Episode 43
I held out my sword.
As a gift for the afterlife, he showed off his Sardia swordsmanship.
Kang!
The moment the sword met the man’s wrist, it snapped. Just as the other two were about to rush at me, I unleashed my Sardia maneuver and cut off one of the men’s necks.
Another man rushed at me, but he ended up running into my sword himself. The tip of the blade protruded from behind the man’s back.
The man with the broken wrist looked up at me and asked.
“Who are you?”
“Luis de Hebron, I am the one who will judge Breiot for you.”
“Why Hebron… … ?”
Phew!
I stabbed the man in the chest because I didn’t want to hear any more from him.
Hebron was a family with a history as complex as that of Breion or Sardia. If I were to hear the back story, I, as the head of the family representing Hebron, would not be able to sit still.
I cut the man off because I didn’t like that.
I noticed that some of those following me had turned their horses and fled, but I didn’t rush to chase them. I had an idea where they were going.
First, I roughly collected the corpses around me, and then I slowly skinned a few people. This was evidence that would prove the cursed mark, and it was a lifeline that would save Hebron.
“It was done faster than I expected. We have plenty of time. We need to finish it off for sure, because we don’t know when they’ll come back to Hebron and start causing trouble.”
Until now, the presence of Sardia had been a poison that had dragged Hebron into treason. Now that there was evidence to free them, it seemed that if they went one step further, they could elevate Hebron to even higher heights.
Using that forgotten being called Sardia as a stepping stone.
“Let’s go that way. There will be a trail. You should be able to smell it.”
Meeeeeee.
Syang walked towards the direction the enemies had fled. Since the terrain was not windswept, there were still footprints on the ground that they had not been able to deal with as they fled in a hurry.
‘If you are a descendant of the Duke of Sardia, do you think you have the lost treasure?’
The ducal house of Sardia, which had fallen in just ten days, was torn apart and divided among eleven lords. The ducal throne became vacant, and from then on, only two ducal houses remained in the kingdom of Zeno.
However, the Sword of Karma, which symbolized Sardia, disappeared, and its whereabouts have been unknown for over a century.
Meeeeeee!
Syang, who had been running with all his might, suddenly stopped walking.
The guy turned around and ran, then started jumping around in place.
“There’s something in front of me?”
Meeeee!
“uh?”
I felt dizzy. My whole body felt heavy, as if I was struggling in a dense liquid. The moment I reflexively raised my aura, the dizziness doubled.
‘poison?’
Normally, poison can be shaken off by practicing aura. However, this poison mixed in the atmosphere seemed to be in conflict with aura. If I had been ignorant of aura or had only a passing knowledge of aura, I would have stopped practicing and found another method.
‘If you stop, you die.’
The poison spread through the blood vessels of my entire body. My body felt heavier and heavier, and I slumped on Syang’s back like I had lost all my energy.
I saw Inyeong in the distance. There was a gaze watching over my death.
‘A rare scorpion living in the wasteland, its scientific name is the white-tailed scorpion. The way to deal with this venom is… … hot water massage.’
Raised the aura of fire attribute.
The aura swelled and sent energy to every vein in my body, and black beads of sweat formed in my pores. It didn’t remove the poison. Rather, they blocked my pores and slowed down the discharge of the poison.
Whoosh whoosh!
A sizzling heat spread through my entire body, as if I had swallowed a fireball. I am different from a normal knight. I have awakened the aura of fire, and can use intermediate fire spirits.
“Inferno, turn up the heat!”
-… … Don’t die.
As the Inferno raised the temperature around me, I felt like I was burning inside and out.
As the pores were forced open, sweat was released, and the black stuff that had blocked the pores melted and evaporated in the heat of the inferno.
I opened my eyes.
I felt drained, but my energy wasn’t completely drained.
The one who had been watching me from afar fell flat on his face. He wanted to confirm my death, and when I chose life over death, he himself died.
“Inferno, open the fire to the front.”
Whoosh whoosh!
Walls of fire shot up from both sides and stretched forward, their heat dissipating the toxicity of the air.
I walked through a wall of fire. The spirit fire did not harm me, but it burned everything that harmed me.
There was no spark left on the path I had taken. As many sparks as had disappeared appeared and sprang up in front of me.
“Burn it.”
The flames of Inferno watched over me and burned the fallen man. He committed suicide by poisoning himself, blisters rising on his skin.
He used himself as a catalyst for poison.
‘What on earth are you trying to protect?’
My curiosity was soon satisfied. After going a little further, I discovered the dwelling of the Sardia clan. There was a cave entrance hidden in the rubble, which was absolutely impossible to find from a distance.
‘Was it Sardia’s pride that was protected by death?’
The slightly open cave entrance was filled with corpses. They had the same symptoms as the previous dead men, but it seemed that not all of them had agreed to commit suicide.
There were also many who died trying to remove the stones blocking the entrance in order to survive. Thanks to them, I was able to avoid the misfortune of accidentally entering there and being poisoned.
‘If you just pay a little attention to Aura, you can handle it.’
It was impossible for ordinary knights. Only knights who had the ability to control all the veins spread throughout their body could do it.
