C31 - 32
The Regressed Son of a Duke is an Assassin Chapter 31
Chapter 31: To The Academy (5)
As dawn lifted and the round sun rose in the morning, the usually tranquil sky contrasted sharply with the noisy corridor of the inn.
– Bang, bang, bang!
Several knights clad in armor were banging loudly on the door.
Brian hurriedly opened the door and stepped out of the room in response.
“What is going on?”
Brian looked perplexed by the sudden intrusion.
“An emergency decree has been issued throughout all of Saphern! We are to conduct a collective investigation on outsiders, so everyone in the rooms must come out now!”
The knight showed Brian an official document emblazoned with the Saphern crest, demanding cooperation.
Brian’s face broke into a sweat upon seeing the order.
“Could we, perhaps, be granted some leniency to prepare? If you give us the location, we will come to you, but could you allow us some time right now?”
“Leniency? Do you think we are playing around here? Come out immediately unless you want to be dragged out forcibly!”
“Well, it’s just that our young master is still asleep. He strictly instructed to not be awakened until it’s time for him to rise on his own…”
“Young master?”
The notion of a young master staying in a common inn was met with derision from the knight. It was laughable to think that nobility, who valued their dignity more than life itself, would be staying in such a place.
“If you don’t come out by the time I count to three, I will consider it non-compliance and begin forced removal!”
The knight counted with his fingers.
“One!”
“Please wait, sirs! It really would be a huge mistake!”
The knight paid no heed.
“Two!”
“This could very well lead all of you to the realms of death…!”
“Three!”
With the count of three, the knight kicked the door open, pushing past Brian.
Upon entering, the knight found Sian sitting on the bed, his torso bare.
He seemed to have just woken up, evident by his dazed expression.
“…?”
After the knight’s brazen entrance, a heavy silence ensued.
Sian’s long, smooth physique was marked by a multitude of scars that seemed out of place on his youthful face—a hint to his experience on countless battlefields.
The situation felt like stumbling upon a tiger’s lair when expecting a rabbit’s hole; everyone who entered the room was at a loss for words.
“Have you awakened, young master…?”
Brian was the first to regain his composure and cautiously asked.
“I woke up because it was noisy.”
Sian glared with eyes filled with killing intent.
Brian’s body froze under that intense gaze.
“What did I tell you last night?”
Sian’s voice was filled with irritation.
“That you should not be awakened until you wake up on your own…”
“And what is this? I clearly didn’t wake up on my own, did I?”
“I tried my best not to wake you, but there was an unavoidable situation…!”
Brian trembled as he looked towards the Saphern knight, wanting someone to assume responsibility.
The knight, previously dazed, quickly shook his head.
“According to the emergency measures of Saphern, all outsiders must undergo an urgent investigation! We are here to request your cooperation, but…”
The knight’s voice faded to a whisper.
“Are you, by any chance, the son of a distinguished family?”
Realizing that something was terribly wrong, his tone switched to that of a higher register.
Sian simply stared intently without responding, the oppressive aura silencing the knight.
The silence was broken by Brian.
“Our young master is Cian Vert, the son of Duke Vert of Belias! We were on our way to Rowen for the Royal Academy!”
Brian quickly showed the Vert family crest to the knight.
Upon seeing the insignia, the knight’s eyes widened before he promptly sheathed his weapon and bowed deeply at a 90-degree angle.
“I apologize for not recognizing you, the noble son of the Vert ducal family!”
The remaining knights also hastily bowed.
“…….”
A prolonged silence followed.
Sian, his gaze still stern, began to slowly dress.
Watching him, Brian thought:
He had just saved many lives this day…
* * *
“Emergency measures for outsiders?”
“Yes, that’s correct!”
“Why all of a sudden? Has someone stolen the tax evasion money hidden in the storeroom?”
The knight’s face turned pale with fright.
“Spe, speaking of such grave matters! No, it’s not that; our lord, Lord Farquad of Saphern, has gone missing since last night…”
Farquad?
Where have I heard that name before?
