“Are you asking for my help?”
Matheos muttered sarcastically.
I nodded and looked around.
The corridor was filled with chaos.
There were still hundreds of elite soldiers and dozens of knights, along with battle mages, but Marquis Benechion, who was supposed to guide them, was nowhere to be found.
Court officials like the financial officer, herald, administrative officer, steward, and chamberlain were running around in confusion, not knowing where to go.
“I need to check on Lady Trentia first. If there’s any divine power left, will you treat her?”
“Yes. Duke Valencius.”
Lady Trentia was awkwardly seated among the marquis’s knights.
Seeing her remove her helmet, it seemed the fighting had been resolved for the time being.
“Your Majesty.”
“I’m glad you’re alive, my lady.”
I let out a genuine sigh of relief.
At that moment, a knight from the marquis’s house extended his hand toward me.
“Lady Trentia is my prisoner. If you want her back along with her sword and armor, pay the ransom.”
He lifted his visor and met my gaze.
His blue eyes shimmered with a mix of mischief and cool anger.
I couldn’t focus on that; I felt only a sense of disbelief as I asked,
“What on earth happened? It’s almost unheard of for an unharmed knight to be taken prisoner.”
It felt like a huge boulder had settled in my already troubled mind.
The knight who had captured Lady Trentia quickly responded,
“She guarded the passage bravely until Your Majesty was far away. However, a few spirits fighting the infiltrators from behind were corrupted and aimed for our rear, and we suggested to Lady Trentia that she fight alongside us.”
“Are you saying that I went to confront the marquis, and my own knight extended his hand to her?”
“I intended to clear the way and send a detachment afterward. We did exactly that.”
It was a conscious offer of surrender among warring knights, a tactical deception.
I exhaled in relief and looked at the knights clad in golden armor, who were in confusion.
“Everyone looks suspicious. Do you not intend to kill me?”
“What happened to Marquis Benechion?”
I inhaled and replied,
“He took his own life for the honor of his house.”
“Was he truly an infiltrator?”
I inhaled and replied,
“Yes. The saint and the bishop of this diocese will verify it.”
“If he was wrongfully accused by the duke, the knights of Gremoryus have the right and duty to take revenge on the duke.”
“Well, that’s only natural, isn’t it?”
I smiled confidently and gazed into his blue eyes.
It was he who turned his gaze away first.
I pulled a gold coin from my jacket pocket and handed it over.
“Is the life of Your Majesty’s knight worth merely a gold coin? You should be ashamed.”
“That is not just a gold coin, but a manifestation of my desire to reclaim her, even if it costs all my possessions.”
Though it was just a play on words, as if he sensed my sincerity, the knight let out a hearty laugh and tapped Lady Trentia’s chest plate.
“Your lord has paid the price. The lady is freed.”
Lady Trentia stood beside me once more.
I grinned and asked the knight who had taken her prisoner,
“My lady. What is your name?”
“Vitus. Vice-Captain of the Golden Knights serving Gremoryus.”
“Good. Sir Vitus. You’ll now be acting as the captain. Although the saint performed a miracle and eradicated the infiltrators on the ground, the chaos still remains. We need to stabilize Kimalion and capture the fleeing cult devotees.”
In the eyes of the knights and mages, there was a shared confusion.
They all knew enough about the corruption and the old ones.
They were likely well aware that corruption was not just a simple transaction but a matter that contributed to the destruction of this world.
The fact that a comrade had been an infiltrator must have been quite shocking, but the revelation that Marquis Benechion was also one was bound to stir intense mental strife even among the strongest of knights.
What was needed now was action.
“Sir Vitus. Send out the knights and elite soldiers to stabilize Kimalion, and have the church’s purifiers and priests search the tunnels.”
“First, we need to recover Your Excellency’s body.”
“I fled because of the aura of the old ones. I need to go with the saint or the bishop of Kimalion.”
The reason for adding the bishop was a subtle appeal that I had not coordinated with the saint.
Vitus nodded and rose from his seat.
I spoke to Matheos.
“Saint, please assist in recovering the body of Marquis Grace along with the elite soldiers and the bishop here. Lady Trentia, please follow the saint.”
“I understand, Duke.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
I searched for Lady Sorelazie one last time.
“Sister. You have a place to go with me.”
Lady Sorelazie smiled coyly and whispered softly,
“You’re plotting yet another wicked scheme.”
I couldn’t argue against that.
Regardless, even in a city central to a marquis’s territory, there were well-prepared guidelines for emergencies.
Just because the marquis died didn’t mean that everyone shed tears and allowed the duke, who could be a potential beneficiary of the marquis’s demise, to control the province.
“Those who take advantage of the chaos to raid shops will be executed!”
“Bars will be closed for the next week. Gatherings and meetings are also prohibited.”
Elite officers, soldiers, and administrative officers quickly calmed the bewildered crowd.
“Advance!”
“The enemy is fleeing to the right side of Avenue 12!”
“The battle mages are ready! Fire wave, long-range projection. 3. 2. 1.”
Knights, battle mages, holy knights, priests, and inquisitors entered the tunnels and fortresses to search the locations where the infiltrators had emerged, killing fleeing low-level infiltrators and cult devotees.
“Burn it all!”
The bishop of the marquis’s cathedral, Hehart, rushed in and managed the situation.
He skillfully distinguished between the honorable fallen warriors and the criminals who had chosen corruption among the dead knights, soldiers, and mages.
“I greet the saint.”
“Now that the bishop has arrived, we can recover the body of the marquis.”
“Yes, saint. I will analyze everyone and clarify who the true sinners are under the God of Radiance.”
