I Became the Patron of Villains (Novel) - Chapter 150 - Assault (1)
Chapter 150 – Assault (1)
===================
Translated by Jinmu
Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net
===================
Alon wore a blank expression.
In case this was some sort of mistake, he even shut his eyes and opened them twice.
But the man in front of him was still there, smiling broadly and looking at Alon with eyes full of admiration.
“…You are Prince Karsem, correct?”
“Hm? Ah, yes, that’s right. Hahaha. I have changed a little.”
At the sight of Karsem scratching his head awkwardly, Alon barely managed to keep his jaw from dropping.
Seollang looked as if she had little interest in the matter.
Evan, who had been unsure until now, could not hide his shock and left his mouth hanging open.
Because this was change on a ridiculous level.
Alon recalled the Karsem from half a year ago and compared him with the man now standing in front of him.
What had Karsem been like back then?
To be honest, he had been no more and no less than a walking pig.
The clothes he wore had looked ready to burst.
His face had always been filled with irritation and inferiority.
And that was not all.
His personality had also been overbearing to the point that calling him a nuisance was too mild. He had been closer to a thug.
So what about the Karsem of now?
The flesh that had gone beyond a double chin and had nearly become a triple chin.
It was gone.
No, it had not simply thinned.
It had vanished.
The eyes once drowned in annoyance and inferiority.
They were clean.
No, cleaner than clean.
They even looked gentle now.
For some reason, he also seemed far taller than before.
“…You have changed a great deal.”
“I have. This is all thanks to you, Brother… no, Marquis.”
“I see.”
“Yes.”
Alon’s thoughts still were not working properly.
No matter how he looked at it, the magnitude of this change refused to feel real.
“…This is almost like something out of a web novel.”
Without thinking, he remembered the web novels he used to enjoy.
The ordinary protagonist transmigrates into the body of some overweight troublemaker from a royal or noble family.
Then he works hard, loses the weight, becomes handsome, and the servants applaud.
To be honest, Alon had never fully understood that.
No matter how much weight someone lost, facial structure and body shape were still supposed to leave traces.
And yet now, standing before the real thing, Alon felt exactly what those clapping servants must have felt.
“…No, this really does deserve that reaction.”
Around the time that thought crossed his mind.
“Please sit down first. Father will arrive shortly.”
“Very well.”
Following Karsem’s invitation, Alon’s party sat down almost as if guided into place.
Not long afterward, Karmakses III arrived.
Only then did Alon fully recover his senses and begin to take part in the banquet.
Though the event felt slightly burdensome.
“I heard you have already reached the first rank. That is remarkable.”
“Not at all. It is all thanks to the teaching the Marquis gave me.”
“I see.”
“Yes.”
The reason was simple.
Karsem praised Alon throughout the entire banquet.
“…He speaks of you all the time.”
“I see.”
“If not for you, Marquis, I would likely still be living that pathetic life even now. I am always grateful.”
And not just a little.
“It is nothing. I did not really do much. It was something Your Highness accomplished yourself, so there is no need to push the credit onto me.”
“No. As I told you, if not for you, I would still have been in that same miserable state.”
Too much, if anything.
As Alon felt Karsem’s fervent eyes fixed on him, he could feel the hand hidden under the table curling on its own.
…Karsem was being completely sincere.
####
The next day, after the banquet that had left only Alon cringing for entirely pure reasons.
“Marquis.”
“What is it?”
“I looked into it, and it seems the evaluation of Karsem has truly changed a lot.”
“To that degree?”
“Yes. I had no idea, but people are rating him more highly than the first prince now.”
Behind his indifferent expression, Alon felt genuine surprise at Evan’s report.
“Truly to that degree?”
“Yes. I heard that the atmosphere inside the royal palace has become a bit strange because of it too.”
“…So Karmakses is not managing it separately?”
“From what I heard, even the king is remaining silent.”
The king was remaining silent.
Only then did a small sound of understanding escape Alon.
“So that is why Karan looked at me like that.”
He recalled Karan’s gaze from before.
Even though it had been their first meeting, Karan’s eyes had not been friendly at all, which had left Alon puzzled.
If the atmosphere within the kingdom had truly become strange, then it made sense.
If Karmakses III was not controlling the atmosphere of the present court, then it was no different from tacitly permitting a struggle for the throne.
“…From a king’s point of view, that is not a decision I can’t understand.”
The first prince, Karan, was better than the second prince.
But that did not mean he had the makings of a good king.
It only meant he was better in relative terms.
In that situation, the second prince had begun to show a better image than the first over a long period.
It was only natural that the king’s heart might waver.
Karmakses III was a father, yes, but he was also a man bearing the position of king, one who thought more as a king than as a father.
“…What is interesting is how a power struggle between a first prince whose succession was settled early and a second prince who only started gaining recognition later is even possible now. But there is no need for me to concern myself with that side of things.”
In any case, once he combined all the circumstances, he could broadly understand what was happening.
“…Karan thinks Karsem changed because of me.”
Naturally, from Alon’s own point of view, that was rather baffling.
He had never done anything especially significant for Karsem.
“Marquis, then what do you plan to do now?”
Evan happened to ask.
Alon answered immediately.
