SGC 36

CHAPTER 36

Translator: Rae

₊˚ ✧ ━━━━⊱⋆⊰━━━━ ✧ ₊˚

In that instant, a faint glint, sharp as a blade, flashed through the eyes of the previously composed young duke. As the smell of blood drifted closer, Jasper’s unrefined words went on and on without end.

“Ever since I saw her portrait, I thought she was a rare sort of woman. Beauties who can seize a man’s eye with nothing but a painting are not common. And on top of that, she’s young and fresh.”

“...”

“Even if I’d found beauty like that in some roadside brothel, I’d have taken her away at once and made her my mistress. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Jasper smacked his lips as though in regret and let out a snickering laugh.

“Later on, I even thought it was for the best that she was lowborn. Girls like that know nothing, so they’re easy to train to one’s taste. And since she’s only just come of age, the chances are slim that she’s already been passed around like a rag somewhere—truly at her ripest.”

Bang!

At that moment, smoke burst up at Jasper’s feet with the crack of a gunshot without any warning. Before Jasper, frozen wide-eyed, could even look down, his prized horse reared in fright and began to thrash wildly.

He yanked hard on the reins, but it was impossible to keep his balance on the maddened horse. In the end, Jasper was thrown headlong from the saddle and landed on the dirt, bracing himself with his hands as he panted for breath.

“Y-You d*mned bastard! What the hell kind of lunatic stunt is this?!”

Lowering his shotgun, Edmund looked down quietly at Jasper’s flustered state. Across that face, chiseled into cold indifference like a plaster statue, there spread a smile strange in how chilling it was.

“In a hunting ground, it is best to keep watch in every direction, Count.”

Beside Jasper, a venomous snake lay sprawled with its jaws wide open. The exact center of its body had been pierced through by Edmund’s bullet.

“I mean, Your Highness the Deposed Crown Prince.”

The young duke looking down at Jasper sprawled on the ground was excessively calm. A smile still lingered at the corners of his mouth, yet ironically, his face did not look as though it were smiling in the slightest.

“Since you seem so intent on invoking rank, I thought this title might suit you better.”

Unruffled green eyes swept over Jasper, who had gone momentarily blank.

“But Your Highness, surely you know this well.”

“...”

“That rank is of absolutely no use when it comes to preserving one’s life.”

Soon the hunting dogs came charging in with the fox in their jaws. They dropped the blood-soaked carcass beside their master and wagged their tails as though expecting a reward.

Without so much as glancing at them, Jasper kept glaring sharply at the duke before him, until his lips slowly twisted in interest.

Ha. Letting out a short laugh, Jasper soon burst into loud, hearty laughter.

“Ha, hahaha!”

Jasper’s laughter echoed through the quiet forest for some time. The sound was startling enough that even a servant outside the woods, gathering prey, came running in alarm to his master.

With a servant’s help, Jasper rose to his feet. He clicked his tongue as he looked down at his ruined hunting clothes, yet lazily lifted blue eyes still brimming with mischief.

“Yes, of course I know. I’m living proof of it.”

Jasper Antonio Obrenne, once the king’s eldest legitimate son, had been stripped of his position as crown prince with ease despite a noble bloodline none could deny.

The reason a man once born a prince had fallen to the level of a provincial noble was simple: depraved conduct, repeated scandals, and an inhuman disposition unfit for a crown prince.

The king regarded his son’s cruel nature as a threat. He judged that if Jasper were stripped of his right to the throne, all strife would come to an end.

But that decision instead invited an even greater threat, leading to the annihilation of the royal family.

The heir the king chose was the third prince. The second prince, pushed down in the line of succession, expressed his outrage and discontent, but the king’s will remained firm.

Harboring resentment, the second prince eventually rose in rebellion not long after. And he did so without mustering a single soldier—only with a single small spark.

It had already happened some twenty years ago. Around dawn, the royal palace was consumed by flames before anyone had time to act. Not only the king and queen, but the crown prince and crown princess, and even their young children, were unable to escape the blaze.

