Just a Lunatic
This guy’s just a total lunatic, isn’t he?
“Yes. I’ll do as you say.”
“Hm?”
“That mission, I mean.”
Kill Julian.
The purpose of the mission had only grown more solid.
“As you command, Your Grace.”
“You can call me your future husband, you know.”
“As you command, Your Grace. I’ll finish the job quickly and return.”
I decided to wrap it up exactly the way he wanted. Tonight, if possible.
“Then I wish you a peaceful night.”
I offered my farewell and returned to the guest room.
“What was that? Who was it?”
Veronica, who had claimed she was going to sleep, was wide awake and asked the moment I stepped in.
“Just someone I know.”
“You sure know a lot of rich people… Well, I guess that makes sense.”
Julian was a bit more than “just rich,” but whatever.
“Makes sense how?”
“Rich guys come to District 6 all the time. As your clients.”
Ever since I took over as Karma, Houndry had shut down that particular line of business long ago. But the old reputation still stuck, so Veronica spoke as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Let her think what she wanted.
“We’ll be there soon. Why don’t you get some sleep?”
The moment the words left my mouth, news came that all of Julian’s luggage had been unloaded and the train was about to depart.
I went straight to meet Grand Duke Oscar.
Of course I was going alone—I had received the invitation in my capacity as Amelia’s knight.
I told Veronica to rest until there was something for her to do.
Slip—
I used the ring to change into the most luxurious yet understated attire I could manage, and at the same time formed the royal crest over my left breast.
That should be enough for the estate to recognize me and open the gates.
Grand Duke Oscar’s mansion was less an elegant villa and more a fortress carved out of an entire mountain range.
They must have been told I was coming. The instant they confirmed my identity, two servants rushed out and heaved the black iron main gate open with all their strength.
The massive doors swung wide with a heavy, grinding sound.
“Thank you for accepting the invitation, Sir Hasgard.”
The deep voice hit my eardrums the moment I stepped into the entrance hall.
Grand Duke Oscar himself.
One of the seven great lords.
I had expected a margrave to be seated on something like a throne in an audience chamber, chin raised high. Instead he had come all the way out to the foyer and was waiting for me halfway down the staircase that connected the first and second floors.
Moments later Oscar, a crimson pelt draped over his shoulders, descended the stairs.
With every step his boots scraped the floor, producing a metallic ring.
If Duke Julian armored himself in perfume and silk embroidery, Grand Duke Oscar was a red-hot lump of iron straight from the forge.
In the center of the hall a man who looked exactly like one of those rough, colossal marble statues carved from ore just hauled out of the mines strode forward with heavy footfalls.
“It is I who should thank you for the invitation.”
I bent one knee and offered a formal greeting that, even to my own eyes, looked awkward.
Soon the Grand Duke’s blackened leather boots came to a stop at the edge of my lowered field of vision.
“No need for all that ceremony. Come on, don’t just stand there—this way.”
Oscar urged me along without preamble.
I had been planning to try proper etiquette for the first time on this occasion, but Oscar clearly didn’t care for it.
Which suited me fine.
Trying to do something I never did had felt awkward anyway.
I thought we would head to the Grand Duke’s audience chamber, but Oscar turned left across the hall and led the way without pause.
I followed him into a dining hall with an extraordinarily high ceiling.
So we were going to eat first, then?
There was something oddly familiar—almost like the scent of home—about the way Oscar made sure his guest was fed before anything else.
But contrary to my expectations, what Oscar had prepared was not a meal.
“Sit. Wet your throat first.”
Not food. Liquor.
Day drinking.
He didn’t even ask whether I usually drank; he simply held out a glass filled to the brim, as if of course I would accept.
I didn’t refuse. I drained it.
When I raised the glass to my lips, the hazy focus beyond the rim suggested Oscar was smiling with satisfaction.
Even though we sat at opposite ends of a long table, the Grand Duke’s imposing presence made him stand out clearly even from a distance.
Square jaw. Sharp brows and thick black hair.
The muscles that threatened to burst free even under the crimson pelt proved he was no mere ruler who sat around issuing orders.
Mines. Ore.
He had the solid build of a miner.
