Ch#46
Aman was bewildered.
The moment Tiria and the Madam vanished, this man’s countenance transformed instantly, and he began to behave with such insolence. Aman even wondered if the information he had gathered on him was fundamentally flawed.
‘I was told he was a nobody.’
The information had come from a reliable source.
Tiria’s husband, who had returned to the Wibin territory… the current head of the Portman family, was supposedly nothing more than a reckless upstart who had never received a proper noble education.
Furthermore, he was said to be so lacking in backing that he had to hire knights from a neighboring territory just to hunt monsters.
But what was this?
‘What in the world…?’
He didn’t look like a nobody at all.
Instinct is always more honest than reason.
Aman’s body froze stiff.
The man’s gaze was so sharp that Aman couldn’t even find the words to form a proper rebuttal.
It was a sensation entirely foreign to Aman, who had lived his whole life as the young master of Nimrud.
A strange fear felt in the face of a strange thing, a strange situation, and a strange opponent.
As is the habit of the human species, Aman began to react out of pure inertia.
“How dare you!”
“How dare I?”
“You don’t know your place, raising your hand against a Nimrud!”
It was an outburst of indignation.
In Ferdin, Nimrud was a family with the status to justify such an outburst.
After all, wasn’t his father, Count Nimrud, possessed of connections vast enough to establish a new law in this kingdom?
Aman squared his shoulders and shouted loudly, but it felt hollow.
No matter how much a frightened herbivore puffs itself up, to a predator, it only looks like a more substantial meal.
Ignorant of this, Aman’s shouts continued spasmodically.
“Do you think a place like Wibin can protect you!? What? Lessons? Etiquette? Do you really think you’re in a position to lecture me on that!?”
He pointed a finger, his words reaching a crescendo.
“Know your place! If you’re a baron from some remote countryside, then bow your head! How dare you speak to me in such a—”
“Pfft!”
A hollow laugh escaped Elric’s lips.
No, it was a sneer.
“Heh… hehehe….”
He laughed so hard his shoulders shook, and the vibe was strangely unsettling.
“My way of speaking, you say…?”
He stroked his chin with a thoughtful hum, but his gaze wasn’t even on Aman.
It was as if he were thinking of something else.
That was the impression he gave, and it was indeed the truth.
“Forgive me for laughing. I was suddenly reminded of the past.”
Elric sat back on the sofa and leaned against the cushions.
Only then did Aman stop having to look up at him.
Yet, he didn’t feel the slightest bit relieved.
He felt as though he were suffocating.
He felt as if his knees were about to buckle.
It was a natural reaction to the aura Elric usually suppressed leaking out.
“It was quite a while ago. I believe it was the autumn I turned sixteen….”
Elric suddenly began to tell a story of the past.
“I was quite immature back then. I still am, but I was worse then. Besides, the place I stayed was far from a neighborhood where people looked after one another, so didn’t my personality turn quite foul?”
“What are you….”
“I had a very rough tongue. I used to spout curses at everyone, regardless of rank… and the person who looked after me back then told me this.”
Tap, tap. Elric drummed the end of his cane against the floor.
A hint of nostalgia seemed to flicker across his face.
“Speech is the vessel of a person. Therefore, no matter what you think inside, speak with politeness. Then your vessel will grow accordingly.”
“…….”
“So I started changing my way of speaking from then on. At the time, I thought the way old men spoke was the height of politeness, so I began to adopt it. Before I knew it, it became a habit, and even unconsciously, I find myself using the speech of an old man, don’t I?”
Aman couldn’t understand the point of the story.
He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being mocked.
Just as he was about to part his lips to say something.
“Well, putting that aside, the important thing is that I eventually became a person who can pretend to be polite on the surface.”
His gaze turned toward Aman.
Somehow, his eyes seemed a bit redder than a moment ago.
“However, it seems a person’s true nature doesn’t change easily.”
Immediately after those words pierced his ears.
“Sometimes, my true personality leaks out. It seems that man’s words aren’t entirely reliable.”
Whish—
With that sound, the world Aman was seeing flipped upside down.
Thud!
Only after the impact struck his head with a loud noise did Aman realize his body had been slammed into the floor.
“Ugh!”
Since he had been driven headfirst into the ground, the pain was beyond description.
It was a bewildering agony for Aman, who had never felt such pain in his life.
His eyes rolled around.
He was trying to find the reason why his body had been slammed down.
In the process, he saw the cane now resting across Elric’s shoulder.
Only then did his ankle begin to throb.
