The Great Bastard Alliance

"So the opportunity to settle this peacefully is especially precious now." Soren lightly clapped his hands, and a manservant entered from outside carrying a reddish-brown wooden box.

"Marquis Wenger hopes you will voluntarily give up your surname. In compensation, he is willing to support your pioneering venture with five hundred gold coins."

The manservant set the box on the table and opened it, revealing gold coins packed to the brim. Richard picked one up. Heavy, alluring, gleaming gold—stamped with the king's likeness, yet more beloved than the king himself, and even more tempting than the devil when it came to luring people into corruption.

There were a full five hundred of them. Truly hard to resist.

"It seems we can reach an agreement." Soren was already very old, but his eyes remained sharp. He saw greed in Richard's eyes—greed that gnawed to the bone.

People like this usually died quickly, but if they happened to survive, they often stirred up quite a storm.

When had he last seen such a look? Ah, this morning, when he looked in the mirror.

"No!" Richard said with immense regret, tossing the coin back into the box.

"Oh?" Soren slowly furrowed his brow.

He had always been confident in his own mind, but now he felt matters slipping beyond his control. He found that feeling deeply unpleasant.

Richard tapped the table to emphasize his words. "That is a glorious surname passed down through more than a dozen generations of ancestors, bearing countless honors and glories. It is the most precious thing my father gave me. Do you understand?"

Soren heard the most righteous, most thunderous cry of his life: "You need to pay more!"

"A thousand gold coins, interest-free. But you can only buy goods from me." Soren drew a deep breath and struggled to keep his expression steady.

"Deal!" Richard braced both hands against the table and stared at the dignified old man. "But add priority purchasing rights for all goods under your name."

"Agreed, Mr. Richard. You truly are... quite an interesting fellow."

Soren agreed readily, and Richard immediately pressed his advantage.

"I heard Corin Grand Arena has a batch of Highland Barbarian slaves."

This was intelligence Richard had specifically sought out.

The Highland Barbarians were a barbarian branch living in the bitterly cold lands of the far north. That savage climate tempered them and shaped them. Every adult Highland Barbarian possessed both strength and tenacity, and they were universally acknowledged as natural-born warriors.

"Building a guard from slave warriors? A clever idea." Soren continually rubbed the enormous gold ring on his index finger with his thumb. It bore a huge gemstone, crimson as blood. "But I must remind you, those barbarians are as famous for their ferocity as they are for their unruliness. Do not expect them to obey obediently."

—Unless you can beat them into submission with your fists, according to barbarian custom.

Soren silently added this in his heart, but that was utterly impossible.

It was not as though Corin Grand Arena had never tried to tame these fine fighters. The result had been that their best gladiators were beaten so badly they could not get out of bed for half a month, and that month's revenue was cut in half as a result.

And that had merely been the Highland Barbarians' warm-up.

"That is my concern." An inscrutable smile appeared at the corner of Richard's mouth.

"Brave young man, deal." Whether Soren meant it as praise or mockery was unclear. He lowered his head, spread out a sheet of parchment, dipped a feather pen generously in ink, and smoothly wrote line after line of elegant rounded script.

"Twenty gold coins each, fifty in total." He rolled up the parchment and handed it to Richard. "Take this to the grand arena, and you will get what you want."

The entire thousand-gold-credit line had been emptied. Gold enough to pile into a small mountain had only bought him a paper roll, yet Richard smiled in satisfaction. The first step of his plan had gone smoothly. It was a good omen.

He bowed respectfully to Sir Soren and retraced the path by which he had come.

"Sir, it seems you and Sir Soren had a pleasant conversation?" The green-eyed manservant from before was once again leading him.

"Not bad." Richard held the wooden box full of gold coins and glanced at him unconsciously. Suddenly, he felt the man's demeanor seemed slightly... strange.

The mouth was not the only thing that could speak. Body language was also a language. Sometimes, the information conveyed through movement was even richer and more vivid than actual words.

He was still the same person, and his clothes and hairstyle were still impeccably neat. Yet compared to the rigorous, almost rigidly standard manner of a manservant before, he now seemed far more relaxed and casual.

"Mr. Richard, please come this way." Green Eyes guided Richard to a corner far from the main entrance.

"Is something the matter?" Richard appeared relaxed on the surface, but every muscle in his body had shifted into a state of poised readiness. His hands hung naturally at his sides, positioned perfectly for drawing a sword.

This might be an assassin from the Orlando family—he would not naively believe their conflict had been settled so easily. Nobles were especially inviolable when facing the weak, and especially fond of rules. Richard knew that the newly inherited Marquis Wenger certainly wanted to kill him and wash away the family's disgrace.

"The count actually hopes you can gain some advantage in your struggle against the family." Green Eyes undid the button at his collar and fanned air into it with one hand.

For a servant of a great family, he was being far too improper before an outsider.

"Why?"

"Because the count is the illegitimate son of the previous Duke Augustus. He feels deep sympathy for your circumstances." Green Eyes suddenly lowered his voice. "The count is even willing to provide you with a certain degree of assistance, of course, only in secret and in private."

"Oh..."

Richard nodded repeatedly with a delighted expression, thinking, Yeah, right. As if I'd believe that nonsense.

If being bastards alone were enough reason to lend a hand, then that old fox Soren would have plenty to keep him busy with. The Northeastern Province alone could gather more than five hundred, and all of Pompeii could probably raise a whole legion.

That excuse might fool some native youngster, but how could it fool an old ghost who had lived two lives? Still, for him at this moment, one ally harboring ulterior motives was better than being completely isolated.

"And you are?" Richard did not think Green Eyes' identity was so simple either.

An ordinary manservant would never know the dark history of his master's family, much less serve as an intermediary in secret negotiations.

"You are the illegitimate son of the old Marquis Orlando. The count is the illegitimate son of the previous duke. And I..." He looked at Richard, and an unfathomable sea seemed hidden within his gray-green pupils. "I am the count's illegitimate son. My name is Rogge."

"..."

Richard froze on the spot.