It was Elko who answered Raphael's golden story on his behalf.
He was in charge of all the receipts and disbursements while he was in Yesak, so he had something to say when it came to gold coins. Elko naturally cut Raphael off.
“Yes, that gold. It was very useful! But you think you were the only one who gave us financial help, you arrogant brat!”
Elko raised his voice and scolded.
“You don’t know what happened in Yesak either! We had to do whatever it took to survive!”
At those words, not only Prince Alfonso but also Sir Bernardino and Sir Manfredi closed their eyes with sorrowful expressions.
When have the Prince and his entourage of knights ever experienced cold and hunger?
Simple hunger was okay. The hardships they all went through were bearable. The problem was discrimination.
It was tragic that Sir Bernardino was not given medicine when he was injured and on the verge of death.
Even if Alfonso and a handful of his men had tried to obtain medicine from other places with the spoils they had received for their exploits, it would still not be enough to buy basic food and supplies.
In fact, even if they had given him medicine, it wouldn't have made much of a difference. That's because all they had was a plaster made with a local prescription.
Sir Elko spoke as if spitting blood.
“When our home country abandoned us, the only ones who reached out to us were the Grand Duchess of Lariesa and the Grand Duke Odes of Gallico! Without them, we would have all starved to death!”
Very early in the war, Sir Bernardino was saved by doctors who treated him with gold sent by Lariesa.
Alfonso, who had not responded to any of Lariesa's letters until then, finally bowed down to his pride and responded in front of Lariesa when Sir Dino's life was threatened by an injury.
Everyone knew the fact. It was an incident that Sir Dino still owed Alfonso as a debt of gratitude.
“Oh my, great Sir Elko. I thought you hated the Kingdom of Gallico for cutting off your arm and losing your eye, but it seems like the common people are blind when it comes to their rice bowls.”
“Raphael!”
Raphael's excessive sarcasm was restrained by Alfonso.
“Sir Elko served me faithfully for over four years in the barren land of Yesak.”
Alfonso's voice was filled with guilt rather than anger.
"...No matter how much you are, I won’t tolerate you talking like that to Elko.”
“...!”
This was a truly heartbreaking story for Raphael.
Raphael himself cut into the ground with his sharp tongue without any consideration for the consequences, but he was wounded by Alfonso's harsh words.
Yes, there could be disagreement about what Ariadne deserved.
What Raphael knew was a one-sided narrative anyway.
If there was more history between them, for example, if Ariadne was actually a vicious villainess to Alfonso or a serial killer who enjoyed boiling animals and children to death, then Raphael's judgment could have been wrong.
Moreover, each had his own position and desires. Raphael admitted that his own mind may have cast a veil over his objectivity.
But Alfonso putting Elko in front of Raphael was something entirely different. The story between Raphael and Alfonso was old and complete.
Raphael and Elko had a subtle, if overt, tension-filled relationship since childhood, and Alfonso never took sides with either one.
Everyone simply tacitly acknowledged that Prince Alfonso's closest friend was Raphael.
But during the four years that Raphael and Alfonso were apart, Alfonso's time was spent writing more pages with people other than Raphael.
The four years Alfonso spent on the battlefield, and the shadow of a woman who came between them, created a rift between them that could never be mended.
“...Do you think I wouldn’t have wanted to go back?”
Alfonso was a bit late when he finally came up with an answer to the question Raphael had attacked him for not being by Ariadne's side.
“It wasn’t until I was dragged to Gallico that I realized that without power, without achieving things with my own hands, I couldn’t be with the person I wanted to be.”
Alfonso's emotions gradually became more and more agitated.
“If I go back straight from Yesak, it will just be the same old thing over and over again. How can I return home? If a powerless boy Prince just holds Ari’s hand, everything will be solved?”
Another Princess, another concubine, would appear, and Leo III would sell his son like a stallion to the house that bid the highest price.
If he couldn't surpass his father, it was a future as clear as day. But Raphael didn't give up.
“Ah... So you came back as a Prince with a wife because you hated being a powerless Prince?”
Alfonso felt a sharp, stabbing pain in his stomach. He had nothing to say.
“That’s right. Your girlfriend got engaged, broke off the engagement, and now you’re coming back married. Isn’t that like getting hit once and then getting hit twenty times back? Since when has our Prince been this petty?”
The sound of Sir Elko's tantrum from behind served as background music.
“Shut up, Baldessar! The first to betray the gods was Countess de Mare!”
Raphael continued to follow Sir Elko's tantrum.
“Yeah, let’s say Ari got engaged and you found someone else. Even so, you’re an unforgivable bad guy for sending that letter to Ari.”
