Episode 256 The Tomb of the Knife Point (2)
Crisp –
The dry parchment buried in salt spreads out as if it were crumbling.
A familiar handwriting appeared in it.
‘Dear brother C’ – With the concern of his younger brother Hugo.
Bikir first checked the sender of the letter.
The sender of the letter was, as expected, Hugo Les Baskervilles. It was quite understandable since the seal of the letter was only used for top-level military secrets that only the head of state could deal with.
There was just something strange.
“……Brother? And younger brother?”
Hugo is obviously the eldest son and head of the Baskervilles. But was there anyone he could call his brother?
It was hard to imagine even inside and outside the family.
At that moment, Vikir’s mind suddenly recalled what Hugo had said before.
‘It’s like eating for free.’
‘Whoop whoop. That’s right. This father, too, worked hard to become the eldest son when he became head of household.’
It was part of a conversation we had once, when we beat the triplets with Hive, Middle, and Low.
When I first heard this, I wondered if being the eldest son could be called hard work? I had a question called
But now I know better.
Hugo was not the eldest son, but as a result of a fierce power struggle, he killed or defeated all his older brothers and rose to the position of head of the family.
In other words, he became the eldest son by birth.
……but? Did Hugo still have someone he could call his older brother while he humbly called himself his younger brother? That’s the question.
‘If you think about it, it’s probably not very rare.’
Bikir read the full text of the letter as he searched for his memories before returning.
One of my 15-year-old sons has just returned from two years of surviving alone in the floods of Red and Black Mountains.
Therefore, we are planning to arrange a small dinner, and if you have the opportunity, please come and shine.
It’s been a long time since I haven’t seen you face to face.
The return of the older brother, who has the most power among the seven counts, will surely be a great strength to the family in itself.
Then I will wait for your reply.
Roughly speaking, since Bikir was alive from the sea, he was told to come to the great feast.
Bikir looked at the letter and rubbed his chin once.
The letter was not as old as I thought. And it’s the first time I’ve ever seen Hugo so formal.
I now guessed who the addressee of this letter was supposed to be.
‘Brother C. And the Seven Counts…’
In Baskerville, the Iron-Blooded Swordsman, there are seven Counts who spend their years only in battle.
In the world, they are called ‘Seven Counts’.
Seventh Earl is a very old title, and has existed since before the founding of the Great Rock Empire, during the Warring States Period, when the continent looked as if colorful jellies had been spilled on the map.
At that time, the king was just a concept of a small castle lord, and the current empire has integrated them all into one empire and seven families.
For example, Baskerville, the iron-blooded swordsman, manages the savages in foreign lands, and Don Quixote, the sorceress, manages the wandering tribes of the sea.
One family, one country.
It was an era when a single family was prosperous enough to serve as a single kingdom.
A time of chaos when everything was gradually integrated into one empire and seven families.
This was actually the heyday of the seven count system.
The seven counts were able to fight all over the western front by mobilizing the family’s military authority without the permission of the family head.
The seven-headed carriage that led the golden age of the Baskerville family, where monsters, barbarians, and other families were all afraid of the teeth of the mad fighting dog.
However, after the empire unified the continent, the huge battlefield disappeared.
There were always small local wars, but there was no chaos like before.
A chaos on such a grand scale that an entire old bloodline disappears and dozens of castles collapse in one day.
As the era of the Grand Woong passed, the prestige of Count Chil naturally declined.
So, from time to time, the old Baskervilles of the Senate longed for the past and remembered the ‘Seven Earls of those days’.
Nanse (亂世). The freedom, the romance, the seven teeth of the sword that ran through the battlefield without anyone noticing.
It was their claim that it was the real Seven Earl. Today’s politicians who are preoccupied with political strife do not deserve to be called seven counts.
‘Certainly, at that time, the inaction and power of the seven counts were really strong at the level of the head of the household.’
Vikir recalled what had happened in the past.
When Bikir returned to the Baskervilles after living with Balak, Hugo was very happy and held a great feast.
At that time, those who were invited were the seven knight commanders who enjoyed the most powerful authority after the current seven counts and Sogaju.
It is said that they all wanted to take Bikir to their knights, so they all hoped to attend the large banquet, which is not usually attended.