‘The monsters with the Trickster’s mark are enough to worry you, but with traitors armed with poison living beneath the territory, Hebron’s situation is getting worse.’
“Inferno, raise the temperature inside the cave. As long as it doesn’t catch fire.”
As the temperature inside the cave rose rapidly, the air inside the cave was blasted out. Soon after, a gust of wind blew in and entered the cave, and toxic air was spewed out from various places in the cave structure that went into the ground.
There were more than one entrance to the cave. It seemed that the Sardia clan had created several escape routes.
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‘They would have sacrificed many people and only let a few of Sardia’s direct descendants escape. It would have been an obvious method.’
I couldn’t chase after Sardia’s remnants alone.
It was expected that the survivors would take revenge on the Zenon royal family or attack the Breio Dukes.
‘There’s no reason to take care of all that. I just leak information to the royal family and I get paid for it.’
The inside of the cave was a mess.
The Whitetail Scorpion’s venom was amplified by the corpses it fed, but I didn’t bother to destroy the corpses strewn everywhere. I had now learned how to resist the venom perfectly.
I took in the poisoned air through my nose and mouth, heated it with my fire aura, and sprayed it all over my body. It stung a little at first, but I soon got used to it.
‘According to the wizard’s research, there were cases where resistance to poison was developed in this way. All of the test subjects died, but they died because they were unable to control their veins.’
The cave was full of old tools.
They seemed to have been here for over a century.
‘Is it because of Spiel that you’ve been hiding so long and then revealed yourself? Or is it because Hebron is so easy?’
The Sardian remnants looked down on Hebron. They were probably optimistic that they could easily assassinate me and go back to their old lives.
The wasteland life of the first century was enough to strip the duke of his filth. The interior of the cave was miserable. It was hard to believe that vagabonds had gathered here to live.
As we entered the long cave, a large space appeared. There, the dead were dressed in relatively neat clothes.
‘This trace… … .’
As the Inferno rapidly raised the internal temperature, the air circulated, leaving traces of the airflow that resembled splatters all over the cave.
Click.
As I pulled the hidden lever, one wall opened with a click.
There were signs that books had been hastily pulled from the shelf. The same was true of other things.
‘There must have been another passage.’
Inferno lit up the fire, and I examined the trail the wind had left behind.
“uh?”
A book was found under the bookshelf.
It seemed like it was dropped in a hurry.
-Republicanism: The republic belongs to the people.
‘Republicanism?’
Although I had read all sorts of books, I had never encountered the word “republicanism.” Before I could even think about that unfamiliar word, I frowned at the subtitle on the cover.
‘The republic belongs to the people.’
The title alone could be used to guess the content of the book. If the values pursued by the former dukedom of Sardia were republican, the Zenon royal family would not have stopped at expelling them for treason.
It was clear that not only those who read this book, but even the blood relatives of those who briefly owned it would be purged.
‘Ask me or give it away?’
Hebron could have aimed for the title of Viscount simply by exaggerating my accomplishments to date. If the word ‘republican’ had been added to this, it would have been possible to take advantage of the chaos in the kingdom to climb even higher.
Chomp!
I turned the page. It was out of curiosity. Only by knowing what republicanism was and what values it pursued could I criticize and attack it.
Clang.
The bookshelf flipped smoothly.
It wasn’t that difficult. Whoever wrote it, it was well-written.
‘A government that gives the king’s power to the people…? I don’t know whose idea it was, but it’s just sophistry.’
I understood republicanism. At least I accepted the structure of republicanism in my head. But I had no idea how much sacrifice would be required to realize it.
Even this was a thought that was possible because I was a Baron. If I had been a member of Braio, I would have been outraged at the mere fact that someone had come up with such an idea and immediately formed a tracking team.
I decided to put off disposing of the book for a while. For now, I looked inside the cave.
‘also…….’
My guess was right. I pushed the bookshelf aside and a hidden passageway appeared. Even that was so cleverly camouflaged that it was hard to see, but a faint ripple left by the wind as it swept by revealed the gap.
‘It’s the Eins way.’
Shortly after the fall of the Sardia duchy, it was popular among the high-ranking nobles of the Kingdom of Zenon to create secret passages to prepare for unexpected events.
At that time, the Duke of Braio also questioned technicians across the country and collected related information, and one of the things discovered at that time was the ‘Eins Method’.
Click, click.
I pressed the hidden button and gently pushed the top of the door with my palm, and the secret passage responded.
The walls inside the cave are open inward.
The air inside stung my nose. The pungent and pungent smell stimulated my stomach. It didn’t stimulate my appetite, but rather tried to draw out what was in my stomach.
The stench that stung my nose was a mixture of death and fear.
Krrrrrr.
A bright red light exploded in the space where not a single ray of light could enter. When I illuminated the interior with a torch, dozens of pairs of eyes stared at me as if they were going to devour me.
“… … Ghoul? Are you raising the undead?”
In the Kingdom of Zenon, tangling with the undead is forbidden.
It was illegal to summon them, of course, and to discover them and not report them.
“Is it because it’s the border of Antaria? There are so many different things here.”
Antaria was a sacred kingdom. They favored priests over knights, and the background was that undead appeared more often than in other regions.