“A letter? What letter?”
There were more than one or two letters sent by Alfonso. However, Raphael did not take Alfonso's counter-questions at face value.
“Now you’re even denying that it ever happened?”
“Do you think I only sent one letter?”
The excited Raphael had no idea that this story meant that Alfonso had sent Ariadne dozens, or perhaps close to a hundred, of letters that she had never received a reply to.
However, he understood that Alfonso had sent Ariadne several letters that were almost abusive.
“Wow, you’ve done that many times? You’re such a piece of human garbage.”
Alfonso, on the other hand, thought that Raphael was accusing him of 'swaying Ariadne's heart by sending her affectionate letters even though he had a wife.'
Since the marriage contract with Lariesa was signed at the time of his escape from Gallico, all the letters Alfonso wrote to Ariadne were essentially flirtations between a married man and a virgin.
Alfonso felt a little ashamed when he realized belatedly that he had been a married man flirting with an unmarried girl.
“Stop blaming for the sake of blaming, Raphael.”
But considering all the circumstances, he couldn't help but feel that it was a forced accusation.
Adding to the verbal abuse he had heard earlier, even Alfonso, no matter how sympathetic, was starting to get angry.
“Are you perfect like that? Is touching your friend’s girlfriend, who asked you to do it, what Raphael de Baldessar thinks the friendship is?”
She was a woman who even had a fiancé. Alfonso would have paused for a moment, looking back at himself, but Raphael shouted without a moment of hesitation.
“What about friends!”
Anger flared in Raphael's red eyes.
“How much trouble did that woman have to endure because of you!”
Sir Elko grumbled behind him.
“You’re saying that she's putting up with the troubles of her fiancé, Duke Cesare, because of her past relationship with her ex-boyfriend? She should have lived a quiet life a long time ago.”
“Please shut up.”
Raphael shouted, looking straight at Alfonso without even looking at Sir Elko.
“You have no gratitude for what you received!”
The worst attitude is that he took so much gold from Ariadne, but then he got it from Lariesa too, so he doesn't need to thank Ari separately.
“Your conscience was boiled and eaten!”
Even though he is married, he still has feelings for Ariadne, but he has no intention of breaking up his marriage and dating her.
It's the worst. In that situation, if Alfonso picks on Ariadne's history of engagements and broken engagements, he's not even a man.
“Alfonso de Carlo, stop making such a fool of yourself!”
"What?"
From Alfonso's point of view, it was so unfair and resentful that he was about to jump for joy.
If he really wanted to make a fool of himself, he would have summoned Countess de Mare as soon as he got back home and started a quarrel with her to embarrass her.
On the other hand, if he was a married man who wanted to play with a virgin, he would have gone to her house and made fun of her.
The friend who was heaping such accusations on him, despite his status and influence having allowed him to do nothing of the kind that was possible, did not seem like the person he knew.
“Watch your tongue, Raphael de Baldessar!”
Eventually, even Alfonso's voice became louder. Raphael shouted in return.
“You really can’t see anything in front of power? Did you really want a powerful wife that much? To the point of throwing away the woman you loved?!”
“Raphael!”
But Raphael did not stop.
“Just, you’re wrapped up in the hem of your pretty Princess’s skirt and you go and suck the assholes of the Gallicos. Don’t act like a slut.”
He held out his index and little fingers to Alfonso, with the rest of his fingers folded, as if poking him.
It means 'You're not even a man', and if we trace its etymology, it was a finger swear word meaning 'Your wife is sleeping with another man'.
"Hey!"
At this point, even the always-calm Alfonso began to look around.
This time, Alfonso, unable to control his anger, strode towards Raphael and tried to grab him by the collar.
Sir Manfredi, who had been watching the whole situation from behind, ran forward like a squirrel and caught Alfonso from behind.
"Your Highness!"
Sir Manfredi was only able to restrain Alfonso for a split second, but that was enough time for Raphael to pull himself away from Alfonso.
Sir Bernardino, whose reflexes were no longer as sharp as before due to his old age, quickly joined Prince Alfonso.
“Wow..."
Sir Manfredi also stood by and took note.
“Your Highness! Calm down for a moment!”
Meanwhile, Sir Bernardino winked at Raphael.
“Raphael, go first!”
Raphael stood up, biting his lip. Sir Dino spoke in a low voice.
“Let’s talk again later!”
Raphael responded coldly.
“That won’t happen.”
He looked at Prince Alfonso with a cold expression.
“If that was the case, you shouldn’t have accepted the money that woman gave you. You thought she betrayed you, so you slept with Princess Gallico, and now you’re accepting the money?”
