Chapter 129 - A Cruel World

The young lord who had departed in the middle of the night had lost consciousness when the carriage was destroyed.

It wasn’t long before he came to again.

"Ugh..."

He slowly regained consciousness.

His entire body throbbed from the impact, and a groan escaped his lips.

"Urgh... What is this?"

Both of his hands were tied to the armrests, and even his neck was bound to the backrest, forcing him to stare straight ahead.

The only thing within his field of vision was a single candle.

Opposite him sat a gray-haired man with a grim, oppressive aura.

Resting his face on both hands, he silently watched him.

Those deep blue eyes, as profound as a bottomless lake, seemed to glow in the candlelight.

The man knew exactly who he was.

It was Ferda Valdrova.

He understood the situation in an instant.

...Or perhaps he only thought he did.

Chuckling softly, he addressed the man sitting across from him.

"Wouldn’t it be better if you said something? You kidnap someone, yet you don’t utter a single word."

Only then did Ferda finally speak.

"To be honest... I was afraid."

"Afraid?"

"I wondered whether I had made a mistake. I kept thinking... what would happen if I kidnapped an innocent man and killed him."

Ferda uncrossed his hands and leaned back against the chair.

"But it turns out I was right."

He spoke the name of the culprit who had called Valdrova a murderer.

"Marcus Yurei."

The eldest son and heir of Duke Yurei.

He was the very voice that had haunted Valdrova’s ears.

"I trust you already know why you were brought here."

"Of course I do."

Marcus Yurei looked up at Ferda with empty eyes and sneered.

"So the esteemed Grand Duchess truly heard those words, didn’t she? I thought she’d ignore the voices of the common people."

"You lowly human who doesn’t even know your place..."

Luri flared up and stepped forward.

Ferda quietly stopped her.

Luri obediently complied.

But Ferda was no less furious.

"...Why did you do it?"

"Why? Isn’t the reason obvious enough?"

He laughed like a madman.

"The man I called my father is now a war criminal, and people are swarming over our ducal house, trying to tear it apart. Aren’t you the same? Feeding off our territory with those refugees?"

"Isn’t that simply because your family is incompetent?"

Ferda shot back without hesitation.

"Your father foolishly begged for mediation and caused this entire disaster. What exactly were we supposed to do?"

"You could have returned the refugees."

"So after remaining silent all winter, you suddenly demand them back once spring arrives? You truly have no shame."

"That’s right. Shameless indeed. You treated us like a free soup kitchen."

A grin spread across Marcus’s face.

As though he had been waiting for this very moment.

"But aren’t you just as shameless?"

"..."

"It’s been one hundred and fifty years since the Dragon-Demon War began. How many people has the Grand Duchess killed during all that time? Wasn’t that precisely why she chose to repent and quietly live out the rest of her life?"

Then he added in a low voice,

"If you’re a murderer, then act like one and crawl back into hiding."

The next instant, Marcus—his entire body still bound—was knocked backward.

It wasn’t Luri who attacked him.

It was Ferda who had lost control.

Instead of using magic, he clenched his fist and drove it straight into Marcus’s face.

Thud!

Thud!

Thud!

Each punch landed mercilessly.

Ferda struck Marcus’s face with every ounce of strength he possessed.

Crack!

A sickening sound echoed through the room.

But it wasn’t Marcus’s face that had broken.

Proof of that was Ferda’s wrist, now hanging limp and mangled.

Marcus’s face had done little more than swell.

"Heh... Heh... So the Regent’s punch is so delicate that it can’t even draw a nosebleed."

"Shut up."

Ferda had known this would happen.

Even so, he couldn’t stop himself.

He hadn’t wanted to kill him with magic.

He wanted to smash that smug face with his own hands.

"So your right hand is ruined. Will you use your left next? Why don’t you give it a try?"

Marcus continued mocking him without pause.

Grabbing Marcus by the collar, Ferda spoke coldly.

"Don’t be so impatient. This is only the beginning."

Ferda knew exactly how to create someone who could neither truly live nor die.

He intended to use every piece of that knowledge to give this man a life of unimaginable cruelty.

Marcus merely chuckled.

"The beginning? Who says I’ll let you decide when it begins?"

"Why? Do you think I’ll obey your precious noble rules? Or are you planning to die before I can even make you suffer? If you think you can, then go ahead and die. But you can’t. Now that you’re in my hands, I’m the one who decides whether you live or die."

Ferda tried to overwhelm him with his gaze.

Yet Marcus showed not the slightest hint of fear.

Ferda understood.

The man still had one final move left.

"Regent Ferda... welcome to this cruel world."

The moment those words left his lips, an afterimage shimmered around his neck, and the space itself distorted.

Crack!

Crunch!

Marcus’s neck bent into a grotesque zigzag before violently twisting.

He died instantly.

The sudden silence that followed was filled with bewilderment.

Having witnessed everything, Luri quietly called out his name.

"Lord Ferda?"

"...I didn’t do that."

When Ferda answered, Luri looked at him anxiously.

