Chapter 330
Chapter 330: He Had Given Far Too Much
Upon hearing Viktor's words, Count Laurien's expression dimmed.
"I did not expect Mr. Viktor to already know of this matter, having only just arrived in the Kingdom."
Count Laurien's words were laden with bitterness. He let out a quiet sigh, his expression tinged with helplessness.
Within the Kant Kingdom, the tragic circumstances of Count Laurien were hardly a secret anymore.
Whether the high-born nobility or the plain-living common folk, everyone knew the story of his suffering.
His wife had gone mad. His daughter was dead.
More heartbreaking still was the fact that his dead daughter had been killed by his very own wife who had lost her mind.
Priscilla's mother had killed her with her own hands.
Because his wife had fallen into madness, and to prevent her from escaping the castle and charging into the territory to harm the people, Count Laurien had endured boundless grief alone and imprisoned her in a hidden room within the castle, hanging a warning sign forbidding entry.
He had also erected an extraordinarily powerful Magic Power barrier around the room on all sides to prevent his mad wife from breaking free of her restraints.
Having done all of this, the Count had very nearly plunged into bottomless despair.
To bind his own wife with his own hands was like tearing open his own deep wound, filling him with unimaginable anguish.
Yet despite having made this painful decision, Count Laurien had never given up on his wife.
Daily food provisions—including seasonal clothing changes each quarter—he handled all of it alone.
Only a Count of considerable personal strength could avoid being killed by his own maddened wife.
His devoted devotion had spread far and wide among the people.
It allowed many to come to understand that Count Laurien was a man of profound and unwavering love.
Even with his wife having lost her mind, he continued to care for her personally.
Such unflinching resolve moved people deeply.
And so Count Laurien came to be known as the【Count Who Cradles Roses—the Man of Devoted Love】.
Within his household, there was also a daughter.
His daughter was beautiful—well-mannered and gentle.
All who had met her spared no praise, wholeheartedly extolling Priscilla's perfection.
Count Laurien, too, felt a deep sense of solace in having such a daughter.
He regarded her as his most cherished pride—surpassing even his precious title.
Day after day, Count Laurien cared for his maddened wife with tireless devotion.
But even the most meticulous care has its blind spot.
One day, occupied with affairs that required his attendance at a Banquet held for Lords across the region, he was away the entire day.
He did not realize that this particular absence would cost him a price too devastating to bear.
That night, when he returned home and searched every room, he found no trace of Priscilla.
In the end, he pushed open that sealed door.
And his shattered illusions along with it.
What greeted his eyes was the scene of his daughter—eviscerated.
The corpse's eyes were wide open, its limbs hanging limp and twisted as though wrenched apart, arranged atop a blood-soaked carpet in a grotesquely broken shape.
The food his daughter had brought for her mother lay scattered across the floor everywhere, as if her final act of kindness and care had been savagely torn apart by the very person she loved.
Priscilla, seventeen years old. Her life, frozen forever at the age of 17.
A daughter. A wife.
Good fortune rarely comes in pairs—but misfortune never comes alone.
These devastating blows had come for Count Laurien all at once.
Both were people he cherished.
Count Laurien could not bring himself to abandon either one.
In the depths of his grief, he sought the help of the Kant Kingdom's most revered Grand Duke.
At this point, Count Laurien turned to Viktor and asked:
"Mr. Viktor, as a Mage, are you familiar with the profession of Necromancer?"
Viktor straightened himself slightly, lifted his gaze toward Count Laurien, and spoke in an unhurried tone.
"Continue."
As though finding Viktor's reaction entirely expected, Count Laurien's expression remained unchanged, and he went on.
"Grand Duke Balo is the Kingdom's last surviving Necromancer."
The Mages of the Kant Kingdom generally shared a particular quirk.
They had no taste for following convention—for dabbling in elemental magic and going about things the ordinary way. They preferred to specialize in the unconventional, to forge their own divergent paths.
This had resulted in very few powerful elemental Mages ever emerging from within the Kingdom's borders.
Chuer, the Kingdom Warrior Viktor had once encountered, sought—according to his Background Story—to cultivate his powerful Black Magic through the sacrifice of Players.
The shield with the Parry-capable 【Evil Knight】 skill that Viktor had obtained from him was a piece of equipment Chuer had refined through Black Magic.
Combined with the Kant Kingdom's far greater numbers of warriors, the status of Mages within the Kingdom had been suppressed to an extraordinarily low standing.
Yet in this very nation—so scarce in Mages—the Kingdom's history had nonetheless seen the emergence of a group of Mages who had brought Black Magic to full mastery.
Necromancers led by the Kant Kingdom's Grand Duke Balo had appeared.
They were capable of controlling corpses and the souls of the dead, or directly summoning spirits buried deep in the earth to fight for them.
The more powerful Necromancers could even invade human souls, annihilating their enemies directly at the level of the soul.