In fact, this was not a correct explanation in principle.
Raphael delivered Ariadne's letter an hour late, and when Alfonso returned, only the gold coins from the Etruscan Holy See were left.
Alfonso never knew that the money was from Ariadne, and since Raphael had just left, he had no time to refuse.
But both Alfonso and Raphael were too excited to argue logically.
“Money? What kind of money? Are you sticking with it? This little punk?”
Alfonso, enraged, tried to attack Raphael again. Sir Bernardino and Sir Manfredi desperately clung to the Prince.
Even with the two of them holding on, it was too much. When Alfonso tried to charge forward like an ox, the two knights were dragged forward.
“Prince! Please!”
“Calm down, calm down!”
Meanwhile, Raphael poured out his words like a machine gun.
“I didn’t know you were such a coward. You’re a pillar of a house that eats women, and you didn’t do anything wrong, and I really didn’t know that the guy who masturbated was my friend.”
Raphael cast one last glance at Alfonso, who was glaring at him in resentment.
“I’m finished with you.”
Boom!
Raphael closed the door to Alfonso's drawing room with a bang.
He walked down the hallway of the Palazzo Carlo Palace without looking back.
After that, the voices of Sir Dino and Sir Manfredi, who were trying to stop Alfonso, and the voice of Sir Elko, who was reporting loudly as if for Raphael to hear, were heard.
“Your Highness. Hold on tight. There is no time to delay here. You must begin to dress up for the dinner hosted by the Marquis de Guatieri.”
The Marquis of Guatieri was a noble of great renown who held great lands in the eastern part of the kingdom. He was one of the most influential figures in that area.
Raphael felt something welling up in his chest.
As a child, Alfonso was a boy who took in not only himself, who was the son of the Marquis of Baldessar, who had a high title but was only a court noble with little actual influence, but also Elko, who was just a commoner, and they all got along without discrimination.
The banquet of the Marquis of Guatieri is a behind-the-scenes event where the most powerful figures of the Etruscan kingdom gather.
A social gathering place for the old powers to which the Marquis of Baldessar was never invited.
It was only natural for a Prince of a country to go to such a place. But Alfonso, as a natural person, was not the type of person to go to such a place.
He never enjoyed or sought out such things. It was different now. Raphael felt his heart grow cold.
His friend Alfonso was nowhere to be found.
He was in charge of all the receipts and disbursements while he was in Yesak, so he had something to say when it came to gold coins. Elko naturally cut Raphael off.
“Yes, that gold. It was very useful! But you think you were the only one who gave us financial help, you arrogant brat!”
Elko raised his voice and scolded.
“You don’t know what happened in Yesak either! We had to do whatever it took to survive!”
At those words, not only Prince Alfonso but also Sir Bernardino and Sir Manfredi closed their eyes with sorrowful expressions.
When have the Prince and his entourage of knights ever experienced cold and hunger?
Simple hunger was okay. The hardships they all went through were bearable. The problem was discrimination.
It was tragic that Sir Bernardino was not given medicine when he was injured and on the verge of death.
Even if Alfonso and a handful of his men had tried to obtain medicine from other places with the spoils they had received for their exploits, it would still not be enough to buy basic food and supplies.
In fact, even if they had given him medicine, it wouldn't have made much of a difference. That's because all they had was a plaster made with a local prescription.
Sir Elko spoke as if spitting blood.
“When our home country abandoned us, the only ones who reached out to us were the Grand Duchess of Lariesa and the Grand Duke Odes of Gallico! Without them, we would have all starved to death!”
Very early in the war, Sir Bernardino was saved by doctors who treated him with gold sent by Lariesa.
Alfonso, who had not responded to any of Lariesa's letters until then, finally bowed down to his pride and responded in front of Lariesa when Sir Dino's life was threatened by an injury.
Everyone knew the fact. It was an incident that Sir Dino still owed Alfonso as a debt of gratitude.
“Oh my, great Sir Elko. I thought you hated the Kingdom of Gallico for cutting off your arm and losing your eye, but it seems like the common people are blind when it comes to their rice bowls.”
“Raphael!”
Raphael's excessive sarcasm was restrained by Alfonso.
“Sir Elko served me faithfully for over four years in the barren land of Yesak.”
Alfonso's voice was filled with guilt rather than anger.
"...No matter how much you are, I won’t tolerate you talking like that to Elko.”
“...!”
This was a truly heartbreaking story for Raphael.
Raphael himself cut into the ground with his sharp tongue without any consideration for the consequences, but he was wounded by Alfonso's harsh words.
Yes, there could be disagreement about what Ariadne deserved.
