"The military is pointlessly strong with nowhere to vent it, so bastards cropped up who follow an idiot like my younger brother."
According to Mel, this territory hadn't been in complete disarray before her arrest by the inquisitor.
With barely a year since the house head's collapse, the existing systems had still been holding together.......
"Was your younger brother actually very capable?"
Mel's younger brother, who'd ousted his older sister and seized the territory in that short time, might have been more capable than I'd thought.
Blood runs true, after all?
But Mel hit me with something unbelievable.
"It's all because of you, Boss. Looking at it now that I'm back, I'm sure of it."
Mel's territory had fallen apart because of me?
I stared down at her, and she asked.
"Boss, you said you're from Baron What's-His-Name's barony, right? Was it the Panier barony by any chance?"
I didn't know.
So I looked at Thomson.
"Y-yes, that's right."
Thomson nodded.
I was dumbfounded and pushed back.
"Does me being from there give your younger brother some disease that makes him rat you out? Hard to pin that on me."
"No! Boss, you said you trained by killing monsters before Father passed away!!!"
The explanation that followed made the back of my head throb.
The Panier barony and the Kranel Margraviate were both located in the kingdom's south.
About a day or two apart.......
"You killed every single monster in the demon realm, didn't you? The most vicious one there, a lich, fled toward our territory to get away from you. Our father was cursed while killing it, and that's why he collapsed like that!"
Something I'd never considered.
Digging through my memories, I recalled the frustration of my younger days when a lich had slipped away.
Was this what Mage Corps Commander Yuria had called the butterfly effect?
"Ahem, every action has positive and negative consequences."
I pointed out that young Thomson had survived by gathering and selling the monsters I'd killed, and argued that what happened to her father was an unforeseeable accident.
Then I explained why I'd killed every monster in sight.
"Father said that killing monsters was the form of warfare most helpful to common folk."
He really had said that.
That's why most of my childhood training had been against monsters.
"That's true enough. Blaming you was just a figure of speech. It really was just an accident."
Mel's explanation continued.
The lich, having once been human, was intelligent.
The Lich, a clever monster, realized it could never beat me and fled to the Kranel Margraviate.
It was a deranged monster that would turn the residents into skeletons if left alone, so Mel's father had responded swiftly, preventing major casualties, but.......
"Our territory was monster-hunting territory, remember? Father did kill the lich, but he got cursed and ended up in a vegetative state."
The lich had been stronger than expected.
And wasn't even that lich gone now?
With the other monsters wiped out, the army had nothing to do.
Mel's younger brother had exploited that opening, revealing his ambitions and reporting his own sister to the inquisitor.
A spectacularly unlucky chain of events.
"Well, everything worked out this time around, so don't feel too bad!"
The fact that my actions had put Mel's father in a vegetative state was more than enough to stir my guilt.
'What if that had happened to my father?'
Putting myself in her shoes made it hit even harder.
I wouldn't have been able to endure it.
I was agonizing over what on earth to do about this.
But then.......
"Honestly, Father's not much of a human being either. It's only because I have a plan to inherit the title easily; otherwise I wouldn't have asked you to use your Spirituality to save him."
I was even more thrown off.
'How can she talk about her own father like that?'
Was Mel also forsaking family bonds?
As if to prove she and her younger brother shared the same blood, Mel spoke of her own father like a card to be discarded.
It was my companion's family matter, so I had no intention of weighing in.
'Everyone's got family baggage.'
Still, from where I stood, it made no sense.
Mel knew me well.
She added a quiet aside.
"You'll understand when you see him, Boss."
There was something bitter in her expression as she said it.
***
What had been the inquisitor and what had been the young lord.
We dragged the two, barely more than corpses, out of the dungeon.
Being a clergyman and an aura-wielding knight respectively, this much wouldn't kill them.
"The M-Margrave......."
The soldiers crowding the area gaped at us in shock.
I drew my sword and spoke.
"Anyone who stands in my way will be treated as an enemy."
Sure enough, Mel's younger brother really did seem to be her flesh and blood.
He'd apparently prepared properly, because knights who looked like they could fight a bit blocked my path.
'The mood's split about half and half?'
A mix of killing-intent-laden knights and ordinary ones.
The former were the blood-stained blades loyal to Mel's brother; the latter were true knights devoted to the house.
