I Became the Patron of Villains (Novel) - Chapter 22 - Grand Temple Assembly (2)

Chapter 22 – Grand Temple Assembly (2)

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Translated by Jinmu

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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The battle against the goblins ultimately ended in victory.

The knights and mercenaries held the line steadily, and Alon obliterated the flanking force that had been circling around with bows to strike the nobles from behind, tipping the balance in an instant.

There had still been casualties, of course. The enemy numbered in the hundreds and they were mutated creatures at that. But considering the scale of the fight, the losses were remarkably light.

So the battle came to a complete close when a knight drove his weapon through the skull of the last goblin still thrashing in defiance.

Once they confirmed the situation was over, the men who had fought all let out deep sighs of relief and turned to look at Alon, who was staring down at the goblin corpses.

He had just gone through a battle where life and death were on the line, yet he still wore a blank expression, as if none of it had moved him in the slightest. The mercenaries looked at him with sudden reverence.

The sight of him turning dozens of goblins into meat without even changing color had burned itself into both mercenaries and knights.

But the man they were admiring so sincerely was thinking something very different.

I was one hit away from dying.

It did not show on his face, but he was doing his best to calm the heart hammering inside his chest.

Because he bore the Mark of the Profane, he could now use magic three more times than before. But by the time he had cast `Wall` and `Shield` twice each, his miserable mana capacity had reduced him to little more than an ordinary man.

Good thing the knights won.

He had trusted, more or less, that even mutated goblins were unlikely to beat trained knights and mercenaries. Still, once every means of protecting himself had been stripped away, he had found himself wishing for their victory with desperate sincerity.

I almost thought about slipping away halfway through and coming later, but staying with the group was the right call. More importantly…

Praising his past self for having acted rationally, Alon steadied his racing heart and looked back at the goblins. His face turned grave.

He knew exactly what the violet amethyst-like crystals growing from their bodies meant.

Why is there divine descent?

It was a strange trait that appeared in monsters across the continent when an Outer God was preparing to descend into this world.

Monsters affected by divine descent became more ferocious, and their physical abilities were enhanced.

The monsters they would encounter on the rest of the journey to the duke’s territory would probably still be manageable with the forces currently gathered here. That was not what worried Alon.

What worried him was the fact that divine descent had appeared at all.

If this phenomenon had begun, it meant that before long, an Outer God would descend upon this land.

Gods from the outer reaches, the sort that should never have been able to descend unless the Five Great Sins manifested.

This is bad.

From Alon’s point of view, the descent of an Outer God was a matter of enormous importance.

Maybe not as catastrophic as the Five Great Sins, but if even one of those frontier Outer Gods fully descended and began rampaging, one or two kingdoms could disappear without difficulty.

There were six kingdoms on the continent aside from the Empire.

That meant there was a full one-in-three chance that his retirement plan would be destroyed.

No, he would be lucky if retirement plans were all he had to worry about.

So Alon stared at the goblin corpses with a grim expression.

But there were others there whose expressions were even worse than his.

Two men looked as if not just they, but their children and grandchildren had all been ruined in one stroke.

Count Craild and Count Edoron.

* * *

Several more days passed after the mutated goblins appeared, and they were now only about a day away from the duke’s estate.

It had only been a few days, but in that short span two changes had come over Alon’s circumstances.

The first was that the nobles who had openly looked at him with contempt and ridicule while Count Craild and Count Edoron mocked him no longer wore those expressions.

The second was this:

“Count Palladio, I brought some meat from my estate. Would you care to try it?”

“Count, if you are willing, I was thinking of giving your territory a little support. What do you say?”

Count Craild and Count Edoron had stopped hurling insults and instead begun groveling before him.

Unlike a few days ago, they clung to the expressionless Alon with faces that looked ready to offer him their liver and gallbladder if he asked.

Alon still treated them with total indifference, but the two counts were desperate.

Truly desperate.

The display Alon had shown several days earlier had been far too suspiciously powerful to dismiss as mere luck.

And they still remembered what the third-circle mage brought along by Baron Amon, purely to flaunt his wealth, had said that night.

That Alon’s magic was absolutely not second-circle.

The moment they heard that, the two counts suddenly began to suspect that the rumors spreading through society might be wrong after all.

There were still unresolved questions if the rumor was completely false, of course. But that was not the important part.

What mattered was that the two counts had realized Alon possessed enough hidden strength that he did not need an escort.

Which meant the power Count Palladio supposedly possessed, the same power that had erased Avalon in a single day, might actually be real.

That left them with only one option.

