Judgment (1)
Kyle Leopold gazed out at the Western capital of Porvin and let out a quiet sigh. When his forces had begun their march on the city, he had braced himself for at least some measure of resistance.
After all, Porvin was the heart of the West—its largest and most important city. Including the surrounding satellite towns, its population reached nearly one hundred and fifty thousand. A metropolis of that size should have been properly fortified.
That was precisely why he had dragged the Dreadnought all the way here: to neutralize those very defenses.
“I expected a battle, at least…” he muttered under his breath, scanning the perimeter of the Western capital.
The mage towers meant to defend the city were visible, but they looked utterly abandoned. Some had partially collapsed, and thick ivy had overgrown the rest. They resembled nothing so much as ruins.
“They’ve grown far too accustomed to peace.”
Porvin had enjoyed far too many years of tranquility. The barbarians had never reached the capital. The Arbel Mountains had shielded them completely, and the South directly below them had possessed almost no standing army.
Naturally, the importance of capital defense had faded. Whatever funds remained had likely been siphoned off by corrupt nobles.
Besides, the Southern Legion’s advance had been absurdly swift. They had brought only the bare minimum of troops and supply units, charging forward for an entire week without pause. There simply hadn’t been enough time to rebuild the shattered defenses.
In this corrupt, incompetent land known as the West, the suffering of its people would end today.
Western Grand Duke Charles Raymonds. The time had finally come to settle the score with that bastard once and for all.
With a long, grating creak, the gates of Porvin Castle swung open.
What emerged was a pitiful force of only a few hundred men. For a man who held the title of Western Grand Duke, it was a laughably meager display—clear proof that Charles Raymonds had completely lost the support of his people.
“It’s been a while, Charles Raymonds.”
One of the chief culprits behind the catastrophic ending of Mona-joh. The Empire’s most savage hunting dog. The mad hound who, at Aria’s command, had slaughtered everyone who tried to prevent the war.
Kyle intended to deal with him personally, ensuring such a tragedy never occurred in this world.
People who suffer a major failure tend to fall into one of two categories: those who rise above it, or those who are crushed beneath its weight and fall into despair.
Western Grand Duke Charles Raymonds belonged firmly to the latter.
He had never truly tasted defeat before.
The overwhelming aerial supremacy of the Western Wyvern Knights. Enemies who possessed no air force of their own. Every battle Charles Raymonds had ever fought had been one he was destined to win. The only person who failed to understand this simple truth was Charles Raymonds himself.
He had always succeeded. He had always won his wars. He had always held the upper hand. He was a spoiled brat who knew nothing of defeat.
‘If they just do what I say, we always win. So why should I listen to anyone else?’
That had been his fundamental way of thinking—until he met Aria.
Aria was the only woman who had ever truly caught Charles Raymonds’ fancy. He had fallen for her almost instantly. As someone who had always been a victor, he naturally assumed she would eventually become his as well.
…Of course, it had all been a delusion.
In the original Mona-joh, Charles was never chosen by Aria. Once the civil war that destroyed the Empire had ended, the hunting dog she had tamed became nothing more than a useless beast. And once the hunt was over, hunting dogs were eaten.
Abandoned by Aria amid the ruins of a fallen Empire—after tens of millions had already died and suffered—he experienced his first true defeat.
Fortunately, in this world, Charles did not need to drag the entire Empire down with him just to taste defeat. There was already someone who had beaten him long before the men in Aria’s so-called “harem.”
“Kyle Leopold…!!!”
Crash!
A porcelain vase shattered against the wall of the office. Still unsatisfied, he hurled a chair across the room and paced furiously back and forth, breathing like an enraged bull.
After some time, Charles finally collapsed into his seat with a heavy thud.
“…This… this is all because that retarded, half-witted bastard pulled some disgusting trick,” he muttered.
In the end, Charles Raymonds never once acknowledged his own faults. His pride would not allow it.
The fat worm who had once knelt so pathetically before the woman he loved. The idea that it was now his turn to kneel before that same worm was utterly unacceptable to the pride of the Western Grand Duke.
