Chapter 36
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 36
With those thoughts in mind, Olen ventured deeper into the forest than usual. The overgrown, knee-high grass made her uneasy, but she pressed on. Though a path existed, it looked as if it had been abandoned long ago. The farther she walked, the more unfamiliar plants began to appear, and she felt as if something truly incredible might lie just ahead.
The little girl pushed forward without fear. She walked and walked, losing all track of time. Just as an unsettling feeling told her she should turn back, she heard a strange sound from somewhere nearby.
Terrified, the girl froze. Only then, as fear washed over her, did she strain her ears. It sounded like the cry of a beast, but it was unnaturally irregular.
Heave… heave…
Listening closely, she realized it sounded more like a human gasping for breath.
A rustling sound came from the bushes.
“Who… who’s there?” she asked in a small voice, trying to shake off her fear.
Instead of an answer, the gasping grew heavier. No matter how she listened, it was definitely a human’s breath. But why would anyone be in a forest like this?
After standing still for a few minutes, her fear gave way to curiosity. If it had been a beast or a monster, it would have harmed her already. Olen walked slowly toward the source of the sound.
As she drew closer, the sound grew more labored—no, it was weaker than before, like a dying ember fading away.
Deep within the Graphenia Forest, a dying boy lay on the ground.
“...!”
Startled, Olen couldn’t utter a word. Seeing the boy collapsed on the ground and covered in blood, she initially mistook him for a corpse.
But the labored, painful breaths he drew proved he was still alive.
The dying boy’s arm trembled violently. Holding out her dimly lit lantern, she saw that his entire body had been brutally mangled.
His torso was torn open at the waist, his innards spilling out. She felt like crying. She wanted to throw up. Suppressing her instinct to turn away from the gruesome sight, the girl made a split-second decision.
I have to save him. But he’s already dying… Even so, I have to try. I have to do whatever I can.
“Just wait, just wait a little bit! I have herbs!”
It was not a wound that could be healed by mere herbs, but it was the only thing the panicked girl could think to do.
She pulled the herbs she had stuffed into her pockets. Though she had never studied herbalism, she knew one of them possessed anesthetic and restorative properties. With trembling hands, she frantically pulled them out, dropping several onto the ground. The night was dark, making it hard to see. She set the lantern down and began rummaging through the dirt.
She was completely unaware that behind her, the dying boy had drawn a dagger from his chest.
Crack.
Grit.
*
Phase. ??
“As you’ve heard, that bastard Torso, the real power behind the Rocobo family, was executed this morning. Poor fool. Right up until his neck was on the guillotine, he was under the delusion that I was going to help him. You should have seen the sheer despair on his face when he finally realized he’d been betrayed. But since everyone in the Empire knows how busy you are, Lord Bresia, it couldn’t be helped. A pity, really.”
“They are all fools who don’t even realize they’re being played like puppets in our hands. Or perhaps Lord Lapudir’s wisdom is simply several steps ahead of theirs. Either way, congratulations, Lord Lapudir. Or should I call you Grand Duke Lapudir now?”
A bloody regime change was drawing to a close.
In an Empire that feigned eternal peace, the factional struggles of the nobility had stained the guillotine’s block a deep, dark red. Under a blade that fell as many as twenty times a day, thousands of lives had already been snuffed out like morning dew.
And for the victors, such stories were merely casual conversation, enjoyed amidst the chaotic revelry of a banquet.
Leisurely raising his glass, Bresia Celebit smiled silently—the unmistakable smile of a victor. He and Lapudir Thirdvale were among the winners of the civil war that this regime change had become.
The futures of the Celebit and Thirdvale families, led by Bresia and Lapudir respectively, were now paved and smooth. It was a guaranteed future. The “enemies” who had held their families back no longer existed; they had been executed on the slightest pretext. Perhaps that was why the wine tasted exceptionally sweet today. Everything looked beautiful. Insanely beautiful.
Bresia opened his tightly clenched right hand, spreading his fingers wide. It was a gesture of supreme confidence, a sign of his determination to sweep up all the wealth and honor in sight.
Lapudir giggled frivolously at the sudden motion. It was a smile of pure amusement, not mockery. A hiccup slipped through his laughter. Though he looked fine on the outside, Lapudir was also quite drunk.
To the man who stood at the center of the factional warfare, alcohol was normally a poison, a demon. Alcohol robbed one of rational judgment, and those who lost their reason never knew what mistakes they might make. A careless word spoken in jest could become a dagger in one’s own back.
Knowing this better than anyone, the usual Lapudir would never have touched pleasures like alcohol and women.
But now, even this was fine. The current Lapudir—Lapudir Thirdvale, who had played a distinguished role in purging the moderates clinging to the Emperor’s side—was now the man with the most secure footing among the hardliners.
Everyone enjoying the banquet around them was a loyal vassal, people who wouldn’t dare dream of betrayal, scrambling to catch even a single drop of power from his coattails. There was absolutely no reason to be tense.
“Now that Podes, the most troublesome of the moderates, is rotting in prison, the Alvim family is finished. With their decline, we can consider the moderates completely annihilated.”
After speaking, Lapudir set his glass down and leaned back in his chair. His face was flushing as red as the hair that was the pride of the Thirdvale family. Clearing his throat, he pulled a small hand mirror from his pocket. The face reflected in it was definitely showing signs of intoxication.
How much humiliation did I have to endure before I could finally drink in peace?
