Chapter 19

After the commotion subsided. The emperor’s men departed, and tranquility returned to the Saxon duchy.

“Your Highness.”

As proof of that peace, Eve, the maid who woke Dale early every morning as usual, called out.

“Young Master Dale, it is time to rise.”

His voice was softer than usual as he rose from the pillow stuffed full of down feathers. The dawn sunlight filtering through the window was very faint, leaving the room still dark.

But the knights of the duke’s castle would already have finished their morning exercises and be hard at work training.

“Thanks for waking me.”

“Yes.”

Hearing Dale’s words, Eve silently bowed her head. As a maid, her role here ended for now. Yet after bowing, Eve hesitated, lingering as if she had something to say.

Dale, understanding her meaning, smiled quietly.

“Is there something you want to say?”

“Well, um…”

The young maid Eve hesitated, unable to answer immediately.

A seventeen-year-old girl uses honorifics toward a mere ten-year-old child, while Dale speaks to her without hesitation. It’s because of their different backgrounds. That’s the way this world is.

A person’s nobility is determined at birth, and no one questions such class distinctions.

So to men like Petro, she’s nothing but a ‘lowly thing’ to be treated however they please.

“…Thank you.”

After hesitating, Eve gathered her courage and spoke.

“It is truly an honor for someone like me to be able to serve you, young master.”

Was it just to say those words that I hesitated and hesitated so much? I’ve lived no small part of my life in this world, yet that way of thinking still feels unfamiliar.

Yet I have no choice but to grow accustomed to it.

The eldest son of the House of Saxony.

He understands the weight that name carries and exploits every single bit of it. For without doing so, he could never bring down the empire.

“Yeah.”

And so, Dale simply smiled quietly. The conversation ended there.

That day, instead of clashing swords with the knights, Dale answered his father’s summons and headed for the ducal castle’s office.

The top floor of the castle, the office of Duke Saxony, his father.

“You took a very dangerous risk, Dale.”

The moment Dale entered, his father, the Black Count, spoke, recalling the events of that day.

The clash with the Imperial nobles. Was he about to reprimand him?

“…I have no doubt you are a bright boy.”

But the Black Duke’s next words were slightly different.

“Why did you choose such an action?”

It was simply a pure question. To test the vessel that Dale possessed.

‘The time has finally come.’

After hearing that question, Dale did not hesitate.

No, rather, how long had he waited for this day?

──Not as a ten-year-old child, but as a full-fledged member of the duke’s household.

That is why Dale answered. That day, the political significance of his actions.

“That’s not all.”

Moreover, Dale’s story did not end there.

“──If the ‘Hero of Another World’ hadn’t died in his battle with the Divine Sword, Lord Bader.”

Dale continued calmly. The true nature of the ‘Empire’ he had come to understand while bred as the Empire’s hunting dog in his past life. A truth even the Black Duke failed to grasp.

“The next target the hero’s sword would have struck would have been this Duchy of Saxony.”

“……!”

The imperial court secretly plotted against the House of Saxony, and Dale from his past life had heard it all clearly.

Yet the empire feared the power of the hero more than the Duke of Saxony. They dreaded the moment the golden leash would snap, their own hound breaking free from control.

Thus, immediately after defeating Lord Bader, he was discarded like a used rag right there on the spot. The empire’s plan to use poison to counter poison—to subdue the Black Duke through the hero—ultimately ended in failure.

“…You speak with great insolence.”

Duke Saxon retorted sternly.

“Why are you so certain?”

I can’t just blurt out that I heard it in a past life.

“Despite the hero from another realm defeating the Demon King in the past, the empire failed to completely eradicate the darkness of the Demon King’s domain.”

Dale continued.

“Instead, after repelling their main forces, they unilaterally forced our Saxon House to bleed.”

All within the realm of ‘reasonable’ doubt and evidence.

“Along with that unreasonable order to reclaim the Demon King’s domain as imperial territory──.”

“……”

Monsters endlessly pillaging beyond the mountain ranges. And within that darkness, high-ranking demon lords holding their breath, awaiting the hour of their revival.

