Chapter 58 : Chapter 58
Chapter 58. What Was Inside the Cadmus Vault (2)
***
"Please do me a favor."
I, who had been drinking the brandy, looked at him with a puzzled expression.
"If you return to the past... could you take me in? If possible, I hope you find me before the winter of the Goddess Calendar Year 355 passes..."
"No, did I not say that I don't even know if I will be selected as a regressor yet?"
I was flustered by the old man's heavy sincerity.
"I'm saying if it happens."
The old man looked toward the direction where Bigrove used to be beyond the darkness with eyes lost in remorse.
"On that cold winter day, I lost my family. By the time I barely succeeded in making a comeback and found my family, everyone had already died miserably."
The old man exhaled deeply, creating a puff of white breath.
"We... are fighting now to avoid becoming void, but perhaps... I already became void starting from that winter day."
Flustered by the old man's sincere recollection, I looked down at the brandy bottle I was drinking. It was low-quality, but it was an extremely expensive brandy.
"You say there is no such thing as a free lunch in this world, so why are you handing over such expensive brandy?"
I spoke with a laugh.
"If I am selected as a regressor, I will pay the price for the brandy. Supplies Officer."
Hearing my words, the old man wrinkled his face and laughed.
***
I'm not sure if he's still here. Even Bonas himself couldn't remember the exact period. It was because it happened thirty years ago, and from what I heard of the circumstances, it was something that occurred quite urgently.
"Simon, there is something you need to do."
"Please speak, Baron."
Simon answered with a wide grin at me for calling him to give a task after a long time.
"I want you to find one of the merchant groups in this Bigrove. According to what I've looked into, there is a merchant group on the verge of bankruptcy..."
"Should I find them?"
"Yes. We also need someone to manage our money now. While looking for the family account, it would be good if I could pick up one talented individual."
Exclaiming in admiration, "Indeed, my lord thinks of many things even when he makes a single move," Simon followed the order.
"I heard that the merchant leader Gwendolyn is useful. Find him and report to me."
"Yes, Baron."
It wasn't a lie. The person who recommended that the merchant Bonas Gwendolyn was useful was the administrative Supplies Officer Bonas Gwendolyn from the future. As soon as Simon heard my order, he turned his horse toward the city of Bigrove.
I should move too.
Not only Simon, but I also had work to do here in Bigrove. This visit to Bigrove was an official visit in which I proudly revealed myself, not a secret movement. Therefore, the first thing to do was to meet Count Lacie, the ruler of this place and the head of the Lacie family, to pay my respects. That was the law and etiquette of nobility.
As the head of the Cadmus family, I was a person who should not neglect these things. I remembered that my father, Pallard Cadmus, used to travel up to Bigrove once or twice a year to pay his respects to Count Lacie.
"Let's go, Rakshar."
"Yes. Young mas... Baron."
And from now on, that role was entirely mine.
***
"Haha! It is an honor for the renowned Baron Cadmus to visit my territory!"
"Thank you for welcoming me, Count."
I greeted Count Lacie with the utmost courtesy.
"If you had told me a bit earlier, I would have been more thorough in my preparations. Please forgive my inadequacy for only being able to prepare this much."
"Inadequate? I have never received such a welcome until now, Count."
I treated Count Lacie clearly as a superior, thereby saving his face. Since they were nobles no different from kings in their own territories, some occasionally held their heads high against me, but since the Blanc before his eyes treated him with a humble and polite attitude, Count Lacie was greatly satisfied with that behavior.
"A truly precious guest has come! I must open the wine bottle I've been saving today!"
I noticed that Count Lacie liked me, but I didn't let down my guard regardless. It was because nobles were always people whose front and back faces were different. Furthermore, since Count Lacie was a man who wielded enough influence to call himself the overlord of the south, I needed to be careful of his schemes. I did not refuse the wine glass Count Lacie gave me and dealt with him with a face and atmosphere that were appropriately tipsy.
"This is quite a shame. Meeting Baron Blanc in person today, it would have been perfect to make you my son-in-law! I happen to have a few daughters of the right age."
Count Lacie smacked his lips in regret with a tipsy face.
"I don't know why the men of the Cadmus family are so cold toward the Lacie family. Your father, Baron Pallard, also ended up choosing Tolome instead of me."
