Chapter 4 – No Really, How Did You Win;(4)
Baron Ragna Armageddon. Aka Baron Radon.
The sole heir and the young head of the family, who had repeatedly declined and eventually collapsed, was a man of good character, but lacked the ability to revive the family that was gradually falling into disrepair.
But starting five years ago, he has completely changed.
The exact source is unknown, but it is presumably that the ancestors of the Armageddon family hid it somewhere in case of an emergency, and the money was raised by selling expensive goods.
With followers unknown where they came from, he revived the territory that had been devastated back to the glory days of the past.
He hired not only followers, but also mercenaries with goods to gather troops and actively wage war on the surrounding territories.
A completely different journey. It was like a different person.
Territory warfare, which takes place through disputes between territories in Hermon Kingdom, is left to its own judgment. And it didn’t matter what the winning side took from the losing side.
This was a law to consume the power by fighting among the nobles in order to prevent the nobles from accumulating excessive wealth and using their power to overthrow the royal family.
And Baron Radon began to gradually build up his power by using this law against the nobles to prevent them from gaining too much power.
Starting with the small territories adjacent to the Armageddon territory, Radon won the territory battle with incredibly minimal damage, not just tearing off property, but swallowing the territory itself and incorporating it into his territory.
In order to declare war on an opponent’s territory, a justification for a territory war was needed, but Baron Radon already had that. Most of the territories adjacent to the Armageddon Territory originally belonged to the Armageddon Territory.
There was once a glorious era when the Armageddon family were not barons but dukes and founding contributors.
Armageddon.
Period.
Gracas.
They were the three families that served the royal family as the founding contributors and dukes.
Then one day, there was a trivial incident where the two families and the Armageddon family clashed for some reason, and the royal family took notice of the Duke of Armageddon and sided with that side, which was the beginning of all the tragedies.
With that incident, the Dukes of Period and Gracas decided to eliminate the Duke of Armageddon, who was relatively powerful among the three dukes. They made all sorts of complaints against the Armageddon dukedom, continuously engaged in fiefdom warfare, seized the land, and divided it among the lower nobles who followed them.
The territory was devastated due to the influence of the territory war that continued, and the Armageddon duchy, which lost its power, could not get rid of the false accusation that the two duke families had put on them, and even the trusted royal family threw out the duchy, who no longer had power. The royal family demoted the position of the Duke of Armageddon, who had lost his power, on the pretext of false accusations made by the two dukes.
From Duke to Marquis, from Marquis to Earl.
From earl to viscount, from viscount to baron.
The family at the highest level gradually declined and fell to the lowest level.
It was not a problem enough for the Armageddon family, who had such a past, to wage a fiefdom war on the nearby territory where the followers of the Dukes of Period and Gracas were lords. Because it was a territory battle to regain the lost territory.
The two duchies that led to the fall of the Armageddon family were not too wary of the sudden change of Baron Ladon. It was because he thought what he could do, even if he tried a young family man who had never experienced a manor war in a state where the manor, which had already lost everything to lose, had barely been revived.
But they didn’t know that Baron Radon had strange powers.
An ominous power beyond imagination, lightly overturning the common sense of conventional warfare.
Originally, once the territory war started, it lasted from at least two days to two weeks at the longest, and the longer the territory war, the more resources were consumed in both territories.
However, Baron Radon had won as many as five territorial battles without any damage, and before the fact was even communicated to the two dukes, he declared a territorial war to the nobles who followed the duchy.
And before the two dukes could even come up with a countermeasure, they lost 30% of the nobles who followed them in the land battle, and only then realized something was wrong.
The aristocrats who followed the two duchy families were declared a land war for absurd reasons, and no matter how hard they tried to defend themselves, the land owner, Baron Radon, was helplessly occupied overnight.
Enraged, the Duke of Gracas declared a land war against the Baron of Armageddon, intending to show what he had seen.
And the Duke of Period, who belatedly prepared for the territory battle to help the Gracas family, couldn’t believe that the news of the Duke of Gracas’s death and the defeat of the territory reached their ears even before he sent his troops.
The Baron Armageddon family, which swallowed even the duke of Grakas, one of the two wings of the Hermon Kingdom, already possessed tremendous power that did not fit the title of ‘Baron’.
An inexplicable and strange power possessed by the head of the Duke of Period with troops nearly twice that of the Duke of Period.
Already, the domain of Armageddon was close to another small kingdom within the Kingdom of Hermon.
And the king there was, of course, Ragnar Armageddon, who in just one year obtained power that even the royal family could not recklessly take from the bottom of the aristocracy with his own power.