“I have finished what I needed to do in Colony, so I intend to finish the remaining tasks and return.”
“The remaining tasks? Ah, the monstrosity you mentioned before?”
“Yes.”
“Am I staying behind here again?”
“You are, but… you look pleased.”
“No way.”
Anyone could tell from Evan’s face that he was thinking, Great, I don’t have to suffer.
Alon found it vaguely irritating.
For a moment he even wondered if he should drag him along after all.
But only for a moment.
He let out a light sigh and pushed the thought aside.
This time, he was not going to the desert to finish off the monstrosity outright.
It was only a preliminary visit to do the necessary setup.
Alon recalled the desert monstrosity, Scorpirion.
“If possible, I would like to take care of it while I’m there.”
Unfortunately, that desire would be difficult to fulfill.
At present, he did not know Scorpirion’s exact location.
Unlike a monstrosity like Rikrakkamur, whose position could be pinpointed, Scorpirion was only known to be somewhere in the vast desert, with no special marker to guide the way.
Even in the game, identifying Scorpirion’s position took time.
You had to clear the temple that guided the path and spend around three months on preliminary work before you could go after Scorpirion.
Of course, one could ignore the temple entirely and simply roam through the enormous desert in search of Scorpirion’s lair.
But why did no one do that?
Because finding Scorpirion’s cave in the desert was like looking for a needle in the sand.
On top of that, there were also the scorpion soldiers.
The scorpion soldiers guarding that monstrosity’s cave.
That was the second reason Alon intended to do only the preparatory work for now.
They were called scorpion soldiers, but if you were playing with the mage class, they were even more troublesome than Scorpirion itself.
There were more than hundreds of them, made of sand.
Even after being killed, they revived without end.
By game levels, each one was an Expert-class annoyance.
And all the weapons they used were coated with poison, so the moment you allowed even a single hit, it became fatal.
However, there was a strategy for dealing with those troublesome scorpion soldiers.
If you first completed the preparatory work at the temple, received the guidepost, and then headed there, the scorpion soldiers all crumbled into sand and disappeared.
“I plan to move tomorrow.”
Alon made his decision.
“Then I will remain behind and wait.”
“…”
Looking at Evan, who once again seemed irritatingly delighted, Alon thought.
…Should I just bring him with me after all?
####
At that same time.
Somewhere in the vast desert.
Inside Scorpirion’s cave.
No, the place was far too wide to be called a cave.
The scorpion soldiers, who ordinarily should have woken only when an intruder appeared, were awake.
But they were not moving.
No, more precisely, they could not move.
The hundreds of soldiers that had awakened to stop the intruder.
Crackle. Crackle.
All of them were skewered by black lightning, trembling in place, unable either to die or to live.
And through that mass of scorpion soldiers, a wolfkin man with silver-gray hair drifted slowly forward.
His steps were perfectly ordinary.
Perfectly relaxed.
The moment he passed through the hundreds of scorpion soldiers and stepped into the center of the cave.
Rustle.
Another wave of soldiers began waking beneath the cave floor.
And that was not all.
A shriek rang out, and a force far larger than what had appeared at the cave entrance burst from the sand and surrounded the man at once.
Soon after, the cry of Scorpirion, the thing sleeping in the cave, began to echo.
Even then, no sense of crisis appeared on the intruder’s face.
“Oh.”
If anything, the man sounded amused.
Crackle.
Black lightning wrapped around his body.
The very next instant.
Tsut.
His figure disappeared.
And when the man appeared once more.
Not a single scorpion soldier remained near him.
Instead, what stood before him now was.
The monstrosity.
Scorpirion.
The scorpion that had lived for nearly a thousand years with one of the Five Great Sins’ vessels lodged in its body.
Even so, the man only smiled pleasantly as the beast stared at him and let saliva drip.
“Well, good. I was disappointed after coming up to the surface and finding that the seeds were sprouting much more poorly than expected, but…”
He lightly placed a finger against the monstrosity’s head.
“You can help with that.”
At the same moment, black lightning flowed from his hand.
Scorpirion convulsed madly.
Before long, the monstrosity’s brownish color gradually began to change.
It was dyed a murky black, like the abyss.
Watching that sight.
The man.
No, the apostle of Pride.
Turned his gaze toward Colony.
“Now then, shall we go greet that person?”
He smiled deeply.
“And while I’m at it, meet my younger sibling too.”
####
The next day.
As planned, Alon began preparing to move so he could carry out the preliminary work.
He felt a bit more at ease than usual.
Even if fighting broke out, Seollang and Rine had both agreed to help him.
“…Rine said she had to stop by the royal palace for a moment, so let’s leave once she returns.”
That was why.
Alon chatted in a relatively relaxed mood with Seollang, who was holding a limp Kkamangi in her arms.
Then.
Kwang.
A tremendous noise exploded out of nowhere.
It came from a distance.
But it was clear enough to every ear.
Alon sprang to his feet at once and looked out the window.
Then he could not hide his shock at what he saw.
“…Scorpirion?”
The giant monstrosity was breaking through Colony’s walls and forcing its way inside.
And then.
“…Oppa?”
By his ear, he heard Seollang’s voice murmur in disbelief.