Grand Duke of the Heibern House

＜Episode 5＞

Head of the Hibern family.

Butler Aguile’s eyes trembled constantly as she looked at Kazen.

Unlike the past, which was somehow strange, his atmosphere had definitely returned to the old days when he was strong.

Kazen, the ruler of the Montdelilla Mountains.

Butler Aguile, who had been supporting Kazen all her life, was most sensitive to his change.

“Are you ready?”

“Yes, my lord. Everyone is waiting.”

Today is the day when the Great Hibern family’s monthly meeting is held.

It is a place where all the vassals scattered across the vast territory gather and report their achievements.

Kazen silently wore a crown of lions, symbolizing the kingdom’s standard bearer, on his head.

“egg plant.”

After he left the family room and passed the long corridor, the servants hurriedly bowed down and bowed down.

Wearing a lion’s crown and holding a golden lion’s flag, Kazen was no longer the head of a single family.

An existence that represents the kingdom’s authority itself.

The mighty military authority belonging to the golden lion is comparable to that of the king.

Ki-Ik-

rattle-

The vassals who were sitting in the great meeting room all stood up and bowed.

There was no one who was not a brave knight, but he did not dare to face the golden lion.

Kazen seated on the throne.

It was only when he hung the golden lion on the flagpole that the retainers straightened their backs.

“You have a nice face, Sorod. A son?”

Knight Sorod, who caught Kazen’s gaze, scratched the back of his head.

“yes. I am ashamed.”

“hahahaha!”

When Kazen burst into laughter, applause and laughter erupted from everywhere.

It was everyone’s congratulation and blessing that Sorod, who was looking at fifty lines, finally welcomed his son.

“Lord Eden will grind his teeth. Since I lost the bet, isn’t it a year of sobriety?”

Sorod looks at Eden with a grin.

“Good job. Half of the Hennes vineyard is a yard that he took care of, so it is a blessing to the people of the territory.”

“What!”

“ha ha ha!”

Kazen then exchanged his regards with all the other vassals.

His virtue of not forgetting and taking care of even the smallest circumstances of his vassals is the driving force behind his strong loyalty to the Heibern family.

However, the monthly meeting was not just a place to unwind.

“How is the situation in Podom? Is it still the same?”

Sorod handed out the documents to Kazen with a hard face.

“It got worse. It’s really flowing like a flood. Now, the number of nomads is greater than the number of local residents.”

The knight Wagger, who was next to him, also helped.

“The aftermath has reached our Rita area. More and more nomads are moving south, Kaju.”

“Um… … .”

As Kazen began to struggle with a hard face, Sorod’s eyes lit up as if he had made up his mind.

“I cannot stand by the sidelines any longer. You need to put on a fence and place guards. If we accept more nomads, we cannot guarantee the safety of the territory.”

Wegger nodded heavily as if agreeing.

“We continue to help the nomads who did not pay a dime of tax on the territory, so the complaints of the locals are not easy.”

Kazen firmly shook his head.

“Are you telling me to make a border inside the kingdom now? Although they are said to be in a nomadic situation, they are also subjects of the kingdom. Hibern, who claims to be the standard bearer of the kingdom, cannot defeat the people.”

“But you can’t accept it indefinitely like this, can you?”

“Yes, my lord. If you leave it like this, it really won’t be strange no matter what happens.”

“stop. Is there still no word from Prince Bowen?”

Sorod let out a long sigh.

“Don’t expect a positive reply from Prince Bowen. Baron Darione is already bankrupt. If he had the ability, he wouldn’t have turned so many territories into outcasts in the first place. There are also rumors that he has already organized his family and fled out of the kingdom.”

Kazen looks at Sorod with a look of disbelief.

“Is that true?”

“It’s still a rumor, but judging from the history, it’s likely to be true.”

“You’re crazy.”

The Baron Darione was in debt to the kingdom’s countless guilds and banks.

