Chapter 251

Side Story – A Snake Without Venom, A Flower Without Fragrance (1)

“I yield.”

Karim Zahar withdrew his magic and politely bowed his head, conceding defeat.

After a brief silence, the young man who had been his sparring partner glanced at the hidden weapons scattered on the ground and sneered quietly.

“Coward.”

Rather than bristling or retorting at those words, Karim quietly returned to his place.

He could feel the contemptuous gazes directed at him from those around him.

The Zahar, the mage noble family that ruled the Enril Desert, were commonly compared to vipers.

The world’s most cruel and merciless assassins.

Among them, Karim was called a coward.

Because of a temperament that feared competing with others, and feared hurting them.

The reason he could avoid being weeded out was that he was the child of Talis Zahar, the younger brother of the current family head and the true power behind all major family affairs.

Of course, he couldn’t be certain whether his father and uncle even properly recognized his existence.

His magical power, his character … not a single thing about him was of any use.

While in the midst of enjoying the luxury of washing his face at one corner of the training grounds, a low voice came from behind.

“You weren’t blubbering again, were you, Karim?”

“Not once. Sister.”

“I saw it with my own eyes the other time, so don’t talk nonsense.”

Aryl Zahar … Karim’s one and only full sibling by blood.

She was the only person in the family he could be at ease with.

Because unlike the other viper nobles of Zahar, she was at least someone who had something resembling human warmth.

However, unlike Karim, Aryl was someone who could be decisively cruel when necessary, and so her external reputation was much better.

“So, what brings you here?”

Though they might have known better when they were younger, it had been quite some time since Aryl and Karim had shared private conversation.

Less because the relationship had soured, more because the worlds they lived in were different.

If she’d go so far as to come find him like this, he assumed there was some business, and that assumption was correct.

“A war is going to happen soon.”

“A war, with whom……”

“Arabion.”

Wiping his face with a towel, Karim fixed his sister with a sharp gaze.

Aryl made an effort not to let it show that she had flinched inwardly.

This big-framed younger brother of hers was weak and timid to a degree that wasted his physique, but there were times like this when his serious expression carried a terrifying air of authority.

Perhaps because of the large build he’d inherited from their uncle, the family head.

“Surely not … you’re saying they’d start a war over that squabble from a little while ago? What foolishness.”

“Watch your words. Judging whether it’s foolish or not isn’t our place.”

“That’s…”

Karim understood what his sister meant and fell silent.

Though light sources were placed throughout this Red Fortress to prevent easy concealment, there were still people who could overhear such conversations.

“……Right now this news is known to only a few in the upper echelons. So before that, buy as many battle-useful magic artifacts as you can as quickly as possible. Do you have some money?”

“I don’t.”

Whether giving medicine money and treatment fees to servants with severely ill family members, or regularly supporting facilities helping orphans who had lost their parents to become self-sufficient …

For all manner of reasons, money never seemed to accumulate in Karim’s pockets.

Aryl, who guessed the situation to some degree, wrinkled her face and said:

“What on earth are you going around doing, you fool.”

Hearing it from others didn’t bother him, but hearing it from his sister still hurt.

When Karim said nothing, not showing this, she sighed deeply and said:

“……Can’t be helped. I’ll try speaking to Father so you can be assigned to the same unit as me if possible.”

“You needn’t do that.”

Political favors were debts, after all.

That was true even between father and daughter.

Not wanting his sister to be indebted to their father on his account, Karim refused.

“Can you survive on your own?”

“I’ll have to try. And if I can’t, that will be my limit.”

In truth he had no confidence and didn’t want to go to the battlefield, scared as he was, but he knew he couldn’t refuse.

Yielding to flows he couldn’t resist was what he had done his whole life.

* * *

Just as Aryl had said, the war broke out a few months later.

The Zahar mages summoned from across the Enril Desert headed west, riding on beast-drawn wagons or carts, or running on their own two legs.

The commander of the unit Karim belonged to was Perga Zahar … the family head’s grandchild and, in terms of blood, his second cousin once removed.

“Karim.”

“Yes, Perga.”

“Don’t stand so straight. It’s annoying to have someone taller than me standing next to me.”

