Chapter 101. Gorge Where Even Tears Dried Up (1)
A dark underground prison.
Two n were facing each other with iron bars between them.
“As one ages, eyesight may decline, but one’s gaze becos sharper.”
Hansen’s gaze looking at Nicholas was sharp.
“W-What on earth do you an…….”
Nicholas asked as if he had no idea what was going on, lifting his glasses that had slipped down his nose.
With ssy curly hair, glasses askew, and eyes welling up with tears, Nicholas' appearance was foolish enough to evoke sympathy from anyone who saw him.
“A person who not only forged a graduation certificate but also thought of shoving it in front of a Baron ruling a territory cannot be in his right mind.”
Hansen nonchalantly took out a bundle of papers from his bosom and threw them at Nicholas' feet.
“It is your graduation thesis.”
The bundle of papers fell at Nicholas' feet with a thud.
On top of the bundle, a large red stamp was stamped.
A red stamp that read ‘Thesis Rejected’.
Nicholas looked at the bundle of papers with an indifferent gaze.
“You held dangerous ideas.”
Hansen’s lips were smiling, but tension was still flowing in his gaze.
“……Why is this in your hands?”
Nicholas' eyes shone as he looked at Hansen.
The foolish look from a mont ago was nowhere to be found, replaced by a sharp gaze.
“Unless you are an official of the Collegiate Church, the graduation thesis…….”
“I do not know how you evaluated Baron Blanc, but he is soone who has acquaintances with influential figures in various fields.”
As Nicholas said, the graduation thesis of the Collegiate Church was not sothing easily accessible unless one was an official.
However, Blanc was a Golden Grade custor of the Iron Bank, the biggest sponsor of the Collegiate Church.
Nicholas, looking at his graduation thesis lying at his feet, raised his head and ended up chuckling.
His mask, which he had painstakingly created, was peeled off, but Nicholas felt elevated by the anticipation of the person nad Blanc Cadmus rather than the dismay of it.
Blanc Cadmus was a much bigger figure than he had thought.
“Indeed, he is a person worthy of the title of rising star…….”
His glasses shone in the dark prison.
CLANG-!
In an instant, Nicholas suddenly clung to the bars and grabbed them.
His two eyes looking at Hansen beyond the bars were filled with madness.
“Did the Baron see my thesis? What did he say?”
Hansen looked into Nicholas' eyes.
They were the eyes of a dangerous beast.
And those eyes resembled soone.
“The Baron is a person of great caliber. If you had shown that appearance from the beginning, you would not be here right now.”
Nicholas and Hansen, exuding sharp montum, faced each other with the bars in between.
Blanc Cadmus, the Black Wolf, and Nicholas, who was called the Red Pri Minister in the previous life.
Two dangerous beasts recognized each other.
“Congratulations on your appointnt. Nicholas.”
Blanc Cadmus had decided.
To walk on the red carpet laid out by the Red Pri Minister.
***
“We decided to bring his family to Norington as well. Now Nicholas will have no choice but to take root in Norington.”
“Good work.”
Blanc was concentrating on his work while accepting the docunts Jesman handed over.
“Baron, I do not know if I am crossing the line by saying this, but…… he is a dangerous man.”
Blanc, who was quietly signing the docunts, lifted his head at Hansen’s words and looked at him.
“It is fine.”
Blanc replied with a beaming smile.
“If it is him, he will understand well.”
Hansen looked into Blanc’s smiling eyes.
And he saw the dark sea sleeping within them.
It was a vast sea capable of lightly containing a beast-like gaze like Nicholas'.
“……Understood.”
Hansen could not understand his deep inner thoughts that seed endless and his gaze looking at a distant place.
“I will simply follow.”
He decided to follow his lord’s orders as per a knight’s duty.
“And they say Duven and Bonas will arrive by tomorrow morning at the latest.”
“Understood.”
The current Norington was like a giant hole that sucked in talents and consud them rapidly.
That was why Blanc, who was short of hands, quickly called them from Baltire.
“It will be good for them to co early and adapt as well.”
From now on, the stronghold of Cadmus was not the mansion in Baltire, but here in Norington.
