Chapter 4

Chapter 4 — Westphalen’s Bastard (4)

On the third day after leaving Aachen, the city of the Sun God Church, we arrived at the Westphalen lord’s residence.

Since I needed to make my report as quickly as possible, I immediately headed to the lord’s office with the administrative official.

Father welcomed me with his arms wide open.

Why has this man been acting like this lately? Did something happen?

His excessive attention and kindness were enough to make me suspicious.

I really hoped nothing strange was going on.

“You’ve worked hard. Did you bring back a reply?”

“Yes. Here.”

Father took the letter, read through it in an instant, and tossed it into the fireplace.

There was no fire burning right now, but a servant would burn it later.

“Did you receive anything else?”

“I was given a gift.”

“A gift? The Cardinal gave you something?”

Father looked fairly surprised.

Apparently, the fact that I had received a gift from the Cardinal—the most powerful religious authority in this entire region—was interesting enough to catch his attention.

“That gift was given to you, so keep it.”

“Aren’t you going to check what it is?”

“There’s no need for that.”

Then Father looked toward the administrative official.

It was clearly a silent order to report anything unusual.

“There was nothing unusual about Young Master Eric.”

This official was loyal to the Westphalen family.

A report like this was only natural, and I had already expected it.

That was also why I always brought this official along whenever I went somewhere.

Finally, I removed the signet ring from my finger and held it out.

But Father didn’t take it.

Instead, he pushed it back toward me.

“Keep that as well. You’re a member of this family too. It wouldn’t do for you to have no family seal.”

Possessing the family seal meant that I had the authority to represent the family.

It didn’t mean that I had become Father’s heir.

Rather, it simply gave me the ability to act as a representative of the family.

It was something like how a family member could receive registered mail on someone else’s behalf.

But after my coming-of-age ceremony, I would be kicked out of this count’s household anyway.

In the end, the weight of this ring amounted to little more than a souvenir proving that I had once belonged to the family.

I tightly clenched the signet ring in my hand.

Even with the tiny amount of authority I had as an illegitimate child, I had worked rather hard for the sake of the territory.

And the only thing I get out of it is a souvenir.

A bitter smile appeared on my face.

It wasn’t like I had expected anything grand, but what was I supposed to do with a signet ring?

Then Father added one more thing.

“You handled your work well, so I’ll give you a reward. I’ll combine it with your coming-of-age gift. Look forward to it.”

Correction.

Apparently, I was getting more than just a souvenir.

“May I ask what it is?”

“Can I tell you during your coming-of-age ceremony?”

“...Yes, Father.”

Just what kind of grand gift was he planning to give me?

I hope he just gives me a lot of gold coins.

If I was going to be sent off to the countryside anyway, shouldn’t I at least leave with plenty of money?

For the first time, I found myself slightly looking forward to my coming-of-age ceremony.

The moment Eric left the office, Count Michael wrote a letter to his father-in-law, the former Count of Westphalen.

[To my dear father-in-law.]

[If we entrust ‘that matter’ to my son Eric, I believe he will endure for a long time.

After observing Eric for several days during the incident with the Pfalz territory, I found that he possessed remarkable physical strength and was also excellent at analysis and strategy. His sense of responsibility, sociability, and even his political judgment were outstanding.

Furthermore, he is the only person who carries the blood of Marcel, so he has sufficient legitimacy as well.

I understand that the matter has already been decided, but for the sake of our future, I recommend replacing the current choice with Eric.

—From your loyal son-in-law, Michael.]

Michael believed that if Eric were placed into the plan being prepared by the former Count of Westphalen and Young Lord Noah, the results would be extremely satisfying.

My room wasn’t inside the lord’s residence.

It was located in the servants’ quarters behind it.

Perhaps because I had lived there since I was young, I was already used to the place and didn’t feel particularly offended by the poor treatment.

The moment I entered, my escort knight Martin happily welcomed me.

“Young Master, I heard you went through something terrible. I should have gone with the tax collector’s procession.”

“What are you talking about? If you’d come along, you would’ve died too.”

“What? Were those dark mages really that strong? I heard they were wiped out without much damage.”

As expected of the Westphalen knights.

They were both fast and powerful.

