Our Lord Has Gone Mad (4)
The day of the Eclipse.
"Ugh. Why does the air feel so heavy?"
I waved my hand through the air for no good reason, trying to brush the weight away. Unfortunately, the effort only made the atmosphere heavier.
"Look at him. Is he seeing things?"
"Should we fetch the apothecary from the village below?"
"He's always been like that. Just leave him be."
"He seems even more unhinged than usual, though?"
"My good man. He's been ranting for a full year that the world would go dark in broad daylight. You expect him to be in his right mind when the day finally arrives? It's been a year. A whole year."
"Tsk. If it were me, I'd have crawled into a hole by now."
Hey. You people. My subjects.
Part of me wanted to call them out on the spot... but I couldn't. They were genuinely, sincerely worried about someone. And of course, that someone was me — Ian Darkest.
So stop looking at me like I'm some pitiful wreck!
I'm right about this!
...If I actually shouted that, they'd drag me straight to a physician, so I settled for a timid little cough.
"Ahem... ahem."
It had been so long since anyone paid me this much attention that the words wouldn't come out right.
I stood atop a shabby earthen wall. Below it stretched the meager defensive lines I'd spent the past year scraping together — every scrap of knowledge and every resource I could muster. Sharpened wooden stakes. Pits dug here and there. And a few piles of stones stacked precariously along the ramparts.
"Tsk tsk. Just look at that mess. He's completely lost it. Monsters are coming, he says — and he thinks that junk is going to stop them?"
The voice rising from the base of the wall dripped with open mockery.
My number-one soldier: Granny Elara.
Arms folded, she clicked her tongue and stared up at me.
"The sun goes down today and the world turns dark and monsters come pouring out? A stray dog would laugh at that. The lord got beaten down by his family so hard he finally cracked. Completely cracked."
Huh. That's weird.
Why does that sting so much?
Had I been training her swordsmanship this whole time, or her trash-talking?
Still, I couldn't very well scold my first and finest troop. Seorigol's total military force numbered exactly two, and half of that force was currently hiding behind a massive oak tree.
"...Grrrr."
A snow leopard beastkin girl with silver hair and wary eyes — Anya — crouched low, watching me with her whole body coiled tight. The moment our eyes met, she let out a low growl and sank even deeper into cover.
Reality really was a bitter pill.
Ah, how I missed microtransactions. Just click the payment button and get stronger. Those were the days.
For the past year, I'd prepared for this day while being treated like a lunatic. At the Academy I'd become a laughingstock. To my own people, I was the eccentric lord no one could understand.
So what?
Seorigol was my legitimate fief. Whether people called me crazy or not, I did what needed doing.
"Don't forget! The moment the world starts going dark, you evacuate to the designated underground cellars immediately! Bar the doors tight and do not come out under any circumstances!"
My shout earned nothing but snorts of dismissal.
"Yeees, yeees, we hear you, my lord~"
"How's that bright sun supposed to just up and set all of a sudden... honestly..."
They grumbled, but they still moved. Hauling dry firewood. Filling water casks. Checking emergency rations.
Fine.
So what if I didn't have powerhouse heroes bought with real money? So what if I lacked knights swinging radiant sword auras, dragonkin breathing dragonfire, mages warping time and space, or priests healing allies with sacred power?
"Hey, Hans! That's the lord's order! Dig that pit wider! A goblin couldn't even fit in there!"
These people, following me like this...
"Argh, seriously! How many of us have to suffer because of this crazy lord?!"
They called me a madman, but they still followed...
"Bigger than that! You planning to bury the lord in a hole that small?"
...Ahem.
At this rate, I might end up buried instead of the monsters.
That was the thought running through my head when it happened.
"There! What's that?!"
One villager's shout snapped every gaze toward the single road leading into Seorigol. A group was approaching through a cloud of dust.
"C-could it be monsters?"
"The lord wasn't crazy after all!"
Their sudden faith was almost enough to bring tears to my eyes. Unfortunately, they were wrong. Through the dust, I could see a flag snapping in the wind. Not monsters. People.
"That's the Darkest family crest!"
"Good heavens — the main house sent troops?"
The murmuring swelled. Shocked stares locked onto me from every direction. Reasonable enough — I was the only reason anyone would dispatch soldiers to a backwater like this.
"For that bastard son?"
"What on earth is going on?"
Life on barren land made people rough with their words. Yeah. I'd like to believe that was all it was.
Their astonishment was justified, though. For more than twenty years, the Darkest family had treated me like I didn't exist — despised me like vermin and exiled me to this wasteland. And now that same family had sent troops for my sake?
Of course everyone was stunned. Even I was a little surprised.
Honestly, I figured no one would come.
A request for reinforcements.
I'd made all kinds of preparations for the Eclipse, but the piece I'd poured the most effort into was this request. The strategy for the Eclipse episode had always been simple: raise the absolute combat power of your territory. And the easiest, most reliable way to do that was to summon heroes or troops.
The problem was that I had neither money nor anything else of value...
— Clank. Clank.
A few mounted knights and foot soldiers. They weren't heroes, but in the current situation they were a massive boost to our fighting strength.
Good thing I swallowed my pride and went begging at the family estate.
I'd had to endure a little humiliation — okay, a lot of humiliation — but so what? I was a bastard son. I didn't have any honor left to lose.
— Hiiiiiing!
A mounted knight strode up before me and dismounted. Gleaming armor. A neatly trimmed beard. Arrogant eyes. He removed a helmet stamped with the Darkest knight order's crest and offered a perfunctory bow.
"I present myself before Lord Ian Darkest. I have arrived under orders from Lord Lionel Darkest."
The knight who had dismounted bowed with the bare minimum of courtesy. His name was Caelen — the eldest son's closest retainer, infamous even within the family for his arrogance and cruelty.
