The Duke's Son :Re-Chapter 250

[Theodore, the ghost of the Lion’s Castle, detects your presence and wakes from its long sleep.]

Death Knight Theodore had awoken shortly after Jae-Hyeok entered Lion’s Castle and killed his first pursuer

Upon meeting Jae-Hyeok, Theodore had gone on a long rant, its telepathic words like thunderclaps within Jae-Hyeok’s mind.

—A murderous intent as sharp as a blade... The sword-crazed demon is finally back! Kukuk! Kuhahahahat! Thank you! You have granted my wish, so I will keep my promise! The moment I regain my strength, this sword of mine will aim for your life!

It was clearly a reaction to Jae-Hyeok, and quite a menacing one at that. Upon telling the lion statue about it, the lion statue had also warned Jae-Hyeok to steer clear of Theodore, sharing many details in the process:

—That sword-crazed demon? He suddenly vanished after leaving behind a mountain of blood and a sea of corpses within Lion’s Castle. Hmph. Now that I think about it, it’s no wonder Theodore, that scoundrel, is so obsessed with you. He admired the father, so now he’s obsessed with the son. You should be careful.

The lion head statue's words hadn’t painted the Yaksha in a gentle light—and this was despite the fact that the Yaksha had shed rivers of blood to preserve the sovereignty of his nation. In Jae-Hyeok’s view, such a great man deserved the most respect in the modern history of Korea. How could he be described so harshly?

Sigh. Well, from a third-party perspective, it’s natural they fear Father.

During his time as a player, Jae-Hyeok had encountered various things and heard numerous stories. He’d long learned that his father wasn’t just a relaxed and kind person.

In battle, a person can’t help but become ruthless.

Whether to protect, to take, or simply to survive—whatever one fought for, losing the fight meant losing everything. And mercy to the enemy was harming oneself. Jae-Hyeok knew this well; he sympathized with his father’s brutal reputation.

It was probably well deserved.

Jae-Hyeok imagined how his father must’ve looked wandering the battlefield, then he thought of himself and his own disposition when killing.

Maybe people already talk about me as a demon, too.

Dry leaves crunched underfoot as Jae-Hyeok emerged from the mouth of a shadowy forest path. He crossed the overgrown field, passed through a half-collapsed stone arch, and soon arrived upon the cracked stage of an ancient colosseum.

The scenery was desolate and bleak, the same as always.

Unlike the outside world, which blazed with the heat of summer and sang with midday cicadas, Lion’s Castle remained in perpetual autumn.

“Have you been well?”

Jae-Hyeok greeted the lion head statue mounted at the crest of a certain stone gate. It was none other than the patron saint of Lion’s Castle—a being blessed with intelligence yet cursed with the frozen form of a statue.

How many eons had it existed alone, with nothing but the rubble and wind as company?

Jae-Hyeok sympathized deeply with the lion statue’s plight.

“Have you been less lonely these days? Do-Jin is quite talkative—”

—You damn bastard!

“......!”

Jae-Hyeok greeted the statue warmly, only to cover his ears in surprise. Of course, his actions did nothing in the face of the lion head’s telepathic voice.

—What type of grievance do we have for you to send that guy to me? You whisper sweet words about being friends to my face, but your actions betray your cruelty. Is this your true personality?

What is going on...

Jae-Hyeok was baffled by the lion statue's harsh tirade. Just as he was struggling to organize his thoughts, something flew overhead and struck the lion statue with a squelch. As it flowed down, Jae-Hyeok wrinkled his nose at the pungent smell. He gleaned the identity of the flung object: it seemed to be the gory intestines of a pretty large beast.

“This one’s fresh, pulled it from an ogre I just killed! The orcs will definitely be excited!”

The voice behind those vulgar words was so loud it was as if someone had swallowed a train horn.

Jae-Hyeok looked to the treeline past the far side of the ruins and saw a small figure drenched in green blood hurdling toward the platform of the colosseum.

It was none other than...

“Do-Jin?”

“Uh? Jae-Hyeok!”

Upon spotting Jae-Hyeok, Do-Jin’s speed redoubled.

From his movement, it was clear that Do-Jin’s level had risen quite significantly since they’d last seen each other.

