Chapter 80

"S-sorry? Y-Your Grace?"

Annette — the duke's capable deputy and devoted retainer — looked thrown.

"We're still in the palace, sir. What was it His Majesty said?"

"…"

"Weren't you ordered to put down the uprising?"

"That was part of it."

"Part? So there was something else. Then again — even being told to handle that to begin with strikes me as a little off, sir."

Duke Cherity didn't seem inclined to talk about the other order, so the deputy quietly let it drop.

The duke lost himself in his thoughts.

He turned back to the conversation that had taken place in the audience chamber moments earlier.

Take care of the uprising in the Gelta region.

Why me?

Duke Cherity was no dog of the emperor's.

If anything, they stood on opposite sides.

So why this?

When he asked because he genuinely didn't follow, the emperor added,

While you're there, kill the Grand Duchess Lecashe.

For a beat, Duke Cherity narrowed his eyes, half-wondering if he'd heard wrong.

If you take care of the Grand Duchess, I'll grant you one thing you want.

The arrogance of assuming you could grant me anything I want, Your Majesty. Ridiculous.

Duke Cherity.

As if he knew what Cherity wanted.

It was so absurd he actually let out a small laugh through his nose.

But why me, of all people?

Because you get things done.

Surely that isn't the whole of the bargain.

Not that it mattered, really.

He'd been meaning to visit Lecashe territory at least once.

The face of the Grand Duchess he'd seen at his own birthday party came back to him.

She'd looked half-dead already — was there even any point in killing her, he'd thought briefly.

What is it you want?

Lecashe territory has my eye.

What — surely not for the ijet?

Among other things.

The emperor didn't know.

He didn't know what House Cherity had been searching for, generation after generation.

Take care of it and there's nothing I can't grant you.

That was why he could agree so readily, no doubt.

But from the duke's perspective, it worked out well.

And so the deal between the two was struck.

Of course, the thought that the emperor had lost his mind hadn't left him.

All this over some woman.

---

After leaving the palace, Cherity went to the temple.

He slipped through a door hidden in the temple, unseen by anyone, and on the other side, someone was waiting for him.

"You've come."

The man in priestly robes looked old, but his station within the temple was high.

The high priest of this temple.

"Yes. Have you found the child?"

"…Not yet."

"Hah. What kind of management is this."

The duke looked at the high priest like he was hopeless.

The high priest only worried at his lips and said they were still searching.

"I'll have to head to Lecashe."

"Are you really going through with it? That place doesn't sit right with me, sir."

"What else can I do, when I've searched everywhere and He still won't answer?"

"You don't think He could really be in Lecashe?"

"There's no telling. The Forest of the World Tree is in Lecashe."

The Forest of the World Tree.

The place called the source of all things.

In truth, when Cherity had first set out to find his god, the Forest of the World Tree had been the first place he'd considered.

But like the high priest now, he'd carried a surely not in his chest.

That was why Cherity had never set foot in Lecashe, not once.

He'd been all the way to the eastern lands, and still hadn't gone there.

By now he'd checked nearly everywhere.

Unless there was some uncharted land out there, Lecashe was the last place left.

"He's there. I know it."

A feeling.

"I pray that He is."

If only he could find the slightest trace of his god — even buried in the demonic energy of the Forest of the World Tree — the high priest would have offered up his very soul.

The night of the faint tremor.

Cherity, who'd lost all meaning in his life, had found it again.

He didn't know where the tremor had originated, but he'd unmistakably felt the presence of his god.

The god was sleeping somewhere.

And he could be the one to leave behind the legacy of finding him.

A deep smile settled across Cherity's mouth.

"In any case, that's how it stands. You — keep searching for that child. Faster."

"Yes, Your Grace."

The high priest slowly traced the sign of the cross.

"May the god's blessing be upon you."

Cherity walked out without bothering to hear the rest of the empty incantation, untouched by a drop of holy power.

---

Meanwhile, after Cherity left, the high priest stayed behind and glared at the door he'd just gone through, his eyes gone cold.

"High Priest."

A figure who'd been behind a door stepped forward.

The high priest's face was a mask of humiliation.

"To grovel like that before some shabby duke who borrows the merest fragment of the god's power — it's pathetic. I can't stand it."

The priests borrowed the god's power too, of course, but the difference was in the scale.

There was a legend that the Cherity bloodline ran back to a holy spirit.

Cherity could in fact wield a little holy power, which seemed to confirm it.

Though with the god now gone into hiding, even that wasn't possible anymore.

After losing his holy power in the wake of the Holy-Demonic War, Cherity had assumed the temple priests had lost theirs too.

He was right.

The priests were husks dressed up as vessels.

The holy power the priests used was, every drop of it, the power of artifacts.

The real thing was gone.

Which was exactly why the temple was even more desperate than Cherity.