Believing that suppressing the Armageddon family was already impossible, Hermon invited Baron Armageddon to a party to celebrate the upcoming birthday of the king. He is a being who can shake the royal family by gaining tremendous power in an instant, but it is unknown whether he has any intention of directly rebelling against the royal family, so we wanted to confirm that.
The prince of the kingdom of Hermon insinuated that intention to Baron Armageddon, who was attending the party. And when he opened his mouth, only heavy silence descended on the noisy party hall.
“I have no intention of bringing down the royal family. However, I have no intention of swearing allegiance to the royal family. A hunter who is reluctant to raise a hound because it has sharp teeth, and throws it away as soon as its teeth fall out, saying that it is useless, any hound can become its owner. Will you follow me?”
The Armageddon family did not forget that the royal family had abandoned them. Rather, he had it deep in his heart.
“Nevertheless, the fact that the hunting dog that has regained its teeth does not bite the neck of the owner who abandoned it is the least courtesy to the affection that once took care of it. You can’t hold on to it, and if you try to kill yourself by twisting its neck just because you can’t have it.”
Wow. Baron Armageddon picked up a cookie from the table and chewed it.
“The hound will bite its once owner by the scruff of the neck. Without any hesitation.”
The Armageddon family does not swear allegiance to the royal family.
And he’s not even hostile to the royal family.
It was just the bare minimum of courtesy for not completely depriving the title of a nobleman even though he cut off the founding contributor.
Even if it’s the royal family, if you’re going to do something stupid, I’ll do it without hesitation.
At the warning of the family head, who already had power as a royal family, the nobles felt a chill run down their spines.
Baron Armageddon continued to wage war on the territory after that. Unlike before, however, he entrusted all authority over the territory to his agent instead of taking the initiative himself.
When the royal family gave him the title of duke again to appease him, Baron Ladon refused.
As if the royal family had no intention of forgetting that they had abandoned their family.
Also, the nobles who committed such unfunny things as assassination attempts suffered a terrible thing that dried up all their blood.
It was repeated, and in the end, a horror disaster that no one dared to overcome was born.
No one could put any restrictions on his actions now. Even if he invades the estates of other nobles and steals their wealth, almost as if it were a hobby, even if he enjoys a dissolute life by inviting countless women into his bedroom, even if he insults the royal family in front of his face.
*
“…That’s how it happened.”
“…Oh my God.”
“…Well.”
“Her…”
“..Crazy.”
The story of a man who was once an earl, who lost everything in a land battle against the Armageddon family and ran away and became a homeless drunkard, left the hero Luke and his party at a loss for words.
He thought that he was not normal from the first time he faced him, but he could not have been a person who did such amazing things. They realized again how lucky they had been to come back alive after attacking in such a halfway state.
At the same time, I had no choice but to change my thoughts about the enemy.
The period of ‘becoming like a different person’ mentioned by the drunkard is probably when he obtained the fragment of chaos.
It was unknown how the fallen aristocrat obtained it, but in any case, what he did after obtaining the power was the greatest among the five beings with fragments.
From the bottom to the top. A truly dramatic life reversal.
But no matter how good he was before, no matter how unavoidable he was forced to tamper with forbidden powers, now he is clearly a wicked man.
A wicked man with no way to justify himself. What’s even funnier is that he himself doesn’t particularly deny it.
Luke remembered the time he challenged Baron Armageddon. Exhausted from dealing with the numerous beasts unleashed by one of his henchmen, they barely reached the front of Baron Armageddon, and were intimidated before battle by his immense evil energy that resonated with the shrapnel.
[…Right. Are you the hero chosen by the Goddess of Light that has been talked about recently?]
Luke didn’t know anything about Baron Armageddon, but Baron Armageddon already knew about Luke.
[Are you calling me evil? Does not matter. Because it’s true. Yes I am evil He’s a villain with no way to save him. So? What did that mean?]
[The warrior has the path of the warrior, and the wicked has the path of the wicked.]
[Upright warrior of light. Don’t be mistaken that everyone will walk only the right path like you. Do not impose your justice on others.]
[As a villain who opposes your justice, and as an evil that threatens the world, I just walk the path I chose for myself.]
[If you want to stop it, try blocking it with force.]
And Luke fell for him. Without reaching even one of his fingers, he was horribly defeated and fled.
“…”
Luke was afraid. Under the guidance of the goddess, he gained a means to protect himself from his strange powers, but will that be enough to deal with him?
For the current Luke, Ragnar Armageddon was the first insurmountable wall he faced.
It was the same even now when I gained the ability to face his power.
