Ventorino Kingdom - Toward the Second Revenge (5)
"Hearing it again like this... he really was a piece of trash."
After Valdes told Rachel the truth behind the extermination of the former dynasty, her face was filled with both bitter emptiness and seething rage.
She was not hearing it for the first time. What he had told her was almost identical to what her mother had once said to her. There were a few minor differences, but those only made sense; her mother’s version had been colored by her own private emotions.
"I didn’t expect that. So Princess Isabel knew all of that."
"She said the demon that kidnapped her showed it to her. The man who was hiding and watching the royal palace get attacked..."
"Ah..."
"He told her that was the reality of your human world."
Rachel gave a faint, bitter smile, as if she herself had been the one to hear it directly.
Valdes could only imagine how deep Isabel’s despair must have been. Back when the Hero’s party had stayed in the capital, they had shared a certain amount of camaraderie. Isabel was the same age as Marc, so the two of them had chatted over small, trivial things and grown close. How ridiculous must it have been to realize that Marc, who had once seemed like an ally, had done nothing but hide and watch?
That was probably why, even after she had somehow survived and returned to the capital, she never announced it. If she had slipped up, she would likely have been used in a false uprising and quietly murdered. And in that respect, it was probably the right decision.
Whether Marc knew it or not, the queen would have had her assassinated by any means necessary.
"It’s a little strange to call him the mastermind, but there was someone behind Marc who tempted him."
"So there was another enemy..."
Rachel’s hand tightened around the spoon in her grasp.
"Right. That’s Marc’s wife. The current queen, Katarina."
"The queen...?"
Her eyes widened.
She looked as though she had never once imagined the queen could have been involved. Everything Rachel knew had come from Isabel, so she probably never found out until the day she died. She would never have guessed that a noble of her own kingdom had taken part in something like this.
"At the time, Katarina was at the Fifth Fortress with her older brother. Marc and Katarina had already been engaged before then, but I’d say the plan must have started around that point."
"...One side becoming king, the other becoming queen."
"Exactly. If the plan succeeded, Katarina’s family would go from an ordinary count’s house to one of the greatest noble houses overnight, and they’d be able to add royal blood to the dynasty. It’s exactly the sort of thing a woman as power-hungry as Katarina would do. I thought little of it at the time — just that it was strange for a member of the Hero’s party, a warrior that strong, to suddenly get engaged to Marc. I never dreamed she was thinking something so absurd."
Marc and Katarina’s relationship had begun quite a long time ago.
More precisely, it had started around the time they had just saved the Ventorino Kingdom. Katarina had thrown herself at Marc almost from their first meeting. Even though there was a fairly significant age gap, she had acted so boldly that everyone assumed she had simply fallen head over heels for the man who had saved her and her country.
That kind of thing was not uncommon in wartime, so no one thought much of it. In fact, she had even received cheers from the rest of the party, who told Marc to go for it. When the two of them had quickly finished their engagement, they were surprised, but only to that extent.
Then came the day they moved their base from the Fifth Fortress to another location.
"I ran into one of the cavalrymen who had been with Marc during the royal rescue mission at a tavern."
It had truly been a coincidence.
As they drew closer to the Demon Lord’s domain and victory began to come into view, the rest of the party’s scrutiny had become blatant. She wanted to trust them, but at the same time she felt uneasy, so she had slipped out alone, needing to make preparations of her own.
"We were both alone, and the tavern was too cramped, so we ended up sharing a table. That cavalryman recognized me, got drunk, and started telling me an interesting story. I didn’t want to believe it, but something felt off from that moment on."
Even that cavalryman had not been certain that Marc had deliberately delayed the rescue. He had only been sharp enough to sense that something was wrong. The soldiers who had traveled on reconnaissance with Marc and knew the truth were already buried under cold earth.
"He probably promised the soldiers he was with some noble title or other in order to persuade them. But... because he was uneasy, he killed them. Not with his own hands, maybe, but by driving them into a dead end."
