The Villain Family’s Strongest Butler
Chapter 2
Chapter 2
“Welcome back, Your Highness.”
The Grand Duke’s office.
Having returned to the Grand Duke’s Residence after a week away, Cadrian slipped off his coat as he entered the office.
Count Norbert Millard, a vassal of the Valot Grand Duchy, took Cadrian’s coat and spoke.
“Did your business go well?”
Then he glanced around.
“Come to think of it, I don’t see your aide?”
Cadrian pulled out his desk chair and sat down.
“The matter isn’t finished yet. That’s why I left Ed behind.”
“Ah.” Norbert sighed regretfully.
“So you hurried back alone because of the newly found survivor.”
Cadrian nodded.
“Found on Teridana Beach, was it?”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
Norbert poured hot tea into a prepared cup, set it before the Grand Duke, and stepped back. His movements were deft and without wasted motion.
“I had them bring the person to the Grand Duke’s Residence for now, but… what do you intend to do?”
“……”
Cadrian rubbed his forehead.
“It’ll be one of two things. Either someone connected to black magic, or a monster.”
Whichever it was, it meant death.
Norbert swallowed hard at the sudden sharpness in Cadrian’s voice.
Black magic. And the black magicians who wielded it.
A year ago, black magicians—who had vanished for ages—reappeared.
It had been four hundred years.
Armed with even more sinister magic, the black magicians had begun attacking the entire continent, starting with the Remart Disputed Region.
At the time, the war between the Cadea Empire and the Tenasis Empire was in full swing across the Remart Disputed Region.
‘They must have targeted the place where the eyes of the entire continent were gathered.’
Perhaps they deemed it the perfect stage to announce their presence to the world.
Because of that, countless knights fell in the Remart Disputed Region.
Among the fallen of the enemy empire was a knight Cadrian had often mentioned.
‘Was her name Sia?’
After witnessing that knight’s death with his own eyes, the Grand Duke had spent many days lost in thought, staring blankly out the window.
Like someone who had lost a comrade-in-arms.
In the end, the Remart Disputed Region was overrun by the black magicians.
One day, exactly one year after that fateful day.
Trensha Village, right beside Teridana Beach, was attacked by black magicians and reduced to ruins.
That had happened a week ago.
The casualties were devastating.
Cadrian had dispatched knights to scout the ruined village in search of any possible survivors.
In the midst of the chaos to clean up the aftermath, something seemed to have happened to Cadrian as well.
‘That was the first time I’d ever seen His Highness so shaken.’
Cadrian had left the village’s recovery in Norbert’s hands. Then, taking his aide Ed with him, he had vanished somewhere.
Fortunately or not, no survivors were found for some time. Thus, the Grand Duke’s absence caused no real issues, and Norbert was able to handle the cleanup without trouble.
Yet today, of all days, a survivor had turned up.
At news of a survivor’s discovery, Cadrian had rushed back.
Norbert spoke.
“I thought Your Highness dumped the work on me just to delay my retirement.”
“As if.”
When Cadrian gave a low chuckle, Norbert spoke in a somewhat somber tone.
“……If you intend to conduct an interrogation, it might be better to take them to my countship’s underground prison rather than the Grand Duke’s Residence, Your Highness.”
The Grand Duchy already had an infamous reputation for being cruel and vicious.
Even if that was nothing more than rumor.
‘It would be best to avoid bloodshed here if possible.’
The Grand Duke looked at Norbert, who was muttering with worry, and said,
“I can hardly make our aging Count handle interrogations as well.”
At that, Norbert puffed out his chest.
“I am still plenty spry.”
“You said you wanted to retire and travel.”
“Indeed. And yet a survivor had to be found today of all days.”
“Then take your packed bags and leave. We are not so short-handed that I need to work an elderly, retired vassal to the bone.”
Norbert pouted at Cadrian’s teasing words.
“You wound me, Your Highness. This old man remains your servant until his dying breath.”
“Is that so? Then why don’t you take up the vacant position of the Grand Duchy’s butler?”
At once, the earnest look in Norbert’s eyes vanished, replaced by dead seriousness.
“Ah, let’s not go that far. Please spare this old man. I have to stay alive to serve Your Highness, don’t I?”
“Anyone listening would think I’m shoving you into your grave.”
“Because it’s the truth.”
It had already been over five years since the Valot Grand Duchy’s butlers began dying off.
It was all because of assassins infiltrating to target the Grand Duke.
The Valot Grand Duchy had many enemies.
With Cadrian, the head of the family, so frequently exposed to danger, the butlers striving to maintain the estate’s security inevitably got caught in the crossfire.
Over fifty butlers had perished in that manner alone.
Normally, a butler in a high-ranking noble household had to come from a respectable family, receive an elite education, and graduate from the Butler Academy.
‘Few among them are proficient in swordsmanship or magic.’
Those skilled with a blade preferred becoming knights rather than butlers, and those endowed with strong mana sought to become magicians.
A person who was both a competent butler and a skilled swordsman was exceptionally rare.
In fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say none existed.
‘Though it is far better than His Highness getting hurt……’
Professional butlers who had completed the Butler Academy came lured by the exorbitant salary, only to leave as corpses.
