“Your Grace. It is Vincent.”
“Come in.”
When the white-haired elderly butler spoke from outside the door, a deep, resonant baritone sounded from beyond it.
The butler opened the door and stepped into the room. Before his eyes was a middle-aged man seated at a work desk.
Though he was sitting in a chair, the presence emanating from his entire body filled the not-at-all-small office, making it immediately clear that he was no ordinary man.
The strongest warrior in the empire.
The Black Lion of the North.
The guardian deity of the empire.
The being known by those and many other fearsome titles was the head of the prestigious Seronis family, whom the elderly butler Vincent served.
Darkan Seronis, the Northern Grand Duke.
As befitted the iron-walled guardian who defended the empire’s north from every manner of threat, a man also called the Sword Duke by the world, even sitting still he exuded the unmistakable aura of a warrior.
Had an ordinary person stood before him, it would not have been strange for them to have been overwhelmed by that aura and left trembling.
But the elderly butler had served him for many years, and so he walked up before him without yielding to that presence.
“……”
Even as Vincent came to stand before him, Darkan did not so much as glance his way.
The mountain of work the grand duke and family head had to handle pressed down upon him even now.
Of course, that was not the only reason.
He knew and trusted Vincent, the elderly butler standing before him and the head butler of the Seronis family, better than anyone, so there was no need to ask.
All he had to do was receive Vincent’s report.
And, as always, he held absolute faith that Vincent would bring him a satisfactory result, so he simply kept his pen moving without pause.
“…My apologies, Your Grace. …I lost him.”
Thud.
Vincent, head butler of the Seronis family, knelt and bowed his head in apology.
“…You lost him?”
“Yes. I lost him.”
At hearing the word failure from Vincent, whom he had trusted as much as—no, even more than—the family’s elite knights, the grand duke stopped the pen he had been moving and looked at him.
“You, of all people, failed? What a truly ill-natured joke…”
The grand duke stopped speaking.
A man who had devoted unwavering loyalty to the family for decades would never make such a joke.
An unbelievable truth.
And evidence that gave flesh to that truth was spread out before his eyes.
The red liquid dripping from the prostrate Vincent, and the acrid scent of blood wafting from it.
“He cut you.”
“I am ashamed, Your Grace.”
Having confirmed that Vincent’s butler uniform, the white shirt beneath it, was stained red, Darkan slowly rose from his seat.
“I failed to carry out Your Grace’s command. Please allow me to atone with my death.”
At Vincent’s plea, Darkan fell silent.
Then he opened a small safe behind him, took out a tiny glass bottle, and tossed it in front of Vincent.
“Drink.”
A brief command.
But in a tone no one would dare defy, Vincent drank down the liquid inside the glass bottle without hesitation.
“Your Grace. May you remain in good health…”
The elderly butler, standing on the threshold of death, blessed the future of the family head who had ordered him to take his own life.
As the long years he had spent serving the family head and the house flashed past like a revolving lantern, and as he felt the pain that had been crushing his body until moments ago fade away, Vincent slowly closed his eyes.
“…Get up, Head Butler. If you drank a high-grade potion that can heal most wounds in an instant, you ought to spring to your feet. Why are you trying to collapse? It may be a little old, but its efficacy should be intact.”
“?”
At Darkan’s questioning, Vincent opened his eyes and felt over his own body.
Realizing that the pain had vanished like melting snow and that the long sword wound had disappeared without a trace, Vincent hastily rose to his feet.
To Vincent, who was at a loss over the mercy of the family head who had bestowed not death but an expensive potion upon him despite his failure to obey orders, Darkan posed a question.
“So the deputy head butler—that fellow—cut even you down and dared to flee?”
“Yes.”
“Ha ha ha…”
Darkan let out a hollow laugh.
The deputy head butler of the Seronis family.
He laughed as though he simply could not feel the reality of the fact that the man had caused such a tremendous incident.
“To think he could cut you, of all people. Then even the Black Panthers…”
“My apologies.”
“As expected, that was a pointless question. Hahaha.”
Sensing that if even his most trusted head butler had been cut down, there was no way the Black Panthers under his command were unharmed, Darkan burst into laughter once more.
“I am sorry. It was my fault for failing to properly gauge his abilities. To think he was at that level. Perhaps ordering him captured alive was a mistake. The casualties?”
Darkan blamed himself as the head of the family for having made a poor judgment.
It was a clear blunder.
The price had fallen squarely upon his most trusted head butler and the Black Panthers under his command.
It was enough to make him feel shame even as the grand duke who guarded the empire’s north.
