Chapter 43
I raised my sword.
As a parting gift for their afterlife, I demonstrated the Sardian swordsmanship for them.
Clang!
The moment our swords clashed, the man’s wrist twisted unnaturally. As the other two rushed toward me, I employed Sardia Maneuvering Footwork and severed one of their necks.
The last man charged, only to impale himself on my sword. The tip of the sword protruded grotesquely from his back.
The man with the broken wrist looked up at me and asked.
“Wh… who are you?”
“Louis de Hebron. The one who will judge Breio in your place.”
“Why would Hebron—?”
Thud!
I stabbed him in the chest. I didn’t want to hear the rest.
House Hebron had a complicated history, no less tangled than that of House Breio or House Sardia. If I heard the rest of his story, I wouldn’t be able to stand idly by—not as the head of House Hebron.
That was why I silenced him.
I spotted a few of the enemy turning their horses to flee, but I didn’t rush after them. I had a good idea where they were headed.
For now, I roughly cleaned up the bodies and skinned a few of them just enough to expose the brand of the curse—evidence to prove the brand and a lifeline that could redeem House Hebron.
“I wrapped this up faster than expected. Plenty of time left. There’s no telling when those bastards might return to Hebron and wreak havoc. I’ll need to finish this properly.”
Until just now, Sardia’s existence had been a poisonous burden that could drag Hebron into charges of treason. But now I had the evidence to break free. If I pushed further, I might even be able to elevate Hebron to new heights.
By using that forgotten name, ‘Sardia’, as a stepping stone.
“Let’s head that way. We’ll find traces if we keep going. You should be able to smell them.”
Baaaaa!
Syang charged off in the direction the enemies had fled. It wasn’t a windswept terrain, so the footprints they left behind in their hasty retreat remained visible.
‘If they’re of House Sardia bloodline, could they be carrying some lost treasure?’
House Sardia fell in just ten days, torn apart and divided among eleven lords. The ducal title was left vacant, and since then, the Kingdom of Xenon has had only two ducal houses.
But the iconic Flamebrand, the sword symbolizing House Sardia, had vanished. Even after a full century, its whereabouts remained a mystery.
Baaaaa!
Syang suddenly stopped mid-gallop.
Then he turned around, circled in place, and started hopping.
“There’s something up ahead?”
Baaaaa!
“Huh?”
I felt dizzy, like I was spinning. My whole body felt heavy, like I’d been thrown into a dense liquid.
Reflexively, I drew up my aura—and the dizziness doubled.
‘Poison?’
Normally, aura cultivation could drive out poison. But the poison mixed in the air seemed antagonistic to aura itself. If I had lacked a deeper understanding—or if I had only known aura at a typical knight’s level… I might have stopped cultivating and searched for another solution just now.
‘If I stop, I’ll die.’
The poison spread through my bloodstream. My limbs felt even heavier, and I slumped over Syang’s back like a man drained of life.
In the distance, I saw a shadowy figure—a watcher observing my death.
‘A rare desert scorpion… scientific name: Whitetail Scorpion. The antidote is… hot water therapy.’
I drew on my fire-attributed aura.
It surged it through every vein in my body, forcing energy into my limbs. Beads of blackened sweat dotted my pores.
The poison wasn’t expelled yet, but instead, the aura had clogged the pores, slowing the release of the poison.
SWOOOSH!
Heat spread through me like I had swallowed a fireball. I was no ordinary knight. I had awakened a fire-attributed aura, and I could summon a mid-tier fire spirit.
“Inferno, raise the temperature!”
–…Don’t die.
As Inferno increased the ambient heat, I felt like I was burning from the inside out.
My pores forcefully opened. Sweat poured out. The black beads clogging them melted and evaporated in the heat of Inferno’s flames.
My eyes opened.
I felt exhausted but not completely drained.
In the distance, the one watching me collapsed sideways. He had been waiting to confirm my death—but when I chose life instead, he chose death.
“Inferno, open a path of flame ahead.”
SWOOSH!
Walls of fire rose on either side and extended forward, pushing the poisonous air away.
I walked between them. The flames of Inferno did not harm me, and everything that could harm me was burned to ash.
No embers were left in my path. Instead, the flames reappeared ahead, rising anew.
“Burn.”
Inferno’s fire hesitated for a moment as if studying me, then surged forward to incinerate the fallen figure.
He had taken his own life with poison. Blisters now bubbled up on his skin.
He had used his own body as the poison’s catalyst.
‘What exactly were they trying to protect?’
The question was soon answered. A little farther in, I found the residence of the Sardia clan. Hidden beneath a pile of rocks, the entrance to the cave was expertly concealed—utterly undetectable from a distance.
‘Did they protect it with their deaths to preserve the pride of House Sardia?’
The slightly open cave entrance was littered with corpses. They showed the same symptoms as the man I had encountered earlier, though it seemed not all had chosen to end their lives willingly.
Many had died while trying to move the stones blocking the entrance in a desperate attempt to survive. Thanks to them, I was able to avoid a tragic mistake by not entering the cave recklessly and getting poisoned.
‘If I focus even slightly on my aura circulation, I could handle it.’
That was something ordinary knights couldn’t do. Only those capable of controlling every vein in their bodies could manage such a feat.