What Raphael knew was a one-sided narrative anyway.
If there was more history between them, for example, if Ariadne was actually a vicious villainess to Alfonso or a serial killer who enjoyed boiling animals and children to death, then Raphael's judgment could have been wrong.
Moreover, each had his own position and desires. Raphael admitted that his own mind may have cast a veil over his objectivity.
But Alfonso putting Elko in front of Raphael was something entirely different. The story between Raphael and Alfonso was old and complete.
Raphael and Elko had a subtle, if overt, tension-filled relationship since childhood, and Alfonso never took sides with either one.
Everyone simply tacitly acknowledged that Prince Alfonso's closest friend was Raphael.
But during the four years that Raphael and Alfonso were apart, Alfonso's time was spent writing more pages with people other than Raphael.
The four years Alfonso spent on the battlefield, and the shadow of a woman who came between them, created a rift between them that could never be mended.
“...Do you think I wouldn’t have wanted to go back?”
Alfonso was a bit late when he finally came up with an answer to the question Raphael had attacked him for not being by Ariadne's side.
“It wasn’t until I was dragged to Gallico that I realized that without power, without achieving things with my own hands, I couldn’t be with the person I wanted to be.”
Alfonso's emotions gradually became more and more agitated.
“If I go back straight from Yesak, it will just be the same old thing over and over again. How can I return home? If a powerless boy Prince just holds Ari’s hand, everything will be solved?”
Another Princess, another concubine, would appear, and Leo III would sell his son like a stallion to the house that bid the highest price.
If he couldn't surpass his father, it was a future as clear as day. But Raphael didn't give up.
“Ah... So you came back as a Prince with a wife because you hated being a powerless Prince?”
Alfonso felt a sharp, stabbing pain in his stomach. He had nothing to say.
“That’s right. Your girlfriend got engaged, broke off the engagement, and now you’re coming back married. Isn’t that like getting hit once and then getting hit twenty times back? Since when has our Prince been this petty?”
The sound of Sir Elko's tantrum from behind served as background music.
“Shut up, Baldessar! The first to betray the gods was Countess de Mare!”
Raphael continued to follow Sir Elko's tantrum.
“Yeah, let’s say Ari got engaged and you found someone else. Even so, you’re an unforgivable bad guy for sending that letter to Ari.”
“A letter? What letter?”
There were more than one or two letters sent by Alfonso. However, Raphael did not take Alfonso's counter-questions at face value.
“Now you’re even denying that it ever happened?”
“Do you think I only sent one letter?”
The excited Raphael had no idea that this story meant that Alfonso had sent Ariadne dozens, or perhaps close to a hundred, of letters that she had never received a reply to.
However, he understood that Alfonso had sent Ariadne several letters that were almost abusive.
“Wow, you’ve done that many times? You’re such a piece of human garbage.”
Alfonso, on the other hand, thought that Raphael was accusing him of 'swaying Ariadne's heart by sending her affectionate letters even though he had a wife.'
Since the marriage contract with Lariesa was signed at the time of his escape from Gallico, all the letters Alfonso wrote to Ariadne were essentially flirtations between a married man and a virgin.
Alfonso felt a little ashamed when he realized belatedly that he had been a married man flirting with an unmarried girl.
“Stop blaming for the sake of blaming, Raphael.”
But considering all the circumstances, he couldn't help but feel that it was a forced accusation.
Adding to the verbal abuse he had heard earlier, even Alfonso, no matter how sympathetic, was starting to get angry.
“Are you perfect like that? Is touching your friend’s girlfriend, who asked you to do it, what Raphael de Baldessar thinks the friendship is?”
She was a woman who even had a fiancé. Alfonso would have paused for a moment, looking back at himself, but Raphael shouted without a moment of hesitation.
“What about friends!”
Anger flared in Raphael's red eyes.
“How much trouble did that woman have to endure because of you!”
Sir Elko grumbled behind him.
“You’re saying that she's putting up with the troubles of her fiancé, Duke Cesare, because of her past relationship with her ex-boyfriend? She should have lived a quiet life a long time ago.”
“Please shut up.”
Raphael shouted, looking straight at Alfonso without even looking at Sir Elko.
“You have no gratitude for what you received!”
The worst attitude is that he took so much gold from Ariadne, but then he got it from Lariesa too, so he doesn't need to thank Ari separately.
“Your conscience was boiled and eaten!”
Even though he is married, he still has feelings for Ariadne, but he has no intention of breaking up his marriage and dating her.
It's the worst. In that situation, if Alfonso picks on Ariadne's history of engagements and broken engagements, he's not even a man.