It seemed they had already wiped out the group of dark mages.

However, Martin apparently didn’t know the full details of what had happened.

“I can’t tell you the details because they’re classified. Anyway, I came back alive, so that’s what matters.”

“I understand. But what’s that bundle?”

I suppose it was hard not to notice since I was carrying a package tightly wrapped in expensive silk.

“A gift.”

“From whom?”

“The Cardinal of Aachen.”

“The Cardinal? Then it must be something valuable.”

“Who knows?”

Martin took the bundle from me and opened it.

Inside was a dagger stored in a box.

Its blade was thirty centimeters long.

Its handle was also thirty centimeters long.

It had a very strange shape.

On top of that, the entire thing was black, making it stand out even more.

“What is this? It certainly looks unusual. Don’t tell me it’s just a dagger.”

“Ah... now I remember. Yeah. It’s just a dagger.”

I remembered what had happened two nights ago when I had been drinking with the Cardinal.

I had been teaching the Cardinal some terrible dad jokes.

“Hahaha! Eric, tell me another one!”

“What do you call it when a dragon flies up into the sky? An up-dragon~!”

“Wahahaha! Where in the world did you hear these things? They’re truly entertaining!”

The Cardinal and I were completely drunk.

Neither of us really knew what we were talking about anymore.

We were just laughing at everything.

“I’ve got another one~ What’s the lewdest food in the world? A mushroom!”

“Pfft! Hahaha! I must use that during a sermon at church. I should write it down so I don’t forget.”

The Cardinal staggered to his feet and headed toward his desk to get something to write with.

Then he accidentally knocked over a display rack decorated with swords.

Clatter! Crash!

“Oh dear! Eric, give me a hand.”

He could have simply called one of the soldiers outside, but apparently the alcohol had convinced him that he should clean it up himself.

I helped pick up the swords scattered across the floor and returned them to the rack.

It was rather funny.

When I entered this room, I had been forced to leave all my weapons outside, yet there was an entire row of swords hanging inside.

While picking them up, I discovered a strangely shaped dagger.

Almost as if something were pulling me toward it, I picked it up.

“This one is unusual.”

“Hm? What was that again?”

The Cardinal pressed a hand against his forehead, trying to remember.

“Ah, right. That dagger is ridiculously durable. We collected it because we thought it might be a sacred relic and analyzed it, but it wasn’t a sacred relic. It wasn’t even an ordinary historical relic, and apparently it isn’t a magic item either. They said it seems to have been made by processing a meteorite.”

“How interesting.”

For some reason, I felt strangely drawn to it.

Before I even realized it, the words came out of my mouth.

“Please give this to me as a gift.”

“Sure! You can have it. I’ll put it in a box for you.”

“Thank you, Cardinal.”

Without giving it much thought, the Cardinal placed the dagger into a box that had previously held expensive bottles of alcohol.

Then he took the silk that had been decorating the sofa and used it to wrap the box into a bundle.

“So that’s what happened.”

“...I can’t believe there was actually someone who enjoyed those strange jokes of yours.”

I couldn’t understand why Martin looked so uncomfortable.

Either way, I had even managed to receive a gift, so what was the problem?

“But isn’t this dagger useless? The handle is too long. The balance must be terrible.”

“No. Something like this can still be useful. It’ll be convenient when camping. I can cut branches or prepare ingredients with it.”

“You barely go camping once a year, and you’re saying that?”

“I used to do it all the time.”

Of course, that had been in my previous life, inside Monster Gates.

Anyway, this strange dagger would probably be useful for something.

I had accepted it because of that strange attraction I felt toward it, but I didn’t think too deeply about it.

I simply stored it away carefully.

Countess Lorian Westphalen, the mother of Young Lord Noah, had been in a foul mood since morning.

“He gave Eric a signet ring? Has the Count lost his mind?”

The person standing before Lorian was Head Maid Chloe.

She had served the Westphalen family loyally for ten years.

Of course, her loyalty was directed only toward Countess Lorian.

“His coming-of-age ceremony is approaching, so perhaps His Lordship simply gave it to him as a keepsake.”

“That isn’t what a family seal means!”