He’s certainly one of the prominent members of an imperial noble family.
“Are you referring to Farquad Nephris of the Count Nephris family?”
“Yes, exactly! After the sudden death of the previous lord a year ago, Lord Farquad took over the rule of this region!”
Unbeknownst to me, one of those bald guys was managing this place.
The Nephris family is one of the three major wealthy families of the empire, backing the current Empress Cassandra Nephris.
Right now, it must be Count Randolph Nephris at the head of the family.
And this Farquad lord must be his brother.
But how can a lord just go missing? How incompetently must his guards have acted for that to happen?
“What does a lord going missing have to do with outsiders like me?”
“Ah, well, that is, it’s a bit difficult to explain, but…”
The knight hesitated, as if trying to hide something.
“You were going to interrogate us all anyway, right? You must have intended to talk about it. Don’t beat around the bush, just tell me.”
It seemed as if the roles had reversed, with me questioning them instead of the other way around.
After some back and forth, the knight reluctantly closed his eyes and disclosed.
“Actually, we suspect our lord may have been kidnapped, not simply missing…”
“Kidnapped?”
I pressed on with my questions.
“Who are the suspected kidnappers?”
“We’re not certain yet, but you know of the organization that has been mentioned recently? The one that worships the Black Mist, those Mist followers…”
They’re losing their minds.
I confirmed last night that they’re not here.
Now, every time something happens, do they just blame the Mist by default?
And they say kidnapping, but if it was really the Mist, wouldn’t they have simply killed the victim instead of abducting them?
It’s more plausible that someone pretending to be the Mist kidnapped a lord…
Wait a second.
When I think about fakes, I suddenly remember last night’s events.
This couldn’t possibly be…
“Is that Farquad lord bald?”
“Yes…”
The knight replied promptly, without hesitation.
A masked kidnapper and a bald noble.
It seemed more and more likely that the person I saw last night was actually Farquad.
Just great, unintentionally getting entangled in unnecessary matters again.
“Honestly, we don’t think it’s a very likely situation! Our lord is not of the sort to have attracted the contempt of such dark fellows!”
Such nonsense.
Do they think I’m unaware of the real sordidness of that bald family?
If they knew they’d all be executed for treason later, they’d likely pass out in shock.
“But because strange black smoke was seen in the room from which our lord disappeared, we included those potential imposters among our suspects. We were conducting investigations on outsiders as a precaution when we came here.”
“So you were conducting urgent investigations under suspicion that the perpetrators might be in disguise among outsiders?”
“Yes, exactly! You have a keen insight!”
He kept babbling more than necessary.
What an exemplary knight he seemed to be.
Despite claiming to be a noble’s offspring, I doubted he could amount to much.
I stood up.
“Alright. I understand, so let’s end this. Leave now.”
“Excuse me?”
The knight looked dumbfounded.
“I said the investigation is over. You’re no longer needed, so leave.”
Of course, when I said the investigation was over, I meant my own and the fact that they were no longer needed meant the knights.
They must be bewildered, having come here to conduct an investigation only to be interrogated themselves. But what can be done?
At least it’s clear that I’m not the perpetrator.
After almost chasing out the dim-witted knights, I immediately started preparing to leave.
“Where are you going, young master?”
Brian, who had been observing the situation, asked, bewildered.
“For a stroll.”
“In the morning?”
“It won’t take long. Have everything ready for when I return, so we can set out immediately.”
“Yes, I understand!”
The journey to the Academy might be long, but there’s a saying for times like this: “More haste, less speed.”
I’m not trying to solve any meaningless kidnapping case, just casually observing my surroundings with a leisurely mind… what a load of nonsense.
I’m simply too bothered to leave things as they are.
Now that the culprit has seen my face, if I were to just leave, who knows what kind of trouble might spark?
I turned my steps back to the alley where I had spread the fog last night.
Despite the rising sun in the morning, the alley was just as deserted as the night before.
Once I made sure no one was around, I closed my eyes again.
