The Military Princess Won’t Fall in Love with a Magic Scientist

Chapter 200. Where the Mad King’s Legacy Lies

Deep within the Duke’s Manor, in the old Duke’s bedroom.

This was the most heavily guarded place in all of Winter City. Even a fly would probably have to be inspected for its sex before being allowed inside.

The room was thick with the smell of medicine, a mingled scent of potions, incense, and that peculiar decaying odor unique to old age.

The heavy velvet curtains were drawn shut, leaving only a single dim magitech lamp burning.

Logaris’s figure appeared abruptly in the middle of the room.

He made no effort to conceal his presence.

The old man on the bed slowly opened his eyes.

Fenrir Von Winterhold.

The once-mighty Grand Duke of the Northern Territory, who had once shaken the world with his name, was now so thin he looked like a bundle of dried firewood. His eye sockets were sunken, his cheekbones sharply pronounced, and the scar that ran across half his face looked especially vicious in the dim light.

He was like an old wolf that had lost all its teeth to age, yet could still tear out a throat.

“You came,” Fenrir said in a hoarse, rasping voice, like two rusted sheets of iron grinding against each other.

“I came to settle accounts.”

Logaris pulled over a chair and sat down with arrogant ease. Leaning forward, he met those clouded yet razor-sharp eyes head-on.

“Old man, the deal is done. Sylvia’s position is secure now. I’ve done even more than I originally promised.”

He extended his long, pale hand, palm up, and crooked his fingers lightly.

“Now it’s your turn to honor your promise. Hand over the clue to Mad King Maxim’s legacy.”

The room fell silent.

Only the monotonous, cold ticking of the alchemical device beside the bed, the one maintaining his vital signs, could be heard.

Fenrir stared at Logaris for a long time.

In this young man’s eyes, he saw greed for knowledge, ambition for power, and a kind of absolute rationality so chilling that even a man like him, who had spent his entire life rolling through mountains of corpses and seas of blood, felt his heart tremble.

This boy was a peerless blade.

A pity he was too sharp. If the sheath was not good enough, he might wound the one holding him.

Fenrir said nothing. He merely raised his withered right hand with visible effort. On his shriveled index finger was a plain black iron ring, its surface covered in fine scratches, medals left behind by time and war.

With a faint magical fluctuation so weak it was almost impossible to detect, a dim gleam flashed across the ring.

A palm-sized metal plate, entirely black, appeared out of nowhere in his hand, then slid weakly onto the blanket.

“Take it.” Fenrir’s voice was soft, yet it carried an unquestionable authority.

Logaris did not stand during the ceremony. He reached out and picked up the metal plate directly. It was icy to the touch, its material unknown, and its surface was engraved with a complex star chart and a line of ancient magical coordinates.

He pushed up his glasses, his gaze sweeping across those coordinates, and his brows instantly knitted together, as if he had just seen something utterly absurd.

“Old man, has your illness affected your brain?”

He waved the metal plate in his hand. “These coordinates point to the southeastern border. That’s deep inside the Great Howling Rift! Mad King Maxim clearly died in the Dragon Mountain Range back then. How could his legacy possibly have ended up in the southeast, thousands upon thousands of miles away?”

Logaris was not a historian, but he knew at least that much common sense.

And now this old man was telling him it was inside the Great Rift in the southeast?

“What nonsense. The Dragon Mountain Range is where the Mad King’s bones were buried. He was beaten until both body and soul were destroyed there. Who in their right mind would keep their store of knowledge right beside their own grave?” Fenrir said disdainfully.

“That lunatic Maxim carried out most of his experiments in what is now the Great Rift. In fact... that cursed place, the Great Rift itself, was something Maxim created!”

Fenrir’s voice turned grim, as though he were recounting a forbidden history long sealed away. “That was where he built his greatest and most insane laboratory—Heavenreach Tower. Later, because of an experimental accident catastrophic enough to destroy the continent, the crust collapsed and space shattered. That was how it eventually became the bottomless Great Howling Rift of today.”

Logaris froze for a moment, then pushed up his glasses again, his mind spinning at full speed.

If that was true, then logically it made sense.

The Mad King of that era, in his pursuit of godhood, really was capable of any atrocity, no matter how insane.

“All right, I accept that explanation.” Logaris promptly tucked away the metal plate like a miser who had just gotten the better end of a bargain. “In that case, my trip to the southeast happens to be on the way. This works out nicely for me. Thanks.”

He stood, dusted off the hem of his clothes where no dust existed, and turned to leave.

“Wait.”

Fenrir suddenly called out to stop him.

“There’s one more thing.” The old man’s gaze turned strange, carrying an indescribable meaning. “The core area of that laboratory was sealed by Maxim with the highest level of bloodline lock. Ordinary brute-force methods won’t get you inside.”

“So?” Logaris suddenly had a bad feeling.

“The key.”

Fenrir pointed toward the door. “You need a biological key.”

“Other than Maxim’s own bloodline, the things he left behind only recognize the direct bloodline of the royal house. In other words...”

The old man bared a few broken teeth in a grin, smiling like an old fox.

“If you want to open that door, you’ll have to bring Sylvia with you.”

Logaris was completely stunned.

What kind of nonsense was this?

It would make sense if the Mad King’s laboratory recognized his own bloodline. That was family inheritance. But why would the Astrelia royal bloodline work too?

Could it be that back then, Maxim and Astrelia I had actually been... lovers?

And later they turned against each other in a fit of love turned sour, only to leave a back door behind as a keepsake?

He lowered his head, looked at the metal plate in his hand, then looked back at Fenrir’s sly grin.

So this old bastard had been waiting for me right here?

In the end, he was still worried that I might have rebellious intentions. He was afraid I would swallow the legacy for myself, or sideline Sylvia completely, so he used this method to bind their interests together once and for all.

“All right. I understand.”

Logaris took a deep breath, forcibly suppressing the urge to complain. He pushed up his glasses and restored that refined scoundrel’s fake smile.

“Old man, take care of your health.”

He waved a hand and walked toward the door without looking back. “Try to live a few years longer. Don’t die after I’ve already emptied out the Mad King’s legacy. If that happens, I’ll feel very little sense of accomplishment.”

“Get lost!”

Behind him came the dull thud of a pillow slamming hard into the door.

...

Logaris stood in the corridor and adjusted his collar. Yet the mocking smile on his face vanished the instant he turned around, replaced by a depth so heavy it made one’s heart tighten.

His mind began racing at high speed.

Fenrir knew about this because the Winterhold family was an ancient relic left over from the Mad King’s era. Their ancestors had personally lived through that war.

If even Fenrir, a regional lord, knew the location of the Mad King’s legacy and the conditions required to open it, then there was no reason for the royal house, which ruled the entire kingdom, to know nothing about it.

If that was the case...

Logaris narrowed his eyes, and a cold gleam flashed behind his lenses.

Could it be that the Second Prince Carlisle, who had always shown ambition and had long been cultivating his power in the Southern Territory, also knew this information?

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