Chapter 20
Chapter 20
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Translator: crow
Chapter Title: EP.6 – On a Certain Moonlit Night (2)
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Lord Roden had a headache.
The reasons for the pain numbered dozens, but the elements immediately tormenting his head were...
"Honey! We have to make a big fuss about this! How can that guy not be expelled after touching our child! We need to complain to the Knights!"
His wife, who had spoiled their youngest son too much, screamed for the knight to be punished.
Raised as the daughter of a wealthy marquis family, she knew nothing of politics and spouted foolish words.
Did she truly not know what it meant to complain to the Knights—no, to fight the White Silver Lion Knights?
...I married her solely because she was pretty. I should have heeded my late mother's warnings.
However, he could overlook his wife's whining to some extent.
He could smooth it over later.
But more serious problems took precedence.
"There will be no threat to his life. Knights are inherently people of tremendous vitality. However, recovery will take at least a year. ...If we had fresh troll blood at 80% purity, it might shorten the process."
It was also a problem that the vice knight commander—who would have to lead the territory's knight order after the retiring knight commander—was recovering so slowly.
The Pollet family was a knight family.
Freelance knights and mercenaries hungry for fame challenged them day after day. It was routine.
Accepting those challenges was part of their pride.
Yet one of the territory's key knights had fallen in such a manner.
A knight hailed as the territory's champion, no less.
It was only natural for the lord to feel utterly frustrated.
'Troll blood, where on earth does one even get that?'
They said recovery would speed up with 80% purity troll blood, but was such a thing easy to obtain?
Trolls rarely emerged even from deep forests, and even if one succeeded in the hunt, the blood coagulated or grew turbid the instant it died—making 30% purity something to boast about.
To secure 80% purity fresh blood would require bringing along an Aura User.
In other words, it was impossible.
'My head hurts. It hurts.'
This alone was enough to give him a splitting headache...
"My lord, if you wish it, I will fetch that bastard's head this instant."
"Father! Let me handle it personally!"
"...What has gotten into all of you?"
The knights tasked with defending the territory, and even the eldest son who would carry on the line.
They were seething with rage over the incident, poised to draw their swords at any moment.
Watching them, the lord felt a wave of dizziness.
'Do they lack any capacity for thought?'
His wife, ignorant of knights and politics, was one thing.
But these were the men destined to protect the family one day—no, Pendragon itself.
Had they forgotten the Pollet family were royalists from the start?
If they truly didn't grasp what it meant to provoke the White Silver Lion, then it would be right to sever their heads this instant.
They would ruin the family otherwise.
'...This is my failing.'
After the three-year war with Britannia ended, his neglect of family affairs had returned as such a grave error.
To be surrounded by such pathetic souls meant he had ruled his children and house poorly.
He should have been stricter.
Then they wouldn't dare act out like this.
'Where do I even begin to straighten things out?'
The lord's worries deepened.
......At that moment.
"—You look deeply troubled, Lord Roden."
"......"
"Heh heh, well, managing a family is no easy task. I understand."
"......"
"Not even a word in reply? Am I truly so loathsome to behold, old man that I am? How embarrassing."
"......"
—Lord Roden could scarcely draw breath.
No, he offered no response at all, his limbs shaking uncontrollably.
How long had he been there?
An elderly man emerged slowly from the shadowed gloom, the bright moon at his back.
At a glance, he seemed nothing more than a kindly old butler.
Yet Roden would never be deceived.
He would not fall for that gentle voice.
Nor for that benevolent face.
How could he, when he could never forget the catastrophe wrought by 'that old man'?
With a trembling voice, Roden dared utter his name.
"Al, Alber..."
"Heh heh, for Lord Roden to remember a mere old man like me—what an honor."
"...Albert! W-we've done nothing. Our house harbors no intent to defy the royal family!"
He pleaded desperately, like a man crying out.
The baseless excuses poured forth endlessly.
To such a degree was Roden's fear of him.