The roots Blanc was putting down were slowly wrapping around Norington.
***
“You are truly heartless.”
Duven and Bonas, who were said to arrive by morning, could only arrive in Norington two days later.
“……I am sorry, Madam. But…….”
It was because they were escorting the carriage carrying the Baroness of Cadmus, Ciella, and Emilia.
Bonas and Duven, standing behind Ciella, were bowing their heads towards Blanc as if they were people who had committed a cri.
It was because they could not send a warning to Blanc to avoid the Baroness' sharpened eyes.
Ciella had made a big decision and ca down here.
She had always been waiting with a nervous heart for her husband who left for the decisive battle with the three Barons.
Even when she heard the news of victory in the war.
Even when she heard the news that he arrived safely in Norington.
Blanc had not sent a single letter to Ciella.
Since Blanc was expected to be very busy, Ciella did not urge for news from Blanc with the mindset of supporting him, but.
Upon receiving the single letter that finally ca up this ti, Ciella could not endure it anymore.
“You have the mind to send letters to subordinates, so I ca down directly because I was curious why you could not think of sending your regards to even once.”
Venom was slowly filling Ciella’s eyes.
Looking into her eyes, Blanc seed to recall her appearance when she was called the Red Widow Spider in the previous life.
However, no way to dare resist the woman in front of him ca to mind.
Because it was his fault no matter who looked at it.
Ciella, who was still unsure of her position, was feeling anxious every ti Blanc’s fa rose.
“Why did you not call for ?”
In such a situation, since Blanc did not even contact her properly, Ciella’s heart could only burn.
Blurry tears began to fill Ciella’s eyes along with venom due to her disappointnt in Blanc.
“I have not yet prepared a space for you to stay comfortably, Madam. Plus, winter is approaching soon, so I just wanted you to be in the warm mansion in Baltire.”
Ciella had felt sothing while experiencing Blanc all this ti.
That the young Baron, not yet twenty, had a bad habit of trying to shoulder everything himself.
“I am your one and only wife. Do not forget that the seat next to where you are is the place where I should be.”
Ciella took a step closer to Blanc and looked up at him.
“You must not disregard too much. Can I beco the mistress of the Cadmus family if I am afraid of rely the cold wind of winter?”
Blanc looked at Ciella’s determined gaze.
The image of her enduring countless hardships and boldly doing her job in the Liberation Front in the previous life seed to surface little by little.
“Right. It is rather good that it turned out like this.”
“What is?”
Ciella, feeling puzzled by Blanc’s words, lifted her head and looked at Blanc with teary eyes.
Her figure looking at Blanc with wet eyes and lips slightly parted was beautiful enough to make people around admire her, but.
Blanc cherished the strong soul hidden within her beautiful appearance more.
“Duven! Duven Fogota!”
“Yes, Baron!”
Blanc called the Dwarf who created the repeating crossbow and stood him in front of him.
“Is what I requested ready?”
“Y-Yes. Baron.”
There was a matter Blanc had specially requested of Duven in Baltire.
“He said it would arrive in a week from now.”
“Good.”
Ciella, who could not catch up with Blanc and Duven’s conversation, looked at Blanc blankly.
Blanc grabbed Ciella’s two shoulders and turned her body.
“Do you see the empty lot over there? Originally, the white mansion where I was born and raised stood there.”
Ciella rembered Blanc liking the white mansion newly bought in Baltire, saying it was similar to the Cadmus mansion.
“Yes, so?”
Blanc hugged Ciella’s shoulders and said to her.
“I wish for you to build the new Cadmus mansion there, Madam.”
Blanc had intended to build a new Cadmus mansion here from the beginning.
So he had requested Duven to find Dwarves with excellent skills in architecture.
“M-?”
“Then who would do it if not you, Madam?”
Blanc said, looking at Ciella with serious eyes.
“Please build a mansion that our children and their children’s children will protect from generation to generation.”
“……!”
At Blanc’s words, Ciella placed her hand on her chest and was overco with emotion.
The new Cadmus mansion.
Entrusting that to her ant that, above all else, Blanc trusted and relied on Ciella.
