Chapter 130

That °• N ?? v ?? l i g h t •° was right.

Princess Aisha’s husband had not been decided yet.

Not receiving a reply to a marriage proposal could also be taken as rejection, but...

If Princess Aisha sees our handsome son in person at the event, who knows how her feelings might change?

The same thought occurred to everyone at once.

“Forget buying fur for myself. I should buy plenty of clothes for my son instead. You never know what might happen from now on, hohoho!”

“Oh my, Viscountess. By the way, did you know? At a book club only young ladies are allowed to join, my son ranked first in a vote for the most handsome young lord.”

“My goodness. Those young ladies must never have had a proper look at my son.”

Flames began burning in the eyes of the ladies who were quite confident in their sons’ looks.

Only then did high society firmly latch onto the most entertaining part of this event.

Forget monsters and training—the nobles began excitedly speculating over which young lord would capture Princess Aisha’s heart.

The once-quiet social scene came alive.

But the Kreutz ducal castle, despite being the center of all that attention, had no idea any of this was happening.

***

One week before the monster training center’s completion ceremony.

Knox returned to the ducal castle alone.

The servants made a tremendous fuss about seeing him again after ten years and wanted to throw a party, but Knox politely declined and quietly went to Calypse’s office.

He intended to scold Kyle for barging into the ducal castle without permission.

But.

“...Kyle never came.”

“Pardon? But I was clearly told he left before I did.”

“If he had arrived, there would already have been an uproar around Aisha. Didn’t he wander off somewhere else along the way?”

There was no way.

Actually, I secretly went to spy on that girl Aisha. She had a huge pile of marriage proposals, so I told him the truth. Then he suddenly said he didn’t care even if she got married and that he could just become her dog or something, and he ran off.

What? You spied on Princess Aisha?

Yeah. Kyle said Assistant Knox was intercepting the letters that girl sent him. So I only went because he asked me to. If you’re going to scold someone, scold him. I just did what I was told.

And apparently Kyle had known for quite some time that House Kreutz was intercepting the letters between him and Aisha.

Kyle rarely showed his emotions on his face, so Knox had simply assumed he was fine.

But if Asbon had described him like that, Kyle must have completely lost his reason.

It’s probably going to take quite a while to rebuild his trust. What am I supposed to do?

For once, Knox felt somewhat uneasy.

In truth, he had never been someone who spent much time worrying about relationships between people.

Working as an assistant to House Kreutz, following Kyle into the snowfield—

he had done both because immersing himself in monster research suited him far better than constantly dealing with people.

But perhaps he had grown attached to Kyle over the years, because Kyle had begun to weigh on his mind.

“Anyway, you must have had a difficult journey. Rest today. Go say hello to Aisha and Lucas too.”

“...No.”

Fortunately, his uncomfortable thoughts vanished thanks to his master’s considerate words.

“Since I’m already here, I’ll give you the reports I haven’t been able to send by message.”

Knox wiped his snow-dampened monocle with a towel and began delivering the reports he had been unable to send before.

“First, there are three major matters to report. One is that so-called ‘mutations’ have begun appearing among the monsters—ones that do not obey Kyle’s commands. We saw more of them the deeper we traveled into the snowfield.”

“You said there were one or two of those before. There were far more than that?”

“There seem to be more the farther north we go. Conversely, the closer we get to the Kreutz ducal castle, the more docile monsters we find.”

“Then the monsters we’ve been subjugating all this time were comparatively tame.”

There were also the civilized monsters they had not yet properly encountered, the lives of the snow-dwellers, and the newly discovered species.

“That’s everything I’ve recorded so far. We’ll need to study the civilized monsters further, but since His Majesty Grace said she’ll also be attending the monster training center’s completion ceremony, I think it would be best to report the details then.”

Knox flipped through the papers to make sure there was nothing he had recorded but forgotten to report.

Fortunately, the report seemed perfect, with nothing omitted.

“Now that I’ve finished reporting, I’ll visit my laboratory for the first time in a while.”

“Wait.”

