Chapter 58
Chapter 58
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 57
Chapter Title: The Oath at the Crossing Bridge
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Spring had arrived in Sneria territory.
Flowers were blooming, the migratory birds that had departed were returning and chirping away, and the laughter of children frolicking after shedding their fur garments was in full bloom.
Such a spring.
Spring had also come to the Sneria lord's manor.
"Husband. The plum blossoms have bloomed so beautifully."
"Mm."
"If it is alright with you, might you be able to make some time this weekend?"
"Please speak comfortably, as a favor."
"In my country, this was the proper etiquette for a wife."
"I seem to recall that even there, it was considered ideal for lovers to treat each other without being bound by such minor formalities, casually and without reserve. Is my memory mistaken?"
"..."
At Duke's words, Hana's cheeks flushed pink.
"If I do not speak this way, I feel ashamed."
"..."
Seeing his lover with a faint blush on her cheeks, Duke was at a loss for words.
Duke barely suppressed a sigh as he recalled the incident that had led to Hana starting to act this way.
*
After a long time away, Duke had returned after venting in his Opfir guise, only to be greeted by Hana shyly presenting him with a marriage vow document.
'Just where the hell did things go wrong?'
When she held out the vow document, Duke felt the most flustered he ever had in his life.
It was no exaggeration to say it surprised him even more than when he realized this world followed a misunderstanding trope.
Fortunately—or perhaps not—before Duke could make a slip of the tongue, she tossed him a clue to grasp the situation.
"When you sent the engagement vow through contract magic, I was quite surprised as well."
Only then did Duke open the interface granted by Rex's authority and begin reading it carefully.
Here, Duke carefully checked the word "혼".
'Fuck.'
It wasn't "혼" as in soul (魂), but "혼" as in marriage (婚).
Not "soul," but "marry."
'Ah, damn Korean.'
An error that people from the empire's English-speaking culture would never make.
At the same time, a mistake only Duke—who saw it displayed in Korean—could make.
For some reason, it felt like the system was jeering at him mockingly.
Confirming his mistake, Duke regained his composure and sorted out what he needed to do.
'Clear up the misunderstanding?'
The thought crossed his mind briefly, but...
'No. It'd ruin the character.'
The second-in-command accidentally engaged? Where else could you find such a perfect setup?
Of course, that wasn't the only reason.
'Come to think of it, is there any need to clear the misunderstanding?'
No matter how he thought about it, this was a chance to be with his favorite character. There was no reason to ruin it.
Judging by her reaction, she seemed to feel the same way.
So Duke donned his iron mask expression and nodded.
"I understand."
Duke signed the vow document without hesitation.
As he inscribed his artistic signature, honed over 200 years, her expression brightened.
"Sir... no, may I now call you husband?"
Duke concealed his slightly reddened ears with his helmet and nodded, feigning solemnity.
And just like that, Duke became a married man faster than lightning could fry soybeans.
Duke himself, as well as Rex and Ari who were watching their relationship through the system, had no doubts about the couple's newlywed life.
But when Duke was in the midst of preparing a grand wedding ceremony, Hana made a statement no one had anticipated.
"I want to hold the ceremony after the war ends."
War?
What war?
Hadn't Sneria territory now been incorporated under Rex, leading to an armistice agreement?
Duke was puzzled, but he understood upon hearing her following words.
"I want to delay the marriage until Your Highness Providence establishes a complete nation."
Sneria's war was merely in a state of armistice, not true peace.
Hana was stronger than expected, Rex's command was beyond imagination, and Duke was insanely powerful, so the invasion had merely paused for the moment.
The royals were still directing inexplicable hatred toward Marquis Providence,
and the other lords were preparing for war, driven by their sunk costs.
To explain simply, the current relationship between the Esiric Kingdom and the marquisate was akin to that between South Korea and North Korea.
They couldn't continue the war because the opponent was too strong or the damage too severe, so they had drawn a line and agreed to an armistice.
In such a state, Hana couldn't hold the ceremony lightly.
If she and Duke formally married and even had a child, Sneria's defensive strength would be gone for 10 months.
Moreover, since marriage was a once-in-a-lifetime event, she harbored a personal desire to hold it when the nation and territory were at peace, allowing for a stable newlywed period.
Thus, Duke and she remained in a de facto relationship.
Administratively, they weren't officially married, but it was a relationship they had promised to each other, known to all who needed to know.
Such was the bond between Duke and Hana—beyond engagement, yet short of marriage.
The problem lay in her subsequent behavior.
"Husband. Did you cough?"
"Please speak normally, as a favor."
"I apologize. Otherwise, I feel I cannot face you."
Far from familiar, her attitude had grown even stranger.
During their long flirtation phase, she had been desperate to see him, but now that they were together, shyness led her to deliberately don the mask of a rational, cold female soldier.
The issue was that she hailed from a culture similar to Confucianism.
She was the kind of woman who had worn mourning garb and observed a three-year mourning period when Duke died.
She was far more Confucian than Duke had imagined.
And this was actually an improvement.
Originally, she spoke in full historical drama style, but thanks to Duke's persistent corrections, it had mellowed to this extent.
"Husband."
"I told you to call me by name."
"...Please give me time."
Duke quietly sighed inside his helmet.
In the end, time would resolve everything.
While spring visited Duke, it also arrived in the Providence marquisate.
However, none among the marquisate's bureaucrats had the leisure to enjoy that spring.
"Any word from the Intelligence Department?"
"They captured spies at the border. Planning to send them to Interrogation."
"Public opinion?"
"Captain Hedonius is managing it somehow for now."
