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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: Teottry
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The next day, the three potential successors gathered again in the command tent. The atmosphere was tense after yesterday’s confrontation.
“If you, as the eldest, set an example, it would dispel any suspicions of collusion with the enemy. What do you think, Uncle?”
“You want me to lead the vanguard? So that was your plan all along!”
“What nonsense are you talking about?”
“That clumsy spy was actually sent by you! A pathetic attempt to force me into the vanguard!”
“Really. Is that your excuse?”
Andril watched the open conflict between his uncle and half-brother. They both knew, rationally, that Allen was the most likely culprit.
However, the seeds of doubt, once planted, couldn’t be easily dismissed.
Everything was proceeding according to Allen’s plan.
‘Even his inaction for three days is a strategy.’
He knew that if he acted first, his uncle and half-brother would join forces, and if he waited, their conflict would deepen. Allen was a patient man who prioritized victory above all else.
Andril suddenly pictured a lion hiding in tall grass.
The lion’s cold, unwavering gaze, fixed on its prey, reminded him of Allen.
‘He’s not my enemy.’
He forced the image from his mind. There was no need to fear. He had no intention of opposing Allen.
On the contrary, they were partners with a common goal. He could even consider Allen an ally.
Of course, if Allen heard him, he would likely scoff.
“Uncle, Brother, fighting amongst ourselves is exactly what the enemy wants.”
Only after Andril’s intervention did the tense standoff between the two cease.
The waiting servants brought in their meal.
The meal was long overdue due to their argument. Perhaps it was the delicious food, but the atmosphere relaxed slightly.
“Gah…”
Someone choked.
A knight dining beside Aden clutched his throat, his face draining of color, his mouth opening and closing silently.
“What’s wrong?! Something caught in your throat?”
The knight pushed Aden’s hand away and stumbled to his feet, still clutching his throat, his body convulsing.
The white foam bubbling from his lips indicated that it wasn’t a simple case of choking.
“P-Poison!”
Aden and his vassals, who had been about to help, recoiled in shock. Antonius and his vassals, who had been smirking, also backed away.
“Ugh…”
“Retch…”
Everyone in the tent began to vomit.
Meanwhile, the poisoned knight collapsed onto the table, motionless. Fortunately, he was the only victim.
After emptying their stomachs, both sides glared at each other in the now-messy command tent.
Their hands rested on the hilts of their swords. Aden, his face pale, stammered,
“H-He was aiming for me! Jentry ate my meal…”
Aden had been switching meals with his vassals ever since they joined forces with their rivals.
Regaining his composure, he pointed at Antonius accusingly.
“Uncle…! You’ll have to explain this!”
“Haa, now that your fake spy plot has failed, you’re trying to frame me for assassination! Such a dishonorable act! Typical of a bastard…”
Antonius scoffed. Aden, who had just narrowly escaped death, reacted sharply.
-Shing!
Aden drew his sword, and both sides followed suit, pointing their weapons at each other.
“You’re the one who should be explaining yourself! You would benefit the most from my death! You colluded with the enemy, then tried to kill me and shift the blame! That’s why bastards…”
“Nonsense! That spy and the poisoning were all your doing! You’re trying to ruin my reputation and corner me! But you underestimated me. I won’t fall for the tricks of a greedy bastard who would sacrifice his own family for wealth!”
“What?! You’re saying I poisoned my most trusted knight with my own hands?!”
“That’s the only way to avoid suspicion! But you underestimated me. I’m not so easily fooled by the schemes of a greedy bastard blinded by wealth!”
“Y-You…!”
Aden glared at Antonius, then, taking the body of his dead knight, stormed out of the command tent.
He knew he would lose if he started a fight here. Antonius had the support of the knightly families.
Aden moved his forces upstream, taking roughly half of the allied forces, around three hundred men.
Their alliance had been built on mistrust from the beginning. Their hearts were filled with suspicion.
Both of them immediately concluded that the other was responsible for the poisoning, without even searching for the true culprit. The true culprit, however, was someone else.
‘It’s all going according to his plan.’
Andril, the true culprit, couldn’t rejoice, despite the stalled investigation. Everything was unfolding exactly as Allen had planned.
Allen knew that Aden was cautious and suspicious, and that he would be careful with his food.
While Aden believed he had avoided assassination through his own cleverness, the true target had never been Aden, but his knight.
Why? If Aden died, Antonius, the most powerful of the three, would be unopposed.
