Chapter 181

Translator: Willia

The weakness of Life Tenure was that people changed. Every lord in the world, by default, remained a lord until death.

Even someone who had been quick-witted, energetic, and full of confidence in his youth often grew dull, passive, and timid with age.

Their judgment clouded, anxiety plagued them, and they became fixated on trivial things. It was not uncommon for them not only to squander everything they had achieved, but even to ruin their territories and families along with it.

Count Reinwaldt of Caldebern was one such man.

He had been active and sociable in his youth, but around the age of fifty, he had grown timid and suspicious. He was now sixty years old.

There had been no particular incident that caused it, but if one had to look for a reason, perhaps the death of his eldest son, followed by his wife's passing, had combined with his own declining strength and the growing fear that he was being left all alone.

It was not an illness, so there was no cure for it. Even if he wanted to step down, he could not. The right that had naturally been his from birth, his Birthright, was no longer something he could enjoy. It had become nothing but a burden.

It had been Reinwaldt's own wish to unite the main house of Caldebern with the Stormhertz branch of the Caldebern Family.

Thinking it would benefit both sides if their bloodlines were joined through marriage, he had married his daughter Aileen to Ricardt's eldest brother, Graut.

But now that very arrangement felt like a threat. A threat to his title and his family.

On top of that, Ricardt's absurd rise in status and his affection for his homeland only made Reinwaldt more anxious.

If the King of Adeloron extended his influence here, could Reinwaldt, a mere Count, simply be swallowed up? That absurd, groundless fear had become an immediate threat in his mind.

He had no strength, and he was always tired, yet when he lay down, sleep would not come. The young man who had once had dreams had grown old, and now he could no longer dream.

On a night when the full moon hung beside a tall spire, Reinwaldt drank alone. He was not savoring the taste of the wine. He only wanted to get drunk enough to sleep.

One glass, then another. He filled a large cup with wine and drank. As the alcohol took hold, his anxious thoughts receded somewhat, and memories flashed through his mind of happier days when those now dead had still been alive.

But they passed far too quickly. That was the nature of time. When he was young, it had seemed to run far ahead of him. At some point, it had begun running beside him. And now that he was old, it stood far behind, silently watching as though telling him to go on alone. There was no going back.

The end of time was always the present. Standing at the end of time, Reinwaldt thought of his young grandson.

Yes. All of this is for my grandson. For the family. Once Stormhertz is dealt with, my family will survive even through this war. We won't be absorbed.

A hope as faint as the dark room itself blossomed in Reinwaldt's heart.

Drowsiness finally came. Before going to sleep and dreaming a happy dream, Reinwaldt wanted to see his grandson.

“Is no one there?”

Reinwaldt called to the guard knight stationed outside his bedroom. But even after quite some time had passed, there was no answer. That could not be right.

Perhaps the knight had not heard him, he thought, but to make certain, he forced his aged body upright. Still dressed in his nightclothes, he walked to the door and opened it. Yet all he saw was a corridor filled with pitch-black darkness. There was no one guarding his bedroom.

Count Reinwaldt stood there for some time, staring into the deep darkness. Nights were naturally quiet, but something felt wrong. There were no servants waiting nearby, and the silence was as cold as death.

No, perhaps he simply had not noticed because his hearing had dulled with age. But as he stood still, a very faint sound began to reach him from somewhere.

Scrape. Scrape. Scrape, scrape......

Wondering what the sound was, the Count picked up a lantern and stepped outside. The floor was cold beneath his bare feet, but perhaps because he had grown old, even pain had become somewhat dull.

The darkness filling the corridor seemed to mock him, reluctantly giving way only when the Count drew near. He walked not toward the light, but toward the sound. Scrape, scrape.

The sound was coming from his grandson's room. Was the little rascal still awake and playing around this late at night? The thought brought a fond smile to his lips.

He reached out and slowly opened the door to his grandson's room. The hinges creaked, and astonishingly, the sound stopped dead.

But something was strange. A large black mass loomed over the bed.

Wondering what it was, Reinwaldt raised the lantern toward it, and his eyes met another pair. They belonged to an intruder whose hood covered his nose and mouth. The bed was drenched in blood, and the man was in the middle of sawing through someone's neck.

Who else could that someone be? Whose room was this? The thought drove into the Count's mind like an iron spike. His eyes flew wide, and his entire body froze.