They had to soothe his temper as quickly as possible.

Someone watching the situation might have thought it wiser to wait and investigate the remaining inconsistencies before moving.

But to men who knew House Palladio well, that logic did not apply.

They had personally witnessed the family’s degeneracy too many times.

They knew how cruel the Palladios could be.

Alon himself had never shown them that kind of behavior, but they were firmly convinced he must be just as vicious and ruthless underneath.

After all, House Palladio had produced nothing but bastards since his grandfather’s generation.

Thanks to that, Alon had lived rather luxuriously over the past few days.

Instead of living on sweet potatoes and corn at every meal, he had been eating meat, and the wine they occasionally brought with it was excellent.

Even so, the reason his expression had not softened at all was the goblin incident from several days ago.

Who is it?

No matter how hard he thought, there was no answer.

Divine descent was merely a precursor announcing that an Outer God would descend. It gave no clue as to which god it would be, or exactly when.

That meant worrying himself sick over it was meaningless.

Meaningless or not, however, it was the sort of problem that could wipe out his future plans in an instant and reduce him from noble to commoner overnight.

Once I get to the estate, I need information. No matter what.

Thinking that, Alon looked at the nobles fluttering around him like trained performers, having abandoned even their pride to make up for what they had done earlier, and once again felt the full force of House Palladio’s reputation.

I didn’t expect them to act like this over the mere possibility that the rumor might be false.

He turned his eyes away.

Feeling the weight of the family’s notoriety was one thing. He had no desire whatsoever to ease their anxiety.

He liked to think of himself as cool-headed, but there was a petty side to him.

In the end, the two counts’ little performance only stopped once Alon arrived at House Rotegre.

* * *

What Alon saw the moment he arrived at House Rotegre was an absurd number of enormous mansions.

For a rich man, he sure does have a strange hobby. How many mansions does he need inside one castle?

He wandered past a whole collection of buildings with wildly different interior styles and, before long, realized they all belonged to different concubines.

For a moment he found himself wondering whether the duke’s body was somehow still intact.

Because he had arrived while the banquet was already well underway, Alon headed straight into the ballroom and found himself startled yet again.

He could tell at a glance that enormous sums of money had been poured into everything he saw.

Even the least important wine glasses had gold trim, and the chandeliers were made of gold as well. Looking at them, Alon felt a sudden urge to unhook one and sell it.

Naturally, the ballroom was packed with nobles.

Duke Rotegre, who had predictably turned out to be gaunt as a reed despite spending lavishly to host the Grand Temple Assembly, was chatting with countless others.

Alon did not join their idle conversation like he had at the last ball.

It was not hard to guess that nothing good would come of inserting himself.

This time for reasons even worse than before.

So instead of entering the nobles’ conversations, he simply intended to hover nearby, eat moderately expensive food, and eavesdrop.

Evan had already gone to contact the information guild the moment they reached the estate.

That was why, while eating a dessert that tasted rather like egg tart and sipping wine, Alon happened to overhear something interesting.

“Baron Daldoran, have you heard the news?”

“What news?”

“About Duke Altia and Count Xenonia. Apparently not only did they form an alliance, but they’re trying to build a faction now.”

“Ah, that rumor. Yes, I heard it too.”

The two nobles had moved discreetly into a corner to gossip as if discussing a matter of profound secrecy, but with his hearing enhanced by mana, Alon could hear them easily.

“Is it really true? I still can’t believe Duke Altia and Count Xenonia allied in the first place. If they form a faction, they would become powerful enough to crush every existing faction in the kingdom.”

“Exactly. We may be about to witness something unprecedented.”

The news did surprise Alon, but it did not make him particularly tense.

Even if such rumors were spreading, he still believed those two shadow powers could never maintain an alliance for long.

While thinking that, Alon took another bite of egg tart and his eyes widened on instinct.

That is good.

He naturally reached for another and stuffed it into his mouth.

But then:

“Still, that’s not the real problem.”

“What do you mean that’s not the real problem? Is there an even worse rumor?”

“I wouldn’t even bring it up if there weren’t.”

Chew chew chew.

“What is it, then?”

“I heard this through a very discreet route, so don’t repeat it. From what I was told, the head of this faction isn’t Duke Altia or Count Xenonia.”

“…Then who is?”

Chew.

“Count Palladio.”

“…Count Palladio?”

“That’s right. The head of the faction is Count Palladio.”

“Is that really true?”

“Of course it is. Do I look like I would lie?”

Chew…?

“???”

What?

At that, Alon turned toward the nobles carrying out their secret conversation and could only stare.

