I Became the Patron of Villains (Novel) - Chapter 26 - Isn't This a Bit Much (2)

Chapter 26 – Isn’t This a Bit Much? (2)

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Translated by Jinmu

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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Delman, Master Knight of Caliburn and the Third Sword among its Five Great Swords, was in an excellent mood.

During this expedition, he had killed Klkan, one of the eight barbarian chieftains and one reputed to be among the stronger ones.

Of course, the method he had used would have been condemned by both Caliburn and the barbarians.

He had challenged Klkan to a duel, then used hidden troops, traps, and poison to kill him when the chieftain came out alone.

In a war where both sides had long prided themselves on respecting each other’s honor, it was an act of extreme cowardice.

Delman did not care.

What mattered to him was that he would not have to surrender his place as the Third Sword to Deus, one of the newly risen Five Swords. Smiling at the thought, he slaughtered every barbarian left on that battlefield.

Every last one.

He could never have done it alone, but the many soldiers he had stationed outside the duel’s sightline made it possible.

Having secured his achievement, he returned to one of Caliburn’s forward outposts, expecting only to report his victory.

Then he saw it.

Red-haired and bearing a fire-themed ability to match, Delman stood there with the knights of Crimson Flame and looked at what had once been the outpost.

Not the outpost itself.

The thing that had been an outpost.

Gray earth stained red with blood. Ruins. Thousands of corpses strewn across the ground.

But the focus of everyone’s gaze was not the wreckage.

It was the single man standing in the center.

The barbarian wore leather garments of the north and stood calmly amid the destroyed outpost. Then he turned, looked at Delman, and began walking toward him.

At first glance, it almost looked suicidal.

Unlike that lone barbarian, Delman had nearly a hundred knights with him, along with many more soldiers.

Even one of the eight chieftains should never have been able to face such a force alone.

Yet despite recognizing that, Delman remained tense.

Partly because the outpost had been so thoroughly destroyed it was barely worth calling ruins.

And partly because of the presence he felt from the man.

Delman was a Swordmaster.

A man who had entered the realm of monsters, where one slash could cleave a mountain ridge and one swing could claim dozens of barbarian lives.

And he could feel it clearly.

The abnormal aura pouring off the barbarian before him.

Then.

[So you are Delman.]

The man’s voice rang out.

It did not sound human. Merely hearing it shook the mind.

For a moment Delman was stunned. Then he instinctively raised his aura blade and answered.

“Who are you?”

[Then answer me, Delman. Why did you defile a great and sacred duel?]

“…What?”

[Answer. Why did you defile a battle of honor, a duel staked on both men’s pride?]

[Speak.]

Only then did Delman realize the barbarian was speaking of his duel with Klkan.

He snorted.

“This is a battlefield. If he was fool enough to trust the word duel here, that’s his own mistake.”

To Delman, duels were for idiots.

The barbarian stared at him.

[You dare describe a great duel that way.]

His tone dripped with disgust.

“I already told you. This is a battlefield.”

[This is your last chance, human who has risen higher than most. Duel me. If you win, I will let you live.]

Delman did not answer.

He simply gave an order.

“Prepare for battle.”

At once, soldiers and knights drew their weapons in disciplined formation.

The knights of Crimson Flame, who had followed Delman through dozens of northern victories, all unsheathed their blades and released their aura.

The barbarian looked at them and murmured, almost in lament and contempt both:

[So the beings called knights truly possess no honor.]

Then the corpses around them began to move.

Knights whose heads had been split in half.

Soldiers with half their bodies gone.

Horsemen whose upper bodies had been mangled almost beyond recognition.

They rose.

And then the gray land filled with the screams of the dead.

“It hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts…”

“Kill me. Please, kill me…”

“Gkegh…”

[Mortals without even the capacity for honor are unnecessary in this world.]

And then he vanished.

Even Delman, who had stepped beyond ordinary human limits, failed to follow the movement.

But the voice came again.

[However.]

Delman turned.

The barbarian had already struck the earth.

The ground exploded outward.

Rocks and gravel flew into the air, and the soldiers and knights who had been braced for battle were thrown skyward all at once.

Then the barbarian swung one foot through empty air.

In that instant, the airborne men were smashed apart by flying stone, reduced to chunks of flesh before they could even scream.

Red spider lilies bloomed everywhere the pieces landed.

Only then did Delman realize something else.

His arm was gone.

His scream tore through the battlefield.

Only then did the soldiers fully understand what had happened.

A Master Knight and most of the order he led had been annihilated in a single moment.

Fear spread through the surviving troops like plague.

Their will collapsed with it.

