“L-Lloyd!?”
At the unexpected appearance of Lloyd, the Countess looked up at him with a face full of shock and confusion.
This was the very top floor of the castle.
It was not a place someone could climb up to by scaling the castle wall from outside.
“Unless you can fly, there’s no way you could’ve entered through the window. How did you get in here……?”
“Is that important right now?”
“…….”
After glaring at Lloyd for a moment, the Countess took a deep breath to calm her racing heart.
She did not know how he had gotten in, but knights were guarding her outside the door.
If necessary, she only needed to call for them.
Once she thought of that, the Countess felt more at ease. Composing herself, she asked, “So what brings you here so late at night?”
“I came because I have something to return to you, Countess.”
At Lloyd’s words, the Countess looked puzzled. No matter how hard she thought, there was nothing she was due to receive from Lloyd.
“Something to return?”
When she asked, Lloyd took something out of his Inventory and threw it at her.
The Countess caught it with her hands without thinking.
The moment she identified it, she screamed and threw it away.
“Aaaah-!!”
What Lloyd had handed her was none other than the assassin’s head.
“H-How could this be……?”
Her pale face turned ashen in an instant, and her limbs began to tremble.
Realizing that the situation was dangerous, the Countess cried out toward the door at the top of her lungs.
“An intruder! Get in here and seize the intruder at once!”
Surely the knights who had heard her voice would rush in and capture Lloyd.
No matter how capable Lloyd was, he could not possibly handle several knights at once.
“I don’t know what you’re planning, but did you think you’d get away with this after doing something like this?!”
Perhaps because she trusted that the knights would soon arrive, the Countess’s earlier fear vanished, replaced by an arrogant demeanor.
Yet even as time passed, no one entered.
The Countess called for the knights again in a flustered voice, but the result was the same.
No matter how much she called, there was no response.
Then Lloyd spoke, sending her a cold stare unlike any she had ever seen from him before.
“It’s useless. I’ve already used an artifact inscribed with Silence Magic.”
Only then did the Countess realize that the situation was taking a serious turn, and she hurriedly touched the necklace around her neck.
The necklace she wore was an artifact inscribed with a Fourth Circle Ice Spear spell.
“Ice Spear!!”
When she spoke the activation phrase, three large ice spears formed around her.
Meanwhile, Lloyd had not even drawn his sword.
The Countess smiled.
In her eyes, the outcome had already been decided.
“It seems you gained confidence after killing an assassin with your retainers’ help. If you surrender now, I’ll let what happened today slide.”
But rather than being frightened, Lloyd merely laughed as though her words were absurd.
“Weren’t you going to kill me anyway?”
“……So you knew all along. Then I’m sorry, but die for our Hailed!”
At her cry, the three ice spears flew swiftly toward Lloyd.
Yet Lloyd still did not draw his sword.
He merely extended one arm.
‘Fool.’
Although Lloyd had been a thorn in her side, perhaps she could not bear to see his body pierced. The Countess closed her eyes and turned away.
Yet even after a long while, it was strangely quiet.
When the Countess slowly opened her eyes, she could not contain her shock at the sight before her.
“W-What is this……?!”
The ice spears that should have pierced Lloyd’s body by now had all stopped in midair.
The sight was so unreal that she could not even think.
Finally snapping back to her senses, she touched her artifact with a terrified expression and began shouting madly.
“Ice Spear, Ice Spear, Ice Spear, Ice Spear!!”
More than a few dozen ice spears appeared in an instant.
Enough ice spears to fill the room were all aimed at Lloyd.
“I don’t know what trick you used, but you can’t stop this many ice spears.”
But that was merely her wish.
Just as before, the moment Lloyd extended his arm, every ice spear stopped in midair.
That was not the end.
When Lloyd moved his hand, dozens of ice spears turned to powder and vanished at his gesture.
Before Lloyd’s overwhelming and unknown ability, the Countess collapsed to the floor with fear and despair mixed across her face.
“T-That’s impossible. How can you, who aren’t even an Archmage……?”
She had heard that mages who reached the limits of what humans could attain were able to dispel an opponent’s magic.
But Lloyd was not a mage.
He was only a Beginner Knight who had just become a Sword Expert.
‘How can this be……?’
The Countess stared at Lloyd with trembling eyes, as though she still could not believe what she was seeing.
Then she realized.
That everything happening now was not a dream, and that she would soon die at Lloyd’s hands.
‘The assassin must have died at Lloyd’s hands, not his retainers’.’
Once that thought reached her, the Countess decided to give up on everything.
Killing Lloyd, and even surviving herself.
Lowering her head as though she had resigned herself, she asked Lloyd in a trembling voice, “After I…… after I die, what will happen to our Hailed?”
“If that bastard is involved in this, I can’t let him off either.”
Until now, she had tried to preserve her noble dignity no matter what. Only then did she fall to her knees and begin to beg.
