Game Opportunity Becomes Reality, Chapter 137
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Game Opportunity Becomes Reality, Chapter 137
34. What Is This Now (1)
Seeing me ask what business he had, my maternal uncle Edgar Winston cautiously opened his mouth.
"I came to seek your forgiveness."
And the words that flowed from his mouth were exactly what I had expected, so much so that I almost lost my steam.
"You don't actually think you'll be treated like family just because you come to apologize now, do you?"
"N-no, absolutely not."
In my heart, I wanted to crush them, but the only reason I had left them alone was because they were my mother's siblings and parents.
No matter how much of a nephew I was, the person sitting in the seat of honor and giving them a cold glare was the highest authority in this Kingdom.
It would be abnormal not to be nervous.
He swallowed dryly and continued speaking seriously.
"My father that is, Duke His Highness's maternal grandfather, Marc Winston has been quietly amassing money. By selling the name of Lady Sylvia, the Viscountess, no less."
"Huh..."
But what came next was somewhat unexpected.
He had come to confess a wrongdoing we had yet to catch on to and ask for forgiveness.
"It seems he thought Your Highness's attention would eventually turn to us. So...."
"He plans to hoard money and flee to another country?"
"I am ashamed."
Should I call this clever?
Or should I call it shrewd?
I read the Myriad Mirror's information to gauge my uncle's exact mindset.
[Edgar Winston / Merchant]
Talent: Intellect (High), Administrative Ability (Medium), Business Acumen (Medium), Command Ability (Low)
Trait: Honest Merchant
Relation: Favorable / Neutral
Status: Anguished / Self-loathing
With an eye that had seen many talents, his stats were neither good nor bad.
But the problem was that I couldn't see any cunning or calculating behavior in him.
I had always thought of the Winston family, including him, as selfish merchants.
So the opposite assessment was rather disconcerting.
Given his disposition, he didn't seem like someone who would deliberately betray another person.
And that made my irritation spike even more.
Because it meant the people I hated weren't purely wicked after all.
In the end, didn't that just mean there was some story behind his actions?
"Sir Gregory."
"Yes, Your Highness."
"Handle this properly. Do I have to hear it directly?"
"My apologies. As of this moment, I will significantly increase the surveillance personnel in the area."
"Do that."
"Then I shall take my leave."
I vented that irritation on Gregory, a Special-rank Member of Blue Moon.
Well, it wasn't exactly their fault.
From where I stood, the Winston family was far down in importance, and even Blue Moon couldn't keep tabs on every place like that.
At my order, Gregory vanished back into the ground, and the moment he disappeared, my frozen uncle began trembling in his hands.
-Gulp.
It was a sight all too familiar to me and Bug, but for those who didn't know, it was nothing but terrifying.
After all, what came to mind with stealth was an assassin.
He must have realized once again what kind of being I was.
"You've saved me from embarrassment, so I suppose I should reward you. Is there anything you wish for?"
No matter how much his intent was to correct a wrong, he had essentially sold out his own father.
Since he had done something unthinkable by normal standards, I brought up a reward.
Of course, that remark also carried the intent of testing him.
What he needed to say here to shake off my displeasure was....
"It's fine. How could I take a reward after selling out my father? I will not show myself before you again after today. I apologize for making you feel uneasy."
That's exactly it.
I let out an inward sigh at his correct answer and rose from my seat.
"Lead the way."
"Pardon?"
"Lead me to my grandfather. We need to settle this."
"Y-Your Highness will personally step in?"
Judging by my uncle's conduct and the flow of things, it seemed cutting ties with me and my mother had been my grandfather's doing.
So I wanted to face him directly.
"Understood. I will escort you."
"Just give me the coordinates. I'll fly over."
"Ah.... Yes."
Selling the name of the child he had abandoned in fear what an ugly old man.
Did he think he could sell my mother's name and flee to another country and be safe?
* * *
"Hah…"
My maternal grandfather Marc Winston, facing me, wore an expression as if he had just seen a ghost.
