Chapter 124
Chapter 124
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: Vine
Chapter: 124
Chapter Title: The Lake Knight
-----------------------------------------------------------------
“Durak!”
“The Lake Knight!?”
While Lucas stood there dumbfounded, the knighted mercenaries jumped in surprise and buzzed with excitement.
The Lake Knight, known as the right-hand man of the legendary Knight King Aiden, who first unified Brantia.
Even after the Aiden dynasty fell, countless dynasties that challenged Brantia’s hegemony courted the Durak family, but they refused them all and remained Brantia’s foremost knightly house.
There was even a saying: “He who claims the three Lake Knights may aim for the throne.” Such was the prestige of the Durak family in Brantia.
“Y-You’re truly a knight of the Durak family? Proof...”
“Impersonating Durak’s honor in Brantia? What a joke.”
Lanslo chuckled and drew his spear. Lucas and the knights paled in shock.
Most would think of archery first for an elf knight, but in Brantia, spear mastery was more renowned among them—thanks to the Durak family.
“What do you think you’re doing!? Even if you’re a Durak knight, this is my territory! How dare you harass me on Crollmarin land...”
“Lord Lucas Crollmarin. You stand accused of the murder of Sir Harel Bosch and of commissioning the murder of Sir Graham Crollmarin. Come quietly while I’m asking nicely.”
“...!”
Lucas’s face drained of color in an instant.
The knights were equally stunned, their expressions blank.
It also suddenly made sense why Lucas had fled the castle the moment he arrived.
“Everyone.”
Grrrrr!
At Lanslo’s command, the Perseos Beowulf warriors simultaneously transformed into lycanthropes.
“I-I surrender!”
“We yield! We yield!”
“A commissioned murder against the former lord? I had nothing to do with it!”
True to their mercenary roots, these knights cared nothing for faith or honor—only sharp instincts—and one by one, they dropped their weapons.
“Urk! Graaaah!”
In that moment, the dazed Lucas suddenly drew his longsword and charged ferociously.
Thwack!
“Gah!”
Struck in the face by Lanslo’s spear, Lucas tumbled straight from his saddle.
“Am I starting to take after Sir Eugene?”
For a man who’d beaten a count unconscious in broad daylight, he looked remarkably serene.
* * *
“...!”
The nobles of Crollmarin Castle were at a loss for words.
Faced with the unprecedented scandal of a count and his territory’s knight conspiring to murder each other’s fathers, the nobles could only gape in shock.
Of course, some refused to believe this bombshell and tried to protest or argue.
But the witness—and murderer—bound tightly and kneeling before them was a problem.
“He threatened that if I didn’t obey, he’d hold me responsible for the defeat and slaughter my father, not to mention everyone in House Bosch! To save my household, I had no choice... Sob! I don’t dare beg forgiveness! But please! Show mercy and spare my family at least!”
The one weeping rivers of tears and snot was none other than Calbern Bosch.
When the head of a family that had served as Crollmarin knights for generations turned himself in and testified, it was impossible not to believe.
Above all, the fact that “outsiders” were witnessing this scene cowed them.
With a high vampire noble—who had slain the beast king of Marin Forest and every Roamer monster there—along with his subordinates watching, no one dared act rashly.
“Th-Then what do we do now?”
“What do we do? It’s the murder of the former count and the territory’s knight. We hold a trial.”
“Indeed. We must convene honorable and esteemed nobles for a formal trial.”
“No, sir! You want to spread this disgrace far and wide?”
“Ah, then what? Shall we hold our own trial and condemn the count ourselves?”
“No, that’s...”
The nobles debated heatedly. But their eyes kept flicking nervously toward Eugene.
Even for a patricidal crime deserving death, the victim was the lord they’d served until now. That changed things.
Not one noble present wanted to bear the responsibility of pronouncing the count’s death sentence.
In such a situation, Eugene made a perfect scapegoat.
A foreigner and other race he might be, but he more than fulfilled the “honorable and esteemed noble” requirement.
“Sir Eugene! What are your thoughts?”
“Y-Yes! You’re the one who can judge this fairly, aren’t you, Sir Eugene?”
“Please share your esteemed opinion.”
The nobles, sharp-eyed despite their rough manners, swarmed Eugene.
‘Of course.’
He was an outsider, after all.
Eugene, who’d been waiting for them to make the first move, pretended to ponder before speaking calmly.
“Hmm. Since you all insist, I’ll share my thoughts.”
“Y-Yes.”
The nobles gazed at him like chicks eyeing a parent bird with food.
“First off. No need for other nobles to judge this case.”
“Yes? Why not?”
“A disgrace in Crollmarin. Crollmarin’s honorable men must end it. That’s my view.”
“Ooh!”
A light compliment to Crollmarin, and the nobles brightened.
“Wise words indeed, sir. But with just us...”
“If the new Crollmarin Count renders judgment, no issue. That’s what I think.”
“Yes? New count, you say?”
“W-Wait! Are you saying you’ll elevate one of us to count?”
“Hmm!”
Eugene inwardly clicked his tongue at the nobles torn between greed and responsibility, then glanced aside.
“Former Crollmarin Count. Has a direct heir. A son.”
“Yes!?”
The nobles’ eyes widened at this bombshell, naturally following Eugene’s gaze.
“M-Master?”
“Come here.”