"Sir Caelen. Thank you for making the long journey."
Caelen's lips curled just slightly as he answered. His voice was perfectly polite, but the mockery underneath was impossible to hide.
"Hardly anything worth calling hard work. When the young master personally visited the family estate to request support against some 'astronomical anomaly' that might occur in this remote frontier... how could we possibly turn him away?"
He put deliberate weight on young master — a clear jab at the bastard standing in front of him.
"I also heard the people of the fief have been growing anxious. Great concern over their lord's state of health, apparently. Lord Lionel Darkest was especially worried, and so he dispatched me and my men to... observe the situation. And should any genuine 'anomaly' occur, to offer what humble assistance we can."
The way he stressed observe and anomaly dripped with contempt. This wasn't the attitude of a man bracing for a catastrophe like the Eclipse. This was the attitude of a man who believed I was the madman — and that the real problem was whatever mess my madness might cause.
...Figures.
Absurd delusions. An end-of-the-world theory that made no sense. A half-brother who was little more than a human punching bag, showing up at the family estate to beg for troops over that nonsense. There was no way Lionel would let an opportunity like this slip by.
Even so, I held out my hand to Caelen.
"Whatever the case, I'll be counting on you."
".......?"
Caelen stared at my outstretched hand, looking genuinely thrown. His eyes said, You weren't this kind of person before.
Fair enough. The old me had been a sniveling, inferior wreck whenever anything related to the family came up — pure bastard-son complex. But the me standing here now had a modern man's values installed.
So what if I was a bastard?
They'd come to mock me? Fine. That didn't matter either. Monsters were going to come charging in the second they laid eyes on us, hungry to devour everything in sight. Did these guys really think they could just stand there and not cut them down?
Whether they laughed at me right now or not, the fact remained: they were my combat power. So I was counting on them. If they wanted to stay alive, they'd better start slicing monsters.
"Quite the... impressive preparations you've made, Lord Darkest."
Caelen reluctantly clasped my hand, then cleared his throat and looked around.
"Almost as if the end of the world truly were coming. Or perhaps... the end has already swept through this place. Haha."
His subordinates laughed along with their superior's sneer. I said nothing and simply smiled back.
Let's see who laughs last.
"The world turns black the moment the sun reaches the center of the sky, was it? I shall look forward to it, young master."
Still smirking, Caelen led his soldiers to a spot near the wall. They settled in as if they'd come on a picnic — chatting idly, pointing at me with open mockery.
Time began to crawl.
The villagers' initial tension faded, and one by one they started grumbling again.
"What is this? The sun's high in the sky and nothing's happening."
"Right? We wasted a whole day of farm work because of the lord."
"Tsk tsk. Just give it up already. Aren't you embarrassed in front of those family knights?"
Granny Elara didn't even bother lowering her voice.
"Hey, lord-boy! Enough already! The sun's blazing and you're still going on about the world turning black?!"
I could feel their irritation peaking. I looked up at the sky.
The sun had drifted — just barely — off true center.
"...Soon."
I answered quietly. Even that certainty only earned louder laughter. Caelen outright threw his head back and roared.
"Hahaha! Soon, you say? Young master, your imagination truly is extraordinary! On a day this clear, what on earth could possibly—!"
Caelen's words cut off mid-sentence.
In an instant.
With no warning at all.
The color of the world began to change.
The sunlight that had been pouring down so fiercely lost its strength in a heartbeat. As if some vast hand had started to cover the sun, the bright sky darkened at a terrifying pace.
"...Huh?"
At first, everyone just looked confused. Maybe they thought a cloud had simply passed over the sun. Every face turned upward.
There was not a single cloud in the sky.
The darkness spread at an unbelievable speed. The sky that had been shining blue moments before bled into an ominous ash-gray, then finally into a deep, ink-black.
"G-good heavens..."
A sound somewhere between a gasp and a scream tore from someone's throat. The murmuring noise vanished as if it had never existed. The laughter was gone. All that remained was a choking silence and the darkness racing outward in every direction.
"The s-sun..."
It was disappearing.
As if some colossal beast were devouring it, a black shadow ate into the sun from the center of the sky. A perfect circle of darkness — too flawless, too sinister to simply call a moon.
As the light died, the temperature plummeted. Air that had been warm only moments ago turned bitterly cold, and a bone-deep chill sank into the skin. A wind from nowhere kicked up dust, and the goats tied at the edge of the fief began to bleat in panic.
"Th-this is... what in the world..."
Caelen's voice was trembling. The arrogance and mockery had drained from his face, leaving only shock and disbelief. His subordinate knights stood pale as corpses, staring blankly at the sky.
The villagers were already drowning in terror. Some collapsed to their knees, muttering prayers. Others screamed and tried to flee toward their homes. Granny Elara stood frozen with her mouth hanging open. Even Anya, still hidden behind the tree, watched the grotesque spectacle with eyes gone round and wide.
And at last—
"........"
In the thick silence, the final scrap of sunlight vanished behind the black shadow.
A world fully claimed by darkness. A pitch-black void no one could believe was midday. Absolute dark — no stars, no moon, nothing, because it was still day.
The familiar landscape of Seorigol was gone. Only the faintest outlines of things remained, barely distinguishable.
The Eclipse.
The beginning of every catastrophe I had watched, sick of it, across nine hundred and ninety-nine regressions.
It had become reality.
— Groooooooaaaaar...!
From far away, something howled. That low, rolling cry began to close in around Seorigol like a rising tide, slowly surrounding us from every side.
In the darkness, I drew my sword.
What lay ahead was unmistakably hell.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
My heart hammered wildly — but not only from fear. A strange relief washed through me as well.
At least it wasn't me who was crazy.
It was the world.