The Dread Duke
1324 Words
"Damn it!"
Here's the translation of the passage:
A dazzling array of treasures and antiques littered the ground, with jewels that had fallen from their lustrous glass casings scattered everywhere. The grand hall of the palace was in complete disarray, but no one dared to move forward to tidy up. The reason was simple: the one who had just thrown a fit and smashed all the precious items was none other than the palace's owner, the emperor of the empire, the most powerful monarch on the continent - Alex.
"I simply asked you to look after a woman! A woman! A woman with disabled legs, excessive blood loss, and both hands fixed to a cross with steel nails - layers of mechanical locks, a maze of several hundred meters deep underground, and a constantly patrolling army." Alex grew more and more angry as he spoke, and he swept the table with his hand, sending a large number of scattered envelopes and letters from various places crashing to the ground.
Everyone in the hall lowered their heads. Those who could stand here and be scolded by the king knew very well what was on the table - seemingly noble and gorgeous envelopes decorated with layer upon layer of fine knife light, containing one bad news after another.
"Your Majesty, we have no news of that person yet..."
"Your Majesty, there have been no strangers in my territory..."
"Your Majesty, regarding the missing army..."
"Your Majesty, there has been a minor riot in the capital..."
That Duke.
That devilish Duke.
If ordinary civilians only felt disgust and fear towards that Duke, the people standing in the palace hall had much more complex feelings.
They were nobles, members of the royal family, schemers, wise men, top cunning people, all together forming the power structure of this country.
So, everyone could actually understand the towering anger of His Majesty the King at this moment, and also understood the pale faces of the princes and princesses standing in the front row.
It was anger.
It was fear.
It was jealousy.
It was...dread.
Although the empire was recognized as the strongest country on the continent, King Alex was naturally the most powerful monarch. But they all knew that King Alex had come to this point not because of his own wise and decisive judgments or strategies - it was because of that Duke.
A few years ago, the legitimate eldest daughter of the Castilla family left her family with only twenty or thirty guards and a mechanical whip, heading to the front line of the battlefield.
At that time, everyone assumed that she was going to her death. Everyone knew about the Castilla family's troubles. As the first family of the empire, the spectators of the royal family would rather stir up these muddy waters than extend a helping hand to support a woman.
This legitimate daughter was nothing more than a sacrificial lamb in the struggle for power and profit. She had volunteered to go to the battlefield, probably because she was driven crazy by the infighting.
But no one expected that she was not just a woman.
She was a demon. Capable of doing the impossible.
During those years on the battlefield, the empire swept all before it, going from a small and weak country that competed with other countries, constantly being beaten down by several powerful nations because of their coal and oil resources, to becoming the largest and most powerful country on the continent in one fell swoop.
With a whip, a pair of red eyes, and an evil demon who had emerged from blood, she led an army of millions. It was her who almost swallowed up the entire continent.
King Alex was just an average monarch with limited abilities, but he sat in his luxurious palace every day, anxiously listening to one victorious report after another from the front lines, watching as the territory of his kingdom expanded, and hearing the praises of his ministers and commoners.
What else could make a king's ambition expand rapidly?
War. Victorious war.
Yes, he had conquered the strongest emperor of more than half the continent!
Alex repeatedly told himself, secretly proud, but unable to resist hoping that the devilish woman would die on the battlefield.
Because at that moment, the king would know that this terrifying existence was beyond his control.
But she didn't die, and instead halted her conquest of the entire continent.
The devilish woman returned with a message, demanding that King Alex tie up all the male members of the Castilian family and pour gasoline on them, and that she be granted a higher title than the head of the Castilian family and control over the entire family.
Otherwise, the messenger trembled, she did not answer what would happen otherwise, but contemptuously laughed and beheaded the prisoners.
The king smashed things all over the ground, vented his anger, and ultimately did as he was told, trembling with fear.
When the Duke returned triumphantly, a silent army followed her, and there were relatives tied up on the city walls.
She laughed out loud and cursed the men on the wall with extremely vulgar language, which was like the language of a hooligan.
After cursing, the Duke pulled out her flintlock pistol and shot the men several times, igniting the gasoline on their bodies, which instantly burst into flames, looking like a huge bouquet of roses over the royal city. The Duke waved her whip and said, "Look, this is the flower and praise we bring back from our triumph!"
Then she directly whipped the gatekeeper lying on the ground and returned to the capital in a magnificent manner.
King Alex, who received the news in the palace, blacked out and fell into a nightmare about the Duke.
This devil acted arrogantly, spoke vulgarly, and did not care about her identity as a woman, nor did she ever think of being a loyal minister. The empire was not like the few countries in the east of the continent, where there was a strong and stereotyped loyalty to the monarch.
The Mechanic Council, the Magic Guild, the various nobles who were knighted, the mining hunters, the Temple League, and other powers competed with each other within the empire, and the king was just a stepping stone in the middle, a mascot used for p********a for the common people. Under such circumstances, as long as the Duke gave the order, all the major powers that tried to please her would definitely abandon King Alex.
It goes without saying how much he hated her after years of hard work, and how he finally had the upper hand and nailed the Duke to the cross, ready to execute her by fire, only to find that she had disappeared? Vanished again?
How could King Alex tolerate this!
"Go find her! Go find her! Turn the entire capital upside down for me!"
The emperor, who had been hiding his light for years, tore off his mask and roared almost insanely, "Go and kill her!"
"You, you idiots--think about your own position clearly! If that devil comes back again, you will all die!" The king overturned the last intact golden rose in the palace, "Think about the roses that devil gave me when she triumphed! None of the men from Castile who offended her escaped; now there's nothing left of them--you'll be the same!"
The people in the hall all knelt down, but their expressions were different. The Duke was terrifying and frightening, but only because of her excessive strength.
They had united to send the Duke to the stake out of fear before, but that was no longer the case.
They no longer had a common enemy, and the empire had lost her suppression...
They needed to find her, but in the process of finding her, couldn't they start some actions that they were previously afraid to take because of the Duke?
- Writer