“Hiiik!”

Clang!

The lantern slipped from his hand.

At that moment, a third person attacked the Count from behind. He clamped a hand over Reinwaldt's mouth, pulled him tightly against his chest, and whispered into his ear.

“You'll see your grandson soon enough.”

Rather than pain, Reinwaldt felt the strange sensation of something foreign at his throat. Then blood immediately began gushing out, and his breathing seized up as though he were drowning.

“Cough! Grrrk! Khrrk!”

Thud.

The man who had assassinated the Count was none other than Randell, known as Iron Arm. He shook the blood from his hand and looked down at the dead Count with emotionless eyes.

Apparently not particularly moved by it, he spoke to the man inside the room.

“Hey, what're you doing? Why's it taking so long?”

“Well, I brought the wrong knife. It wasn't cutting very well.”

“Why are you sawing through it in the first place?”

“Because we have to show it as proof?”

“Proof of what?”

“......Good point. Maybe it's a habit from my Adventurer days.”

“Fuck, now the bed's filthy too. You wash it.”

“Huh?”

“You did it, so you take responsibility. Just get out here for now.”

The man who had killed the Count's young heir looked down at his blood-soaked hands for a moment. Since they were already dirty anyway, he wiped them on a clean part of the bedsheet. The half-sawn neck was truly horrific. It was at least somewhat better with the darkness hiding it.

The man with half his face covered by a hood hurried over to Randell.

“Is everything downstairs finished?”

“I more or less cleaned it all up. That's why I'm up here.”

“So what do we do now?”

“Ever heard of the Right of Retention?”

“The Right of what?”

“It's a right that's existed since the days of the ancient empire. I know I saw it in the imperial law code. It's the right to keep possession of collateral until your claim is satisfied. In other words, I'm going to hole up here until the Second Prince gives me the Title of Count. Tell all the guys operating in the other regions to halt their missions. If he doesn't give me the title, we don't work. Then the Second Prince will have no choice but to give me the Title of Count.”

“I have no idea what you're talking about, but you sound really smart, Boss.”

“Clean, isn't it? Perfect. And who am I?”

“Randell the Iron Arm!”

A loud shout entirely unsuited to the quiet castle corridor rang out. Randell nodded in satisfaction and said,

“You think I'm going to settle for something like autonomy the way the Viola Clan did? I'm going to become a Count, that's what I'm saying. You guys want to become knights too, don't you?”

“But I don't know how to ride a horse.”

“Fuck! If a Count knights you, then you're a knight!”

“Hehehe......”

Randell slung an arm around his subordinate's shoulders and yanked him close. The corpses of nobles who had died miserable deaths lay scattered through the corridor and bedroom, yet the two men joked around in high spirits.

That was the problem. Whether it was Grantz the Invincible or Randell the Iron Arm, both were sharp in their own ways, decisive, and capable of leading their men. Yet neither had any plan or even any real idea what they intended to do after actually obtaining a title.

The two descended to the floor below by way of the narrow staircase. What awaited them there was carnage on a scale that could not even be compared to the floor where the Count and his grandson had died.

The servants, hired workers, and handful of guard knights had all been killed in their sleep. The knights had drunk drugged water, fallen into a deep sleep, and been killed without even a chance to resist.

There was no need to blame them for their complacency. The real mistake had been inviting men like jackals into the castle in the first place.

If there was one small consolation to be found in this tragic carnage, it was that no crimes other than murder had been committed.

That was because Randell the Iron Arm and his subordinates might have looked ignorant and bumbling at first glance, but when it came to their work, they were professionals.

There had been none of the amateurish lapses in discipline such as raping women during a job or pocketing loot for themselves.

They had chosen a date, carried out the work swiftly and simultaneously, and finished everything cleanly.

Whether Randell's plan would actually work, however, remained uncertain. Just as Count Reinwaldt had misjudged things, and Ricardt had misjudged things to some extent, Randell too had made a miscalculation.

After Randell and his men disposed of the bodies and put the castle in order, they sent word to the Second Prince.

Count Reinwaldt had refused to participate in the war and had intended to stir up trouble for treacherous purposes, so they had executed him in accordance with the Imperial Prince's wishes and now awaited good news.

Meanwhile, somehow or other, word spread everywhere that Randell had killed the Count.

