Chapter 65 — Whose Side Are You On? (5)
Chapter 65 — Whose Side Are You On? (5)
Matthias looked once at Roan, who was sunk in despair, then barely managed to raise himself and lean against the wall.
As if he had realized his life was already forfeit, he steadied his breath and spoke in a venomous voice.
"Well, you aren't a baron now, are you. A former baron. You had your title stripped because Rose was invaded by demonkind. That treacherous Demon King's scheming knows no end. The baron fell prey to it and was ruined."
"That...."
Diobe's face contorted.
Roan remained frozen like a statue, his hands still covering his face.
When he had raided the border fortress of Rose, the Demon King had been using a transformation tool. Only a few people around him and Diobe knew that the one who had wrecked the fortress was the Demon King himself.
But Matthias was staring at Roan with eyes full of fury, as if the Demon King had orchestrated everything.
"A ruined baron, but a man who could grovel well enough. He became the son-in-law of a count's house."
Diobe glanced once at Grünent.
Her expression seemed to be asking for confirmation. After all, a royal knew the movements of the nobility best.
Grünent hesitated, looking deeply troubled, then barely managed to nod.
"Since he was a knight acknowledged for his skill, he somehow salvaged his house. But there's no way for him to rise further. And once, he was the much-vaunted prodigy of the kingdom's knight order!"
And then Matthias,
looking straight at the Demon King, spoke.
"Truly, you deserve to be called a Demon King.
You have seduced even the brilliant Princess and the noble knight Diobe, turned them into your dogs, and brought about the downfall of a knight with a bright future. And now you mean to trample the sacred human lands protected by the Goddess."
Roan lowered his hands.
His dark gaze pierced Matthias.
The commander of the Church of Laurecia's knight order flinched and drew his shoulders slightly inward, but when Roan took no further action, he seemed to regain a little confidence and kept running his mouth.
"To think that the once-proud Ashen Knight Diobe was clinging to demonkind to eke out a living. While your husband and your house crumbled in an instant. Was your wretched life truly so precious to...."
"Enough."
He could not listen any longer.
In the end, Roan made the order commander stop speaking.
"Guards."
"Yes."
The direction Roan turned his head was toward the knights who had been watching Helen and Matthias.
"Take this man to the prison."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
A grinding of teeth could be heard.
But Roan gave Matthias no further attention.
Grünent, who had been looking at Roan's face, bit her lip. Roan gave his command with a cold look in his eyes that she had never seen before.
"Tell the correction officer to interrogate this man."
"Understood, Your Majesty."
For an instant, a warmth settled in Roan's eyes. And then he looked at Grünent.
That was why Grünent felt like she might cry.
Among all the shocking stories, what pained her heart the most was
the fact that her beloved sovereign wore an expression that seemed to tear at his own pain.
Only then did Grünent realize what that earlier cold look had meant.
For Grünent's 'politics' was a skill that found true meaning in context and in the actions of the other party.
The Demon King was afraid.
Afraid that his shameful past deeds had been revealed,
and that they would wound him and Diobe and drive their hearts apart.
Grünent, who had reached out a hand to comfort Roan, withdrew it, thinking that offering clumsy consolation in front of Diobe might be thoughtless.
Seeing that, Roan smiled bitterly.
"Grünent."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
"Will you go inside with Helen?"
"I shall, Your Majesty."
Grünent soon assumed the expression of a wife and withdrew together with Helen.
"Diobe."
"...."
Diobe could not bring herself to say anything.
But there was no anger or irritation in Roan's voice when he called her again.
"Diobe."
With a startled face, her head snapped up.
"Yes, Your Majesty."
"Shall we talk?"
Having moved to his office, Roan sat down facing Diobe. To be honest, Roan wanted to flee for a moment.
'...This is painful.'
The excuse that it had not been him who did it would never get through. Roan wanted to cover his face again.
But he knew he must not.
Roan recalled the day he first saw Diobe. She had worn an expressionless face, as if all emotion had been stripped away.
Now, Diobe's face was far more vivid.
And because of that, her pain and sorrow were fully revealed in her expression as well.
Roan clenched his fist tightly beneath the table. He faintly felt the power of 'Will.'
At that strength, which seemed to urge him not to run away,
Roan opened his mouth first.
"Diobe."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
"I am sorry."
Diobe, who had been staring at the table with a forlorn expression, looked up at Roan in sudden surprise.
"Your Majesty?"
He had been continually hesitating over whether to say it or not, and in the end he had spat it out.
It had not been a deed he had committed.
And it was not something he could undo.
He had hesitated, wondering what use an apology could be, but the meaning of an apology was not something for him to find anyway.
Diobe had to grant it.
He bowed his head deeply.
Not knowing what to do, Diobe half-rose from her seat.
"Your Majesty, you need not do this."
"I should have done it long ago."
But the emperor's body did not move.
Only after the hesitating Diobe slumped back into her chair as if the strength had left her did Roan raise his head.
Seeing the emperor's habitually aloof and brusque expression fiercely distorted, Diobe, too, wore a complicated expression.
"Still, perhaps it is fortunate. That I... did not kill your husband."
"...Yes, Your Majesty. You did not kill him."
"All this time I thought I had killed your husband and taken you...."
A deep sigh leaked from Roan's lips.
The emperor was staring down at the empty table, his eyes lowered.
"Diobe, if you wish to return even now."
At those astonishing words, Diobe's head jerked up. Her eyes widened.
If he could only find and activate the waypoints, it would be possible to secretly enter Merde.
Officially starting a family with her husband again might be impossible, but it would be possible to meet her surviving family.
"I will send you back as soon as the war is over."
"...Your Majesty."
"I know this is already far too late to undo what has been done, but...."
