13 (55)

“What do you mean?”

“Exactly what I said. I escaped from my father’s madness.”

“I think I understand roughly. Duke Rose Christopher seems to have become engrossed in black magic.”

“How… did you know that?”

“There was a noble who had been cooperating with him. I heard the general story from him.”

“That is correct. However, it seems there was something he could not say.”

“What is it?”

“Father has completely fallen into madness. Recently, he began committing indiscriminate massacres and impaled his loyal retainers on stakes. Now he no longer even cared about the king’s gaze.”

“Hmm. Why did you come to me?”

“I want to kill my father. Ruderwin cannot defeat him. I judged that Lord Louis was the one with a possibility.”

“I have no reason to fight him. Nor do I have the leeway to do so. So, Rose Christina, I understand what you are asking of me, but I cannot accept it.”

Louis firmly refused. Wanting to know the situation and facing him head-on were separate matters. Minister Richard, who had been listening from the side, let out a sigh of relief. However, she still remained confident, because she had expected Louis’s answer to some extent.

“Father’s first target is not even the Kingdom of Ruderwin, but Lord Louis. Even if you stay still, you will probably be invaded by the forces Father is currently preparing.”

“……..What is the reason?”

“I do not know the details. I heard him muttering that he had heard some sort of voice. Father’s exact goal is to offer Lord Louis as a sacrifice. I only overheard it, so I am not certain, but it seems he is preparing something.”

“………”

“And I heard in passing that you make important use of women.”

“That is true. If they have ability, I entrust them with important positions regardless of gender.”

“Please trust me. If it is me, I know a way to minimize Lord Louis’s losses and take Father’s territory.”

Minister Richard had an expression of disbelief, and everyone here seemed to think the same. She was about to open her mouth to explain something, but Louis raised his hand and stopped her. Louis had a tool that allowed him to judge more accurately than anyone else without needing to hear her explanation. Her information appeared before Louis. Rose Christina’s other abilities were no different from an ordinary person’s, but her intelligence was a staggering 15. The specialty below it was a form Louis had never seen before.

‘Strategist….’

She was a person who possessed the very ability Louis had needed in the previous war.

The sky was gloomy, and beneath it, various groups of people were gathered. There was one man sitting on a huge throne, and before him, a cavalryman was kneeling to report. Beside him stood a black mage. The black mage was not dressed like a mage, but there was no one here who failed to recognize his identity. He was filled with corrupt death energy, and the cup he had been drinking from and set down for a moment contained human blood that looked like wine.

The nearby soldiers were all over 2.5 meters tall and did not give off a human-like nuance. The fortunate thing was that there were only a small number of such beast-like humans. However, every soldier lingering around this place was gripped by tremendous fear and could not even think of running away from the man in the center. The man in the center, who had just drunk from the cup of blood while looking at the cavalrymen with hollow eyes, was Duke Rose Christopher.

The rose on the family banner behind him had already lost its former color and was drenched in blood, and though it had happened by chance, people thought it looked natural. Duke Rose Christopher had not been in such an out-of-control state from the beginning. Like others who colluded with black mages, he had proceeded with matters while concealing something extremely carefully. The reason that had been possible was the enormous power gained over three generations. The Kingdom of Ruderwin had fallen into a special state similar to the Eron Duchy, namely a concentration phenomenon in which power had long been focused on a single house.

In the Eron Duchy, that power had been divided among several houses, and until Louis appeared, that power had remained evenly balanced. Unlike the Eron Duchy, where the king had completely lost power, Ruderwin took the form of the king and many houses opposing House Rose. That balance had been fairly plausible, and it had made the Kingdom of Ruderwin peaceful for more than a hundred years. That balance had been broken only a short while ago. The unfamiliar man who had come to him had completely transformed Rose Christopher.

The man’s identity was Justin Nestor. He was one of the symbolic figures of the cult and one of the greatest among the great black mages who had long evaded the Holy Knight Order’s persistent pursuit. It was unclear how he, who was only slightly aged, had obtained such enormous magical power. However, the things he had committed were all close to disasters. Those who knew him believed that he had offered a thousand virgins as sacrifices to obtain youth, but he never opened his mouth about it, and since he had actually risen to the position of elder, no one could ask him.

In any case, as soon as Justin Nestor met Rose Christopher, he called him a hero. According to him, Rose Christopher had the vessel, or the qualities, to be transformed into a great man. It was a rather flattering remark, but the fact that the person who spoke those words was a mage with enormous magical power won Duke Rose Christopher’s favor. It was not long after that when he began to change.

Beside him, people continued to be impaled on stakes. Most of them were those who had defied him, and many were retainers who had not held back from offering loyal advice. They were their subordinates and families. Some were people who were dying unjustly for no particular reason. The standard of judgment itself was vague, and since Rose Christopher himself had come to enjoy murder, it did not particularly matter to him. Rose Christopher looked at the cavalrymen with hollow eyes. The cavalrymen were trembling in fear. They had lost Christina, and in the end, she seemed to have crossed the border.

“Fools. As always, there are very few useful things around me.”

Rose Christopher spoke coldly. The cavalrymen’s faces turned dark.