Not one lasted a month before meeting their end by the Grand Duke’s side.
Because of this, the Grand Duchy, once hailed as the premier workplace, was now dubbed the Butler’s Graveyard.
‘The Grand Duchy won’t collapse just because the head butler’s seat is empty.’
However……
An estate could not run without servants, and a family could not be managed by the head alone.
‘It’s true that the longer the butler’s seat remains vacant, the more unstable the Grand Duchy’s internal affairs become.’
And the burden shared between the Grand Duke and his aide would only grow heavier.
‘We need to find a butler soon……’
At this rate, I worry we’ll end up dragging some vagrant off the backstreets and putting him in the butler’s coat.
Norbert let out a sigh.
“I will find a butler somehow, Your Highness.”
Norbert continued in a calm yet confident voice.
“Whether I teach swordsmanship to a graduate of the Butler Academy, or teach butlering to someone who knows how to swing a sword, I will fill that post no matter what!”
At that, Cadrian chuckled.
“I’ll look forward to it.”
Since it was practically a hopeless prospect,
Norbert merely offered a bitter smile in return.
Teaching swordsmanship to a butler, or butlering to a knight, would take no small amount of time and effort.
‘Above all, finding someone willing to learn an entirely new field outside their own specialty will be even harder.’
What we need is someone who learned both swordsmanship and butlering from the very beginning……
‘Yet who on earth would do something so foolish……?’
Mastering a single discipline already required immense time and perseverance……
Norbert’s worries deepened.
Just then, Cadrian drew a pocket watch from his coat and checked the time.
“They’re late.”
“I instructed them to bathe and dress the person in fresh clothes before bringing them in.”
Norbert looked toward the door and spoke in a chilling tone.
“We cannot know what taint they might have brought from Teridana Beach, after all.”
Cadrian nodded.
Right on cue, someone knocked on the office door.
Knock, knock—
“Your Highness. The Teridana Beach patrol has arrived.”
“Enter.”
Soon, the office door opened.
Shudder. Goosebumps prickled along my forearms.
That single command from the Grand Duke to enter made every hair on my body stand on end.
Whoa, is this for real? Is it really that Grand Duke?
“You may go in, my lady.”
The knight who had escorted me to the office spoke politely.
I nodded and stepped inside.
A large man sat with his back to the sunlight streaming through the window.
Because of the backlighting, his entire form was draped in shadow, yet the man’s violet eyes gleamed brightly through the dark.
‘Those eyes.’
I knew that gaze.
The gaze that had glinted ominously through the narrow slit of that cold helmet I faced time and time again.
‘Cadrian Valot……!’
It’s real. It’s really the Grand Duke.
My fingertips trembled slightly.
It felt like running into an apex predator of unfathomable power deep in a night-fogged forest.
Not the still, painted expression in a portrait, but the living, breathing face of the Grand Duke.
‘Wow…… But who the hell painted his portrait?’
I thought the artist had been threatened into painting him handsomer than he actually was.
‘The painter did him dirty.’
The Grand Duke in the portrait couldn’t even compare to the man before my eyes. If anything, the painter deserved to be beheaded for failing to capture his looks properly.
‘I almost felt cheated, dying before I could ever knock that helmet off his head.’
I was glad I’d lived long enough—no, glad I’d come back to life.
However.
‘Why has he been looking at me like that this whole time?’
The Grand Duke’s gaze was strange. Yes, “strange” was the only word for it.
It wasn’t the suspicious look one gave a potential threat, full of doubt.
His eyes were slightly widened, his brow faintly furrowed. And his jaw clenched tight, muscles bulging.
‘No way……’
Is this face his type?
‘Well, the Grand Duke is a man, after all.’
It wasn’t like a face like this could be found just anywhere, you know?
While I nodded to myself, the knights continued their report.
The date, time, and discoverer; that she was found on the northeastern shore of Teridana Beach; the condition she was in when discovered; and so on.
Yet even as he listened to the knight’s report, Cadrian could not take his eyes off me.
What is wrong with him? Say something already.
I stood just a few paces away from Cadrian, waiting for him to speak.
“……”
“……”
Even after the report ended, the silence lingered.
‘What’s going on?’
As the silence stretched, awkwardness washed over the faces of both the old man standing beside the Grand Duke and the knight who had just finished reporting.
I felt the same.
Having so much to hide made me unnecessarily jumpy.
‘Wait, did he actually figure it out?’
At first he seemed stunned, but now he was glaring at me with a gaze so fierce it felt like he wanted to devour me whole.
Any thought that he was staring because this face was pretty or his type had already vanished from my mind.
No, there wasn’t a single trace of my past life in how I looked now.
‘Don’t lose your nerve.’
I wasn’t the “Sir Sia” that Grand Duke knew.
Just then.
The Grand Duke, who had been sitting quietly, slowly rose to his feet. An ominous energy radiated from the gaze assessing me.
Then, turning toward the knights standing outside the door, he commanded:
“Shackle her.”
Huh? Shackle?
As my eyebrows shot up, the knights waiting behind me rushed in.
“Excuse us.”
Clank, clank! Heavy shackles clamped neatly around both my wrists and ankles.
