Chapter 89
Chapter 89
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 89
Chapter Title: The Rumor That Our Dad Is a Scary Tiger!
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“Dad!”
The physical penalties had all vanished, but Dad was still “Dad” to me. Seemingly delighted by that fact, Dad grinned brightly as he replied.
“Yep, it’s Dad.”
My dad’s lispy voice was as cute as ever. I reached out and stretched his stubbly cheeks like cheese.
“Our dad is the cutest!”
Dad chuckled away, oblivious to his cheeks being pulled long.
Nestled snugly in the arms of the world’s cutest dad, I thoroughly healed myself by peering at the fountain pen and documents on his desk.
‘The documents are all about volunteer work, really.’
There was no trace of the infamous reputation Martin had mentioned.
I harbored doubts once more in my mind, but right now, Dad’s suspicious activities weren’t the issue.
The problem was...!
“So, why did my daughter come to see Dad so early in the morning?”
“Sponsor my friends!”
I pulled the crumpled sponsorship request from my pocket and thrust it toward Dad.
Dad furrowed his brow and tilted his head.
In that moment, Dad’s expression shifted oddly.
[Sponsorship Request
1. Martin McBorg
2. Burger (real name: Bjorn Hesburger)]
I watched as Dad’s face gradually hardened while scanning the contents of the sponsorship request.
‘What’s wrong? Is it weird?’
It was such an outrageous request that I worried Dad might refuse.
‘I’ve got a way to convince the Elder Council if Dad just agrees.’
There was a method to secure majority support from the Elder Council—by grasping the nobles’ weaknesses and forcing their agreement on the sponsorship.
But to get the Elder Council’s support, Dad’s approval was essential first.
I looked up at Dad anxiously and said,
“I wrote everything on the sponsorship request, but they’re both total geniuses. They might not seem that impressive right now, but they really are.”
“......Close?”
I could see Dad’s throat bob. Nodding tensely, fearing rejection at the Dad stage,
“Uh-huh? We’re kinda close now, but I’m not asking for sponsorship because of that!”
“Both...... boys, huh? Pretty close?”
Dad’s voice trembled.
“......Boyfriends?”
I thought it over carefully, then nodded vigorously.
‘They’re boys, so boyfriends, right?’
And I answered more enthusiastically than anyone.
“Uh-huh! Boyfriends!”
The moment the words left my mouth, the parchment lost its form in Dad’s hand and crumbled to dust.
I stared at Dad with wide eyes.
I could see Dad’s jaw twitching.
This was a graver expression than the time moles ruined Dad’s entire season’s harvest back in the countryside.
***
After Sien left, Matthias stood there dumbfounded.
Sien had flapped away after planting a smooch on his cheek. The comment about hoping Dad would sponsor them was extra.
What power did Dad have? He’d have to pressure the Elder Council for sponsorship.
But......
“How dare they approach my daughter......”
The sponsorship request was neatly and cleanly filled out.
Even to Matthias’s eyes, there was nothing shady about it.
He’d heard from Sien’s teacher that her friendships were wholesome, and she even helped outcast friends.
‘Not pretending to be outcasts, right?’
Burger and Martin.
Seeming like they needed a proper look, he roughly crumpled the sponsorship request into his pocket.
And right then.
Someone knocked on the door Sien had left through.
He narrowed his cold eyes and whispered in feigned warmth.
“Sien?”
Of course, he’d sensed via intuition that the footsteps weren’t Sien’s, but this performative act was for the 0.01% chance it might be her.
At that moment, the door opened.
“Ta-da, it’s Delphia!”
As expected, it was someone else.
Matthias, who had plastered on a sunny smile, hardened his lips and issued an eviction order.
“Out.”
She shook her head and plopped onto the sofa.
“I came to give her a bag as an Academy enrollment gift!”
She shook a bag studded with spikes in both hands, beaming innocently. At that, Matthias closed and opened his eyes.
“Huh? Why that face?”
“Don’t mind it. Get out. That bag is too shabby for my daughter to carry.”
Delphia asked in a puzzled voice.
“What’s wrong with it? The spikes are kinda cute and nice...... Hmm, but your face looks like death. What, did she say she’s got a boyfriend?”
“......”
“No way, for real?”
When Matthias scowled, having hit the nail on the head, Delphia burst into laughter.
“She can’t stay in your arms forever, you know?”
