Chapter 52 : Chapter 52
Chapter 52
Ian, standing on the high platform, cast a cool gaze upon the faces gathered in the banquet hall.
Ultimately, all the problems Moner faced had arisen from the absence of its master, the duke.
It was only natural for pests to infest a masterless house.
A low, subdued voice erupted as if boiling.
“Everyone seems to be in a bad mood.”
They were the pests gnawing away at the domain.
Those who had lined their pockets with bribes while the people of the domain ate bread mixed with sand, those who had multiplied their wealth by taking advantage of the suffering of others.
Ian slowly walked down from the platform and continued.
“Of course, I can understand it all.
There are those who obtained their positions by bribing the Regent, and those who got their positions by aligning with other vassals.”
He walked towards the tax official at the very front and patted his shoulder.
“It must be unpleasant for me to suddenly declare myself the master now.”
The tax official, who met Ian’s cold gaze, quickly bowed his head and said.
“Unpleasant is not the word!
We are overjoyed that you have become the head of the family, Young Lord……”
Thwack!
Before he could finish his words, Ian moved on.
The tax official, still standing in his place, instinctively touched his neck.
He felt no pain, yet he felt a dull dagger.
“Wh-what is this?”
The moment the surprised tax official unconsciously drew out the dagger, warm blood gushed out.
“B-Baron Deon!”
The noble who had been laughing and talking just a moment ago screamed with a pale face, and screams erupted from all around.
“Guards!
Guards!”
“The young lord has gone mad!”
Beyond the body of Deon, which collapsed as if it were a lie, Ian, with red eyes, spoke.
“You, who swore allegiance to Moner, lined your own pockets instead of protecting the domain.”
The surrounding vassals shouted at Ian, who was walking without stopping.
“Young Lord!
Get a grip!
What is this in the sacred Lord's Castle……!”
Ian’s dagger flew towards the man’s neck once again.
“You fattened yourselves on the suffering of the people of the domain, and broke your oath of fealty for fleeting wealth.”
Every time a hand stretched out from Ian’s bosom, the vassals who had been in disarray collapsed one by one.
“How can you repay that sin with anything other than death?”
The murderous intent gleaming in his eyes shone menacingly.
“Therefore, you all, who deserve to die, are sentenced to death.”
* * *
Just before Ian ascended the platform.
Baron Malfoyeu, Ian’s personal physician who had watched over his madness for a long time, had read the madness in Ian’s eyes from the moment he entered.
“Open the door right now.
The bathroom, I need to go to the bathroom right now.”
The baron, trying his best not to draw anyone’s attention, pleaded with the Black Noble Troop guarding the door.
“As a noble, how can I commit such a discourtesy at the young lord’s inauguration ceremony?
Please, I beg you, just open the way for a moment!”
However, the Black Noble Troop did not even flinch, even seeing him stomping his feet.
“Y-you damn wenches!”
He had realized it the moment he entered the banquet hall.
An inauguration ceremony with no food or drink prepared.
This was clearly not a place for celebration and blessing.
No, the young lord clearly had no intention of being congratulated by those gathered here.
'Damn it, I should have run away earlier!'
He had stayed in his seat, fearing that leaving might bring about greater misfortune, but to think things would turn out like this.
'I need to find the Regent before it’s too late, but where the hell is that old man?!'
If there was a way to survive in this place, the Regent would know it.
But no matter how much he looked, the Regent was nowhere to be seen.
“Surely that man didn’t abandon Moner and run away, did he?”
As Malfoyeu, who was chewing his fingers in growing fear, was looking for the Regent, he spotted Ian slowly descending from the platform.
'It's too late!'
The moment he met the young lord’s cynical smile, every cell in his body screamed danger, and a tingling shiver ran from his toes to his entire body.
As he frantically looked around with a trembling body, he finally saw a person wearing a robe and hiding behind a pillar on one side of the banquet hall.
