Eat First, Then Deal With It

Marquis Burzak’s estate, burned to the ground by Crocell.

The incident had been put to rest.

I returned to Librata manor.

Noon.

Rigen’s bedroom.

I sat cross-legged and ran an assessment of my condition.

“Pushing the Telekinetic Barrier to its limit really wrung me out. I’ll hold off on using it for a while.”

The real concern was magic.

I focused and called it to my fingertips.

Red, to orange, to yellow.

Third rank.

More than enough to earn the label of prodigy — but far from enough by my standards.

Far from enough when measured against the empire’s truly powerful, either.

“Still, growing magic isn’t exactly easy……”

There were four main ways to strengthen it.

One: steady daily magic training. Terrible efficiency. Everyone does it because it beats doing nothing, but only barely.

Two: mana potions. Exceptional for someone with no magic at all, but diminishing returns for someone already awakened. A Grade One mana potion was hard to come by, and even if I drank one now, the gains would be modest. There were special-grade potions that outperformed them — but those were true exceptions, rarer than rare.

Three: receiving a transfer from another person. Magic Inheritance.

The method humans used to pass power down through bloodlines — but the conditions were strict and finicky. Think of it like a bone marrow transplant. It works in some cases, but compatibility has to be checked, and most of the time it simply doesn’t take.

More importantly, the giver had to be at a higher rank than the receiver.

Given that I was almost certainly stronger than both the count and Roderic, that avenue was closed.

Four: grow through real combat.

“Most people end up relying on four……”

Sparring didn’t cut it. It was the kind of fighting where lives were genuinely on the line that drove magic to leap forward.

During the war against the Seven Sin God, every battle was a death match — no need to think about any of this. Survive the day, and tomorrow you were stronger. Especially for me, fighting at the front.

But this was a time of peace.

Since reincarnating, the only real combat I had been through was the fight with Crocell.

“Peace is good, but……”

Of course, at third rank with my psychic abilities and the knowledge and combat experience from a previous life, I could manage against most opponents.

But what about opponents who weren’t just ‘most’?

“I’ll have to find another way……”

While I was thinking, the magic still flickered at my fingertips.

The yellow shifted — just for a moment — to green.

“Hm?”

I blinked.

Green would mean fourth rank.

If third rank made you a prodigy, fourth rank was pinnacle territory for a human. The kind of achievement that warranted its own chapter in a history book.

Other races, with their longer lives, had heights beyond that — but for a human?

I checked again immediately. It was back to yellow.

But the green I had seen was not an illusion.

“……I’m already right on the edge of fourth rank?”

Something was off.

Yes, I had fought Crocell — but that was one fight. You needed twenty, thirty battles of that intensity before the next threshold came into view.

“Actually, wait…… I started at third rank from the beginning.”

Sirik Karakas had begun at first rank and clawed his way up through every manner of life and death. But Rigen Librata had awakened magic and immediately landed at third rank — and now, after a single real fight, was already knocking on fourth.

“Not just a prodigy. A once-in-an-age phenomenon……”

Did that even make sense?

Even by my standards as the empire’s former strongest, the growth rate of this body was baffling.

“I assumed the reason I started at third rank was because Rigen had been drinking mana potions for years and the heart had been hoarding all of it……”

The heart had swallowed up every mana potion Rigen ever drank and sat on it.

But thinking about it further — that didn’t entirely add up either.

Mana potions were meant to grant magic to those without it. For someone already awakened, the effect tapered off sharply.

In other words, drinking enough mana potions to reach third rank from nothing would have required an almost absurd quantity.

“This abnormal growth…… is it this thing?”

I pressed a hand to my chest.

Thud, thud. A beating heart.

The one that had greedily devoured every drop of magic that flowed through this body.

“It’s definitely not an ordinary heart.”

Still in the realm of hypothesis for now.

But confirming whether my theory was right would require a process I’d rather not think about.

“Ugh, that’s going to get messy. Can I just pretend I don’t know and move on?”

I shook my head.

Not something to worry about right now.

Food first.

The Librata estate garden.

A fine spring day. The smell of roasting meat drifted through the air.

I sat on a mat spread under the shade of a tree and stared blankly.

A wild boar, skewered and turning golden over the fire.

