Trash of the Count’s Family - Chapter 316

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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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“…Am I free to decide as I wish?”

Kale Heniatus nodded at the Navigation’s tone, which had grown calm once more.

“Yes. Whether you keep it all or share it—do as you please.”

Merry’s gaze alternated between Kale and the wooden tendrils. As I watched her, Meokbo’s voice echoed in my mind.

-We need to purify it. There are limits to what the tree can contain.

The Man-Eating Tree that once dwelled in Heniatus Territory.
People had avoided the area around the withered tree, yet that place was not a dead land consumed by lifeless mana, turned black and lifeless.

Rather, everything around it simply withered away.

-If something dead doesn’t return to nature and instead exists wholly in this world, that alone influences other life forms.

Like the Man-Eating Tree.
It could exert harmful effects on its surroundings.

“Hmm? You’re all out here?”

I lifted my head at the sudden voice.

Atop the towering black wooden tendrils stood Dark Elf Tasha, gazing down at us below.

The Dark Elves were currently assisting the warriors in reconstruction efforts following the war. Spirits bearing diverse elemental affinities of nature proved invaluable to the restoration work.

“Actually, I came in a hurry, but we’ve met right away.”

Despite her troubled expression, Tasha leaped lightly from the wooden tendril.

I watched Tasha instead of the silent Merry.
Or rather, I noticed the man following behind Tasha, his expression bearing considerable shock.

‘…Why did he come?’

Kale Heniatus’s face filled with confusion, while Tasha wore an apologetic expression as she looked at him.

“It’s just that I suddenly started reporting the situation—”
“Oh! This can’t be! Oh, oh, oh!”

The person standing behind Tasha cut off her words, letting out a continuous stream of exclamations.

My head was pounding.
But my body moved quickly regardless. There was no other choice.

“A lowly wretch like me cannot possibly stand on two legs and gaze upon the face of such a noble person!”
“Market Master!”
“Grandfather! Please!”

Kale Heniatus and Tasha quickly grabbed Obante, the Dark Elf and Market Master of the Underground City, as he attempted to kneel.
Tasha’s grandfather remained unchanged in his ways.

-This Dark Elf is doing it again!

I could hear Raon’s delighted voice, but I had no mind to listen.

“Oh, this can’t be!”
“Grandfather, please!”

Though Tasha tried to stop him, the Dark Elf Market Master was seized with shock upon seeing the figure standing directly in front of Kale Heniatus’s tent.

A man with platinum blonde hair.
It was Erhafen.
The last to emerge from my tent, he stood with a composed expression, holding the video communication device connected to Crown Prince Albert.
He was the only one who had remembered to look after Albert, who had been left bewildered as everyone rushed out, and he had quietly observed everything from the corner of the tent until now.

The current leader of the Dark Elves, who had lived for over five hundred years, could not form a single thought in the face of that chilling aura.

‘An aura of this magnitude…!’

The other Dark Elves, who had never actually encountered a Dragon and felt its aura, could not properly discern the auras of Erhafen and the invisible Raon.
But unlike them, Market Master Obante, who had actually seen a Dragon in the past and felt its aura, immediately recognized Erhafen’s true identity.

At the same time, a chill ran down his spine as he realized he could not sense Raon’s aura.

‘…Raon has grown even stronger!’

Unlike when we met before, Raon’s aura became imperceptible after turning invisible, and I could sense that he had become far more formidable than myself.

“Market Master.”

I turned my head at the low voice calling out to me.
I saw Kale Heniatus looking at me.

‘…He’s grown stronger too.’

The aura of nature emanated vividly from Kale. His spirit circled around him endlessly, unwilling to leave his side.

‘…It’s been about a year now.’

Roughly a year had passed since we first met.
What on earth had happened to Kale and his companions in that time?

‘They’ve become this strong from war alone?’

That was absurd. There had to be another reason for their growth.
Of course, that reason mattered, but it wasn’t particularly important to me, the Market Master.

My eyes passed over Merry.
A child like my great-granddaughter.
At the same time, the underground city beneath the desert of the Land of Death, where I sat as Market Master, came to mind.

A chain of fate that had continued through generations since ancient times.
That destiny had only begun to manifest in this generation.

I glanced briefly at the platinum-haired Dragon.
Our eyes met.

-Ignore me.

The Dragon’s voice reached me.
I straightened my legs with force and stood upright.

