5. A Conflict Named Desire - 02
5. A Conflict Named Desire - 02
A thousand years ago, the entire continent was engulfed in the flames of war. It was an era of extreme chaos, where dozens of nations rose and fell across the land, all leveling their spears and swords at one another. A brutal era in which countless lives were pointlessly trampled on the battlefield, all for the desires of a handful of power-holders. It was also a savage age where the common folk groaned beneath the heels of marching soldiers, crushed by a war that seemed to have no end in sight.
In the end, people grew weary. They were exhausted by the endless cycle of meaningless war. They grew disillusioned by the countless lives wasted on senseless battlefields. They came to feel nothing but disgust for everything that defined that age.
So the people prayed. They prayed for an end to the meaningless bloodshed, for a peaceful era where tomorrow could be as certain as yesterday. Carrying these hopes and wishes deep within their hearts, they offered fervent prayers to the Goddess.
And then, as if embodying the collective will of the masses, a man appeared. No one knew where he came from or what he had done before. But from the moment he arrived, he subjugated everything in his path with his overwhelming personal might and unique, dominating charisma. He was said to possess the strength of ten thousand soldiers all on his own, and in a mere decade, he united a third of the continent, succeeding in ending all the wars that had ravaged the land.
That man's name was Debhart. He was the great progenitor of the imperial family that would reign as masters of the Empire for a thousand years.
It is also said that Debhart had four loyal lieutenants who aided him more than any other during the founding of the Empire. In return, Debhart granted them and their descendants the right to seek an audience with him at any time, and it is told that he prayed for their glory to last for generations to come.
Their names were Estel, Turnizen, Dekaraznan, and Crussel.
This was the origin of the imperial family that could be called the master of the continent, and the glorious Four Great Ducal Houses that serve them.
Yet upon hearing this tale, many may find one detail puzzling. In children's storybooks, there is usually a wizard thrown in as a side-note, pulling fire or ice from their hands for the sake of entertainment. But such figures are conspicuously absent from the founding myth of the Empire. It's a remarkable contrast to today's mages, who strut around with their chests puffed out, claiming to be the nobles of nobles.
The reason mages are absent from the Empire's founding myth is simple: a thousand years ago, the standard of magic was so pathetic it bears no comparison to today's. Nowadays, magic can cause all manner of bizarre phenomena, but back then, it was apparently at the level of simply reproducing localized natural phenomena artificially.
To be fair, even that level of power would have been a significant variable on the battlefield. Yet the warriors who cut down their enemies at the vanguard of the army found the behavior of the mages utterly distasteful. They showed no hesitation in sneering at the magic-users, calling them fools for hurling spells from a safe distance, unlike themselves, who risked their lives fighting the enemy face-to-face.
Among them, the one documented to have held a particular dislike for mages was none other than my glorious ancestor, the first Duke Estel. He is said to have been a warrior to the marrow, a man who reportedly considered the fireballs mages threw to be less impressive than the embers from a pipe.
And at that time, the Archmage under Debhart's command, Castana, intensely disliked Estel for voicing such opinions so openly, and eventually the two of them ended up rolling around on the ground in a brawl.
The result went without saying. Estel, who had reached the Master Realm, beat Archmage Castana black and blue, quite literally.
However, that wasn't the end of their ill-fated relationship. After all the wars on the continent had ended, when Debhart awarded lands to his subordinates, he assigned Castana's territory right next to the Estel Territory.
What's even more astonishing is that neither Estel nor Castana voiced any objection to Debhart's decision. It makes me think that Debhart, for turning two people bound by such enmity into neighbors, and both Estel and Castana, for quietly nodding along, were all a little unhinged.
From a common-sense standpoint, how could he have come up with the remarkable idea of forcing two people who would growl at the mere sight of each other to live as neighbors?
And so, Estel and Castana were forced to become neighbors, but as one would expect, their relationship showed not the slightest improvement. No, if anything, the relationship between the two houses allegedly took a turn for the worse as time went on. Neither Estel nor Castana was content to simply hate each other; they passed that hatred down to their descendants as an inheritance.
In this way, a thousand-year-long tradition of dinner-table education was built. A chain of hatred had begun. As the years passed, this blind hatred only intensified, eventually sublimating into a point of tradition. Now, a thousand years later, the relationship between the two houses has reached a point where one couldn't even call it 'fine' as a lie.
