Margrave’s Bastard Son was The Emperor - Chapter 647

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 646. Annihilation
Hielo was so different from what I remembered.
The fields where I had first ridden in a carriage to meet Mollin, the lake where we could enjoy boating, the dried hay spread across the roofs, the long stone walls stretching beneath the manor—nothing remained intact.
All that was visible was utter devastation.
“Damn it.”
Berik’s pupils trembled violently as well.
Even when the Central Army and Bratz had clashed, the damage was not this severe. Debris was scattered across the streets so thickly that the roads were no longer visible. Could anyone possibly be alive? I examined the area carefully, but the only movement was the raging flames.
“Ian, this… how could this…?”
Instead of answering, I turned my body toward the manor. It was similarly half-destroyed, nearly collapsed.
Berik, the employee, and I descended into the manor courtyard, our senses heightened. We were listening for any sign of human presence.
“Hena! Nersaren!”
Berik cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted. But no answer came. I stared down at someone’s arm and leg, crushed beneath the rubble.
“Is anyone here?! Please answer! It’s Berik! Ian came with me!”
The employee simply rolled his eyes in shock, following close beside me. Since we didn’t know what dangers might be lurking, it was wise to stay near the mage if one wanted to survive.
“Hena! Anyone at all, if you’re alive, answer me! I’ll save you!”
Thump.
Then, a very faint sound of movement was heard. Berik and I reacted simultaneously and turned around, while the employee merely jerked his head about in alarm.
I walked straight toward the source of the sound. A tree with its base cut off lay across the lawn. Noticing something, I gestured to Berik.
“…Berik. Move this tree.”
“The tree? Ah, yes, right here!”
“Hurry.”
This was the location of the secret space where Der’s wife and son, Mrs. Mary and Chel, had once hidden. The fallen tree was blocking the entrance, so it appeared they couldn’t open it from inside.
As Berik lifted the tree effortlessly, the entrance camouflaged in the lawn creaked open slightly.
“Oh.”
Peeking out, Hena raised her head from below, and the first thing she saw was my feet. Her gaze slowly traveled upward. Soon she met my golden hair and green eyes, deepened by the glow of embers.
“M-Master.”
Ian Hielo. Before I was the Minister of Magic, I was the lord of Hielo, and more than that, her master. As I nodded and extended my hand, Hena grasped it as if in a dream, her mind dazed as she climbed up.
“It’s been a long time, Hena. I’m glad you’re alive.”
“Ian, sir—”
Though I said I was glad she was alive, Hena’s appearance was a mess, scratched and smudged with soot everywhere. Unable to find appropriate words of greeting, she murmured.
“…You look remarkably the same as before, sir.”
More than ten years had passed. In that time, Hena had become a proper lady, yet I remained exactly as I was in her last memory.
Philia, Nersaren, and Roel had not informed Hena about my condition, so she had never expected my appearance to remain unchanged.
“I thought you would be taller. If I had known, I wouldn’t have stolen so much of your food back then… or so I thought.”
“Hena, don’t you see me?”
“Gasp. Berik. How you’ve grown! You’ve become a wild beast.”
Standing beside Berik, the difference was even more striking.
Behind the bewildered Hena, strangers began poking their heads out one by one.
“B-Butler. Are you alright?”
“Everyone, come up! The master and Berik have returned!”
“Pardon? By owner, do you mean Lord Ian?”
“Everyone, let’s go outside! It’s safe now!”
“Let’s get the children up first. Please help pull them from above!”
“Understood! Berik, come help here!”
Hena set aside the pleasantries and helped the people who had been hiding with her climb up. Aside from a few manor servants and nearby villagers, they were all children.
“Um, what about Mom and Dad?”
“Shh. Don’t cry. We’ll look for them. They must be nearby.”
The children, their faces streaked with tears and mucus, gazed around the desolate Hielo Manor with frightened eyes. They could sense it instinctively. There was no way their parents could be alive in a place like this.
“What happened here, Hena?”
Ian asked while showing her the letter Lady Lien had sent.
“It says Father left the estate. Did he depart for the capital?”
“Ah…”
The brief letter contained questions about Clark and information about Nersaren’s situation. It seemed she had sent it as soon as she returned to Merelrof, unable to wait any longer. Though it remained a mystery how it reached Ian in mere hours.
“It’s true that Lord Nersaren was trying to go to the capital because he couldn’t reach Lady Philia. But that’s not what happened. Not long ago, Lady Lien came to us and reported that merchants had fled here in large numbers. She said the situation was unstable.”
Hena then calmly explained how Nersaren had gone after the hawk, how the hawk returned alone, and how her husband Mui had subsequently gone on reconnaissance toward the desert with soldiers.
“Mui returned quickly. After that, he told everyone to evacuate, that a mage was coming…”
“A mage?”
“We also heard that Kakan had… fallen in battle.”
“…!”
Kakan’s death itself was shocking, but what it implied was even more startling. Hadn’t Cheonrye been ambushed? Hena ran her hand through her hair and sank down.
“I don’t know. I truly don’t understand how the situation unfolded. Sigh… In any case, following Mui’s warning, all of Hielo’s soldiers gathered and armed themselves with Idgal weapons. To defend the manor.”