Her silver hair sparkled brilliantly.
Beautiful locks like molten silver, but Matthias seemed utterly unmoved.
He merely narrowed his eyes at Delphia.
“You.”
“Yes?”
“No entry here.”
“Huh? No way? I gotta see my Baby Master!”
He curled his lips into a smirk.
“If you don’t leave now, you’ll never see her. Out.”
“I’m not leaving.”
Delphia pouted, but it was of no concern to him. Rising, he said,
“If you won’t leave, I will.”
At his attitude of no attachment whatsoever, Delphia leaned forward in confusion and asked,
“Where to?”
No obligation to answer, but he replied simply.
“To fulfill my daughter’s request.”
Delphia furrowed her brows under his gaze. No matter how she thought about it, his words carried a subtle air of superiority. Like saying, “I’m closer to Sien than you.”
Delphia couldn’t let that slide.
“Oh, my Baby Master’s request? What is it?”
No one could miss how she emphasized the nickname-not-nickname “my Baby Master.”
Matthias curled his lips again and said,
“She came asking me to sponsor some guys. Not you—me.”
“What! I can approve sponsorships too! I’ll send it to the Elder Council!”
“You’re not on good terms with the Elder Council.”
Delphia pouted at that.
“......Annoying. I’m not supposed to be friendly with the Elder Council anyway.”
“Right, you’re not.”
“Yeah, I just know how to kill those bastards.”
Ignoring Delphia’s words, he closed the door.
As she said, over the past five years, he had seized the leashes of the entire Elder Council.
The tigers who once ruled all of Mirmod were now mere puppets on his strings.
The Elder Council Chairman had resisted fiercely, but it wouldn’t take long to break him either.
Matthias wagged a finger with an intrigued expression.
What he had accomplished so far flashed through his mind like a panorama.
***
Matthias handled the Elder Council bit by bit each time Sien headed to the Academy.
“Dad, kissy!”
“Yep.”
He saw her off gently as the docile dad for her happy commute. Then he tightened the noose on the Elder Council.
He seized ledgers of their myriad corruptions and extracted forced loyalty from the members based on that. Of course, some didn’t bow to him.
The Elder Council Chairman.
He lived aloof in the Mirmod family tower, as if unrelated to Matthias or Sien.
Calculating that even the Duke of Mirmod couldn’t touch an Elder Council Chairman with no overt scandals.
What he overlooked was that Matthias was an unprecedentedly ruthless duke in Mirmod history.
“A mere hollow shell of an Elder Council throwing a tantrum too far.”
“What is this? Just how far do you intend to go?”
“Playing dumb? You tried to leash my daughter, you.”
The Chairman sneered instead of flinching visibly.
“Oh, did I, Duke?”
Selling Sien’s info to the Crown Prince had been reported as one rogue elder’s deviation. But Matthias read the hidden conspiracy within.
“You did. So brazenly.”
Matthias gestured elegantly toward the Chairman’s neck. A sword had appeared in his previously empty hand.
The Chairman squeezed his eyes shut then open at the honed blade and the vividly black aura enveloping the entire sword.
The powerful defensive magic circle around the Chairman was rapidly dismantling.
He backed away with a desperate look, muttering,
“You sold your soul to demons to manifest black aura?!”
Black aura was exceedingly rare even among the continent’s few Swordmasters. Not even Dragon Slayers could manifest it.
Matthias tilted his head and said,
“If I sold my soul to demons, doesn’t that make you the one dying to such a bastard?”
Crude siege warfare of words ensued.
But the victor was obviously Matthias Mirmod. Over five years, he had dismantled the Elder Council limb from limb and choked their funds.
At this moment, the Chairman clung to vain hope. Surely Matthias wouldn’t butcher him with a sword.
“Threatening me, the Elder Council Chairman, with a blade—I’ll have things to do too......!”
“Necromancer powers, right.”
“......!”
“Summon corpses or ghosts. I’ll cleave them all. And speak properly. I know all your corruption, and I’m executing you for it.”
The aura that had finally breached the Chairman’s mighty defensive magic circle rippled over the blade.
The Chairman, too, was a Mirmod moved by power logic.
Overwhelmed by the sheer skill gap, he lost the will to fight. Seeing his defeated-dog face, Matthias tilted his head and said,
“Leave some last words to make me happy killing you.”