“Hailed knows nothing about this. So kill only me, and please spare our Hailed!”
“Then write a will right now. Write that you attempted to assassinate me and that, unable to overcome the guilt, you will leave this world.”
She hesitated for a moment before biting her lip.
“I-I understand.”
The Countess took out paper and a pen, then began writing what Lloyd had told her with trembling hands.
Her handwriting was somewhat crooked from the trembling, but it was still easy enough to read.
Soon, the will was complete.
After checking its contents, Lloyd nodded in satisfaction.
“Good. This will do.”
“……I wrote the will as you said, so you’ll spare our Hailed, right?”
“Of course. If you remain obedient like you are now, I have no intention of killing that bastard Hailed either. He has to carry on the House.”
At those words, the Countess’s already large eyes widened even further.
“W-What did you just say……? Hailed has to carry on the House? What do you mean?”
“What do I mean? Exactly what I said.”
“Th-Then you weren’t after the position of heir?”
“I have no intention of becoming the heir. No matter what Count Bled has in mind, I planned to leave this place with my retainers once I came of age.”
“T-This can’t be!”
He had planned to leave this place.
Then what in the world had she been doing all this time?
“Could it be…… Everything I’ve done until now……”
“You wasted your time.”
“Aaaah-!!”
The Countess clutched her hair and screamed in despair.
Her appearance might have seemed wretched and pitiful to some, but not to Lloyd.
Regardless of her reasons, she had tried to kill him.
“Well then, goodbye.”
The moment he finished speaking, the Countess’s dagger, which lay on the floor, began to move at Lloyd’s gesture.
The dagger flew swiftly toward the Countess and embedded itself precisely in her heart.
“Gah.”
With a brief groan, the Countess coughed up a mouthful of blood and collapsed.
After breathing raggedly for a while as though in pain, she slowly closed her eyes.
It was the end of the Countess, who had chosen a foolish path without even verifying anything for the sake of her son, whose standing was gradually dwindling.
“Tch.”
Lloyd clicked his tongue as he looked at the Countess’s corpse, then used the [Mimicry] skill to leave the place as he had come.
***
The next day, House Bled was thrown into chaos when the Countess was discovered in her room by a maid, dead from a stab wound.
The Countess’s sudden death dealt everyone a tremendous shock.
The one fortunate thing was that the Countess’s will was found by a knight and immediately passed to Count Bled.
After reading the will, Count Bled let out a deep sigh.
‘Why has this happened……?’
He had thought it strange that she had recently seemed anxious and irritable for some reason.
But she had always been a sensitive person, so he had assumed that was all it was. He had never expected something like this to happen.
“What should I do now……?”
For a noble, taking one’s own life was an extremely dishonorable act.
Thus, he had strictly ordered the knights to keep their mouths shut and delayed her funeral as long as possible, but he could not keep doing this forever.
‘How can I announce my wife’s death while preserving the House’s honor……?’
House Bled was one of the Empire’s foremost knightly Houses.
Naturally, he was saddened by his wife’s death, but the House’s honor came first for him.
While Count Bled desperately searched for a solution, someone knocked on his door.
The person who had come to his office was none other than Lloyd.
“I came because I have something to tell you.”
“If this is about the Chimera, we can discuss it later……”
“It is about the assassin who attacked me.”
At those words, Count Bled sat up straighter.
It was a sign that he intended to hear Lloyd out.
Lloyd then began to speak.
“Do you know of the Jackal Assassin Guild?”
“Don’t tell me…… The assassin Olivia hired was from the Jackal Assassin Guild?”
“I captured the assassin and interrogated him with truth serum, so there is no doubt.”
When Lloyd answered with a nod, Count Bled’s eyes widened.
The Jackal Assassin Guild was one of the Empire’s foremost assassin guilds, known for its high success rate and large number of skilled assassins.
Moreover, it was famous for protecting its clients’ secrets even at the cost of its members’ lives.
Yet Lloyd had not only captured an assassin from the Jackal Guild, but had forced him to confess the truth.
“If he was an assassin from the Jackal Guild, an ordinary truth serum should not have worked on him……”
“Thanks to Sir Cotton, who made an exceptionally effective truth serum.”
In truth, Lloyd’s torture had played a major role, but there was no need to tell Count Bled that.
“Sir Cotton……”
If it was a skilled Magic Scholar from House Seid, it was not strange for him to make a truth serum capable of making even assassins confess.
Thinking that, Count Bled nodded and spoke.
“Hmm, then I understand. But…… what is it that you wish to say?”
At Count Bled’s question, Lloyd lifted the corner of his mouth slightly and got to the point.
“An assassin guild dared to attack House Bled. Are you going to let this slide?”
That was right.
Lloyd’s revenge was not over.
From the beginning, he had intended to destroy even the Assassin Guild that had tried to assassinate him.