"Surely... you didn’t lose control without realizing it...?"

"No. That’s not what happened."

He had certainly been angry.

But it wasn’t the overwhelming rage he had felt back then with Erembalt.

Remaining calm, Ferda examined Marcus’s neck.

"Look."

There, faint traces of a Black Magic Magic Circle remained.

"He must have set it so that reciting a trigger phrase would automatically twist his neck."

"So that greeting... was the trigger phrase."

Realizing she had wrongly suspected Ferda of losing his sanity, Luri immediately bowed her head.

"I’m sorry... I doubted you so thoughtlessly, Lord Ferda."

"No. There’s nothing for you to apologize for."

Luri looked at him, puzzled.

"What do you mean?"

"It means that if you suspected me... then everyone else will see it the same way."

Ferda stepped back mentally and examined the entire situation from a distance.

One thing was certain.

He had already sunk into a dangerous mire.

"Luri."

"Yes."

"You said you attacked the carriage and brought him here."

She nodded.

"That’s right. I fought back the urge to slaughter them all and only brought this miserable wretch."

"Are you certain no one knows it was you?"

"Very few people saw my face... but if they truly investigate, they’ll eventually figure it out."

She had even released Dragon Fear to prevent needless slaughter.

There was no doubt about that.

’The problem is whether they’ll go report this immediately... or return to the castle first.’

He couldn’t know yet.

Either way, the situation was disastrous.

If they reported it immediately, Duke Yurei would launch an investigation, and the matter would grow even larger.

If they returned to the castle first, they would discover the corpse of Marcus Yurei with his neck snapped.

No matter how anyone looked at it, it would appear that Ferda had killed the son of Duke Yurei in a fit of rage after Marcus had insulted him.

"But didn’t he admit to insulting the Grand Duchess himself?"

"Not publicly."

He had intentionally muttered those words quietly enough that only Valdrova could hear them.

Ferda knew.

Even trying to prove that fact would only make matters worse.

’Black Magic will undoubtedly become the issue.’

Marcus Yurei had died because of Black Magic.

Once Black Magic entered the discussion, all suspicion would inevitably shift toward Ferda, claiming that he was a practitioner of Black Magic.

Ferda knew exactly why.

Because that had once happened to him in the past.

Black Magic was a brand that never faded, and people had once been desperate to use that brand to kill him.

Marcus’s death had already dragged Ferda into a deep, suffocating swamp.

’Who benefits from this death?’

The first person to come to Ferda’s mind was Duke Yurei.

Duke Yurei was the kind of man who called refugees traitors and used them as examples through his own knights.

Using even his own son as a stepping stone was entirely within the realm of possibility.

"What shall we do with the body?"

Ferda looked down at the lifeless son of Duke Yurei, his neck grotesquely twisted.

There were many ways to dispose of it.

He could bury it somewhere.

Feed it to monsters.

Or burn it until nothing remained.

The Ferda of old would have chosen one of those options without hesitation.

But not anymore.

He was the Regent governing the Grand Duchess’s territory.

The acting lord of Hestia Village.

And Valdrova’s fiancé.

"...What a cruel world."

Ferda muttered quietly.

At that very moment—

The interrogation room door burst open, and someone rushed inside.

"Lord Regent Ferda. The Tower Master has contacted—"

Isabella stopped mid-sentence as soon as she saw the corpse with its neck grotesquely twisted.

"What in the world happened here?"

"It’s difficult to explain properly, but for now, just know that he paid the price for insulting the Grand Duchess."

"Hmm."

As a Dragon Spawn, Isabella quickly accepted the death of someone who had committed such blasphemy.

At the same time, as an administrator, she wore a complicated expression at the death of a noble.

Luri reprimanded her for barging in.

"How could you come in without even knocking?"

"I know I was discourteous, but the matter is that urgent."

Isabella held up the communication crystal she had brought.

"The Tower Master contacted us with great urgency. She requests that you answer immediately."

"Understood."

Ferda connected his consciousness to the communication crystal Isabella had brought.

—Regent, I’ll skip the formalities since things are urgent.

Erika spoke in a flustered voice.

—Are you still enjoying the Festival of the Beginning of Spring?

"No."

—Then has the festival already ended?

"It has officially concluded, but many people are still inside the castle."

—The young ladies and young lords haven’t left yet, correct?

"Some departed during the night."

—If they’ve already gone too far, it can’t be helped, but gather as many of them as possible immediately!

Erika then explained why she was so alarmed.

—The Grand Duchess’s territory has been occupied by monsters! If anyone moves now, they’ll all be slaughtered!

***

The peaceful Grand Duchess’s territory was thrown into a state of emergency.

Not just Hestia Village, which bordered the Land of Demons, but every noble under her rule.

With Isabella’s and Luri’s cooperation, Ferda plotted the current situation onto a map.

After studying the completed map, he muttered,

"...We’ve become an island."

The monsters had formed a perfect blockade, completely isolating the Far Eastern Region.

