Chapter 191

Translator: Willia

It was a quiet, secluded village. A small lake lay beside it. It seemed like just the sort of place for tending a modest vegetable garden and grazing sheep or cattle in the fields.

It did not look suited to a large population, but if a small number of people were content with what they had, they could make a decent enough living there.

This was the new Benzinen village, a place even the locals of Esck barely knew about. It was a new home rebuilt with construction materials salvaged from the ruins.

Ricardt stayed in the village for a while. He sent the letter he had written to Reman to the Master Alliance through a member of the Benzinen Brotherhood, intending for the Alliance to send it onward by horse to wherever Reman was.

Whether it would be delivered properly, and even if it was, whether Reman would respond favorably, remained uncertain.

But that did not mean they had to sit around twiddling their thumbs until a reply arrived.

Ricardt came up with a plan of his own. But it was something the Benzinen Brotherhood had never even imagined trying.

“Since it’s come to this, let’s bring everything out into the open.”

“......What are you talking about?”

Kala, who had been trimming vegetables with a dagger, turned to look at Ricardt. Perhaps because some measure of trust had formed between them, he still spoke informally, but his tone was a little more courteous than before.

“Are we going to keep fretting that Papa might hide, or be afraid he’ll come after us? If we’ve decided to kill him anyway, we might as well do it openly. That’ll force some kind of reaction, and then we trace it back to him.”

“......We don’t have nearly enough people for that.”

“Why not? We do them one at a time. First, we find Papa’s lackeys and crush every last one of them.”

“How?”

If they knew how to do that, they would hardly be in this mess. Still, though Ricardt had never studied much, he was exceptionally sharp. He simply did not flaunt it, but when it came to strategy and tactics, he was a genius virtually without equal.

And beneath that genius had always been an ability to understand and read people.

“From what I’ve seen of the people in Esck, betrayal seems to be almost routine around here. When do you think people betray someone? When the side they’re loyal to seems less trustworthy than the enemy. Everyone knows Papa exists, but they keep quiet about him. They don’t want to stir him up and suffer for it. So there’s only one answer. We show them that Papa and his lackeys don’t amount to a damn thing, and that we’re the ones they can trust.”

Ricardt said it lightly, but his words went straight to the heart of the matter. What he was proposing, however, was less a covert act of revenge than an outright campaign, or even a battle.

“......”

“I think we should establish an Alliance branch here. Your people hate outsiders anyway, so how about you run it, Kala? Master Alliance, Esck Branch, Benzinen Guild? Office? Whatever. The point is, we push things in that direction. We punish anyone who kidnaps or abducts boys in the name of the Alliance. That makes for a pretty good banner too.”

One remarkable thing about Ricardt was that when he found himself trapped in a frustrating situation, he could change the entire game. Rather than secretly tracking Papa without being noticed, he was proposing that they openly crack down on him and hunt him.

“......Wouldn’t it be better just to wait? For the high-ranking vampire’s reply, I mean.”

“You can’t win a fight by sitting under a persimmon tree with your mouth open, waiting for one to fall. I respect the way your people live, and the way you handle things, but if the objective is clear, you have to be willing to try whatever means are available.”

It was not that Kala disagreed with Ricardt. He was simply reluctant because it was not the way they were used to doing things.

No, even while part of him resisted the idea, another part of him wanted to try it. He could not say why. Perhaps it was the sense of trust Ricardt himself inspired, or the charisma radiating from his strength.

Ricardt intended not only to kill Papa and Dunkel, but also to bring the Esck region into the Master Alliance’s sphere while he was at it. Of course, in an age when regional identities were so strong, he intended to respect their customs and way of life as much as possible.

Forcibly incorporating a region like this into a territory or country would ultimately require massacres, burning, and other such acts, but the Master Alliance had no need to do that. It was, after all, a kind of private organization, not a territory or a state.

Of course, there would still be some coercion, and things that felt alien to the locals would inevitably take place.

“I’ll make damn sure Papa dies. Think of this as the way to make that happen.”

Once Ricardt made a decision, he drove it forward like a tank. He could be somewhat high-handed about it, but he had never failed doing things this way.

More importantly, the Benzinen Brotherhood had no clear solution of its own, so they had little choice but to follow Ricardt.

“By the way, what exactly is the relationship between you and Bellin?”

Whether they had made up or were still awkward with each other was hard to tell, but Bellin and Roy were crouched together by the lakeside, peering down at something.

When Ricardt looked toward the boy and girl in the distance, Kala also stopped preparing the vegetables for a moment and looked at the two children.

“She’s my daughter.”

“Shouldn’t you at least put some shoes on her?”

“It isn’t just Benzinen. In several villages, children aren’t given shoes from an early age. Then, when they eventually start wearing them, the sound of their footsteps becomes unusually grating to their ears. Naturally, they learn how to move without making a sound.”

“What kind of place raises everyone to be assassins?”

“I suppose we chose that way because we had no strength.”

“What do you mean?”

“We have suffered invasions by powerful enemies since ancient times. The ducal house of Rheinburg is both our old enemy and our overlord. All they ever did was come around whenever we had nearly forgotten about them, kill everyone, and burn everything. Of course, they don’t do that anymore. Do you think that just happened on its own? It was because our ancestors threw away their lives to assassinate their commanders. We aren’t afraid of dying. We’re afraid of failing to kill. That is Esck. That is Esca. That is Benzinen.”

For the record, the Esck region technically belonged to a lord as well. It had simply been left alone because resistance there had been so fierce since ancient times. They had not been granted autonomy. They had secured it for themselves.

