The Daughter of Evil - Volume 3 - Chapter 2.23

Chapter 2, Section 2-The Signal Fire of a Counterattack; Scene 3
Praeludium of Red, page 121-124

♣ Yukina ~In the Beelzenian Empire, “Rucolebeni/Inn"~

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That night, the Beelzenian army gathered in four places at the warfront at the emperor’s orders. The four units were made up of twenty thousand soldiers total (five thousand to each unit). The next morning, the army that had been fighting defensively until then began an official invasion into Retasan in the former Lucifenia territory.

Among the four units, three of them launched an assault on Retasan Fortress, leaving one behind in the rear guard. After repelling the fortress guards who fought back against them, they laid siege to Retasan.

The new Retasan commander Ney Phatipe called for reinforcements at once, but the corps from the main country didn’t come as it was currently engaged with a small scale attack on Asmodean that had been launched a week prior, and furthermore one of the generals of the local army refused to send them aid. That was thought to have been a contradictory Lucifenian general. The original five thousand soldiers at Retasan Fortress and their three thousand reinforcements–merely eight thousand in all–were forced to deal with the Beelzenian army.

The Beelzenian army had superior numbers, but taking out Retasan Fortress, which had other advantages, was fairly difficult; after that they fell into a stalemate.

The Beelzenian army wanted to avoid a drawn out conflict, having to regiment their forces throughout the country. Currently they were in the middle of formulating a new strategy to break up their current state of affairs…

“…And that is all I have found out about the war situation.”

The old gentleman finished his report, tone precise and smooth.

When I gazed out the window of the inn, I saw carpenters carrying stones, sweating. They were in the middle of repairing the buildings destroyed by the dead soldiers.

“Thank you, Bruno. Please keep it up,” I said, handing him a bag full of silver coins as a reward.

“I’m grateful. Now I can treat my grandchild to a fancy lunch today.”

“At any rate, I can’t believe I was able to meet you here.”

Bruno was a man who’d served as the Freezis family’s head servant up until three years ago. He had stepped down due to his advanced age, and it seemed now he was spending his retirement here in Beelzenia, his birthplace.

“I just used some experience from the old days; I used to work as an information broker of sorts from time to time.”

I hadn’t known it, but Bruno told me that he’d been involved behind the scenes with my father’s pastime, information gathering.

“Even so, what luck running into an old acquaintance in this country by sheer chance.”

The crux of my meeting with Bruno again had been a referral from Duke Oruhari. But he hadn’t known that Bruno and I were old acquaintances, apparently.

“Things like that do happen. The fate laid out by the gods is a whimsical thing.”

Fate, huh…?

“I have a different theory on it, myself.”

“Oh, what’s that?”

Bruno looked at me with great interest.

“Well, maybe let’s say that you were actually asked to go looking for my whereabouts and check up on me by my father. …Hm?”

It was a half joking, half earnest theory.

“Ho ho ho. I’m impressed, young miss Yukina. You always have such interesting ideas.”

“Well then, what do you think? True? Or false?” I pressed, but,

“I’ll leave that to your imagination.” He dodged the question.

“Awww, come on! Gimme an answer~!”

“Ho ho. Not everything has an answer in this world.”

The elderly gentleman turned around without losing his smile, heading for the entrance.

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As a result of my going out and joining with them on my own during the dead soldiers’ rebellion, I’d lost my permission to stay with the Langley Unit.

In particular I seemed to have done wrong by besmirching Duke Oruhari’s prestige, and I ended up being put under surveillance at all times while I was in Beelzenia.

Naturally he didn’t take such measures out of any malice or anger–he was just worrying about me. For that reason he’d taken my dissatisfaction with the whole thing into consideration and introduced me to Bruno.

On top of being unable to meet with Gumillia, as I was no longer able to enter the imperial castle, being constantly supervised meant that I couldn’t really move around freely. Frankly I didn’t know what to do with myself.

Should I try to go see her here, still?

There was just one person in the Langley unit who hadn’t joined in at the war front. Germaine.

I had tried to get her to tell me her story several times up until this point, but each time I did she would either coldly refuse or be unable to talk much because she was so drunk.

This time might end in a miss as well, but it was better than just watching the carpenters work from my inn window.

I got dressed and dashed outside. The weather was nice. Beelzenia was a much warmer country than Marlon.