Leaving behind such an enormous debt, he irresponsibly fled out of the kingdom!

Was it desperate enough to throw away both the honor of a nobleman and the authority of a baron?

“Um… … .”

Kazen’s suffocating moan.

The atmosphere in the meeting room had to subside.

It is because there is no suitable countermeasure in the field where the head of household talks about the responsibility as a standard bearer carrying the authority of the kingdom.

It was best to just encourage the influx of nomads to live without friction with the existing territories.

But then.

Ki-Ik-

A boy opens the door to the conference room and slowly enters.

As soon as he saw him, Kazen grabbed the chair as if it would break.

“Ruin!”

At Kazen’s cry, everyone’s heads turned toward Ruin.

Archduke Luin.

Few people know the face of the Archduke here, having only heard of the name.

The only people who had seen him at least once were Kazen’s closest vassals, butlers, and immediate blood relatives.

Everyone kept quiet, but everyone was unaware that the Grand Duke was in a confined state.

Whether it was the cause of an incurable disease or a curse, as long as the family head kept his mouth shut, they never wondered about the safety of the archduke.

However, such a grand duke appeared at the monthly meeting.

drooling-

The chair, which had been vacant for more than ten years, welcomed its owner for the first time.

The seat of the heir decorated with a lion’s mane.

It was Ruin’s first ritual as a legitimate grand duke of Hibern.

Although embarrassed, Kazen manages to endure her agitation.

“How are you here… … ?”

It was Ruin who had been lying like a corpse until yesterday.

My son, who had dried up like an old tree and was about to die at any moment, suddenly came back to life like this!

“Are you not qualified to sit down?”

Ruin’s absurd answer made Kazen stunned.

You probably know that I’m not asking for eligibility for monthly meetings, right?

Kazen just couldn’t understand Ruin who was laughing casually.

“Hey, look at your body first. butler!”

However, Ruin’s transparent gaze was directed only to the papers on the round table.

Kazen is looking at Ruin as if he is looking at a mysterious animal.

Ruin, who was meticulously examining the documents while drinking tea, suddenly stared at his father.

“I will look at the family accounts.”

“What?”

Ruin tilted his head with an expressionless face.

“Are you not qualified?”

He is the grand duke of the Heibern family who acts as the head of the family in case of emergency. There was no reason not to look at the family ledger.

The question is, what is the purpose of perusing the family account in the current situation of overflowing nomads?

However, the request was made by claiming the qualifications of a grand duke. There was no justification for refusal.

“Bring the account books.”

Aguilera, the butler, who quietly stooped and left the meeting room, appeared a moment later holding an armful of account books.

“Are you going to check everything now?”

The amount of budget the Grand House of Heibern spends is staggering indeed. In order to look at all settlement fields, it would be possible to empty the entire time of at least three days.

“You just need to look at the outline.”

swish

Ruin starts turning over the ledger at a dazzling speed.

Whether they were reading through or just passing through, the expressions of the knights gathered in the conference room began to look strange.

“ah? I don’t care, let’s go ahead with the meeting.”

What kind of meeting could be going on when the Archduke, who first appeared at the monthly meeting, was suddenly perusing the books first?

Even Kazen, the head of the household, was staring blankly at it, but the situation was no different for the vassals.

Let’s go like that for about an hour.

Tup.

Kazen’s deep voice came out again when Ruin, who had covered the account book, was deep in thought.

“Now tell me. Why did you suddenly ask to see the family account?”

Luin calmly replied.

“As the grand duke, I will make a proposal to the head of the household. First, the training frequency of the knights is too frequent. should be reduced. Just focus on maintaining your fighting power. For the time being, we need to cut our training by less than half.”

“What is that… … ?”

Hibern is a rider.

A family that symbolizes the kingdom’s greatest strength.

But to refrain from training knights belonging to such families?

“Second, I also suggest that luxury items other than those necessary for survival be prohibited from being brought into the family. There are too many luxuries enjoyed by blood relatives.”