“Alfonso de Carlo, stop making such a fool of yourself!”
"What?"
From Alfonso's point of view, it was so unfair and resentful that he was about to jump for joy.
If he really wanted to make a fool of himself, he would have summoned Countess de Mare as soon as he got back home and started a quarrel with her to embarrass her.
On the other hand, if he was a married man who wanted to play with a virgin, he would have gone to her house and made fun of her.
The friend who was heaping such accusations on him, despite his status and influence having allowed him to do nothing of the kind that was possible, did not seem like the person he knew.
“Watch your tongue, Raphael de Baldessar!”
Eventually, even Alfonso's voice became louder. Raphael shouted in return.
“You really can’t see anything in front of power? Did you really want a powerful wife that much? To the point of throwing away the woman you loved?!”
“Raphael!”
But Raphael did not stop.
“Just, you’re wrapped up in the hem of your pretty Princess’s skirt and you go and suck the assholes of the Gallicos. Don’t act like a slut.”
He held out his index and little fingers to Alfonso, with the rest of his fingers folded, as if poking him.
It means 'You're not even a man', and if we trace its etymology, it was a finger swear word meaning 'Your wife is sleeping with another man'.
"Hey!"
At this point, even the always-calm Alfonso began to look around.
This time, Alfonso, unable to control his anger, strode towards Raphael and tried to grab him by the collar.
Sir Manfredi, who had been watching the whole situation from behind, ran forward like a squirrel and caught Alfonso from behind.
"Your Highness!"
Sir Manfredi was only able to restrain Alfonso for a split second, but that was enough time for Raphael to pull himself away from Alfonso.
Sir Bernardino, whose reflexes were no longer as sharp as before due to his old age, quickly joined Prince Alfonso.
“Wow..."
Sir Manfredi also stood by and took note.
“Your Highness! Calm down for a moment!”
Meanwhile, Sir Bernardino winked at Raphael.
“Raphael, go first!”
Raphael stood up, biting his lip. Sir Dino spoke in a low voice.
“Let’s talk again later!”
Raphael responded coldly.
“That won’t happen.”
He looked at Prince Alfonso with a cold expression.
“If that was the case, you shouldn’t have accepted the money that woman gave you. You thought she betrayed you, so you slept with Princess Gallico, and now you’re accepting the money?”
In fact, this was not a correct explanation in principle.
Raphael delivered Ariadne's letter an hour late, and when Alfonso returned, only the gold coins from the Etruscan Holy See were left.
Alfonso never knew that the money was from Ariadne, and since Raphael had just left, he had no time to refuse.
But both Alfonso and Raphael were too excited to argue logically.
“Money? What kind of money? Are you sticking with it? This little punk?”
Alfonso, enraged, tried to attack Raphael again. Sir Bernardino and Sir Manfredi desperately clung to the Prince.
Even with the two of them holding on, it was too much. When Alfonso tried to charge forward like an ox, the two knights were dragged forward.
“Prince! Please!”
“Calm down, calm down!”
Meanwhile, Raphael poured out his words like a machine gun.
“I didn’t know you were such a coward. You’re a pillar of a house that eats women, and you didn’t do anything wrong, and I really didn’t know that the guy who masturbated was my friend.”
Raphael cast one last glance at Alfonso, who was glaring at him in resentment.
“I’m finished with you.”
Boom!
Raphael closed the door to Alfonso's drawing room with a bang.
He walked down the hallway of the Palazzo Carlo Palace without looking back.
After that, the voices of Sir Dino and Sir Manfredi, who were trying to stop Alfonso, and the voice of Sir Elko, who was reporting loudly as if for Raphael to hear, were heard.
“Your Highness. Hold on tight. There is no time to delay here. You must begin to dress up for the dinner hosted by the Marquis de Guatieri.”
The Marquis of Guatieri was a noble of great renown who held great lands in the eastern part of the kingdom. He was one of the most influential figures in that area.
Raphael felt something welling up in his chest.
As a child, Alfonso was a boy who took in not only himself, who was the son of the Marquis of Baldessar, who had a high title but was only a court noble with little actual influence, but also Elko, who was just a commoner, and they all got along without discrimination.
The banquet of the Marquis of Guatieri is a behind-the-scenes event where the most powerful figures of the Etruscan kingdom gather.
A social gathering place for the old powers to which the Marquis of Baldessar was never invited.
It was only natural for a Prince of a country to go to such a place. But Alfonso, as a natural person, was not the type of person to go to such a place.
He never enjoyed or sought out such things. It was different now. Raphael felt his heart grow cold.
His friend Alfonso was nowhere to be found.
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