“As long as the darkness dwelling in that land does not vanish completely, our bleeding will not cease.”

Though it is called the Demon King’s Domain, that is merely a name humans use for their own convenience.

A deeper darkness dwells within that land.

Even the Demon King they defeated was but a fragment of that darkness.

“The Imperial Court, knowing this better than anyone, is precisely why they bestowed the Demon King’s Domain upon my father.”

There could be no clearer proof that the Imperial Court viewed the House of Saxon with such deep suspicion.

“Moreover, those beyond the northern borders point fingers at our duke’s house, calling us the ‘Clan of Darkness.’”

The Clan of Darkness. At those words, the Duke of Saxony smiled bitterly.

“The Empire and those beyond the North clearly fear our power.”

Having said that much, Dale played his trump card.

“Therefore, just as they abandoned the hero long ago, they will seek to eliminate any ‘internal risk’ that threatens them.”

“Abandoned the heroes…?”

At those words, the Black Duke gasped in shock. Of course, the Duke of Saxony was one of the few who knew the ‘truth of the hero’—the fact that the hero’s fate was nothing more than being discarded by the empire.

But Dale was not one of them.

How could this child know such a thing?

Officially, the hero had chosen mutual destruction with the Divine Sword, Sir Bader, for the empire’s sake. Therefore, the truth of that day was one of the empire’s most secretive and shameful blemishes, something it could never reveal.

“This is merely my conjecture based on reading the books in the library and reflecting on them.”

Dale replied. He had processed his own experiences into a rational doubt that could be inferred from historical records.

“Because it doesn’t make sense when you think about it rationally.”

Dragged into a world he didn’t know, forced to raise a sword for a country he didn’t know. While enduring unimaginably horrific physical modifications.

In such a situation, could there truly be even the slightest room for feeling patriotism toward the empire?

Fortunately, the hero is dead, and the empire still hasn’t overcome the aftermath of the unification war. The repercussions of that aftermath are far more severe than the empire ever imagined.

There is no doubt about the sword and magical talents bestowed upon Dale.

“Nevertheless… the empire will not cease until it achieves the ambitions it desires.”

But the ability to perceive this nation, where immeasurable desires are tangled in complex knots, with such precision is another matter entirely.

‘Could it be that this child possesses even the wisdom of years, something talent alone cannot compensate for?’

After a silence, the Black Duke asked again.

“Are you trying to deny the empire’s justice?”

“Father, do you truly believe the justice pursued by the Empire is righteous?”

Dale countered with a question of his own, recalling the countless souls who had perished by his hand in the past.

“…….”

There was no need to hear an answer.

Just as Dale was the ‘son of the Duke of Saxony,’ the Duke of Saxony was ‘Dale’s father.’ And the father he had watched grow up to the age of ten was never a man who would affirm the empire’s justice.

“I read countless books chronicling the empire’s history in my father’s library.”

Dale spoke.

“The justice of an empire is ultimately the justice of an oppressor who uses violence to seize and trample powerless nations.”

He skillfully transformed the experiences of his past life into the ‘historical records’ written in books.

Black Duke understood this truth more keenly than anyone. In the past, House Saxon could justify its existence as the empire’s shield against the Demon King’s domain.

But now that the Demon King has fallen at the hands of the Hero, and the shield’s raison d’être has vanished, the power held by the Black Duke and the Black Magic Tower has become far too dangerous for the Empire.

After all, commanding military forces is the power of a ruler.

A powerful mage alone can wipe out an entire army.

A necromancer of equal mastery can single-handedly raise an entire army.

And what of the Black Duke, said to have reached the very pinnacle of that necromancy…?

“Then what direction do you think our Saxon House should take?”

Thus, the Black Duke spoke.

“Our House Saxon can never coexist with the Empire.”

Dale answered.

“Because at this very moment, our Saxon House is the ‘greatest danger’ the Empire embodies.”

The Black Prince surely knows this too. No, rather, the Duke of Saxony is the one who understands this truth most genuinely within the empire.

