CH 102

Translator: Nisarah      Editor:Fleeting

♦

What he said made sense. Commoners did have the right to move to other nobles’ territories, but unless there was an extraneous circumstance, like what happened to the Hearthing family, it was rare for commoners to move.

He coated his words with the word of ‘responsibility’ but his true intention was obvious. He wanted to add a card named ‘the Hearthing family’ into his hands. Not just ‘getting up’ when they ‘fall’ but trying to gain more advantage. Typical nobles.

I could sense Mazell’s family’s nervousness behind me.

“Are you saying that our family is unreliable?”

“Nothing like that, Sir Welner. I was only saying that it was my duty to take responsibility, as our family was at fault.”

S̲o̲n̲ o̲f̲ t̲h̲e̲ b̲i̲t̲c̲h̲ pretended to be pure with that smile. In the first place, didn’t everything happen because of your mismanagement? Well, I understood it would be impossible for a noble family to pay attention to each and every village in their territory since information transferred very slowly in this world in comparison to my previous world.

However, this and that were different matters! Was being shameless a skill you needed to have as a noble? Or was this shamelessness just a trait of the Witthoft family?

Still, this guy didn’t seem to know anything about the security of this mansion. Most likely, the state of the mansion’s security was kept a secret.

“It would be best if we just ask the relevant people. Hearthing family, what do you think of my proposal?”

So he used his nobility status here. I mean, how could commoners refuse a noble’s favor?

I really didn’t like how he did things and how he guided the conversation, but what I hated the most was that d̲a̲m̲n̲ smirk on his face. He really pissed me off. Just when I was about to say something, Father cut me off.

“Sir Erdogan. You are making a proposal to the wrong people.”

“…Sir Ingo, what do you mean?”

Sir Erdogan glared at Father, but Father just calmly took a sip of his tea.

“It was His Highness, the Crown Prince, who entrusted us to take care of the Hearthing family.”

“If that is the case, then I will send an official request to His Highness. Both of us are Count, so as long as His Highness didn’t object, there would not be any problem.”

“I’m not finished.”

Father gazed at me as if saying ‘don’t interrupt’, so I obediently sat down and stayed silent.

“His Highness entrusted us to take care of the Hearthing family, but the person who was really responsible for the Hearthing family while they live in the capital was Grand Duke Seyfart, not my family.”

“…What do you mean?”

“Haven’t you heard about it? The Hearthing family was actually entrusted to Grand Duke Seyfart, but because the Grand Duke was on the battlefield at that time, His Highness decided to temporarily entrust them to us.”

Sir Erdogan’s face immediately turned pale. If the guardian of the Hearthing family was the Zeavert family, then transferring the guardianship to his house wouldn’t be a matter of trust or distrust, it would be just a simple transfer of guardianship.

But it would be a different story if the guardian of the Hearthing family was Grand Duke Seyfart while Zeavert family were just the Grand Duke’s deputy chosen by the royal family. If Sir Erdogan tried to appeal to transfer the guardianship of the Hearthing family, he would come across as if he couldn’t trust the deputy chosen by the royal family.

Still, Father, why didn’t you tell me about this before!?

“The other day, I also asked Duke Grunding for his help. I thought that there would be some difficulty if my house alone became the temporary guardian of the Hearthing family, but Duke Grunding told me that my house would be fine without his help, but if I needed anything, I could consult him anytime.”

Checkmate. With this, my house even had the support of the Duke, the head of the Queen’s maiden family, so it would be impossible for Sir Erdogan to do anything now. Even if he somehow persuaded His Highness, if the Duke disagreed, then even the royal family wouldn’t be able to do anything.

In fact, if Father went to ‘consult’ with the Duke saying ‘I was told that there is a house who is more suitable as the guardian of the Hearthing family compared to the Zeavert house’, it was easy to imagine what sort of reaction would the Duke, who said my house would be fine even without his help, have.

I finally got it. So everything went according to plan.

Just like how the kingdom fished out the nobles who had ulterior motives toward Laura in Finnoi, this time the kingdom wanted to use this chance to fish out the nobles who think they could take advantage of the Hero, Mazell. That was why the kingdom didn’t announce the fact that the real guardian of the Hearthing family was Grand Duke Seyfart.

The reason Lily-san was made into the parlor maid of the guest room was to announce to other noble houses that the Hearthing family was here.

That meant Lily-san was made into a bait. Although I was sure that Father and others must have made some arrangement to protect her safety, that still pissed me off.

As I tried to think calmly, I also realized one other thing. All this time Sir Erdogan was trying to provoke me deliberately, and he almost succeeded.

On the other hand, Father hid the circumstance behind the Hearthing family’s guardianship, prepared the ‘consultation’ with the Duke as an insurance, then waited until Sir Erdogan used his position as a noble as a pretext to use the Hearthing family, before finally striking.

Moreover, Father had said nothing about the mansion’s state of security, so he still had a card to play. I guess this was how nobles fought.

On the other hand, even though Sir Erdogan finally realized he had fallen into a trap, all he could do now was to regret the fact that he didn’t confirm who was the guardian of the Hearthing family. He couldn’t even say to anyone that he proposed to Father to move the Hearthing family to his house. After all, his opponents were the Grand Duke and the Duke.

In short, Sir Erdogan was a puppet dancing on the stage prepared by His Highness and planned by a choreographer called ‘my father’.

The reason Father showed this to me was probably to teach me. Sir Erdogan was made into my ‘practical teaching material’ for nobility education. It was true that no one had ever taught me about this kind of thing.

In a way, Father was telling me that I needed to be able to do this kind of thing in the future.