Therefore, everything was Kyle Leopold’s fault. It had to be.
“If that idiot hadn’t gone sniffing around my Aria, I never would’ve had to butt heads with the South in the first place!”
He let out a furious roar and grabbed the door handle, ready to storm out and drag the man back by force.
But he couldn’t bring himself to open it.
Charles Raymonds was an animal. And animals are endlessly strong against the weak, yet endlessly servile before the strong.
The hellish night at the port of Albion flashed before his eyes. The knights melting helplessly. The murderous barrage of shells flying in every direction. The flares that blinded the sky.
“Fuck!”
Crash!
Once again, the Western Grand Duke’s residence echoed with nothing but roars and the sound of things breaking.
Charles Raymonds was not strong enough to rise from defeat. Nor was he magnanimous enough to bow his head to those he had once looked down on. All he could do was hide in his room, escaping reality while venting his violent temper.
Under normal circumstances, that might have been tolerable. Thanks to his characteristic irresponsibility and love of war, the actual administration of the Grand Duke’s estate had long been handled by his subordinates, who worked themselves to the bone in his place.
But this was now an open conflict between the South and the West. With the very man responsible for the crisis holed up in his room, criticism was inevitable.
At least, that was what Charles Raymonds believed.
And those beliefs soon twisted into hallucinations.
—The Grand Duke is just hiding in his room while a war is breaking out… Tsk.
—It was his war to begin with, wasn’t it? Look at him acting so irresponsibly after starting it all…
—Ha, I bet he’s planning to go wag his tail at that woman again.
In a strict hierarchical society, servants insulting a Grand Duke should have been unthinkable. But such common sense no longer reached Charles Raymonds, whose mind was already half broken.
His paranoia grew worse by the day. And the target of that paranoia was always the weak.
“Butler, you bastard! How dare you insult Charles Raymonds, rightful ruler of the West and legitimate blood of the Raymonds family!”
“N-no, Your Grace! I didn’t say anything!”
“Shut your lying mouth! Are you calling me a liar?!”
Over the course of a month, the number of people injured—or even killed—by his paranoia began to rise. As a result, the butlers and maids of the Grand Duke’s residence grew increasingly reluctant to enter his chambers.
And the more isolated he became, the stranger Charles Raymonds grew.
The news that reached him was always despairing.
“The South has declared total war and mobilized its army!”
“Border Earl Eric Smith led forty thousand troops into battle, but they were completely annihilated by the Southern forces…”
“Aquiten Fortress has fallen to the Southern dogs! Their army is now right outside the Grand Duke’s castle!”
Driven to the brink, no longer able to flee from reality, he finally had no choice but to step forward.
He could no longer remain locked in his room.
“Fine, fuck it. I just have to win and prove them all wrong. I just have to catch that half-assed, ill-mannered idiot Kyle and crush him!”
If he could repay them with victory, everything would be fine. Until the very end, Charles Raymonds followed nothing but his instincts.
But by the time he finally stepped outside, it was already too late.
No one wanted to follow Charles Raymonds anymore. It was the price of his own sins.
In the middle of a conflict, the Grand Duke had spent weeks locked in his room, lost in delusions. The corrupt nobles who had gathered around him only for money and power had no loyalty to speak of. The major nobles had already fled long ago.
The common people refused to follow him either. Public sentiment had clearly shifted toward the courteous Southern army rather than the corrupt Western nobles who had only ever exploited them.
And so, when Charles finally rode out before the Grand Duke’s castle with lance in hand and a pitifully small force behind him, what greeted him was five thousand soldiers covering the plain—and—
“It’s been a while, Charles Raymonds.”
—Kyle Leopold, looking down at him from atop his horse.
Ironically, the scene was almost identical to the one from ten years ago.
The day he had subdued Kyle for harassing Aria and publicly humiliated him. The crowd surrounding the kneeling Kyle. And at the very front of that crowd had stood Charles Raymonds.
“How does it feel? Familiar sight, isn’t it, Charles Raymonds?”
The mocking voice finally severed what little sanity Charles Raymonds had left.