The double life of a count’s bastard

Chapter 22

“Kahahahahaha!!”

“gurgle~ gurgle~!!”

“Hahahahahahaha!”

Hans shook his head in disbelief at the laughter of the men and women that could be heard even from outside the building.

Rousseau, on the other hand, smiled wryly at the familiar sounds of laughter she had heard in her precognitive dreams.

“I’ve been through enough of this in my visions, but to have to accept the reality that such an idiot is monopolizing the love of the gods!

Luo Xiao glanced up at the sky in disbelief, then pushed open the door and walked in.

Kick-!

The smell of strong liquor, women’s fumes, and stale cigarettes wafted into his nostrils.

Russo frowned, reflexively holding his nose as he quickly scanned the interior.

“Haaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh!”

The man buried in the four women jumped to his feet, his tongue rolling out of his mouth.

He had a gaunt appearance and lustrous platinum hair that gave off an extremely mysterious aura.

He was impossibly tall, with a slightly thin build, but if you looked closely, he was also toned, as if he hadn’t been neglecting his physical fitness.

Above all.

‘You said your clothes were wings……, but they sure do make women swoon!’

His white and gold priestly robes made him look so radiant that I didn’t think a man could look so good.

His necklace, a cross encased in a circular border symbolizing Nevatera, the goddess of heaven and earth, and the three bracelets that wrapped around each wrist, also proved that he had risen to a considerable position within the church.

“Don’t come. If you come, you will be beaten.”

Hans warned the man who was charging at him.

Despite his warning, the man lunged at him with his arms outstretched, and Hans’ response was…….

Pfft!

“I warned him he’d get punched.”

The kick to the chest sent the man flying pretty wildly, crashing into tables and chairs.

“Oooh…… that must have done a lot of damage.

Russo’s eyes clearly showed it.

Blood splattered into the air as he was stampeded into the corner of a table, tangled up in a chair, and thrown around.

“Oh my God, how did I do that, my head is bleeding!”

“You kicked a man!”

“What an ignorant human being!”

The women mingling and drinking rushed toward the man on the floor and busied themselves with helping him up.

When Russo looked at Hans, he seemed to be fine and didn’t even care.

“I’m going to stay out, just looking at him makes my head hurt.”

Shaking his head, Hans walked out of the building, and as he was helped to his feet by the women, the man chuckled and looked at Russo.

“So you’re the wretch of the great House Slater?”

A faint white light seemed to emanate from the man’s entire body, and the torn forehead and bridge of his nose instantly reverted to their original forms.

“Even the most famous trolls are known for their immense regenerative powers, but their healing abilities are a fraud.

The ability to heal and restore not only others but also to restore his own body naturally.

It’s a man’s power. Or, more accurately, the blessing of the goddess Nevatera, who loves him.

By the way.

“Oh my!”

“Oh my God, the scars are gone!”

“Your skin looks so much smoother! It’s glowing!”

“I’m so jealous!!”

The women who surrounded him could only exclaim with envy and admiration at the man’s inhuman ability to heal.

They saw a man living with the lavish love of God and the love of women.

“I used to think I was sucking the sweetest honey in the world…… and now I see you, and I feel so shabby.”

Rousseau’s tone of voice is so humbling that the man looks dumbfounded for a moment, but then he laughs out loud, leaning back on his heels.

“Fuhahahahahahaha!”

The man laughed until he was in tears, wondering what was so funny, and when he finally calmed down, he picked up the liquor and glasses on the table and approached Russo.

“Shall we have a drink first?”

“Just one drink?”

The man immediately told the woman to bring him all the liquor in the store.

Qiq-qi

While the women were bringing in the liquor, the man lit a cigarette.

“Huuuuu~! I wonder why you asked to see me, but first, let’s see how well our wretched master can drink.”

“You’re going to regret that?”

In response to Rousseau’s question, the man seemed to enjoy the situation so much that he picked up the bottle and immediately began to pour it into his mouth.

After downing half the bottle in one fell swoop, the man held the bottle out to Rousseau.

Rousseau snatched the bottle from the man’s hand and downed the remaining half of the bottle in a similarly clean fashion.

“Good! Good! I’ve met someone worthy of a proper drink in a long time! Do you know my name?”

“Aren’t you Merlin, the idiot that blind Nevatera loves?”

“Exactly! Exactly! I am Merlin, the asshole that the goddess Nevatera loves the most, and Russo, the bastard of the great house Slater!

An asshole meets an asshole.

Later, Hans, an iron-blooded knight who became a master, said of their encounter

“If I had boldly drawn my sword at that tavern and decapitated anyone, …… the world wouldn’t be so noisy.

But Hans didn’t know that.

He didn’t realize that people were calling him a “bad knight,” and pointing fingers at him, saying that if only you’d stayed away from assholes, the world would be a little quieter.

* * *

“A ……priest for life?”

Merlin, who had been sipping his drink merrily, looked at Rousseau as if he’d heard something he couldn’t.

Very occasionally.

Some priests, for one reason or another, become lifelong priests, following a particular person until the day they die.

However, it is not at all common, literally only once in a while, maybe once every few years.

Usually, priests give their all to the Order, so they live their entire lives in service to it.

Of course, Merlin has no intention of living such a dull and uninteresting life.

One of the reasons why he’s called an asshole and looked down upon by many within the Order is that he indulges his most basic human and male needs.

