Chapter One Hundred: Eastward! Falev!

“Thank you for your generosity.” Lady Daina took the wooden box in both hands, her expression faintly composed.

As a noblewoman, she had to remain graceful and unruffled at all times.

The noble lady smiled slightly, stepped closer, and said in a voice only the two of them could hear, “This is a specially refined tallow. It can beautify and nourish the skin, and if taken long enough, it can even prolong one’s life.”

At those words, Lady Daina’s carefully maintained calm finally cracked. She took a step back, her face filled with shock and disbelief.

“This...”

“If you do not believe me, Madam, you may try it when you return,” the noble lady said with a smile.

Without giving Lady Daina another glance, she turned, lifted her wineglass lightly, and said, “The ball begins now. I hope everyone enjoys themselves.”

With that, she drained the red wine in a single swallow, then turned and left the aerial garden.

The assembled nobles were long since used to this. Though the Madam hosted many balls, she rarely attended them herself.

...

The palace was ablaze with light, crimson carpet covering the entire corridor, and stained-glass windows lining the walls.

Click, click, click...

The crisp sound of high heels striking the floor drew nearer and nearer, until the Countess of Lev, dressed in a red off-the-shoulder gown, arrived before a great door.

The guards on either side opened the door for her, lowering their heads and bowing slightly.

The stunning noblewoman walked straight in. Inside was a lavishly decorated chamber, filled with exquisite ornaments and priceless murals.

Ahead, on a large bed, the bedclothes rose and fell repeatedly, accompanied by sounds that stirred the imagination.

Without changing expression, the noblewoman sat down on the sofa, poured herself a glass of red wine, and crossed her pale, slender legs. The glass swayed gently in her hand as moonlight streamed in through the window.

No one knew how long had passed. Only when the last mouthful of wine slid down her throat did the movement on the bed finally cease.

“Hmph.” The noblewoman let out a contemptuous laugh.

A figure rose from the bed, casually throwing on a bathrobe before stepping out of the shadows.

It was a middle-aged man with a beer belly, a somewhat rounded build, sparse light-blond hair, and a warm, affable smile on his face.

Count Lev, the master of the Lev Territory, full name Lev Crit VIII.

“My dear wife, why did you not say you were coming?” Count Lev asked as he came to the sofa. He gently took his wife’s right hand and kissed the back of it with elegance.

The noblewoman watched all this coldly, then withdrew her hand and said, “If I had told you, would you have stopped?”

“I would have been quicker,” Count Lev replied.

Faced with this hopeless answer, the noblewoman did not grow angry. Instead, she said with a touch of sarcasm, “Quicker? With your skills, if you got any quicker, would you collapse the moment you touched me?”

“Oh, my dear wife, you may question my incompetence, but you cannot question my ability in that regard,” Count Lev said, once again seizing her right hand and rubbing it idly between his own.

“It seems we have neglected our time together for too long. We’ve grown a little rusty, my lady. Perhaps if we—”

Before he could finish, the noblewoman slapped his hand away. Her expression cooled further, and clear disgust filled her eyes.

“Hmph. I have no interest in your slab of fat. Besides, I did not come here to trade barbs.”

“What are you planning to do about the Eastern Grand Duke?”

The Eastern Grand Duke was a duke who seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. By all rights, he should never have sat in that position, yet due to one reason and another, the great nobles of the kingdom had ultimately been forced to acknowledge his legitimacy.

To put it more bluntly, the Eastern Territories had been sacrificed.

Recognizing the Eastern Grand Duke’s legal status had brought them no direct loss, but for the nobles within the eastern lands, it was a tremendous threat. He was now their nominal lord, and no amount of personal denial could alter that. Which meant that once he had the strength, he could cast them down from their titles at any time.

Count Lev was not the least bit vexed by the rejection. On the contrary, he sat down on the sofa with complete indifference.

“What else can be done? Let that Eastern Grand Duke do as he pleases. His title is basically already set; we cannot change it. Unless you can crawl into His Majesty the King’s bed and persuade him to withdraw the royal decree.”

