I Became the Patron of Villains (Novel) - Chapter 21 - Grand Temple Assembly (1)

Chapter 21 – Grand Temple Assembly (1)

===================

Translated by Jinmu

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

===================

Alon already had a fair idea why the nobles were openly looking down on him.

Because the rumors had completely died down.

Until recently, the nobles had feared him because they believed he was the hidden power who had wiped out Avalon, the giant eastern underworld organization Leo once controlled, in a single stroke.

But they no longer thought of Alon that way.

Years had passed since he became count, and in all that time he had done nothing.

House Palladio had been notorious since his grandfather’s day. It had never once gone without exerting influence over the underworld.

The exact shape of that influence changed over time, but House Palladio always ended up controlling the east.

But after Alon became count, the house stopped exerting any influence over the underworld at all.

As a result, the eastern underworld had now been torn apart and devoured by packs of scavengers that used to live off scraps outside the territory Count Palladio controlled.

Not only that, the present strength of House Palladio, meaning its political power, was weakening as well, which was only natural.

Most of the authority the house had enjoyed until now had been built on money funneled in from the underworld.

But once Alon became count, he stopped throwing money around to maintain that power.

The life he wanted was not one where he rose to glittering greatness in the underworld. He wanted nothing more than a comfortable noble life.

In other words, from his perspective, he had already reached his goal.

But after he withdrew from the underworld entirely, rumors had naturally begun to spread among the nobles.

Maybe the current Count Palladio was not a hidden mastermind at all. Maybe he had simply become count by pure chance.

And when Alon continued to do nothing even as time passed, that rumor gradually hardened into accepted fact.

By now, the evaluation attached to him had fallen to something like this:

A spoiled fool who lucked into becoming count after inheriting a hidden-power house.

A few nobles still suspected him, of course, but even they had recently begun to side with the rumor.

If Alon really had the power to erase Avalon overnight, it made no sense that he would have left it unused this whole time.

So yes, he had expected this sort of treatment.

What he had not expected was for people to come over personally just to mock him.

“…”

Alon looked up at the two nobles standing over him, both of whom had faces that looked treacherous from the outset.

He did not know either of them by face.

But from the crests on their carriages, he could easily tell that one was from House Craild and the other from House Edoron.

They both look old enough to know better. This is embarrassingly childish.

He almost laughed after seeing their weathered faces, but he quickly understood why they had come all this way just to sneer at him.

So that is it. This is a victims’ club.

House Palladio had not only been a house of degenerates. It had also held enormous power in the underworld.

As a result, it had given nearby houses certain benefits while also exploiting them far beyond necessity.

Two of the houses that had been treated like errand boys in those days were House Craild and House Edoron.

To sum up the present situation, the houses that had once suffered under House Palladio were now taking their resentment out on Alon.

Of course, the ones who had actually used them like tools were Leo and Count Palladio himself, not Alon.

Strictly speaking, Alon had no reason at all to listen to this mockery.

But for the two nobles trying so hard to insult him, what mattered was not that he was Alon.

What mattered was that he was Count Palladio.

“Did all those underworld troops disappear because you failed to manage them?”

“Your carriage doesn’t seem very well maintained either. Shall I lend you a little money?”

The two counts worked hard to scratch at him like anonymous trolls leaving nasty comments on a forum.

“Hm.”

For a moment, Alon thought, This is irritating.

Then he chose reason over instinct.

If he fought now, he could smash both of the nobles in front of him into paste. Not literally butcher them, perhaps, but close enough. But that would obviously make things annoying.

The moment he fought with them, he would have to separate from the group and travel alone.

And then he would end up getting drawn into trouble with bandits or other nuisances he otherwise would not have had to deal with.

More importantly, it was obvious that provoking him into reacting was exactly what they wanted.

No reason to play along with something this childish.

So Alon chose to ignore them.

He was not stupid enough to step neatly into a trap laid out in plain view.

That night, he ate two ears of corn while the counts’ constant mockery chirped in the background like music.

Not bad.

Roasted corn in chilly weather tasted excellent.

Butter would have made it better.

Under the moonlight, Alon stared blankly into the night and thought about that.

* * *

The uncomfortable coexistence continued for several more days.

Every evening, Count Craild and Count Edoron would crawl out and throw mocking comments his way, and every time, Alon ignored them as if they were beneath notice.

One side ignored.

The other tried desperately not to be ignored.

Naturally, the side doing the ignoring always won.

Alon had already internalized one profound lesson he had once learned from a certain corner of the world:

Do not feed idiots.

There was no one here who could beat him on that front.

Of course, after this went on for several days, some of the other nobles began to sneer at Alon as well. They mocked him for staying silent despite the insults and derided him for lacking even the dignity expected of a noble.

But the people who actually felt worst about the situation were the two counts doing the mocking.

“That damned brat.”

“This is absurd.”

Count Craild frowned as he looked toward Alon in the distance.

They were mocking him, yet somehow they were the ones being treated as irrelevant. There was no way that felt good.

Still, after simmering in that irritation for a while, they quietly exchanged words.

“Have you confirmed it?”

“I have. It seems there really are no additional guards attached to him.”

In truth, the reason Count Craild and Count Edoron had mocked Alon so openly was not just to vent their old grievances.

They were also investigating his escort.

“I checked in secret with an artifact too, and found nothing. It’s really just that spoiled fool and that unruly knight sitting beside him at noble tables.”

“Then the rumor really is true.”

“It seems likely. If he had real forces, he would not be traveling around alone.”

“Then we can proceed with the plan.”

The reason they had been investigating Alon all this time was simple.

They wanted to move into the underworld.

They already knew that Alon had no interest in it and that the eastern underworld was currently being overrun by scavengers of every kind.

