In our style of governance, you must give the people freedom. But it must be "meaningless freedom." Let them have the right to criticize trivial matters, the right to play sports, the right to choose from colorful goods in the marketplace. Let them squabble over petty things, to vent their frustrations and believe they have power over their own lives.

As long as what they choose does not touch the true power structure behind the curtain, let them play in the sandbox we have built for them.

Because that is what makes them content to remain prisoners in the cave until the day they die.

When Nora reflected on all of this again in her quarters,

one thing Byleth had said from the very beginning lingered.

Humans were not designed to coexist in large-scale societies.

Many things were starting to make sense in Nora's mind.

She realized that what Byleth described was something every nation in this world already did.

The fire behind the cave was a necessary tool for establishing control.

Just like evolution.

This was a matter of survival.

A flash of red sparks. The shrill sound of metal slicing through armored shell, shearing it clean.

Rafinya Saint Pauli was knocked backward, regaining her footing in the center of a ring of Diablo who had formed a circle around her, roaring with excitement.

The young woman flicked the tip of her blade, sending sparks scattering. She exhaled in a long, steady rhythm, eyes locked on what stood before her without a shred of carelessness.

This Diablo was much slower than Mr. Fury... and that was likely true of rank-and-file Diablo soldiers in general. The level where, if this were a game, she should be starting. Not the final boss like him.

"Not bad."

The crab Diablo snapped his own pincers in a rhythmic clatter.

"But a flaming sword alone won't do anything to me."

He lunged at her with startling speed. His size advantage, combined with the bizarre Diablo physique, might have left anyone inexperienced rooted in terror. But not Rafinya.

She used her agility to leap skyward. Her body soared above the crab demon. His eyes tracked her, and his pincers changed direction to chase her instantly, but she was faster, landing on the other side by a hair's breadth. What the crab Diablo caught was a strip of her shirt, torn and dangling from his claw.

"She's the one who hand-copied Professor Darwin's book for me... the book that happens to document crabs."

"I thought it was only about birds, Your Grace?"

Dan said nothing more and simply pointed at the scene unfolding before Freya.

"What a nuisance!"

The crab Diablo grumbled in frustration.

Rafinya paid no mind to the torn fabric. She circled the Diablo in absolute stillness.

Meanwhile, Dan lifted his feet from the sand and pulled out an apple he had brought as a late-night snack, taking a bite.

"What are you waiting for, human? All you do is dodge. Scared?"

But she did not answer him at all.

"Fine then."

And then he charged at her with speed far greater than before. Roughly three times faster.

Even Rafinya's eyes widened for an instant. The sharp tip of his pincer streaked past her eyeball at a terrifying distance. Had she jerked her head a fraction slower, she would have lost an eye.

But it wasn't over, because this crab possessed reflexes remarkably attuned to movement. This might be the worst kind of opponent for Rafinya.

When she swerved to evade, he swerved right after her with only a slight drop in speed.

Rafinya's blade whipped upward, aimed to pierce under his chin, but his claw reached her body first.

And with that, her waist was clamped shut. Blood sprayed from both sides of her midsection, which had been reinforced with a strengthening spell. Without that enchantment, her body could have been severed in half with ease.

"HEY!!! You bastard, watch it! If the Prince's student dies, how are you going to take responsibility?!!!"

"Don't worry, Freya."

Dan raised his hand to stop her.

"I'm watching."

Rafinya corrected the situation. The instant she was clamped, she saw the joint gap of the pincer yawning open right in front of her face.

Without hesitation, she drove her blade straight through that gap. It only went in about a quarter of the way, but it was more than enough to cause the crab Diablo searing pain, forcing him to shriek and wrench his pincer wider to pull the sword out. She slipped free, both hands touching the ground.

She didn't stop to look. She launched herself forward immediately. Her target was already decided: she leaped up onto his back.

The crab Diablo tried to follow, but his legs were locked to the sand.

No... to be precise,

the sand beneath him had hardened to the consistency of concrete, locking his legs in place. Earth-element magic.

"That's from the natural science curriculum."

"Yes. Basic spellwork. Even I can still use it."

And once she was on his back,

a backup knife was drawn from behind her waist. She drove it down into the center of the crab Diablo's head, nearly dead center.

Of course, the knife couldn't pierce through the shell on his head. But piercing was never the point.

Rafinya was about to make use of something far more powerful.

"Get off my back!"

He tried to reach behind with his pincers to pluck her off, but his body was too large. His own claws could not reach his own back. He couldn't remove Rafinya.

She, on the other hand, gripped his shell tight with one hand, the other clenching the knife embedded in the top of his head.

And then sound magic was invoked.

In an instant, the short blade began to "vibrate" rapidly. It shook like a percussion massager.

The natural weakness of crabs is that they lack inner ears like humans. Instead, they have a balancing organ called a "statocyst," a small, hollow sac located at the base of the antennae. Inside this sac are tiny grains of sand called "statoliths," suspended in fluid and surrounded by sensory hairs. When a crab tilts or moves, gravity shifts these grains against the sensory hairs, telling the brain which way is up or down.

"Rafinya targeted this exact point. By sending vibrations through the knife, down through the shell, and into the fluid inside the head, she wasn't trying to crack the skull open. She was trying to transmit the frequency downward."

By transforming the surrounding fluid into a "whirlpool," the statoliths inside the statocyst would spin wildly and without direction, flooding the central nervous system with false signals until it seized.

"Like a human being spun at high speed, experiencing vertigo and total loss of balance."

"Get off!!! Get off me!!! AAARGHHHH!!!!"

It was taking effect. The louder he thrashed, the tighter Rafinya held on. And the more he flung himself around, the harder the vibrating knife shook.

Until the crab Diablo's body finally collapsed face-first from the sensory overload Rafinya had inflicted.

The sand locking his legs crumbled back to ordinary grains.

And on that night, it became clear to everyone present, Freya included.

They understood now why humans called Rafinya the next Maximin.

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