Medieval Knight System: Building the Strongest Empire Ever!

Chapter 319: Someone Tried to Abduct Viola!

The court clergy of Breisburg had to hurry over to Radensdorf. In the old days, the Church would have unilaterally set the place and schedule. It was proof that the Church’s authority was wavering.

I’d been granted the privilege, if you could call it that, of skipping the ceremonies and the triumphal celebration, but right now, reporting this newly discovered conspiracy to the grand duke mattered more than any of that.

Fortunately, I wasn’t turned away at the door.

After Louis died, the grand duke had barred all audiences for a time.

Even if Louis had joined hands with Duke Altringen and raised a rebellion, he was still a wound on the grand duke’s heart. The grand duke I saw at the funeral hadn’t let it show, but he was undoubtedly grieving.

Hearing my report, the grand duke looked dumbfounded.

"There’s never a quiet day around you, Baron."

"It seems to be the fate the Lord has assigned me."

That’s just my lot in life, I suppose.

I pull one thread of suspicion and it unravels into a major incident. Call me a bloodhound and I’d have no comeback, but walking past what’s right in front of my eyes just isn’t in my nature.

"To think poisonous mushrooms were sprouting where no one could see."

"Human greed knows no end, and men repeat the same mistakes."

"Oho, your own words, Baron? Far better than some half-baked philosopher."

"I merely put the current situation into words."

"A most fitting expression. Is it not said that man is a creature of sin?"

The grand duke seemed to like that line. It came from the internet, but few sayings strike the heart so keenly, and it matched our situation exactly. Like moths diving into the flame, never knowing they might die.

The schemers had apparently thrown the lessons of the civil war to the dogs.

Chewing over greed and mistakes, the grand duke stood by the window.

He didn’t press me on the heart of the matter—the relationship between Viola and Louis. No, there was no need to ask. The grand duke already knew that Louis had entrusted Viola to me.

But he hadn’t known about Count Palatine Heinlein lurking behind Viola and Ivan. Which was only natural. Even with a formidable intelligence network like Hoenir, no one can know everything in the duchy.

"You said you’ve mobilized your subordinate nobles to investigate?"

"Yes. It’s thanks to their digging that Count Heinlein approached me."

"A bold and crafty old man. What would you have us do, Baron?"

The grand duke asked me for my plan going forward. Unlike before, the grand duke now asked my opinion first before deciding. I’d answer with all sincerity, but the weight of trust can be a burden at times.

"If it were up to me, I’d smash them before they can band together."

"You could resolve it easily enough, Baron, but that would only scatter the rats. We can’t have them carrying the plague from place to place."

"Hunting down scattered rats happens to be my specialty."

As long as I had the Searcher Scouter, escaping me was impossible.

But the grand duke, who couldn’t have known that, worried about tipping our hand.

"Baron, how about we try something a bit more refined?"

Rather than crushing them right away, the grand duke seemed to be thinking of casting bait. He meant to land a trophy fish, but at present we didn’t even know who the trophy was.

Count Heinlein was far too small to be called a trophy catch.

Now, if the Finance Minister or a prince were tangled up in this, that would be a prize catch indeed.

"Your Highness is a master angler, so allow me to serve as the bait. If I press them relentlessly, every eye will fix itself on me. Use that opening to take what you want, Your Highness."

"You’ve never once moved as the enemy predicted, Baron. Isn’t that your greatest strength?"

Count Palatine Heinlein had been watching us from the moment my men began investigating, and he was bold enough to visit me in person just to scout me out. I’d seen through him from the moment he so casually introduced that Boden wine.

And he was meticulous enough to have schemed to secure the prince’s illegitimate child through Viola. Their misfortune was that Louis had sent Viola to me, and that I had absolutely no intention of letting this be buried.

"I look forward to your struggle, Baron. Read this scroll when you return."

"Does this scroll contain a scheme brilliant enough to knock me flat?"

"Instead of a scheme, it contains information you’ll covet, Baron."

