Chapter 196. Declaration of War
My life is a continuous series of hardships and adversity.
If I were being honest, I’d rather just describe it as complete bullshit.
Some of it, I brought upon myself.
But other things simply blow toward me like the wind, arriving without me even understanding why.
For someone who would have been perfectly satisfied spending the rest of his life shut inside his house playing moderately entertaining games...
This life is way too brutal.
“I-If you do something like this! M-My father! My, my father will! D-Do you think he’ll forgive you...!”
“Your father is the one who needs my forgiveness.”
I looked down at him.
“And so do you.”
As someone who had become a veteran of this tangled, twisted life, I could say one thing with certainty.
The man in front of me had an extremely, incredibly, absurdly high chance of dragging yet another terrible incident into my life.
“My father! D-Do you even know w-what kind of person he— Ack!!!”
“The Flower Knight.”
I cut him off.
“A knight who served the current Empress Dowager when she was still an Imperial Princess.”
I continued calmly.
“But now, he has turned his back on the Imperial Family and lends his strength to the noble faction.”
Just hearing that much was enough to understand how little trust the Emperor had earned.
And how much more unstable the current Empire was than I had imagined.
There was a reason they had the strongest sword on the surface, Grandpa Aro, and still couldn’t move forward.
Derd stared at me.
“Y-You... you know all that...!”
“What matters...”
I raised a finger.
“My friend...”
I smiled.
“Is not what kind of life your father has lived.”
“Not how incredible your father is.”
“And not what enormous influence your father might have over me.”
I leaned closer.
“Okay?”
My pitch-black finger touched the top of his head.
Derd immediately began trembling in terror.
I had interrogated and tortured him for days.
Yet he still hadn’t revealed who was behind this entire mess.
At this point, I was so frustrated that I had seriously considered simply exploding his head.
Was he some incredibly strong-willed man with an unshakable spirit?
No.
He just...
Didn’t know anything.
It had taken me a little too long to realize that.
His pride had become grotesquely inflated compared to what he actually possessed.
I had no idea who had made this man like that.
Count Conte seemed like a much more reasonable person than I expected.
Could someone really grow up under a man like that, watching him all his life, and still end up like this?
Unless someone had deliberately shaped him this way...
Did that even make sense?
It doesn’t.
His father and two older brothers never treated him especially badly.
If anything, his father is running around everywhere right now trying to save this useless bastard.
From everything I had heard, it had nothing to do with appearances, politics, or any other external considerations.
Count Conte was genuinely running around purely because he wanted to save his son.
I thought that was admirable.
Moving paternal love.
And one tragically disappointing son who couldn’t live up to it.
As a father loved by his own children...
I almost felt sorry for him.
[Hayangi: Tsk. Nothing we can do. Let’s turn him into a simple chimera and send him back.]
Yeah.
Let’s do that.
We needed to provide an example, at least.
What should I do?
If I damaged him too badly, I might earn unnecessary hatred.
Maybe I should just attach a pig’s tail to his ass and send him back?
Hmm.
Would that really count as a chimera?
Maybe graft Orc skin onto him?
That might work.
Knock, knock.
“Ingwang-nim. A guest has arrived.”
I sighed.
“...Is it because we only opened the country recently?”
I looked toward the door.
“Why do guests keep showing up?”
I knocked Derd unconscious with a punch.
Then I went out to see who this latest guest was.
Someone coming here at a time this busy...
Could it be one of Count Conte’s people?
They were openly preparing for a siege already.
If they apologized even once, I was willing to hand Derd back and end things there.
I did think I had gone a little too far.
How should I put it....
It happened right after Pie and Aien ended up like that, so maybe I had become slightly more aggressive than usual?
Yeah.
I was immature back then.
“...The guest is outside the walls?”
“Yes.”
The Village Chief nodded.
“It seems they have no intention of entering.”
“...Ah.”
I immediately understood.
“Conte?”
“Yes.”
Well.
That failed.
Hmm....
What should we do, then?
First, issue quests to the people and buy additional supplies.
Since things had come this far...
We might even extort the nearby villages under the excuse of preparing for war.
Though the nearby villages were just tiny mountain settlements and probably couldn’t provide much.
Still...
Whether they helped us or refused could become justification for expanding our territory in that direction later.
[Hayangi: You’re going to swallow them either way, whether they refuse or help, aren’t you?]
In the human world, wording is always important.
I climbed onto the wall and looked down.
A mounted knight stood below holding what appeared to be Count Conte’s banner.
The knight spotted me too.
He dismounted, pulled a scroll from his coat, and began reading aloud.
“Ruler of the wicked!”
“King of Ingwang Kingdom, nation of monsters who do not hesitate to commit horrifying atrocities!”
“Demon King of Madness, Kim Ingwang, hear me!”
The Village Chief looked down.
“Would you like me to shoot him?”
He sounded completely serious.
“I see no particular reason to listen to all of this.”
“Uh, no.”
I raised a hand.
“Let’s hear what he has to say.”
The Village Chief smiled.
“Ingwang-nim is truly merciful.”
No.
I had a Ninja waiting behind that knight right now.
If he annoyed me, I was going to order the Ninja to kill him.
The Village Chief probably wasn’t being completely serious either.
Uh....
Probably.
There was no way the man who knew my past behavior better than anyone else actually thought I was merciful.
“For attacking the territory of Conte Count Conte!”
The knight shouted.
“For kidnapping his youngest son, Derd Conte!”
He raised his voice.
“To the cruel villain responsible!”
“The knight of the Great Empire, Conte Count Conte, hereby formally declares war!”
I clicked my tongue.
“You started the fight first and now you’re playing victim....”
I had heard enough.
Time to kidnap that knight too.
Surely he hadn’t come to declare war on a Demon King’s nation while expecting to return home alive.
This was a Demon King’s country, after all!
I immediately gave the Ninja the signal.
He possessed the instant-kill technique Ninja Attack.
Even if that knight was Hero-class, he should still fall while caught off guard.
“Ninja, go!”
At my playful shout, the Ninja appeared from wherever he had been hiding.
He swung his superheated sword toward the knight’s neck.
But—
The blade was blocked almost absurdly easily by someone who suddenly appeared between them.
“What?!”
The Ninja recoiled.
“Someone blocked my Nin-ja Attack?!”
Then he pointed.
“Who are you?!”
He was clearly saying it seriously.
But there was absolutely no way to take the words seriously.
A bizarre woman stepped in front of him.
“How rude....”
I had no idea where she had emerged from behind the knight.
She had an unnaturally long body.
A gloomy atmosphere.
A dragging manner of speech.
A hunched back.
She looked like an eight-foot-tall ghost woman.
The woman wore a loose dress and gently pushed the Ninja’s sword away with her long fingernails.
The knight sighed in relief.
“Thank you, Lady Persatilia.”
“You should be more careful....”
