Chapter 256 – Side Story 5 – Lord Egger Takes Up the Sword

After the lord’s shocking words swept through the room, the surprised girl cried out.

“What? Vlad is a vampire?”

As his daughter shouted, the lord raised his hand to stop her and said to the boy:

“Ah, I was mistaken. If he were a vampire, he wouldn’t be out in daylight like this.”

“Really! You scared me! Saying such strange things about a perfectly normal person!”

Before Selena, the lord’s daughter, could finish her angry words, the young knight standing next to her spoke up.

“The lord wouldn’t say such things without reason. Why did you think that, my lord?”

The young knight had already nearly drawn his sword, blocking in front of the young lady.

He looked ready to cut down Vlad at any moment.

Vlad stood stiffly, unable to say anything.

He knew he should say something immediately, but the pressure emanating from the lord made it impossible for him to even move a finger.

Fortunately, that pressure gradually subsided.

Then came the lord’s next words.

“There’s a faint dark mana in his body, close to evil energy. That’s why I was mistaken. It’s an energy that’s difficult for ordinary people to possess.”

At the lord’s words, Selena looked at Vlad with a surprised face.

“Huh? Really? Didn’t he not have any mana?”

Her surprised expression seemed too extreme to be just because Vlad had unusual mana.

“It’s too faint for ordinary people to sense. Moreover, it’s different from mana, so it’s difficult to notice.”

At the lord’s follow-up words, his daughter nodded.

“I see. I wondered why he felt different from others, so that’s why. Then, is he in a similar situation to me?”

Something Vlad didn’t understand continued to unfold.

It was a difficult situation to follow, but it seemed he wouldn’t lose his head immediately at least.

At the girl’s words, the lord’s pressure completely disappeared, and the young knight’s sword also returned to its scabbard.

As the sharp atmosphere subsided, the young lady ran to the front of the lord’s desk and asked him:

“So, do you permit it?”

At his daughter’s words, the lord shook his head.

“You haven’t even told me what you want yet.”

The girl made an expression as if she had made a mistake and quickly spilled out what she wanted.

“Ah, that’s right. I wanted to use Vlad here as my attendant. You won’t let me go out alone, right? Seowoo is too busy to always accompany me, and I don’t want to go out with older knights.”

Selena repeated to the lord what she had told Vlad before coming here.

The unremarkable content of wanting to take a boy of the same age with her when going out.

The problem was that all those words were in the past tense.

“But now, it seems I have an even more important reason.”

At his daughter’s words, the lord looked at Vlad again.

The lord’s indifferent eyes examining Vlad.

However, Vlad felt as if those eyes were scrutinizing every hair on his body.

And then came the lord’s next words.

“An outsider whose identity hasn’t even been confirmed yet…”

At the lord’s casual words, Vlad felt a chill.

The lord already knew about Vlad.

If what the young lady had said earlier was true, she hadn’t informed the lord about him.

Yet the lord already knew him.

Was it because he was always monitoring his daughter’s surroundings?

Or, hard to believe, did he know everyone in this domain?

Either way, it was frightening for Vlad.

If he had been just a little more diligent in observing the domain, he might have already lost his head.

Moreover, what made Vlad break out in a cold sweat didn’t end there.

The young knight’s response following the lord’s words:

“We are currently verifying Vlad’s identity based on the domain name and name he left when entering the domain.”

That answer made Vlad’s face turn pale.

The young knight was already investigating Vlad’s background.

“I see…”

As the lord seemed to be pondering, the young knight spoke again.

“If you’re suspicious, why not just reject Lady Selena’s request?”

“Seowoo! What are you saying! Weren’t you on my side?”

The young lady flared up at the young knight’s words.

However, the young knight calmly accepted the young lady’s anger.

“Lady Selena’s safety is my priority.”

“You heard too! Someone like me that I’ve only just met. How else am I supposed to get an opportunity like this!”

“We can investigate without keeping him close. There are mages in the domain more skilled than you, my lady.”

“Still, it’s best if I check myself! If what Father says is true, it’s best if I, the person involved, investigate!”

With each exchange, Vlad could feel his life hanging in the balance.

If they would just let him go, it would be fine, but things were turning terrifyingly complicated.

Talk of investigation by mages conjured images of being trapped in a mage’s laboratory as an experimental subject.

In the end, even though the young lady also mentioned some kind of investigation, Vlad could only inwardly cheer for her.

As such an unexpected commotion broke out, the lord raised his hand to silence the two.

“In any case, we’ll have to keep him in the castle. Since his identity verification isn’t complete yet, we can make a decision after it’s finished.”

The lord’s conclusion was ultimately a deferral. Moreover, regardless of the conclusion, Vlad would have to stay in the castle.

The young lady asked the lord with sparkling eyes.

“Then, can I keep him by my side until then?”

After pondering again, the lord finally nodded.