But I wondered if the Duke helped Father to return the favor for Laura’s case. Certainly, if the Zeavert family lost its guardianship against other nobles, we would get the mark of being incompetent, since we weren’t able to take care of a commoner family. This would be a stain to the Zeavert family’s honor.

Or maybe it was Father who took advantage of the fact that the Duke had praised me? Since it would be hard for the Duke to say no to father’s request after having praised me before.

I didn’t know who took the initiative between the Duke and Father, but one thing was for sure, this was all made to teach me. As someone who could even become a minister, Father sure was merciless in his teachings.

After that, Sir Erdogan and Sir Heiner mumbled something, but in the end, they couldn’t come up with anything to retaliate against my father’s words, so they left. They apologized for making such a request, though. We saw them off until they left the mansion as a show of courtesy.

“Father. My apologies.”

It was true that Sir Erdogan nearly succeeded in provoking me, so even though I wasn’t satisfied with Father’s way of doing things, I would still apologize.

“Welner, anger could also become a weapon for a noble. But an anger brought by your incapability of controlling your emotion would be like gripping that weapon on its blade barehanded. Learn to control your emotions.”

“Yes.”

When I returned to the reception room, I found the Hearthing couple waiting with a difficult expression painted on their faces.

“Count. I apologize for…”

“No need. But if you prefer going to Sir Erdogan’s house, I will consider it.”

“No. If it is not too much trouble for you, we would like to stay here.”

Ali-san gave an immediate answer. Well, our house was rather fussy about the work of the employee.

But we were the house of the Ministry of Ceremonies so for us, being rude to others would stain our honor that was why we never treated the employee rudely.

Father, as a minister, was also financially well-off so the salary for working here was not bad so they just felt pretty comfortable here. Plus, from what I saw earlier, the Hearthing couple seemed to have a delicate relationship with Sir Heiner.

Come to think of it, maybe in the game, Sir Heiner was killed in the demon outbreak? Because of that, the village chief lost his backing of ‘a Knight Captain of a noble house’ and thus his position, and in turn, the people of Alea Village flipped their attitude 180° after hearing that Mazell saved Laura in Finnoi.

I would never know if this was what actually happened, though.

“I see, you can accept what Sir Erdogan brought here as an apology.”

“Sir… about that… this amount of money is…”

In my previous life, it would be like getting a pile of money that just fell from the sky. But considering the amount of suffering the Hearthing family had gone through because of the mismanagement, I thought this amount could be said to be little. Maybe it was just because my sense of values differed from theirs. Or perhaps Sir Erdogan actually planned to give them more after he roped them to his side.

“Then, how about you take care of it on their behalf, Welner?”

“Pardon?”

Why me?

“You just need to take care of it until you can discuss it with Mazell-kun.”

“Understood.”

Since Father said something like that, I could no longer refuse. It was true that what to do with this money was something that all members of the Hearthing family, including Mazell, needed to discuss. It wasn’t like I was going to embezzle it, so I guess it was fine for me to take care of it temporarily.

In the latter part of the game, the player no longer had anything for them to spend money on, so they got a lot of it just sitting around in the inventory. I wonder if by the time Mazell returned, this money would be like a loose change to him.

“Is that arrangement alright for you?”

“Yes. Thank you for your help.”

The whole family bowed their heads to me after answering my question. Because of my memory of the past life, I felt uncomfortable with the parents of my friend acting respectful like this. Come to think of it, most of my friends were nobles, so I always used polite language when speaking to their parents, just like how I spoke with my friend’s parents in my previous life.

(T/N: ‘speaking politely’ here means Welner was using polite Japanese while Welner always used casual Japanese when talking to Mazell’s family.)

It looked like Father also wanted to use the Hearthing family as a practical training on how to treat commoners. I was sure there was more reason than that, but practical training was definitely  one of them. I had a noble’s sense of value. When I become the head of the family in the future, it would be bad if I created a development plan with a ridiculous budget because I didn’t understand the commoner’s sense of value. In any case, I remembered Mazell was strangely calm about this kind of thing. He really got the making of an important person.

So here, Father must be trying to tell me to remember how most people would react if they were given this amount of gold. That Father of mine sure didn’t waste any opportunity.

“Then I will temporarily take care of it.”

“Yes. I will leave it to you.”

After I gave my answer, they looked relieved. Really, why were these people trusted me unconditionally like this? On my way back to the office with a slight stomach ache, Lily-san, who was following behind me started to speak.

“Thank you very much, Welner-sama.”

“No need to thank me. I didn’t do anything.”

Rather than helping, I almost lost control of my emotions, but Lily-san showed me a small smile and continued.

“You might think like that, Welner-sama, but I was happy that you got angry for us. I was also happy that we did not have to leave here.”

I didn’t know how to react when she told me that. Well, I guess this place was pretty comfortable for them, plus it looks like something uncomfortable happened between the Hearthing couple and Sir Heiner, so they must not want to go there. As for what happened, I wouldn’t ask.

“Ah… um…. If you said so, then. In any case, from now on, I will be counting on you again.”

“Yes!”

She answered me with a face full of smiles. Since things had become like this, I had no choice but to prepare.

♦

T/N: Hello, Nisarah is here! So there is actually one thing I’ve been thinking to change, so I would like to ask everyone opinion about it.

Because there’s no equivalent for honorofic like -dono or -san, I decided to not translate Japanese honorific but I always feel strange when I paired english noble title with japanese honorofic, so I’ve been thinking of translating only honorific that will be paired up with english (e.g: Viscount-sama -> Lord Viscount) or just forgo it all together (e.g: Viscount-sama -> Viscount), but what do you all think? 

Tldr: Should I keep japanese honorofic when paired with english title or not?

Vote here!