And Amelia, diligently rotating it.

“Amelia went out and hunted that herself. Going to be something.”

“Mm.”

I answered Roderic’s remark with a wordless groan.

By looks alone, Amelia appeared to be a girl in her mid-to-late teens.

But beastmen aged differently — she was surely far older than that. And wolf beastmen had strength bordering on the superhuman.

She was spinning what had to be a two-hundred-kilogram boar without the faintest sign of effort.

……How did she even catch it?

The hide she’d already stripped was completely unmarked. Not a single wound.

Amelia had skinned the boar, drained the blood, removed the organs, and cut away anything inedible — all without stopping for a breath.

I glanced at Roderic.

“How’s your leg?”

“Healing. Physician says I should be moving normally again in about a fortnight.”

“Still, don’t push it……”

“Looks like the meat’s just about ready.”

I shot a look at Garul, who had just dropped that line from the side.

He had been staring at the slowly browning boar like it was the love of his life. He flinched when he caught my glare.

“A-ah, n-naturally Young Master eats first. I’ll wait my turn.”

“Wipe your mouth before you say that.”

“Hm? Oh, yes, right.”

Garul actually wiped the corner of his mouth.

I exhaled slowly.

“And Roderic eats before me. Obviously.”

“Forget about me. Amelia went hunting because she was worried you kept collapsing. You eat it all.”

“How am I supposed to eat this whole thing by myself?”

“Shall I help with that, Young Master?”

A voice cut in while I was grumbling.

Heinkel had slipped into the gathering unannounced and held up a bottle of wine.

I looked at him without particular enthusiasm.

“You’re still here?”

“……Haha. Imposing on your hospitality, I’m afraid.”

“Shouldn’t you be heading back to Burzak’s side?”

“My business there is finished. Marquis Burzak won’t dare lay a finger on House Librata for the next ten years at least. Rebuilding that estate is going to cost a fortune, and he’s thoroughly demoralized besides. I also gave him a word of warning, on the lighter side.”

I watched him without speaking.

Roderic cleared his throat.

“Heinkel did actually help a great deal with the cleanup. He identified every soldier in our ranks who had been bribed by Marquis Crocell. Allowed us to deal with it quickly.”

“Ah. So you knew about all of it and were keeping your mouth shut the whole time?”

“……Well, yes. My apologies.”

“And then you very cleverly passed the information to Father and Roderic to fix your image. ‘Trustworthy dark elf Heinkel, ask for him at the door.'”

When I made no effort to conceal my sarcasm, Heinkel looked away.

Even with a thick skin, there was only so much you could brush off.

“……Ah, yes. To be honest, I didn’t want a war between the two houses either. Digging into Crocell was my primary objective. And I couldn’t have stopped him alone, Crocell had received the blessing of Magic Inheritance.”

“You could probably have taken him evenly, no?”

“Hard to say without fighting. And even if I had taken down Crocell, Philon would have killed me in the process. And bringing Crocell down wouldn’t have ended it anyway.”

I glanced at Roderic. He held his silence.

“So Father and Roderic left it entirely up to me?”

“Yes. They said if I wanted to stay, I needed your permission, Young Master Rigen.”

“……”

Heinkel’s position wasn’t hard to understand.

I had ruled the dark elves in my previous life — I knew their nature and the way they operated.

If Heinkel had broken ranks and fed me information on his own initiative, there was a real chance his own people would have branded him a traitor and dealt with him accordingly.

Dark elves were exactly that kind of people.

“I don’t resent you, but I can’t trust you easily either. So, share something useful. Right on the line between helpful and getting yourself killed.”

“That’s sufficient?”

“I’ll decide after I hear it.”

Heinkel glanced around briefly.

His eyes landed on Garul, and I cut in before he could say anything.

“Garul’s fine to know.”

“Hm? Know what?”

“See, even if I tell him, he won’t understand. Don’t worry about it.”

Garul, who had been watching the boar the whole time, looked thoroughly baffled.

Heinkel smiled despite himself and lowered his voice.

“The truth is…… there is some suspicion that Marquis Crocell had a hand in what happened to Young Master Roderic at the imperial capital last year.”

“……”

Roderic’s expression hardened.

I thought for a moment, then nodded.