“But once he’s assigned to some remote region after the coming-of-age ceremony, it won’t mean any—”

“Shut up! Do you think I don’t know that?”

Most people regarded Eric’s signet ring as nothing more than a keepsake.

However, there was one detail about the family seal that almost nobody paid attention to.

In an emergency, a person holding the seal could potentially claim inheritance rights.

Countess Lorian imagined that if the Count died, Eric might use possession of the seal as an excuse to start a rebellion.

From Eric’s perspective—and from nearly everyone else’s—this was nothing but ridiculous paranoia.

There wouldn’t be any fools stupid enough to follow someone into rebellion just because he possessed a single signet ring.

This time, I really need to kill that bastard Eric.

Lorian was obsessed with her son, Noah.

There was nothing she wouldn’t do for him.

Even if she had to dirty her own hands.

“Chloe, prepare poison.”

At Lorian’s order, Chloe’s expression twisted in horror.

“Again? Young Master Eric is strangely resistant to poison. We’ve already failed several times—”

“Nonsense!”

Lorian shot to her feet.

“They were all excuses those maids made before running away! And I heard there’s a poison strong enough to kill an ogre. Find that, or something like it.”

“...Understood.”

Chloe barely managed to hold back a sigh.

Countess Lorian was not someone who could be persuaded with reason.

In fact, the reason Eric’s personal maid had already been replaced thirteen times was because Lorian had repeatedly used those maids to try to poison him.

Whether Eric had received some divine blessing, or whether the maids had truly backed out at the last moment, no one knew.

But every time an assassination by poison was attempted, Eric survived.

No.

Calling it surviving wasn’t even accurate.

Nothing happened to him at all.

But poison strong enough to kill an ogre? Does something like that really exist?

Despite being the head maid of a count’s household, Chloe suddenly felt miserable at the thought of having to search through apothecaries for poison.

A few days later.

For only the second time in my life, I woke up with an upset stomach.

I sat on the toilet and thought deeply.

If someone from Earth saw me right now, they might say I looked like Rodin’s The Thinker.

These are the same symptoms, and even the same smell, as when I ate poisoned food at the campsite.

That means I ate the same poison again.

I had thought I had escaped the poison last time through sheer luck.

But now I realized something else.

Apparently, poison simply didn’t work on my body.

I had no idea why.

But right now, the reason wasn’t important.

What mattered was that someone was trying to kill me.

Honestly, it was pretty obvious who was behind it.

Still, I should confirm it.

After returning to my room, I looked at the young maid assigned to me.

But she couldn’t say a single word.

Her face was deathly pale, and her entire body was trembling.

I felt bad that she was being pushed around by powerful people, but what else could I do?

I still needed answers.

“Who ordered you to do it?”

The young maid flinched violently.

“A-Ah—”

Thud.

Unable to handle the tension and stress anymore, she fainted on the spot.

“What the... I only asked you a question. Why did you faint? Hey, kid. Wake up.”

There was no sign that she would regain consciousness, so I placed her on the bed.

Then I immediately headed toward Head Maid Chloe’s office.

The head maid managed all the female servants.

There shouldn’t be anything happening in this lord’s residence that she didn’t know about.

If I asked her directly, I should be able to get something out of her.

Knock, knock.

“Come in.”

I immediately pushed the door open and entered.

Head Maid Chloe jumped in surprise.

Of course she did.

A person who was supposed to have died from poison had suddenly appeared in front of her.

Without even offering a proper greeting, she simply stared at me with wide eyes.

I immediately got to the point.

“Head Maid, we should at least greet each other when we meet. And go get the maid who fainted on the bed in my room. If she’s hurt anywhere, have her treated.”

Although Chloe was technically a lower-ranking noble, she was also the second-highest-ranking servant in the lord’s residence after the chief steward.

Even so, I deliberately spoke casually to her.

My goal was to throw her emotions off balance and make her accidentally say something she shouldn’t.

Head Maid Chloe answered in confusion.

“S-Sorry, Young Master. I’ll replace her with another maid immediately.”

Her eyes were shaking wildly.

“Hey, Head Maid.”

“Y-Yes? Is there something you wish to say?”

I stared at her quietly for a moment.

Then I asked.