But Diobe slowly shook her head.
"No, Your Majesty. I will not go back."
At the unexpected answer, it was Roan's turn to open his eyes wide.
Diobe wore a bitter expression.
"You heard him. My husband... has taken a new wife and started a new life."
"...I am sorry."
"No, Your Majesty. Even if Your Majesty had perhaps not... taken me, the baron would still have abandoned me and entered a count's house as a son-in-law."
"Hmm?"
Roan frowned slightly.
He had meant to discard Diobe from the very beginning?
At last, Diobe began to unburden her story.
"My family was a fallen viscounty, a humble one in the countryside. My father sent me to the knight academy with what remained of his wealth. He was a good father, but he could not be a good lord."
Her eyes were looking into the distant past.
"My husband was someone I met at the knight academy. He was of common birth, but his skill was so outstanding that everyone expected he would one day hold a key post even in the Kingdom's knight order.
And at that time, I, too, was a knight with an epithet. Though slight, I had skill, and though only a name, I was a noble's daughter. That was why my husband courted me."
Ah.
Roan felt he could guess the rest of the story.
A man of skill and ambition.
Acquiring a wife who was a knight of renown with an epithet and of noble blood must have brought him immense satisfaction.
That was, until he learned that her house was in fact ruined.
"My father even sold the territory to provide a dowry for me. Because of that, my husband did not know. Only after my father passed away, when he learned that nothing remained for me as an only daughter, did he fly into a rage."
Diobe smiled, as if with longing and pain.
A tear fell from the corner of her eye. Roan hastily held out a handkerchief.
Diobe accepted the handkerchief without a word.
"Still, my husband was a superior knight. To his subordinates he was strict, but he seemed a righteous military man.
Even if he was not a good husband to me, I thought he was at least a person worthy of respect as a knight. And so I tried to follow him."
At the sudden chill in Diobe's voice,
Roan studied her expression.
A face as devoid of feeling as when Roan had first met her was erasing the sadness.
"When my husband received the barony as lord of the Rose Fortress, I resigned from the Kingdom's knight order. And I moved to Rose. Then my husband strained every nerve to have our marriage annulled."
At the thought that arose, Roan's brow quirked.
Neither the game nor the text log had contained memories like these.
"Verbal abuse and violence... spending every night with women from the pleasure house.... As if he wanted me to run away first.... But I had no choice either."
As if frustrated, Diobe let out a breath.
"For I no longer had a place to return to."
Her birth family seemed to have completely collapsed.
"I spent five years at Rose like that. Unable to bear a child, I was in danger of soon being divorced. Among the nobility of Merde, there are many ways to annul a marriage. One day, my husband came to me with papers, looking triumphant. He said that with only the High Priest's permission, we would become strangers."
Inwardly, he was flustered, but the shell of the Demon King concealed his wavering expression with no more than a slight movement of his brow.
"And, that day, Your Majesty came."
Diobe wore a faint smile.
They did say a devil came bearing an offer you couldn't refuse.
Just like the Demon King of that day.
"I disliked that a knight would distrust his own skill and set up a shadow warrior. I told him such tricks were only for the politicians in the capital. But it seems my husband survived thanks to that."
In the end, Roan's consternation, having crossed the threshold of the filter, surfaced outwardly.
Seeing Roan open his mouth before he realized it, Diobe, too, smiled as if she found herself equally absurd.
A mixture of bitterness, scorn, and sorrow
formed a complicated expression.
"I do not know how Your Majesty sought out my husband. But what Your Majesty beheaded... was a shadow warrior."
Unconsciously, Roan tightly gripped the edge of the table. Unable to withstand the strong grip, the well-finished wood grain let out a crunch and broke away slightly.
Yes. The memory had had a strange feel to it, now that he thought about it.
Wanting only to quickly dispose of the lord's head and return, the Demon King had hunted for the lord like a vengeful spirit.
A single soldier had pointed out the lord, trembling,
and the lord had been in a panic.
With eyes that seemed to accept that he could not help the soldier's act of betrayal.
Come to think of it, the situation did not add up.
Normally, when faced with such a situation, a lord would draw his sword or make threats to keep the soldier's mouth shut.
Not knowing how to broach the subject,
Roan was simply venting his frustration on the innocent table. Diobe spoke in a composed voice.
"But that day, I lost my husband."
Diobe's olive-colored eyes gleamed.
Was it moisture, or was it venom?
"He was a terrible husband, but as a knight I respected him. But that day, the knight I had respected died as well.
They say he has started a new household, but there can hardly be a new household to speak of. You must take Knight Matthias's words with a grain of salt. Likely I will have become a late wife, and my husband will have returned to being a free man."
After a somewhat long silence, Diobe spoke.
Her words were as if she were driving in a nail herself.
"The process by which you brought me here was not gentle. Looking back on the past I spent here, that, too, was not good. But Your Majesty has changed."
Diobe's calm eyes stared straight into Roan's violet eyes.
"Whatever the impetus, Your Majesty is now someone I respect. For me, who had no place to return to, this castle has now become my home. And it is Your Majesty who has given me a place to stay."
And Diobe smiled.
"Just as I am a dead person to my husband, so my husband is a dead person to me. So, Your Majesty, while I thank you for your sincerity in apologizing, you need not apologize."
Along with a noisy beep-beep sound effect, Diobe's affection value began to change.
Previously, Diobe's affection had risen only by small amounts each time she encountered Roan together with Grünent.
The number, which had been +20 right up until a moment ago, began to fluctuate continuously.
+22, +24....
The affection value stopped after hitting +45.
"That day, the one who stole my husband from me was my husband himself."
Diobe wore an expression he had never seen before. Through her tears, she smiled as if joyful.
As though she had finally shaken off something inside her.