Blanc handed over one of the burdens placed on his shoulders to his wife, Ciella.
Hearing Blanc’s words, Ciella felt the anxiety about her position that had always been unsettling her disappear like lting snow.
“Please help .”
At Blanc’s words asking for help, Ciella, who had completely forgotten about her disappointnt in him, embraced Blanc.
“Sob sob…….”
Emilia, watching that scene from behind, had reddened eyes.
The Cadmus mansion to be built anew.
Thinking of the dark night when she took out her young young master, she ended up weeping loudly.
The Regressor watching the two weeping won.
‘Passed it well.’
Blanc let out a sigh of relief.
***
Waiting for Blanc, who returned to the office after comforting the weeping Emilia, were two letters.
One was an invitation sent from the Lacie Count family.
And another was a letter with Vicious' na written on it, but without the family seal stamped.
“It is a surrender docunt.”
Blanc, who killed all the Vicious family mbers and exterminated the family.
Although he captured the Vicious castle, he had not directly occupied it, so a few Vicious retainers remained there running Monshau.
“It was only a matter of ti anyway, wasn’t it? Rather, it is effectively them making the first move.”
Blanc, nodding while listening to Hansen, put down the letter from Monshau and lifted the letter from the Lacie Count family.
-I congratulate the Black Wolf on finding his original place. I wish to invite Baron Blanc, who rose from the ashes and has now beco a proud lord of the South. Please grace my birthday banquet with your presence. Ruler of the South, Count Lacie.
Blanc, having read the letter sent by Lacie, looked at the man in front of him and smiled.
“Count Lacie is already trying to keep in check. He proudly introduced himself as the Ruler of the South in the invitation.”
Blanc flicked the letter with his fingertips, sending it flying to the man sitting in front.
That man tried to catch the letter Blanc threw while exuding a sharp gaze, but.
Nicholas, who twisted his body flailing to catch what he could have caught just by raising his hand still, eventually dropped the letter.
“…….”
Nicholas picked up the letter maintaining a serious attitude as if nothing happened.
“What do you think, Nicholas?”
Blanc asked, leaning his back deeply into the chair.
“Currently, there are two paths I can choose in front of . I want to hear the advice of you, who is bold enough to forge a graduation certificate from the Collegiate Church and sharp enough to dare deceive a Baron’s eye.”
Though he could have felt pressure from Blanc’s joking rebuke, Nicholas closed his eyes quietly without caring about it and fell into deep thought.
It seed as if his pupils rolling around were visible over his closed eyelids.
“……Count Lacie calling the Baron is likely intended to keep the Baron in check and at the sa ti draw the Baron into his embrace if possible, as you predicted.”
“Go on.”
The foolish appearance shown at the beginning was nowhere to be seen in the current Nicholas.
“Indeed, it is decisive action worthy of calling himself the Ruler of the South. It is no different from him making the first move before the Baron exerts influence in the South.”
It ant he sent a warning letter to Blanc before he ford relationships with other nobles.
“However, there are areas he dares not interfere with, which concern Vicious, Langketa, and Kamora. I believe the Baron can create variables through the three families and their territories.”
Nicholas was saying not to forcibly confront the influence in the South that Lacie had preoccupied, but to take advantage from the territories of the three Barons, which was the new board Blanc had laid out.
“Then?”
At Blanc’s question, Nicholas strode to his desk, picked up a letter, and handed it to Blanc.
“Before confronting an opponent, the more cards you hold, the better, and it seems right for the flow to go this way as well.”
Blanc looked at the letter Nicholas handed over.
The letter without a seal.
It was Vicious' surrender docunt.
A smile ford on Blanc’s lips looking at that docunt.
“Good. Nicholas, get ready.”
Nicholas smiled at Blanc’s words.
Because his advice had worked.
However, his smile stiffened at the words of the Cadmus family butler who just entered.
“Baron, all troops have finished preparations to leave for Vicious.”
“…….”
Looking at the stiffened Nicholas, Blanc laughed coldly.
Beyond the letter, the eyes of the Black Wolf looking at Nicholas were shining blue.
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