Naturally, the residents of the Count's Direct Domain were deeply shocked. Whether the Count had grown old and senile and his judgment had deteriorated or not, there was an enormous difference between having a lord and having none.

More than anything else, they relied heavily on their lord for a sense of reassurance. To hear that he had been murdered overnight left them bewildered, dumbfounded, and frightened. What would become of us now?

Whether the people of the territory were anxious or not, Randell and his men freely raided the Count's storehouses, drinking and carousing to their hearts' content. Eventually they even brought in high-class prostitutes from outside and began spending the money the Count had accumulated as freely as water.

“What'd I tell you!? Huh!? I said all that matters is that none of us betray each other, didn't I!? I don't need anything else! Fuck! Buuuurp! I don't need women! I don't need money! All I need are my comrades! You guys are all I haaave!”

Whether that was the most appropriate thing to say while flanked by two prostitutes was debatable, but Randell made an impassioned appeal to his companions about camaraderie.

Still, it was actually pretty solid camaraderie, and they worked well together. They had been together for a long time, after all.

Randell had once held sway over an entire region, with skill worthy of being counted among the Empire's Nine Swords.

At that moment, the Adjutant suddenly sprang to his feet, raised his cup high enough for the alcohol to spill over, and shouted,

“Who are we!?”

“Randell the Iron Arm!”

Inside a castle filled not with dignity and honor but with prostitutes and alcohol, Randell's subordinates roared in unison. Their solidarity had reached its peak.

Their spirits soared, their chests filled with loyalty and camaraderie, and at that moment, they needed neither women nor money. Randell and his men threw their arms around one another's shoulders and wandered through the castle together.

Naturally, they eventually spilled outside in a crowd, made a mess of the courtyard, frightened the local residents doing menial work for no reason, then climbed onto the castle walls, looked up at the sky, and roared with laughter together.

They sang as they reminisced about the hardships they had endured together, and sometimes suddenly wiped tears from their eyes.

While everyone was still caught up in the excitement, one of the men looked far beyond the castle and said,

“Huh? Looks like the Imperial Prince sent someone.”

“What!?”

Randell shot to his feet. His subordinates all surged upright with him. They were so drunk their vision spun, but after blinking a few times, they could see reasonably well again.

“What? Where, where?”

“Oveeer there.”

The subordinate pointed.

At the point where the road ended beyond the village below the castle, there was indeed someone sitting on horseback and looking in their direction.

“We're over here! Here! Moron! Can't you even find the road!?”

“Hurry up and give us the title!”

“Wahahahaha!”

Everyone was in such a good mood that they shouted whatever came to mind. As though he had heard them, the man standing at the end of the road urged his horse toward the castle.

He did not seem to be coming particularly fast. Or... was he? As he gradually drew closer, there was one curious thing about him.

“I've never seen a horse that red in my life.”

One of Randell's subordinates said it aloud. Everyone else was thinking the same thing.

The man on the red horse crossed through the village and finally reached the castle gate. He stopped his horse in front of it and quietly looked up at the men on the walls. He was a handsome blond-haired young man.

Randell and his men figured that someone of the Second Prince's stature must send impressive men like this as his envoys.

But what the young man said was entirely unexpected. He pointed straight at the people looking down at him and shouted,

“I am the King of Adeloron! Ricardt! You dared murder Count Caldebern and thought you would escape unscathed!? I'll flay every last one of you and rub salt into your flesh!”

“......”

First came confusion. Then they sobered up. None of them immediately understood what Ricardt was saying. More importantly, who had he just said he was?

Randell blinked repeatedly and stared blankly down from the castle wall before asking,

“Um, haven't you come to the wrong place?”

“Shut your mouth, you wretch! You're Randell, aren't you!? I'll give you the most painful death imaginable!”

Randell only kept blinking. He simply could not understand the situation itself, much less accept it.

Ricardt was that Ricky in the red cloak, wasn't he? The one who had been butchering people since he was ten years old. The one who had wiped out the Ernburg Five. And now he was an undefeated military commander as well. He was even a king in his own right.

So why was that man here?

Randell could not understand it no matter how hard he tried, but neither could he deny the reality before his eyes. And just like that, cracks immediately spread through the camaraderie that had seemed so unshakable moments before.

Randell hid his steel prosthetic arm behind his back, pointed at the subordinate beside him, and said,

“I think there's been a misunderstanding. I'm not Randell. He is.”

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