As eyes focused on him in an instant, the flustered Luke received Eugene’s beckoning.
With Luke at his side, Eugene coldly addressed Calbern, who looked up with a face of total resignation.
“Sir Calbern Bosch. Tell the truth.”
“...!?”
The nobles’ gazes snapped back to Calbern.
Calbern bit his lip hard, let out a long sigh, and revealed the secret known only to two in the world.
“Sir Eugene’s squire, Luke Bosch—no, young Lord Luke Crollmarin... is not my father’s son. He’s the bastard of the former Crollmarin Count.”
“What!?”
The impact crushed the hall as fiercely as Calbern’s murder confession.
“As you all know, the late countess was fiercely jealous. So the former count couldn’t reveal his blood son, young Lord Luke. Thus...”
He entrusted Luke to his most trusted knight, Sir Harel Bosch.
Not as a Crollmarin, but to live as a Bosch bastard.
Sir Harel Bosch gladly accepted his liege’s request. Having lost his wife early, another child posed no issue.
“Th-Then! The reason he sent that fellow—no, young Lord Luke—to the battlefield in his place...”
At the quick-witted noble’s words, Calbern nodded grimly.
“Yes. As you suspect. Count Lucas Crollmarin learned young Lord Luke was his half-brother. The former count told him during his illness. And... and...”
Unable to continue, Calbern heard Eugene whisper low.
“Almost there. Your only path to survival.”
“Urk!”
Gritting his teeth, Calbern squeezed his eyes shut and shouted.
“Lucas Crollmarin is not the former count’s son! He was born of the countess and her own brother, Baron Liward! She rushed the marriage to hide her illicit pregnancy!”
“Eek!?”
“But Lucas Crollmarin learned the truth... and sent young Lord Luke to the battlefield in his place, fearing he’d be cast out. Sob!”
“S-Such a thing...”
“Insane. They’re all insane...”
The shock was so great some nobles collapsed to the floor.
“Proof of Sir Calbern’s words. This.”
Eugene showed the nobles the letters the former Crollmarin Count had sent to Sir Bosch.
That discovery—letters his father had secretly kept—was the starting point of Calbern’s collusion with Lucas.
‘I didn’t know Lucas Crollmarin was a product of incest, but...’
It solidified the justification to oust Lucas and elevate Luke as the new “Crollmarin Count.”
Eugene had half-expected to resort to force, but this was practically shoving the countship onto Luke.
“M-Master? What’s all this?”
Reeling from the successive shocks, Luke blinked up at Eugene with trembling eyes.
“What is it?”
Eugene placed a hand on his shoulder and smiled meaningfully.
“You’re the new Crollmarin Count as of today. Isn’t that right, sirs?”
His gaze swept the nobles—cold and ruthless, truly vampiric, utterly unlike the look he gave Luke.
“...!”
Snapping to attention, the nobles exchanged glances, then dropped to one knee as one and cried out.
“We greet our liege, the Crollmarin Count! Lake spirit! Bless the master of Crollmarin!”
The youth who had once been a slave, lucky to become a knight’s squire, had reclaimed his true fate as Crollmarin Count.
“Kieeeek! I won’t accept this! Squire Number Two daring to become count before my master!? Everyone, you know this is all a lie... Gah!”
The blabbering spirit got his due fate as well.
* * *
Events proceeded swiftly after that.
This scandal—if leaked—would draw the scorn of every noble house in Brantia, the worst in Crollmarin Count history. The nobles wanted it buried as quickly as possible.
Inciting a son to kill his father was disgraceful enough, but for the man who’d ruled as count to be of another bloodline?
This went beyond mere dishonor.
Thus, they decided to conceal Lucas’s incestuous birth and publicize only his patricide commission.
Kin slaying for power happened often enough; punish the culprits decisively, and it could be contained.
Some gossip was inevitable, of course.
In the end, Lucas—the root of it all—was sentenced to death. Ten minutes later, his head rolled, and his body was hung at Crollmarin Castle’s gate.
Calbern Bosch, guilty but knightly in confessing fully after surrendering, received leniency. His lack of choice under threat was considered.
He and his house lost all status, reduced entirely to serfs.
Luke, naturally, became Crollmarin Count.
The young orthodox count received oaths of loyalty from knights and nobles vying for position.
Less from expectation of the youth than fear of the vampire high noble standing behind as his guardian.
‘Sir Eugene will leave the territory soon, right?’
‘Then the new count will rely on us.’
Amid the scheming nobles, young Count Luke declared:
“As a knight, I am not yet complete. Thus, I will continue to follow my master, Sir Eugene.”
“Yes!?”
The nobles gaped in dismay.
Then, the highest-status man present—after Luke and Eugene, and perhaps more renowned in Brantia than both—stepped forward with a smile.
“Count Crollmarin wishes to fulfill his duties as Sir Eugene’s squire before formal investiture. And when that time comes, I, Lanslo of Durak, will gladly serve as witness.”
“...!”
The witness at his investiture from Brantia’s oldest, most honorable knightly house!
An honor even rare royal houses couldn’t claim—the nobles’ jaws dropped.
Naturally, the same thought struck them all.
‘Perhaps our Crollmarin could claim a share of Brantia’s hegemony?’
‘Then we must first win over Sir Eugene!’
Rough they might be, but these nobles had instincts second to none.
(To be continued)
-----------------------------------------------------------------