That was when Calypse’s low voice sounded behind Knox as he was about to leave the office.

“Is something wrong?”

Knox turned his head and adjusted his monocle.

The report had undoubtedly been flawless, without a single mistake, yet Calypse somehow looked troubled.

“You said you’re going to the laboratory?”

“Yes.”

“Without resting?”

“Pardon? Yes. Since I’m already here, it would be better to finish my work as quickly as possible...”

“You still work like a man possessed.”

Calypse cut Knox off with a sigh.

“The attendants have already prepared bathwater for you. Take a bath, eat something, and get some sleep. You can go to the laboratory tomorrow morning.”

Knox raised an eyebrow and opened his mouth.

“Work like a man possessed? I can’t stay here for very long, so if I want to use my time more efficiently...”

His mouth snapped shut in shock halfway through the sentence.

What are you even going back for?

Kyle suddenly came to mind, overlapping with himself.

Maybe he turned out that way because I raised him like that.

...This is troublesome in more ways than one.

From the very beginning, Knox had regarded Kyle as half monster—in other words, as a research subject.

He had vowed to raise Kyle as a human, but the very fact that he had needed to make that vow meant he had not truly thought of Kyle as human in the first place.

It feels like I suddenly have a runaway child.

His head began to ache.

Where in the world had that bastard gone?

Surely he had not said all that and then abandoned the snowfield entirely out of a sense of betrayal.

“...Your Grace.”

“What?”

“Has Princess Aisha begun actively seeking a husband?”

Knox’s mouth moved before his mind could stop it.

Only afterward did he sigh, feeling awkward about having asked such a question, and sweep a hand through his hair.

But for some reason, Kyle’s face kept coming to mind.

The way his complexion had darkened every time he was told there was no letter.

And besides, Knox was personally curious about Aisha’s marriage situation too.

“Where did you hear that? Aisha may have marriage proposals, but she isn’t seeking a husband. Every proposal that arrived at the ducal castle was used as firewood.”

“Ah. I see.”

With his curiosity satisfied, Knox bowed his head and left the office.

He felt relieved, while at the same time irritated by the unpleasant sensation of worrying about someone.

***

The bitter cold of the north, where blizzards raged all year round, had begun to ease.

Spring had arrived.

It was a peaceful afternoon, and for once the snow had stopped.

“Hello, Princess. The weather has gotten so warm that I thought I’d take the Feris for a walk on the hill behind the estate for the first time in a while.”

“...Yeah. So warm. Warm enough that it wouldn’t be strange if someone melted to death.”

“Pardon?”

Ignoring Guide’s startled expression, I stared up at the bright sky with dull eyes.

It should be around this time.

[Flowers had begun to color the outskirts of the city. The people of the north, delighted that the blizzards had stopped, were beginning to pour out of their homes. Avin had been waiting for this moment.]

This was the point in the original novel when Avin, now nineteen years old, began his revenge in earnest.

After barely escaping House Pose and the Kingdom of Doctia, Avin tried to make a fresh start in the Frozen Kingdom, but failed.

The Frozen Kingdom’s royal court had already become thoroughly corrupt because of King Argen.

On top of that, once House Kreutz stopped conducting monster subjugations, monsters began flooding across the border, and the nobles’ dissatisfaction and anxiety grew day by day.

Avin took advantage of the situation, drawing the families that wanted to eliminate monsters to his side and building a base of support.

Families that wanted to eliminate monsters.

Put another way, families whose hatred of monsters had always been stronger than most.

In other words, from the perspective of House Kreutz—whose altered path now involved considering the possibility of coexistence with monsters—this was around the time when families that were practically their principal enemies would begin surfacing.

“Hmm. House Kreutz really does need to build a support base outside the north.”

Of course, His Majesty Grace was firmly established in the central region, but even that would hardly be enough to suppress the Kingdom of Doctia with ease.

We needed supporters.

Not people who merely liked us, but allies bound to us through firm contracts.

In that case...

I was still holding one marriage proposal I had not thrown away.

A very expensive-looking envelope bearing a silver shield.

“Good. I’ve decided.”