In the game Aethelgards Bane, the family of Count Valerius was a textbook example of disposable villains. They existed for a single side quest, serving as little more than experience point fodder for the protagonist before vanishing from the story.
In short, they were extras. The only reason Zane knew so much about them was because he’d ground out their related quests repeatedly while playing. The experience rewards, after all, were quite generous.
From a gamer’s perspective, they were simply a means to an end.
But that was a luxury Zane no longer had. Now that the game had become his reality, his feelings toward the Valerius family were far more complicated.
The game had offered only a brief description: a family running a drug and prostitution ring under an organization called Cerberus. Now, Zane had seen the fragmented, ugly truth with his own eyes.
In fact, he was staring right at it.
Zane subtly shifted his gaze forward, toward the open coffin where the corpse of his half-brother, Silas, lay.
Cause of death: an accidental fall.
It was an absurdly anticlimactic end for a man who had been a major player in the kingdom’s drug trade. Of course, Zane knew it wasn’t an accident.
It would be strange if anyone here didn’t.
He glanced to the side.
Standing next to him, head bowed in a mockery of grief, was Darius, the eldest son. A wide, triumphant smile was plastered across his face. He and Silas had been locked in a bitter power struggle for succession.
That smile is going to split his face in two.
Darius wasn’t even trying to hide it anymore; his expression was completely unguarded. Anyone with eyes could see that Silas’s death was no accident.
Yet no one said a word. Not the knights, not the retainers. Not even Cormac, the current Count Valerius, uttered a single reprimand to his eldest son.
Then again, Cormac was so far gone, lost in a haze of drugs and women, that he probably didn’t care if his sons tore each other to pieces. It wasn’t as if he was capable of stringing a sentence together anymore.
Zane suppressed a small, sarcastic laugh. Even at his son’s funeral, the Count was flanked by courtesans, his dignity a long-forgotten memory.
Just as you’d expect from a dark fantasy. This family is an absolute mess.
Not that Zane had any intention of intervening.
His own plans were proceeding smoothly without his direct involvement. The only real problem on his horizon remained the Five Calamities.
I need to find the others. Quickly.
As he mulled this over, the funeral reached its final stage. The lid of the coffin was being moved into place.
“Hmm…?”
A strange thought suddenly occurred to him.
Is this how Silas was supposed to die?
When he’d played through the Valerius family episode in the game, only Darius had appeared, so Silas’s death had always been a foregone conclusion. But Zane now recalled something Darius had said during his final confrontation with the protagonist.
…Didn’t he say that after years of suffering, he finally killed Silas himself to become the undisputed heir?
Having played the game so many times, Zane clearly remembered the pathetic sight of Darius in his last moments. He tilted his head, a flicker of confusion passing through him.
He quickly shrugged it off.
In the end, it wasn't his concern.
A few days after Silas’s funeral, a remarkable peace settled over the Valerius estate. The turmoil surrounding the second son’s death vanished as if it had never been.
The succession war was over.
While the Count did have a third son, Zane, no one expected the family to descend into chaos again.
Unlike Silas, who had built a power base by aligning with the underworld and selling drugs, Zane was known to have no power whatsoever.
Even Darius, paranoid as he was about the succession, paid Zane no mind.
He was far too busy absorbing the drug trade that Silas had left behind.
With the estate finally quiet, Zane sat reading a letter from Eris.
“Hmm.”
The letters they’d exchanged for nearly a year were always much the same, filled with simple, everyday news.
Most of it concerned the orphanage: which children were growing well, how their studies were progressing. She also included a few brief mentions of Nox, the boy Zane had sent to her.
‘They’re growing well without any issues…’
Zane smiled, satisfied, as he read the short line in Eris’s neat script.
When he had left Nox at the orphanage, he’d told Eris the boy could be “a bit of a handful,” asking her to take special care. Since then, she had never failed to include a small update on his progress.
Reading her letters, you’d think she was just a kind, innocent girl from the countryside.
He briefly considered visiting her, but shook his head and continued reading.
As he reached the end of the letter, Zane spoke aloud.
“Gideon.”
“Yes, my lord?”
“…Do orphanages normally receive many donations?”
“Hmm. They likely receive some, but I wouldn’t imagine it’s a great deal.”
“That’s what I thought.”
The question had been prompted by a list of donors at the bottom of Eris’s letter.
Was it three months ago, or four?
Curiously, a few months back, other people had begun donating to the same orphanage Zane was supporting. The letter only mentioned that a merchant named Falkor had made a contribution, so he didn’t know the exact amount, but still…
This month, five people donated. Myself included.
His brow furrowed for a moment, but he quickly dismissed the thought.
