Chapter 1

★ The Border Castle of the Kingdom of Curvaan ★

“Haaa~”

The girl sighed, sitting at the end of the table where she was allowed to attend the meeting.

“Your Excellency, let my unit handle this. Our skills are getting rusty.”

“What do you mean? Your unit was out last month for the monster extermination. Leave this to our elite forces.”

“What elite forces? And ‘monster extermination’? You were the one who said, ‘Don’t get too excited just for killing some insects,’ weren’t you?”

“Let’s compromise and go with my unit...”

“You’re no good.”

“That’s right. You just moved last week.”

“Yeah, but we just suppressed the rowdy adventurers who were causing trouble while drunk!?”

For a while now, the grown men have been bickering.

The stone mansion was bleak, with monster pelts laid out instead of carpets. These pelts, which could fetch a good price if properly maintained and sold in the Holy Capital, were now tattered from being trampled by the muddy boots of the rough men gathered here.

The thick and heavy conference table, which had been newly purchased last year, was creaking from the continuous pounding. At this rate, it might not last the year.

“Haaa~”

The girl sighed again.

In this room, there were about six grown men and only the girl. She had been told to attend the meeting to “learn for the future,” but all she was seeing was a quarrel among men who were looking for an excuse to go on an adventure.

“Hey, the young lady looks troubled.”

“What’s wrong, exactly?”

“Ever since she went to the Holy Capital, she’s been like this.”

The girl, Mira, the eldest daughter of the Margrave Muel, had left her border domain for the first time to go to the Holy Capital.

What she saw there gave her a great shock.

The clean and orderly streets, especially inside the “Third Holy District,” were spotless, with not a single piece of trash. In the domain capital where Mira now resided, the name “capital” was a mere formality, with shabby houses lining the streets, and one could easily step on horse droppings if they weren’t careful.

The food in the Holy Capital was also excellent. Beautifully cut vegetables, artistically crafted sauces with depth, and soft, sweet meat. In the domain capital, the food was simply cut, cooked, and seasoned.

Most importantly, the people.

“I can’t invite Lady Eva here...”

Mira recalled the girl of her age she met in the Holy Capital.

Eva, from the Sylies family, had a beauty that Mira had never seen in any painting, and her composed demeanor was also impressive.

In a dream-like state, Mira had told Eva, “Please come visit us,” and Eva had agreed. However, when Mira returned to the border domain and smelled the horse droppings, she came to her senses.

There was no way she could let the delicate Eva smell such things.

There was no way she could invite Eva to such a place.

“Mira, this is a meeting. Behave yourself.”

“Meeting!? What part of this is a meeting!? You’re all just excited about the appearance of a monster and deciding who will go to defeat it! Why not just draw lots?”

“...It always ends up like this in the end.”

The Margrave, Mira’s father, honestly admitted this in response to Mira’s pointed comment.

The meeting was not about making decisions through discussion, but rather to avoid the discomfort of deciding by lot without any discussion.

A mooing sound of a cow could be heard.

“Father, if everyone is free, let’s clean the domain capital? We need to keep the main streets clean!”

“Ha, young lady, don’t make me laugh. Who’s going to do the cleaning...”

The large man, who was glared at, gasped. A bald, heavily eyebrowed man in his fifties was intimidated by a 12-year-old girl.

“B-But, we already sent the cleaning request to the Adventurer’s Guild. It would be wrong for us to take it.”

The muscle-bound man with an eye patch sitting next to him said, and the muscle-bound man with a shaved head and a tan sitting next to him nodded in agreement.

Mira shouted.

“No adventurer has accepted the request!”

“...Mira, it can’t be helped. I did send it out because you insisted, but the adventurers here are hungry for excitement. They wouldn’t do something as mundane as picking up trash.”

“Father, your language!”

The Margrave, when pointed out by Mira, merely shrugged.

One thing Mira realized after meeting various nobles in the Holy Capital was that “her father was strange.” For one, the head of a noble family doesn’t personally wield a battle axe to fight monsters or wear a bear pelt on their head, and noble children don’t call their father “Dad.”

Back in the domain capital, Mira focused on receiving proper noble education and re-educating her father. Despite her constant reminders, her father’s language showed no signs of improvement.

“Then, shall we decide by dice?”

The female muscle-bound man suggested, and the other muscle-bound men agreed, saying things like, “That’s a good idea,” and “The young lady is in a bad mood, too.” Incidentally, they were the Margrave Muel’s vassals, each commanding a thousand-strong force.

This time, the topic was the investigation of a large-scale earthquake in the foothills and the extermination of a giant scorpion that had been awakened from a long hibernation due to the earthquake.

“Haaa~”

As Mira sighed again, watching the muscle-bound men decide who would go by dice, her father came over to her.

“Don’t be so anxious. This is a good place, isn’t it? Eva didn’t become your friend just because you’re a pampered young lady, right?”

“That’s... true, but I still care. Lady Eva is working with Father in another country, you know?”

“Ah, the thing with Grinjed...”

The Margrave was aware of the events in the Rief Magic Empire but, as the owner of a military force to govern the border, he could not leave this place to act alongside the former Holy King Grinjed.

On the other hand, the Sylies family, being a central noble, had no domain, and Eva had gone to the Rief Magic Empire with Grinjed.

When he heard this, the Margrave felt a deep sense of envy.

While the border was exciting and fun in peacetime, he also wanted to be involved in national affairs.

“Oh, is it decided?”

The muscle-bound men cheered, and the bald one who won raised his fist in victory—when,

“Your Excellency, Your Excellency!”

The door to the meeting room burst open, and another muscle-bound man rushed in. Incidentally, all of the Margrave’s vassals, from the top captain down, were muscle-bound men, regardless of age or gender. Even if they were thin when they joined, they would bulk up within a few months.

“What is it? I said this meeting is for important decisions.”

“...”

The girl looked at her father with a questioning gaze, wondering how a meeting decided by dice could be “important,” but the Margrave ignored her and stood with his arms crossed and chest puffed out.

“Well, it seems the giant scorpion that suddenly appeared... has been exterminated.”

The muscle-bound men who lost the dice immediately looked at the bald one who won, but he opened his mouth in surprise. The losers chuckled, saying things like, “Can’t be helped,” “This time it’s off,” and “Serves you right, you stinky fart.”

“...Exterminated?”

However, the Margrave asked in doubt.

“Hey, wasn’t that giant scorpion over 10 meters long, and the reason it was passed to us was because the adventurers were hesitant?”

“Yes.”

“Who exactly did it?”

“That’s...”

The messenger muscle-bound man slowly took something out of his pocket.

“He said to show this to Your Excellency when he came to this castle.”

The moment he saw it, the Margrave Muel’s eyes widened.

It was a familiar dagger, but the one that was almost new was now heavily used.

He had given this to someone just two months ago.

And yet—how many battles must have been fought?

“Bring him here immediately—no, I’ll go! Where is he!?”

Gripping the dagger, which he had given as a parting gift, the Margrave shouted.

“Rage has gotten even stronger...!”

It was a voice of joy.

New chapter. Rage’s perspective starts tomorrow.