Reincarnated into a Game as the Hero’s Friend - Chapter 33
3rd POV
It was natural for everyone to gaze coldly at the young man who shouted ‘give me command of the army!’ as soon as he entered the main camp.
“Do you people have no intention to save my father who is still in the fortress!? I am the eldest son of Marquis Knap, Mangold Goslich Knap!”
“This army has been entrusted to me. They have no reason to follow the order of others.”
Count Shandel answered the angry demand of the eldest son of Marquis Knap, Mangold, calmly. Of course, it only made Mangold even more furious.
“This is a chance to earn the great merit of protecting the fortress! Yet, you wish to just stand still!? You coward! Shameless!”
“Courage is different than recklessness, Mangold-dono.”
It was the Count’s sarcasm to call him dono rather than Sir. For the Count, there was no need to show manners to the person who also had no manner.
As a military house, it was natural for the members of Marquis Knap’s house to be overbearing, but they would still mind their manners as a noble. But this son of Knap house seemed to have mistaken his own ability and his family’s ability.
Rather than calling it a surge of impatience because his father was still inside the fortress, it was more of arrogance.
Count Shandel thought that this man’s attitude and calmness was no match to Welner von Zeavert who was more than five years younger than him.
Of course, the Count had no way to know that Welner was only calm because he knew that the fortress would fall.
As the Count re-evaluates his assessment toward Welner to ‘I see. This is why he got into His Highness’ good grace’, Mangold in front of him kept shouting.
Since the Count had gotten sick of this troublesome man, he told his subordinate to bring the document box. He then pulled out a document from that box.
“What is that!? Why are you bringing out that useless thing!? How dare you, a mere count, not listen to the words of a marquis’s heir like me!”
“This is an official document from His Highness the Crown Prince that stated I am the commander of this army.”
It was a cold word that must have poured cold water onto Mangold’s head. The face of Mangold and the Marquis knights that didn’t stop him changed.
‘I don’t know if they can’t stop him or they didn’t stop him, but whichever it is, these guys are useless,’ was Count Shandel’s cold evaluation of the Marquis’s knights.
“Please explain to me why despite this document that is written directly by His Highness existed must the army follow Sir’s order?”
“Well…That’s…In the first place, why…”
What Mangold wished to ask was probably ‘why did His Highness even take the trouble to write that kind of official document’ and ‘In the first place, why is there an army conveniently placed here?’
The Count let out a big sigh. At any rate, he no longer had the intention to amuse this dumbfounded group. The Count glanced at his knight.
“Escort them out.”
“Yes.”
In a far more violent way compared to the word ‘escort’, the Count’s knight expelled Mangold and his subordinate. While shaking his head, the Count returned the document to the box.
“It seems that Marquis Knap failed to educate his son. Still, I wonder if His Highness has foreseen this situation, that’s why he sent this document?”
“I reckon His Highness prepared this document in case the Marquis wishes to take control of this army. After all, the Marquis is not the type of person that will accept his defeat obediently.”
Viscount Grellman answered the Count with a tone as if he was amazed. In the long years the kingdom had stood, perhaps some people would still think this incident was a mere ‘coincidence’. Still, this was too cruel.
If the oracle of the revival of the demon king was true, the kingdom could not just stay still. Both the palace and the Crown Prince had started to move. The Crown Prince must have known there was a chance that the Veritza Fortress would get attacked and he used it.
Both the Crown Prince and Count Shandel didn’t think to go as far as eliminating Marquis Knap.
Still, there was a need to make the nobles who had no sense of the incoming danger realize. Ironically, the person who had the least sense of danger was Marquis Knap. The palace sent Marquis Knap to the fortress with the purpose to give a ‘rough wake-up call’ to these nobles.
In this aspect, you could say Welner and the Crown Prince were both known to have the same idea.
“But there’s no doubt that Marquis Knap is a loyal man.”
“I truly hope that the Marquis can escape safely.”
But the difference between Welner’s thoughts with the thought of the Crown Prince and other nobles of the palace was that the latter could also use the Marquis’s failure.
It would be good if the Marquis could get off his high horse after this incident. Even if the Marquis died in this incident, it would mean that the palace has succeeded in chipping away the power of the influential nobles. No matter what the outcome was, there was no disadvantage for the palace.
That was why you could also say the nobles in the palace were still somehow underestimating the revival of the demon king.