Necromancer Of The Black Bible (127)

Verdin looked at Laerin with a cold, bleak gaze.

As if unable to bear that look, Laerin quietly turned her head and spoke.

“She is within the Empire.”

Verdin waited for the next words, but Laerin did not continue.

Unable to endure it any longer, Verdin asked again.

“Is that all?”

“Yes. For now that is all the answer I can give.”

Verdin’s demeanor turned cold.

At that moment Natasha, who had been watching, intervened.

“So you want us to do more for you, is that right?”

Hit on the right point, Laerin nodded with a bright face.

“I’ll let it go for today, but our village is in danger. If Viscount Grovebern learns that soldiers and a knight were killed here, he won’t stay idle.”

It was entirely expected.

That was why Verdin didn’t want to get involved with them.

But Laerin knew exactly what Verdin wanted and also knew what and how to ask.

Having read Verdin’s inner thoughts and Laerin’s calculations, Natasha smiled faintly and spoke.

“It can’t be helped. We have to get involved in this, then?”

Verdin shook his head repeatedly, but there was no choice.

What he wanted was to recover Princess Lillian. Finding her and bringing her back to the Kingdom of Altera was the way to restore his honor.

“Do not worry too much. Princess Lillian is alive.”

“Is that so?”

“The Sylphs told me so. They are saying that she is alive and well.”

Laerin declared with gleaming eyes, but Verdin felt uneasy.

Simply being alive was not enough.

There are many ways to keep slaves in this world, and among them are those who cripple them to bind them.

It was common for captives taken by bandits to lose an arm or a leg and be sold, living lives worse than death.

When Verdin’s expression did not lighten, Laerin spoke again.

“Do not worry too much. Within the Empire it’s forbidden to cripple slaves. The Princess is said to be intact and doing well.”

“Is that so?”

Verdin thought for a moment and then continued.

“If the Princess ends up in danger, tell me. That’s my condition.”

“I will. I promise.”

Laerin nodded readily.

Natasha tapped each of their shoulders once and said cheerfully,

“Good. A deal is made. Now what should we do?”

“First, please find the survivors. Tell me their location and I’ll handle the rest.”

At Laerin’s instruction, Verdin and Natasha began to move.

They found all the survivors and gathered the bodies just after sunset.

At dusk.

A shout echoed from the top of Brandstein Castle.

“What did you say!”

Viscount Grovebern urged the knight with a disbelieving expression.

“Say it again, Konrad. What happened to the inspection corps?”

Chief of Staff Konrad pushed up the lens of his monocle and answered in a firm voice.

“According to the report: the thirty members of the inspection corps, including Captain Walter, were annihilated. Only four returned alive. None of them are uninjured. Most are seriously wounded.”

Grovebern clenched his fist tight.

He then looked again at the report on his desk.

News of the inspection corps’ annihilation.

The report stated that the rebellion began when the corps’ messenger had finished reading the order to increase Silvanite extraction.

Grovebern read that passage several times and then asked Konrad.

“Was there a swordsman in that village capable of defeating Walter?”

“Not that I recall. Among the criminals who drifted into the village there was none superior to Walter.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. We reported to the village head before sending the corps, and notable individuals were investigated in advance.”

Deep wrinkles formed between Viscount Grovebern’s brows.

It was a strange matter.

Despite his large frame, he was a very meticulous man.

Having earned his viscountship by clearing nearby bandits, he always prepared for combat no matter the task.

Thus, when sending the inspection corps, he had reviewed the village’s members and sent enough forces to subdue any threat.

‘And yet they were annihilated?’

He was fifty-one years old.

He had led countless campaigns, but hadn’t been so overwhelmingly bested since he was about twenty.

‘Walter is an Expert-class knight. There’s no way he’d fall to some retired brigand hiding in a forest village.’

Having sorted his thoughts to that point, Grovebern spoke again.

“How did Walter die?”

“I tried to find that out as well, but…”

“Why? Couldn’t you find out?”

“Well…”

“Tell me. Whatever you heard, say it all.”

Konrad opened his mouth with an unwilling expression.

“According to the survivors… he was killed by a ghost swordsman.”

“A ghost swordsman?”

Grovebern’s eyebrows twitched, and Konrad swallowed.

Grovebern’s eyes gleamed as he asked again.

“Explain properly. A ghost swordsman—what does that mean?”

“I asked several times because I couldn’t accept it, but they all said the same thing: a faceless swordsman.”

“A faceless swordsman…”

“They say Walter died by a single stroke of the sword he wielded. And…”

Konrad continued with a skeptical expression.

“Walter wasn’t the only one killed by that single stroke.”

“Then?”

“About ten soldiers who stood alongside Walter were also killed.”

Grovebern’s gaze deepened.