The grand duke smiled meaningfully. Every time this man smiles in that unnerving way, there’s something behind it. Back at the mansion, I unrolled the grand duke’s scroll, like a sealed set of secret orders meant to be opened at just the right moment.

"So there was a reason he never executed the Finance Minister."

The scroll was a letter sent to the grand duke by Clara, the head of Hoenir in Breisburg. Count Reinfeldt, the Finance Minister, still hadn’t given up his grip on power.

Can a man obsessed with power truly sink this low? The Finance Minister was plotting to eliminate Adelbert, had made contact with the cornered queen, and was drawing in various fallen nobles.

Trying to kill even his own son for power. No, perhaps it was an ending foretold from the moment he began seeing his son as a rival. Clara, who had remained in Breisburg, had caught it all.

Fortunately, Adelbert has Inspector General Mort.

As Adelbert’s schemer, there’s no way Mort failed to notice the Finance Minister’s movements. After all, their greatest political enemy was never us. It was the Finance Minister.

Surely Mort hadn’t been careless in watching a Finance Minister who could barely move. And if he had been careless? Becoming a headless ghost takes only an instant. I know the terror of intrigue better than anyone.

The civil war had ended, but peace had not come.

There’s no end to the greedy who reach for power.

So how should I make use of this information? Rather than suppressing them in advance, the grand duke wanted to gather all the poisonous mushrooms gnawing at the duchy into one place and burn them. Which meant this information had to be used as bait.

"Louis suffers even in death."

Louis had wished for his child to live a peaceful life, but fate cursed him. I felt genuine pity for him. At this rate, far from peace, the child had become a spark of conflict before even being born.

No, the birth of the illegitimate child had been Count Heinlein’s design from the very start.

Perhaps the reason Louis wanted to give the child a peaceful life was that he’d sensed Count Heinlein’s ambitions. With his own disposition for conspiracy, Louis must have smelled something filthy.

The reason Louis chose me as the noble to protect his own flesh and blood came from his belief that only the Streit baronial family, loyal to Altringen, could keep the child safe. I felt the full weight of that trust.

But I couldn’t say why he never told me any of this. Louis was already dead, so his true intentions were lost forever. As I turned it over in my mind, Anton rushed in.

"Baron, someone tried to abduct Viola!"

"They moved faster than I expected. Bold ones, indeed."

Anticipating an abduction attempt against the Rijeka family from the start, I’d already dispatched a squad of the Gale Knights. That they attempted it anyway suggested the count was now quite desperate.

He must have learned of my contact with the grand duke as well.

To them, I was the greatest threat, after all.

"From the sound of it, the kidnapper got away. Am I right?"

"My apologies! He fled into the slums, and we simply couldn’t catch him."

Radensdorf had slums too.

No, there isn’t a big city anywhere without them. Runaway serfs, criminals, beggars, lepers, prostitutes, and the like made up the bottom rung and formed a small society of their own.

It’s also the perfect place to hide from the guards’ eyes, and on top of that, this wasn’t Breisburg, our home turf. So holding my men responsible for losing the kidnapper would be unreasonable.

"They were extremely careful ones. They tried to divide our attention and snatch Viola, but thankfully Alex blocked it in time, so she’s unharmed."

Draw attention to one side, then strike the other. A textbook misdirection. It also happened to be my favorite tactic. And it was the very plan the grand duke and I had in mind as well.

If they’d fled into the slums, I might normally have stopped at a thorough, time-consuming search, but these people had underestimated me. Because I have a history of mercilessly wrecking the slums of Breisburg.

A simple, blunt method, but the most effective one.

Better yet, I had a splendid justification.

Criminals of the slums had dared to attempt the abduction of a prince’s handmaid. The enraged prince decided to strike the slums. Who could possibly object to that? If anything, the citizens would welcome it.

Count Heinlein could never have imagined I’d flip the board with such a brute-force move. I immediately sent Anton to ask Michael to surround the slums.