Winning by force was possible, but Mel and Thomson were behind me.
So I stepped aside.
'Sometimes words work better than strength.'
Strength solved everything.
But there were times when a three-inch tongue was faster and more convenient.
Now was exactly that moment.
Mel stepped forward.
"Father is still alive, and you dare show this disrespect? Do you truly think this traitor is the Margrave?"
At her words, the swords of the house's loyal knights wavered.
Deep down, they'd felt guilty about treating Mel's younger brother as Margrave while the house head still drew breath.
Meanwhile, the knights steeped in killing intent only honed their blades sharper.
Forked tongues wagging.
"Can someone accused of heresy who lost her claim to succession truly call herself the house's heir?"
"Wouldn't the word traitor suit Lady Mel better?"
Faces as weaselly as Mel's brother himself stood out among them.
'Birds of a feather, as always.'
These bastards would become traitors the instant Mel's younger brother fell or died.
That's exactly why they barked so fiercely.
They were scared, in other words.
'Mel will handle this.'
Before leaving the dungeon, Mel had said she had a quick and easy solution and asked me to just set the mood.
So I trusted her.
"My younger brother framed me and sold me to the inquisitor. Father knew his nature and prepared someone in advance."
She pointed at me.
"By the Margrave's command, Jack, the mercenary of monstrous strength, rescued me. And you dare speak to me of treason?"
This was the moment I truly realized Mel had been born a noble. (Normally Mel spoke like a common street thug.)
She rattled off lies in an imperious tone, and she was better at lying than any noble I'd ever seen.
Even I would've struggled to tell truth from fiction without using my Spirituality.
'Hm.......'
Come to think of it, the part about Mel being framed was actually true.
A book in a different script and heterochromatic eyes were hardly proof of heresy.
'She's so convincing because she's telling the truth.'
Time for me to step up.
I moved forward and asked.
"Will you be this territory's traitors?"
The cluster of knights quietly split in two.
One half: the knights loyal to the house.
The other: the younger brother's cronies.
The momentum had shifted.
"The Margrave will rise and set all of this to rights! Stand aside, all of you."
The Margrave will rise.
Those words carried immense weight.
This time, it wasn't the sword tips but the territory's loyal knights who wavered.
Yet it was also hard to believe at face value.
"It has been months since His Excellency the Margrave fell to the lich's curse. If you could explain how you intend to wake him......."
The elderly knight who'd escorted us from the outer wall to the reception room when we first arrived asked.
His tone carried the resolve to follow Mel's lead depending on the answer.
I spoke.
"Come see for yourselves. This method, too, was ordered by His Excellency the Margrave himself."
The momentum shifted completely.
Middle-aged and elderly knights pressed in on those who'd followed Mel's younger brother.
A path opened naturally, and Mel, who hadn't been entirely without allies, saw several knights approach and fall in at her side.
When I moved to intercept them, Mel held up her hand.
"We believed in you, my lady!"
"Hngh—. At last, this territory will be properly......."
Seeing knights escort Mel as if guarding their liege stirred something in me.
She'd said she'd prepared after a fashion, and apparently she had a decent number of supporters.
'So Mel's a lady here.'
Could One-Eyed Mel, captive of an imperial count, have ever become a noble?
In our past life, we'd been treated as shitty mercenaries until we'd built our reputation.
That would've been absolutely impossible before.
Yet here, from the very start, I was working alongside a strategist who commanded respect as nobility, leading a territorial army to restore an entire kingdom.
'The impossible is happening in reality.'
I felt, viscerally, what an absurdly broken ability it was to return to the past.
After a brief moment of reflection.
"Jack is going to treat Father, so no one is to interfere."
We arrived at the house head's chamber, where the Margrave lay bedridden.
Seeing Mel's father in person stirred strange feelings.
'The younger brother's the spitting image of their father.'
Mel, honestly, was prettier than any woman I'd ever seen.
Even when she'd had one eye and a brand on her forehead, that had been the case, and now with two eyes and a clean face, she was even more striking.
Her mother must have been an absolute beauty.
Shing—.
"Even so, letting an unidentified mercenary near....... Did His Excellency the Margrave not entrust you with anything?"
Was he afraid of me waking the Margrave?
