A Declaration of War Before Becoming the Duke

Kaizen, true to his identity as a warrior from the North, was disassembling numerous firearms and inspecting their parts.

"So."

A strict-looking brown-haired woman had come to visit Kaizen's room.

Like him, she was one of the Nebula ducal family's illegitimate children. Bella.

"How did the ambush go?"

Ignoring her words, Kaizen wiped a foreign particle from his firearm.

As a warrior from the North, inspecting his weapons in preparation for battles to come was a vital ritual.

He had already wiped down and sharpened his sword, so now it was time for his firearms.

BOOM!

Perhaps she disliked seeing Kaizen like that.

Bella, who had been glaring at him with a frown, strode over, slammed her palm onto the desk, and opened her mouth once again.

"Let me ask again. As you said, I was the one who provided the funds. Shouldn't you at least report on the progress?"

Her words were polite, but her tone was practically commanding.

Kaizen answered with a growl as he looked at the firearm parts knocked loose by the impact of the desk.

"Can't you wait even a little..."

"Oh my. If I remember correctly, we're not exactly on close enough terms for you to show me that kind of consideration."

Damn woman.

Seeing Bella shrug in front of him, Kaizen could only think that.

A woman who, like him, had entered the ducal family as an illegitimate child.

And yet she acted insolently, as though she were a noble despite being nothing more than an illegitimate child.

There wasn't a single thing about her he liked.

At that thought, anger began to heat Kaizen's head.

'Should I kill her?'

Kaizen's hand twitched for an instant.

If he fought her using his ability, she wasn't someone he couldn't defeat.

No, lacking almost any real combat experience, she was actually an opponent whose neck he could take right now.

Click.

The moment that thought occurred to him, a revolver was already in Kaizen's hand.

Mana began flowing into the revolver's cylinder.

It was the signal that [Magic Bullet] was ready to activate.

Vrrrrm.

Seeing Kaizen like that, Bella too began scattering mana enough to make the furniture around them tremble.

Numerous mana amplifiers were attached to her entire body.

The mana those amplifiers emitted as they resonated was powerful enough to make the surrounding air ripple.

"..."

"..."

A truly hair-trigger situation.

'No.'

But Kaizen suppressed the murderous impulse welling up inside him.

When he lowered the revolver first, Bella withdrew her mana as well.

If they had been the only two illegitimate children, he would have dealt with her swiftly, whether by assassination or whatever else.

But there was one variable.

'Abel...'

Kaizen silently mouthed the other illegitimate child's name.

The man he had glimpsed when he came out of his room after fainting from the humiliation the duke had inflicted on him at their first meeting.

And the man who had shown no movement at all while Kaizen, at the duke's command, had been rushing around studying and trying to win the knights' trust—things he normally never did.

At first, he had thought Abel was merely a wastrel.

He was someone who holed himself up in his room, making it impossible to know what he did.

But the situation had changed now.

Ordinary people didn't know, but every noble and person of power knew the Empire's current situation.

They too had been able to learn what had happened in the capital through the ducal family's intelligence department.

Under normal circumstances, it would have been nothing more than information to stave off boredom.

The airship terrorist attack, the necromancy that had occurred in the Empire—it had all been nothing more than a distant story to Kaizen.

Bluntly speaking, since it wasn't a misfortune that had befallen him, it hadn't affected him much.

But.

'A saint...'

The moment he heard that Abel had contacted the saint and grown close to her, what had happened in the Imperial capital was no longer someone else's story.

A saint. And not just any saint, but Saint Ariel of the Church of Light, whose stock was rising fastest right now?

Dangerous.

That was the thought that had instinctively occurred to him when he first received this information. Bella had felt the same.

The temporary alliance that had formed as a result.

Bella provided the funds to hire mercenaries, while Kaizen handled the mercenary contracts through connections he had built up during his life in the North.

"Wait."

The intelligence department had no information that could help them gauge Abel's full strength.

After all, for the sake of fair competition, information on the other illegitimate children had all been classified as top secret and was inaccessible.

'Not knowing that bastard Abel's strength bothers me a little, but...'

"I hired approximately ten mercenary units and ordered them to ambush him."

No matter how it was done, that much force was bound to leave a mark.

Whether his body grew tired or his mind became exhausted, damage would accumulate either way.

"They departed about two days ago, so the first mercenary unit probably ambushed Abel today."

"..."

"The relentless attacks, day and night, will wear his mind down to nothing."

But they didn't know.

To begin with, both of them had lived their entire lives in the light.

Kaizen was a promising warrior from the North.

Bella was an elite who had graduated top of her class from a magic academy.

That was why neither of them understood.

Relentless attacks day and night would certainly tire a person out.

Their thinking was not entirely wrong.

But constant threats of assassination were practically an everyday occurrence from Abel's perspective.

Abel's mind was by no means so weak that it would collapse from something like that.

Moreover, if they wanted to inflict psychological damage, irregular surprise attacks would be much more effective than regular assaults.

"I told them to gnaw away at his mind with maximum guerrilla tactics. Now wait."

The mercenaries they had hired would wear down their opponent by repeatedly striking and withdrawing.

Then the two of them, Kaizen and Bella, would defeat the exhausted Abel through a pincer attack.

In the Nebula ducal family, defeat was an indelible stigma.

No one in this ducal family obeyed a man who had once been brought down.

"I understand. Then I suppose I should prepare to deal with that wastrel."

Bella nodded as though a superior had just received a report from a subordinate.