The wind resistance peeled the blood and gore off of Do-Jin, exposing the flame-red hair beneath.

In several breaths of time, Do-Jin arrived on the stone platform and slid to a stop right before Jae-Hyeok.

“Welcome! You haven’t forgotten me, have you?”

Do-Jin opened his arms.

“Why would I forget you? How have you been?”

Jae-Hyeok used Peak Sword’s Scabbard like a stick, pressing one end against Do-Jin’s face to avoid his stinky embrace.

Do-Jin’s arms pawed uselessly toward Jae-Hyeok for a moment before he stepped back with a look of enlightenment.

“Ah, you don’t want to get my clothes dirty.”

“... You aren’t wearing clothes.”

The sight of Do-Jin standing proudly while wearing nothing but underwear was not among the list of things Jae-Hyeok had expected to see today, especially not out in the wild. He looked like he belonged to an uncontacted tribe.

Do-Jin shrugged.

“It was a hassle to wear clothes when they would get dirty every day. By the way, isn’t this place really amazing? At first, I was busy cursing you. Then, after living here for a few days, I really liked it.”

Do-Jin smiled wide, revealing canines that gleamed in the sunlight.

Suddenly, hundreds of eyes appeared from beyond the red line marking the danger zone. And soon Jae-Hyeok saw they belonged to an army of orcs led by a number of orc warriors.

The count of orcs was incomparable to the few Jae-Hyeok had seen here and there in his time training by the lion head statue.

“Jae-Hyeok, you are a first-year student and you might not have learned this yet. I heard that monsters hunt and consume other monsters to raise their level or reproductive ability.”

Do-Jin saw his chance to act like a true senior. He brushed back his hair before clasping his hands behind his back and inclining his head.

“Using my intellect, I took that principle and produced what you see before you by hunting the neighboring monsters and feeding them to the orcs.”

The crowd of orcs stepped past the red line, snorting excitedly as they did. Their eyes were locked on the ogre’s intestine hanging off the lion head.

“Compared to when I first started, the number of orcs has increased by a dozen times. They’ve also grown bigger.”

Crossing the safe zone as a student was prohibited by the school rules. However, as it was summer vacation, most of the students were out of school, and the number of security patrols had reduced accordingly.

They were also in a remote area.

Of course, the most important factor was Seol Su-Ah. That no one had stopped Do-Jin could only mean she’d tacitly allowed Do-Jin to run loose.

However, anyone who knew Do-Jin knew that in the absence of rules, Do-Jin would inevitably find some way to become a menace to those around him.

And sure enough...

—G-get lost! It is disgusting!

The lion head screamed as the orcs strode across the stone platform and climbed over one another to reach the lion head statue. The lion head’s screams grew even more shrill then, as the first of the orcs reached it and began sucking and licking the intestines and gore off the top of its head.

“... So what are you going to do with these orcs?” Jae-Hyeok wondered.

Perhaps the orcs were well fed, or perhaps the orcs from the nearby forest had a peculiar nature. Whatever the reason, the orcs showed no hostility toward him and Do-Jin.

It was just like the orcs that had watched Jae-Hyeok’s sword dance with shining eyes; they seemed to possess some instinct for obedience.

“What am I going to do?”

Do-Jin shook his head, looking every bit like a father dealing with rambunctious children.

“Don’t ask me.”

“......”

Jae-Hyeok didn’t bother asking; there was no deeper purpose to the orcs. One look at Do-Jin’s goofy smile, and it was clear that the orc army came to be simply because Do-Jin was bored. “Do whatever you want with the orcs, but remember to take care of the statue. I mentioned this before you left. Did you forget?”

In fact, Jae-Hyeok had reminded Do-Jin repeatedly to take care of the statue. Ideally, he’d hoped for Do-Jin to soothe the lion head statue’s loneliness and perhaps earn enough goodwill to obtain its quest.

However, it seemed Jae-Hyeok had set his expectations too high.

Rather than gain favor, it was already fortunate that the lion statue hadn’t become hostile.

“Oh, Stoli? Of course I remember. I make sure to take good care of it.”

“Stoli?”

“Stone lion. Stoli for short.”

“......”

He even gave it a nickname...

Jae-Hyeok wondered if the party in question liked it.