That was something Allen, who was aiming for their mutual destruction, couldn’t allow.
What surprised Andril was that Allen, whom he had only met at the jousting tournament, understood his half-brother better than he did.
‘Perhaps my plan is also… No, that’s impossible.’
Andril dismissed the thought. The future was too bleak to contemplate.
His thoughts were interrupted by Antonius, who approached him as the situation calmed down.
“You should make your stance clear. You can’t claim the Countship on your own. Support me, and I’ll grant you a suitable territory and title.”
Andril’s forces numbered only a hundred. On his own, he couldn’t even hope to survive against Antonius or Aden, let alone claim the Countship.
And yet, Antonius was trying to recruit him. Andril knew why.
“Do you really intend to fight Aden? With the enemy right in front of us?” If the hundred men sided with Aden, the forces would be evenly matched, and if they sided with Antonius, his victory would be assured.
“Of course, we’ll deal with the enemy first. But now that Aden has shown his true colors, it’s best to be prepared, isn’t it?”
That evening, Aden, who secretly visited Andril’s tent, said the same thing.
“You saw his shameless face. Not only did he collude with the enemy, he tried to kill me and then shifted the blame. He’ll do anything for the Countship. And you’ll be his next target. We have to join forces to survive. We’re in the same boat, aren’t we?”
Aden tried to appeal to their shared status as bastards. Of course, he also promised material rewards, just like Antonius.
Andril scoffed inwardly. Aden was the one who had insulted his mother, calling her a whore, and ostracized him, despite being bastards themselves.
In any case, both of them would eventually betray him, despite their honeyed words.
“I’ll follow you, Brother.” He chose Aden because Allen had instructed him to. Aden’s face lit up as he grabbed Andril’s hand.
“Good, good thinking! That’s right, we have to help each other!”
The two smiled, concealing their true intentions.
They didn’t fight immediately. They had a powerful enemy, Allen, in front of them, and the distance between their forces had eased the tension somewhat.
“T-The enemy is retreating!” However, it didn’t last long.
Allen’s forces, which had been facing them across the Rhine River, began to withdraw. A messenger, arriving a little later, delivered the news.
“Rebellion! A rebellion has broken out in Phalanx!”
It was reported that Baron Debussy and his mother, joining forces with the remaining vassals, had launched a rebellion while Allen and his subordinates were away.
“It seems they won’t be able to focus on us for a while.”
Antonius’s voice, though low and quiet like the morning mist, reached everyone in the command tent.
A heavy silence fell over the tent, the air thick with tension.
The three potential successors, who had been united by a common enemy, now eyed each other cautiously. With the common enemy gone, only one question remained.
Who would become the next Count?
“Ahem. Uncle, you should disband your forces.”
Aden broke the silence. Antonius chuckled.
“What are you talking about?! The enemy might be feigning retreat and preparing to attack. I’ll stay here and defend. You disband your forces. You can’t afford to maintain them anyway, can you?”
“Thank you for your concern, but we can hold out for another year.” The two glared at each other, then scoffed and turned away.
They both maintained their armies, using the possibility of Allen’s treachery as an excuse. The only difference was that their vigilance was now directed at each other.
Even the ordinary soldiers knew that their enemy had changed. The tension, like a taut string, stretched to its breaking point.
The atmosphere in both camps was charged, as if something was about to happen.
However, no one could have predicted that the catalyst would be such a small incident.
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“Lord Antonius! It’s an epidemic!”
On the morning of the third day of the standoff, Antonius, who had been thinking it was time to settle the matter, was startled by his vassal’s words.
In this era of limited medical knowledge, an epidemic was more feared than a knight’s sword.
“The physician said it’s from drinking contaminated water!”
“What nonsense! The Rhine River’s upstream! How can the water be contaminated…!”
“Aden’s forces are upstream from us.”
Antonius’s face hardened. Aden and Andril’s allied forces were indeed positioned upstream.
A waterborne epidemic had broken out in Antonius’s forces due to the careless use of water upstream.
“Could it be… they did this intentionally?”
Seeds of doubt had already taken root in Antonius’s mind.
“Whether it was intentional or not, we must take action! We need clean water to maintain our forces!”
The vassal was right. Whether it was intentional or accidental didn’t matter.
If Aden saw an opportunity to weaken Antonius’s forces through the epidemic, he wouldn’t hesitate.
