Chapter 249
Southern Front ⑤ — The Planted
Mistletoe
Translator : PolterGlast
Under the fierce onslaught of the Griffonia Empire,
the fall of the Southern Gate Fortress had become only a matter of time.
Then, a situation arose that astonished and confused the generals.
One part was the news of the death of their supreme
commander, Margrave Hastburg, but another piece of news invited great
confusion.
"Attention all forces of the Kyle Kingdom Army. Margrave
Hastburg has fallen in battle! By the final words entrusted to me by the Margrave,
I order all forces to cease fire immediately and surrender!"
This unbelievable command was issued to the generals by Viscount
Kyrias, who claimed to have been entrusted with the aftermath by the Margrave.
"That cannot be! The Margrave ordered a retreat to the Southern
Gate Fort!"
"Surrender to the enemy at this juncture? That is
completely different from the previous order!"
"The Margrave has fallen? He was wounded, but he should
have been fine until just moments ago!"
Voices of opposition rose from the generals. In fact, the Margrave
continued to send messengers until just before his death, and his orders had
reached the generals, so everyone found Viscount Kyrias's words
suspicious.
"This is out of the question! We will follow the Margrave's
direct order, force a breakthrough through the enemy lines, and retreat!
Everyone, follow me!"
"To begin with, we bear some responsibility for the
breach of the left wing castle wall, but there are reports that the castle gate
was opened on the right wing, inviting the enemy army in! As long as such
suspicion exists, I cannot obey that order!"
"Now it makes sense why the enemy army did not attack
the right wing! There is no way we can listen to Lord Kyrias's
orders."
Baron Kreitz,
Baron Bold, and Baron Herald verbally abused the messenger from Viscount
Kyrias, promptly reorganized their armies, forced a breakthrough through
the enemy army, and retreated to the Southern Gate Fort. Amidst fierce
fighting, their forces were reduced by nearly half.
"Now that the Margrave has passed, we shall accompany
him! All forces, charge to secure a retreat route for our allies!"
Following the Margrave's final order, there was no end to
those who voluntarily joined the rearguard, fighting as soldiers prepared to
die and meeting heroic ends one after another. It was precisely because of
their desperate struggle—wagering their very lives—that so many of their
comrades were able to make their retreat.
Consequently,
with the exception of the Right Wing defended by Viscount Kyrias, fierce battles continued to rage even after the
fortress had officially fallen. The Imperial Army found themselves unable to
occupy the stronghold with any ease.
From the
direction of the Right Wing—where Viscount
Kyrias had held command—First Prince Glorious entered the fortress, gazing
upon this chaotic situation with visible bitterness.
"Lord Kyrias, I accepted your surrender as per
our prior arrangement, but what is this unsightly spectacle? I acknowledge the
merit of your betrayal in capturing the fortress. However, if you cannot even
control a mob of defeated remnants, then the guarantee of your status after the
occupation—which you so eagerly requested—may well be in jeopardy."
"First, I apologize for the blunder. I will now
eliminate the fools who do not follow Your Highness's benevolence and will.
Would that be acceptable?"
"Umu, changing one's stance is difficult. One must make
enemies of those who were friends until yesterday. If you cannot do that, we
cannot trust you either. You understand quickly, which is excellent."
Placed outside the battle and remaining almost unscathed,
the Viscount Kyrias Army attacked all at once toward the Kyle Kingdom
Army they had been fighting alongside until moments ago to retreat. Raising the
justification of punishing the crime of disobeying Margrave Hastburg's
orders and chastising military insubordination.
As a result, all resistance forces remaining within the
fortress were eliminated, but simultaneously, within the Kyle Kingdom
Army, the betrayal of Viscount Kyrias changed from suspicion to
certainty.
Through this sequence of events, the Southern Gate Fortress
fell. Once the battle had been decided, Viscount Kyrias stood alone in the command post that Margrave Hastburg had
designated as his headquarters.
This area had been left unattended after Kyrias
killed the Margrave. Amidst several lying corpses, he advanced to the corpse of
the notable figure and straddled it.
"I have fallen as far as I can fall. There is no way to
make excuses now. This is all your fault, Margrave."
Tears overflowed from his eyes as he spoke to the Margrave's
corpse.
"You asked 'Why?' at the end, did you not? That is a
question I share as well. Why... why was I not chosen to be your successor? Why him? Why that
upstart brat (Darek)? Why were the
path for me to achieve military
exploits...
deliberately closed off?"
Yes, Kyrias had feelings of helplessness that had
piled up endlessly.
"All I ever lived for... the only dream I ever
harbored... was to restore the Count
Kyrias family, which had once fallen into ruin, smeared in disgrace. And yet... your
treatment of me was simply too much. In this battle, stationed on the Right
Wing, I was not granted even a single opportunity to achieve military merit. Furthermore,
my territory is trampled by the enemy army, and I was left here to defend this
fortress as nothing more than a sacrificial pawn. Tell me... in exchange for
all that I was forced to lose, was I to gain absolutely nothing in return?"
Kyrias had spent
his childhood in a position where his future was promised as the heir to the Count
Kyrias family, which served as Commander of the Royal Capital Knights.
That fate changed abruptly over twenty years ago when the Kyle Kingdom
Army suffered a crushing defeat due to his father's blunder during the first
invasion by the Griffonia Empire Army.
