章 254: The Grave of Swords (2)
Crisp.
The parchment, dried out by the salt, crumbled.
A familiar handwriting appeared on it.
'Dear Brother C' – With the concern of my younger brother Hugo.
Vikir first checked the letter's sender.
As expected, it was Hugo Le Baskervilles. This was not surprising, as the seal on the letter was for top military secrets that could only be handled by the head of the House.
But there was something odd.
"... and your brother?"
Hugo was clearly the eldest son of the Baskervilles and the head of the House. But was there anyone else he could call brother?
It was unthinkable, even within the family.
Suddenly, Vikir's mind flashed back to something Hugo had once said.
'It's okay to eat for free.'
'Hehehe. That is correct. This father also worked hard to become the eldest son when he became the head of the family.'
This was part of a conversation I had once when I was beating the crap out of the triplets Highbro, Midbro, and Lowbro.
The first time I heard this, I wondered if being the oldest son could be considered trying.
But now I get it.
Hugo was not the eldest son, but he became the head of the family after killing or defeating all of his older brothers in a desperate power struggle.
In other words, he became the eldest son by accident.
Was there still anyone left that Hugo could humbly refer to as his brother and call him his brother? That's the question.
'If I think about it, there's probably not much left.'
Vikir read the letter in its entirety, searching his pre-regression memory.
My fifteen-year-old son has just returned from two years of surviving alone in the jungle of the Red and Black Mountains.
Therefore, I am planning to organize a small dinner, and if you are able, I hope you will be able to attend and honor him.
It has been a long time since we have seen each other.
The return of my brother, the most powerful of the Seven Counts, would certainly be a great boost to the family in itself.
I look forward to hearing from you.
In short, the letter said that Vikir had survived from the jungle, and to come to the great banquet.
Vikir looked at the letter and stroked his chin.
It wasn't as old as Vikir thought, and he'd never seen Hugo write so formally before.
Now he realized who this letter was supposed to be addressed to.
'Dear Mr. C. And the Seventh Count....'
In iron-blooded swordman Baskerville, there are seven counts who spend their days in battle.
The world calls them the Seven Counts.
The position is a very old one, dating back to the Warring States Period, before the founding of the Rock Empire, when the continent was a mess of colorful jellies on a map.
Back then, kings were just small provincial lords, and the current empire unites them all into one empire, and the Seven Houses.
For example, Baskerville, the iron-blooded swordsman, controls the barbarians in the wilderness, and Don Quixote, the spearman, controls the wandering tribes of the sea.
One House, One Nation.
A time when a single family was prosperous enough to function as a nation.
A time of chaos, when everything was gradually merging into one empire and seven families.
This was actually the heyday of the Seven Counts system.
The Seven Counts were able to fight throughout the Western Front by mobilizing their family's military authority without the permission of the head of the family.
The seven-headed carriage that led the golden age of the Baskervilles, when monsters, barbarians, and other families were all afraid of the teeth of the crazy fighting dog.
But after the Empire unified the continent, the battlefield on a grand scale disappeared.
Smaller, localized wars have always existed, but not with the same chaos.
Chaos on a massive scale, where entire old bloodlines disappeared and dozens of castles collapsed in a single day.
With the end of the era of the great wars, the power of the Seven Counts naturally diminished.
So sometimes the old Baskervilles in the Senate would reminisce about the past and remember the 'Seven Counts of those days'.
Anarchy. The seven teeth of the sword that ran through the battlefield without anyone paying attention, that freedom, that romance.
Their argument was that this was the true Seven Count. The current politicians who are only focused on political warfare do not deserve to be called the Seven Counts.
'Certainly, those were the days when the power and might of the seven counts was truly household.'
Vikir thought back to the past.
When Vikir had returned to Baskerville after his time with Balak, Hugo had held a great banquet in his honor.
Those invited at that time were the current Seven Counts, the seven knight commanders who enjoyed the most powerful power after Lord of the House and Young Lord of the House.
Each and every one of them wanted to take Vikir into their order, which is why they all wanted to attend the banquet, which was not usually attended.
