Glen Zenard was the guest residing in the Flaud Estate for the past couple of days. With his title as a Karuwiman Honorary Holy Knight, he had solved a couple of the Count’s concerns and was staying at the estate in return for his deeds. Furthermore, he was now helping them on a very important mission during his stay.
“So how was the Steelwall Estate?” Glen asked. His eyes shone greedily like a snake flicking his tongue in front of prey. However, it was gone in an instant—so quickly that even Klint, whose head worked especially well in corrupt and dirty matters, didn’t notice.
“There weren’t any signs of what we were looking for.”
“Is that so?” Glen said calmly, but inwardly, he was scowling. He thought, ‘Still not yet?’
It seemed like he needed to employ a few more subordinates, and after deciding this, Glen stopped paying attention to Klint. In the first place, Glen rarely gave attention to extras unless there was something he wanted from them, and these extras were nothing more than tools that made him shine brighter. Yet, what Klint said next attracted Glen’s attention again.
“The only special thing that happened was that the Steelwall family’s eldest son came back.”
“…Steelwall’s eldest son?”
“Yes. Zich Steelwall. He is our Count’s grandson. I heard he left the family because of their broken relationship, but when I went to the estate, he was there, And…” Klint recalled Zich’s attitude toward him and gritted his teeth. “His personality was really trashy. As expected of someone with the lowly blood of Steelwalls running through their veins.”
Klint insulted Zich and then stared at the Flaud Estate. “Let’s continue our conversation next time. I have to report to the Count first.”
“Yes, sorry for keeping you here when you are busy. Please go.”
Klint bowed his head slightly to Glen and went inside the mansion. Glen was all alone now, and his mind seemed to whirl.
‘Zich Moore returned to Steelwall?’ Normally, Zich should’ve never returned to Steelwall after leaving once. In the past regressions, Zich had lived without paying any attention to his ex-family. Yet, apparently, he was now back at the Steelwall Estate.
‘Is this also a changed variable?’ Glen didn’t feel too downcast about this though. This timeline had been way off its normal tracks so far that this level of change seemed like nothing. Instead, the news made him happy since originally, Zich wasn’t part of Steelwalls’ fall. Glen had annihilated Zich’s birth family in the previous regressions so that Zich’s origins would be muddied even further. The fact that Zich didn’t care for his family at all didn’t matter to Glen, and Glen did so to simply fulfill his personal, vulgar satisfactions. Glen also thought the main tool for his plan, the Flaud family from Zich’s mother’s side, was especially fitting for the whole storyline. Thrilled by these prospects, Glen placed considerable care into bringing Steelwall to ruins even when the plan didn’t involve making Demon People or helping him become a hero.
Above all, the reason why Glen simply came here for the sole reason of destroying Zich’s birthplace was that Zich dared to surpass him in fame and began to be praised as a hero. In other words, he was just taking his frustration and anger out through this plan. Although Steelwall’s fall was supposed to happen a bit later, timely plans were useless in this timeline now. He didn’t care about it anymore and decided to just get rid of Steelwall early.
‘I will show that I am the true hero this time!’ Glen clenched his fist tightly and circled his mana around slightly. He felt an enormous flow of mana that was incomparable to the amount he felt before. Glen also felt his body ache, but he ignored that feeling. He just wanted to boast to the whole world of the new power he gained, especially to Zich.
‘I am going to push my plan forward even more.’ His slave might protest about this decision, but that was none of his concern. A slave only needed to do what his master told him to do and prepare a smooth path for his master.
‘Just you wait!’ Glen thought, swearing to show Zich his superiority for sure this time while bringing a flashy fall for Steelwall.
* * *
Since Greig was becoming used to duels, Zich was decreasing the frequency of their battles. Of course, the biggest reason for this change was that Zich was getting sick of beating up Greig.
‘Is it about time for me to go monster hunting with him?’ Zich thought it was about time for him to progress his plan of showing Greig the greatness of his older brother. Although the Countess might protest against this plan, it was the Count’s job to deal with her.
‘There’s a difference between beating him up directly and tossing him around to make him suffer. With the latter, I can enjoy it a bit more.’ Zich smiled devilishly.
“Ah, Sir Zich!” Snoc walked toward Zich from far away. He was with Elena, and it seemed like the two had gone out together. Zich’s party obviously didn’t move as a group every day, and these days, the party members went in pairs in set ways: Zich and Lyla, Hans and Lara, and Snoc and Elena. Of course, the members went in groups of twos or fours from time to time or with other people, but this was the most common combination.
“Are you guys coming back from a date?” Zich asked them.
“No, we aren’t.”
“We aren’t.”
Snoc and Elena firmly denied Zich’s joke. However, seeing how Nowem sighed deeply while lying on his back on Snoc’s shoulder, it showed that it was only those two who didn’t realize what was going on. Zich thought of teasing them a bit more, but decided against it. Very generously, he decided to leave these two innocent young ones alone.