And while the rumors about Alon had more or less hardened into fact, the two counts had spent too many years suffering under House Palladio to rely on rumor alone.

They wanted confirmation.

They wanted to know whether Alon truly had no power.

Now that several days of observation had convinced them that he truly had no meaningful escort, smiles began to spread across their faces.

“The Holy God smiles on us.”

“Indeed. To think that we might finally set foot in the underworld ourselves…”

Most nobles recoiled from the idea of entering the underworld.

These two were different.

After spending so long acting as Count Palladio’s lackeys, they already knew how astronomical the money moving through the underworld was.

And because they knew how sweet that kind of power tasted, their excitement was already swelling at the thought that House Palladio had finally become an empty shell.

If they joined hands, devouring the underworld was not impossible.

The only reason their houses had never entered it before was not lack of strength.

It was because they had always had to watch Count Palladio.

So after talking themselves hoarse, the two men turned their eyes to Alon again.

“If we take the back side for ourselves, shouldn’t we give him a little gift too?”

“A wonderful thought. There should be limits to how far one can ignore another person’s words.”

“He only acts like this because he doesn’t know how frightening the world can be. We can teach him.”

“Count Craild truly has a generous nature.”

With oily smiles completely unbefitting nobles, as if they had done nothing wrong from the beginning, the two counts became more convinced than ever that their moment was about to arrive.

And just as they finished their private conversation and began heading back toward the main camp where the other nobles had gathered.

“Monsters!”

The incident erupted without warning.

Monsters had appeared in the darkness of the night.

They had been lying in ambush like men, silent until a soldier noticed them by chance. The moment he shouted, monstrous cries rang out from the forest as if they had been waiting for that exact signal.

At once, the mercenaries and knights drew their weapons to protect the nobles, almost as though they had rehearsed it.

And then:

“Mage, light up the field…”

A mage whom one noble had extravagantly dragged along just to show off at the Grand Temple Assembly responded to the knight’s shout by raising a sphere of light into the sky.

The noisy mercenaries and knights all fell silent at once.

What the mage’s light revealed in the dark forest was a mass of goblins.

Ordinary goblins, by themselves, were not especially dangerous monsters.

They were common forest creatures, with no more strength than a child. Any mercenary beyond the rank of complete novice could deal with them easily.

Their rusty swords and bows were certainly dangerous, but not enough to truly threaten seasoned mercenaries and knights.

Even goblins only became troublesome when their numbers were high, and even then, a few dozen could still be driven off without much difficulty.

But if their numbers were enough to cover the forest before them.

Then they became a genuine threat.

And the knights’ tension rose for another reason as well.

The goblins before them were clearly not ordinary.

“What the hell are those?”

A knight muttered in a voice full of fear and confusion, staring at the goblins.

The problem was their bodies.

Their entire forms, including their heads, were overgrown with violet crystals.

Like a plague.

And beyond that.

“Fuck… that’s Mark, isn’t it?”

Among the swarming goblins lay the remains of Mark, the seasoned mercenary who had been stationed outside as lookout in case anything happened. He had been torn apart and greedily devoured.

“Krrk…”

One bloated goblin still held part of his corpse in its hand.

At that sight, the mercenaries felt fear rising through them.

“Th-that’s impossible…”

Mark had been a veteran mercenary who could have slaughtered dozens of goblins alone under normal circumstances.

If a man like that had died without even managing to warn them that these monsters were coming, then that implied one terrifying truth.

These mutated goblins were anything but normal.

The knights gripping their weapons understood as well that this was a very bad situation.

Even if these had been ordinary goblins, the battle would still have been a grim one for the knights.

Taken individually, goblins were weak, but the knights had nobles to protect, and goblins were cunning enough to exploit exactly that weakness.

And while the mercenaries were frightened by the goblins’ appearance and by Mark’s death, the knights, who could use mana, understood something even worse.

The goblins were clearly infused with mana.

And monsters imbued with mana became physically stronger even when the amount was small.

Just as the knights’ expressions hardened at the sight of the grotesque goblins preparing to charge with shrill cries.

Kudududuk.

A wall of stone and gravel surged up in the center of the goblin horde.

All eyes turned.

The mage who had cast the light recognized it immediately as one of the third-circle spells, `Rock Wall`.

Then a moment later.

A translucent barrier spread around the outside of that wall.

A second-circle shield.

Confusion replaced despair on the faces of the knights.

The goblins’ murderous attention snapped fully toward the wall.

“Reinforcement.”

A calm voice rang out.

And then:

“Compression.”

The translucent sphere rapidly contracted, warping the stone wall inward as it shrank.

Tap. Tap.

In the silence, footsteps sounded.

The knights and mercenaries turned toward the noise.

A man was walking toward them.

As if he felt nothing at all, even in a crisis like this.

The nobles and knights could identify him at a glance.

It was Count Palladio.

“Vacuum.”

As his lips moved once more, the shield that had been a round sphere changed shape into something lumpy and jagged, like a rough boulder the size of a football.

Then:

“Return to Origin.”

With those final words, and with the bracelet on his wrist beginning to glow a dim gray.

KWA-BOOM.

The compressed gravel burst outward like a shotgun blast and shredded dozens of goblins into pieces.

It happened in an instant.

The nobles, knights, and mercenaries all stared blankly as dozens of mana-infused goblins were reduced to torn chunks of meat.

Count Craild and Count Edoron looked especially stricken, their eyes wide enough to split.

Now the focus of everyone’s attention, Alon simply said:

“Stop standing there and get ready.”

Then he looked ahead in complete calm.

As if under a spell, the knights and mercenaries lifted their weapons.

The fear that had been spreading through them had vanished before they realized it.