Ruin looked around the knights.

“Thirdly, the size of the war horses and weapons possessed by all of you who have gone is too large. It is not even an emergency, so there is no need to endure huge maintenance costs.”

Thorod was furious.

“What do you mean, Grand Duke? A knight who fattens his horse and does not prepare for war does not deserve peace.”

However, Ruin didn’t care and was picking up all of the family’s finances that were leaking everywhere.

Knights gathered at the conference hall.

They couldn’t easily understand the grand duke who just played numbers out of nowhere, even though the issue of nomads would be a headache.

“If you suddenly tighten your finances, dissatisfaction will inevitably come out. Even if you don’t, you’re in trouble with the nomadic issue, and you can’t make the family more confused.”

Ruin questions his father.

“Then how much money will you pay for Paneom Mine?”

“what?”

The conference hall where everything has turned to ice.

“Are you clearing the Paneom Mine? What kind of nonsense is that all of a sudden?”

“The reason for Darionega’s bankruptcy is because of negligent estate management. The problem was that we only believed in the huge amount of iron ore produced at the Paneom Mine and wasted all the proceeds.”

No one here knew that now.

It was a natural result to spend gold without developing new veins by trusting only the existing mines.

Paneom Mine, which is now like a dry well. Of course, there was no reason to buy it.

Rather, I shouldn’t have looked in that direction.

“No one here praises Prince Bowen’s lax management. Why do we have to clean up a useless mine?”

“Then accept the nomadic people endlessly.”

“what?”

Kazen couldn’t understand at first.

What is the correlation between clearing the Paneomm mines and accepting the wanderers?

“All of them are people who have lived looking at only one Paneom mine. A huge number of miners, those who sold them alcohol and food, guild merchants who bought high-quality iron ore, blacksmiths and lumberjacks who supplied them with charcoal… … .”

Ruin going back to the beginning again.

“Were they nomads from the beginning?”

Only then did Kazen understand what Ruin was saying and smiled bitterly.

“It is a mine that has dried up. Even if we buy it, how can we develop new veins?”

Unlike the Darione family, who earned their title by building wealth as merchants, the Heibern family was a renowned knight’s family.

The reason why the kingdom entrusted the Paneom Mine to Darionega was because they had the ability to manage the mine.

Unfortunately, the Hibernians were entangled in complex interests, and their skills in dealing with merchants and making their fortunes were absurdly lacking.

“Why do we develop ore veins? Aren’t there others who will step out of their way to avoid being in debt?”

Debt collectors with red-eyed eyes.

Kazen thought of the people who were desperately looking for Lord Bowen.

But the question came up again.

“You told me to buy the mine and entrusted the development to the creditors? Who dipped their toe into other people’s property?”

“Whoa.”

How much more do I have to tell you to understand?

The family name of this knight whose head has been filled with muscles.

It was more than understandable why the family’s fief, which was huge a thousand years ago, had to shrink like this.

“The people most interested in buying the mine right now are Bowen’s creditors. Whether you’re kidnapping an engineer from another country or blowing up an entire mine with a bomb the size of a house, they want to be the first to find the veins. Because that is the only way to get back the money you lent.”

Ruin’s eyes became intense.

“But I can’t. why? Because merchants can’t recklessly covet the kingdom’s property. so… … .”

Ruin looks at Sorod.

“Sir, you should not put up a fence and stand guard, but find a successor who has a Prince Bowen or a householder. And father, prepare to depart for the royal castle right now.”

“… … king?”

“Isn’t it a good cause? The wandering people’s south. An urgent situation that has no choice but to settle the confused territory. Report all of this to the King and receive the right to operate the mine.”

Everyone was staring blankly at Ruin.

Wizard.

Beings who think endlessly.

Those who stand at the pinnacle of magicians are called wise men.

And the great mage, Ruin, was the pinnacle that the sages of such a continent had never crossed.