'Isabella' Le Baskervilles, Leader of the Doberman Knights.
'German' Le Baskervilles, leader of the Shepherd Knights.
'Metzgerhund' Le Baskerville, Leader of the Rottweiler Knights.
'Cu-Chulainn' Le Baskervilles, Leader of the Wolfhound Knights.
And even Boston Terrier Le Baskerville, leader of the Pitbull Knights, and Great Dane Le Baskerville, leader of the Mastiff Knights.
However, due to distance and time, only the Count of Boston Terriers, the leader of the Pit Bull Knight, and the Count of Great Danes, the leader of the Mastiff Knights, actually attended the Great Banquet.
'... Later, Cindiwendy told me that the number of Seven Counts who wanted to attend was six.'
Indeed. In fact, when Vikir returned from the Depht of the Red and Black Mountain, there were only six of the Seven Counts who wanted to attend the Great Banquet, not all of them.
That's because one of the seven had turned his back on the world and gone into hiding.
Although he had long since lost contact, he was the strongest and oldest of the seven.
Countless letters and messengers were sent by the Baskervilles in an attempt to determine his whereabouts, but none were returned.
And even from those who went to deliver the letters.
So the perception was that there were really only six of them.
"..., the unreachable seventh count, this must be him."
Vikir could clearly identify the person the letter was referring to.
A being that Hugo calls 'Brother C'.
He was the only one of the current seventh counts to have a name among the old seventh counts.
He was the last of the original seventh counts, the one who lived through the turbulence of the Warring States.
Even Hugo, who had killed all his brothers and ascended to the position of Lord of the House, could not do anything about it until the end.
This was CaneCorso Le Baskerville.
* * *
Vikir had a clear idea of why the unnamed pit bull that delivered his letters died.
Whiiiiing-
A terrifying storm sweeps across the desert.
The grains of white salt sand that twist along with the wind spread across like a huge castle wall, sweeping away and drying out everything.
It's an extremely dry season, and everything that touches it is stripped of moisture and dried to a crumb, soon to be shredded by sharp grains of sand.
Vikir walked through it, wrapped in his black cloak.
'It's certainly tough, for sure Graduators will die.'
It was hard enough to simply survive, but if a Basilisk, an S-ranked Dangerous Monster, came at you, you would truly have no choice but to die.
Even if you're a top-notch Combat Pro of the Graduator.
Caw!
A large crow flies across the sky.
They are targeting the corpse of Vikir, who died after being caught in a storm.
But even the crows in the sky can't escape the power of the salt storm.
Failing to calculate the distance, the huge bird of prey's neck and wings were snapped by the force of the storm, and soon began to be salted while floating in the air.
…Pow!
Soon, the crow's dried-up mummy lay on the ground.
Its entire body was broken and crushed, but it had been killed by the rapid dehydration that had occurred before.
"...Hmm. If there were Basilisks, I wouldn't have gotten in either."
Vikir muttered as he made his way through the storm.
He was barely making it through with his body strengthened by the River Styx and the magical regeneration he had absorbed from Beelzebub.
...How many hours had passed?
As I broke through the salt storm, I saw something strange in the center of what had been a white sandy field.
A tower. A black tower.
It was a strange, bizarre structure that could only be described this way.
Shaped like an awl sticking out of the ground, contained both the black color of the night sky and the red color of blood.
The cold metallic material of its walls was unidentifiable, and its height was impossible to guess.
However, what was certain was that inside this tower in front of Vikir was an extremely high-level spatial distortion magic that was incomparable to the one in the Magic Tower.
"... This actually existed."
Vikir had certainly seen this tower before.
Not with the naked eye, but briefly in his pre-regression childhood, when he had just escaped from the Cradle of Swords, in his infantile liberal arts classes.
It was a figment of imagination, a fictional entity that always appeared on the margins of textbook pages when we studied the family mythology of the Baskervilles.
But here it was, standing tall and real.
"...!"
Upon reaching the tower, Vikir saw the words crudely carved by someone with a sword in front of the supposed entrance.
'The Grave of Swords.'
From cradle to grave.
It must be someone's dying words.
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