I looked at Count Lacie across the wine glass I was holding. It was for a very short moment, but I didn't miss that his unfocused pupils had shone fiercely.
"I don't know much about my father's affairs... but in my case, I had no choice. Tolome was my only blood relative, so I had no choice but to seek out Count Bartomyu."
"My boy! Do you think I wouldn't have welcomed you if you had come to me? Southern affairs are as good as my own affairs."
"I am sorry. The situation was urgent and my thoughts could not reach that far."
He's trying to make me take a side. Count Lacie was speaking as if whining while drunk, but he was clearly sending a warning to the Cadmus family for choosing Tolome over him.
"In any case, I do not think you, a rising star of the Felix Kingdom, will stay crouched like this. You must be planning to reclaim Norington when the time comes."
"That is correct, Count. I will reclaim my rights along with the revenge for my father. So please be a source of strength for me."
This was exactly one of the reasons I met Count Lacie. If I could only obtain the cooperation of the Count Lacie family, it would be a great help in operating the army I would raise, so I couldn't neglect my relationship with him.
"Of course! We can't let those smelly Gartaria bastards run wild in Norington forever! I will wait for the time when you raise your banner!"
Count Lacie laughed boisterously and patted my shoulder.
"So do not forget, Baron Blanc."
"What do you mean?"
Count Lacie lifted a glass of wine, drained it to the last drop, and spoke to me with a dazed look.
"Norington is the southernmost place even in the Felix Kingdom. Is it not quite a distance from Tolome, which is in the center of the kingdom?"
"That is correct."
"So I am saying do not forget."
Count Lacie put strength into his hand that was holding my shoulder.
"Distant water cannot put out a nearby fire, can it?"
Count Lacie was laughing, but his eyes alone were shining fiercely.
"Please do not make the same foolish choice as your father."
I could tell by looking at his eyes. The fact that Count Lacie had not been drunk for a single moment in this place.
***
I did my best to participate in the banquet Count Lacie provided at the castle owned by the Lacie family. The Count treated me with extreme hospitality through the banquet that lasted all night, and during that time, he consistently flaunted Lacie's power to me. It was a wordless pressure to come under him.
However, despite my young age of fifteen, I flexibly glossed over the situation as if a serpent were slithering over a wall.
"Simon isn't returning."
I woke up early in the morning, dressed up, and tried to leave the Lacie family castle to head toward the city.
"A-perhaps he hasn't found him yet?"
"Simon isn't someone who moves by force like that. If he couldn't find him, he would have come to report that he couldn't."
As soon as I and Rakshar passed through Lacie's castle gate to find Simon, a scrawny boy rushed at us as if he had been waiting.
"My lord, Baron Blanc!"
"G-get away!"
Thinking of the scrawny boy as a beggar, Rakshar tried to drive him away by baring his teeth, but the boy stubbornly clung on despite his threat.
"Werewolf! Lord Rakshar! I am a messenger sent by Sir Simon Diez! I have been waiting for you all night!"
When his name popped out of the mouth of the boy he had thought was a beggar, Rakshar opened his eyes wide and looked at me.
"Speak, boy."
I looked down at the boy and demanded an explanation.
"The person I serve is a merchant named Bonas Gwendolyn, but he..."
"Must have gone bankrupt. And then?"
The boy seemed flustered when I cut off his words, but he regained his senses and explained the situation clearly.
"As soon as the repayment period for the debt ended, debt collectors clung to him. They are not content with disposing of Mr. Gwendolyn's assets; they are even trying to sell Madam and the young master as slaves, saying the money to be repaid is insufficient."
Hearing the boy's words, I exhaled a sigh of relief internally. Even though winter had begun and I reached Bigrove as quickly as possible, I would have missed him if I had come even one day later. Bonas could not specify the exact time he was ruined. He only remembered that snowflakes were scattering along with a cold wind that seemed to chill his bones, just like now.
He probably couldn't endure the moment when he failed to protect even his family along with his own downfall and had tried to forget it without realizing it.
"Lead the way, boy."
"Thank you, Baron!"
The boy was overjoyed and guided me and Rakshar to the city. Bigrove, the territory of the Lacie family, was a territory whose primary focus was wheat production based on vast plains. Therefore, it was a place with a large grain market to the point where it was a custom for merchants of Felix, who primarily dealt with grain, to start their trade journeys from Bigrove first.