“Do you really believe the nonsense those people are spouting, that we should all unite to isolate and ignore the Eastern Grand Duke?” The noblewoman looked at Count Lev as though he were a fool.

“You may avoid him for a while, but can you avoid him forever? So long as we remain on eastern soil, sooner or later he will come looking for us.”

That plan, supposedly devised jointly by the kingdom’s great nobles, was something only an idiot would believe in. In plain terms, they meant to use the eastern lords as bait to test his strength.

If the Eastern Grand Duke made any move at all, the first to suffer would be them.

Count Lev poured himself another glass of wine and waved a hand dismissively.

“Is there not still that Count Dain fellow? Though of humble origin, his strength is undeniably formidable, and the order of knights under him is very strong indeed. He ought to be able to hold off the Eastern Grand Duke.”

“And besides, he has no reason to attack us. The King would never permit war between a count and a duke. Moreover, vast forests and mountains lie between us, with no roads for an army to pass. What, is he supposed to fly over?”

Count Lev actually knew full well that the others were using him as a shield, sending him forward to probe just how much strength the Eastern Grand Duke possessed. There was no helping it; his territory lay in the east, so he could only count himself unlucky.

“And afterward?” the noblewoman asked.

“Afterward...” Count Lev drained the wine in his glass, wiped his mouth, and revealed a confident smile.

“That black-hearted duke will have no afterward. Soon he’ll be buried beneath a flood of refugees, and his entire territory will descend into chaos. Without the King or the Hunters’ Guild, he is nothing. And now he’s issuing summonses? Who does he think he is?”

“He’s nothing but a black-haired upstart who rode that harlot princess to the King’s favor. What does he have to be so smug about?”

As if he had found a place to vent, Count Lev began spewing filth without restraint.

Seeing the count like this, the noblewoman could not help rubbing her forehead. He was not, in truth, a fool; in many respects he was a competent lord. His only flaw was an excessively jealous nature.

He was easily swayed by emotion, and at times his mind would simply jam.

Still, what he said was not wrong. With Count Dain in the way, the other side could not possibly launch an attack in the short term. Besides, a vast stretch of rugged hills lay between them, barren and desolate, with no road for an army to travel. If they truly intended to strike the Lev Territory, they would have to pass through Count Barret’s lands.

The Eastern Grand Duke stood in the most barren region of the entire kingdom. No matter how great his ability, it would be of no use.

For the moment, they could do nothing to the Eastern Grand Duke. After all, the King had his back.

“All right, what you say does make sense. But what about the missing town in the territory? You drove away all the original inhabitants there. Rebuilding it will take a great deal of time.”

“We can talk about that later. Anyway, these wretches are like weeds; cut one crop down and another springs up. At worst, we can drive a batch of people over from somewhere else.”

...

One month later, at the edge of a plain in the Lev Territory, several wild rabbits played together.

A gentle breeze passed through, and the bright green grass bowed its head.

This was a fairly fertile stretch of meadow. Ordinarily, shepherds would surely have driven their flocks here, yet now there was not a person in sight, not even a single sheep.

Then, suddenly, a thunderous rumble came from within the forest. The ground began to shake, and towering trees toppled one after another.

Startled by the sudden change, the rabbits scurried into their burrows.

Bang!

As a tree at the very edge of the forest crashed down, one figure after another emerged from the woods.

They were all laborers, dusty and grimy, wearing blue uniforms, their faces exhausted.

Looking at the broad new world before them, every worker raised the shovel in his hand and let out a thunderous cheer.

“We did it!”

The weariness on every face slowly faded, replaced by a surge of exhilaration.

After cutting through thorns and thickets, after sleeping in the open and braving wind and dew, they had finally opened this road, a road that verged on the miraculous.

Looking back at the path behind them, something strange rose in every heart, and a feeling known as pride welled up within them. For the first time in their lives, they stood tall.

They had done it.

With their own strength, they had accomplished what the noble lords could not.

“Eastward! Strike Lev!”