Chapter 81 - The Sage Who Chose Eternity Over Eternal Rest (1)

Those facing impending death generally fall into one of two categories.

They either accept everything and give up, or they struggle until the very last moment.

Marquis Montpellier was the latter.

Having had his body hacked up by the Sword Maidens, the marquis crawled over and groveled at my feet.

"Y-Your Highness... Please spare me... Please, just my life..."

Half out of his mind from the Sword Maidens' blade work throughout the night, the marquis begged me desperately.

"If you just spare my life, I will become Your Highness's dog. If you tell me to bark, I will bark; if you tell me to die, I will at least pretend to die!"

He was a man with a truly disgusting attachment to life.

Even while saying he would bark if told to, he absolutely refused to actually say he would die.

"The, the former head of House Quern is a cuckoo child born between the countess and her lover. The eldest son of the Baltes family from the Central region is committing adultery with the wives of his retainers, and..."

Out of nowhere, the marquis began rattling off the shameful secrets of the nobles in front of me.

"There are many more! I have evidence of the shameful deeds and corruption committed by the nobles! If you just spare me, I will give them all to Your Highness! With those, the nobles wouldn't dare defy Your Highness's words!"

I could guess how the marquis had been manipulating the kingdom's nobles all this time.

"Please show mercy! If you do, I will become Your Highness's dog!"

The marquis clung to my feet. I stared at him for a moment before lightly swatting his hands away, as if brushing off filth stuck to my body.

I looked out over the distant snowfield. Dawn was already breaking.

Although I had watched the marquis suffer throughout the night, I didn't feel a single ounce of satisfaction.

As expected, the sorrow ingrained in this land was too deep to be resolved just by catching one of the empire's dogs. The price of the blood of the Northerners who died in vain could only be paid with an equal weight of blood.

There was a long way to go. I stood up from my seat. I gave a glance to Gunne.

She, her white skin heavily stained with blood, approached with an expressionless face.

CRUNCH, CRUNCH.

The marquis flinched at the sound of footsteps echoing across the snowfield.

"Y-Your Highness! I will cover the eyes and ears of the empire! If you let me, many of the things the kingdom has lost will fall into Your Highness's hands!"

Gunne grabbed the marquis by the hair and yanked his head back.

"Gah!"

Gunne's blade touched the marquis's neck.

"I-I can even lift the seal on the Magic Tower for you!"

At the marquis's stifled voice, I raised my hand. Her sword, which had halfway dug into his neck, stopped right there.

"The seal on the Magic Tower?"

"I mean that, with my authority as ambassador, I can grant permission to foster Mages and open the Magic Tower, which were restricted according to the treaty!"

The marquis clung to me with a face that looked as if he had grasped a lifeline.

"Tell me in detail."

Looking at the marquis, I sat back down.

"First, tell me what that treaty is."

* * *

As the marquis's explanation continued, I felt the muscles in my face stiffen.

This wasn't a treaty; it was practically a forced treaty.

Not a single clause among all the details was beneficial to the kingdom.

The treaty was essentially a declaration that we would cut off our own hands and feet and volunteer to be a vassal state.

The kingdom had to receive the empire's permission even to train its own military. And this applied not only to the military, but to knighthoods as well.

The kingdom's knights could not exceed a certain number, and the kingdom was obligated to report a roster of all its affiliated knights to the empire. The roster had to include their locations and realms of mastery.

There could be no omissions.

It was an absurd clause. Yet, there was an even more humiliating and miserable clause than this.

At least there was still some room to foster knights and a military.

The clause regarding Mages was a vicious one that practically blocked the fostering of Mages at the source.

The doors of the Magic Tower were locked, and new magic could not be researched. The research and training of war magic were forbidden, and one could only learn healing magic.

Unless they were a fool, no one would want to become a Mage under such terrible conditions. Let alone the fact that Mages were not fools, but rather a sharp-minded bunch.

Such brilliant individuals would surely have left in search of a place where they could research and train freely.

Now I finally understood.

Why not a single Mage had participated in the war that broke out in the North.

It wasn't that they didn't participate. There hadn't been a single one left to begin with.

"Hah."

I was so dumbfounded that only a hollow laugh came out.

This wasn't even a country.

The kingdom had already lost its sovereignty and had been reduced to nothing more than the empire's watchdog. It wouldn't be strange to call it a mere province of the empire.

Everyone in the kingdom knew, and only I had been kept in the dark.

I looked at Marquis Montpellier.

It was truly absurd that this pathetic man, who was blabbering as if ready to sell out his own country just because a blade touched his skin a few times, held the leash of that watchdog.