I paused as I caught the intensity in Obante’s gaze fixed upon me.
It was fierce—almost bordering on madness.

‘Why is this old man acting like this?’

As Obante, who was practically a Dragon fanatic, sent that burning stare my way, a chill ran down my spine.
Tap.
Obante grabbed my shoulder and whispered into my ear.

“I will stake everything as well.”

What is he saying?
Where did he suddenly come from, and what does he mean?
I glanced past the Market Master with a bewildered expression and looked toward Tasha.

“Ah, really! Market Master, if you say things like that, what am I supposed to do!”

Tasha looked at me with an exasperated expression and spoke.

“I reported the Dark Elf battle from last night to the Market Master. After hearing that, he said he had something to tell me regarding Merry, so he came rushing over just now. And he says he has something to convey to you as well, Young Master Kale.”
“…Merry?”

My attention shifted back to the Market Master.
In that moment, the Market Master’s mouth opened.

“Merry.”

He called her name gently.

“Yes, Grandfather.”

Obante gazed at Merry, who answered with her usual composure, and recalled her at ten years old.

‘I prefer a suffering Necromancer.’

A child who had chosen Necromancer over Dark Mage.

“What kind of Necromancer do you wish to become?”

Obante posed a question he hadn’t asked before. Merry’s lips sealed shut for a moment.
His gaze was too serious to answer carelessly.
Though he appeared somewhat disheveled, he was the wisest Dark Elf she knew. And he was the grandfather who had opened the path of the Necromancer to her.

Merry glanced at Kale Heniatus.
Raon’s voice reached her.

-Good Merry! Answer however you wish! You can even say you’re specially great!

The corners of Merry’s mouth lifted slightly beneath her black robe.

During the war with the Empire, she had made a resolve while fighting the Tower Master who had controlled Honth.
Just like the author of the books she had studied.

【I need to become overwhelmingly strong.】
【Like the Sage of Death.】

Merry spoke her thoughts aloud.

“Overwhelmingly.”

I was hungry.
When I saw the trees infused with dead mana, I was hungry.

I could only describe this feeling as hunger.
Because it was a desire, or yearning, I had never truly harbored before. Different from the simple curiosity to see the outside world from back then.
A greed that burrowed deeper, like a swamp.

I wanted to grow stronger.
That yearning and greed.
Unable to satisfy it, I remained hungry.

“I wish to become overwhelmingly strong.”

Market Master Obante continued to ask gently.

“Like whom?”

Merry answered without hesitation.

“Like the Sage of Death.”

The author of the book that had shown me the path to becoming a Necromancer.

【I hope you surpass me far beyond measure. My disciple, reading this book.】

I wanted to become like that person.

Tasha, who was listening to this, faltered.
Before she came to the Jungle, her grandfather Obante had mentioned something while instructing her to protect Merry.

‘Yes, perhaps this is all natural. The moment has come to inherit the will of the Sage of Death.’

At that moment, she wondered who the Sage of Death was. Tasha’s gaze naturally turned toward her grandfather Obante.
But Obante was looking at Kale Heniatus, not Tasha. His lips parted.

“The Sage of Death.”

Obante withdrew a book from his embrace.
A story passed down through generations, only to the Market Master of the Underground City in the Land of Death since ancient times.
The Sage of Death.

“She was death itself.”

She held death in her embrace.
And moreover.

“The sole sovereign of all dark things.”

Light and darkness were both natural.
The one who first guided those beings who could only survive shrouded in darkness.

“The King of Death.”

The moment those words flowed from the Dark Elf Market Master’s lips, Kale Heniatus recalled what the Tower Master had said during the war against the Empire.

‘The King of Death must be so sorrowful. If it were her, she would have been delighted that a successor to the Necromancer’s power had appeared.’

The Sage of Death was none other than the King of Death itself.
Yet Obante’s words were far from finished.

“The one who transformed the desert of the Caro Kingdom into the Land of Death, one of the Five Great Mysteries.

The Land of Death—uniquely among the Five Great Mysteries, the only legend whose protagonist was a ‘person’.
A desert covered in sand that burned crimson by day and darkened by night.
The one who created that desert.

“The Last Necromancer.”

A Sage, a King, and the final existence.

“She alone was called the ‘King of Death’—the sole Necromancer to overwhelm even Dark Mages.”

One who had reached the apex of darkness with overwhelming, unparalleled mastery.

