"Are you sure?"

A languid voice echoed through the room.

"It's just as the soldiers said: the fiend is gone from the Count of Bersha's castle. Our informant saw it with his own eyes. The castle's as clean as it gets."

"Heh heh heh. Is that so? Well, well~"

Baron Lubeck burst into a sly laugh at his knight Albert's report.

Baron Lubeck had just turned fifty this year; he was short and half bald.

His great greasy lump of a belly jiggled and bounced.

He was a run-of-the-mill baron, but greedier than he looked.

After the empire fell, he'd backed the right side.

In those rough times, he'd fought tooth and nail to keep from losing his domain.

It had quickly won him the trust of the great lord, Marquis Aradon de Junen.

But that was as far as it went.

His domain was too small to raise knights, the real fighting force.

All he had was one small castle and a single fortress recently annexed from the county of Bersha.

You could cross it on foot in less than a day.

It didn't have much in the way of local specialties, either.

Even keeping a dozen or so knights was a strain.

Raising one knight was harder than raising a thousand soldiers.

Knights didn't come cheap.

You needed a talent for mana breathing and superb swordsmanship.

And on top of that, expensive mana gear.

"They say only that so-called lord is any good. He seems to be a lesser spirit swordsman. The rest of his men are just mercenary trash he's gathered. And the things Gerard lost in the fight... we can get them back right away!"

Albert, commander of the domain's knights, rattled off his report.

To their shame, the cavalry, knights included, had been chased home flat broke.

It was a third of the domain's main fighting strength.

The foul-tempered baron had flown into a rage.

He'd beaten the soldiers who came walking home like beggars.

He'd had the rest of the cavalry flogged too.

Amid all that, good news had come in too.

People were…