“Understood.”

Privately a distant relative, but publicly the commander of his unit and one of the candidates considered worthy to become the next successor … so Karim had no choice but to bow his head readily.

Fortunately, Perga was more focused on other things than on tormenting his half-wit distant uncle.

Things like engaging in power plays with other successor candidates, or reining in influential nobles from vassal families under the name of friendship.

After nearly a month of swift marching, they finally left the Enril Desert and reached a place commonly called the Grey Zone.

“This place is also quite desolate.”

“I know, they said the land outside the desert would be full of lush grass and densely wooded trees.”

“That’s further west.”

The Zahar nobles stepping outside the desert for the first time looked around with expressions of curiosity and chattered.

That lasted only briefly … when Perga raised a hand, everyone fell silent at once and looked at him.

Perhaps because they were all wearing long robes and masks, their appearance was truly sinister and imposing.

“First we’ll establish a base in Vigen.”

“The lord of Vigen City has declared his intention to support Arabion.”

“I heard. Foolish of him…… Ashu, Karim?”

“Yes, Perga.”

At his commander’s call, Karim answered, feeling his mouth go dry.

The order that followed was as expected.

“The lord’s younger brother has expressed his intention to support us, so we’ll need to put him in the lordship seat. Handle it yourselves.”

“We shall carry out the order.”

Unlike his colleague who answered a step ahead, Karim hesitated briefly before bowing his head.

He could feel the other nobles around shooting him blatantly contemptuous looks.

A short while later, they came face to face outside Vigen City with a man called Alos Mevern, who claimed to be the current lord’s younger brother.

“So, you’ll support us if you’re placed in the lordship seat?”

“Yes. Vigen City lies at the southeastern end of the Grey Zone, bordering the Enril Desert … I know well that going against you would make it impossible to survive.”

“I would have preferred your brother knew that too.”

“My brother…… in his youth, during a pilgrimage, a Arabion noble once showed him great kindness, and he says he cannot betray that. It’s unavoidable for the sake of the family.”

He wasn’t entirely wrong, in a sense.

If not for this fellow who claimed to be the lord’s brother, Zahar would have simply annihilated the entire Mevern family that ruled Vigen and taken their place.

But that was that, and one couldn’t help viewing someone who requested the assassination of his own brother from a foreign power with anything but contempt.

Fortunately, since he was wearing a mask, there was no need to struggle to hide his expression of contempt toward the man.

With Alos’s help, the assassination of Vigen City’s lord went off without a hitch.

“Guh, guhhk……”

The family head of the Mevern family, Roso, was a formidable individual who would be difficult to defeat even with the combined efforts of the two of them.

He could be rated as one of the most skilled among the nobles of ordinary mage families, who were born with a single bloodline.

Across the entire Grey Zone it would likely be difficult to find a mage stronger than this man.

However, even such a formidable individual couldn’t do anything when stabbed in the heart and throat by a magically focused blade while asleep.

Twisting and withdrawing the blade planted in the neck, Karim gritted his teeth at the foul stench of blood wafting from his hands.

“You can do it when you have to, coward.”

When his colleague sneered and disappeared back into stealth, Karim too disappeared into stealth and followed, exiting the bedroom.

Thanks to Alos having extinguished the corridor torches in advance, they could disappear truly like ghosts.

Two days later.

At Alos’s invitation, now the new lord of Mevern, the Zahar forces made Vigen City their base.

Standing in the corridor he had passed through a short while ago with the intent to assassinate this place’s lord, Karim looked down at his hands.

He had washed them clean long ago, yet still the smell of blood lingered.

The first kill … something other Zahar nobles would have accomplished at a younger age.

The shock it brought devastated his spirit.

However, unfortunately, war … and the Zahar family he belonged to … was not gentle enough to comfort such a weak heart.

* * *

It was Zahar who cut the opening blow of the first proper battle.

They ambushed the enemy’s main force in the forested zone connecting the Grey Zone and the Arabion territory of Dakein Plain.

First, approaching under concealment, they struck supply units … setting fire to prepared provisions, sniping from a distance to wound or eliminate the more powerful mages, and similar tactics followed.