Alcohol, women, gambling, tobacco, and other things, Merlin prides himself on being a free spirit who does what he wants and doesn’t do what he doesn’t want.

It would be strange if Rousseau didn’t make him look like a madman, especially since he’s the one who recommends that Merlin become a priest for life.

As Rousseau glared at him with a smug look on his face, Merlin let out a long puff of smoke before speaking.

“Look, you know better than anyone that what you’re about to say is bullshit beyond the pale, don’t you?”

“I know. For an asshole from Nevatera who wants to live a life of go when you want to go, come when you want to come, a lifelong priest would be a terrible thing.”

I know!”

Merlin gulped down his full goblet of liquor as if to say no more bullshit.

“But you also have to consider that that life could change depending on whose life you become a priest for life.”

Clink!

Merlin slammed his glass down on the table with such force that it shattered and glared at Rousseau with reddened eyes.

“If you’re going to talk shit about me, just go away… If you think you can convince me with a few words, how many bitches do you think have approached me like that in the past? Ten? A hundred? Fuhahahaha!”

Merlin laughed as if that were impossible.

Merlin had lost count of the number of people who had tried to woo him against his will.

Local lords offered to build him the most splendid and lavish temples in their estates, wealthy nobles offered to pay him a jaw-dropping sum of money every month, and powerful men in the capital promised him knighthoods.

All sorts of treasures, money, and beautiful women tried to keep him around, but none of them could keep him.

Hans’s arrival comes at just the right time, as the lord of Césaix, who had been staying at the manor for some time, is beginning to think about moving on.

Knowing the greatness of the Earl of Slater’s family, he was curious to learn more about the wretch they had produced.

And so he came to see Rousseau, and he asked him to be his chaplain for life.

Merlin was so disgusted that he considered storming out of the room.

Rousseau’s words weren’t worth a second thought, as Merlin would never become a priest for life, not even if the Emperor of the Empire offered it to him, let alone Count Slater himself.

“One more bullshit…….”

“Do whatever you want, just like you are now, be free, live as you please, but do it by my side, that’s my only condition.”

Rousseau frowns.

There were dozens of empty bottles on the table and the floor, but neither Merlin nor Rousseau looked drunk at all.

“Are you…… an idiot now that I see you?”

“Not an asshole, an asshole.”

Rousseau’s face was beaming with pride as he said this, but why?

I didn’t mind when people called me an asshole and pointed fingers at me, but seeing Russo proud of being an asshole was on a different level.

“What kind of assholes are there?

Merlin had met a lot of people in his life, but he had never met anyone like Rousseau.

He was young, only seventeen, but strangely enough, he didn’t seem to have a simple punch or bloodlust.

‘Not just impulsive.

I can tell by the look in his eyes.

There was a strange depth to Rousseau’s eyes that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

Maybe it was pure brilliance, something he’d never encountered before, which was why Merlin had called him an asshole.

“I’ll pay you well.”

Merlin laughed, a caustic laugh.

“Do you have any idea how expensive I am, and you’d probably freak out if you heard that?”

“I know. I can’t pay you as much as those assholes who tried to seduce you with money, but I can pay you enough that you won’t feel bad, and since Hans gets five hundred gold every three months, I’ll treat you equally.”

Five hundred gold every three months is no small amount of money. No, it’s a lot of money for a 23-year-old Merlin.

But.

“Only 500 gold? That’s all I can earn in a month?”

“Okay, you can earn as much as you can part-time, and I’m not going to have anything to do with it.”

“…….”

For the first time, Merlin was at a loss for words.

What kind of a man is this, and what’s so easy about him, and why is he so obsessed with himself…… Oh, well, we’ve all been obsessed, it’s natural.

Anyway, even for Merlin, who was supposed to be a priest for life, but was just a priest for life in name only, such a suggestion was unheard of.

But.

“And if I still don’t like it, what do you want me to do afterward?”

Merlin had no intention of accepting Rousseau’s offer, no matter how favorable it was to him.

In other words.

“Because you’re worried about the risk of it blowing up at any moment?”

“They say people are mindless wretches, but at least you’re not a mindless head. Or is…… fooling people? Why? What are they after? I’m really curious about this?”

Merlin’s eyes deepened, and he stared at Rousseau for a moment.

It was a far cry from the asshole look he’d had before, when he’d seemed to want to see right through you.

The Rousseau of the pre-precognition dream, the one who hadn’t already experienced a decade of life and its abject despair, would have balked at Merlin’s glare and jumped to his feet.

“You’re not good enough for me, you idiot!

Rousseau met Merlin’s gaze with adorable eyes.

“If you’re so curious, try living with me for a few years, or even a few months.”

Merlin scratched his curiosity.

He knew Rousseau well.

No matter what he said, no matter what he offered, Merlin would never allow him to be a priest for life.

But Merlin is a man who can be impatient with what he wants to do and what he wants to know.

“Ten years,” he says, “or at least until the Orcs start moving in earnest!

Even in the Visions, when the Orcs began to encroach on the northern estates beyond the Inceran Mountains, Merlin took it upon himself to join the war before anyone suggested it.

He’s called a pariah by his people, and shunned by those who worship the gods.

“The goddess Nevatera loved him for a reason.

Knowing Merlin’s sincerity, Rousseau tries to keep him around, even though he’s a pain in the ass.

Of course, that’s where Merlin’s skills were most needed.