Bishop Hehart had lived long in Kimalion and had deep connections with the Gremoryus family.
As a priest, he held deep respect for the saint, but as a local power in Kimalion, he inevitably had a somewhat different stance.
There could easily be suspicions that Duke Valencius was conspiring against the Gremoryus family through back dealings with the saint, and he was indeed thinking that way.
“God of Radiance.”
Those doubts vanished when the clear signs of corruption were found on the marquis’s body.
Hehart was a bishop who had lived his whole life in Kimalion.
Kimalion was a city where the cult of corruption operated beneath hundreds of tunnels out of sight of the God of Radiance, and Hehart was a skilled priest who could distinguish between voluntary corruption and involuntary corruption.
“The corruption is confined to the left hand, but it has penetrated to the bone. This means he gained power through a contract and struggled to control corruption.”
When someone is corrupted involuntarily, their body morphs uncontrollably, and the corruption tends to start from the outside of the skin.
In other words, the more limited the area and the deeper the corruption, the more meticulous the infiltrator.
“As far as I know, Your Excellency was right-handed. The left hand—if it’s limited to just the hand and not the wrist, then he could have prayed at the church and shook hands with me after enduring some pain.”
Hehart looked at the saint with a serious expression.
“Saint, if this fact is made public, there will be tremendous chaos in Kimalion.”
At that moment, Lady Trentia realized why Valencius had sent her to the saint.
‘Oh dear. Did I just have such thoughts? I must have become a coward.’
To avoid the appearance of Valencius having killed a perfectly fine marquis, the church, which held public sentiment, needed to denounce the marquis.
Talking was not her specialty, but she was good at confrontation, so engaging in a verbal confrontation was manageable for her.
“Bishop, I may not compare to you in depth of faith, but I know that what is concealed will ultimately be revealed in the sunlight.”
The words of a sword expert in full plate armor carried great weight.
If that knight had endured against a dozen other sword expert knights for even a few minutes, it carried even more weight.
“Please do not turn away from the truth that Duke Valencius has risked his life to uncover.”
Saint Matheos also nodded.
“Though Duke Valencius may not be the most pious and meek of men, he is not someone who would compromise with the demons known as the old ones. He came to this land with merely five and showed the courage to expose the high nobility; how could we, the Church of Radiance, ignore this?”
“Saint.”
“The fully mutated infiltrators that crawled out of this land number over a hundred. Is this not the moment for the church to guide the people?”
This was the moment when Matheos’s political acumen, learned from Argos, shone through.
Hehart realized that with the revelation of Marquis Benechion as an infiltrator, the church now had a significant justification to intervene with the new marquis.
To rise to the position of bishop, one needed both divine power and political prowess.
He soon made a decisive resolution.
“It has been revealed to all that the marquis conspired with infiltrators to sacrifice the city.”
This statement was not entirely inaccurate.
Based on pre-return standards, this would indeed happen about 24 years from now.
Revealing that Marquis Benechion was an infiltrator would see both his name and body destroyed.
Everything was going according to Valencius’s plan.
There are times like that.
When everything seems to be going just as I planned, yet I feel strangely uneasy.
Of course, I knew the reason.
It was when I caused the downfalls of kind people.
It might have been hard to call Benechion a good person, even before my return.
After all, he had lost sight of revenge and sacrificed 200,000 citizens at the cost of millions of lives.
……I was accustomed to punishing those who brought about miserable outcomes with good intentions.
Yet killing someone who was doing their best in their position was anything but a light matter.
Of course, I understood.
Anyone who would choose corruption to such a degree could not coexist.
It was just… regrettable.
At least before getting involved with Jeilliris, Benechion had been a remarkable noble.
He loved his subjects, governed proactively, and achieved real results.
That would likely be the deep regret that gnawed at my heart.
“We could have gone on well together.”
Nothing was more frightening than being swayed by emotions.
His insight must have been clouded back then.
Wisdom is needed to achieve goals while determining means and methods.
The moment he dreamed of revenge without regard for means and methods.
“You said you would leave this fortress and city.”
He forgot the wisdom that had given him wings and the dreams he once had.
Tax reductions, trade city construction, territorial expansion.
Until two years ago, he had rejected everything he once desired.
I exhaled a sigh and dispelled my lingering feelings as I looked at Lady Sorelazie.
“Sister, when we break in, suppress them immediately with a shock attack. The ones inside are at least sword users.”
She shrugged playfully with a grin.
“Shouldn’t you tell me where this is and what we’re here to do first?”
We were standing before a mansion that had Wyvernfit visible nearby.
The walls were tall like a castle and seemed unbreakable even by considerable magic.
“The marquis’s hideout. We’ve come to secure the heirs.”
Lady Sorelazie did not ask how I knew that.
She wasn’t one to be interested in such details.
“Heirs?”
“We need to prepare a successor who will likely be cooperative with the imperial family.”
Lady Sorelazie blinked her differently colored eyes in confusion.
“In Purioaito, the marquis was clearly a traitor, and with the emperor alongside us, we could choose successors as we pleased. But I feel this place will be different.”
“If things go as I think they will, the church will significantly damage the reputation of Marquis Benechion.”
And I continued,
“This time it will not be a method we choose, but the one who survives will become the marquis.”
“What do you mean?”
I looked around the city.
Smoke was still rising from various places.
“Sadly, the grandsons of Marquis Benechion will perish at the hands of the infiltrators he raised. The one who fortuitously survives will undoubtedly develop a great affection for the Duke of Sorelazie, who saved him.”