[Traits: Egoist, Greedy Merchant]
Seeing him in person, my maternal grandfather was exactly as I had imagined.
A selfish being who sold my mother into a noble family and cut ties when things didn't go his way.
"D-Duke Your Highness!?"
"Wh-What? Ugh!"
Inside the small Winston family manor, the kind a mere baron title would use, all those involved in the incident happened to be gathered, saving me the trouble.
I captured every single one of them and teleported them to the Ducal Castle's Underground Prison.
Having dealt with the cancer of the Winston family, including my maternal grandfather, without a single word of conversation, I turned to my maternal uncle.
"Is there anyone else?"
"No. They were all gathered here by chance."
For him, this was probably a huge matter, but for me, it was nothing more or less than post-meal exercise.
"With this, our relationship ends here."
So, for my maternal uncle to see, I placed 10 Mithril ingots (worth 10 billion) on the table and told him never to show his face again.
He didn't want the reward, but I simply turned away and shifted my gaze to Bug.
"You little."
"W-What? What's wrong?"
When I stared at him, he flinched, then started spouting strange excuses.
"Honestly, I didn't even know you two were related."
"So you mean you dragged a complete stranger into my castle?"
But that excuse only made it more absurd, so I had to give him a knuckle to the head.
"Ow! It's just that what that old man had was interesting! I wanted to show you, but who knew things would turn out like this!?"
"The item?"
At that, my gaze turned to my maternal uncle.
No matter how well he had rectified his wrongdoings, how could he be at ease after betraying his family?
My maternal uncle, who had been looking at the Mithril ingots with a troubled expression, belatedly gave an awkward smile and pulled something out from his bosom.
"You must mean this."
As he held something out, I had to widen my eyes at the sight of it.
[Electronic Circuit Device / Presumed to be a mobile phone]
It was an object not of this world a relic of memories.
It was a smartphone with the S company's logo clearly imprinted on it.
"Doesn't the mark on that thing look just like Grand Duke Lucas' cipher?"
"W-What is this?"
Grand Duke Lucas' cipher refers to English alphabets.
He left them scattered all over Rondel, but since there were too few materials to decipher them, they were called a cipher.
As Bug said, the S company's logo engraved on the back of the smartphone was an alphabet, so it wasn't just similar it was identical.
"Where did you get this?"
My mind grew complicated.
Why is this in Rondel?
Greatly flustered, I asked my maternal uncle with utmost seriousness.
"I bought it from someone who appeared to be a Triton Continent native in the Pieren Viscounty. He had an unusual appearance and spoke a language I had never heard before. He seemed to need money and was trying to sell it to a general store, so I bought it in his place."
"Any other information?"
"I met him around noon on the 3rd of last month, at the eastern market of Pieren city. Other than that, there's no particular information."
A Triton Continent native would look similar to an Asian from Earth.
But such a person speaking a language never heard before?
For a moment, one possibility flashed through my mind.
"I'll take this."
"T-This is too much."
Then, snatching the smartphone from him as if seizing it, I added a box containing 50 Mithril ingots onto the table where I had already placed 10.
"Bug, let's go back."
My flustered maternal uncle refused repeatedly, saying he didn't need the money, but I was already reciting the teleport spell.
Then, leaving my maternal uncle behind, I quickly returned to the Lord's estate with Bug.
* * *
Arcia greeted me as I returned to the Lord's estate.
She timidly protested that if I was going somewhere far, I should have brought her along, and I had to apologize to her.
But even as I apologized, all my attention was on the smartphone in my hand, and Arcia, noticing this, only voiced one complaint before quietly following me.
-Thud.
Quickly taking my seat at the desk, I pressed the smartphone's power button.
"..."
But the smartphone showed no response.
It looks like the battery ran out.
I had no choice but to take apart the smartphone's cover and pull out the battery.
Then, using magic, I sent a very low-voltage current into the battery.
Something like Rondel-style wireless charging, I suppose?