He seemed to have noticed that I was in a terrible mood. The marquis, his face pale white, quickly made a proposal.

"I cannot completely nullify the clauses, but it is within my power to loosen the restrictions to some extent. As you know, the damage the North suffered from this incident is incredibly massive, is it not?"

"And thanks to whom?"

The marquis's face grew even more desperate.

"I will temporarily grant permission for the restricted training and research of war magic, and lift the seal on the Magic Tower up to the third floor."

The Magic Tower was not a simple building.

The Magic Tower was the very law created by the ancient sages who compiled the mysteries of the world, and it was the gateway to accessing those mysteries in itself.

And since the floors of the Magic Tower were the measure that determined the depth and variety of mysteries Mages could access, lifting the seal up to the third floor meant permitting the research and training of magic equivalent to the 3rd Circle.

In its own way, it was a plausible offer.

If the one proposing it wasn't some lowly ambassador from a foreign country.

What a fine state this country is in.

But what could be done?

The nation of the lion that forced the empire to relocate its capital 400 years ago no longer existed, and the current kingdom was merely a small country that would be blown away by a single breath from the empire.

For now, the important thing was to buy time.

"O-Other than this, there is an endless amount of things I can do for you."

Perhaps my displeasure had shown on the outside, as the marquis cried out with the face of a death row inmate with his neck in the gallows.

I pondered.

It would be truly easy to cut off the marquis's head right here.

If I just drew Twilight and brought it down right now, the marquis would die instantly in that groveling posture of submission.

But that would only be a momentary release of anger; the aftermath that would storm in later was a different matter.

Even so, I had still intended to cut off his head.

Because at that time, I hadn't known about the existence of the treaty.

If the empire's figures came poking around the North under the pretext of investigating Marquis Montpellier's death, there was a high chance it would cause problems.

Everything I had done, and everything I was going to do in the future, were prohibited by the treaty.

I organized my thoughts. And I made a decision.

"Fine. Raising at least one dog of the empire wouldn't be so bad."

The marquis's face lit up at my words.

It seemed he didn't care at all about pride or face in front of the fear of death. Or perhaps he thought he could pay me back plenty as long as he escaped this current crisis.

"You will never regret this!"

To me, those words sounded exactly like a promise that he would make me regret it.

"But you see."

The marquis, who had been letting out a sigh of relief, flinched and looked at me. Looking at him, I unleashed the presence I had been suppressing.

"If you're a dog, grovel flat on your stomach like a dog."

"Ghk!"

Groaning as if he were being choked, the marquis groveled flat on his stomach.

It was different from a moment ago when, even while kneeling and saying he would become my dog, he constantly studied my expression and looked for a way out.

With his face buried in the snow, he couldn't even breathe properly, and he trembled convulsively with his entire body, from his stomach to his chest, glued to the ground.

I smiled looking at that sight.

It truly left nothing to be desired as the posture of a dog facing its master.

Now, the only thing left was to fasten a leash around the neck of this foul-tempered dog.

And it just so happened that I had a suitable leash.

"Swear it. Swear that your master is not the Emperor of Bourgogne, but me."

And in that moment, the Poem of Domination was activated. Added to it was the energy of the usurper that had melted into my soul.

"I-I swear it. My master is not the Emperor, but Your Highness."

The marquis repeated my words without even knowing what he was saying.

"I swear right here that the present and the tomorrow of my destiny belong to Your Highness."

Seeing him blather on with words I didn't even tell him to say, it seemed he had completely submitted to me.

However, the human mind is profound and tenacious. No matter how much I crushed him with my grade and bound him with my poem, it was impossible to completely convert the marquis.

As time passed, he would forget the oath and only the humiliation of today would remain in his memory.

To ensure the marquis couldn't go back on his oath even when that day came, I left a token.

I made him write a blood oath insulting the empire's emperor and pledging his loyalty to me, and had him write down imperial secrets and information that must not be known. And on top of that, I made the marquis sign it himself and stamp it with the seal of the Montpellier family.

"H-Huh?"

The marquis looked dumbfounded after seeing the blood oath he had written. Even while his mind wasn't working properly due to his spirit being suppressed, he seemed to have realized that something had gone terribly wrong.

Even so, it was only after he had woven his own chains and hung them around his neck.

"Tsk, you're badly hurt."

I helped the marquis to his feet.

"That's why I told you to be careful. I said the North was dangerous."

The marquis rolled his eyes around frantically.

I dragged the marquis back to Winter Castle.

"Your Highness?"

Vincent and the other higher-ups of Winter Castle scowled as they saw Marquis Montpellier return. I gave a casual answer to them as they asked for the reason for the marquis's return through their glances.

