CHAPTER 35

"No. No!"

Vince didn't think Jonata was dead because of Meyer. His wife had just been unlucky.

But…

He couldn't bear to reach for Meyer's hair.

The best he could do was to hurriedly take the scissors from Meyer and tend to the injured wound without touching his hair.

Meyer seemed to understand Vince's true feelings and said nothing.

Since then, Vince had taken care of Meyer in honor of his wife's support.

But that's all.

Vince could not and would not become a Jonata. Meyer no longer opened his heart to anyone.

Since then, Meyer had hated having someone in contact with him. He especially didn't want them touching his hair.

That's how time passed, and Meyer turned thirteen.

One day, the same as always, an unusual dimensional twist suddenly occurred in the Duchy of Knox, and monsters began to slip out.

It was the first dungeon.

Everyone was in a panic because of the phenomenon that was out of the blue.

The Black Knights did their best to take care of the demons that had escaped from the dungeon, but the loss of human life was significant.

The dungeon was a sign of the Demon's King reign in the world.

This was the second sign of the Holy Demon War in a thousand years.

Grand Duke Knox had no doubt that all this was because of Meyer.

As soon as he received the report that the dungeon had been opened, he went blindly up the spire.

"The cursed you brought the Demon Lord here! I should have killed you right after you were born from the start!"

"Your Excellency! You can't do that!"

Vince tried to stop it, but the sword of the Grand Duke was the first to descend toward Meyer.

But at that moment, mana burst out of Meyer's body.

It was an outburst of magical power caused by personal danger and anxious emotions.

"Keuaak!"

Meyer's mana was shady, dark, and violent.

The magi devoured the air of Knox as if it were eating him.

The magi had consumed Grand Duke Knox, and he was rapidly drying up. With his life force gone, he looked like death itself.

Meyer's face turned pale as he watched it happen right in front of him.

He was someone he hadn't run into many times since he was born, but he was still his father.

There was a hint of shock at the fact that such a person had tried to kill him and ended up dead because of him.

"What? The Grand Duke…!"

Upon hearing the news of the Grand Duke's death, the Grand Duchess staggered as if she were going to faint. She quipped that this was all Meyer's fault.

"I can't believe my son killed his own father. He's like a demon! It's his fault the dungeon was opened. Throw him into the dungeon. He opened the dungeon, he had to close it!"

"Grand Duchess. Calm down. He is the only heir to the Grand Duke Knox!"

Vince cried out shakily.

However, the Grand Duchess shuddered and shouted, as disgust and hatred against Meyer hit the sky.

"That is the heir to House Knox! That's the Demon King's servant! Hey! Throw that wicked monster into the dungeon!"

The vassals who knew Meyer's secret also insisted that they should obey the Grand Duchess' orders.

At that moment, there were people who sided with Meyer. They were the Black Knights, the loyal swords of the Knox family.

They shouted that they could not send the only heir to the House of Knox to death.

"Grand Duchess, calm down. The young master killed the Grand Duke. The young master has never held a sword properly. There is no way such a person could have killed His Highness the Grand Duke!"

"The Black Knights will defend that atrocity that killed the Grand Duke! Where exactly does your loyalty and honor reside?"

"Monsters have escaped the gates and are roaming the castle. The death of His Highness the Grand Duke is merely an unfortunate accident caused by them!"

The Black Knights, who did not know about the magic Meyer had, thought that the Grand Duchess was trying to use Grand Duke Knox's death to take down the illegitimate child, the enemy of their eyes.

So the castle of Nokentoria was overturned by chaos.

Between the chaos, Meyer rose from his seat.

Vince wanted Meyer to cry and beg. He was hoping he'd buy some sympathy.

But Meyer's gorgeous golden eyes did not look like the young age of thirteen.

He looked at him with a look of understanding of all the bondage and sinfulness that had been placed upon him.

Little Meyer Knox spoke softly in a voice that had just become a metamorphic and scratched the metal.

"I will obey the orders of the Grand Duchess."

"Young master!"

Vince shouted sadly, but Meyer, who had already made up his mind, had no hesitation.

Meyer ran into the dungeon on that path.

No one thought Meyer would come back alive from the dungeon. Even Vince did.

But everyone's expectations were betrayed.