“And simultaneously, she was the one who provided the Dark Elves with a place to dwell.”

A dwelling for the Dark Elves.
The vast underground city beneath the desert, known as the City of Death or the City of Life.

Kale recalled the words the Tower Master had spoken.

‘I wiped them all out. The Dark Elves too. I thought I’d eradicated them completely.’

The Tower Master of the Alchemy Tower had believed the Dark Elves were extinct.
But they had been living beneath the Land of Death, in that desert underground.
Obante’s lips curved into a knowing smile.

“The full story would take considerable time to explain, but the Dark Magic sought to annihilate the Dark Elves as well.”
“…Grandfather! Is that truly so?”

Tasha asked in astonishment, and Obante merely shook his head, dismissing it as ancient history.

“While it fell to the Dark Elves to beautify the underground city, it was the Sage of Death who first provided that place.”

Obante closed his eyes, savoring the tale passed down only among the Market Masters.

The Dark Elves did not harbor such hatred toward humans, who had rejected them generation after generation.
Why was that?

Because the Dark Elf who had served as the leader of the Underground City had always said so, since time immemorial.

Humans are similar to us.
Do not hate all of them.
Those who suffer among them suffer just as we do.

To hate all humans would be ungrateful, for it was a human who had created the place where the Dark Elves could live.

Obante spoke, looking at Kale Heniatus.

“I will commit all my strength to aid you and—”

The wrinkled hand of the Elderly Man came to rest upon Merry’s shoulder.

“—and to aid Merry.”

It is said that the Sage of Death spoke these words before passing.

【The only one who can become the next King of Death is a Necromancer.】

Obante, the Dark Elf, could not refute those words.
Why was that?

Dark Elves and black mages—creatures bearing the attribute of darkness—do not understand the “pain” that darkness carries.
Least of all do they understand death.

But a Necromancer always keeps pain and death close at hand.

【A king is a seat that only one who has experienced everything—the very bottom and the highest peak—can ascend to.】

Obante recalled the word “destiny.”

Ten years old.
A boy who had fled the city where people lived to cross the desert, seeking survival. That boy became a Necromancer with a grotesque visage.
And seventeen years passed, and when that boy emerged into the world, black magic reappeared in the world.

Things Obante had never once imagined were already unfolding before him.

The position of ‘Market Master of the City of Death’.
Even the Whale Tribe, fewer in number than the Dark Elves, had a king, yet unlike other races, the Dark Elves had chosen not to crown one.
As centuries passed, most Dark Elves no longer knew the reason why, but the Market Master understood it well.

Because the throne existed elsewhere.

Obante patted Merry’s shoulder as she stood motionless, then handed the book in his other hand to Kale Heniatus.

“This is a tome on dark magic left behind by the Sage of Death.”

It was the same book he had presented to Merry alongside the Necromancer’s tome.

“The Sage said that each of these books—the dark magic tome and the Necromancer’s tome—would have their own rightful owner.”

Kale Heniatus accepted the book cloaked in black.
A black tome without a title.

“The Sage said that if one is truly the rightful owner, they will know it the moment they read the first page.”

Just as Merry had chosen the Necromancer’s book after hearing its contents, Obante urged Kale Heniatus to examine this one.
Kale Heniatus opened the black book with an odd sensation stirring within him.

Rustle.
As he turned the cover, a single line of text appeared on the very first page.

‘Look at this?’

The corners of Kale Heniatus’s mouth rose.
The black book contained but a single sentence.

【Find the mirror.】

A mirror.
What came to mind was the Sun God’s Condemnation—a divine artifact.

Kale Heniatus felt a slight chill run down his spine.

Just how much of the story that couldn’t fit within the five volumes of “The Birth of a Hero” was truth?
Where did the connections begin and end?
Perhaps because this was the ‘real world’, everything was linked by cause and effect.

The moment I, filled with doubt, read the next sentence, a picture formed in my mind.

【Draw your sword.】

A picture that would begin from beneath the Alchemy Tower at the heart of the Empire.

【And give it to your warrior.】

My gaze turned toward Saint Jack.

【The warrior shall advance without hesitation.】

And finally, it reached Merry.

【The King of Death shall open the path.】

The Sun God’s twins and the King of Death.
Imagining the picture they would paint in the Empire, my spine tingled.
It was a pleasant chill.

I saw the tallest tower on the Western Continent—the Bell Tower crumbling.

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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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