And in the middle of that slaughter, Delman, missing an arm, stared at the barbarian in disbelief.

The barbarian.

No.

The god of all barbarians.

The father of duels.

Ultultus crushed Delman’s organs to pulp with one rough hand and then looked down at him as if he had only now finished his task.

A moment later, Delman rose again, blood spraying over the gray snowfield, screaming in pain just like the others.

Satisfied, Ultultus looked upon the surviving soldiers.

[All you savages gathered here.]

[Prove through duel]

[that you are not savages.]

[Then I will grant you an honorable death.]

There, upon a blood-red coliseum made of corpses, he offered them a duel.

* * *

Biran, direct disciple of the Fourth Sword and a promising knight in his own right, could not understand the current situation at all.

He had only come here today because his friend Kamain, who was also a highly valuable source of supplies for him, had asked him to rough up a single noble from Asteria.

Ordinarily, even within the alliance of six kingdoms, one still had to observe a minimum level of courtesy toward foreign nobles.

A mistake could become an international incident overnight.

But Biran had accepted Kamain’s offer without hesitation, partly because of what Kamain offered him and partly because he saw almost no chance of the matter growing serious.

He had three reasons for that judgment.

First, among the six allied kingdoms, Caliburn held the greatest voice in practice because it was the one constantly fending off the northern barbarians.

Second, Count Palladio’s reputation had not recovered yet. He was still widely seen as a fool who had become count through luck, and he had no connections in Caliburn.

Third, even if things became slightly troublesome, Biran believed his master Fiola, one of the powers at the top of Caliburn, would smooth everything over.

Though not on Deus’s level, he possessed abundant talent for the sword and had always lived under his master’s protection.

For all those reasons, he had believed there would be no consequences for teaching Count Palladio a lesson.

Ordinarily, his reasoning would not even have been wrong.

But there was one thing he did not know.

Count Palladio was the benefactor of Deus Makalian.

The Master Knight hailed as a hero in Caliburn.

The man who had killed Kurga of the Snowfield in a duel and earned the epithet `Swordless`.

Biran was slammed into a tree with a sickening crack.

He tried to speak, his face full of fear and rebellion.

“W-wait… Lord Deus…! You can’t… ghk…!”

He never got to finish.

Deus’s foot drove into his stomach before the words could leave his mouth.

The knights of Lion’s Pride, who had been full of reverence toward Deus moments ago, instinctively moved to draw their swords.

Deus glanced at them.

“Draw your blades if you wish. I’ll leave what happens after that to your imagination.”

That was enough.

They swallowed hard and froze.

What followed was a one-sided beating.

Alon watched Deus appear out of nowhere and proceed to thrash Biran mercilessly.

On the outside, he remained expressionless.

On the inside, he was smiling with satisfaction.

You grew up very well.

He looked at Deus with something very much like the pride of a father watching a son who had turned out splendidly.

Granted, most fathers did not feel that way while watching their son beat another man into a pulp.

Even so, the emotion in Alon felt suspiciously close to paternal pride.

If he were honest, it went beyond that. There was gratitude mixed in too.

All the way to Caliburn, he had assumed Deus would not be especially pleased to see him.

At best, he thought Deus might feel some gratitude. Nothing deeper.

They had never once spoken personally.

More than that, Deus had never written him a single letter either.

So hearing the word benefactor come from Deus’s own lips made Alon feel strangely rewarded for all the years of support he had poured into him.

Warm satisfaction spread through him.

“He hits hard,” Evan remarked.

“He does,” Alon replied.

And for about three minutes, he watched Deus destroy Biran in real time with a quiet smile, feeling as if something in his chest had finally been cleared out.

He was deeply grateful.

But five minutes later.

“Count.”

“…What?”

“Isn’t he going to die at this rate?”

Alon watched Biran sobbing and clutching at trouser legs while begging for mercy, only for Deus to keep beating him without restraint.

Something about the situation had begun to feel off.

“No. Surely not.”

“Right…”

Still, Alon kept watching for another five minutes under the assumption that surely Deus would not actually kill him.

Then he looked at Biran’s face and realized that every trace of the earlier smugness had been beaten out of it beyond recognition.

Cold sweat broke out across his skin as he remembered something he had momentarily pushed aside.

Deus was one of the Five Great Sins.

That did not erase Alon’s gratitude.

Not even close.

But still.

I appreciate how far he’s going for my sake, but isn’t this a little much?

Leaving Biran looking half-dead behind him, Deus walked back over.

“I will escort you.”

Then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, he bowed deeply.

Around them, soldiers and knights stirred in shock.

Alon looked at the bloodied wreck that Biran had become and thought again.

This really is a bit much.