But at their core, all of this fell under the branches of Black Magic.
The malevolent nature of Black Magic was rarely acknowledged by orthodox Mages, and naturally it would never receive the approval of the world's greatest Mage alliance—the Mage Council.
Manipulating corpses and wandering souls was nothing short of a desecration of the dead.
And so righteous Mages naturally found it impossible to tolerate these Mages who represented evil.
Yet the power of Necromancers was something ordinary Mages simply could not match.
What was more, the Necromancers had the backing of a nation as vast as the Kant Kingdom behind them.
The Council could only issue condemnations of the Necromancers' conduct—beyond that, they had no better means of dealing with these Mages.
Yet without anyone noticing, over the passage of time, those Necromancers who had once followed the Kant Grand Duke gradually faded from the world without a trace.
The only Necromancer still alive and known to the world was the Kant Kingdom's Grand Duke Balo.
He had become the world's last remaining Necromancer.
Even so, Grand Duke Balo had publicly declared:
That he would never again make use of this 'harmful' Black Magic.
The Necromancers gradually vanished from the pages of history—how many years had passed since then, no one could say.
Viktor relaxed his posture, leaning back slightly against the sofa.
Grand Duke Festan. Festan Balo.
He was a legend of the Kant Kingdom—and at the same time, Auréliane's maternal grandfather.
Viktor naturally knew this.
In the game's mid-arc, Mage Players would gain access to a new branch Class: the Necromancer.
To change into this Class, one had to find the corresponding Class-change instructor.
That instructor was Grand Duke Festan Balo.
However, the conditions for becoming a Necromancer were extraordinarily strict.
As for what those conditions were……
Just as Viktor was lost in recollection, Count Laurien spoke.
"In order to save Priscilla, I transferred ownership of my entire territory to the Grand Duke."
"All of it, just to ask him to use Necromancy once more—to resurrect my daughter."
A Necromancer could bring the souls of the departed back to reality, and could even use certain means to restore a soul to life.
Count Laurien knew this, which was precisely why he had wished to appeal to Grand Duke Balo to resurrect his daughter.
But the Grand Duke had made a vow—that he would never again use Necromancy to disturb those who had already found rest beyond the mortal realm.
And so he had only used ordinary Black Magic to anchor Priscilla's soul within the manor.
That was all he had done—but it was already more than enough for the Count to be grateful for.
The corresponding price, however, was that Priscilla could not leave the manor by so much as a single step.
Furthermore, she could only remember what had happened before her 17th birthday.
Her body had been frozen at the age of 17, to the point that she had no memory whatsoever of being killed by her own mother.
Count Laurien had warned her: do not go looking for her mother, and do not show her body to strangers.
Because she was a wandering soul—she had no legs, and she would frighten others.
Even Priscilla herself knew these things, and so she had always abided by them.
Only in 1 regard could she not bring herself to comply.
She loved her mother too deeply. Even though her mother had become like something consumed by demons, she still believed that her father had deliberately imprisoned her mother.
She feared that her mother would end her life in loneliness and solitude, and at every turn wanted to force her way inside to rescue her.
But her mother's room was sealed off by the Grand Duke's Magic—no one except Laurien could enter.
And so she had wanted to ask a powerful Mage to break open that barrier.
"Just as you have surmised, I deliberately let Priscilla know that you were a powerful Mage—which is why she came to find you."
Count Laurien raised his head, fixing Viktor with a gravely serious gaze.
"That way, I would have grounds to ask you for help."
Viktor narrowed his eyes, hands clasped together, elbows resting on his knees, looking at Count Laurien:
"So what you want is for Her Highness the Princess to plead your case."
Upon hearing Viktor's words, Count Laurien nodded in acknowledgment.
Her Highness Auréliane was Grand Duke Balo's granddaughter.
Bound by this familial tie, he hoped that Auréliane could speak on his behalf—asking Grand Duke Balo to use his long-sealed Necromancy once more.
"I hope the Grand Duke can resurrect Priscilla. She should be able to continue her own life, not wander through the manor day after day like a wandering ghost."
Viktor smiled faintly and continued:
"In that case, the person you should be seeking is Auréliane—not me."
"I have no connection whatsoever with your Grand Duke."
Count Laurien seemed to have anticipated that Viktor would say precisely this.
And so he rose from his seat, reached into his clothes, and felt around as though searching for something.
At last, he extended his hand and opened his palm.
A surge of golden radiance burst forth from within it, illuminating the vast hall in brilliant splendor.
In Count Laurien's hand rested a cluster of wheat stalks radiating a golden hue.
Even the very air around it seemed, by virtue of that golden wheat, to have grown richly and fragrantly mellow.
"Please accept this, Council Member Clavena."
Viktor looked at the golden wheat stalks, one eyebrow lifting slightly.
Because in that moment, from within Viktor's field of vision, the name of this object had surfaced before him.
【Goddess of Abundance's Wheat Stalks】