Even though three days had passed since the great battle.
Whether he thought back to that perilous battle three days ago, the life-and-death struggle three months ago in Valhalla Canyon, about three hundred kilometers outside the eastern border of the Yarolan Kingdom, or something even more distant...
What made him feel that it was far away was not the length of time, but the two or three irreversible things that had happened.
"Alas."
All of Loren's myriad thoughts could only turn into that one sigh.
It had truly put him through hell.
He gazed out the window from the second floor of Wency Free Memorial Palace.
On Royal Avenue in northern Bulida, golden sunlight filtered through the stained glass and scattered across the ground in a riot of colors, illuminating the square before the palace.
The Imperial Guard, dressed in bright red uniforms and carrying spears, stood watch over the road leading to the palace, their eyes fixed straight ahead.
Inside the palace, everyone was busy.
Attendants hurried back and forth along the marble corridors, delivering stacks of official documents.
Bulida's nobles and ministers wore solemn expressions as they argued heatedly over something in the Conference Room.
In an office on the second floor of the West Wing, behind a closed carved wooden door, the newly crowned sovereign, Emperor Loren Krantel, was bent over his desk, writing furiously.
His brown hair hung over his forehead, covering his slightly weary blue eyes.
The black tea on his desk had long since gone cold, while official documents had piled up like a mountain beside it.
Three days ago, after being crowned, he had begun muddling through a frantic mountain of work.
Wency Free Memorial Palace stood at the western end of Royal Avenue in Bulida, the capital of Krui Di, right beside