However, trade did not always guarantee sweet success, so the grain market of Bigrove was always a place where numerous merchants who made wrong judgments repeatedly went bankrupt and fell. And those like hyenas who tried to bite the remaining carcasses of theirs always used to linger around. Just like now.
Numerous hyenas were swarming blackly and baring their teeth to bite the carcass of a single merchant who had fallen. And one sword I had sent was sharply raising its momentum and blocking them.
"What kind of unknown brat is blocking us?!"
"Have I not said it several times? I said I am a knight of Baron Blanc Cadmus."
"So why is the knight of that Baron brat, whose blood hasn't even dried on his head, blocking us?!"
"Because the Baron ordered it."
"Darn it!"
They were people who didn't already sound like honest merchants. Simon was feeling an unbearable anger as the debt collectors before him insulted me, but he was firmly guarding his spot, recalling my order. Because if he were to move rashly here, he wouldn't be able to guarantee the safety of Bonas Gwendolyn and his family, who were shivering behind him.
Good. I was satisfied seeing Simon guarding his spot despite his face turning bright red. Thinking that he seemed to have learned the basics properly from Hansen at the least, I thought I should obtain swordsmanship and an aura cultivation method for him in the future.
"I don't know what kind of knightling you are, but we've seen more than one or two armor-wearers like you bluffing. Get lost before you face something ugly!"
"It seems you think we'll back down because you're using the name of a distant Baron. We are people who have come by the order of Lord Gregson! Do you think a mere brat Baron who must be in Baltimere can stop us!"
Even a dog raised at home would bark loudly in its own front yard. The man named Gregson was a merchant famous for being a big hand in the grain market of Bigrove. It was said that it was difficult to open a grain transaction without going through his hands, so the debt collectors had reason to hold their heads high. Furthermore, the debt collectors here didn't even think of Simon as my knight to begin with, and they were people who didn't even know I was here in Bigrove.
"It is difficult to just listen and let that statement pass."
However, reality always exceeded the yardstick of expectation. I, who had been listening to the debt collectors' words, stepped forward through the people who were watching. Simon's face brightened as he recognized me.
"What kind of brat, whose beard hasn't even grown properly, is interfering in what adults are saying..."
The debt collector wanted to growl at me as I came out of the crowd, but his senses developed in the back alleys were sending a dangerous signal. I was no ordinary man. My overall appearance was that of a boy, but my gaze was so deep and dark that it made my age impossible to pinpoint. Furthermore, the werewolf who followed behind me was glaring at him fiercely without hiding his ferocity.
"I am the very brat Baron Blanc Cadmus you were talking about, you ruffians."
My voice made them stop, and my cold gaze fettered the debt collectors. The alleyway, where shouting and cursing had been rampant until just now, was currently enveloped in a silence so deep that even a single mouse would find it hard to move easily. The man before their eyes made it so.
"H-how do you prove that you are Blanc Cadmus?"
The one who appeared to be the leader of the debt collectors squeezed out his last courage to counter, but even he was already feeling it.
I think I'm... screwed...
I sneered coldly upon hearing those words.
"You are impolite as well as lawless. You are truly a human who needs no mercy."
I spoke while looking at Simon at the same time as those words.
"Until yesterday, I was a person who shared wine with Count Lacie, the ruler of this land. I received permission from him to be here, and at the same time, I obtained his favor through the wine glass."
I gave a signal to Simon. That he could run wild to his heart's content from now on.
"We... are people sent by Lord Gregson. That person hiding behind the Baron borrowed our master's money and has not repaid it!"
The leader of the debt collectors used honorifics toward me as if he had grasped the situation to some extent, but in the end, he was only making excuses for the impoliteness they committed by relying on the halo of the man named Gregson. Hearing the debt collector leader's words, I sneered at them coldly and spoke.
"No matter how great the man named Gregson is, you keep mentioning his name before me, who holds the title of Baron."
I nodded to Simon and Rakshar.
"I must test just how great of a person he is."
Simon and Rakshar drew their swords and approached the debt collectors.
"If the man named Gregson is nothing special, it will be fine for me to kill you all."
My swords bared their fangs toward the debt collectors.
"If he is a person who wields as great a power as you say."
I shrugged my shoulders.
"I can just apologize after killing you."
The blades of Simon and Rakshar shone.