Chapter 36
To become a ‘beloved ally’ after the evil spirit incident, I focused even more on diplomacy.
Although it reduced our profits a little, I signed a spice contract with Lord Jeras for the sake of our relationship with the princess and our neighboring domains, and I sent a considerable tribute of spices, salt, and other goods to the prince who had sent Azel as a gesture of gratitude.
Yet there was one family whose relationship with us never improved: House Ryan.
I could not understand what these bastards were dissatisfied with, but they returned the compensation money we had sent to Dreihart and took an even more thoroughly hostile stance toward us than before.
If they had merely taken a hostile stance toward us, I could at least have understood.
House Ryan brutally hunted down not only the slaves fleeing to our domain but even the free citizens, and unless we dispatched the Kron Knights to the domain's border to protect them, the fields would have been littered with corpses.
In fact, I already knew through the merchant informants Noah had planted that the Ryan domain was gradually going insane.
But I never expected them to go so far as to publicly kill even a steward, the free citizen who stood closest to the nobility, in an old-fashioned trial called ‘God's judgment’ rather than ‘the judgment of the law.’
A few days after that incident, a letter arrived.
It had been sent by ‘Vara,’ Hadem's son, whom I had met exactly once in the past.
The letter desperately asked me to come secretly to an agreed-upon place because there was something he absolutely wanted to tell me.
It could have been a trap, but the desperation I sensed in the letter brought me to the meeting place with Azel, and that was how I came to be here.
Before I could react in shock to the son's startling declaration that he wanted his father dead, I answered as a lord.
“Do you understand what it means to say you will kill your father using my power?”
“Yes! I know. I know better than anyone!”
No matter how many insane things he had done, Hadem was still a lord and a father.
For a son to ask me—the lord of a neighboring domain, no less—to kill such a person was an enormous act of filial impiety even by the moral standards of this place, where Confucianism did not exist.
“But this is the only way! If we leave things as they are, that Mad Lion will continue this madness until every one of us is dead!!”
In Calix's memories, Vara had been a slender, cheerful, and lively child.
Yet after whatever he had endured for ten years, his face was covered in wrinkles, and his hair had become patchy, as though he had developed bald spots.
From his appearance alone, I could somewhat understand how painful his life had been over the past ten years.
“Have you tried asking His Highness the Prince for help?”
“Ha! Big Brother! Do you think His Highness the Prince, who intends to use my father, would throw away one of his axes over something like this!? He will never intervene over something like this!”
I see… The prince I knew from the game was not evil, but neither could he be called particularly just. He was a pragmatist.
Hadem's execution of a free citizen through God's judgment was insane, and the prince would not look favorably upon it either.
But depending on how it was interpreted, that action came dangerously close to the limits of a lord's governing authority.
Would the prince discard Hadem, one of his military assets, because of this incident and take an action that would reduce his influence in the southern region?
As Vara had said, there was a high chance that he would not intervene.
“Then what about asking Her Highness the Princess for help?”
“I tried asking for help indirectly! She replied that families should handle their own affairs!!”
It would not be easy for Lord Jeras, acting alone as a member of the princess's faction, to defeat Lord Hadem.
In the end, defeating Hadem would require the power of another lord from the princess's faction, and then, regardless of what justification we created, it would become a proxy war between the prince and princess.
If that happened, the prince would certainly provide support, because he could not afford to lose even if Hadem was in the wrong. And so, a war over the fate of the southern region could begin.
The princess and Lord Jeras had probably refused because they found that possibility too burdensome.
“Big Brother! You are the only one we have. You, the Silver Dragon of Kron, are the only one who can save the people of our Ryan domain!! If this is our fate, then we would rather become your slaves!!!”
“………”
My head hurt.
I felt sorry for the people of the Ryan domain, and I wanted to help them as well.
But if I rashly started an all-out war with Hadem, things would become troublesome.
Defeating Hadem was not the problem.
If I made Hadem's crimes a public issue, I would end up politically attacking the prince for knowing about those crimes and leaving them unaddressed.
Then the princess's faction would gleefully begin attacking the prince's faction, and I would be branded as a member of the princess's faction, making the situation irreversible.
That would run counter to my goal of becoming a ‘beloved ally’ to every faction.
“I understand your suffering and that of your people.”
“Big Brother!!”
“But this matter is too serious to decide here. I will contact you later, so wait for me.”
“I will wait! Please…save the people of our Ryan domain.”
Vara bowed his head to me and begged with utter desperation.
It broke my heart that the heir to a domain had been driven so far into a corner that his hair had fallen out, his pride had been abandoned, and he was bowing his head to me.
I returned to my domain carrying that heavy burden.
* * *
After returning to the domain, I asked Azel to keep this matter a secret between the two of us for the time being.
When I told Azel it was for the sake of making the right choice, Azel nodded emphatically, saying they understood.
The reason I did not tell my vassals about it immediately was that I needed time.
Many of the incidents so far had been unavoidable.
Monsters had invaded, and the rebellion had already begun because of someone's conspiracy.
I had resolved matters that had already begun rather than starting them myself.
But this time was different.