Priests with no holy power. They'd joined hands with the imperial family during the Holy-Demonic War, but their relationship had always been hostile.

If the imperial family found out the temple had lost its power, they'd wipe the temple out first.

So they'd kept it buried in absolute secrecy, all the way to now.

"But he's also one we can't afford to be without. Once the god appears, what is a Cherity to us? In the end, even he will kneel at your feet, High Priest."

"He will. As long as our god is in the Forest of the World Tree."

The high priest ground his teeth.

He would tear apart innocent Lecashe if that was what it took to call him back.

And he would rid himself of that eyesore Cherity and reclaim power in full.

But the temple didn't know either.

That the imperial family was hiding secrets from them too.

In the end, both sides clutched their secrets and clawed to protect what they had.

Ridiculously enough.

---

Duke Cherity came down to the south.

"This the place?"

"Yes, sir. The fool's got the gates wide open and is waiting for us."

When the imperial knights arrived at the entrance of Roman territory, the viscount himself was standing there, guarding it in person.

Did he still not grasp the situation?

Cherity rarely let any feeling show on his face, but this time he couldn't help it.

"Hah."

A bitter laugh broke out of him at the sheer absurdity.

Behind where Viscount Roman stood, you could see the castle in flames — things were clearly serious.

He could see all that and still be standing here like this?

Duke Cherity looked down at the viscount welcoming him with eyes gone cold as ice.

"Why look at me like that, sir?"

"Bind him."

Cherity gave the order to the knights, contempt naked on his face.

"Y-Your Grace? What is the meaning of this!"

"Y-Your Grace!"

Viscount Roman shouted for Cherity until his throat tore, but Cherity cut down the knights guarding the gate without breaking stride and walked through.

His family was bound in ropes one after another.

They begged for their lives in the most pitiful state imaginable.

And the people of the territory watched every moment of it.

Viscount Roman had been taken.

When word first spread that the emperor was sending someone, the nobles had naturally assumed it would be on their side.

Looking at it strictly through the noble lens, no matter how big the mess had grown, they were nobles.

In Aleta, cases of nobles being punished — short of bringing themselves down — were extremely rare.

They were the privileged class. Six of one, half a dozen of the other; they covered for each other.

But this didn't go the way they'd expected.

The nobles were only strong against people with no power.

Once Cherity's knights and the imperial knights drew their blades, things wrapped up fast.

It was only when the nobles on the scene — along with the ones elsewhere — had all been rounded up and tied together in one place that they finally realized.

Something has gone wrong.

The residents who'd watched the whole thing roared in triumph.

His Majesty has come to our aid!

They shouted it, weeping with gratitude.

And Duke Cherity was a noble who understood showmanship.

"Have no more worry. I, Creona Cherity, have come at His Majesty's command to help you. The lord of this territory is no longer this man."

"Wh-what is the meaning—!"

The viscount writhed in shock, but it was no use.

Roarrrr—

The people gave a cheer thick with all the bitterness they'd swallowed.

The rest were rounded up too, every last conspirator, and made to kneel before the castle gates.

They wept and begged, every one of them.

Mercy, they cried for mercy.

"P-please, spare us. We never thought it would come to this — please, sir, just listen, Your Grace!"

Viscount Roman and his family screamed for help.

But Duke Cherity only looked down on them with arrogant contempt and said nothing.

"Please, Your Grace! If not me, at least mercy for my children—!"

For all his recklessness, the viscount still cared about his children, it seemed.

"Try begging your territory's residents."

The words had barely left his mouth when a stone flew from somewhere and struck Viscount Roman in the forehead.

"Bastard! Are your children the only ones who matter?!"

"Give me my daughter back!"

"You bled the rest of us dry and now you want us to spare you? That's a laugh!"

"Die with us!!!"

Viscount Roman flashed a vicious look for a beat, then dropped his head.

There was nothing he could do in this state.

He hadn't completely given up on the hope that something might change once he was brought to the capital, but right now, the duke was watching.

He bit it down and held still.

"I'm — I'm sorry."

And then he apologized.

Thwack—

That weak little apology wasn't about to win back the hearts of the people he'd already lost.

Cherity, watching it all unfold, stepped in to calm the riled-up residents.

"His Majesty will hand down the punishment. His Majesty will not turn his back on your suffering."

After he said it, Cherity gestured to the knights.

The bound nobles were dragged off by the knights, blood streaming from them, and locked straight into the castle's dungeon.

It took only a few days for Cherity to bring in every one of the Gelta Six.

And every one of them set off on the road to the capital in the most wretched state imaginable.

No protection, no carriages — they were marched on foot through rough mountain country alongside the soldiers.

When they passed through villages, they had nowhere to hide from the stones the residents hurled at them.

The fall of the Gelta Six.