"Make no mistakes."
"Yes sir!"
This was because the Esiric royals had arrived with an official armistice agreement alongside the spring.
Thus, the war entered a stalemate, leading to an indefinite armistice.
The problem was that the one who had appeared at the negotiation table was the SS Honor Guard's 2nd Company Commander.
Rex, ever selective about appearances, had no desire to negotiate personally.
Sending the madman Duke might result in him suddenly strangling the diplomat at the table,
and the dark elf adjutant (former 1st Company Commander) had eyes gleaming with strange lust for conquest lately.
The rice-ruining 3rd Company Commander Remesis was obviously out of the question.
That left only the 2nd Company Commander.
Fortunately, the 2nd was quite normal aside from his occasional trial-talk.
Moreover, as the most rational and silver-tongued among them, Rex trusted him and sent him as the diplomat.
And what returned was...
"My liege! I have officially secured duchy status!"
Mountains of even more, even larger workloads.
Seeing the 2nd Company Commander report excitedly like a retriever returning with a mortar shell in its mouth, Rex collapsed into bed from sheer joy.
If there was one fact he had overlooked, it was that the 2nd Company Commander's tongue was far too silver for Rex's comfort.
He knew exactly what leverage he held in negotiations and used it to gain the upper hand.
- "Do you really think you can manage those empty territories?"
In the recent war, Duke had beheaded barons and counts from the walls, leaving their territories ownerless.
Now that the war was in stalemate, other lords coveted those chaotic lands, but the 2nd had preempted them.
- "Got the confidence to digest them? Fail, and we'll devour you too."
- "Can Marquis Providence really digest them?"
The 2nd Company Commander had shoved his face close to the diplomat saying that and burst into maniacal laughter.
- "Trials we cannot slay are what make us stronger. After the ordeals we've overcome, this is child's play."
And so, even the empty territories were annexed to Providence under the 2nd's silver tongue.
As a result, Rex had gone from marquis to duke.
Surprisingly, this didn't deviate much from the original story's flow.
In the original, Rex's subordinates weren't overflowing with superhumans like now, but in the land-grab game using ordinary soldiers, Rex had the edge and eventually claimed the duke's seat.
Of course, this world's Rex had taken a far more forceful path than the original.
Faced with administration suddenly ballooned to duchy size, Rex cried out with the exact same line as his original parallel self.
"Me, a northern pig duke...! Me, of the Kim dynasty!!"
In a certain sense, it was spot on.
His duchy had unified the northern Esiric Kingdom and drawn a ceasefire line with the southern royals.
Heck, Rex even held nukes in his hand.
"Haha... me, a pig duke..."
Rex could only marvel in exasperation.
He had merely thrashed about to survive; he had never dreamed of founding a new nation.
But as always, his vassals overinterpreted his survival struggles...
- 'Aha! My liege plans to topple the royals and build a new kingdom!'
And thus, the duchy was born.
In any world, those who made enemies of the royals had only two choices.
Fail and become traitors, or succeed and become founding monarchs.
In that sense, Rex's lingering dream of living a leisurely life as a moderate city voter was now an impossible delusion.
In any case, this spring was hellish for the duchy's bureaucrats.
Under Rex's farm-focused policies, spring and fall farming seasons already brought insane workloads.
Yet the damn Esiric royals, under the guise of armistice, kept sending spies and saboteurs, tripling the bureaucrats' tasks.
"You fucking bastard shits!! Leave the fertilizer warehouse alone! Come summer, I'll rain shitbombs on those southern fuckers' heads!"
There was an incident where a bureaucrat's heavy dialect outburst made Duke and Rex flinch, but overall, the duchy was bustling.
While Rex and the civil officials were being shredded,
Duke waited on the capital's walls for someone.
Several hours later.
The person Duke awaited trudged up to the walls.
It was the blind swordsman returning to the capital after the long war.
Duke halted the blind swordsman at the Crossing Bridge.
"Long time no see, Peter."
"This old man's been back from the front barely a day, you bastard. Let me in nicely and let me rest."
"Fine. But let's settle this first."
Shing.
Duke's beloved sword Durandal let out a heavy sound as it cleaved the air.
The greatsword's tip halted right before the old man's nose.
"End your wandering now and choose. The empire of the past, or the empire of the future."
The old man's milky, cataract-clouded eyes gazed at Duke.
"Must it be said here?"
"I am now a knight of the newborn Providence Duchy. There is no ground in this duchy for the specter of the empire to tread."
"Sigh, I always think it, but you're enviable."
How could someone be so upright?
He stood in stark contrast to a certain old man who still clung to lingering regrets over failing to fully serve his fallen empire.
Of course, it was an empire that deserved to fall, but guilt over unfulfilled duty made it hard for the old man to abandon it easily.
Toward such a Peter, Duke spat words akin to poetry.
"What matter the name of the nation, be it this or that? Behold the essence. Did you swear loyalty to a nation called Hexion, or to the people living upon this land?"
At those words, Peter's lips trembled repeatedly before he replied in a quavering voice.
"What I was loyal to."
The old man barely squeezed out the words.
"What I wished to protect, even if I became bleached bones and turned to soil, was simply a land where even the blind like me could live without worry."
At that, Duke's sword tip lowered slightly.
"Understood. That resolve—keep it to the end, without wandering."
"Even if it means dying a hundred deaths, I shall protect it."
The old man smiled in relief.
Duke, too, felt relief inside his helmet.
'How was that? Pretty poetic, right? The historians must have recorded it well.'
Duke was already excited at the thought of sneaking into the records office midweek to check the dialogue.