That was also something that happened often during wartime.
It was a common way to eliminate future rivals, political enemies, or subordinates who held your weakness in their hands. Even Beatris had skillfully manipulated matters so that her husband was sent into a battlefield where victory was nearly impossible, then lured demons toward the ducal house and wiped them out completely.
"So it looked even more suspicious. Those cavalrymen had been elite enough to run all the way there and take part in the royal rescue mission, and yet after that, they started dying in strange numbers."
As he drowned that growing unease in alcohol, he happened to meet Hero Pedro, and while drunk he told him everything he knew, everything he suspected.
"And not long after that... that soldier died too."
"..."
"I’m sorry to say this, but I didn’t care. Not that soldier dying, not the story he told me. I had too much to do — preparing for war against the Demon King’s army and worrying about my comrades betraying me. I didn’t really believe any of it, either."
He had prepared for betrayal, but in the end it had not been enough.
He had made two mistakes.
The first was underestimating how much they feared him. He had never imagined they would go so far as to tear down a fortress and gather most of their assets just to create a means of restraining the Hero.
The second was the complacent belief that, whatever happened, he could at least keep his own body safe. In truth, he had managed to escape the trap they set, but he had already been on the verge of death.
"The one who stabbed me in the gut back then was that bastard. Marc. His eyes were shaking like crazy. At first I thought he just had that look because he’d betrayed a friend, but at the very end he muttered something to me."
"Why did you go into that tavern, Pedro?"
"...He said that."
He had been in no state to ponder the meaning of those words, being too busy trying to run for his life. Only after he barely escaped, reached the Demon Queen, and was reincarnated by her as Valdes did he calmly begin to analyze what had happened back then.
And the conclusion he reached was this: the tavern Marc had mentioned at the end was the very place where he had met the cavalryman, and the truth of that day had played a far larger role in why Marc had betrayed him than he had ever realized.
After that, he investigated everything he could about the incident, and eventually he even discovered the possibility that Princess Isabel might still be alive.
"...You really are the Hero, aren’t you..."
That was Rachel’s first response after Valdes finished the long story.
"Well, what does it matter? It doesn’t affect revenge, does it?"
He threw her own words back at her, and the girl smiled.
"Hehe. That’s right. Then I’ll tell you our mother’s story."
Whether it was because Rachel had a good memory or because Isabel had repeated the story so many times, her recollection was vivid and detailed.
Isabel had returned to the capital, but she had been unable to reveal that she had survived.
She had nothing, while Marc and Katarina had spent no small amount of time building a solid foundation. By declaring vengeance and adopting a hardline policy toward demons, they had won the people’s support. Under Katarina’s leadership, the nobles had also sworn loyalty to them.
And yet Isabel had not given up.
She had left the capital in search of an ally and headed for another region. After enduring every manner of hardship, she finally arrived at the house of Hobray, the kingdom’s most loyal marquess family, only to find that they had been reduced to viscount status and stripped of much of their land on the pretext that they had failed to properly serve the former dynasty.
She managed to meet the Hobray viscount after great difficulty, but he only shed tears and apologized, saying there was nothing he could do if it was a battle with no chance of victory. He gave her a small amount of money and sent her away. Shocked by the blow, Isabel lived for a while in the Hobray territory.
So that was the report I heard back then.
Valdes nodded as though everything had finally clicked into place. The slum he had seen in the past had belonged to Hobray territory.
The Hobray viscount had secretly looked after her from time to time, but it was a brutal place for a woman to survive alone. She did not have much money, and there was little she could do after having lived her entire life in luxury.
In the end, after much agonizing, Isabel returned to the capital and became a courtesan.
There had been no shortage of men who wanted to bed her — she was attractive, and she carried the noble, refined air unique to royalty. Thanks to that, she became a high-class courtesan and managed to save some money, putting down roots for herself at least for a while, but when she became pregnant, she quit and fled far from that place.