Just as the Black Knights were about to enter to close the dungeon, the gate rose up and Meyer, covered in demon blood, immediately slipped out.

It wasn't long before the dungeon closed after Meyer came out.

Closing a dungeon is proof of heroism.

The lords and the Black Knights were thrilled by that fact.

For them, Meyer Knox was no longer the illegitimate child of the Grand Duke.

It was only hope that could be a ray of light in the darkness that had suddenly unfolded.

"The Black Knights are pleased to meet the 50th Grand Duke Knox!"

"May the mighty glory be with the warrior's successor!"

Public opinion turned completely. They honored Meyer and bowed their heads.

"He's the 50th Grand Duke of Knox? Ha, ha, ha!"

The Grand Duchess laughed incredulously when she heard the news that Meyer had been brought back to life safely.

"Grand Duchess. Please do allow it."

"Hahahahaha!"

The Grand Duchess had lost her mind.

It was concluded that normal judgment was no longer possible, and she was soon locked up in a room.

So Meyer became the Grand Duke of Knox.

The first thing he did when he became the Grand Duke at a young age was to deal with his father's vassals.

There was little opposition in the area because of the reputation of pushing the next Grand Duke Meyer into the dungeon.

So Meyer handled all the people who knew the secret of his hair except Vince.

The fact that the Grand Duchess had a "demon spell" when she saw Meyer was considered to be a ruse to express her grief over the loss of the Grand Duke.

Thus, the Grand Duchess was confined in the name of recuperation and suffered a long illness, but in the end she passed away within a few years.

Meyer had been constantly closing dungeons since the moment he became the Grand Duke.

As if this was the only way he could be recognized.

As the number of gates Meyer closed increased, the secret of his birth and the suspicion of his father's murder, which followed Meyer, gradually clouded, and his praise became higher.

That's how 15 years had passed.

Meyer became a madman who burned everything to close the dungeon.

Although he escaped from the spire that had locked him up as a child, he was still imprisoned in a prison named the dungeon.

***

After Vince's story, silence fell in the dimly lit room.

I didn't want to face Meyer Knox's childhood this way.

No, I didn't want to know for the rest of my life.

It was all the more so because his past was miserable.

On the day I drank with Meyer, I remembered that Meyer, who was seeing me off, was unusually sensitive to hair.

'It's not that he was uncomfortable with me touching him, did he still think they would be cursed if someone touched his hair?'

It's a bunch of nonsensical bullshit.

Hair is merely affected by magic, it does not harbor magic.

So there is no such thing as receiving a curse just because you touch hair.

However… That kind of thing was not something he could easily admit to, knowing that it was not his head.

I moistened my dry mouth with my tongue.

Meyer's unexpected past was too heavy for me to swallow alone, and too miserable for me to ignore.

Now I finally understand why Meyer is so desperate and obsessive about closing the dungeon. I would be the same.

The only way I could recognize myself was on a journey to eliminate the source of the pain that had plunged my life into despair.

I couldn't help but be possessed.

Vince, who had been silent for a long time, opened his mouth pointing to the portrait.

"Do you know how this portrait was painted?"

Come to think of it, it was strange.

There was no way that the Grand Duke and his wife, who hated Meyer so much, would have painted a portrait with him.

Vince smiled bitterly and smoothed the curtain lines.

"No matter how much the previous Grand Duke and his wife denied His Excellency, they could not erase his very existence because he was also of Knox blood. So naturally, as a nobleman, he had to have a portrait… but they didn't want to be in one space with His Excellency."

… What bullshit is that?

It seems that my inner thoughts were revealed in my expression. Vince also laughed as if it was ridiculous on second thought.

"For this reason, the previous Grand Duke and his wife painted their own portraits and had His Excellency the Grand Duke painted over them."

I wrinkled my brow.

I don't know what the hell is the point of such vain behavior. Where are the family portraits that paint that way?

In the 21st century, everyone will dress up properly and go to a photo studio to take family photos, not to compose and edit them. There are people called the Great House.

However, it did not represent all the vile discrimination of the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess.

It was a fact that remained unimaginable to me.

"Even then, he was reluctant to show His Excellency's image directly to the painter, so he had the painter paint a childhood portrait of the previous Grand Duke and his wife, changing only the color of their hair as a reference."

"... I'm surprised the Commander is still leaving this portrait intact. I would have burned it."