“Look. Even now, it loves playing with the orcs. It probably hasn’t been boring for a single day since I came, right?”

“Is that so?”

—Take it off! Hurry! It’s so dirty that I am going to throw up!

Do-Jin confidently nodded. “Certainly, I don’t think there’s time to be lonely.”

—I would rather be lonely! You damn bastard!

***

—Are you going to find Theodore? I warned you to be careful of him, and yet now you’re seeking him out... Forget it. But you should know, it would’ve already regained a considerable amount of strength. 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

Stoli was uncooperative when Jae-Hyeok asked it about Theodore’s hiding place.

Fortunately, it still favored him. For a time, Jae-Hyeok had worried that it might grow to like Do-Jin more.

We’ll even if they don’t like each other now. I still hope they’ll grow on each other.

Compared to the past hundreds of years it spent fixed in place, killing time in a daze, the last few days must’ve seemed like a storm to Stoli. However, Do-Jin had a way of growing on people.

At the very least, I hope they become friendly enough for Do-Jin to obtain the quest.

Jae-Hyeok had a plan to clear the main quest soon.

He could just about fill in the ranks for the ceremonial drill with the help of his friends in the Lion’s Castle, the Jaegyeong Pharmaceuticals employees, the Guardian Guild, and the Shinra family.

Of course, training and integrating people with different affiliations and tendencies will be entirely my responsibility.

Jae-Hyeok climbed the sheer cliff at the edge of the coastline.

Formed of basalt deposits, the ground was dark and full of small holes.

With too much force, the fragile stone would crumble underfoot, making climbing a difficult task, even for someone with transcendent-level stats.

It will break easily.

Of course, the being Jae-Hyeok sought had achieved an even higher level of transcendence, having forgone its mortal existence for the body of a death knight. By now, whatever its stats were, Jae-Hyeok was confident that it could easily ascend and descend the rugged terrain of its home.

—You’ve already come?

After Jae-Hyeok reached the top of the cliff, the soil before a lone grave swelled, and Theodore burst out. Purple light flared to life in its hollow eyesockets.

“Even if you are the son of the sword-crazed demon, you aren’t the demon himself... How arrogant. How disgraceful. It’s to the point where my stomach is upset.”

In the past, Theodore had shown goodwill to Jae-Hyeok.

Even though it could’ve killed Jae-Hyeok, Theodore had let Jae-Hyeok live on multiple occasions. It had also provided direct help when Jae-Hyeok had faced a crisis against one of Baus family’s knights.

However, Jae-Hyeok knew that Theodore’s actions weren’t born of some soft spot it had for Jae-Hyeok. Instead, it saw its actions as an investment, having helped him in the hope that if Jae-Hyeok one day followed in his father’s footsteps, Theodore could engage him in a glorious battle.

Yet, in just a few weeks, Jae-Hyeok had the gall to seek out its grave. His arrogance knew no bounds.

“After all that effort I put into keeping you alive, you’re seeking your own death. Do you think I’ll spare you again?”

Over the whipping wind and rain, thunder boomed in the sky.

A purple magic sword manifested in Theodore’s hand, and Jae-Hyeok drew his own.

The two swords collided with a piercing ring, and neither moved. The swords wrestled back and forth, but Jae-Hyeok held his ground.

“You?”

“Last time, you said my father granted you a chance, right? Let me guess, he promised to fight you again.”

“How did you become so strong? Are you someone else?”

“But nothing is free in this world. I suppose you promised to submit to him if he beat you the next time, as well. This must’ve been the condition my father put forward. Am I right?”

“Are you really the same kid from a few weeks ago?”

“I want to compete with you on behalf of my father. What do you think? You aren’t scared, are you?”

“Kukuk! Kuhaha! Well, your identity doesn’t matter! Let’s fight! We will prove who is stronger!”

Thunder boomed again, and dozens of lightning branches pulsed in the sky, illuminating the clifftop where the two of them stood.

[The ghost of Lion’s Castle, Theodore, has accepted the duel.]

The strongest Death Knight that even the Baus family couldn’t create, a monster whose name was synonymous with fear during the battle for Lion’s Castle, had now recognized Jae-Hyeok as its opponent.