Chapter 275: The Tin Knight and The Enchanting Demon
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 275: The Tin Knight and The Enchanting Demon
Giselle's inauguration as the new lord proceeded with remarkable smoothness.
As Giselle had already been managing the domain's affairs as the acting lord, no formal transition of duties was necessary. Furthermore, the family's youngest lady, who might have been the sole obstacle, acknowledged Giselle's new position with a smile.
The common folk and vassals, while realizing their lives were improving daily under Giselle's governance, had harbored a trace of anxiety and guilt regarding the family's youngest lady. Thus, when Adelaide herself assured them she was fine, they breathed a collective, internal sigh of relief.
Strictly speaking, it wasn't that Adelaide had given up Friedel; rather, she had decided to govern a much larger territory that included Friedel. However, very few understood this distinction.
The people of the domain would only begin to grasp the true extent of Adelaide's new position once the project led by Maris and the Lion Duke's bloodline—to develop new territories and merge them with existing ones—was fully underway. But that was a story for a later time.
“You're a strange one, you know. You've got nothing left to prove, so why are you so set on sticking with us?”
“Hehe…”
Adelaide smiled sheepishly at Dorothea's remark.
Truthfully, just as Dorothea had said, Adelaide had little reason to continue traveling.
In fact, from a pragmatic standpoint, the proper course of action for a noble would have been to remain here rather than journeying with the party.
Whether it was recruiting neighboring territories or redeveloping the land, it would have been more advantageous for securing future influence for Adelaide to personally lead the efforts on the ground, rather than simply entrusting everything to the Lion Duke's bloodline.
Furthermore, there was always the risk that, in Adelaide's absence, they might embezzle the vast funds being sent from the two Towers.
Of course, neither Maris nor Giselle were foolish enough to be blinded by short-term profit at the cost of long-term loss, but it was a fundamental truth that one could never be certain of another's heart.
And yet, Adelaide did not hesitate to embark on the journey with her companions.
“I achieved my goal thanks to all of you, so now I want to help you! Besides, I need to visit the kingdom to see my mother anyway.”
“Honestly.”
Dorothea muttered, shaking her head.
As you watched her, you chimed in.
[The ‘Tin Knight’ says you’re happy on the inside, so why are you being so prickly!]
[The ‘Tin Knight’ points out that being unable to express gratitude is a sickness of its own!]
Thump!
Her reply came not in words, but as a rap from her staff.
The blow wasn't very hard, though.
It was proof that Dorothea herself was, to some extent, aware of the truth in your words.
Considering that your purely nonsensical jokes usually earned you a beating severe enough to dent your helmet into a U-shape, this reaction was downright adorable.
While Dorothea continued to ramble on about transactions and debts, you let her words go in one ear and out the other, sinking into your own thoughts.
A journey’s purpose is important.
You could call it the main scenario, or the main quest.
Though you were the type to occasionally stray from the set path to beat down enemies you had no reason to fight, you never denied the significance of a main quest.
It serves as a guidepost, after all.
For example, you had a purpose: to stay by Dorothea's side and protect her, following the request of the old man who had entrusted his body to you.
At the start of the journey, your motivation had been half curiosity and half a lack of anything better to do. Now, however, it was a goal etched into your very heart, request or not.
Dorothea's purpose was to collect the eight sacred treasures of the kingdom and pass her master's graduation exam.
The Key of Opium. The Belt of Amaryllis. The Chalice of Tuberose. The Gloves of Haider. The Pouch of Lilium.
She had secured five, with only three left to go. While this meant she was just past the halfway mark, the end of her quest was not far off, as other competitors would surely gather their own treasures and come seeking her out.
Adelaide had accomplished her goal of building her skills and reputation to be acknowledged as the heir to her domain.
In fact, she had overachieved to the point that instead of becoming Friedel's lord, she had reached a level where she could take Friedel's lord as a vassal. But hey, a win was a win.
Adelaide's new, updated objectives could be summarized as 'Help her companions' and 'Settle the score with the Kalidahs'.
Having thought this far, you glanced to your side.
A beautiful, composed woman with green hair and red eyes noticed your gaze and tilted her head.
Sophia.
What was her reason for traveling with them? What, exactly, was her own 'main quest'?
Was she truly just being dragged along by Dorothea, a person with no goal or will of her own, merely a vessel for one of the eight sacred treasures?
…You had seen too much to dismiss her so lightly.
The angel who appeared in the City of Scales. The young girl who had called Sophia 'teacher'.
Her duality—expressing a favorable view of God, stating, 'Their imperfection makes them feel familiar,' while simultaneously showing unusual hostility toward the heavens that acted in God's name, as if mocking their every word and deed.
When you had asked her why on that deserted island (inhabited by vampires and teeming with evil spirits), Sophia had refused, saying your affinity level wasn't high enough yet.
But she had also added that it wouldn't be long.
Just then, a thought struck you like a bolt of lightning.
[The ‘Tin Knight’ plucks a flower from the roadside and presents it to Sophia!]
“Oh, my. Thank you.”
[The ‘Tin Knight’ plucks a flower from the roadside and presents it to Sophia!]
[The ‘Tin Knight’ plucks a flower from the roadside and presents it to Sophia!]
