Lord of Rot

The Milky Way cut across the night sky like a sword.

Hunched figures—the corpses of the earth-people—scurried across the ground, at times leaping like apes to grab hold of tree trunks and propel themselves forward.

’Was it scared away?’

Ever since the Griffin was driven off by the smell of burning pasture, he hadn’t been able to find a trace of it.

Whether the Fierce Mane mare had been successfully bred was still unknown. The Groom said only that her condition was fair; her appetite had worsened for a time but was slowly recovering, as was to be expected of a warhorse.

A Griffin represented immense wealth. Leech was torn; he feared it would harm people, but he couldn’t bear the thought of losing track of it completely.

’It would be great if it stayed. I could use it as a stud from time to time.’

Only when he discovered a massive cave on a cliff in Pig Spine Valley—piled high with human heads, white bones, gleaming armor, and fine swords—could he be certain that the Griffin had truly been scared away.

「Porcupine Castle.」

Leech had moved out of his bedroom long ago. He couldn’t keep forcing his personal valet to neglect his duties, nor could he stop the scullery maids from cleaning his room. So, he moved into his father Lieder’s former chambers, ordering that his old bedroom was now off-limits to everyone.

In the crypt beneath the castle’s ”forbidden room,” the Griffin’s hoard was laid out before Leech.

A large bag of Jinri. A few of the coins were bent and twisted where the Griffin had stepped on them, but gold was gold.

By his rough count, there were over twenty coins, and the pouch was heavy in his hand.

It was equivalent to two or three months’ income—easily the greatest prize from this haul.

After careful sorting, he found a valuable sword. The material seemed to be silver steel, a type of exquisite but brittle metal. According to legend, silver steel dealt immense damage to monsters; Leech remembered reading about it in a book called *The Donkey Knight*.

The blade had a peculiar pattern, the result of a master-level torsion welding technique where acid etching revealed the twisted layers of metal. He couldn’t discern much more than that, but it was, in a word, beautiful. However, a line of text had been etched onto the blade through some sort of corrosive process, clashing with the sword’s overall aesthetic.

It read: ”What do you want to say in the face of death?”

’Hmm?’ Leech studied the sword, perplexed. The inscription was a glaring flaw on the otherwise exquisite weapon, and he found its meaning completely baffling.

’What do you want to say in the face of death? And it was placed right where you’d see it upon drawing the blade. Did the original owner need to see it, to remind himself, every single time he drew his sword? What a miserable life he must have led!’

He set the sword aside and picked up another item: a ring set with a red gem. The stone seemed to possess a life of its own; at first glance, Leech had even worried he might be burned by it. Of course, the Ruby was cool to the touch.

’This will fetch a good price.’

The rest of the items seemed unrelated to the sword’s owner. There was a suit of armor bearing the insignia of a golden rapier—the relic of one of House Leopold’s Golden Soldiers. Keeping it in the castle felt like asking for trouble.

There was armor from other families as well. Back when his father, Lieder, was still alive, the war in the Eastern Gorge had not yet ended. Many families had gathered in the region back then; it seemed a number of them had become the Griffin’s late-night meals.

His father, Lieder, had also owned a suit of Knight’s armor, which included a helmet, breastplate, a full suit of Chain Armor, pauldrons, greaves, poleyns, couters, and gauntlets. It was incredibly cumbersome to don and required a squire’s assistance, but wearing it on the battlefield drastically increased one’s odds of survival.

Leech had his pill business, which brought in a monthly profit of around seven to nine Jinri. This already surpassed the income of most minor barons, though of course, he was no match for the fabulously wealthy Baron Spark.

Outfitting a single Knight cost five Jinri. The actual price, of course, would vary depending on the blacksmith’s quote, but it would never be less than two or three Jinri. This meant Leech could now afford to outfit one or two Knights per month. Some minor nobles’ entire annual income might only be enough to equip a few Knights in total.

And that didn’t even include the warhorse a Knight required, which also had to be purchased with Jinri, nor the horse’s barding, the Knight’s lance, a bow or javelins, and a greatsword or mace for fighting on foot.

Many lords, while they might grant the title of Knight, would not provide the warhorse and equipment, as doing so would bankrupt them. Only great houses like Leopold, fabulously rich men like Baron Spark, or Leech’s own maternal grandfather’s family could afford to generously bestow a full set of gear upon their Knights.

This highlighted how difficult it was for a commoner to become a Knight. Even if Leech agreed to take the son of his steward or his chancellor, Gelan, as a squire, it would take the boy decades to earn enough for a set of armor and a horse without some side hustle!

So, the barrier preventing commoners from becoming Knights wasn’t just social class, but also money.

If this armor were reforged and its style slightly altered, it would be perfectly serviceable for battle. Some of these suits were even several times better than Lieder’s own!

’Assuming the territory had its own blacksmith, that is.’

Judging by these findings, the Griffin hadn’t appeared recently. It had been active in this region for a while, only starting to hunt in Porcupine Territory for some unknown reason.

Or, to consider a more grim possibility, some powerful entity had appeared on the other side of Pig Spine Valley, forcing the Griffin to change its hunting grounds and venture here for food.

”Does this have something to do with you?” he asked, looking at the Silver Steel Sword in his hand.

Silver Steel Swords slay monsters, and a Griffin was, coincidentally, a monster of legend.

’Is there a connection?’

’Someone who hunts Griffins?’

’Could it be some silver-haired guy carrying two swords on his back who loves to play cards?’

’If there was a connection, I hope they don’t come here. This minor Baron isn’t ready to deal with superhumans.’

After packing everything away, Leech decided he would wait for Joe to return and then give him the Ruby ring to have its value appraised.

Leech let out a yawn.

Without his phone, the internet, computer games, or any new anime to binge, his life had become much more structured. He started feeling drowsy soon after nightfall.

Before going to sleep, he sent out the raven to patrol the area.

It was a habit he had recently formed. The raven understood this was its task; its Magic Brain was a quick study.

The raven spread its wings, and Leech’s vision soared with it, away from Porcupine Castle.

From the air, the ugly wood-and-mud huts looked like piles of dung dropped on the ground. Leech was once again convinced that Black Ears was only good for making farm tools; he really couldn’t trust the man’s word on anything else.

The slaves were causing no trouble.

Everything was fine, as always.

But the raven didn’t fly back toward the castle. Leech knew it sometimes liked to circle over the dense forest, but ever since the Griffin’s appearance, it had lost all interest in that direction. Instead, it preferred to fly over the coast.

The sea reflected the river of stars, making it seem as if the soaring raven was flying amongst the constellations, with nebulae swirling at its side.

For a moment, it felt as if he himself were flying.

Suddenly, he noticed something amiss. It was a ship—a two-masted sailing vessel. It flew no family crest from the Eastern Gorge. Instead, a skull flag flapped in the wind.