One of the knights loyal to Mel's younger brother drew his sword and challenged me.
He was threatening me as if to demand some token, and it was so absurd that I actually wondered, 'Should I just solve this with force?'
Clench—.
I caught the knight's blade between my fingers and channeled my monstrous strength into the grip.
The knight tried to flare his aura, but thanks to my improved control over this younger body, I snuffed out his killing-edged aura in an instant and snapped the blade.
CLANG!!!
Every eye in the room turned to me.
Petty delays didn't suit my temperament, so.
I spoke evenly.
"Make no mistake: if I set my mind to it, I could kill everyone here."
There wasn't a moron here who didn't understand what it meant for bare fingers to snap an aura-clad blade.
They all pulled back their fighting spirit, faces blanched, and stepped away.
They'd realized my words were truth.
—Boss, easy!
I glanced back to see Mel mouthing the words silently.
I smirked and nodded.
Then I went straight to Mel's father, lying in bed.
'Would it be a problem if I just jolt him awake?'
When Mel told me to go easy, she didn't mean how I treated the knights.
After years of working together, reading her true intent was second nature.
She was telling me to stir him awake with the barest thread of Spirituality, just enough for the faintest consciousness.
'A weasel-faced type, huh—.'
A face identical to Mel's younger brother's, only older.
I covered that face with my palm and roused my Spirituality.
Normally, Spirituality was the aggregate of monstrous strength, making fine-tuned control harder than full output.......
'Having less of it actually makes this easier.'
I effortlessly spent 0.1 of my Spirituality and infused it into Mel's father.
Think of it as forcibly transplanting my monstrous strength to kindle his life force.
"Ngh......."
Mel's father groaned.
The man who'd lain deathly still under a curse, sustained by nothing but potions and holy water, had produced a sound for the first time.
"The Margrave!!!"
"The h-house head!!!"
The loyal knights gasped in awe.
And.......
Shing—.
The knights of Mel's younger brother, a wretch who'd forsaken the bonds of blood, drew their swords.
Having expected this, I immediately detonated the monstrous strength concentrated in my legs and launched myself toward the wretches who dared bare steel before my companion's father.
BOOM———!!!
***
I curse you for foiling my design.
Your soul shall fall into eternal slumber.
Kasian von Kranel.
A man who bore the rank of Margrave and stood as the strongest in the Kingdom of Alton's south, he'd been drowning in an endless voice.
A curse cast by a lich, a monstrous abomination that had once invaded his territory.
Having lost all sense of time, adrift forever in the void—.
RUUUUMBLE!!!
His world shook.
Into his darkness-consumed mind came a power beyond description.
It was simply, absurdly, overwhelmingly raw strength.
That strength spoke.
You must not die.
Get up. Now.
A monstrous force ordering him not to die.
And yet, even as it forbade him to die, it cruelly permitted only a 'meager' sliver of time.
"Gahh!"
Kasian von Kranel opened his eyes.
What he saw was a familiar ceiling.
His own bedroom.
But then.......
SPLURCH——!!!
The scenery changed.
Before his eyes, a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood.
His territory's knights had split into two factions, swords drawn against each other.
Between them, a giant of a man was butchering one side without mercy.
'What in the world.......'
The Margrave was an experienced man who'd spent years on battlefields.
Despite just waking from the brink of death, he grasped exactly what had gone wrong in his territory.
'Mel finally made her move!'
He looked to his side.
One red eye and one blue.
His daughter, with her vivid heterochromia and striking beauty, was watching him.
Her lips were drawn into a wicked smile.
She said.
"My bastard of a younger brother staged a rebellion while you were down, Father. I've just woken you up."
The Margrave choked with emotion.
"You are—."
Mel was not his biological child.
Her mother had already been carrying someone else's baby when they wed.
Magic had confirmed it.
With her hair color and looks nothing like his, there wasn't a single resemblance.
The Margrave had already told Mel the truth long ago, telling her to keep quiet and, in return, never to covet the house head position.
But now.......
"My one and only younger brother reported me as a heretic and tried to kill you, Father. It's fine if you don't acknowledge me."
"What do you—."
The Margrave tried to shout something at those bewildering words.
But his voice wouldn't follow.
"I've already—."
Mel said.
"—in the middle of succeeding to the Margrave's title, Father."