Murderous intent surged once again at her insolent attitude, but Kaizen suppressed it again.

Bang!

"Oh my."

Yes, he had held back.

He had substituted a single bullet for the urge to bury dozens of rounds between her brows.

It was rapid fire bordering on the supernatural.

In Bella's eyes, Kaizen's sequence of drawing, aiming, and firing was so swift that she couldn't even see it.

"That's dangerous, you know?"

However, Kaizen's attack was blocked by the shield spell Bella kept deployed at all times.

The bullet fell powerlessly to the floor. Looking down at it, Bella gave a sardonic smile.

"Then I fire a gun to be dangerous. Do you think I fire one hoping to be safe?"

"Is that so?"

Bella gave a small inward laugh as the situation unfolded according to her plan.

That attack had allowed her to roughly gauge the strength of the man named Kaizen.

She had gotten more than enough value out of deliberately maintaining that insolent attitude and needling his nerves.

The force of the impact against the shield.

And by roughly reverse-calculating the mana that had gathered at the muzzle of that man's gun during their little battle of nerves, she could infer Kaizen's strength.

"What a shame. Next time we meet, I hope for somewhat more gentlemanly treatment."

Bang!

Kaizen answered her words with another gunshot.

Thud.

The door closed.

"Damn woman..."

Her attitude, her motives—there was nothing about her he liked.

Kaizen clicked his tongue once, picked up the firearm part that had fallen to the floor, and resumed inspecting it.

Time passed.

One day later.

"What? Annihilated?"

Kaizen heard that three mercenary units sent to ambush Abel had been wiped out.

He once again emphasized to all the remaining mercenary units that the ambush itself was not the objective; the key strategy was to strike and withdraw in guerrilla-style attacks.

Three days later.

"What?! I told you! Strike and withdraw in guerrilla-style attacks!!"

This time, five mercenary units were wiped out.

On the fifth and final day.

"Heeey. It's hopeless. Completely hopeless."

When he heard that even the final two remaining mercenary units had been wiped out, Kaizen drastically revised his estimate of Abel's strength upward and stared blankly at the ceiling in dejection.

***

Five days later.

"We've arrived."

As I was resting briefly with my eyes closed, Mist's voice reached my ears.

I opened one eye and looked out the car window. The Nebula ducal estate came into view.

"Mmph... Yeah. So we've arrived."

"Yes."

Saying that, Mist began slowly parking the car in the parking area maintained by the ducal family.

...

A perfectly smooth parking job without the slightest jolt.

I hadn't noticed it while driving over unpaved roads because the car had been shaking, but once we reached paved roads, I could fully appreciate her driving skills.

Who was it that said you knew someone was a truly good driver when their passengers fell asleep without realizing it?

By that standard, Mist was a perfect-score driver.

"Ugh..."

I gave a light stretch to loosen my stiff body.

I could feel her gaze on me through the rearview mirror, but it wasn't the first or second time, so I simply took it in stride.

Clunk.

I opened the car door and stepped outside, rubbing my still slightly stiff neck.

"If you're uncomfortable, would it be all right if I gave you a massage?"

"Hm? Ah, no, I'm fine. More importantly, don't we have something to do?"

I declined Mist's offer and slowly started walking toward the ducal family's estate.

Ten attacks by hired mercenary units on the way to this ducal estate.

And twenty-five attacks by gangs of bandits who appeared to have been additionally mobilized by those mercenaries.

There had been a total of thirty-five attacks over five full days.

I could understand the bandit attacks, if I gave them every possible benefit of the doubt.

Whether the number of bandits had increased because public sentiment had grown unsettled after the terrorist attack in the Empire, or for some other reason, I knew that their numbers had gone up.

But the mercenary units were a different story.

These were mercenary units that had obviously been hired and set in motion by someone, not bandits who hadn't even awakened mana.

If so, who had hired them to attack me?

"Let's go to the head of the family first."

It was a simple matter.

Who stood to benefit from me being attacked?

The illegitimate children—in other words, Kaizen and Bella, the two currently in this ducal family. They had clearly been behind it.

"Damn it. There can't be any commotion while we're dealing with the illegitimate children."

In truth, this was only half an excuse.

"So I need to ask the head of the family for permission."

An excuse I was making to myself because I had to face the head of the family, whom I didn't even want to meet.

I immediately quickened my pace to meet the head of the Nebula ducal family.

.

.

.

So what is it?"

"...There's something I need to say."

"?"

The duke looked to be in worse condition than before, perhaps because the internal injuries he had suffered in his fight with me had been so severe. I slowly opened my mouth.

"From now on, I'm planning to devour all the power of the ducal family you've built up."

"..."

"For my own sake alone."

An unidentified organization hostile to me.

An organization shrouded in secrecy—I knew nothing about its strength, intelligence network, or financial power.

To stand against such an organization, the limits of an individual's power were obvious.

Therefore, I now had to become the head of the Nebula ducal family.

"So if you want to stop me, stop me now."

The duke before me probably wasn't likely to look upon me kindly.

Naturally. He had already been suffering from being poisoned, and then he had suffered severe internal injuries in his fight with me.

Of course, the duke had initiated that fight by attacking first, but people were fickle.

Even if someone attacked first and suffered the consequences, it was only natural for them to feel wronged.

"And don't think about scheming behind my back for no reason."

As I said that, I exhaled a long stream of cigar smoke—the cigar I had never once removed from my lips in this duke's room until now.