Perhaps that was why I didn’t particularly enjoy the way his green eyes tracked my every movement.
Whether he intended it or not,
I felt the pressure.
“You’ve come a long way. I invited you so we could speak frankly.”
Grand Duke Oscar didn’t seem to care for small talk; he went straight to the point.
I was the type whose conversation consisted mostly of jokes, so I wondered if we would clash… but his straightforwardness wasn’t a bad thing either.
“I would like to hear how our distinguished guest views the current state of the war.”
He moistened his lips with liquor as he spoke.
“Distinguished guest.”
An odd title to throw out of nowhere.
And he had said it clearly:
the state of the war.
He spoke as if a war like the one a hundred years ago had already begun.
“The state of the war… you say.”
I had never met anyone like him before.
Everyone else only hoped such a thing would never happen. I had never encountered someone who, like Oscar, already treated it as fact.
Amelia and Blash, to whom I had deliberately fed clues in order to pull them into my plans, were relatively proactive about confronting the Death God Cult. But for a Grand Duke who wasn’t even one of the people around me to think the same way was genuinely surprising.
And of course the natural thought followed.
If there had been more people like him in the previous life…
Things might never have reached the worst, might never have reached the apocalypse.
“It isn’t all that bad.”
I answered with genuine pleasure, and he gave a low “Hmm,” signaling me to continue.
“The one who died at the Magic Tower this time was an executive of the Death God Cult. They have lost considerable fighting strength.”
“I see. Thanks to your efforts, no doubt. But ‘not all that bad’… That sounds as though the situation isn’t particularly good either.”
“I meant we cannot afford to lower our guard. We never know when they will thrash about in desperation.”
“Then I shall go as well.”
Grand Duke Oscar dropped the heavy declaration as if it were nothing.
“Why so surprised? You already know I decided to support the Seventh Princess.”
“But I never imagined Your Grace would take the field yourself…”
“It means nothing if I don’t go myself.”
Oscar spoke with absolute confidence.
The complete opposite of Julian.
“Sir Hasgard, great affairs must be handled by nobles like us.”
“Nobles like us,” he said…
Comparing a margrave to a mere count’s house was almost embarrassing.
“The ignorant common folk ought to look up to men like us as their model. Even if blood must be spilled, it must be the blood of the noble and pure like ourselves.”
The Grand Duke spat out such discriminatory words without the slightest hesitation, revealing his will.
Because of that, it became even harder to pin down his nature.
In short—whether he was a good man or a bad one.
I couldn’t tell.
“In your eyes, do I lack anything? Wealth and honor, the trust of my people, the southern mines all in my hands, and above all a healthy body. I possess everything so completely that I could die this very moment without a single regret.”
Oscar’s confidence aside, he wasn’t wrong.
A margrave second only to the king—how could he be lacking?
“There is only one thing that still bothers me: I have not yet decided where I will die. No—more precisely, I have decided, but I have not yet reached it. Sir Hasgard, I do not wish to be buried in a sunny place. What does it matter whether the bed I lie in is sunlit or shaded when I will not rise again?”
He set the empty glass on the table and shot a glance at a servant to refill it.
“My tombstone will say, as my predecessors’ did, that I was such-and-such generation head of a noble and pure ducal house. But what good is that? Being remembered as a man who borrowed the name of a family built by his ancestors, lived a few decades, and died… no matter how I look at it, that is not like me.”
In other words, it simply wasn’t cool enough.
I was beginning to understand what kind of man Oscar was.
Men obsessed with manhood existed everywhere.
“Here lies Oscar Valencia, a man among men.”
From the moment he had suddenly announced his support for the Seventh Princess and declared he would throw himself into the war, I had known he was no ordinary person.
As expected, he was completely unhinged.
“That would be enough.”
A tiger leaves its hide when it dies; a man leaves his name.
Then Oscar was a man who wanted to leave his name as a tiger.
“Your Grace appears healthier than anyone, yet why are you already searching for a place to die? Could it be…?”
“As you can see, as I said. Perfectly healthy.”
Oscar spread his arms as if to show off his muscles.