“Black Mist 4th Form: Sensing Killing Intent!”
A little fog escaped my collar and seeped into my eyes through my throat.
The fog-covered vision turned everything black, changing the world to a monochrome palette.
However, this monochrome world was nothing more than a useless background.
– Fwoosh!
Gradually, a red glow began to shine through my focused pupils.
Over the elongated walls and densely built buildings, it emitted a strong light.
It’s the same.
The same killing intent as the one I sensed last night.
I crossed the alley quickly towards the source of the red light.
The place I arrived at was in front of a dilapidated house.
It didn’t seem deserted, but it was so old that nobody would question it if it were called an abandoned house.
Or rather, it was a suitable place to dump a body or to confine someone.
I naturally knocked on the door.
– Bang, bang, bang!
I waited a minute after knocking.
Despite a couple more knocks during that time, there was no response from within.
Is he pretending not to be there despite sensing someone around?
I was about to forcibly break the door when I took a step back to position myself.
This rotten old wooden door could easily be broken with a punch, no need to draw Ceyram…
– Creeaak.
As I had barely clenched my fist, the door opened with a creaking noise.
“Who’s there?”
“…?”
I was caught off guard.
The person who opened the door was not the middle-aged man I expected, but a girl who looked about my age.
Moreover, she was leaning on a crutch under one leg…
“I’m sorry, my leg is not in great condition, so it took me a while to answer.”
I glanced down at her leg subtly.
This was more than just a bad condition.
The girl’s left leg was completely twisted below the knee and wrapped tightly in white bandages.
As I lifted my eyes to meet hers, I saw nothing but innocence untouched by the hardships of the world in them.
Did I make a mistake? Am I at the wrong place?
While I was still doubting whether it was actually the house behind that I had mistaken, another person appeared from inside the house.
“What’s the matter, Sal… Gasp!”
He was a middle-aged man with streaks of grey in his hair.
The moment he saw my face, he went pale as if he had seen a demon.
I could tell by the way his eyes trembled like aspens.
I had found the right address.
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The Regressed Son of a Duke is an Assassin Chapter 32
Chapter 32. To the Academy (6)
Even if I couldn’t recall his face, I distinctly remembered his clumsily innocent gaze.
The familiar energy that we sensed from one another.
He seemed to have realized that he had been discovered, and he didn’t try to deny the situation.
“Shall we move to another spot?”
It appeared as though he was taking cues from a girl who seemed to be his daughter.
Without a word, I nodded, and the man looked down at the girl and spoke.
“Sally. Daddy needs to chat with this person right here, so can you wait inside for a bit?”
“Okay, got it!”
The girl answered with a bright smile and went inside.
After sending his daughter away, the man with a stiff expression led me to a place behind the house, a clearing littered with discarded timber, its purpose unclear.
Though he wasn’t looking at me, I could sense the lingering hostility in his worried gaze from behind.
“Are you from the Lord’s manor…?” The man asked, turning around with an anxious look.
“If I were, I would have captured you and thrown you in jail last night.”
I replied nonchalantly.
“The girl just now, she your daughter? Or granddaughter?”
“My daughter…”
“She seemed a bit handicapped. Has it always been like that?”
“…”
Instead of answering, the man emitted a threatening aura.
“Can’t you just pass by like yesterday, pretending not to have seen anything?”
I couldn’t help but snicker at his pathetic attempt.
“Don’t be mistaken. I’m the one in control right now. I can hand you over alive, or, if it bothers me, I can just take your head.”
His eyes were filled with suspicion.
“You don’t believe me? Go ahead, try something. Did you stick that club in your belt to wipe your ass?”
“…!”
He might have concealed his weapon, but I had been aware of it since I first saw him.
The man’s face turned pale, and he soon pulled out a hidden stick and threw it to the ground.
He realized he had no choice.
“What do you want?”
“First, take me to where he is.”
The man’s gaze led in one direction.
At the end of his line of sight was a small, newly built shack in the corner of the clearing.
I walked towards it without hesitation.