“Please. Mercy.”

Rose Christopher did not answer. In any case, he had to stir up the Eron Duchy. Perhaps it was better this way. However, he had never dreamed that his eldest daughter would betray him. No matter how he was, this was not a particularly pleasant feeling. The screams and pleas ruined the mood that had been about to improve. As if speaking in Rose Christopher’s place, the black mage Nestor smiled and said,

“Your prayers did not reach!”

It was a voice filled with madness. It was soon a death sentence. One of the cavalrymen shouted, “Please spare me!” but the huge men nearby had already moved. He tried to swing the spear he was holding in resistance, but it was caught absurdly easily. It did not take long for him to be bound. The ordinary infantrymen clicked their tongues inwardly and prepared new stakes.

Calling them stakes was generous; they were iron skewers. In particular, the upper parts were so sharp that one did not want to imagine their purpose, and the surface had blood clinging to it in a grotesque shape. If there was a use for killing someone slowly and a use for ending their life at once, what was now being given to the cavalrymen was the latter. One cavalryman, gripped by fear, cried out for his family alone to be spared.

“Ho, your courage is admirable. Sacrifices are always gathered from good things.”

Nestor watched the face of the man, who had held a little hope, with amusement and then continued speaking.

“But it seems your sin cannot be washed away with your blood alone. How admirable… Execute it.”

Nestor meant it sincerely. As an apostle for the god of blood and someone planning to overturn the world in the future, he thought the cavalryman now cursing him was admirable. It would have been laughable if someone heard it, but this young man was sincere no matter what anyone said. He was a faithful believer who constantly stimulated the god of blood, while also possessing pity for those being sacrificed.

Screams burst out one after another. They were loud and short. Most died from shock. Blood flowed down from the shafts they were impaled on like rainwater. Rose Christopher watched the sight with an intrigued gaze.

‘No matter how much I look at it, I never get tired of it.’

His mood was beginning to improve a little. But it was laughable that his emotions changed so suddenly like this. After all, the fact that his daughter Christina had left this place was purely the result of Christopher himself and Nestor’s work. A round-faced sycophant said to him,

“Grand Duke. I will send additional men. Please leave it to me. I promise I will safely bring Christina back here.”

Until just recently, there had been a loyal retainer named Nardi beside him. He was now in the underground prison. Seeing someone else instead of someone familiar was a strange thing. Christopher shook his head instead of answering. The man asked back, but when Christopher glared at him, he soon broke into a cold sweat and bowed his head.

‘I simply can’t get a read on him.’

Duke Christopher’s behavior was so inconsistent that even the sycophant muttered that. Meanwhile, Nestor said,

“Grand Duke. We need more sacrifices. More sacrifices…….”

“…….I understand.”

‘He’s mad… Something is going mad.’

It had only been good until he took the position. Now that he had climbed up, merely standing in this position felt like walking a tightrope over a cliff.

“……That is why I came here.”

Louis put together all the pieces of the puzzle that had been missing until now. They were the pieces he had been trying to obtain by dispatching Mark Jay, and it could be said that he had obtained them without any particular danger, but for some reason, he felt uneasy. She did not seem to be telling only the truth.

While climbing up to his current position, Louis’s intuition in that regard had developed considerably. Above all, the information window showed that the respect she had for him was infinitely low. That meant she was lying to him, at least in part. He knew from experience so far that people with low respect values had very rarely told him only the truth.

‘….Still. It’s difficult to find any particular flaw.’

Even if she was hiding something, it seemed true that Justin Nestor, an elder and apostle of the cult, had met Rose Christopher, and that Christopher had changed afterward. The timing of her arrival here was also before the rumors had spread. Soon, rumors that the grand duke was committing massacres within his territory would reach the Eron Duchy faster than feet could carry them.

Mark Jay was currently on standby. After hearing her words, Louis planned to entrust him with a large ranger unit and proceed with work to verify the information that truly needed to be confirmed. For that purpose, the information that absolutely had to be confirmed was being neatly organized in Louis’s mind.

The part that personally piqued his interest was that Duke Christopher himself was a high-level swordsman. Among the enemies he had faced so far, the only person who could have driven Louis into a corner had been his own older brother, who shared his blood, but he had not actually been able to face him. The strongest among those he had encountered was Marquis Boarne Gregory.

However, by the time the war reached its final stage, he had completely lost his will to fight and was captured all too easily, so Louis had never exchanged sword strikes with him in a fight where life and death were at stake. If there was a candidate, it would have been Atila of the Huns, with whom he currently had a military alliance, but the trust Atila sent toward Louis was so one-sided and overflowing to the point of being burdensome that it was difficult to imagine any friction with him for the time being.

Rose Christina watched Louis as he crossed his legs and sorted out several matters. Without realizing it, she was becoming captivated by Louis. She had thought he was someone obsessed with swords and war, but his actual appearance was extremely calm, and he knew how to analyze information.

The weight he emitted was that of a true monarch itself. Because of the fear that he might notice if she mixed in lies, she ended up saying as much of the truth as possible. Louis smiled faintly and said, “Good.” Only then did she finally feel relieved.