Well, the more donations, the better for the children.
With that, Zane penned a reply to Eris, offering half-hearted affirmations to her stories, and handed the sealed letter to Gideon.
“Are you going to deliver this one yourself as well?”
“No, didn't I just go a few months ago?”
“Three months ago, my lord.”
“And… what was your report then?”
“The orphanage is running well. And Nox, the boy I delivered, seems to have improved significantly.”
“Is that so?”
Zane nodded, pleased.
I knew it. Even if they’re fated to become the Five Calamities, they couldn’t have been evil from the start. It’s good to know the children are growing up well. It must have been their environment that twisted them into killers.
The thought reaffirmed his belief in the importance of a person’s upbringing. He looked back at Gideon.
“There’s no need to go in person this time. Just have someone from the mercenary guild deliver it.”
“Understood.”
Gideon nodded and turned to leave, but then he paused, as if remembering something.
“My lord… do you recall the matter you mentioned last time?”
“What matter?”
“The ancient book.”
“Did you find it?”
“Not for certain, but I have found a lead.”
“Tell me.”
At Zane’s command, Gideon began to relay the information he had gathered from his intelligence network, piece by piece.
And as he spoke, Zane’s expression sharpened.
“I’ve found it.”
He had discovered the location of the third Calamity.
Aveline, a small viscounty nestled in the eastern part of the Aethelgard Kingdom, was famous for its beautiful glass crafts.
That, however, was merely its public face. The true source of the Aveline’s wealth was drugs.
A criminal organization called Iron Vipers used Aveline as its distribution hub, paying the Aveline handsomely for his cooperation. Over time, Iron Vipers had grown into a massive syndicate with hundreds of members, its leadership comprised of more than ten expert-level fighters.
Because of this, Brolin, Iron Vipers’s leader and an expert mercenary himself, had been confident that his organization’s power would only continue to expand.
At least, that had been his belief until yesterday.
Brolin’s terrified eyes darted around the room.
Before him lay dozens of his men, their corpses sprawled across the floor in pools of blood.
“P-Please, spare me! Spare me!”
“I beg you!”
“Aaaahhh!”
Only a handful remained, their screams echoing in the cavernous hideout.
Brolin stared at them, his body trembling. These men should have been his shield, his last line of defense. Even if they were weaker than him, their numbers alone should have offered some comfort.
Instead, looking at them filled him with nothing but abject fear.
“Uh… Ugh…”
“Please… stop…”
The surviving men were all holding their swords in a reverse grip, the points of the blades pressed against their own throats.
“No! No, don’t! No, no, no!”
“Aaaahhh!”
“Stop, please stop! I’m begging you… Please!”
Their faces were masks of desperation, pleading for a mercy their own hands refused to grant.
But their bodies moved with a will that was not their own, a sickeningly natural motion as they drove the blades deeper.
With a series of wet, tearing sounds, the last dozen members of Iron Vipers took their own lives.
And then, it began.
“!”
Brolin’s body started to move.
“N-no…!”
His hand tightened on his sword, twisting it into a reverse grip.
“P-please!”
He fought, straining with all his might, but his hijacked body no longer obeyed him. It only trembled with the effort of his resistance.
In his final moment, as the cold steel touched his skin, he saw them.
From the deepest shadows of the hideout, a pair of violet eyes stared directly at him.
The moment he met that gaze—
Shhhk!
Brolin plunged his sword into his own throat.
Thud.
As his body collapsed to the floor, a figure emerged from the darkness. Nox stepped silently over the corpses and walked toward the exit.
“Well done.”
Eris, who had been standing with him in the shadows, followed him out into the night.
“Was there any point in killing these people?” Nox asked, his voice calm, as if he had been waiting for her. Unlike a year ago, his eyes held a clear, sharp light of reason.
“Are you feeling sympathetic?”
“No. I know they ground up human beings to make their drugs.”
“Then?”
“I am simply wondering if killing them will help us kill those bastards.”
In response to his question, Eris smiled.
“Of course,” she said, her answer absolute. “This is merely laying the groundwork for his return.”
As she spoke, a complex pattern began to glow on the floor beneath her feet. At the center of the magic circle was a single, giant eye, a crescent moon carved into its iris.
“When he arrives, we wouldn’t want his domain to be squalid, would we?”
“…I understand.”
Nox, who had been staring at the sigil, nodded as if grasping a deeper meaning. He said nothing more.
“All is as he wills.”
Muttering the words he had repeated countless times, Nox watched as Eris completed the magic circle. Then, together, they vanished into the darkness.
In the Iron Vipers hideout, nothing was left but silence and the dead.