No matter how insane Hadem's actions had been,
Even though this was for the sake of answering Vara's plea and saving the people of the Ryan domain,
if I fought Hadem now, it would become ‘something I had started.’
It was not something someone had ordered me to do, nor was it unavoidable.
It would be something born from my own thoughts, my own judgment, and my own command.
No matter how small the matter, people would die if a battle broke out.
No matter how much I tried to reduce the losses, someone would die if war began.
The responsibility of ordering someone to die so that someone else could live felt…far too heavy.
Compared to that, the political issue between the prince and princess was truly insignificant.
While I was agonizing over the matter, I saw people gathered in the central square.
The people gathered in the square were covered in wounds, then knelt down and began to shout.
“My lord! Please save my father!!”
“My son is still there! My lord! Please save my son!!”
Their voices reached all the way to my office.
I had no choice but to ask what was going on.
“The people are gathered in the square… What is happening?”
At my words, Hart spoke with a troubled expression.
“They are migrants who escaped from the Ryan domain. They are begging you to save the family members who were unable to escape.”
“Migrants who escaped? Don't families usually flee together?”
At my question, Noah gazed at them sorrowfully and spoke.
“I hear that surveillance in the Ryan domain has become extremely strict recently. So, in an effort to get even one more person to our domain, families are splitting up and fleeing separately.”
“As a result, many people arrive in our domain, but many others fail to make it, die, or are captured and taken back to the Ryan domain.”
After hearing the situation, I was dumbfounded.
I had never imagined that I would see separated families like those I had witnessed in my previous life here.
I watched them from the office.
They were all covered in wounds.
Their bodies were covered in minor injuries, and their clothes had been reduced to rags.
No matter how difficult things had become because of the growing number of migrants in our domain, we were not so overwhelmed that we could not treat wounded migrants and give them clothes.
And yet, if they had gathered there covered in wounds and dressed in rags, there was only one reason.
They had gathered there because they were more worried about their families than receiving treatment and clothes.
The separated families from the Ryan domain continued to shout.
Even without receiving an answer, they continued to shout with all their strength.
“Please deliver our families from evil!”
“My lord! I'm sorry! I'm sorry that begging is all I can do! If I could just be reunited safely with my family, I would give you all my wealth. I will become your slave. So…so please, save my family…please…”
One middle-aged man shouted through his tears.
He was crying just like the man I had seen on a family-reunion program for separated families in my previous life.
When that image came to mind, I could no longer bear to keep watching.
And I felt my insides boiling with rage.
I was angry at everything: Hadem, who had created this situation; the prince, who had stood by and watched; and even myself, who could not act immediately despite seeing it all.
* * *
That evening, I could not fall asleep easily.
As I walked along the castle walls and stared at the dark horizon, a shadow approached me.
“My lord, were you here?”
He was Rikain, captain of the Kron Knights and a man who had served House Kron since the time of the previous lords.
Troubled, I spoke to Rikain.
“I want to be alone…Rikain.”
At my words, Rikain did not leave.
Instead, he approached me and spoke as though he understood what was weighing on my mind.
“Why are you worrying so much? My lord, give us the order. Give us the order to save them, as you did in Dreihart.”
“You know better than anyone that things were different then…”
I looked in the direction of Dreihart.
Beyond the horizon, I could still vividly remember the battle in that desert.
“The battle at Dreihart was unavoidable. But a battle with Hadem is different. If we choose to, we can avoid fighting Hadem altogether.”
“But if we do that, the people of the Ryan domain will continue to die.”
“How many of our soldiers died during the Deeprock incident? How many of our knights died during the Dreihart incident!! How many more will die if we fight Hadem!!!”
After every battle, reports on the dead were always brought to me.
There had not been a single battle so far in which no one had died.
All those deaths felt as though they were my responsibility.
“That is an honorable death.“
“There is no such thing as an honorable death!”
“There is! There is!!”
Rikain shouted.
Even in Calix's memories, Rikain had never shouted even once.
Yet this time, he shouted at me for the first time, as though he were teaching me a lesson.
“I have wondered countless times whether I might die cleaning up the nobles' shit. I knew it was unjust, but everyone considered it normal, so I followed along as though it were only natural.“
Harassing the people in the name of justice was common among knights in this era.
Rikain had also once received such a filthy assignment from a former lord of House Kron.
”It was you, my lord, who gave people like us the righteous order to save the people and free the slaves. How could it not be honorable to die fighting for that?“
Rikain recalled that day.
He remembered the slaves cheering joyfully as they gained their freedom amid delphinium flowers, with their lord standing at the center of them all.
That was Rikain's long-held dream, one he had thought could never be realized.
There, Rikain's long-held dream of saving the people through an honorable battle fought at the command of a righteous lord had been realized.
“I am not the only one. All the Kron Knights will be proud to fight for you, my lord.”
“……”
Rikain walked in front of Calix and knelt down.
Then he sincerely appealed to Calix, his lord.
“Therefore, please think of our honor rather than our lives. To become your strength and take part in an honorable battle that saves the people from evil—that is our wish.”
At Rikain's words, Calix could not say anything.
He could not say anything because it felt as though Rikain were admonishing him for trying to escape responsibility by using their lives as an excuse.
And the next day, Calix decided to strike at Hadem.