Chapter 377: It Feels Like Years
I ordered my men to prepare for the return to Feuzen.
My heart was pounding.
I could finally go home.
Last of all, I paid Mort a visit. I wanted to tell him about the map before we left. If Mort knew the place, wouldn’t he be able to pinpoint it easily? Honestly, I was more curious about his reaction.
Perhaps because he hadn’t been tortured yet, Mort was in relatively decent shape.
But there was a thick murderous glint in his blazing eyes.
"I was under the impression the interrogation was over. Is there something more you wish to ask me?"
"I’ve come into possession of a strange map connected to you. It wasn’t easy to get."
I showed Mort the map. At first he stared at it in bewilderment, unable to make sense of it, but the moment he realized what it was, his eyes flew open. It must have been something beyond his imagination.
"Where in the world did you get this? Something like this shouldn’t exist."
"That’s none of your concern. What I want to know is the exact location."
"And you think I’ll tell you?"
"The southern mountains are uncharted, but hunter families and forest keepers live there. Even if you say nothing, I need only mobilize them. It may take time, but I will find the place without fail."
"..."
Mort was wavering. He must have been wondering how the map came to be made in the first place, and why I of all people had it. Everything about it must have been a mystery to him.
Someone connected to Mort was clearly living in the log cabin the map marked. What Mort feared, I suspected, was that something he had been hiding would come to the surface.
"There is nothing you want there, Baron."
"Even if there’s nothing, now that the map is in my hands, I can’t help wanting to see for myself."
"There’s no hidden treasure, and yet you still insist on going?"
"I believe it’s worth my time."
Even if no treasure was hidden there, would the quest have handed me this map as a reward for nothing?
The map’s reward might turn out to be nothing more than points or assorted items, but I might also discover something entirely unexpected. The System never wastes my time.
"...I will help you avoid squandering your precious time, Baron. In exchange, accept my condition. If you refuse, then I wash my hands of this."
"Hmm, let’s hear the condition first."
"Protect my younger brother."
A brother? As far as I knew, Mort was the only legitimate son of his house. A brother, then, could only mean a bastard. Bastards were so utterly commonplace in noble families that it hardly fazed me.
Cases like Bodo’s were the rare ones.
"Your brother has been living in a place like this?"
"Rather than live despised as a bastard, he chose to live quietly out there. It’s so deep in the wilderness that one cannot easily set foot there. It lies in the very heart of a vast forest."
"Acknowledging a bastard as your brother. That’s unexpected."
"He may be a lowly bastard, but he is one of the few people I could ever truly open up to."
"When you die, the Mort line will end. Are you asking me to protect your heir?"
"Quite the opposite. A house like this is better off gone."
Mort smiled cynically.
I had no way of knowing what his family history was like. I didn’t want to know, either, but at the very least, there was no doubt that Mort cursed his own house. That was why he thought of the bastard as a true brother.
"That much I can grant. I’ll turn a blind eye to your family’s bastard."
"I trust you will keep your word. If you break it, I will curse you from purgatory."
"I have never once broken a promise. So no curse will be coming my way."
"...The place where my brother lives is..."
I got the exact location out of Mort and recorded the route there. I didn’t know what secret the bastard was hiding, but I had made a promise, so I would look the other way.
Before ending the visit, I asked him one last thing.
Why had Mort stayed with Viscount Neunil to the very end?
They were partners, yes, but were they truly close enough to stand together until the bitter end? If anything, wasn’t Viscount Neunil the very man who ruined Mort? And yet Mort had stayed with him.
"You certainly are full of questions. Well, I’m a dead man anyway, so what’s left to hide? I had a beautiful older sister. Then one day, a drunkard sold her to Viscount Neunil as a mistress. For a mere handful of gold coins."
"Sold her as a mistress? Is that even possible?"
It was extremely common for the daughter of a poor noble to be married off, practically sold, to a noble from a wealthy family, but being taken not as a wife but as a mistress was another matter entirely.