"He says he was attacked by Orcs on his way back."

The men's expressions became strange at my words.

Having fought against the Orcs for a long time, they would know just how absurd my words were.

Because the difference between wounds inflicted by Orcs and those inflicted by the Sword Maidens was stark.

"Talk about bad luck."

Vincent spoke. It was an ambiguous statement, unclear whether he meant it was bad luck that the marquis had returned, or bad luck that he was attacked by Orcs.

"I don't know what kind of Orc it was, but he sure learned how to use a blade properly."

Another knight marveled as he looked at the wounds on the marquis's body.

Judging by how he spoke, it seemed obvious he knew exactly who had laid their hands on the marquis's body.

It was exactly as I thought.

After shoving the marquis into a suitably secluded place and returning to my quarters, Vincent was waiting in my bedchamber.

"What on earth happened?"

Vincent asked for an explanation outright. Instead of answering, I pulled the marquis's blood oath from my pocket and showed it to him.

Seeing the blood oath, he opened his eyes so wide they looked like they might tear.

"Think carefully about what we need right now."

I told him to carefully ponder over what things we couldn't do before because we had been walking on eggshells around the empire, while the marquis stayed here.

"We've caught ourselves a sucker."

Vincent's blunt expression was quite fitting, so I just ended up laughing.

* * *

There was an overflowing amount of time to think about what we needed.

Having been tormented by the heartless blades of the Sword Maidens and having his spirit dealt a heavy blow, Marquis Montpellier continued to suffer from his illnesses for a long time even after returning to Winter Castle.

The marquis, who finally regained his senses after half a month, fled Winter Castle as if running away, using the Silver Foxes I had assigned as his escorts.

"A Magic Tower, huh..."

And not long after that, the marquis, who had arrived in The Capital, sent an item.

It was a crystal ball adorned with all sorts of jewels. At a glance, it looked like a useless item meant only for decoration on a desk, but that item had a function I was unaware of.

A communication crystal.

Surprisingly, the crystal ball was an artifact that allowed communication by completely ignoring the distance between The Capital and Winter Castle.

"Right. It's been 400 years; it's only normal that at least one field should have advanced."

I activated the crystal ball with a willing heart.

The method was not difficult.

I merely had to inject a little mana into the crystal ball, and that was it.

『Your Highness.』

The marquis's voice could be heard from beyond the crystal ball.

"Oh!"

The marquis's grating voice sounded merely fascinating just this once.

『You just need to place your hand on the crystal ball and speak.』

"Like this?"

『Yes. Excellent work.』

Listening to the sly marquis's voice, I examined the crystal ball from every angle.

To think we couldn't enjoy something like this despite such an excellent convenience existing. I trembled anew at the greed of the empire and the powerlessness of the kingdom.

If we had just had this crystal ball, we could have reduced the casualties of the last war.

『It is not a very common item even in the empire.』

The marquis spoke as if making an excuse, perhaps having noticed my mood.

He claimed it was an item of which only a few existed even in the empire, and due to his role as imperial ambassador, he had been issued an extra one for emergencies, which he had now given to me.

『I have sent a petition to the homeland regarding the unsealing of the Magic Tower and the fostering of Mages, and I have received a positive response.』

"Good to hear. What about the other thing?"

Before the marquis left, I had made one more demand independent of unsealing the existing Magic Tower.

『The construction of a new Magic Tower in the North has also been approved.』

Even if the seal on the existing Magic Tower was lifted anyway, this distant North would not be able to enjoy its benefits. That was why I demanded permission to construct a 3-story or 4-story Magic Tower in the North as well, and the marquis had carried out my demand splendidly.

『However, I wonder if the kingdom's finances will be able to handle the massive costs required for the design and construction of the Magic Tower. As Your Highness is well aware, the reality is that the kingdom has neither the blueprints for a Magic Tower nor any Mages left to build it.』

"No need to worry."

『Your Highness. A Magic Tower is so complex that even the Mages of the empire can barely replicate them by relying on ancient texts... Furthermore, even if you open a Magic Tower, a senior Mage must reside there to manage it, so without the homeland's help, the kingdom cannot even maintain a Magic Tower, let alone build one. We also need someone to educate the Mages...』

"I told you, none of that is necessary."

The marquis kept blabbering noisily, but I didn't listen.

I knew the perfect candidate who was knowledgeable enough in ancient knowledge to build the Magic Tower the marquis spoke of, and who could continuously manage the Magic Tower after its construction. And on top of that, someone competent enough to eat most Mages for breakfast.