Kyrias's father was
stripped of his post as Commander of the Royal Capital Knights, and his family was punished by demotion from Count to Viscount. It
is not that Count Kyrias was blameless for this defeat, but it is said
the biggest cause was that the elderly clinging to central power and the
previous King underestimated the enemy and the severity of the war, and were
reluctant to authorize the deployment of the Royal Capital Knights until
it was too late.
Yet, only his own father was made to bear the
responsibility, branded as incompetent by noble society, and the Kyrias
family came to bear the disgrace eternally.
Since then, regaining the honor of the Kyrias family
became his purpose in life. That ladder was not easy, but he progressed
smoothly to a certain extent. Until the two brothers from the Solis
family appeared in the world...
Kyrias was
chosen by Margrave Hastburg as a son-in-law and accumulated reputation
and military exploits commensurate with that. He was seen as the likely
candidate to eventually succeed the position of Margrave, and he himself
dreamed of it as an established course.
And that dream had come one step away from realization.
But it crumbled in a cruel form. Still, he made efforts to
accumulate military exploits, be promoted, and regain honor.
However, that honor always flowed to others. No matter what
he did, he could not match those brothers.
Kyrias actively
gathered information on the policies they implemented and willingly adopted
what seemed to be merits into his own territory. But as a result, the gap with
them only widened. It could be said he was tormented daily by the impatience of
being left behind.
"Even in this battle, even if we won, I would not be
able to advance, only eating the dust of those brats again. You probably could
not understand such miserable feelings of mine."
Darkness had sprouted in Kyrias's heart before he
knew it. It grew in places he wasn't conscious of, and the darkness deepened.
The late Viscount Hiyorimi discovered that darkness
in him. Precisely because he possessed an earnest and straightforward heart, he
was deemed valuable—a perfect 'Mistletoe' to host the denizens of darkness.
Treatment
that should have been considered fair and appropriate for his abilities was
twisted by their whispers, transforming into fuel for jealousy and resentment. The
tiny sprout of suspicion born in his heart was carefully nurtured by them. Thereafter,
at the hands of the Viscount Hiyorimi and his
eldest son, Lugner, the darkness lurking within him
was amplified further.
And a few months before this battle, when he received a
visit from a suspicious old man, he finally fell completely to the dark side.
Into deep darkness swirling with jealousy, suspicion, and misplaced
resentment...
The questions he threw at the Margrave were ones for which
he, in his calm normal state, could have found clear reasons himself. There
were several reasons why the Margrave did not choose Kyrias as his
successor.
Kyrias
disciplined himself strictly to achieve big goals. He demanded the same of his
colleagues and subordinates, being a man who was extremely detailed and strict
about everything.
His personality, excellent but concerned with trivial
matters due to his seriousness, tended to make subordinates shrink. Being a man
of few words and poor at speaking, his heart caring for his subordinates was
not conveyed, and some even evaluated his seriousness as suffocating.
Therefore, Kirias
was decisively lacking in the one quality essential for leading commanders and
the masses: charisma. Earnestness, rigidity, and strictness... these traits
alone are not enough to make people follow. Because he conducted himself
flawlessly at all times, those around him felt nothing but a sense of
suffocation.
In fact, even Takuhir unconsciously kept a certain
distance from him.
On the other hand, the affable Darek was sometimes
broad-minded yet full of human warmth. He
never hid his flaws, making him a figure whom many felt a deep affinity for. Moreover,
Darek was especially popular among
those of lower status. And thanks to his rapid advancement in recent years, the
number of those higher in status than him had become significantly few.
Actually, setting aside direct
subordinates, there are more people who believe in Darek than in his
younger brother, Takuhir, who advanced even more. That was a fact that
even his brother Takuhir admitted himself and declared without
hesitation.
Precisely
for this reason, the Margrave chose Darek—a
man possessing both charisma and generalship—as the successor to lead many generals.
To begin with, the reason Takuhir and Darek
were blessed with military exploits and advanced was the result of surviving
predicaments, and Kyrias himself has not exposed himself to the danger
of death as much as they have.
Because they overcame many hardships and advanced, they
obtained great power. As a result, they were merely given the opportunity to
wield that power, and the two brothers always fight bearing that expectation
and the pressure of responsibility.
Kyrias himself
possessed neither the strength, the manpower, nor the caliber required to
fulfill such a heavy responsibility. To be fair,
he was an exceptionally competent commander when it came to managing a single
sector of the battlefield. However, when it came to maintaining a bird's-eye view
of the entire war situation, leading other generals as a true
leader, and thinking strategically rather than merely tactically... he was far inferior to the two.
If he were calm, Kyrias should have been able to
accept these facts as perfectly natural. However, his heart was gradually
distorted, and as a result of expanding only suspicion and jealousy, the small
darkness in Kyrias's heart had come to dominate him.
"Margrave, watch me. Whether I become one who restores
the honor of the Kyrias family and opens a new path for this country, or
one who adds the new name of traitor to the disgrace so far and is erased by
history... Watch my figure as I advance hereafter..."
After declaring that, Kyrias left the command post
scattered with rubble. His eyes were already cloudy, expressionless like a Noh mask,
and simply hollow.
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