Chapter: 98
Evangeline did have an excuse.
It wasn’t just anywhere—it was in her own duchy.
Evangeline, the only daughter of the ducal family, and Larit, her close friend whose status Evangeline herself had vouched for.
Who could have expected them to be stopped and hassled over having to prove their identities?
But then—
“If you’re looking for an identification card, I have one here.”
A cold voice rang out.
Larit pulled an identification card from her bosom and held it out to the vigilantes.
The vigilantes accepted it somewhat awkwardly and examined it with dubious expressions.
“House Ancy?”
“Where’s that?”
“Never heard of it.”
The vigilantes had spent their entire lives buried in the countryside.
There was no way they could know every noble family in the Empire.
And so, the situation only became more complicated.
“This identification card… is it real?”
“It could be forged, couldn’t it?”
Suspicion filled the vigilantes’ eyes.
In truth, they did have a point.
For one thing, not all nobles were the same.
There were nobles who owned territories, and nobles who merely possessed titles without any territory to their name.
That alone made a difference in their starting positions.
Moreover, forged identification cards circulated discreetly among the people of the Empire.
After all, there was a difference in the rights guaranteed to nobles and ordinary commoners.
Of course, anyone caught by the security forces would receive severe punishment.
Even so, there were always people who couldn’t give up the tempting benefits and continued carrying forged identification cards.
And the vigilantes jumped to the conclusion that Larit was one of those people.
The kind of vain, immature girl who idolized noble ladies, that was.
One of the young vigilantes widened his eyes and roughly grabbed Larit by the wrist.
“Stop making excuses and come with us!”
“Let go of me!”
Larit hurriedly tried to wrench her hand free, but the young man’s grip wouldn’t budge, as though it were made of iron.
“L-Lari!”
Startled, Evangeline raised her voice.
At that moment—
Smack!
A long, elegant hand suddenly seized the young man’s wrist.
At the same time, a cold voice rang out.
“What exactly do you think you’re doing?”
A man with an expressionless face looked down at the young vigilante who had been threatening Larit.
He was a breathtakingly beautiful man, the sort of man that both women and men alike would instinctively turn around to look at.
Faced with a handsome face that looked as though it had been carved from pure white jade, the young man furrowed his brow deeply.
‘What the hell? Who’s this pale-faced bastard?!’
A man ought to look like a man!
And yet, the young man couldn’t help feeling somewhat tense.
For a man, rather than a woman, to possess such delicate features meant that he was wealthy enough not to need to perform manual labor outdoors.
‘Well, even so, he’s probably just a low-ranking noble.’
There was no way some high-ranking noble lord would come all the way out to a remote countryside like this.
The young man had lived in this village his entire life, and the highest-ranking person he had ever met was a low-ranking official from the ducal estate’s main castle.
Besides, the identification card that girl named Larit had presented earlier belonged to some viscount family he’d never even heard of.
But strangely—
‘What is this?’
Like a mouse standing before a beast of prey, his entire body stiffened with anxiety.
The young man gritted his teeth.
“Who the hell are you?!”
Annoyed at himself for shrinking back, the young vigilante raised his voice instead.
“Me?”
The man, Dietrich, pointed with his chin toward the frozen Evangeline.
“I’m her brother.”
Meanwhile, Evangeline swallowed nervously.
…Big Brother looks incredibly on edge.
And for good reason.
If it were the usual Dietrich, rather than openly speaking informally and provoking the other party like this, he would have preferred to deal with things quietly.
“So, who exactly are you people…”
The grip around the young man’s wrist tightened slowly.
“…to threaten my sister and my sister’s friend, telling them whether they can come with you or not?”
The young man tried to wrench his wrist free from Dietrich’s grasp.
But instead, the pressure around his wrist only increased.
A powerful pain surged through him, as though his wrist were about to snap.
“Ghk…!”
The young man’s face turned bright red, then blue, then deathly white.
“L-Let go!”
The young man struggled frantically.
Watching him, Dietrich raised the corner of his lips.
“Let go?”
“M-My wrist! It’s going to break!”
The young man foamed at the mouth from the pain.
But Dietrich showed no intention whatsoever of releasing him.
“And when Lady Ancy asked you to let go…”
Dietrich tilted his head slightly.
His attitude was unmistakably mocking.
“…did you let her go?”
At this point, the other young men who had been watching couldn’t remain still any longer.
“We’ve been watching this for long enough! That bastard really…”
“Let Peter go right now!”
One of the young men rushed forward and swung his fist.
Thud!
But rather than Dietrich getting hit, the chin of the young man he was holding was violently knocked to the side.
“Ghk!”
Dietrich had swiftly pulled the young man he was gripping by the wrist toward himself, using him as a shield.
His reflexes were astonishing.
Then he shoved the young man forward instead.
“Urgh!”
“Ugh!”
The young men charging at Dietrich tumbled to the ground like falling dominoes.
“You bastard…!”
The young man who had fallen to the ground gritted his teeth and tried to get back up.
But—
“Ghk!”
He was mercilessly kicked in the stomach and sent rolling across the ground again.
“Ugh…”
“Urk…”
Groans of pain filled the surroundings.
The young men were unable to regain their senses and crawled across the ground like insects.
Dietrich looked down at them as though they were filthy garbage. Then he pulled a small, square identification card from inside his clothes and casually dropped it on top of them.
“The identification card you were so desperately looking for.”
Dietrich spoke in a voice filled with contempt.
“Check it.”
The young man grabbed the identification card with trembling hands and stared at it in shock, as though his eyes were about to pop out.
“…Huh? Wh-What?!”
“What is it?”
“This, this…”
The young man couldn’t even finish speaking. His shoulders trembled violently.
Inside the gold identification card, the name Claudius was clearly engraved alongside the family’s crest.
A sword and a rose.
The symbol of House Claudius.
“My people, living on my land…”
An icy voice descended over the heads of the three young men, who had frozen stiff.
“How dare you threaten my younger sister and my companions?”
My land?
My younger sister?
…Could it really be that this man…
Was the Duke of Claudius?!
Cold sweat ran down their spines.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”
“We were wrong!”
“Please, just show us mercy this once…!”
The young men begged, tears and snot streaming down their faces.
Dietrich glanced over them with a gaze as cold as the northern wind.
There was such murderous intent in his eyes that it seemed as though he might tear them apart and kill them at any moment.
But only for a moment.
“Your Grace.”
A delicate voice called out to Dietrich.
At that instant, the murderous intent that had been flickering in his vivid blue eyes vanished completely.
Dietrich tightly closed and opened his eyes before turning around.
“…Are you all right?”
“Yes. Thanks to your concern.”
Larit quickly nodded.
She looked somewhat pale, perhaps because she had been startled, but she didn’t appear to have suffered any serious injuries.
After letting out a sigh of relief, Dietrich abruptly turned toward Evangeline.
“Eva, what about you?”
“Uh, huh? M-Me? I’m fine too.”
“Good. I’m glad you’re all right, but…”
At the same time, Dietrich’s face twisted ominously.
“You even left your escort knights behind and went around on your own! Have you lost your mind?!”
His booming shout seemed loud enough to burst Evangeline’s eardrums.
“What would you have done if something had happened to you?!”
In truth, Evangeline felt it was unfair.
She had only done it to help bring her big brother and Larit together!
But she had enough sense not to shout, ‘I did all this for you, Big Brother!’ at a time like this.
“I’m sorrrrry…”
Evangeline meekly shrank in on herself.
Dietrich glared at his troublesome little sister with a deeply furrowed brow before eventually shaking his head.
“Let’s go back to the villa for now.”