The world was home to all kinds of regions, and all kinds of people with temperaments suited to those regions. The people of Esck might appear sly and secretive on the outside, but a fierce flame burned within them.

Only now was Ricardt, an outsider, finally beginning to glimpse their true nature.

Yet at the end of that chain of revenge upon revenge, grudge upon grudge, what remained was ultimately the innocent companionship of a boy and a girl.

Perhaps killing Papa would not simply be an assassination or an execution, but another act of resistance. Don’t touch the children.

“Damn, you people really don’t get it.”

Ricardt spoke with a frown beneath the shade of a great tree. He seemed to be deliberately trying to sound like a thug, but it did not suit him very well.

Kala, Roy, Bellin, and several others stood behind him, watching as though wondering what on earth he was doing.

“Listen, old folks. Maybe you haven’t heard of us in a backwater like this, but there isn’t anyone in the Empire who doesn’t know the Master Alliance and the Council of Six. Nobody who gets on our bad side escapes ruin. I killed Iron Arm Randell with my own hands, and even the Second Prince ran away because he was afraid of us. And you think we can’t deal with some two-bit vampire? Huh?”

A group of elderly men and women who looked utterly powerless had gathered together to listen to Ricardt. The way they merely blinked at him made them look as though they truly knew nothing.

There was a reason Ricardt had summoned elders from several villages and was acting like this. People who had lived in one area for a long time tended to notice even the smallest changes or anything that seemed out of place.

Only an extremely small number of people knew anything about Papa, so for now, Ricardt was starting however he could.

“You heard the rumor that Raphael, the boss of Diabol Esca, is dead, right? I killed him. He was one of Papa’s lackeys. Once someone chooses to serve a vampire, can you still call him human? Of course not. He gave up being human. Right? So if any of you old folks know something, spit it out.”

Ricardt continued speaking as though he were trying to intimidate them. But because he did not really mean it, his act had been awkward from the start.

“None of you have had a grandson or son disappear? You’re seriously telling me none of you have ever been through that? I’m telling you now, keeping your mouth shut about Papa makes you no different from his thralls. You understand?”

Ricardt kept pressing them, but the elders showed no sign of speaking. It was only natural. The people of Esck guarded their tongues so strictly that it was almost a religious precept.

And frankly, what if they gave Ricardt information and Papa retaliated against them? What reason did they have to trust Ricardt enough to tell him anything?

Still, no matter how much they were people of Esck, they were human, and not everyone lived with exactly the same feelings. One old man glanced around him, then spoke matter-of-factly.

“Thirty years ago, my youngest son disappeared. I gave up searching for him long ago. But the rot it left in my heart has never fully healed. I don’t have many years left now. I don’t care if Papa comes and slices off my nose or cuts my whole body into strips. What matters is whether you truly have the power to avenge me.”

Revenge again. These people seemed obsessed with it. Revenge was the currency of Esck.

At the old man’s question about whether he had the power to avenge him, Ricardt abruptly kicked the tree beside him as hard as he could.

A deep boom sounded. The great tree shuddered, and vivid green leaves came showering down.

In an instant, Ricardt bent his knees slightly and lowered his stance, bringing his hand to the sword at his waist. Then no one saw the sword being drawn. All they saw were flashing streaks of light.

A moment later, the fresh leaves fell with a crisp rustle, every single one of them precisely cut in two. The sword was already back in its sheath.

“Ooooh!”

Only then did the previously indifferent elders widen their eyes and cry out in amazement. A burst of applause followed. Even Kala and Bellin found themselves clapping without realizing it.

Clap clap clap clap clap clap.

This was starting to feel like he had just performed a little trick for a group of old people, but in any case, Ricardt waited until the applause died down before speaking.

“That should be enough to take a vampire’s head, wouldn’t you say?”

“Are you a wizard?”

To the old man, there was no other way it could have looked. He had not seen the sword leave the sheath, nor had he seen it return.

“No.”

“I’ve never seen swordsmanship like that in all my life. I don’t know anything about this Alliance or Council of Six, but I’ll stake my hopes on that swordsmanship. There’s a pig butcher in Komet village. His name is Einmetz. He’s one of Papa’s lackeys. He handles the bodies.”

The old man casually revealed an extremely valuable piece of information. And that was not all. The other elders began speaking one by one.

“Helga too, the woman who does nothing but embroider at home all day. Her job is to watch people through the window. If she spots a particularly handsome boy, she reports him.”

“The intermediary is Mollin. He’s ten this year. They made him a messenger because he’s ugly.”

Valuable information poured from the elders’ mouths like the leaves that had just come showering down. If they had known all of this, why had they kept their mouths shut until now?

Naturally, because telling anyone would not have solved the problem.

And just as Ricardt had said, the stream of information always flowed toward the side that seemed more trustworthy. They had not kept silent because they liked Papa.

The members of the Benzinen Brotherhood organized each piece of information the elders gave them.

Ricardt walked over to Kala and spoke.

“This might turn out to be easier than we thought. If we work our way backward through the connections, it shouldn’t take long.”

But then a name that stirred both longing and regret slipped from the mouth of one of the elders.

“Dunkel. He kidnaps boys, lures them away, seizes them by force, watches them, tracks down runaways, even carries out assassinations. I heard he was from Benzinen.”

The old man stared directly at Kala. His look plainly asked whether Dunkel was not from the same village as him. Kala calmly shook his head.

“Not anymore.”

Ricardt said nothing. He merely stood there in silence, recalling the past he had shared with Dunkel, though there was hardly enough of it to call memories. Then he cast those stray thoughts aside and thought only of one thing: he would find Dunkel and kill him.

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