The leader of the Doberman Knights, ‘Isabella’ Les Baskervilles.
“German” Les Baskerville, leader of the Shepherd Knights.
Les Baskerville, ‘Metzgerhund’, leader of the Rottweiler Knights.
‘Cu-Chulainn’ Les Baskervilles, leader of the Wolfhound Knights.
And Les Baskerville, the Boston Terrier, leader of the Pit Bull Knights, and Les Baskerville, the Great Dane, leader of the Mastiff Knights.
Due to the problem of short distance and time, only two people who actually attended the ceremony were the Earl of Boston Terrier, the leader of the Pitbull Knights, and the Earl of Great Dane, the leader of the “Mastiff Knights.”
‘……Later, I heard from Sindi Wendy that the number of seven Counts who wished to attend at that time was six.’
Yes. In fact, when Bikir returned from the sea of red and black mountains, the seven counts who wished to attend the great banquet were not all, but six.
The reason is that one of the seven counts went into seclusion with his back to the world.
He had been out of touch for a long time, but he was the strongest and oldest of the seven counts.
In order to find out his whereabouts, the Baskervilles sent countless letters and messengers, but no reply came back.
And even those who went to deliver the correspondence.
So, there was a perception that the number of seven counts was actually six.
“……The Seventh Earl who has been out of contact. He is this person.”
Bikir was able to clearly identify the entity the letter pointed to.
The existence that Hugo calls ‘Brother C’.
He is the only person among the current seven counts whose name is listed on the former seven counts.
Countess Chil, the real man of those days, who went through the turbulent times of the reign of King Woong.
Even Hugo, who killed all his brothers and rose to the position of head of the family, couldn’t do anything about it until the very end.
It was ‘CaneCorso Les Baskervilles’.
* * *
It was clear to Vikir why the nameless pit bull who was delivering the letter had died.
Whiiyiying-
A terrifying storm is wrapping around the entire desert.
The grains of sand of white salt twisting along with the wind blow across it like a huge castle wall, sweeping away everything and drying it away.
In the extreme dry season, everything that touches is deprived of moisture and becomes dry, and soon it is cut away by sharp grains of sand.
Bikir was walking through it, wrapped in a black cloak.
‘It’s definitely hard. A graduate deserves to die.’
It was so difficult to simply endure it, but if the basilisk, a dangerous S-rank monster, came at you, you would have no choice but to be prepared for death.
Even if he was a top-notch combat pro.
Caw –
A large crow flies in the sky.
They are aiming for the corpse of Bikir, who was caught in the storm and died.
But even the crows in the sky couldn’t escape the power of the salt storm.
Failing to calculate the distance, this gigantic bird of prey broke its neck and wings from the force of the storm, and soon began to salt while floating in the air.
…Fuck!
Soon, the crow’s parched mummy fell to the ground.
The whole body was bent and crushed, but before that, it was dead due to the rapid depletion of water.
“…Hmm. If there was a basilisk, I wouldn’t have been able to enter either.”
Bikir murmured as he pierced the edge of the storm.
He was barely surviving with his body strengthened by the River Styx and the regenerative power of the monsters absorbed through Baalzebub.
……How much time had passed.
Coming through the salt storm, I saw something foreign in the middle of what had been all white sand.
Tower. It’s a dark red tower.
It was a strange and bizarre construction that can only be described as such.
This tower, which looked like an awl protruding from the ground, had the black light of the night sky and the red light of blood at the same time.
The material of the cold metal forming the wall could not even be guessed, and the height could not be estimated either.
However, the certain fact was that inside this tower in front of me, there was a high-level space distortion magic that was incomparably higher than that of the magic tower.
“…This actually existed.”
Bikir must have seen this tower before.
I didn’t see it with the naked eye, but it happened during the liberal arts class of the infant castle when I was just getting out of the ‘cradle of the sword’ in my childhood before returning.
When studying the family myth of the Baskervilles, a fictional being that always appears on a page in a textbook is a product of imagination.
But it stood tall and existed here and now.
“……!”
Eventually, Bikir, who arrived at the tower, found an inscription crudely carved with a knife in front of the cave that was supposed to be the entrance.
‘The Grave of the Knife’
From the cradle to the grave.
It must mean someone’s words.