Elric had struck his ankle with the cane and brought him down.
“You… you bastard….”
“Refraining from cursing is truly difficult. One is supposed to treat things that aren’t even human as human, isn’t one? It seems I am not that much of a virtuous person.”
Once again, Aman was in a position looking up at Elric.
No, it was a more miserable sight than before.
Because now, Aman had to look up at him while crawling on the floor.
It was at that moment.
“I think this eye level suits us best.”
Elric said with a chilling smile.
“Where do you think you’re looking up? Know your place.”
Tap. The tip of Elric’s cane touched Aman’s forehead.
It was humiliating.
And yet, he couldn’t resist.
Elric’s aura held a sense of alienation, so different from any human Aman had ever known.
Even his terrifying father wasn’t this frightening.
Aman’s eyes instinctively lowered.
However, whatever pride he had left forced one more sentence out of his trembling lips.
“Do… do you think you’ll get away with this…?”
“And what will you do?”
Elric pushed Aman’s forehead with the tip of his cane.
He was tilting it to force their eyes to meet.
He was still cold, composed, and violent.
“Will you run off to your great Count and whine for him to punish me? Or will you hire a knight and challenge me to a duel? Or perhaps… will you try to fight me yourself? Personally, I quite like the last option. I have a bit of a reputation in that field. I’ll at least let you live.”
Where on earth did that source of confidence come from?
That physique? The strength to knock a man down with a cane?
Whatever it was, all Aman could do right now was tremble in shame.
It was only natural.
How could the young master of a minor Eastern noble house stand on the same level as one of the Seven Strongest of the continent, the master of the battlefield?
Using status or backing was also out of the question.
Edward the Geumgong might be one thing, but Kasha the Sword Demon was not a man who feared such things.
Everyone who knew him in the West appraised him, without exception, as a man with the most violent temperament a human could possess—a man further removed from worldly status than anyone else.
To put it bluntly, he was a madman who would draw his sword first if something displeased him.
“I wonder if there is anything more to be said between us. Actually, what I want is far from a conversation.”
Tap, tap.
Elric spoke as he tapped Aman’s head with his cane.
“Be on your way. Use that head of yours to think of any way possible to repay this insult. I shall wait with a joyful heart. You only need to keep one thing in mind.”
At that moment,
“Gah…!”
Aman felt as if he were being strangled.
It was a phenomenon caused by manifesting killing intent, but there was no way for Aman, with his knowledge, to know that.
His whole body simply shook, and his breath was cut off.
He was consumed by sheer terror.
“As long as it doesn’t affect my wife, you may try anything you wish against me.”
The words were delivered clearly, as if to brand the premise into his brain.
It was truly effective.
Aman’s unrefined, soft mental strength was already pouring out affirmation through teary eyes.
“Uuugh….”
Trembling violently, Aman began to crawl toward the door of the tailor shop.
Elric didn’t bother to stop him.
He simply watched the trail left behind in the man’s wake.
“You’re just like a snail. Leaving a trail of fluid as you crawl away.”
Aman had wet himself.
Elric even waved his hand to see him off.
“I shall see you at the banquet. I truly look forward to your retaliation with a joyful heart.”
The moment the tailor shop door clicked open, Aman scrambled out without looking back.
Elric let out a long sigh as he looked at the door Aman had departed through.
‘What should I do now?’
He had acted on impulse, and the thought that he might have been too harsh crossed his mind.
But the regret didn’t last long.
‘If worst comes to worst, I can just negotiate with the Count.’
Judging by Aman Nimrud’s way of speaking, Elric was once again certain that his father, Count Nimrud, held great power.
Elric knew the common trait of such men.
Generally, they tended to value their own and their family’s gain more than their children’s dignity.
If the Count wanted it, Elric was a man capable of entering a contract to swing his sword for him.
‘There’s no need to think about it further.’
Since he had already done it, it wouldn’t be too late to think of a way when the time came.
In the first place, no matter what move Aman Nimrud made, there was nothing to fear.
With those thoughts, Elric waited for Tiria to return. It was only afterward that he learned why Aman Nimrud had come all this way to flirt with her.
“…When I was young, the Wibin family had earmarked him as a potential fiancé for me. Of course, there was a refusal from their side, and since Wibin’s situation wasn’t good, it fell through.”
The moment he heard those words, the last ounce of regret in Elric’s heart vanished.
“Is that so?”
Elric felt extremely displeased.
This, too, was a surprising emotion that even he found unexpected.