-Creak-
It was only the size of a storage closet, but the floor was covered with an oddly neat carpet.
Upon moving the carpet aside, a staircase leading down was revealed.
Anyone would think it’s some kind of secret base.
As I descended the narrow staircase, I was greeted by a pitch-black space. I gathered mana on my hand and cast an ignition spell.
-Whoosh!
The space lit up in an instant.
It was a confined underground room, not much different from the one I had entered.
“…!”
I almost burned the heavy-set figure that suddenly materialized in front of me.
“Wh-who are you!”
The person behind the hefty body was also startled, letting out a scream.
His hoarse voice inevitably made me frown.
Scanning him from head to toe, I recognized his bald head—it was the missing Lord Fakron.
“This scoundrel! Do you even know who I am to dare put me in this miserable situation? I am the Lord of Saphern, Fakron Nephris, from the Nephris family, a distinguished line of the Empire! Once I get out of here, I’ll skin you alive, grind your bones, and feed them to the beasts in……!”
His hands and feet were chained.
An eye cover made him sightless, presumably used in some kind of torture.
He was spewing serious curses that one wouldn’t want to hear, even if he were begging for his life.
Worried about getting spit on, I took a step back.
-Thump-
I bumped into a small table in the corner.
Atop the table was a familiar black mask.
“Was this it? A wooden mask carved quite convincingly, huh?”
The man kept silent.
Next to the mask, a fist-sized, reddish-brown stone rested.
A faint aura of mana flickered around it.
“An ignition stone? I was curious about how you managed to produce black smoke. Sounds like the knights were duped by such a crude trick.”
The small artifact called an ignition stone could produce fire without magic—a kind of mana flintstone often used by long-distance traders because they could easily obtain it.
I hadn’t expected such a cheap item to mimic the mist.
“I just got lucky, I guess…”
The man turned away as he answered.
“Right, it was just luck. You wouldn’t even dream of this in Belias or another city near the Imperial Capital. It’s because this backwater town was a mess.”
After some more investigation, it was clear that any city guarded by such foolish knights wouldn’t function properly.
“Such pests that shouldn’t exist in the world! Do you think I’d be scared of the followers of the Black Mist? It’s nothing for me, Lord of Saphern, to exterminate all of you!”
Even with such a pitiful lord, what was there to expect?
He seemed to lack not only hair but also reasoning skills.
“Seems like you couldn’t train him properly after all this trouble. What have you been doing?”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s not like you abducted the lord just to take pleasure in seeing him tied up, right? You planned to torture him, didn’t you?”
“Torture?!”
At the mention of torture, Fakron shrieked even louder.
I continued the conversation, ignoring him.
“Correct! But I haven’t been mentally prepared yet, and there are knights roaming around outside too…”
His feeble hesitation wasn’t even amusing anymore.
I voiced the assumption that had been in my mind.
“Your daughter’s leg… it has something to do with this man, doesn’t it?”
The man did not deny it.
“How did you know?”
“It just seemed like it.”
I continued, maintaining my composure.
“Which parent wouldn’t go mad if their precious child suffered because of a brainless pig? You managed to abduct the lord with a bitter determination to repay the exact pain your daughter experienced, but when it came to moving to the next step, you hesitated, didn’t you?”
The man shouted as if he had been wronged.
“Even so, it wouldn’t bring my daughter’s leg back, right? In fact, this act is meaningless…”
The man began to tell his buried story with tears in his eyes.
“I used to be a servant attending the former lord of this place, Saphern. I assisted directly by his side, managing administrative tasks related to the operation of the city.”
It was unexpected that he had served the previous lord who had passed away a year ago.
“The former lord was incredibly selfless. He had no personal greed and only thought of the prosperity of the city, to the extent that it was all he cared about. Sadly, he passed away early due to a chronic illness.”
“So?”
“He had no children or siblings, nor did he appoint another successor. Consequently, a new successor was sent from the Imperial Capital, and it was this Lord Fakron.”
At a glance, it was evident that the Nephris household’s influence, associated with the current Empress’s faction, was at play.