[The ‘Tin Knight’ plucks a flower from the roadside and presents it to Sophia!]
“Hmm?”
[The ‘Tin Knight’ asks if it’s not yet time for the secret to be revealed!]
“Mmm? I suppose so?”
[The ‘Tin Knight’ plucks a flower from the roadside and presents it to Sophia!]
“Sir Tin. The system is designed so that affinity doesn't increase from receiving the same gift over and over.”
[The ‘Tin Knight’ displays a ‘!?’ next to its head in shock!]
“What are you two idiots doing?”
“……”
“And Adelaide, why are you looking on so enviously…?”
There's not a single sane person here, Dorothea sighed deeply, completely unaware that to an outside observer, she was just as strange as the rest of them.
*
Let's turn back the clock a little, to a time when the Tin Knight and his party were still bickering in the Empire.
Marquis William Hemming had returned to his own territory for the first time in a long while, bringing with him the lady of Friedel and her retinue. Upon receiving a report from his steward detailing the state of his domain, his lips began to tremble.
“I-is everything written here… true?”
“My apologies, my lord Marquis. We sent missives to the royal capital, but it seems they missed you on the road.”
The report his steward handed him clearly showed that the domain's economy was on a slow but steady decline.
It was as if its fortunes were in perfect inverse proportion to the king's favor he now enjoyed.
Of course, this downturn hadn't come without warning.
“I say, Marquis Hemming. Do you truly intend to stand by and watch the king's reckless behavior? At this rate, that madman will actually launch a campaign to conquer the continent!”
“Weren't you the one who argued we must put a leash on the king to stop him from running rampant? And now you betray us like this?!”
“William, you despicable traitor! Enjoying your new position cozying up to the king?”
“You son of a bitch!!”
Polite, to some degree, to his face. Openly vulgar behind his back.
As he listened to the escalating daily condemnations from his former colleagues, William Hemming wept tears of blood in his heart.
‘Fuck, I don't want to do this either!’
That witch is a monster! She cursed me, she's blackmailing me! Everyone, please, you have to hear about what a vicious person she is!
If only he could shout it from the rooftops, he would feel immensely better.
But bound by the curse—‘You cannot act in any way that would bring harm to the witch’—he could not reveal the truth.
If he spoke up, he was liable to have his species changed from human to amphibian. What choice did he have?
William preferred to live as a man suffering from suppressed rage than as a frog free of it.
However, the other nobles knew nothing of William's predicament (though it was doubtful they would have stopped even if they had). They began to exert intense pressure on the 'self-proclaimed mediator' who had seemingly defected to the royalist faction.
They did so not with military might, but with economic sanctions.
As the nobles of neighboring domains began to frantically tighten the screws—imposing random tariffs, restricting the passage of merchants—the Hemming marquisate found itself effectively isolated and helpless.
Grasping the situation, William sent envoys to demand an explanation and even visited the neighboring territories himself to negotiate, but their responses were uniformly curt.
-The recent harvest was poor, so we are merely preventing an outflow of grain. We cannot sell what we do not have, can we?
-Why are the checkpoints so strict, you ask? There are many bandits about, so we are simply being thorough. Even if you have become the king's most trusted subject, it is quite excessive to interfere in the governance of another's domain.
-Merchants? Travelers? We haven't stopped anyone. Perhaps they were captured by trolls? Who knows.
“These absolute bastards…!”
William tried to live a dignified, elegant life as befitting a descendant of a great house, but the nobles' attitudes were so brazen that even he found it difficult to hold back a stream of curses.
Of course, he knew why they were doing it.
The current king, crying out for the 'glory of old,' was obsessed with strengthening the central government and expanding the military—both of which were a threat to the nobility.
To be more precise, the most severe opposition came not from the court nobles, who received salaries and titles from the king, but from the landed aristocracy, who held their own independent territories within the kingdom.
While there were some nobles like William, who governed their own lands while also attending the royal court, they were the minority. Most lords remained in their territories, sending a child or relative to the palace as their proxy, content to simply pay their taxes on schedule.
Further west on the continent, there were plenty of lords who paid no taxes at all (which was why Friedel's lord had been considered such an anomaly), so these nobles argued that by their standards, they were being perfectly loyal.
The old kingdom, it was said, had not been a place of such power struggles between the king and his nobility, but the current lords' attitude was essentially, 'What do we care about the ways of our ancestors?'
Most importantly, William's domain was geographically close to the other nobles and far from the king.
This had been a great strength when he was a leader of the noble faction, but now, it put him at a severe disadvantage.
Still, the situation had been merely 'difficult, but manageable.' That changed when a massive infestation of mice broke out across the domain, causing the already precarious food supply to plummet into crisis.
“Do something about these damned mice! And more importantly, why has a swarm of them appeared out of nowhere?!”
“W-we believe they swarmed in from the nearby forest, my lord, but we cannot be certain.”
“The swarms are raiding every last storehouse!”
“Mice have even been spotted in the chambers of the Lady of Friedel!”
“Aaaaaaaargh!”
As William lamented the unfairness of the world, a traveler came to visit him.
The traveler, a thick wooden flute tucked into his belt, said to the marquis,
“─I shall rid you of all these mice.”