Hena had protected the children who rushed into the manor, and the villagers gradually took up arms as well. While soldiers defended the estate, they themselves had to defend their homes.
“But it was a mistake.”
Hena sighed deeply while embracing a child close to her. It was a sigh laden with self-reproach, regret, and sorrow.
“We shouldn’t have confronted them. We should have evacuated more people to the underground shelter and fled toward the capital.”
Just one mage.
No matter how close to godhood they were, it was only one. And they had Idgal weapons. The arrogance that they could stand against them had brought about this result.
“I’ve never seen the sea in my life, but I think I understand what it is now. Flames shot up and swirled everywhere I could see. The world itself was shaking…”
She had watched everything from the hill where the manor stood. How human skin melted away, how solid buildings crumbled, how desolate the screams of those crying out in terror sounded.
It was a moment when Hena paused to catch her breath.
Thud!
One of the survivors suddenly grabbed Ian’s arm. It was a middle-aged man. His tear-stained face was dark with soot.
“Y-you, my lord. What in the world is happening…?”
“How dare you!”
“I truly don’t understand why the mage attacked us. You’re a mage yourself, Lord Ian, so you must know. Why, why did my children have to die?!”
“You crazy bastard, why are you doing this to Ian?”
Hena and Berik tried to restrain the man, but a parent who had lost their children saw nothing.
“For ten years, you haven’t shown your face in the estate, and now you appear? If you had been attending to matters in the capital, this wouldn’t have happened! Because the lord abandoned his post, only those below have been dying! Don’t you see?”
He cried out that if Ian had remained in Hielo, he could have prevented this. Berik tried to say something, but Ian stopped him with a gesture.
It wasn’t wrong. To honor Naum’s final words and to return to his own timeline, Hielo had to bear the sacrifice of a vacant lordship. With Hena and Cheonrye’s help, it was barely being governed, but wasn’t that merely a kind of deception built on the pretense of peace?
“Ugh….”
The man wailed while prostrate, and I read the unspoken thoughts in the survivors’ eyes. They didn’t voice it, but most harbored the same sentiment.
Just then, Hena approached with a hardened expression and blocked my path.
“No, Ian. They’re simply overwhelmed right now. Please don’t take it to heart.”
During peaceful times, my absence had its advantages. Taxes were low, tyranny felt like a distant tale, and people lived experiencing firsthand that society rewarded effort proportionally.
I couldn’t respond. All I could do now was ask questions.
“…Where is the mage? Has anyone seen them?”
“The moment the heat rushed into the manor, I went downstairs and sealed the entrance firmly. Whether they perished or flew away somewhere… there’s no way to know what happened. Perhaps they headed toward Merelrof….”
“But Ian. Merelrof was relatively intact compared to us. Sure, there were no people there either. But they probably didn’t go that way at all, right?”
Merelrof might have evacuated safely after hearing about the Hielo incident. For instance, hadn’t Valiuard, who moved through paintings, also vanished without a trace?
A merchant’s employee standing nearby added cautiously.
“That’s possible. If you carry a painting into a painting, it destroys the established pathway, so we avoided it as much as possible, but in urgent situations, there’s no choice.”
If the mage hadn’t crossed over to Merelrof, had they delved deep into Central territory instead?
I shook my head. That was unlikely. The mage was surely from Ruswena. If so, neutralizing Merelrof was essential, even for Hawan, their ally.
‘But they didn’t. Did they exhaust their mana after confronting Cheonrye? If so, having annihilated Hielo, waiting here to recover would be the natural choice. They couldn’t have anticipated my arrival.’
Not Merelrof, not Central, not rest—none of it. Whatever the circumstances, the Ruswena mage had definitely returned.
Perhaps they were struck by Hielo’s soldiers’ Idgal attacks and returned to recover, but if not that….
‘A mage of considerable magical depth.’
I clicked open my pocket watch to check the time. Less than an hour had passed from receiving the letter to arriving here.
To obliterate all of Hielo in such a short span—this was no ordinary mage.
‘Or perhaps they used an amplifier….’
…Or they wielded forbidden magic.
I closed the watch and looked back at the people.
“Leave Hielo and take refuge in a nearby estate. Anywhere is fine. I’ll provide documents bearing my seal—present them to that lord and explain the situation. Should you encounter Merelrof in the process, then search for survivors at that time. Don’t search for my father or Hena’s husband right now. Save yourselves first.”
“…What, what do you mean?”
“…It means Hielo cannot be rebuilt immediately.”
Even if we invested effort slowly in the future, I couldn’t predict how long it would take. Hielo was simply beyond remedy now. And more than anything, it was dangerous.
“This is a path carved by Ruswena. They will strike again whenever they choose.”
“Then, then what becomes of us?”
“Just survive.”
I removed my Minister of Magic badge and handed it to Hena.
“If you survive, I will see you again someday. I know this. So you must endure to the end.”
“Ian.”
“…The debt of the dead falls to me.”
I murmured as if making a vow to everyone—those who took life in Hielo would pay the price. I was the master of everything here: the manor, the fields, the trees, the people, and the future.
Just as the middle-aged man who wailed had said, I owned it all.
“Berik. We’re pursuing them.”
“Where to?”
I tightened my robes and stepped outside the manor.
“Ruswena.”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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