Karim too threw his javelins earnestly, but whether by good fortune or bad, none died from his attacks.

However, this approach could not completely stop the enemy’s advance.

The Arabion army moved forward, lighting everything up so there was nowhere to hide, and plundered provisions from mage families along their route to replace those burned by the Zahar nobles.

“It’s not working as well as expected.”

“What about a frontal engagement?”

“Suicide.”

The Zahar army, with three successor candidates each leading their own units under Talis serving as supreme commander, set aside even their competition and discussed with grave expressions.

Because their strength lay in the tenacity of being able to pursue anywhere at any time, and in the stealth of approaching undetected to strike, so this kind of pitched battle was not particularly welcome.

Before long, Alma Zahar put forward an opinion.

“Let’s attack their homeland.”

“If their main force pushes in?”

“Those people can’t move fast for fear of us ambushing them anyway. It’s better to shake up the vassal families.”

After some degree of disagreement, when this opinion was adopted, Karim too found himself assigned to the unit striking Arabion’s homeland.

Nobles of similar strength to him envied him.

“Damn, we’re stuck here while the most fun falls to someone like you of all people……”

Of course Karim didn’t answer such jealous words.

Even if he whined that he’d rather stay here, nothing would change.

The Dakein Plain raiding unit was composed entirely of nobles mounted on beasts, without even attendant knights.

Their number was a total of around forty.

Having bypassed the enemy’s main force and entered Dakein Plain, they quickly began attacking nearby small cities one by one.

“AAAAAH…!”

“Enemies! Everyone to defensive positions!”

Blood and screams, and madness.

The Zahar nobles drove the small cities’ mages like demons.

Their cruel hands reached not only mages but even defenseless commoners.

“Ahahahaha!”

“Wow, if you grab the head and pull, the spine comes right out? It’s like a tail, pretty funny.”

Perhaps because the aggression normally suppressed by strict discipline had been unleashed … the cruelty they displayed felt like that of someone treating not fellow humans but some alien species.

Among them were even those who were less merely cruel and more particularly absorbed in sadistic pleasure.

‘I’m sorry.’

Karim muttered that while in stealth, throwing a hidden blade into the neck of a knight wildly swinging weapons at any target.

Being in stealth, there was no one to hear that voice.

He knew that relieving his own guilt this way was actually the more cowardly thing to do, but this was the limit of what he could do.

Insubordination in war was death, and with his hair regularly being provided to the main household, desertion was equally impossible.

After turning one city upside down and enjoying massacre and plunder, came the time to savor the harvest.

“No, please……”

“Please spare us!”

Originally, various mage families had a custom of gathering and raising those of unusually beautiful appearance from within their territory.

Because they were born with sexual desire as humans, if they were going to procreate, they preferred a more beautiful partner.

These were commonly called ‘flowers,’ and the raiding unit had earned the right to claim such flowers during the plundering.

It wasn’t only women who were taken … conversely, women and men with homosexual inclinations would take well-raised beautiful youths.

Of course there were also women who desired women.

The campsite full of screams and pleasure-filled moans was less a gathering of noble lords and more like a den of beasts.

Retreating because it was difficult to suppress revulsion, he sensed someone approaching from behind.

“What, Karim … you didn’t gather any at all?”

“Mm.”

Karim let out a low groan and shook his head at the question from a colleague who was asking while drinking water without even his lower clothing on.

The colleague smiled and casually suggested:

“If you’re not going to take girls, won’t you give me your share? There’s a limit on how many we can bring.”

Since having too many hostages when returning to base would be troublesome, the upper command had placed a limit on the number of hostages allowed to accompany.

His colleague was requesting that if Karim wasn’t going to use his share, allow him to take the flowers he was coveting in his stead.

“Not interested.”

“Come on, don’t be like that.”

Not particularly because this fellow had looked down on him since childhood calling him a coward, but because dragging away able-bodied people only to capture them like slaves after not even killing them sat poorly with him.

Though all he could do was a cowardly silence.

Having enjoyed themselves thoroughly sacking one city like that, the Zahar raiding unit invaded a fourth city, one named Kimel.

“Light some fires! Those people are…gack!”