The child she gave birth to was Rachel, and Isabel always asked her young daughter to take revenge for her. Then, when Isabel’s body finally gave out, she fell ill and died.
After that, Rachel had lived by saving the small amount of money her mother left behind, begging, and pickpocketing. Once she was a little older, she survived by doing odd jobs and running errands in the pleasure district.
"That’s about it."
"I think one thing is still missing from the explanation."
"...I don’t know what you mean."
Rachel’s gaze instantly filled with the same wariness it had held when they first met.
"I never thought Princess Isabel would die, so I assumed Rachel was just an alias. But when I saw you, I knew immediately that you were Princess Isabel’s daughter. And I realized one more thing. Do you know what that was?"
"...What?"
"Oddly enough... you look like Marc."
"..."
Rachel really did resemble Isabel so much that it was hard not to think of her as her daughter. Eighteen years had passed since he had last seen Isabel, but the overall impression of her was still very much alive in Rachel. That was why he was certain she was the true final bloodline of the former Ventorino dynasty.
And at the same time, he realized that she also looked like Marc. The overall impression was Isabel’s, but if he examined her features one by one — her steady eyes, her mouth, the set of her face — they all brought Marc to mind.
There was also something odd in her explanation.
She had become a high-class courtesan, then gotten pregnant and fled. At that level, she would have been a valuable source of income even for a brothel, so there would have been no reason to run away just because she was pregnant. It would have made more sense to let her give birth and then have her return to work.
But Isabel had fled.
"...Haah. The current king is pretty old now, so his appearance has changed and nobody notices. Tch. Yeah, I’m that man’s bastard daughter. Back when my mother was working as a courtesan... by pure coincidence, she seduced that man while he was wandering around looking to cheat on her... and conceived me."
"I thought so."
Isabel had probably become a courtesan from the very beginning with that goal in mind.
The source of the information was most likely the House of Hobray. Marc’s affairs had apparently been rumored for quite a long time. She had likely used a magical artifact to get pregnant in a single attempt as well. Buying such an expensive artifact would explain why she had lived in the slums even with the support of the Hobray house.
That all makes sense, more or less.
"So Isabel planned from the start to make her own child take revenge for her."
"Yes. That’s why she started her revenge prodigy training from a very young age."
Constantly feeding her one and only bloodline with revenge had only been possible because Rachel was at once Isabel’s child and the child of her enemy. Just how strongly had she emphasized revenge for the girl to have eyes like that, even at such a young age?
Poor girl.
"So, what are you going to do?"
"Hm?"
"You know I’m the child of your enemy, don’t you?"
"...Puhahaha."
"W-Why are you laughing?"
As Valdes suddenly burst out laughing, Rachel blushed.
"No, it’s just ridiculous. What does that have to do with anything?"
"..."
"All I want is Marc’s ruin. The kingdom and his children and all that — none of it matters. Since I’m going after Marc, I’ll probably end up touching the people around him too, but... I’ll keep the damage to a minimum if I can."
Of course, he said that, but apart from the revenge he pursued as the reincarnation of Hero Pedro, Valdes as the Demon Prince had no objection to tearing away at Ventorino Kingdom’s strength whenever he could.
"I-I see..."
Rachel visibly relaxed at his words.
"That’s still good."
"...What is?"
"The fact that you’re Marc’s child... he’ll recognize that immediately too. If so, it’s perfect for crushing his mind."
Rachel nodded.
That had likely been Isabel’s intention as well. In any case, her own strength had never been enough to guarantee success, and she did not have the time to waste. So she had drawn up a longer-term plan and entrusted revenge to her child instead.
"Then shall we talk about what comes next?"
"Do you already have a plan?"
"Of course. It’ll need a little adjustment, but... all you have to do is follow my lead. Then I’ll give Marc the finest revenge imaginable."
"All right. If it’s for revenge, I’ll do anything. That... is the reason I live."
Valdes called Irena and Yueli, who were waiting in the room next door.