That day, every royal bearing the name Obrenne was reduced to ash and scattered into the air. A great dynasty was exterminated in a single day.

Ironically, the second prince, captured at the scene, did not escape execution either. Jasper, the sole survivor, had already cast off the name Obrenne by then, so the throne passed instead to Glister, the grand ducal house.

Of course, there were still those who could not accept the current royal house beneath the surface. In the most secretive—and meticulous—of ways.

“To dare insult Obrenne—had this been twenty years ago, you would not have kept your life.”

Having finished his long recollection, Jasper narrowed his eyes as though probing Edmund’s true thoughts. Yet the words that followed were spoken in a light, almost dismissive tone.

“But now I’m nothing more than an old man tucked away in the back rooms. All I do is call out young men and idly amuse myself with hunting, don’t I? So let’s put aside that embarrassing old title.”

Jasper jerked his chin toward a servant who hovered anxiously. Soon, with the servant’s help, he mounted his horse, muttering a curse under his breath. Perhaps his shoulder and elbow were injured, for even gripping the reins seemed difficult.

“D*mn it, I suppose today’s hunt ends here.”

Tossing the reins to the servant, Jasper turned back toward the young duke with a feigned benevolence.

“You may continue the hunt with the others. I intend to grant a fine reward to today’s victor.”

The servant beside him took the reins and began to lead the horse slowly away. The hunting dogs ran ahead swiftly along the forest path Jasper departed upon.

Soon, the sunset hanging over the forest’s edge dyed everything in crimson.

Edmund turned in another direction without further delay. As he rode toward the heart of the forest, the ceaseless gunfire from all sides struck his ears like an endless hallucination.

At last, when he reached a place where the sounds grew distant, Edmund brought his horse to a halt.

His gaze, fixed somewhere far away as though waiting for someone, soon tilted downward. A small bird lay crumpled in a pile of leaves, drenched in blood.

For a moment, the bird’s body seemed to twitch faintly, but soon even that slight movement vanished. Over that small, lifeless form, a distant memory from a long-ago winter overlapped.

"Hello, Ed." 

Amid the howling wind, a woman smiled brightly and greeted him.

Bang! In an instant, his vision was washed in blood-red. The vivid stench of blood struck sharply at his nose.

Closing his violently trembling eyes, Edmund tightened his grip on the reins. Veins rose along the back of his hand along with the remnants of suppressed emotion.

When I slowly opened my eyes after a long moment, both the blood-red vision and the scent of blood had completely vanished.

No ripple stirred in his pupils any longer.

"Your Grace.”

 

Following the still call, Edmund’s still gaze shifted. A middle-aged man who had approached without a sound paid his respect.

Seeing the man glance around nervously, Edmund gave a slight nod as if to reassure him. Only then did the man pull a crumpled note from his coat and hand it over.

Unfolding it at once, Edmund saw the information he had been waiting for, hastily scrawled across the page.

[In fifteen days, 2 a.m. Underground hall.]

“You’ve done well.”

At the brief praise, the man, unsure what to do with himself, scratched the scar on his left cheek out of habit.

The man, Maurice, had long been a servant of Jasper Lawton, the one who carried out his most secretive and unsavory tasks.

Edmund had first recruited Maurice several months ago. Sent under Jasper’s orders to dig into the duke’s household, Maurice had been exposed far too easily.

Yet Edmund had neither interrogated nor punished him. Instead, in exchange for overlooking the matter, he made him a proposal.

From then on, Maurice became a double agent, feeding information back to Edmund.

“I won’t ask anything more difficult of you. Just do your part for today.”

Those generous words were added as Maurice kept his head low.

“Of course, I will take responsibility for your family’s safety until the end, so you need not worry.”

Unable to hide his fear, Maurice averted his gaze. He knew all too well that the mention of his family’s “safety” was no act of mercy or kindness.

"T-Thank you.”

Wearing the mask of a benevolent master, Edmund tightened the leash around Maurice’s neck in the cruelest possible way.

So long as his family’s lives rested in that hand, Maurice could never defy the man before him.

***

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