* * *

After hearing something that sounded like a title along the lines of Somehow I Woke Up as Asteria’s Hidden Power, Alon slowly closed the mouth he had left hanging open and resumed chewing.

But he could no longer taste any sweetness at all.

What kind of nonsense is this?

Questions came and went through his head in rapid succession.

He could not understand at all how a rumor like that had started.

If he had been personally close to Duke Altia or Count Xenonia, then perhaps he could at least understand how such a rumor might begin.

But the problem was that he had never actually spent time with either of them.

The last time he saw Duke Altia was when she had still been a young lady attending a ball.

As for the Xenonia side, he had met Lady Xenonia once, but he had never even met Count Xenonia.

There was far too little basis for a rumor like this.

After thinking it through, Alon concluded that the man whispering so confidentially to another noble was simply passing on an absurd baseless rumor.

If there had been any actual relationship to point to, he might at least have suspected something.

But there was absolutely none.

That left him no room for suspicion at all.

So by the time he had picked up a cookie sitting beside the egg tart.

“Count Palladio.”

“?”

He turned at the voice and saw a man standing beside him wearing expensive clothes and a smug sneer.

Who is this one?

Alon gave him a quick once-over.

The man wore his curling hair long on one side, and at a glance he looked like the sort of person whose temperament was twisted in a way entirely different from House Palladio’s brand of degeneracy. Beyond that, however, Alon knew nothing about him.

At least nothing in his memory identified the face.

“My mistake. I haven’t introduced myself. I am Kamain, third son of Duke Komalon of the Kingdom of Ashtalon.”

Seeing that Alon did not recognize him, the man’s expression flickered for a moment before he introduced himself. Alon briefly felt puzzled, then nodded.

He had heard that nobles from other kingdoms sometimes attended the Grand Temple Assembly where so many of Asteria’s aristocrats gathered.

“Count Palladio,” Alon replied simply.

“Your name is well known. I heard you became count through luck.”

“…?”

Alon blinked.

He had already guessed from the man’s appearance that this would not be a pleasant conversation.

Still, he had not expected the man to launch straight into mockery with such complete absence of intellect.

And just as Alon stood there blankly:

“What exactly do you mean by that?”

Another voice cut in from the side.

Alon turned and, unlike Kamain, recognized the newcomer.

Marquis Mardanio?

Strictly speaking, he did not identify him by face. He identified him by the crest pinned to his chest and by the fact that he was obviously a man in solid middle age.

“Are you insulting a noble of Asteria right now?”

“…?”

A shield had suddenly appeared over his head from nowhere, and Alon could only stare in confusion.

* * *

Kamain, third son of Duke Komalon of Ashtalon, was not in a very good mood that day.

There were several reasons, but the biggest was that the marriage talks with Duke Rotegre’s fifth daughter, which had brought him all the way here, were not progressing well.

Of course, that was entirely Kamain’s own fault.

He had done something so absurd it bordered on parody, commenting on the looks of other noble ladies in front of the very woman he was supposed to court.

But just as one would expect from a spoiled brat raised without restraint, Kamain had no intention of admitting fault. Instead, he had become deeply irritated when the young lady told him the marriage arrangement might have to be reconsidered.

If this had not been the allied Kingdom of Asteria, or if House Rotegre had not maintained such significant private dealings with Duke Komalon behind the scenes, he would have already overturned the place at least once.

Of course, Kamain himself seemed completely unaware that Duke Rotegre had only been overlooking his behavior because of those very secret dealings.

In any case, while stewing in this miserable mood, Kamain had come to the ballroom in search of relief and spotted Count Palladio.

He picked a fight for one simple reason.

He wanted somewhere to dump his foul mood.

There were plenty of servants and knights around him whom he could have mocked if he pleased, but Kamain took no particular pleasure in tormenting them.

That was not because he was virtuous.

It was because he found no fun in playing with toys he could break whenever he wanted.

That was what non-nobles were to him.

And in that sense, Count Palladio was an ideal punching bag.

According to the rumors Kamain knew, Count Palladio was just a spoiled fool who had become count through luck, and had no powerful noble allies to defend him.

Even Kamain, brat that he was, knew he was outside his own territory. In his own clumsy way, he had chosen a target he believed he could hit without consequences.

So the moment he saw Alon, he had decided to provoke him.

But then:

“Do you realize how discourteous it is to insult a noble of Asteria?”

“No, that isn’t…”

“Ashtalon has long been our ally. But alliances rest on mutual respect. Has your kingdom now misplaced that respect?”