The moderates and the hardliners. The two wings that decided the Empire’s direction. The fundamental basis of their division was whether or not to conquer dungeons. The Empire’s enemies were largely divided into two categories: monsters, also known as magical beasts, and other nations. The disagreement lay in whether to reclaim neutral territories occupied by monsters to expand the Empire’s borders, or to broaden its influence through international exchange and civilizational advancement.
Of course, those sitting at the table knew better than anyone that such armchair theories did little to actually help the Empire. Even Lapudir, a hardliner who championed dungeon subjugation, had no real interest in it. Having grown up reading books, he didn’t even know how to hold a sword, let alone how to deal with a goblin.
But politics, after all, was a matter between humans. Emotional acts were traded far more frequently than differences in belief, and it was commonplace for dozens of lives to quietly vanish just to seat one more ally in a position of power. The more allies one had, the stronger their influence. The trump card Lapudir had played to secure victory was the ‘Graphenia Forest Arson Incident.’
“Still, it’s rather bothersome that Podes was sentenced to life imprisonment instead of execution.”
Under the command of Podes Alvim, the knights of the Alvim family set fire to the Graphenia Forest.
—Or so the official story went. The mastermind who planned and executed the incident was none other than Lapudir.
The Graphenia Forest was one of the few regions that even the Emperor dared not touch. For within it lived an entity that even he feared: the Primordial Core, and the ancient monster Swallow who resided there. The forest was protected by the Primordial Core. Though the monster had never declared it, whenever the forest had been devastated in the past, a calamity would visit humanity in retaliation. Every year, subjugation squads headed toward the Core to end this arrogant retribution, but not even their ashes ever returned.
The forest was an inaccessible sanctuary. Lapudir had exploited this perception.
The preparations were meticulous. He released violent monsters near Hastin, persuaded the Lord of Hastin to request support from the Alvim family, and executed the plan just as their knights arrived. Calculating the types of trees and the direction of the wind, his agents set fire to a spot where the flames would not be easily extinguished. At the site, they intentionally scattered several items bearing the crest of the Alvim family—not crude fakes, but genuine articles procured from a spy.
And finally—ten corpses.
The fire was suppressed faster than expected. He had hoped at least half the dense forest would burn, but as luck would have it, a sage in Hastin could manipulate water. However, that was a variable he had already accounted for. Since an artificial fire had occurred in the Graphenia Forest, a place to which even the imperial family was sensitive, the situation could not be swept under the rug.
Lapudir’s calculations had been perfect. An investigation team came down from Riaze, not Hastin, and just as planned, the blame fell squarely on the Alvim family. With the fabricated story that the Alvim knights had murdered imperial citizens and started the fire while cremating the bodies to destroy the evidence, the entire family—including their head and moderate leader, Podes—was ruined.
That was the full story behind the anticlimactic end of the seemingly endless political struggle.
“Haha. By now, all of the Alvim family’s assets must have been seized by the Imperial Palace. The fact that the family head is still alive is an immense act of mercy from His Majesty. I’m thinking of buying a few of the Alvim items that come up for auction.”
At Bresia’s playful remark, Lapudir chuckled softly. “What could there possibly be to buy from such a filthy family?”
“I thought so too, but it seems some quite useful things are going up. The maids of the Alvim family have long been famous for their beauty. Though that, too, was ultimately due to Podes’s bizarre fetish.”
“Women? Well, since they have family-owned maids, I suppose they could appear in the auction.”
“There are rumors that a homunculus maid is among them.”
“……Is that so?”
Lapudir’s shoulders twitched. A homunculus maid. He had heard of them, and had even met one when he was very young. Lost in reminiscence, he brought the wine glass to his lips.
They were biological weapons created after the founding of the Empire to supplement its unstable national power. Among the early-generation homunculi, some were created specifically to serve humans. The one he had seen in his childhood was beautiful enough to convince anyone she was not human. He had never seen a person with such flawless looks; she must have been designed that way from the very beginning.
Even though it was an old memory, her beauty remained vivid in his mind. It wasn't that he lacked the desire to possess such a creature, but he had no intention of buying one.
Lapudir closed his eyes gently.
“Lord Bresia, do you intend to buy her?”
“I’m not against the idea, but if you have your eye on her, Lord Lapudir, I should naturally yield…”
“You had better not.”
“Pardon?”
“Do you know why that homunculus was in Podes’s possession?”
Podes’s bizarre fetish was famous. To him, a beautiful woman was an ornament to be arranged on a display shelf, nothing more. He never made love to them, never shared his body or mind. He merely displayed them, as if boasting to others.
The answer to Bresia’s question came after a few seconds of hesitation.
“Because that homunculus has a history of killing her master. Twice.”
*
It is dark. It has been over two weeks since she last ate.
The two human guards standing before her know this, but they never give her food. They know that artificial lifeforms do not deserve to have their dignity respected, and that she can survive for over a month on nothing but water.
Perhaps “survive” is an exaggeration.
She cannot muster any strength. The girl merely slumps limply. Squeezing out what little energy she has left, she clutches the brooch her master gave her.
Still, I feel nothing. How strange. In the past, this would always cheer me up.
Will I… be here forever?
The girl is no fool. Though called a girl because of her appearance, she is a homunculus who has lived for decades. She possesses enough common sense to know this place is a prison. She also knows her master has been captured. What she doesn’t know is whether he is alive or dead.