“The Empire’s ambitions will not cease, and after the war, it will seek to purge internal threats.”

For this moment, he endured and endured for a decade.

“Therefore.”

To utter these very words with his own voice.

“──We must destroy the Empire.”

Chilling.

“……”

For a moment, it felt as if the air around them had shifted.

An ominous darkness surged through the room.

“Do you even know what you’re saying?”

The Duke of Saxony retorted with a stiff expression, dismissing Dale’s words as the recklessness typical of a child.

“I am not suggesting we raise an army with our own hands and plot rebellion right now.”

But Dale shook his head quietly.

“Ten years.”

Dale said after pausing.

“Ten years?”

“Until the Empire recovers from the aftermath of the Unification War and turns its blade toward our House of Saxony.”

Even now, resistance fighters across the continent proclaimed separatism for their homeland’s independence.

Like the Duke of Saxony, the princes worry that the empire might turn its blade against them.

The economy is shrinking, the people suffer from the ravages of war, and the number of bandits who have lost their homes and repeatedly plunder is increasing day by day.

Though many years have passed since the unification of the continent, the aftermath of war only grows more severe.

“Until then, we will build the strength to defend our house against the Empire.”

──Could such words truly come from the mouth of a ten-year-old child?

“We must aid the resistance forces operating covertly across the land, rally the nobility, and further win over the urban bourgeoisie to seize control of the empire’s economy.”

And Dale laid out his vision in full detail.

From the dawn twilight hanging high in the noon sun, until it faded into the western sky. The plan he had painstakingly crafted since the day he was born, to bring down this nation.

The way to protect the House of Saxony against the empire’s claws.

“…What do you think?”

Dale asked at the end of his story. Outside the window, a violet night sky had spread out. It was a deep night.

The Duke of Saxony remained quietly silent.

“Indeed.”

After the silence, the Duke of Saxony suddenly burst into laughter.

“The extent of your talents is beyond measure.”

As if he were immensely pleased.

“It seems you see landscapes beyond what even I can perceive.”

A hint of ecstasy shimmered in his eyes.

“The fact that you are my son… I am so proud.”

Without hiding his satisfaction.

“Because I am your son.”

Dale, too, smiled softly.

“From now on, you are neither merely the eldest son of the Duke’s house nor a mere ten-year-old child.”

The Duke of Saxony nodded.

“From this moment on, I shall treat you with the respect due to the future head of the House of Saxony.”

The Duke of Saxony declared.

“Your age, and even the fact that you are the eldest son of the ducal house, matters not.”

“……Father.”

“In leading our house, I will listen to and respect your words as an equal head of the house.”

Realizing the weight of those words, Dale bowed his head.

The qualification to converse as an equal—person to person, head of a house to head of a house—with his father, the Duke of Saxony.

“Therefore, your words will become the words of the House of Saxony.”

This is the day I have been waiting for.

“Your actions will become the actions of the House of Saxony.”

Not as a ten-year-old child, but as the rightful heir to the duke’s house.

“Your will shall become the will of the House of Saxony.”

──The qualification to wield the power of the House of Saxony with his own hands.

To that end, he has displayed his talents endlessly under the banner of child prodigy. His achievements, his actions, his words—all were stepping stones laid in anticipation of this very moment.

But he never imagined this moment would come so soon.

“Don’t hesitate. Speak, Dale.”

A sensation like gears grinding into place ran down his spine.

“At this very moment, what decision will you make for our family?”

“Father said he would treat me as an equal head of the household.”

Therefore, there was no room left for hesitation whatsoever.

“Then grant me permission to undergo the ‘Tower Trial’ in Necropolis.”

The Trial of the Tower. A slight flicker of unease crossed the Duke of Saxony’s face as he grasped the meaning of those words.

“Not as the son of the Duke of Saxony, but solely as the ‘chosen disciple who inherits the legacy of the Black Count’—”

The continent’s foremost dark mage, who had broken his own oath to take in a young prodigy as his disciple.

“I will prove before everyone that I am the most legitimate heir to inherit the ‘Black Count’s Domain’.”