A thousand years ago, the fact that their neighbors beside the Estel Duchy displayed blind hatred at the sight of them posed no problem at all. In the early days of the Empire, House Estel was one of the wealthiest families within it.
The mines of the Estel Duchy produced vast quantities of gold, silver, and other precious metals, while the fertile plains along the Kildern River and elsewhere yielded enormous harvests. Even if the territory next door was home to less-than-friendly neighbors, they had the strength to simply snort and laugh it off.
But as time passed, this dynamic gradually reversed. While the mines of the Estel Duchy closed one by one and the plains lost their fertility, causing the house to walk a path of decline, the House Castana began its steady rise.
This was because the standard of Magic Studies on the continent began to rise, and the status of mages rose right along with it. It was no longer a matter of simply producing fire or ice from one's hands. The study of magic began to integrate with daily life itself, making living far more prosperous. And on the front lines of this advance were the mages of the House Castana.
They developed numerous artifacts that even ordinary people with no knowledge of magic could use without issue, and through this, they succeeded in amassing a truly astonishing fortune. The immense wealth they accumulated over generations grew to such a staggering degree that it could effortlessly overwhelm their declining neighbors.
The sole saving grace for House Estel was that after the gap in status between the two families widened so immensely, the House Castana simply looked upon House Estel with indifference, as one might look at a stray cat, and never directly picked a fight. This meant that even when they happened to meet on official occasions, physical clashes were avoided.
In my memory, any official exchange between the two houses would have been a dim and distant event well over a hundred years ago. So what on earth could their intention be in sending a delegation now?
"...Have the Castanas eaten something foul, Father? For what possible business could they have dispatched a delegation?"
Personally, I had been firmly convinced that if a delegation were to travel between the Estel Ducal House and the House Castana, it would be for nothing less than a declaration of war to kill each other.
"Hmm. It's a rather interesting situation. And not one that's easy to understand, either."
With those words, my father handed me the letter. As I carefully read through the missive, I began to understand exactly why he had said that.
The contents of the letter from the House Castana were simple enough. A massive Fault Zone currently exists between the Estel Duchy and the Castana Marquisate. There was never any need to bother drawing a border; the fault zone itself had served as the boundary between the two territories for roughly a thousand years. And then, about a month ago, a large deposit of Kitelen Ore, which acts as a magical catalyst, was discovered right in the middle of that fault zone.
'...A disgustingly rare metal, ten times more expensive than its weight in gold.'
The side that discovered the Kitelen Ore first was the House Castana. However, because the deposit straddled the territorial boundary, the House Castana must have felt it would be too brazen to simply swallow it up. And so, the letter proposed dispatching a delegation to properly negotiate the ownership and profits regarding the ore.
"....."
But reading this letter, I felt something was off. No, 'off' was an understatement. The feeling of wrongness was so thick I couldn't help but be on edge—a sense of dissonance so strong it demanded my full attention.
'...Does this make any sense?'
At this point in time, to say the power difference between the House Castana and the Estel Ducal House was like that between heaven and earth would still be an understatement. To put it bluntly, even if the House Castana brazenly declared they would monopolize the Kitelen Ore by force, we would be in no position to protest and would have to accept it quietly. Yet the House Castana, which regards the Estel Ducal House as lower than the village dog, is the one making this proposal first?
And, crucially, nothing like this had ever happened before my regression. There was no event where ore was discovered in the Fault Zone, nor any dispatch of a delegation from the House Castana.
I was aware that the actions of the regressor, Kain von Estel, might cause a slight tremor in the very history of the continent, but this seems to leap far beyond that level. What conceivable connection could there be between my return to the past and the discovery of ore in the Fault Zone?
"....."
Yet trying to puzzle over this problem with only my own wits was bound to lead nowhere. Scratching the back of my head, I voiced my thoughts to my father in a low tone.
"...First, we must hear them out. We should listen to whatever nonsense comes out of their mouths with our own ears and judge the situation from there."
"Indeed, I think the same."
My father nodded in agreement.
"Ah, now that I think of it, the chief delegate leading this delegation is someone you know quite well. In that respect, I would like to entrust you with the task of negotiating with the delegation."
"...Someone I know quite well?"
The moment I heard my father's words, my expression contorted. The reason was simple: there was only one person in the House Castana I was personally acquainted with.
"Yes, Bianca. I hear that child has taken the role of chief delegate for this delegation."
"...Pardon?"
In that instant, the reason my mouth fell open without my realizing it was definitely not born solely from the joy of meeting a childhood friend after so long.