The inspection corps, selected from the regular army’s best, had been annihilated, and Expert-class knight Walter was killed by a single stroke along with about ten of his men?

It sounded like something from a bard’s song.

And an old, worn-out one at that.

If a bard sang such a tale in a tavern nowadays, he’d be greeted with jeers and insults for being clichéd.

Grovebern understood why Konrad had hesitated to report.

“So that’s what came out of the mouths of the badly wounded who barely returned alive?”

“Yes.”

“Did all four tell the same story?”

“…Yes.”

“I see.”

Viscount Grovebern nodded and picked up the candlestick on his desk.

He rose, walked to the hearth, lit a fire, and spoke.

“Leave. I’ll deal with this tomorrow.”

“Understood.”

Konrad saluted crisply and left the room.

Then a servant who had been waiting outside entered.

Grovebern shook his head and gave an order.

“Go out. I’ll light the lamps.”

“Yes!”

Left alone in the room, Grovebern held the recently lit candle and walked slowly around the room.

There were ten candlesticks in the room, and Grovebern went to each and lit the candles himself.

Lighting the study’s candles was an old habit of his.

Whenever he needed to think deeply alone, he lit the candles himself like this.

After lighting the fifth candle placed before his grandfather’s bust, he muttered to himself.

“Rumors will spread.”

He watched the flickering candle and continued.

“The rumor that our inspection corps was annihilated by a ghost swordsman will not sit well.”

The Grovebern family had long defended the Empire’s borderlands from bandits and other external invaders.

The ancestor who first settled there had been granted a barony as a founding supporter, and by his grandfather’s generation they had become viscounts.

And.

A few years ago, after receiving the mineral ‘Silvanite’ as tribute from Silvandel and reporting it to the Empire, they gained a new opportunity.

Namely, Hairo, the deputy Towermaster of the Grand Mage Tower ‘Regio Magnus’, approached them discreetly.

He had long desired to become Towermaster and was very interested in Silvanite’s properties and functions.

He never spoke openly about it, but his intentions were easy to guess.

‘He probably wanted to gather Silvanite to challenge Leopold.’

The Grand Mage Tower is thoroughly meritocratic.

The strongest mage becomes the Towermaster.

Therefore, there are rules for duels.

Anyone wishing to challenge the Towermaster can issue a challenge at any time, and the Towermaster may not refuse.

Of course, throughout the Empire’s history, Towermasters have come exclusively from the Eckhart family.

While the prevailing theory was that it was due to an ancient pact with the Crimson Dragon Eckhart, the truer reason was that they had defeated every challenger.

Eckhart never kills challengers. She burns about half of them, leaving them crippled.

Because of that, no one readily challenged them, leading to the present state.

‘If Hairo is of a certain caliber, with Silvanite’s help he might be able to defeat Leopold.’

That’s not all.

As if aided by heaven, Leopold had gone missing.

This set a schedule for selecting a new towermaster, and Hairo intended to use Silvanite in that contest.

He planned to counter the Eckhart-influenced mages, who mainly specialized in Fire magic, with an overwhelmingly powerful Water-based magic.

It was here that Grovebern struck a deal with Hairo.

He agreed to deliver one ton of Silvanite by the week the duel would begin.

In return, Grovebern requested a viscountcy, and the deal was struck.

All that remained was execution.

Then the incident in Silvandel occurred.

On the first attempt to increase production to meet the schedule, a rebellion broke out and the inspection corps was annihilated.

At this point there were no choices.

‘We must push it through.’

The candlelight flickered in Grovebern’s eyes.

That candlelight carried many things.

A rise in status.

More power.

More recognition and more resources.

Grovebern wanted all of it.

‘I have no desire to do menial border tasks any longer. To do that, I must somehow gain access to the royal court.’

Grovebern shifted his steps.

He then lit the remaining candlesticks.

The bookshelf with his ancestor’s portrait and the hidden safe.

The sword and shield hung on the wall, his well-polished plate armor he always used.

Lighting the candles beside them brightened the room considerably.

Having finished lighting the room, Grovebern returned to his desk and set down the candlestick he had been holding.

He then opened a thick book placed to one side.

It was a register recording his military forces.

Grovebern read it carefully and began to write orders.

‘First, we cleanse the rebels. Afterwards, we’ll draft miners from other villages and deploy them.’

Grovebern listed the units to be deployed in this operation one by one.

The five units under his domain, excluding the guard unit.

All of them had records of having wiped out notorious bandit gangs.

It seemed excessive to deploy them to a small village of about a hundred people, but Grovebern did not care.

For this was a crucial time.

It was a once-in-a-lifetime—rather, a family legacy—an opportunity to make their glory shine at its peak.

‘I must handle this personally.’

Grovebern wrote the following at the very end of the orders.

<Commander-in-Chief: Wolfram Alaric von Grovebern>