“Fortunately, no lives are in danger. However, it seems they will have difficulty moving for some time.”
Then again, if even the head butler had come to report to him while seriously wounded, he could imagine the state of the others without seeing them.
But the fact that no lives were in danger meant…
“Was that his own consideration? Rather impressive, if anything. To neutralize your pursuit and the Black Panthers’ so cleanly. Remarkable.”
Knowing that he himself had ordered the man captured alive, Darkan instinctively realized that the man had likewise refrained from taking the lives of his pursuers—Vincent, who had been his superior until yesterday, and the Black Panthers, who had been akin to his subordinates—and had merely incapacitated them. He voiced his admiration.
Darkan had given him a difficult order, but the man had accomplished something even more difficult.
“Which makes it truly a shame.”
And he revealed his sense of loss without hiding it.
If those who knew Darkan Seronis had seen this sight, they would not have been able to hide their surprise.
It was rare for the Northern Grand Duke, of all people, to express such admiration and regret over having lost a single person.
“As for the deputy head butler, we will put the pursuit of him on hold for now. Head Butler, see to the treatment of the injured Black Panthers.”
Darkan gave the order while looking out the window.
The empire’s north was cold enough as it was, and on top of that, in the foul weather of today’s blizzard, tracking a single person would be a foolish endeavor.
Only the Black Panthers under his command could have done it, which was why he had entrusted it to them, but if they had all been taken down so thoroughly, then in effect it was impossible.
Of course, daring to flee through that foul weather was also, in effect, impossible…
‘And yet, for some reason, if it’s him… No, he must have dared it because he judged it possible.’
That was why he had made the man the family’s deputy head butler and assigned him that duty.
As Darkan thought that far, Vincent slowly asked a question.
“Your Grace. As for Lady Sisne…”
“Oh.”
The young lady of the Seronis family—Darkan, the family head, found himself at a loss as to how he should convey this news to his only daughter.
“Mel, that bastard… Why…!”
And he voiced his doubt as he thought of Mel, the deputy head butler—no, the man who had once been the deputy head butler of the Seronis family.
.
.
.
A forest where even the moonlight was hidden by the blizzard.
In a space draped in truly pitch-black darkness, within a forest where the cold wind seemed ready to freeze everything as it raged like a sharp blade, a man was walking.
This foul weather was enough to make wild animals, and even vicious monsters, curl up inside their lairs, but the young man, who looked as if he had only just turned twenty, simply walked forward in silence.
“Haa… haa…”
The young man, breathing roughly, staggered for a moment.
Partly because the snow had piled up almost to his knees, making it difficult to walk, but…
Onto the softly accumulated white snow, the red liquid seeping from his body fell, and at once began to freeze over in the frigid air.
Even in a normal physical state, walking through a forest swept by a blizzard would not be easy, yet this young man was doing so while wounded.
At a glance, it was a sight that might have looked like a remarkably inventive form of suicide.
“Haa… haa… Hahaha… Ahahahaha!”
But the young man instead burst into mad laughter.
When he swept back his ash-gray hair, stained with dark red blood, violet eyes were revealed.
Ecstasy dwelled in his eyes.
“I finally escaped. Ten years after being reincarnated into this damned romance-fantasy world, I finally managed to escape!”
Pain from his battered body faintly transmitted itself to his mind, but the ecstasy the young man felt was so intense that it made him forget even that pain.
It felt as if he had been born again.
This feeling, utterly different from when he had been reincarnated into this world ten years ago, was enough to make him forget even the chill wrought by the northern knife-winds.
“……”
The young man turned his body for a moment and looked back in the direction he had come from.
As he was in the middle of a pitch-black forest, only darkness spread before his eyes.
What the young man was looking at lay beyond it.
The House of Seronis.
Located in the northern reaches of the Palatine Empire, it was where the mansion of the Northern Grand Duke, Darkan Seronis, stood, and it had also been the home where he had spent the last ten years.
To others, the position of a servant of such a prestigious house, its deputy head butler, was without doubt an extraordinary one.
But the deputy head butler, Mel, had abandoned that position and dared to flee this very day.
If others saw him, they might call him foolish. They might curse him as insane.
But…
“No matter what, I don’t want to just sit there and die in a place that’s destined for ruin once the main story begins. And more than anything…”
Mel thought of the girl who was likely sleeping peacefully, unaware of what she had done—the black-haired, red-eyed girl he had served until yesterday.
“Seriously… I really can’t endure it anymore, Lady Sisne. I really can’t.”
Feeling a chill colder than the northern knife-winds, he shuddered and moved his feet into the darkness.