“Prepare for attack.” Antonius made his decision.
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Meanwhile, Aden’s forces, nearby, also noticed the commotion in Antonius’s camp.
“They’re preparing to attack!”
“Prepare for battle! Prepare for battle!”
Moments later, both armies faced each other, ready for battle.
There was nothing more to say. They had already made their intentions clear.
“Attack!”
“Attack!!”
Antonius and Aden sounded the charge almost simultaneously.
Arrows rained down, followed by the infantry. A small cavalry unit, positioned on the right flank, made a wide detour, aiming for the enemy’s flank.
The battle initially favored Antonius. While his forces had been reduced by the epidemic, his main support base consisted of the Count’s knightly families.
In other words, he had a larger number of elite troops, like knights. His cavalry, in particular, charged with a ferocity that seemed capable of breaking through the enemy infantry lines.
“Andril, now’s your chance!”
Aden, aware of this, had positioned Andril’s forces as reserves to counter the cavalry charge.
And now was the time to deploy them. However…
“Retreat!” Andril, instead, ordered a retreat.
Aden, realizing he had been betrayed, shouted at the retreating Andril,
“You bastard! Do you think you can escape?! Get back here!”
Antonius was the strongest contender for the Countship, possessing both legitimacy and power.
Even if he suffered losses defeating Aden, he still had enough strength to easily deal with Andril, the weakest of the three.
Aden believed that the foolish Andril didn’t understand this. However, Andril knew everything.
“Quickly! Hurry!”
Andril ignored his half-brother’s cries and increased his pace. His only concern was the unfathomable depths of Allen’s schemes.
And just as he feared, Allen was watching everything unfold.
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I watched the battle from the bushes on the right side of the road across the Rhine River. My vassals, one after another, raised their voices.
“Andril has betrayed us!”
“That cunning bastard! I knew he was two-faced!”
“We have to pursue him! He’s planning to seize the territory while we’re occupied!” The original plan was for Andril to support us from within while I attacked from the rear.
However, Andril had retreated as soon as the battle began.
“If he wanted to become the Count, he should have cooperated with the other successors to eliminate me. He couldn’t defeat me with just a hundred men. But he chose to cooperate with me and instigate their mutual destruction. Why?”
Everyone was silent. Even Muel, who usually had good instincts, was away on the task I had assigned him.
I clicked my tongue. My territory was expanding, but my vassals were all warriors, lacking in political acumen.
“There’s only one reason. His goal is something he can’t achieve while his rivals are still around. I have a rough idea of what he’s planning. And I’ve made preparations. For now, let’s deal with the enemy.”
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The civil war seemed to be nearing its end. The victor was Antonius.
With Andril’s betrayal at the last minute, Aden’s forces had been thrown into disarray, and Antonius seized the opportunity to press his advantage and secure victory.
Aden’s only achievement was reducing Antonius’s forces by around a hundred men.
“I am now the Count of Bruah!” Antonius shouted, holding Aden’s severed head aloft.
“Lord Antonius! Enemy sighted!”
Just then, a knight spotted us, but we were already crossing the bridge.
Preoccupied with their civil war, they had allowed us to easily cross the strategically important bridge. I saw Antonius’s look of surprise.
“S-Stop them! There aren’t many of them!”
It was a wise judgment. I had disbanded most of my forces to make them believe we were retreating. All that remained were the thirty cavalrymen I had borrowed from Dressten.
Antonius’s forces, though exhausted, still numbered close to two hundred.
They hadn’t lost many knights either. Thirty cavalrymen should have been an easy opponent for them.
‘That’s what he thinks.’
But was it really? I, a knight capable of single-handedly defeating several knights, led the charge, followed by thirty heavily armored knights of a Margrave.
It was the perfect setup for a devastating shock tactic.
I swung my sword at the enemy knight who bravely charged towards me. Was he a new recruit who hadn’t participated in the jousting tournament? He recklessly raised his sword to block my blow.
Sparks flew, and the knight’s face paled as he realized the immense force behind my swing.
But it was too late. The Trolls Blade shattered his sword and cleaved through his body, nearly severing his torso.
He died without a scream. His only consolation was that he wouldn’t be alone for long. His comrades would soon join him.
“Exterminate the enemy!”
The enemy ranks, unable to withstand my charge, broke, and the heavily armored knights, seizing the opportunity, began to crush their opponents.
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That’s why we have to calculate everything in war😏
