Chapter 53 - A Disturbance (2)

"... I don't remember submitting a résumé."

Aiden snapped back.

His tone was so sharp that Noel, quietly watching beside him, unwittingly put a hand to her forehead.

Then again, this was a man who clashed with members of the imperial family at every opportunity. Why would he make an exception for a grand duke?

The surprising part wasn't Aiden's confrontational attitude, but how mildly the grand duke took it.

"I'm well aware that you're insolent toward anyone you dislike, regardless of who they are."

The grand duke straightened his clothes as he spoke.

"If those fellows had been in mortal danger, I would have saved them myself. You needn't worry about that."

"..."

After listening in silence, Aiden replied in the same surly tone.

"... I don't understand why you arranged any of that in the first place."

"I wanted to know whether you were a fool who'd lucked into power or a man with firm convictions."

"Pardon?"

"You were a war orphan, weren't you? From the slums. Your rise to fame was quite recent."

"..."

As Aiden's expression darkened further, the grand duke continued calmly.

"It's easy to lose sight of who you are when your circumstances change suddenly. I was simply testing whether you were that shallow."

"... By digging into someone's past and goading innocent kids into doing something dangerous?"

His answer was still surly, but the grand duke smiled, unperturbed.

"Yes, and it was worthwhile. I found someone I like."

"..."

This man was a formidable opponent.

Aiden mulled that assessment over. Watching him smoothly shrug off this much hostility, he couldn't help thinking so.

"... At any rate, that doesn't explain it. What position are you recruiting me for, and what do you want me to do?"

"Do you know why the Duchy of Aslan is in the north?"

Of course he did.

It served as the gateway for all manner of evil spirits and magical beasts crossing over from the land bordering the Empire's north.

It wasn't called the Empire's shield for nothing.

"If you know that, this should be easy to explain."

The grand duke continued with a faint smile.

"Once every ten years, the fiends and magical beasts crossing over from there turn the place into a hellscape. We call that day the Night of the Hunt."

"..."

"I'd like you to help bring it under control."

... The introduction to Chapter 2 couldn't have been clearer.

"... Don't you have children you could ask instead of me? I hear they're all distinguished warriors. Surely you could ask them to—"

"I can't trust those halfwits. Are you serious?"

"..."

"I can't entrust a responsibility like that to fools who try to snatch my title the moment I start to falter."

"... Even so, surely they'd be better than me."

As Aiden tried to argue despite that scathing assessment, the grand duke scattered several photographs across the table.

Their contents made both Aiden and Noel flinch.

They showed Aiden wielding pure-white energy, divinity, and even dharmic power.

On top of that, they had captured him using the Knight of Dawn's technique in his recent battle against the Lord Protector.

"You're a hot potato right now, husband of the Lionhearted."

"..."

"A wielder of multiple supernatural powers, with ties to the Knight of Dawn as well—"

The grand duke shifted his gaze from the photographs to Aiden.

"You're a talent people across the entire continent, not just the Empire, would scramble to claim. That wretch of an Emperor seems to be doing everything he can to keep you out of the spotlight so no one steals you away."

The grand duke continued matter-of-factly.

"So pack your things and come to my domain. I'm preparing a reward you won't be able to refuse."

"..."

"Heaven's Light is coming, husband of the Lionhearted."

Aiden flinched.

Searching his memory, he realized he'd heard those words before.

["Heaven's Light is coming, Mr. Aiden."]

... He had heard them from the prince some time ago.

Before he could ponder why the grand duke was saying the same thing, the man continued.

"The Empire will be turned upside down before long. It's already packed with gunpowder, and someone's playing with fire inside it. Whatever else that Emperor may have done, he's made a dreadful mess of raising his child."

"..."

"The conservative nobles loyal to the Emperor, the radical nobles aligned with the prince, and the military officers backing me. Those factions divide the Empire into three camps. That's the political landscape today. Are you aware of that?"

"... I'm not interested in a lecture."

"It doesn't matter if you aren't. What I just described is the entirety of the reward I'm offering."

"Pardon?"

"You and the prince aren't on particularly good terms, are you?"

"..."

"I'll help you resolve that."

Grand Duke Aslan's voice remained level.

"As the head of the Empire's largest faction outside the Emperor's and the prince's..."

But what followed was unmistakably...

"I'm saying I'll personally help you take that prince's head."

...an offer he couldn't refuse.

▣

A well-built train naturally offered an excellent ride, especially in first class.

Of course it did. Those compartments were made for wealthy people to travel in comfort.

That was how it should have been, anyway.

"..."

"..."

His nerves fraying, Aiden glanced back and forth between the two women sharing his compartment.

Noel and Katya stared out the windows with unnatural determination.

'I can't breathe in here.'

Unsurprisingly, that was the thought running through Aiden's mind as he sat there sweating bullets.

They'd never exactly gotten along, but it was far worse now. Neither said a word or tried to meet the other's eyes. Whenever their gazes happened to cross, they jerked their heads away so sharply it looked unnatural.

