Chapter 4 – Becoming the Power Behind the Count’s House (4)

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Translated by Jinmu

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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Two years had passed since Alon rescued Yutia and began exchanging letters with her regularly.

“This one was rescued successfully as well.”

“Really?”

Evan’s report made Alon look up.

“Sent to the orphanage?”

“Yes.

That makes five in total.”

Alon nodded.

Over the past year and a little more, he had succeeded in rescuing all three of the Sins he had originally intended to save, and then the rest besides.

Rescuing the Sin of Greed was the hardest to trace down.

The third one he found, a girl currently known as Rine Groff, had been difficult to locate, but once found, not all that difficult to save.

The others had been similar.

Tracking them down took months, but with Alon’s game knowledge and Evan doing the actual legwork, they had all been found in the end.

Looking at the knight he had worked half to death over the past year, Alon said:

“You can rest a little now.”

“So it’s over?”

“It’s over.”

“…What a relief.”

After letting out a sigh, Evan looked at him and asked:

“But aren’t you happy, young master?”

“Of course I am.”

“You don’t look happy at all.”

“…Do I not?”

Alon glanced at the mirror.

What stared back at him was the face he had already grown accustomed to.

It really was expressionless.

If one stared carefully enough, perhaps the corners of his mouth were raised a fraction, but the change was so slight that almost nobody would notice.

He tried forcing a smile, only to find that his otherwise decent face began to look bizarre, and gave up.

Feels like only my skin never fully finished possessing me.

Unlike his old self, whose emotions had shown plainly, this body’s face hardly reflected anything.

That was not necessarily a bad thing.

It would be inconvenient for other people, perhaps, but it did not inconvenience him.

In any case, the urgent part of my work is finished.

Thinking of the five future Sins now gathered at the orphanage, Alon allowed himself a faint smile.

He had not expected things to go this smoothly.

Every one of the Five Great Sins had more than enough reason to become what they became.

He had always assumed he would only be able to rescue them after they were already badly broken.

That had been his one real concern.

Instead, all five were growing up normally.

“Evan.”

“Yes.”

“You said the orphanage looked fine the last time you checked it?”

“Yes.

Rine and Seollang were both in bad shape before they were sent there, but by the time I visited, they had recovered considerably.

Seollang had been like a broken doll when we first rescued her, but she was doing well there.

Rine, who initially kept her eyes shut as if refusing to look at anything, was reading with interest the last time I saw her.”

That matched what Yutia had written in her letters.

I didn’t expect Yutia to take care of them this well.

One reason Alon had left Yutia at the orphanage was because he did not want her close by.

Another was because, in the setting, she had shown some attachment to that place.

Even so, he had never been sure she would care for the other children too.

Originally, he had fully intended to check on the situation and send in more specialized help if things looked unstable.

There was no need anymore.

Everything had gone far better than expected.

Thanks to Yutia, the only thing Alon now needed to do was develop enough strength to protect himself.

As the third son of House Palladio, he would not ordinarily face mortal danger so long as he stayed quiet, and Evan was at his side besides.

But this was still a dark fantasy world.

Having at least enough power to keep oneself alive was not optional.

That was why he had been considering whether to learn magic.

“Come to think of it, young master, have you heard of Blue Moon?”

“Blue Moon?”

“A group in the east that’s become quite famous lately.

Apparently they hunt down other organizations.”

“…One organization hunting other organizations?”

“Yes.”

“Then they’re doing a good deed.”

Alon answered flatly.

If Blue Moon had been massacring commoners, that would have been one thing.

But if all they were killing were criminal syndicates, that was another matter.

On this continent, anyone calling themselves an “organization” inevitably played with human lives.

So Alon was prepared to think well of them.

Then Evan added:

“The problem is that they kill nobles too.”

“…Evan.”

“Yes?”

“From tonight onward, sleep in the room next to mine.”

If Blue Moon had never appeared in the original story, they were probably a group that died out before the plot began.

That should mean they were not a major variable… though now that he thought about it, Leo had been in an especially foul mood lately.

Maybe this was why.

After turning that thought over briefly, Alon shrugged and began writing a reply to Yutia’s most recent letter.