“But this man was the complete opposite of my former master. Instead of caring for the well-being of the city, he was only concerned with filling his belly, imposing massive taxes on the citizens in the name of sending funds to his family and even embezzling a portion of that.”
It was clear evidence of a corrupt lord.
In truth, even a real Mist would find ample reason to act in such a case.
“I felt a disconnect with his greedy nature and immediately quit. There was no way I could change such corruption, and I thought it was easier not to see it.”
“Why? Didn’t you think about changing things yourself?”
“I’m just a powerless commoner. Moreover, behind the corrupted lord was the enormous power of the Nephris household. Taking them on would have been rushing to my death.”
For him, that was the most appropriate action he could manage.
“Unfortunately, calamity struck from an unexpected place. Even the gods are cruel! What crime did such a young child commit? A pure child, not yet fully grown, what wrong had she done to deserve this? Just for blocking his path…”
A tear streaked down the man’s face.
“He claimed that his carriage was blocked during his tour! My child was just caught up in the unfortunate event while playing in the street, but for such a trivial reason, this man broke one of her legs! Telling her to effectively stay off the streets for the rest of her life!”
It is said that the anguish of a child is more piercing than a stabbed heart.
I had never had children, so I couldn’t fully empathize, but I could understand why he had kidnapped the lord.
“That’s why I abducted him! Though I know nothing else, I wanted to return the pain my daughter experienced! But if I did… wouldn’t I become no different from this inhuman scum?!”
Do you think he’s pitiable?
From my perspective, he’s painfully weak.
An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth—that’s the way of the world. Yet, by hesitating to exact revenge in the name of preserving human dignity, you gain nothing.
After all, humans are not so noble as to harp on about dignity.
Having heard his entire story, I spoke softly to him.
“You’re no different.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s just difficult to cross the starting line. It won’t make you less human.”
I, too, existed boldly as a human in the world.
“After all, this man wasn’t considered human to begin with, was he?”
A lord diverting taxes, breaking a child’s leg out of depravity…
It would not be surprising if the real Mist acted on such a case.
Ignoring the bewildered man, I picked up a heavy wooden stick from the corner.
Soon, a terrible scream echoed throughout the underground space.
-Thwack-
“Ahhhh!”
Alarmed, the man cried out in haste.
“What, what are you doing?”
“I’m just finishing what you couldn’t do.”
With each strike of the club, the small chamber reverberated loudly.
I focused particularly on the left ankle of the man who had been spewing nothing but curses.
“Now he was screaming in pure agony.
“Pl-please, save me! I’ll do anything you ask, just please save me…!”
He was already begging pathetically for his life after a few blows.
That’s the hideous nature of humans.
Only after experiencing pain do they understand their place.
If I intended to stop now, I wouldn’t have started in the first place!
-Thwack-
“Ahhh!”
After about ten more minutes of flogging, it finally ceased.
Lord Fakron of Saphern, having received his punishment, seemed to have fainted, his eyes no longer visible.
“Why… why would you do this…?”
I tossed the club at the feet of the man who sat slumped on the ground.
“Do you think it’s cruel? Compared to the agony your daughter went through, isn’t this nothing?”
“But…”
“If you were going to end this half-heartedly, you shouldn’t have started at all. Being sentimental only hurts you in the end.”
The man was speechless.
Leaving him sitting there, I climbed the stairs.
People say that crossing the line is like crossing a bridge with no return.
But I would ask, is there a need to return?
It’s merely difficult to begin, but once you cross the starting line, a limitless plain stretches endlessly ahead.
I know my path is not acceptable or understandable.
Would understanding it change anything?
I simply live for what I believe is right.
After finishing my business, as I was about to ascend to the surface, the man hurried after me, gripping my arm and asking once more.
“Just who are you…?”
After pondering for about three seconds, I replied.
“Just someone with a bit of experience…”
An understatement, given my current appearance.
And with that, I left Saphern and continued my journey back to Rowen.
(To be continued)