“I was curious what you were trying to do, so I watched for a moment.”

With a relaxed expression on his face,

the giant of a man looked at me and Jinlei lying in front of me.

“So. This friend was your target after all.”

At that leisurely demeanor,

I could not help but question it inwardly.

‘How?’

Ariella should have been keeping him occupied.

It had looked like she was being pushed back, but with the other bloodlines joining in,

a certain amount of fighting had definitely been established.

“Ah, that’s the face of someone with a lot of {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} questions.”

And then,

as if he understood exactly what I was wondering,

“Marquis... shall I say.”

He gave a gentle nod,

then raised the thing he was holding in his hand.

“Miss Ariella is here.”

In the Grand Duke’s hand

was Ariella’s neck, terribly mangled with wounds.

-...I’m sorry.

Her eyes half-lidded, she spotted me,

then struggled to part her lips and speak.

-I lost faster than I expected.

“What are you apologizing for?”

I’m the one who came up with the plan to use him.

If she had been defeated more quickly than expected, then that just meant I had misjudged the strength involved.

“Indeed, it seems Grand Duke Isabella did not keep her as a toy for no reason. I supported her as much as I could, but even so, I never thought she could grow this strong.”

The problem was,

I had definitely seen those two fighting.

From what I saw then, it had not looked like a match that would be decided this quickly.

“To be honest, I was rather flustered.”

And.

It wasn’t as though I had seen it wrong, either.

“So... it’s a bit of a shame, but I had no choice except to use the method I had prepared just in case.”

“What?”

“Well now, did you think I raised a rival without any plan at all?”

He smiled gently,

then spoke as lightly as if he had an amusing story to tell.

“As you know, every noble grows stronger, raises its standing, and naturally achieves promotion in rank. Quite different from the noble culture of inferior species, wouldn’t you say?”

“...That’s true.”

“It cannot be helped. All those names and titles of nobility are merely names we borrowed from the culture of inferior species.”

My eyes widened.

The Grand Duke went on in the same calm tone.

“When we first received blood from the Progenitor and were remade into the first bloodlines, we believed we had been reborn as great lifeforms. But everyone else regarded us as monsters. Fair enough, really. In the beginning, we truly were little more than barbarians without any culture whatsoever. To be honest, I remained much the same for quite a long time even after culture began to take root.”

“......”

“But it seems the other Grand Dukes disliked that. The thinking was that, if we had become superior to the inferior species, why should we be treated like barbarians?”

It was the first time I had ever heard any of this.

Which made sense.

This was a story from even before Ariella’s time in noble society.

A story from the dawn of their kind.

“But think about it. If those barbarians wanted to look refined, would it have been so easy for them to build a culture of their own? So they simply... decided to copy the culture of those very inferior species. That is why we came to be called nobles as well—because we were better than they were.”

“...Now that’s something.”

“A ridiculous story, isn’t it? I never cared for it. I thought it only made the names more complicated and gave me a headache. And since we had borrowed only the names, there were many places where it did not quite line up with the reality. Titles were the prime example. Originally, titles are conferred upon nobles by a king, are they not? But we simply... move on to the next stage once we strengthen our power ourselves, so what sort of nobility is that? In truth, a comparison like a reptile that has shed once versus one that has shed twice would have been far more fitting.”

But

I had no idea why the Grand Duke was suddenly telling me all this.

“However... there was one thing that was similar.”

Then

the Grand Duke raised his hand and said,

“Unlike us, who received blood directly from the Progenitor, those born from our blood—once they reached the level of viscount... hm, back in the old days we simply called it something like ‘third class’—after that, they could no longer raise their standing on their own. Not impossible, perhaps, but exceedingly difficult.”

It had been the same for Ariella.

By her own account, she had already amassed power equivalent to that of an earl,

and yet she had still been unable to raise her standing and had remained a viscount.

And that standing—

“Only the heads of each bloodline could forcibly raise the standing of those deemed sufficiently qualified.”

That gap

had been filled when the Grand Duke bestowed his own blood.

“Is that not the closest thing to promotion in the traditional sense?”

“......”

“But a standing obtained with another’s help is, in the end.”

Above his hand,

red droplets began to swirl.

“Something that can be taken away this easily.”

At those words,

I hurriedly turned my head toward Ariella.

And I had no choice but to frown.

[Ariella Vimanar Karshtein]

[Viscount of the Karshtein Bloodline]

The rank that had clearly been called marquis had dropped by two whole stages.

***

“If power is the contents, then standing is the vessel that holds that power. No matter how much power one accumulates, if the standing is insufficient, there is no choice but for there to be a limit. And no matter how much power one amasses, that standing does not suddenly rise on its own.”

What had drawn Ariella’s standing upward was the Grand Duke’s blood.

By taking that blood back,

he had caused her standing to be demoted, separate from the blood power Ariella herself had built up.

‘...Of course Ariella wouldn’t have known.’

Promotions were usually carried out by the Grand Duke of one’s own bloodline.

A member of the bloodline betraying them and the Grand Duke taking that standing back—

something like that could never happen in the first place.

