Count Hodeki’s grand mansion, located south of the imperial capital.
By the Empire’s standards, it was merely quite fine; by the standards of the Kingdom of Sterling, it was a mansion impressive enough to make one’s eyes spin.
“I say…”
“Most impressive, Count Hodeki. To think you own such a grand mansion in the heart of the capital…”
“Haha, please rest well in my humble home.”
The reason a man who had originally been nothing more than a count of the frontier Kingdom of Sterling could own a mansion in the middle of the imperial capital was—well, naturally, because he had sold out his country.
And thoroughly, flawlessly at that.
If somewhere in the world there existed a contest for judging traitors, he would have taken first place by a vast margin over second, for he had become the Empire’s perfect dog and sold out the Kingdom of Sterling.
‘As expected, a man must know how to adapt to the flow of the times.’
This was how things had been when the Kingdom of Sterling was conquered.
Before the main body of the imperial army marched south, Count Lancaster, the margrave who had detected the movements of the First Imperial Princess Victoria as she led a three-hundred-man vanguard and reconnaissance force composed entirely of cavalry, hurriedly contacted the capital and, after receiving permission, gathered the troops under his command.
Having assembled five thousand infantrymen—an astonishing one-sixth of the entire kingdom’s forces—at the border region, Count Lancaster formed ranks against the cavalry that had approached nearby.
He was a rather capable and loyal soldier, and the kingdom firmly believed his report that he would merely maintain a suitable standoff.
The two things Count Lancaster had not anticipated were that Victoria, leading three hundred cavalry, would choose to attack rather than retreat despite seeing a nearly twentyfold difference in numbers—and that his opponent was Victoria, known as the greatest sword on the continent.
After utterly smashing the five thousand infantrymen, Victoria took Count Lancaster’s head, occupied the fortress in the border region, rested for only a couple of hours, and then immediately charged into the kingdom’s interior.
The first person Victoria encountered after breaking into the kingdom was Count Hodeki, who happened to be inspecting the northern part of his territory.
According to the duties of a noble of the kingdom, he should have immediately reported the imperial army’s invasion to the king, but he chose treason—and opened the way for Victoria’s vanguard to make a straight run to the capital.
And afterward, he even treated the main body of the imperial army that arrived later with every courtesy, allowing them to stay in his territory.
‘Heh heh heh, the Empire really does treat its collaborators well. When I think of how much I profited from that…’
What he gained in exchange for being the first to wag his tail at the imperial army and open the way was the slave trade, as well as a monopoly over the southern trade route.
Merchants passing through the Kingdom of Sterling had to pass through his territory anyway, and he fattened himself by collecting tolls from them.
At the same time, he began selling off the people of his territory as slaves as well.
Through the immense wealth he piled up with blood and tears, he obtained the title of an imperial count. And he gladly offered his mansion as lodging to nobles from his homeland of Sterling who came up to the capital for social gatherings or political affairs, showing off his power.
His face had been filled with constant laughter in recent days—but today was different.
#
In the drawing room of the mansion, where a brilliant crystal chandelier shone, there echoed not the usual pompous airs or cheerful laughter, but only ominous crashes and beast-like roars.
“That lowborn bastard, not even a baron but merely a baron’s younger brother! He dares threaten me, a count of this great Empire?! He dares mock me?!”
Crash—!!
Count Hodeki, his face flushed red and blue with rage, hurled the finest porcelain vase from atop the table down onto the floor.
Shattered porcelain fragments flew in all directions.
“A wretch who, in the past, couldn’t even meet my eyes and only bowed his head before me—! He dares threaten me with mutual destruction?! I only meant to scare him a little, and instead he tried to seize me by the leash and shake me!”
Bang! Bang!
Count Hodeki stood in the middle of the drawing room, huffing and stamping his feet as he poured out his fury.
As he raved so violently that it seemed his eyes might roll back at any moment, the various barons who had been anxiously watching from the corner of the room hurried over with flustered faces and surrounded him.
“P-please compose yourself, Count! You must calm down! We fully understand how enraged you must be, but… though that fellow’s words were insolent, they weren’t entirely wrong, were they?”
An old baron, pale as death, cautiously spoke while watching Count Hodeki’s expression.
“The moment it becomes known that Ian Harper is a fake brought in place of the Sterling prince, the Empire will immediately burn the entire Kingdom of Sterling to the ground.”
Another baron, his face also pale, chimed in.
“That is right. That arrogant brat must have known as much, which is why he behaved so haughtily before you, Count. It is truly outrageous, but… what can be done? For now, you must endure it.”
“Shut up! Do you think I don’t know that?!”
Count Hodeki snarled, glaring at the barons with bloodshot eyes.
The horrifying fact that he and that insolent bastard were now an inseparable community of fate, forced to share life and death, was what made Count Hodeki burn with rage.
He dropped onto the sofa, grinding his teeth as he vowed to find some way, any way, to ruin that brat and take revenge.
‘No matter what, I’ll see that brat turned into boiled meat. There has to be some good way…’
Meanwhile, as Count Hodeki sank into the sofa and breathed harshly, whispers of the complete opposite nature passed among the barons who had cautiously withdrawn to one side of the drawing room.
“Haah, that took ten years off my life. But to be honest… I never dreamed Ian would be holding out so splendidly in the imperial palace.”