“Fine, I’ll believe you,” Zich said and was going to pass them by like this, but Snoc stopped him.
“Sir Zich.”
“What?”
“It might be nothing big, but there is a strange rumor going around in the city.”
“Rumor?” Zich turned around his body. There was no way that Snoc would mention this to him if he wanted to tell Zich fruitless gossip like who cheated on who, or which shop sold cheaper goods and which shop didn’t. “What is it?”
“There’s a rumor that Count Steelwall is secretly a Bellid who worships Bellu, and there are hidden Bellid shrines all around the Steelwall Estate. Moreover, there is an extremely large Bellid temple right here in Violsa.”
“What ridiculous nonsense.” Zich picked his ears.
Zich definitely hated Count Steelwall, but he had no intentions to mock Count Steelwall with lies. ‘It’s better to just hate him without any reason.’ Zich calmly completed a thought that other people would call him crazy for.
“Sir, as expected, it must be a lie, right?”
“The muscles in Count’s head are not so soft that he’d fall for those fanatics.” Zich mocked his father outright.
“Since it’s a rumor related to the Bellids, I thought I needed to tell you.”
“Good job. However, there is baseless gossip about the Bellids everywhere you go, since they are hated by the whole world. You can ignore baseless rumors like that.”
Snoc nodded. Zich was about to just keep going his way, but Elena stopped him this time.
“But the rumor has spread quite far, and just a few days ago, there hadn’t been any signs of this rumor before.”
“Spread far?” Zich slightly frowned. This was definitely a strange coincidence. “I got it. I’ll look more into it.”
After Snoc and Elena left, Zich fell into thought. ‘Rumors about those Bellid guys…’ He was definitely sure that the rumor was nonsense. Considering Count Steelwall’s nature, there was no way he could be a Bellid. ‘Even though both of their personalities are absolute dogshit, their goals and styles are different.’
Then, was it just merely a baseless rumor? However, it was suspicious considering that Elena thought there was something strange about this rumor. Even though Elena did not have much experience, she was known to be a genius. Moreover, she had gained a significant amount of experience while traveling around with Zich and Lyla. If she thought there was something suspicious about this rumor, it was worth looking into.
‘Now that I think about it, there are three rumors.’ Since they were all related to the Steelwall Estate and the Bellids, it could sound like just one rumor, but Snoc definitely mentioned three different rumors.
‘The first rumor is that Count Steelwall is secretly a Bellid who worships Bellu.’
‘The second is that there are Bellid shrines all throughout the Steelwall Estate.’
‘The third is that there’s a temple of a substantial size somewhere in Violsa.’
Among these three rumors, the only rumor that Zich knew for sure was a lie was the first rumor that Count Steelwall was secretly a Bellid who worshiped Bellu. ‘I don’t know whether or not the other two rumors are true.’
Then, Zich suddenly thought of what happened before his regression. He recalled that when he came to Steelwall on of a whim, it was already completely annihilated. ‘Perhaps, was it because of these rumors?’
This was a reasonable explanation why Steelwall had been destroyed. If it was discovered that Count Steelwall communicated secretly with the Bellids or got falsely accused, even the Steelwall Estate known as the kingdom’s steel fortress would be unable to escape annihilation. The Karuwimans would immediately excommunicate Steelwall, gather their holy knights, and the Cronon Kingdom would coldly turn away from Steelwall. Like this, Steelwall would be alienated from the whole world and eventually collapse—this was what happened to all Bellids.
‘I should definitely look more into it.’ Zich went out of the Count’s mansion and began investigating. The rumors he heard were roughly what Snoc and Elena had already told him. From a glance, the rumors had spread out, so it seemed like merely vile rumors spreading around the marketplace. However, as Elena told him, the rumors had spread very far despite the the fact that they were spread only recently.
‘Was it purposely spread around?’ However, it was hard to say that for certain. The nature of rumors was that once they started, they spread like wildfire. However, when rumors spread so far, there were many times when there was a reason for it.
‘Someone might have purposely spread these rumors, or they’re rumors based on a truth, or it might be both.’ There was no need to make a definite decision for now, but these rumors were enough for him to keep an eye on them. There was now a reason for Zich to keep going outside the Count’s mansion.
Then, soon after, Zich felt that the rumors were spreading at an extremely fast speed. The possibility that Zich’s prediction was right began increasing. Moreover, the rumors were slowly becoming more specific, and there was even a place hypothesized to have the Bellid temple.
By this time, there was also a change on the Count’s side as well. Even though they had merely passed these rumors off as baseless gossip spreading around in the city, the rumors were becoming very detailed and specific. Thus, they began looking for the origin of these rumors because they thought that someone was purposely spreading these rumors. At the same time, they began looking for the location of the rumors about the Bellid temple. If the rumors really were true, they planned to find it first and destroy it.
However, the situation did not go the way they wanted it to. As the rumors stated, a Bellid shrine was discovered at the Steelwall Estate. However, the ones who found it were not the Steelwall soldiers.