After spending about five minutes charging the battery like that, I reassembled it, thinking this should be enough to power it on.
-Ring, ring.
The smartphone powered on with a familiar melody.
"Whoa, what is this?"
Bug, who had been watching me work from the side, wore a look of wonder.
But I didn't budge until the smartphone was completely booted up.
If the text that appeared after turning on turned out to be Korean, my head would be in a very complicated place.
"It's English."
Unfortunately, the text was English, and the smartphone was password-locked, so I couldn't look at its contents.
Rondel's technology had advanced considerably, but its mechanisms were completely different from Earth's, so cracking this was bound to be tricky.
"Hoo..."
In the end, having gained nothing significant other than the discovery of the smartphone, I let out a sigh.
"Is this an object that came over from Earth?"
Arcia, who knew everything about me, quickly grasped the situation and asked.
I scratched my cheek and replied.
"Maybe the person who owned this object came over with it too."
I'm a reincarnator from Earth.
And Grand Duke Lucas is a dimension traveler.
It wouldn't be strange for a new Earthling to show up.
But from my current position, the existence of an unknown Earthling wasn't entirely welcome.
After all, an Earthling especially one from an English-speaking culture could access Grand Duke Lucas's Opportunity more easily than anyone.
Of course, since the Opportunity already had an owner, it wouldn't pass into someone else's hands, but I didn't want a commotion to break out because of it.
"For now, I need to find the person who sold this to my maternal uncle."
The saving grace was that the smartphone had been traded in the Kingdom of Rhinehearts, where I was, and I held all the information on the Kingdom of Rhinehearts tightly in my grasp.
If I put the Blue Moon on the search, they'd bring me information before long.
"This feels strange."
"It can't be helped."
Arcia pulled a cool drink from her subspace and handed it to me.
I downed it in one go, trying to steady my wandering mind.
'What kind of incident is about to happen now?'
* * *
Looking at the history between the Croysen Empire and the Kingdom of Rhinehearts, the aggressor was always the Croysen Empire, and the victim was always the Kingdom of Rhinehearts.
But ironically, the citizens of the Croysen Empire, the aggressors, held a greater sense of grievance toward the other side than the citizens of the Kingdom of Rhinehearts, the victims.
This was an extreme example of how people's thinking could become so narrow-minded when distorted information was continuously injected into a controlled society.
The anti-Rhinehearts sentiment among Croysen Empire citizens grew worse by the day, and when a domain was reduced to ashes this time due to the Kingdom of Rhinehearts' hard-line response, it finally exploded.
"What? Diplomatic officials from the Kingdom of Rhinehearts embassy died from a group beating?"
"Yes. And not just one seven of them are said to have died."
Diplomatic officials from the Rhinehearts embassy in the capital of the Croysen Empire had been attacked by citizens and killed.
Upon hearing the news, the Emperor looked baffled.
"Are they insane? Sure, we cultivated the anti-Rhinehearts sentiment ourselves, but how dare commoners take action without the Imperial Family's permission?"
They probably did it out of their own sense of patriotism, but from the perspective of the Imperial family and noble houses running the nation, their actions were nothing but a rampage.
Commoners start trouble, and the Imperial family cleans up after them?
This ran contrary to the feudal order.
"What's the Kingdom of Rhinehearts' reaction?"
"They're extremely agitated."
"That's to be expected."
The Emperor, who had been conversing with the Foreign Minister, clicked his tongue briefly and spoke.
"We'll just state our position as expressing regret, nothing more."
"That won't satisfy them."
"Should we be tiptoeing around them?"
"No. I misspoke."
But the citizens' sentiments were merely a reflection of the arrogant Imperial family and nobles' ideology at the top.
The problem, however, was that the Kingdom of Rhinehearts' reaction was no longer staying within their assumptions.
"Your, Your Majesty!"
"What is it?"
"Our embassy located in the Kingdom of Rhinehearts has been bombarded by the royal army's Heaven-Piercing Fortress."
"What did you say!?"