Then, mocking, he slashed. A diagonal wound across the neck—the Chairman’s face drained white.
“......Last words, you say?”
Clutching his neck, the Chairman coughed repeatedly. The coughs turned mad, then crimson blood spewed like hematemesis.
But Matthias felt no pity for the Chairman.
“What? Even an old fart wants to live longer? When my daughter was five, you used the Education Director to kill her.”
“Ku, cough.”
“When she turned ten, you used the Crown Prince to throw her in prison.”
“Ku, kugh.”
“You dared touch a child—time to pay sweetly, no?”
The Chairman couldn’t even plead.
Instead, his body crumpled to the floor. For once the core of Mirmod power, a pathetically shabby death.
No particular emotion stirred.
Anyone Matthias targeted ended up the same, Chairman or not.
‘The Elder Council Chairman is dead, so the Mirmod family is mine now.’
It was predestined, really.
Power structures around Matthias held little meaning. Crush with force, smother with money—that was it. Money and power were always easy means to subjugate others.
In his life, the only inexplicable surprises were Sien-related.
Matthias embedded the bloodied sword into the wall like a dart and strolled out toward his mansion.
Sien wouldn’t be back yet, so he planned a quick shower and to make dinner.
Everything perfect up to here.
He thought so until, just entering the mansion, Sien came running down the hall toward him.
“Dad!”
“You’re back sooner than expected, Sien.”
Indeed, Sien was the sole delightful variable in Matthias’s life.
Perhaps that’s why.
Despite the unprocessed Chairman’s corpse and his bloodstained clothes, Sien’s early return was overly disconcerting...... yet he couldn’t help smiling.
“Why the weird face, Dad? See something strange?”
“No, Dad’s going to shower.”
And after a simple shower, facing Sien, Matthias received a shock incomparable to the Chairman’s death.
“......Sien, they’re all boys. Close friends, huh.”
At the thought of his once-lap-child Sien leaving, Matthias ground his teeth.
‘Shouldn’t have sent her to the Academy.’
He’d had no choice, processing the Chairman while she was away, but it still left a bitter taste.
Thus, the sponsorship request she showed would soon be approved.
He was undoubtedly a father who could properly back his daughter.
No day more gratifying than this, power in his hands.
All for Sien’s happiness.
***
How could this happen?
I truly couldn’t comprehend.
I’d anticipated the Elder Council’s interference and sought their nobles’ hidden dirty rumors and scandals—like affairs—to expose.
Thanks to managing the merchant guild, my ears were sharp, letting me easily declare, “Approve sponsorship at the family level now!”
But......
‘This morning, word came immediately. Sponsorship approved by all except the Chairman.’
Did this make any sense?
Even [Melodia’s Life] described Mirmod’s Elder Council.
Said to be cunning foxes, tough for average villains to handle. They never acted without cause, earning rep as principled villains.
For them, this sponsorship must’ve been hugely problematic.
So how did it get approved—not just any, but ‘Diamond tier’?
Truthfully, only one answer: unless Dad held insane leverage......
‘......Did Dad really seize this family’s power?’
But controlling Mirmod Duke family’s Elder Council leashes required extraordinary guts or villainy.
Even Grandma, who once commanded the family, couldn’t fully leash them. Much less kind Dad learning villainy express in five years.
“Sien, what’re you thinking?”
“Ah!”
Lost in thought, apparently.
I gave an awkward smile at the finely chopped salad bits before me.
“Sorry, Boss. Sorry, Ted! It’s been ages since just us three ate, and I zoned out!”
First time without Dad, the Mirmod Duke mansion folks gathered.
Dad went to the ceremony officially sponsoring Burger and Martin. Acid and Leonhardt were at school, I stayed with a slight fever.
So now, just Boss, Ted, and me dining. Maid sisters bustled behind me with food!
‘In short, perfect environment—no interference!’
Ted’s not rumor-prone, but Boss from street orphanage. Though busy training in the mansion, he’d hear various rumors inside.
I grinned slyly, rinsing my mouth with lemon tea. And......
“I’ve got a question!”
I poked the side of Boss, scarfing beside me.
“Boss, you hear that rumor?”
“Huh? What rumor?”
“The one that our Dad’s a scary tiger!”
At that, the mood chilled.
Clink.
Boss’s fork rolled to the floor. Faster than I could react.
So weird......
Everyone reacts like this—makes it more suspicious?