Naturally, this place too was trampled mercilessly by the invading Zahar nobles.

After all, a considerable number of nobles who actually knew how to fight had already been conscripted into the Arabion army.

While a young noble acting in the city lord’s place was being torn to pieces by the raiding unit’s more powerful members, Karim belonged to the group going around plundering goods from the knight residences near the lord’s manor.

He tried to fight as half-heartedly as possible, just pretending, and entered the houses left empty after the knights and their families fled or died.

At least he’d need to take decent plunder as some kind of excuse.

While heading inside, his sharp sense of smell detected the scent of a living human.

‘What is this……’

Turning his head, what caught his eye was a fairly fine wardrobe.

Through the slightly open door, he could make out a pair of amber-brown eyes watching him intently.

‘A woman, by the scent.’

She seemed to be one of the knight’s family members.

Why had she stayed here while the others fled … perhaps thinking hiding here gave a better chance of not being found?

Given the senses of a noble, specifically a Zahar noble, that was a foolish thought.

Karim exhaled deeply and looked away, and a small sigh of relief came from behind.

‘Pretending not to notice is difficult in itself.’

Leaving the room, Karim then searched the other rooms and plundered the necessary goods.

Indeed befitting the region known as the most prosperous in the world … the knights of Dakein Plain had much.

Necklaces laden with jewels, all manner of ornaments … he stuffed them in, and when he felt that was enough, a sharp scream rang out from the distance.

“KYAAAA…!”

Striding out a few steps from the room, what he saw was a colleague … the same one who had earlier asked to borrow his share … dragging a woman out by her hair.

The girl with her long ash-grey hair looked to be in her late teens.

“What…… oh, it’s you, Karim.”

“What is this.”

“She was hiding in the wardrobe. Thought she could avoid being found that way, huh. Stupid girl.”

The colleague cackled and shook the gripped hair.

Originally this was a section he was supposed to have searched with no one else, but whether by whim or some mix-up he had entered it again.

Looking her over like assessing a caught fish, the colleague licked his lips.

“She’s pretty enough that I’d like to take her…… but it’d be a bit of a waste to trade her for the ones I’ve already gathered. I’ll just do it once and then kill her. There’s still time before assembly. Can you stand watch?”

At the sight of him making the suggestion while undoing his belt, Karim was briefly silent before taking a firm step forward.

And twisted the hand that had been gripping the girl’s hair.

“Argh!”

“This woman was already mine … I found her first and was holding her.”

“What kind of bull…AAAUGH!”

“This building was mine to process, so she’s mine. Don’t touch her.”

Karim, for all that his noble blood was that of Talis’s son, was on the weaker side when it came to magical power, though his physical ability was above average.

And between nobles of similar magical power, the ability in hand-to-hand was determined by build and muscle mass.

The colleague who had been flustered by the sudden claim of ‘coward Karim’ over plunder screamed as his arm was bent nearly to breaking and fell back.

“Damn, just give it to me. Give it! You act so pure your whole life and then this, you son of a……”

It was all the grumbling he was capable of.

It was only because his mild nature that anyone at all treated him carelessly … unlike that person, a collateral branch among many, the other was the family head’s nephew.

Having driven off the colleague, Karim lifted the girl who had been in such a state of disarray from being dragged around by her hair.

“From now on, you are my spoils of war.”

Thinking that the ones lying dead in this building were the girl’s family left a bitter taste in his mouth.

Having just lost all her family moments before, claiming a woman as a slave and yet telling himself he was saving her.

But he couldn’t let her go here either.

The orders the raiding unit had received were to kill or capture all those with the potential to carry on a mage bloodline.

It would be better to treat her like a war trophy for now and then let her go in a safer place later.

While thinking that to himself, the girl looked at him with amber-brown eyes.

Remarkably, in those eyes was not hostility or fear, but curiosity … as if looking at some strange creature.

“What’s your name?”

“Karim.”

He never thought she’d ask his name here.

Even while inwardly flustered, he answered bluntly, and the girl said quietly:

“I’m Bizhela. Bizhela Mirsel.”

For someone facing the enemy who killed her family, her voice felt almost innocent … that was what Karim thought to himself.