Yesterday’s letter had been much like the others: a brief greeting, updates on the children he had asked her to watch over, and a list of sponsors.

He considered mentioning what Evan had told him about Blue Moon, but decided against it.

Blue Moon hunted organizations and nobles, not orphanages full of children.

So he finished the letter and sent it through the mercenary guild as usual.

It was a quiet day.

* * *

Several weeks later, at the orphanage in the east, Yutia sat reading one of Alon’s letters during the regular gathering that had begun after their “activities” properly started.

“A letter from him?

Let me read it too!

Me too!”

“I want to read it as well.”

The bright girl waving her hand was Seollang, the future Sin of Pride.

The quieter one with green eyes was Rine, the future Sin of Greed.

“Here.”

“Really?

Last time you wouldn’t let us see it.”

“It felt about time.”

Yutia passed the letter over with a smile.

Seollang and Rine looked it over, and beside them even Deus, who usually stayed silent, glanced at it curiously.

A little later, they all looked confused.

“…This is an order?”

“It just sounds like ordinary conversation.”

Of course it did.

The letter truly contained nothing more than ordinary everyday talk.

When Deus looked to Yutia for an explanation, she smiled and said:

“Naturally.

He instructed me from the beginning to make it look like ordinary correspondence.”

Then she drew an older letter from her clothes and showed it to them.

That one too looked perfectly normal.

A light greeting, followed by a natural suggestion that they exchange regular letters about the orphanage.

“…This also looks like a normal letter.”

But Deus seemed to grasp the intent sooner than the others.

“Is this because the contents must not leak out?”

“Exactly.”

“Then wouldn’t magical communication, or simply sending one of us to report in person, be better?”

“It would.”

“Then why letters?”

“Because that is his will.”

Yutia smiled.

“If he decided this is how it should be done, then we only have to follow it.

There is no need to question it.

No need to think about it.”

Deus felt his mouth go dry.

Yutia was usually calm, but whenever she spoke of him, she radiated a faith so thick that even Deus found it chilling.

“…Understood.”

Once the letters had been carefully taken back and put away, the report began.

“Seollang. The north?”

“You mean the slave traders?”

“Yes.”

Seollang grinned brightly.

“All cleaned up.”

“Was your identity exposed?”

“Nope.

The clothes Rine made worked great.

I even gave them a quiz and told them I’d spare them if they guessed what my real appearance looked like.

Nobody got it right.”

“So?”

“I ripped their heads off.”

The words were far too brutal for the cheerful smile that accompanied them, but Yutia only turned toward Deus.

“The south?”

“The people called Avalon were running wild there, so we wiped them out.

And I also found something worth reporting.”

“What?”

“Avalon’s head is the eldest son of the count’s house where he lives, isn’t he?”

Yutia nodded.

“…It seems the eldest son intends to have him quietly poisoned.”

“…What?”

The atmosphere froze.

Seollang, who had been smiling moments ago, flattened herself and watched Yutia’s face.

Rine fixed her gaze forward.

Only Deus still looked at Yutia directly, and even he felt a cold sweat break out beneath the killing intent now filling the room.

“Are you certain?”

“There was an order letter.”

“Did you bring it?”

“Yes.”

Deus produced the letter from his clothing.

Yutia read it without even blinking.

Once she reached the final line, she clenched the paper.

Once the count, whose lifespan appears short, dies, quietly addict and dispose of him.

“…So it’s true.”

The words came out softly.

“It really is true.”

Her eyes were terrible to behold.

For a moment, even Seollang stopped moving.

Rine fixed her gaze straight ahead.

And though Deus had expected the reaction to some degree, even he felt cold sweat spread across his body under the pressure of Yutia’s killing intent.

After a brief silence, Yutia folded the letter with slow care.

“Then we move.”

“Immediately?”

“Of course.”

Her answer came without the slightest hesitation.

“No one gets to lay a hand on him.”

At that, the others all lowered their heads at once.

“Everything according to his will.”

This time the phrase was not spoken with calm devotion.

It carried something much colder.

And from that moment on, the fate of House Palladio’s eldest son was effectively decided.