'I think they're both sulking.'

Noel seemed upset that Katya had followed them without a word, while Katya seemed upset that the two of them had gone out without telling her.

... They were both more than old enough to know better. Honestly.

Watching a nation's greatest knight, the very symbol of its military might, and another nation's princess behave this way left Aiden utterly dumbfounded.

He would be better off doing something productive than dwelling on that.

With that in mind, he began sorting through the information surfacing in his head, piece by piece.

'A crucial branching point in the Main Quest...'

Honestly, he'd be lying if he said the grand duke's sudden remarks weren't bothering him.

Hadn't he spoken as though he already knew about the final coup, the climax of Act 1, "Rift in the Capital"?

'... Why?'

That was the biggest question.

Grand Duke Aslan had no particular reason to help Aiden. He wasn't exactly on good terms with the Emperor, either.

More precisely, he despised the entire immediate imperial family, including both the Emperor and the prince. He saw them as incompetent fools wearing lofty titles.

Merit above all else. An ambitious strategist with an exceptional talent for gathering people around him.

Wasn't that the sort of man Grand Duke Aslan was?

Those very traits were the reason the coup happened in the original story.

'... Wasn't he the one who launched it in the original?'

Grand Duke Aslan himself was originally Act 1's final villain.

By now, though, the main scenario had become hopelessly tangled. The prince, who should have stopped the grand duke, was now the most likely person to attempt a coup, while the grand duke, the original villain, was offering to help stop him.

"..."

Looking at it that way...

The fact that, unlike in the original, Grand Duke Aslan was "ill," and his children, who should have helped him stage the coup, were instead "eyeing his position," strongly suggested that something had gone awry. He must have felt betrayed by the people he trusted.

His decision to approach Aiden and say he liked him also seemed closely connected to their behavior.

'... Now, about that.'

Aiden tapped his chin, lost in thought.

Grand Duke Aslan was a gold mine of skills on par with Noel or Katya.

Of course, hardly anyone on the continent could rival those two in wielding supernatural power. But not every skill involved supernatural power.

When it came to support skills that could help him navigate difficult situations, the grand duke was every bit as impressive as they were.

In short, he had nothing to lose by raising the man's affection.

And with all those traits laid out, the current situation boiled down to this:

'Doesn't this give me a chance to clean him out of skills?'

... For Aiden, it was a golden opportunity.

"We've arrived."

Noel's calm voice interrupted his train of thought.

"This is the Duchy of Aslan."

The train had crested a high hill and was heading down the slope.

They were high enough to have an excellent view of the surrounding landscape.

Soon, a vast city spread out before them in a sweeping panorama.

"... Wow."

It was huge.

Absolutely, ridiculously huge.

That was Aiden's first impression.

He'd visited the imperial palace, but what struck him there was the sheer scale and grandeur of the building. It hadn't conveyed this overwhelming sense of vastness.

An immense city filled the horizon with no end in sight. Hadn't he heard it was the continent's largest single noble domain by area?

The Duchy of Aslan, the Empire's foremost stronghold, called its second heart alongside the imperial palace.

And the setting for Chapter 2, "Night of the Hunt."

'That's absurd.'

They didn't call him the Empire's greatest noble for nothing.

As Aiden marveled inwardly at the thought, the train jolted its way down the slope.

The rise that had been blocking part of the view disappeared.

"Hm?"

Something strange suddenly caught the edge of his vision.

"What's that—"

Aiden tilted his head as he looked up at the sky.

Dark masses unlike anything he'd ever seen filled it.

He peered closer, wondering if they were merely storm clouds, but they weren't.

For one thing, storm clouds didn't have such precisely defined borders, as though marking out a territory.

Nor did they continuously spew black mist as thick as tar around them, so dark it looked as though merely seeing it could blind you.

"Oh, that must be the void region. I've never seen it in person before."

Katya spoke quietly as she looked at the "black sky" faintly visible beyond the frozen land.

"I've heard no human on the continent can ever enter it. It's remarkable that they manage to live with their duchy right beside it."

The place where the body of Wornil, the demons' god, the "God of Devouring," lay sealed.

That was the "coffin" in which all the gods of the pantheon had joined forces to imprison him.

Though centuries had passed since its discovery, the death energy lingering around it still showed no signs of subsiding.

For most people, approaching it meant certain death. Even those with great powers could hardly expect it to do them any good.

'In the first place...'

Thinking about it, her wording wasn't quite right.

That was the very reason the duchy existed here at all.

It was why most of the people in the duchy they'd just seen had packed it with magical and religious structures, even at the cost of choosing a considerably lower level of civilization.

From what he'd heard, without even those measures, its influence would disrupt every aspect of life in the north, the Empire's "shield."

"Let's go."

As he finished digesting all that information, Noel suddenly spoke.

With a clatter, the train gradually slowed.

"..."

Aiden took a deep breath.

Right.

Chapter 2 began now.