Even though the robed figure stood out in the banquet hall, no one seemed to pay him any attention, as if he were invisible.
‘…The Regent?
He was hiding there!
I-I'm saved!’
As he rushed towards the Regent, he felt a strange premonition.
Unlike the usual Regent, who always maintained a ramrod-straight posture like someone with obsessive-compulsive disorder, his hunched back and trembling body made him look like someone who was sick.
At that incongruity, the baron paused for a moment, and the Regent’s hand shot out and covered the baron’s mouth.
“Kugh, mph, mph!”
Thwack!
Thwack!
The darkness that had instantly burst out of the Regent’s body and swallowed the baron returned to the Regent’s body as if nothing had happened, and he hid behind the pillar again.
* * *
“Please, please spare me!”
“Just once, have mercy……!”
“May the curse of the gods be upon you……!”
Ian’s eyes were calm as he walked through the pandemonium of curses, screams, and pleas.
“Gurgle!”
Every time Ian mechanically moved his arm, another corpse was added to the marble floor.
He pierced the brow of the one who had begged for mercy, and the one who had pleaded to be spared rolled on the floor as a headless corpse.
Those who were unarmed ran back, further and further, trying to escape, but the Black Noble Troop guarding the door would not allow it.
“Gasp, gasp.”
How many had he cut down?
His body sent a warning from the continuous use of mana.
'Just a little more.'
I could not stay in this place.
The contemplation in Lier had started right there.
I could have embraced the nobles through politics as the temporary duke, but I could not stay in Central Hold.
I had to visit the front lines to grasp the movements of the monsters, I had to raise the Moner family’s army, and I had to meet the heroes and steal their traits.
Since I couldn’t leisurely sit in the Lord's Castle and manage the domain, I had to send a warning to everyone in the Lord's Castle and Moner.
That the new master of Moner knew no mercy.
“Gurgle!”
So I kept moving my arm.
For every bit of infamy and death piled on this arm, on this body, the survivors would never forget this day, and as the infamy grew, everyone would fear the scoundrel of the Moner family.
“Young Lord─ no, my lord Duke.
Please, just one chance!”
As I plunged my dagger into the throat of an official whose name and face I did not know, I prayed as if making a vow.
“Gaaah!”
May the Moner family become as clean as the blood that stained the Lord's Castle today.
* * *
“Hoo……”
After pulling the dagger from the body of a man with a protruding belly, I let out a low sigh and looked around.
‘The Regent, where is the Regent?’
No matter how suddenly I had moved, I hadn't expected to be able to deceive the Regent’s eyes.
There was no way the Regent, who had ruled Moner for years, would not have questions about an inauguration ceremony with no drink or food prepared.
I had thought there might be soldiers or knights he had bribed, so I had dismissed all the forces inside the castle and prepared the entire Dark Elf Rangers and the Black Noble Troop, but the Regent had shown no movement.
'He definitely didn't run away… where is he hiding?'
Just as I thought the Regent was hiding in fear.
“Khahahaha!”
The Regent’s laughter echoed through the banquet hall.
An unpleasant sound, more like metal scraping against metal than a human voice, followed.
“I was wondering what excuse to make to those idiots Mogul and Sven, but you’ve solved it for me like this!”
The Regent, who turned his head with a creak, directed his black, turbid eyes towards the second prince, Trimia.
“If I report that I have punished you, who went mad with insanity during the inauguration ceremony and killed the prince, the kingdom will also recognize my true worth!”
From the Regent’s eyes, which had already lost their focus, a dark red liquid flowed endlessly.
“Then I will finally become the master of this land!
I, who have dedicated myself to this land more than anyone else!”
The Regent, who had stood in this place after seven years of waiting, did not think of defeat.
All that was left for him was the desire to kill everyone in this place as quickly as possible and take Moner for himself.
He, who had survived in this place and heroically stopped the young lord’s atrocities, would be remembered forever as the savior of the domain and would reign as the master of this land.