“…If Seowoo accompanies you, I’ll allow it.”

“Great! Let’s go right away!”

The young lady bowed her head to her father, then grabbed Vlad’s arm and left the lord’s office.

Seeing this, the lord shook his head, and the young knight bowed to the lord before following the young lady.

As the three left the office, the lord opened his mouth with a serious expression.

“Did you sense anything?”

When he started speaking, there was no one else in the office besides him, but before his words ended, a person emerged from a dark corner of the room.

The person who appeared was a female mage.

A mage holding a magic staff, wearing jeans and a knit sweater.

She was now in her 30s, the domain mage Irene.

“I apologize. Due to my lack of skill, I couldn’t discover anything.”

Before the young lady and Vlad entered the office, Irene had been in this room.

Irene had investigated Vlad while hiding her presence with magic before the young lady entered, but like with Selena, she couldn’t discover anything.

“It can’t be helped. No one but me noticed that energy. In fact, I didn’t even know such a thing existed in my body.”

At Irene’s words, Lord Egger sighed.

“I should have been more careful.”

“I heard it was unavoidable. It wasn’t a situation where you could have been careful.”

Even at Irene’s words, Egger’s expression didn’t brighten.

It couldn’t. His daughter was suffering because of his mistake.

The mana similar to evil energy he had sensed from the unfamiliar boy just now.

That mana, which neither Irene nor his wives Yelena and Zahina could sense, was mana that his daughter had possessed in her body since birth.

The mana similar to evil energy that made Selena extraordinary.

After long investigation, he had been able to discover that this mana came from himself.

The evil energy he had absorbed while fighting undead in another world, Earth, before marriage. That evil energy, transformed by meeting divine power, had been left in his daughter’s body at birth.

Unlike the youngest born with divine power and the eldest who inherited the power of the Divine Tree, the second daughter, born as a mage’s daughter, was born with mana resembling evil energy.

The evil energy that he couldn’t detect at all in his own body due to his powerful mana.

The transformed mana left in his daughter’s body strangely gave her powerful magic, but it troubled her even more.

From struggling with light and preferring the night, to monsters and undead being drawn to her.

Since she was young, it had been difficult to see her as an ordinary human.

“If he has the same mana as Selena… he’s really not a vampire or monster, right?”

“Vampires can’t move around in daylight like that, and monsters can’t take human form. Apart from that mana, he’s human.”

“Then we really need to investigate.”

The domain mage Irene nodded at the lord’s words.

“Yes, I should also contact my wives who are out investigating. Now that a specimen has appeared on its own, they should come here to examine it first.”

“Of course. But do you intend to do as Selena says? Your wives will worry when they return.”

At Irene’s words, Lord Egger shook his head.

“If Selena hadn’t known, we could have locked him up and investigated, but now that she knows, I don’t want to go that far. Moreover, he’s not the type to reveal his secrets through torture or such investigations.”

“As expected, he’s not an ordinary boy.”

Lord Egger smirked at Irene’s words.

“He can’t be ordinary. A child skilled enough to come here alone at that age wouldn’t come here without reason.”

Of course, from what they had observed so far using CCTV, magic, and people, he didn’t seem like a spy sent from another domain or country, but the boy’s extraordinary nature itself was enough to arouse suspicion.

And the lord wasn’t someone to leave such a suspicious person alone.

“If he didn’t have the same mana as Selena, I would have cut him down on the spot, but for now, it seems we need to watch him.

I’ll inform the others, so Irene, please watch over him from behind. I’m sorry to ask this of you.”

“There’s no need to apologize. Selena is the daughter of the lord I’ve sworn loyalty to, and my disciple. It’s natural for a master to protect their disciple.”

Irene bowed her head to Lord Egger.

And as she bowed, Irene’s figure disappeared from the room.

Unlike before when she had just concealed her presence, she had completely left for another place.

It was an instantaneous teleportation magic that ordinary mages couldn’t even attempt.

“I wonder if she’s now the strongest mage in our domain.”

Egger muttered, looking at the spot where Irene had been.

Even such a mage couldn’t treat or even understand this mana, or rather, curse.

Egger could only click his tongue at the bitter reality.

“Still, since we’ve succeeded in finding a clue, we can resume the work we had stopped.”

Though his daughter Selena didn’t know, his wives had been searching everywhere for a cure for her.

Not just in this world of Ea, but also on Earth, in the land of the Divine Tree, and even in the newly opened demon realm.

While they were moving about, the lord had to protect this domain to safeguard his daughter and other children.

Moreover, he had been unable to counterattack through the opened demon realm gate for precaution’s sake, only defending, but now it seemed he could move.

Lord Egger rose from his seat and grasped the sword hanging on the wall.

An ancient imperial sword he had brought from the imperial storehouse to replace the one that had shattered 20 years ago.

Now it was time to use this sword again.