Most bloodlines were structured so that betrayal could not happen at all under that controlling magic.

“She must be suffering quite a bit by now. Power her own standing cannot bear must be raging inside her body.”

Even now, an overwhelming amount of mana was pouring from Ariella’s body.

But its color—

‘Not indigo. Blue.’

The quantity of mana was still overwhelming,

but its quality had plummeted in an instant.

“Restoring that standing again would be rather complicated and bothersome... but well, it cannot be helped.”

“......”

“When the marquis turned a weapon on me, I had no real concern, knowing I could simply reclaim that standing. If anything...”

As he said that,

he lowered the hand holding Ariella and looked at me.

“The one who concerned me was you.”

“What?”

“At first, I thought you were merely Miss Ariella’s toy. Just as Miss Ariella had once been Isabella’s toy.”

In truth,

that was exactly how lightly he had regarded me when we first met.

“But even Miss Ariella, who had once been Isabella’s toy, possessed talent beyond imagining.”

His gaze drove straight into me.

The pressure bearing down on my shoulders had already been strong enough before,

but—

“Then would not Miss Ariella’s toy as well—”

now,

“perhaps be a real blade pretending to be a toy sword?”

There was something else mixed into that pressure now.

A sharp light of vigilance.

***

‘This wasn’t what I expected.’

That Ariella had lost, yes.

But it wasn’t just that.

“I heard Jinlei’s report. He said that when he first met you, he burst your head and heart and killed you. Yet afterward, you appeared before me.”

I had thought that Grand Duke would still look down on me.

That was why I had chosen to move in secret while he and Ariella were occupied fighting.

“I thought perhaps you had gone missing in an attack by inferior species, but even after you burned the island of those inferior species with firearms... here you stand before me again.”

But I had been wrong.

“And... now that I look carefully, I can finally see something.”

Even while fighting Ariella,

not Ariella—the one he could subdue at any time simply by taking her standing—

“Inside you, I can see that there is something.”

he had been wary of me.

“The old me would not have seen it at all. But now, I can.”

Valarak had devoured the other two Grand Dukes besides himself.

There was still one last Grand Duke required to fulfill his goal,

but even if that goal had not yet been completed, one could say he had already reached the threshold just before it.

“That you hold something within you that is terribly frightening... and vast.”

That was why

he could see what beings of lower standing could not.

“I apologize for calling you an inferior species and the like last time. It seems you are not a being comparable to ordinary inferior species.”

Ah, damn it.

I would have preferred it if he had kept treating me like an inferior species.

“A being holding that much power—of course I would be concerned about what exactly it intends to do within my territory...”

Unfortunately,

he viewed me as something even more dangerous than Ariella.

“So naturally...”

His eyes settled on Jinlei.

“this one had to be watched, did it not?”

Thanks to that,

while pretending he had no interest in me,

he had actually been paying attention only to what I was trying to do.

“I do not know what your goal is, but it seems you need this one for it.”

He looked at Jinlei as he spoke.

“Certainly, this one’s ability is peculiar. There are aspects of it quite fatal to our bloodline. Hm. Even so, I do not believe it could affect even me.”

“...If that’s what you think, couldn’t you just hand him over?”

“Ha ha. You know perfectly well that I cannot.”

Smiling,

he stepped toward Jinlei.

“Unfortunately, this one is a guest who received my invitation. As the host, I cannot simply hand my guest over to someone else, can I?”

“......”

“Unfortunately, we know little of the medical arts of inferior species. Even asking the thralls who came from inferior species, they say the best thing is simply to let him rest... so I had no choice but to leave him lying here. But.”

Smack!

The moment he reached a hand toward me,

the hand I had been keeping inside my coat was forcibly jerked out.

“Hm, the raw ingredient is meat? But not ordinary meat.”

In my hand,

the dish I had been planning to feed Jinlei—

[Healthy Meal]

the [Healthy Meal]

passed into the Grand Duke’s hand.

“I can feel a strange vitality from it.”

He looked at that [Healthy Meal] jerky for a moment,

then forcefully shoved it into Jinlei’s mouth as he spoke.

“This works out nicely.”

Feeding a dish to someone asleep was dangerous,

but the Grand Duke clearly could not have cared less.

He forced the meat down Jinlei’s throat,

and the dish melted into Jinlei’s body.

“Because Miss Ariella grew dissatisfied with me, I had no choice but to reclaim her standing. It is only a matter of giving it back after some corrective education, but... that will take quite some time.”

“......”

“So let us do this instead.”

Before long—

“Ugh...”

because of the life force that had seeped into his body,

Jinlei opened his eyes from sleep.

“Grand Duke...?”

At that sight,

I recalled what Jinlei had once told me.

“The plan I had in mind as the first option has, regrettably, been delayed.”

The Grand Duke,

Jinlei had said,

would never give up on him easily.

“So.”

Ariella’s appearance had pushed him down into Plan B,

but originally—

“I shall execute the contingency plan first.”

originally, he himself had been

the Grand Duke’s Plan A.

Those words.