Because he was one of the kingdom's scant three Aura Users?
No.
His power was formidable, yes—but it alone did not account for this terror.
The true reason for his dread was...
"I've not come for a heresy trial, so rest easy. It's been ages since my retirement, heh heh."
His memory of how horrifying the old man's 'former profession' had been.
Heresy Inquisitor John Ray Albert.
The fiend who had exterminated ninety houses!
And Roden still remembered vividly.
How that old man bore a cross on his back, skewering countless souls upon spits...!
But he only smiled.
As though it were a mere phantasm from bygone days.
"All water under the bridge. I've washed my hands of it now, so Lord Roden needn't worry. The past is the past, no?"
Lies—!
"...The elders who recall those days soil themselves at your name alone, clawing their scalps till blood flows from sheer terror. And you call it merely the past?!"
"Youthful indiscretion. Everyone has some pursuit that consumes their young years, and mine was the teachings of the divine. It was my entire world then. Ah, but now? Just a husk of bones, my youth long burned away."
"......"
"Heh heh, laugh it off, Lord Roden. That's the play at a time like this. Heh heh! With timing this poor, how ever will you keep up with the youngsters?"
Albert laid a hand upon his face.
One might question whether a mere baron dared touch a count's visage, but none possessed the courage to voice it before this old man.
In short order, Albert forcibly tugged the corners of Roden's mouth upward into a smile, leaving the lord's eyes damp near to weeping.
With every brush of those fingers, cold sweat drenched his body; he shivered as in the grip of winter's chill.
Once his lips formed that strained crescent,
"Hm, a fine smile."
Albert withdrew his hand, seemingly content.
"......Wh-what brings you here?"
The lord managed to ask amid his terror.
He needed to know his offense, lest the old man return.
"Heh heh."
Was this the correct response?
The old man seemed gratified.
A shrewd judgment worthy of a family head, indeed.
And so, resolved to alter his 'original purpose,' he said,
"Ah, naught of great import. There's a certain young man under this old man's watchful eye, and word reached me he'd tangled with your house of late. Thought I'd drop by."
"N-not him!"
"Lord Roden. You are a fine noble. Not like those fool noble faction sorts who fancy the world their oyster, nor the neutral faction madmen. A royalist who truly grasps the lay of the land. Thus, 'please'—spare this old man from taking up the cross anew. Surely you can manage that much?"
"......"
"Heh heh, silence speaks volumes."
Swoosh.
The next instant,
he vanished as abruptly as he had appeared.
"......"
Roden fell silent.
It felt akin to a ghostly haunting, yet the lingering warmth upon his cheek and the forced upward curl of his lips confirmed it as stark reality.
And the starkest proof of the encounter was,
"......Blood?"
Blood.
Fresh blood, yet to dry.
Not his own. Nor Albert's, surely.
If pressed, it could only be...
'Someone else's. Others' blood.'
A chill raced down his spine!
He grasped a truth he wished unknown:
The old man had come to him bloodied already.
Blood not his own, but that of others...!
As realization dawned, Roden bowed his head low, shoulders quaking faintly.
He understood now: had he not yielded first, what fate would have befallen them?
A horror too dire to utter...!
Bang.
"Honey, let me say it again—this demands we confront the royals at once... ...Honey?"
"......"
"H-honey? Wh-what's wrong? Honey...?"
"......"
"A-are you... crying?"
The lord sniffled. His wife panicked.
Never once in their marriage had she seen this iron-willed man shed tears.
But how could she fathom it?
How profoundly relieved he felt that he—no, his entire family—had survived the brink of death.
How grateful he was that they yet drew breath.
And so the lord wept, while his wife, flustered, drew near to comfort him as best she could.
The next morning,
word arrived that over six newspaper houses and a single sponsoring merchant guild had been consumed by flames overnight and utterly incinerated. The lord silently took up a wooden sword and sought his son.
It was the conclusion of the 'trivial incident' that had unfolded on a certain moonlit night.