“A brat like you dares to call yourself the master?!”
The Regent believed in the abundant power that filled his body.
After swallowing Baron Malfoyeu, he felt as if there was nothing in the world he couldn't do with the overflowing power.
Even if Mogul or Sven had been here, he could have swallowed them and killed them.
The Regent, who smiled in satisfaction at the overflowing power, laughed eerily and shouted at Ian.
“Die!”
He pulled out the ‘shackle’ gifted by the Empire and threw it at the young lord.
The ‘shackle’ turned into darkness and rushed towards Ian.
* * *
Ian stared intently at the approaching darkness.
“As expected.”
That ominous darkness was also one of the precursors to the ruin that was swallowing this world.
<Bad Ending No. 011 The Proliferating Darkness>
The incomprehensible darkness that could not be touched by wizards or knights below the 6th class could only be subdued by holy power.
‘I’m pretty sure the game said it was an abnormal phenomenon caused by oversaturated mana…….’
The darkness that spread like a virus in the game devoured people and grew in size.
They were monsters so deadly that if you didn’t suppress them in the early stages, you couldn’t prevent the bad ending, but they boasted an extremely difficult hunting difficulty because they parasitized humans.
However, from the moment the suspicion arose that the demonic race and the Empire might be involved, this side was fully prepared to fight the demonic race.
Hadn’t he made the Saintess herself attend an inauguration ceremony that would be filled with one-sided slaughter and punishment?
He stared straight at the proliferating darkness and shouted.
“Shendelzar!”
At Ian’s shout, Shendelzar, who had taken refuge on one side, made the sign of the cross and activated the holy magic she had prepared beforehand.
“The God of Light descends upon this place, so no evil shall dare to approach!
Divine Area!”
As her spell ended, a warm light spread, filling the banquet hall, and the holy magic <Divine Area>, which turned a designated space into a sanctuary and annihilated evil, was activated.
“Kuaaaah!”
The Regent, who had been trying to kill the young lord with all his might, screamed at the sudden intense pain that rushed through his entire body.
“Aaaaah!
Stop, stop, stop!”
Black liquid flowed endlessly from his eyes, nose, and ears, and his body and muscles melted as if they were burning.
The crude evil, made from a mere drug, could not stand against the holy magic created to hunt the demons incarnated in the world.
“No way!
I, I can’t die!”
The Regent could not understand this situation.
He couldn't believe that the power that had seemed omnipotent was crumbling away at the spell of a frail woman who was just a cleric, or that the grand plan he had waited seven years for was ending so futilely.
“Aaaaah!”
What was even more unbelievable was the constant pain, as if his entire body was being burned by fire.
The pain, which would have made a normal human lose consciousness and die, continued endlessly.
The acrid smoke from his burning flesh blinded his eyes, and the pain, as if his soul was being ground, made him unable to even scream anymore.
All he could do was curl up into a ball and wait for death.
Then, a voice full of ridicule came from above his head.
“A fitting end for you.”
Just like Ian before the King of Strategy had possessed him, seeing the Regent huddled in pain, waiting for the approaching death, a satisfied smile appeared on Ian’s lips.
“You will never die easily.”
Ian took a vial from his bosom and carefully poured the medicine into the Regent’s mouth.
“Gurgle!
Huh?
Kuaaaah!”
He had a lot of information to get from that bastard.
If he could find out why he had targeted Moner, where he had obtained Queen’s Mercy, the poison of the demon world, and how he had obtained the ‘proliferating darkness,’ he believed he could see an ending he had not seen as a gamer.
With the combination of a stimpack, which was called a low-grade elixir, and holy magic, he could hold on to life even if he was a dying corpse.
The moment he thought that, the Regent’s head, which the holy power had touched, swelled up like a boil.
“Kuaaaaaaah!”
Pop!
In the banquet hall, wrapped in the warm holy power like sunlight.
The Regent’s death throe echoed pathetically.