‘As if the monsters marked by the Trickster weren’t enough of a headache, now there are rebels armed with deadly poison hiding beneath the territory. Hebron is in worse shape than I thought.’
“Inferno, raise the temperature inside the cave. Just enough so it doesn't catch fire.”
As the internal temperature rose rapidly, the poisonous air inside the cave was pushed outward. Then a gust of wind swept in, and from within the downward-sloping cave, poisonous air erupted from multiple spots.
The Sardia clan had not made just one exit. It seemed they had prepared several escape routes.
‘They must’ve sacrificed many to help a few of the Sardia bloodline escape. A predictable tactic.’
I couldn’t chase after the Sardia bloodline on my own.
I expect that the survivors would seek revenge against the Kingdom of Xenon or attack the Duke of Breio.
‘It’s not my job to handle all of that. I’ll quietly leak the intel to the royal family and take my reward.’
The cave interior was a mess.
The poison of the Whitetail Scorpion had been amplified using the corpses as fuel, but I didn’t bother removing the bodies scattered everywhere. I had already mastered a method to resist the poison.
I inhaled the poisonous air through my nose and mouth, then heated it with fire-attribute aura and dispersed it throughout my body. It stung at first, but soon I got used to it.
‘According to a mage’s research, there was a case where resistance to poison was built up in this way. All the test subjects died, but that’s because they couldn’t control their veins.’
The cave was full of old tools.
It looked like they had lived here for over a century.
‘Did they finally emerge after all that time because of Spiel? Or did they just think Hebron was an easy target?’
The Sardia remnants had underestimated Hebron. They probably thought they could assassinate me easily and return to their old ways.
A century in the wasteland had stripped them of their ducal pride. The cave was in shambles—anyone would believe it had been home to vagrants.
Deeper into the long cave, I found a large chamber. The people who had died there wore relatively clean clothing.
‘These traces...’
As Inferno raised the temperature sharply, the air circulated, leaving trails of airflow like scars across the cave’s surfaces.
Click.
When I pulled a hidden lever, one of the walls clanked open.
There were signs that books had been hastily pulled from the shelves. Other items, too, had clearly been snatched up in a hurry.
‘There must’ve been another escape route.’
Inferno lit up the space, and I examined the traces left behind by the wind.
“Hm?”
A book had fallen beneath the shelf.
It seemed someone had dropped it while rushing.
–Republicanism: A Republic Belongs to Its People.
‘Republicanism?’
I had read countless books, but this was the first time I encountered that term. Before I could fully chew on the unfamiliar word, the subtitle on the cover made me frown.
‘A Republic Belongs to Its People.’
The title alone was enough to guess the book’s contents. If the fallen House Sardia had embraced republican ideals, the Xenon Kingdom wouldn’t have stopped at declaring them traitors—they would have purged them to the bloodline.
Anyone who read or even briefly possessed this book would undoubtedly be condemned.
‘Do I bury this or reveal it?’
Given my achievements so far, Hebron could aim for the title of Viscount simply by inflating my accomplishments. If I added the term ‘republicanism’ to the mix, I might climb even higher during the kingdom’s upheaval.
Rustle.
I turned the page—driven by curiosity. To attack and criticize it, I needed to understand what republicanism was and what values it pursued.
Rustle, rustle.
The pages turned easily.
It wasn’t hard to read. Whoever wrote it had a masterful hand.
‘A form of governance that surrenders royal authority to the people…? I don’t know who came up with this, but it’s nonsense.’
I understood republicanism. At least intellectually, I grasped its structure. But I couldn’t begin to imagine the number of sacrifices it would take to realize it.
Even this thought was a luxury I could afford because I was a baron. If I were a member of Breio, I would’ve been outraged by the very idea and immediately organized a pursuit team.
I decided to delay deciding the book’s fate. First, I inspected the rest of the cave.
‘Just as I thought…’
My prediction was correct. When I pushed one bookshelf aside, a hidden passage revealed itself. It had been cleverly camouflaged and hard to spot, but the faint scars left by passing wind had exposed a gap.
‘An Ains-type design.’
After the fall of House Sardia, secret passageways had briefly become a fad among the high-ranking nobles of the Kingdom of Xenon. It was a precaution against unexpected crises.
At that time, the Duke of Breio had also hired engineers from across the land and gathered related documents—among them was this ‘Ains-type design’.
Click, rumble.
With a press of the concealed button and a gentle push on the top of the door, the secret passage reacted.
A section of the cave wall slid open from the inside.
The air that flowed out struck my nose. The musty, metallic stench made my stomach churn.
It was the stench of death and terror, blended into a single foul odour.
Grrrr...
From within a pitch-dark space where not even a ray of light reached, crimson eyes gleamed ominously. When I held up a torch to illuminate the area, dozens of eyes stared back at me, ready to devour.
“…Ghouls? They raised undead?”
Dealing with undead was strictly forbidden in the Kingdom of Xenon.
Not only was summoning them a crime—even failing to report their presence was illegal.
“Is it because we’re near the Antaria border? There’s all kinds of madness here.”
Antaria was a Holy Kingdom. They valued priests more than knights, and behind that was a simple reason that the undead frequently appeared in their region.