“Crocell wasn’t putting this together overnight. Last year he ruins Roderic’s standing. This year he comes after me. All that groundwork laid with the intention of dismantling House Librata from both ends. Then, was the engagement between Alicia and me part of the plan?”

“I don’t have full information on that. But if Crocell changed his mind about something after the engagement was arranged……”

“We trace everyone Crocell met and everything he did after that engagement was announced. That gives us the shape of whatever organization he was working with?”

Heinkel nodded.

So that was what this man was ultimately after — mapping Crocell and the organization behind him.

Heinkel spoke again.

“And there’s something I debated whether to bring up, it may come across as impertinent……”

“You’re still here? Just go home.”

“……There are indications that Miss Alicia may not be Marquis Crocell’s biological daughter.”

Alicia had hinted at something along those lines herself.

But was this actually important information?

My expression asked the question. Heinkel dropped his voice further.

“I don’t know who her mother was. Marquis Crocell simply acknowledged her as his daughter. Among the human nobility there has been no shortage of rumors, but everyone has chosen to look the other way.”

“A child born between Marquis Crocell and an elf woman. Too much risk of offending the elves if anyone digs into it, so everyone kept quiet?”

“Yes. But if Miss Alicia is not truly his biological daughter, the situation becomes considerably more complicated.”

Heinkel hesitated, then pressed on.

“You may take this with some prejudice, given that it’s a dark elf speaking poorly of elves, but…… I believe there may have been some kind of deal between Marquis Crocell and the elves.”

I thought about it for a moment.

“Crocell took in Yena who wasn’t even his child, in exchange for some arrangement with the elves?”

“Who is ‘Yena’?”

“Alicia’s nickname. Anyway……”

I turned it over at length, then looked up.

Heinkel was still standing, wavering about whether to sit down or not, watching my face.

“Your neck getting stiff? Just sit. But……”

“Yes, your conditions.”

“When you report back to the dark elves, keep any mention of me to an absolute minimum. Bury it. Use Roderic’s name, or the count’s.”

“Pardon?”

“That’s the condition for you staying at Librata. Understood?”

Crocell’s scheme had made a mess of things, and the dark elves were going to be collecting information regardless. With Heinkel, their field agent, I could control the narrative — minimize my own presence, keep myself out of the picture.

……The last thing I needed was the Queen of Assassins taking an interest in me.

There was no chance she would recognize me as Sirik — not in a million years. But even so.

Better to stay out of her line of sight if at all possible.

“Understood. If I’m ever forced to break that condition, I’ll inform you in advance.”

“Don’t break it, you punk.”

“Haha, you understand my position. May I remain at Librata, then?”

“Hand over that wine first. If it’s expensive, I’ll consider forgiving you.”

I took the bottle from Heinkel’s hand and looked it over.

“Ocarina, vintage eighty-four? What does a bottle of this run?”

“Seven million won.”

“Well, well. The dark elf field agent is loaded.”

“Ah, I stretched a bit for this one.”

Heinkel smiled and watched my reaction.

I clicked my tongue.

“Fine. Can’t throw out a man who shows up to a barbecue with wine. Make yourself comfortable. But if you pull anything, no mercy.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Heinkel bowed his head, then added,

“I’m sure you’re already aware, but the elves are apparently arriving tomorrow to investigate the Crocell incident. Shall I dig up more detailed information?”

“For elves, that’s a remarkably fast response. What’s going on?”

“I have the same question.”

“Start looking into it. Why they’re moving this quickly, and who they’re sending.”

The Crocell affair was not going to wrap up cleanly.

Every power in the empire was beginning to stir, each one racing to shape the aftermath to their own advantage.

The first to arrive: the elves.

They would come in swaggering, confident that as Librata’s patrons they had every right to run this their way.

“I’m not letting anyone run roughshod in someone else’s house.”

I said it offhandedly, and everyone around me looked over.

Gazes full of expectation and trust.

“What are you looking at? I’ll tell you now, starting tomorrow, you’re all going to work yourselves half to death. Don’t think for a second that I’m the only one pulling weight around here.”

A warning clearly issued.

Just then, Amelia called out from the fire.

“Young Master, it’s ready! Come and eat!”

But tomorrow was tomorrow.

Right now: eat meat, drink wine.

That came first.