"They aren’t ordinary monsters, but gigantic ones. They’ve gathered around monsters roughly the same size as those Lady Valdrova usually deals with."

"How many are there?"

"Twelve."

Twelve monsters.

Which effectively meant twelve separate armies.

Twelve armies surrounding and isolating the territory.

Each gigantic monster possessed enough destructive power to casually flatten an entire castle if it moved.

Ferda had personally witnessed their might while watching Valdrova fight.

’If those things begin moving...’

It would only be a matter of time before the territory was reduced to ruins.

"The one fortunate thing is that those gigantic monsters have almost no mobility."

"So they won’t all charge us at once."

"However, the real problem lies in their ability."

"What ability?"

"Reproduction. They’re giving birth to monsters and forming armies."

They functioned as breeding grounds for monsters.

Even without the Curved Demon personally roaming around creating monsters, these creatures would continuously produce them.

"Dozens of monsters have already gathered around each mother, and they’re still giving birth. If they don’t stop laying eggs, they’ll become armies numbering in the thousands in no time."

"And once they reach the thousands..."

"...It will become a catastrophe."

"Hmm..."

The only way to stop an enemy from steadily building its forces was a rapid strike.

They had to eliminate them quickly.

"What if Her Grace Lady Valdrova were to act?"

"That would certainly be the best option, but..."

Looking troubled, Luri pointed toward the Land of Demons.

"A massive force is waiting here. They’ve positioned themselves entirely along a front where Master cannot enter."

The intention was obvious.

"So the moment she leaves, they’ll attack."

"Exactly."

It was an intelligent strategy.

To protect Hestia Village, Valdrova was inevitably bound to Lonely Mountain.

Such an intelligent and calculated plan made the mastermind unmistakable.

’The Curved Demon... it has to be him.’

With a mere flick of his finger, monsters had emerged from empty space.

A man capable of manipulating space so freely would have been more than capable of placing those gigantic monsters throughout the region.

Ferda chose the most reasonable course of action.

"We have no choice but to request aid from the Empire."

The Grand Duchess’s territory was part of the Empire.

Only the Empire had the authority to intervene.

Ferda immediately established communication.

—Greetings to Lord Ferda Valdrova, Regent of the Grand Duchess’s territory! I am Hans, a Communication Mage of the great Arken Empire!

"Who is currently responsible for affairs concerning Imperial territory?"

—The person in charge, sir?

"Summon the highest-ranking authority. Monsters have invaded Imperial territory."

—Ah... Yes! Understood! Please wait just a moment!

Judging by Hans’s reaction, it seemed the Empire had not yet grasped the situation.

A short while later, the signal shifted with a burst of static, and another voice replaced his.

Even the throat-clearing cough before he spoke dripped with smug self-importance.

—I am Crown Prince Alexander Arken.

"My greetings, Your Highness."

"Yes, I’ve already heard. The Empire is in complete uproar over this as well."

At least, it sounded as though they could have a proper conversation.

"We require reinforcements. Please dispatch Imperial forces and eliminate those monsters as quickly as possible."

—Of course. Naturally, we’ll send reinforcements as quickly as we can. However... it will take a little time.

"How long?"

—Two months.

Two months.

Ferda frowned.

’Is this fat bastard mocking me?’

"You expect us to leave those monsters alone for two whole months?"

—Now, now, don’t sound so disappointed. We’re doing everything we possibly can. Even with our best efforts, that’s the shortest time we can manage. What else can we do?

Their best efforts?

There wasn’t the slightest hint of urgency in Alexander’s voice.

Ferda wasn’t a fool.

He immediately realized what the man intended.

He was planning to exploit this looming disaster for political gain.

"Are you expecting me to bow my head and offer you something?"

—Now, now! You know that’s not what I mean. War requires tremendous amounts of time and money. And once you start following Imperial procedures... well, these things simply aren’t easy.

In other words—

If Ferda wanted the Imperial Army dispatched, he would have to offer something valuable in return.

’You despicable pig.’

He wanted to curse him on the spot.

But Ferda’s current circumstances left him no such luxury.

The weight of responsibility forced him to suppress his temper.

"I’ll consider it."

Ferda immediately cut off the communication.

Suppressing the rage boiling inside him, he turned toward the others.

"What do you think will happen if we leave those monsters alone for two months?"

"If they continue producing monsters at this rate, they’ll become armies numbering in the thousands."

After Luri answered, Isabella added,

"The armies aren’t the only problem. The land itself is."

Wherever monsters remained, life withered away.

Once the soil died, the entire contaminated area would have to be excavated and discarded elsewhere.

If the land surrounding the Grand Duchess’s territory died, then even after the crisis was resolved, the territory would remain isolated like an island.

’That’s the real problem.’

They had to eliminate the monsters immediately.

Yet the Empire had no intention of responding swiftly.

Which meant there was only one option left.

Ferda would have to handle it himself.

"Do you truly believe we can do it?"

Luri could no longer hide her anxiety.

"We can."

We have to.