“No, that is not what I meant…”

“Then does Duke Komalon perhaps look down on Asteria itself?”

“That is absolutely not the case…”

“Then why are you speaking so casually to a count who has not even completed formal succession?”

“Th-that…”

Kamain looked bewildered.

Contrary to the rumors he had heard, the moment he provoked Count Palladio, nobles began jumping in from every direction to tear into him.

So, flustered, he turned to look at Alon.

But Alon himself was staring at the scene with the same usual blank face, behind which bewilderment and confusion were clearly colliding.

What exactly is happening here?

He looked at the three nobles defending him.

One was Marquis Mardanio.

One was Duke Rotegre.

And the last was Count Palan.

The reason Alon recognized them so easily was partly because of their crests, but mostly because all three were prominent figures within Asteria.

Marquis Mardanio was one of the major players in the royalist faction.

Duke Rotegre, by contrast, was one of the heavyweights among the aristocratic faction.

And Count Palan, while maintaining formal neutrality, had accumulated considerable power precisely by remaining in that position.

Even someone like Alon, who had no interest in politics or noble society, could not possibly fail to know them.

“Does this mean Duke Komalon truly looks down on us?”

“N-no, that is not it.”

“Then why, exactly, did you say such a thing to Count Palladio?”

“I… I acted discourteously.”

“Discourtesy is not the point. The point is why you spoke to Count Palladio in such openly contemptuous terms.”

Watching the nobles corner Kamain with lines that sounded uncannily familiar, like something spoken by career politicians or military superiors, Alon thought for a moment and then suddenly realized where he had seen this pattern before.

“I’m sorry.”

“Does saying sorry finish your military service?”

“I’m sorry.”

“I said, does saying sorry finish your military service?”

Ah. It is exactly that.

The memory was still vivid even after more than ten years, and as it flashed through his head, Alon felt cold sweat bead on his skin.

Soon after:

“I… I behaved discourteously…!”

Unable to withstand the nobles’ relentless grilling, Kamain finally fled the ballroom as if escaping for his life.

And the moment he vanished, the nobles began approaching Alon as if they had all been waiting for this chance.

“Count Palladio, are you all right?”

“I am fine enough.”

Alon looked at the three nobles, thinking, Why are you doing this for me?

But then:

“Look at that. It seems those gentlemen have already heard the rumor too.”

“Then I suppose it was true after all, if figures of that caliber are moving.”

“If Duke Altia and Count Xenonia enter politics in earnest, they would be overwhelming. More importantly, look at the others. They are all confused. Keep your mouth shut. The rumor is still supposed to be secret.”

“…Where exactly do you people keep finding this nonsense?”

“One develops methods.”

Thanks to the fact that his hearing was still mana-enhanced, Alon caught the words of the same noble who had whispered the secret rumor earlier and finally gained a vague understanding of what was going on.

For a moment he looked dumbfounded.

So that is what caused this.

Beginning with Marquis Mardanio, who spoke with a hearty laugh as if he understood everything, the three major nobles started treating him like an old acquaintance.

Alon seriously considered telling them that the rumor was false.

If this was left alone, the odds of things becoming complicated later were not just high. They were excessive.

But if he said so now, the entire situation would become unbearably awkward. While he was still debating what to do.

“Ah, I heard that you are studying magic, Count. Is that true?”

“More or less.”

“Then perhaps I might offer a small gift. I recently acquired an artifact after clearing out a group of orcs. It can store mana for later use. What do you say?”

“Now that you mention it, I also prepared a gift…”

At that, Alon fell silent.

That day, he ended up receiving two magical artifacts and five mana recovery potions from the three nobles.

And while most of the nobles looked thoroughly confused as the kingdom’s heavyweights clustered around Alon out of nowhere.

We touched the wrong man.

This is bad. This is really bad.

Count Craild and Count Edoron shut their eyes tight in despair.

* * *

Four days passed after the banquet began.

By the time Alon’s list of spoils had somehow grown longer again, the information guild finally returned something more important.

“…An Outer God descended in the north?”

“Yes. That’s the report. They say those violet crystals were connected to it too, but the guild admits the details are unclear. Apparently the information only exists in ancient documents.”

“…”

“In any case, Caliburn is in chaos because of it.”

There were only two days left in the festivities.

After hearing the report Evan had obtained through the information guild, Alon considered the matter for a moment.

Then:

“Evan.”

“Yes.”

“The moment the banquet ends and we’ve done what we need to do, we leave for Caliburn immediately.”

He made the decision without hesitation.