“That is exactly what I mean. I wondered how many days a mere second son of a baronial house could last pretending to be a fake prince, and every night I couldn’t sleep for fear he might make some foolish mistake and give them a handle against him. Yet, unexpectedly, his reputation among the great nobles of the Empire is quite good, isn’t it?”
“Indeed. On top of that, even the imperial family shields him, so at the very least, for the time being, there is absolutely no chance of him being exposed as a fake. It truly is a stroke of tremendous fortune.”
The barons’ conversation was filled entirely with favorable assessments of Ian.
After all, whether Count Hodeki threw a fit or not, the only thing they cared about was their own peace and safety.
“Besides, I see no reason for him to be caught for the time being. What great interest would the mighty Empire have in some tiny backwater stuck all the way down at the southern edge?”
“Haha, true enough. Even the governor dispatched by the Empire isn’t staying in Sterling’s royal castle, but in the old royal castle of the Kingdom of Tour up north, merely stamping documents in a perfunctory manner, isn’t he? It is fortunate indeed that the Empire has little real interest in us.”
“With Ian drawing all eyes in the capital like that and receiving the imperial household’s favor, there is no reason for imperial inspectors to crawl all the way down to our territories and start sniffing around. Truly reassuring, is it not?”
As the atmosphere among the barons shifted from cursing Ian to praising him, Count Hodeki’s face twisted hideously with disgust as he overheard them.
‘These bastards, after I went to the trouble of putting them up—’
The count sprang to his feet, about to shout at them.
It was at that moment.
In Count Hodeki’s mind, a brilliant idea suddenly flashed like lightning.
‘……Wait. Now that I think about it, is there any need for me to share the Kingdom of Sterling’s fate?’
He stopped walking and stood rooted to the spot.
He had recalled something he had heard when he received his title as an imperial count.
Under imperial law, there were two conditions for a noble to fully maintain his title.
Either possess one’s own territory within imperial lands and have it recognized by the Empire, or serve as a high-ranking imperial official and achieve merit.
As long as one fulfilled either of the two, one’s noble status would be maintained forever.
Most landed nobles were good examples of the former, while those who worked for the imperial household, like Count Gross, were examples of the latter.
(Of course, since Count Gross was one of the highest-ranking nobles, he did have a separate territory of his own. He simply did not manage it personally.)
‘Yes, that’s it! I’ll dispose of every last bit of my territory in that southern Sterling backwater!’
In any case, the current Kingdom of Sterling was a place buried at the very edge of the Empire’s frontiers.
Seafood had been selling fairly well recently, but even so, how much could that possibly amount to?
‘I’ll sell my territory to another noble and turn it into cash, then load all that money onto wagons and come up to the capital. Then all I need to do is feed the upper echelons of the Empire plenty of bribes and secure myself a position as a high-ranking imperial official.’
If he cut every connection to the Kingdom of Sterling with his own hands and finished laundering his identity as an imperial citizen?
‘Then I’ll denounce that arrogant bastard to the imperial household, exposing every detail of the fact that he’s a fake prince!’
The entire Kingdom of Sterling would become a sea of flames for the crime of deceiving the emperor, but to him, who would already have disposed of his territory and settled in the capital as an imperial official, it would be nothing more than a story about some other country.
On the contrary, as a loyal subject who had denounced a swindler who deceived the imperial household, he might even receive tremendous rewards and praise from the emperor.
‘In any case, haven’t I already squeezed everything I could from my territory and the Harper barony, and sold off all the useful subjects worth selling as slaves? The sweet juice has already been sucked dry, and there’s nothing more to tear off. Even if I keep working as a slave trader like this, it’ll last one or two years at most.’
As it happened, he had already been considering changing his line of business and settling in the capital.
‘As soon as this is over, I’ll denounce him to the imperial household, and instead of rewards or whatever else, I’ll ask for a bowl of the broth that bastard was boiled in. Heh heh heh…’
“Heh heh…… Hrk, heh heh heh……!”
Standing in the middle of the drawing room, Count Hodeki began laughing darkly to himself, his shoulders shaking.
When the man who had been raving like a madman just moments ago suddenly let out such a chilling laugh, the barons felt shivers run down their spines and exchanged deeply uneasy glances.
But as they could no longer afford to offend Count Hodeki, they merely clamped their mouths shut and remained silent.
“Kwahahahaha! Yes, yes…”
After laughing like an evil spirit for a long while, Count Hodeki drew a silk handkerchief from his breast and elegantly wiped the corners of his mouth, then arrogantly declared to the barons,
“Now then, gentlemen. Enjoy the rest of your social season. It seems my business in this imperial palace is now over. Something has come up that requires me to go down south ahead of you.”
“Pardon? C-Count. Are you saying you will return home already, when there are still several days left in the social season? What urgent matter could possibly……”
“It is a matter of great importance. You may use my mansion as you please for the remaining period. See to the rest of your schedules among yourselves.”
Count Hodeki even hummed as he hurriedly gathered up his coat.
With a dreadful plan nestled in his heart—to throw Ian into a furiously boiling cauldron in the near future and burn the entire Kingdom of Sterling to the ground—he began preparing to return to the kingdom without the slightest hesitation.