“There is no tragic tale of a terminal illness that makes me want to burn this body out. I simply wish to be remembered as a warrior.”
He was so un-noble for a noble that I actually lost my words.
A warrior.
A word choice far too distant from a margrave.
“I will gratefully accept your aid. However—”
“However?”
“A battlefield is neither a graveyard prepared solely for Your Grace nor a land of opportunity. It is hell where ordinary, innocent people are simply crushed under the footsteps of giants and die. Nothing more, nothing less.”
“You speak as if you have experienced it yourself.”
“Therefore, if that is Your Grace’s will, then stake everything and take the lead. Prepare yourself to be crushed and die just like the soldiers.”
“…Hah! I knew it. I had never met you, yet I thought we would understand each other perfectly!”
He gulped down the liquor and set the glass down with a hearty slam.
“Of course that is my intention! If I ever turn tail in front of the enemy, you have my permission to cut off my head yourself! I swear it!”
To that extent?
I had expected some political scheme…
This guy’s just a total lunatic…?
The Grand Duke was nothing more than a middle-aged man who had achieved everything and then fallen into boredom.
High risk, high return. A madman addicted to dopamine showers.
That was the man called Oscar.
Not a lofty margrave—more like a gambler.
I had no particular desire to dig deeper, yet I had the feeling that if I peeled back this uncle’s layers, quite a lot would come out.
Whether Oscar truly was a man among men… I would know if I watched a little longer.
“That is why I invited you. Soldiers, horses, iron, war supplies—everything is ready, yet a few problems remain unsolved.”
“I take it there is something I can help with.”
“A few things, yes.”
Oscar spoke frankly, and I actually found that convenient.
I had a few things I wanted from him as well.
Being this open made the give-and-take much easier.
“First and most important is the route of march. As you know, loading men and matériel onto a train is the fastest and most efficient method. Otherwise we would have to go around the mountain range, which makes reaching the Royal Capital difficult.”
“But if we use the train, along the way we would—”
“Pass through that bastard Julian’s territory.”
I knew perfectly well; we had stopped there as a waypoint.
“You know Julian too, of course. He is the Seventh Princess’s fiancé. Not long ago I made a polite request for cooperation, and he refused me flat. Even though we both support the same Seventh Princess. The bastard was terrified my soldiers would get off the train and attack him.”
So he suspected a Trojan-horse situation.
I couldn’t say I didn’t understand Julian’s thinking.
“The second problem is that even if Julian simply lets us through, that itself becomes a problem.”
“Because it would become obvious that Your Grace’s forces have left their territory.”
“Exactly. A man like him would strike at the opening.”
The thought crossed my mind that if he was that worried he could simply stay put, but I couldn’t exactly turn away someone offering help.
Besides, I had business with Julian myself.
“I understand. I will handle it cleanly without any aftermath…”
“So I would like you to pass a message to the Seventh Princess asking her to persuade her fiancé… Hmm?”
…Huh?
“Sir Hasgard, I did not mean for you to kill him… You are a more ruthless man than you look…”
I had fully expected the next words to be “so kill him”…
The war maniac I had clearly labeled a lunatic was now clicking his tongue at how cruel I was…
“That would be simple, but it is not so easy, is it? One cannot simply storm a ducal house alone. And he is the Seventh Princess’s fiancé; one cannot do such a thing.”
“I will find a way.”
I ended the conversation there for the moment, but I still had no intention of leaving Julian alive.
I’ll just keep things simple.
That night.
Slip—
I used the ring to change into an all-black outfit.
Until now I had only ever met or been chased by assassins wearing clothes like these; this was the first time I was the one putting on the act.
I decided to storm the ducal house alone.
Through the front gate.
Whoosh—!
I kept using the ring so that the spirits would appear as black flames.
Once I finished dressing the part, it looked exactly like black magic.
Nothing could have been more Death-God-Cult-like.
I was starting to understand why Chronos liked this aesthetic.
This was the south anyway; no one here would recognize Karma.
When all was said and done, the identity of Karma was still the most useful tool for moments like this.
Wooooong—
The instant the black flames touched the front gate of Julian’s mansion, a massive explosion rocked the night, and the soldiers inside the estate jolted awake.