Mort spat the word drunkard with contempt. He was speaking of his own father.
"But do you know what the funny part is? My sister lived happily at the Neunil viscounty. It was I, the one left behind in the house of Mort, who had to endure all the suffering."
"Hmm, so that’s why you despised your own house."
She had essentially been sold off as Viscount Neunil’s plaything, and yet she lived happily there? Just how rotten was the house of Mort, then? Life under that roof must have been worse than a slave’s.
Since no trace of the sister turned up anywhere, Mort and the Neunil viscounty must have hidden her thoroughly. Mort said flatly that she had died of illness not long ago.
"I pity your unhappy fate, but you cannot escape death."
"At this point, I don’t regret the path I chose."
This would be the last time I ever saw him.
He would either die at the executioner’s hands or be banished.
"All preparations are complete."
When I returned to Rosengarden, my men had finished getting ready for the journey home.
Beort had stayed behind to keep the peace in Breisach, but once the duchy’s army relieved him, he would come to Rosenheim. Drek and Ferke seemed giddy at the thought of visiting their liege’s domain for the first time.
After all, it might become their new home in place of Breisburg. Anton was in high spirits about returning home after so long, and Ted was being awfully friendly with a nervous Ivan.
Trying to score points because Ivan is Viola’s father, are you?
What Barosi and Herto cared about was the land where they would settle.
For now, I had Ladwig or Leben in Baschurten in mind as candidates, but with the territorial negotiations dragging on, it was looking difficult. In that case, I would simply have to build them a new village.
Bodo couldn’t come to see us off. He was probably having a hectic time at the Viscounty of Elsheimer right about now. Once Göring joined us and the carriages were ready, we finally left Breisburg behind.
We were heading back in such a rush that I couldn’t prepare gifts for the people of my domain, but I had at least picked up presents in the east for Hilda and the handmaids who had worked so hard. The moment we crossed into the borderlands, I could almost smell roses in the air.
"It feels like I’ve been gone for years."
"Is this your domain, Master?"
Viola, poking her head out of the carriage, looked thoroughly excited. It was colder here than in the mild east, but it was the sort of place where the heart could rest easy. Well, Feuzen was my home, so of course it felt that way.
In reality, it had been just under two months. Hilda was now entering her tenth week of pregnancy. Would her belly be showing a little by then? Had I known it would come to this, I would have studied up on pregnancy.
We really had raced back breathlessly to make it home before the new year. Maybe my heart eased as we entered Rosenheim’s territory because these lands now truly felt like mine.
Once back in Feuzen, I would rest with Hilda for a few days, then prepare to move to Rosenheim. On top of that, the work never ended, from settling the Hungarian company members to building the Vintenheim harbor.
Still, it was all for the development of my domain, which beat toiling away in foreign lands any day. Incidentally, I also safely received the 450 gold coins Louis had paid as the price for protecting Viola and his child.
I had to sign a mountain of paperwork at the Medici Bank, but for 450 gold coins I signed away happily without a single complaint. I had become such a major client that the branch manager himself came out to see me off.
The gold I had deposited with the bank alone exceeded 1,000 coins.
Thanks to that, a Medici Bank branch was set to open in Rosenheim once again. There had been one back when Baron Constance ruled the area, but after his death the branch declined and eventually withdrew.
These days, I hear loan sharks have swallowed up Rosenheim’s finances.
I plan to deal with them soon. Illegal usury obviously has to be rooted out.
In any case, the bank’s return was welcome news.
Counting the ransoms I had yet to collect, the total would grow to around 1,200 coins. I had secured more than enough funds for the harbor’s construction, which meant I now met the minimum requirements to enter the Main River trade.
On top of that, my points had surpassed 120,000. I looked forward to seeing how the domain would transform through various passive skills and investments. As I contentedly pictured the future of my lands, we at last entered Rosenheim.
"Welcome home, my lord. It is truly good to have you back."
Waiting for me was the military officer, August von Einbeck.
The moment I saw his face, I was overjoyed.