Chapter 33
The great sea leading toward the Continent of Kinsia is called the Kinsia Sea.
The distance from the Kingdom of Tian to the Kinsia Sea is about the same as the distance from the kingdom to the Empire of Astria.
“By the way, Your Grace,”
I sat in a cabin with large glass windows that gave a full view of the sea, munching on peanuts as I asked a question.
“Go on.”
“Do we really have to go all the way to the Kinsia Sea? Can’t we just take this cruise ship straight back to the Empire?”
The cruise ship, though no match for the Beltin, was still a luxurious vessel with every facility one could need. Unlike the noisy, bustling Beltin, this ship carried only the minimal number of crew needed to sail, so it was always quiet.
“We could just leave the broken Beltin in the Kingdom of Tian and return to the Empire by ourselves.”
“That won’t do.”
“Why not?”
The duke began explaining to me, in a calm and deliberate voice, about the history of the Beltin.
“The Beltin is a ship that has shared its history with our House of Ruppelen. Do you know where the Duchy of Ruppelen is located?”
“Of course, I know very well.”
The Duchy of Ruppelen, ruled by Duke Knox Ruppelen, was a vast territory in the northwest of the Astrian Empire, lying along the coast.
Its coastline was irregular, and countless islands, large and small, clustered along its western seas. The small island I had once lived on was one of them.
“My father, my grandfather, and all our forebears considered it a lifelong duty to take the Beltin on tours of the duchy. Whenever the Beltin grew too old and worn, a new vessel was built, and the name Beltin was passed down. In this way, the name has continued to this day. It’s practically the history of our house itself.”
“Wow. And you took such a historically important ship and recklessly went out to hunt a dragon with it? And even left it half-ruined? You nearly sent the name of the venerable Beltin, along with the name of House Ruppelen, to the bottom of the sea!”
“Reckless… well, yes, it was.”
The duke gave a faint smile as he looked out toward the distant horizon.
Outside the window, Gari was gleefully swimming, darting across the waves as though dancing, delighted to see the sea again after so long.
I leaned out the window and called to him.
“Don’t spin around in one spot too much—you’ll make a whirlpool!”
“Don’t worry, Creator.”
The duke silently watched me conversing with Gari, then spoke.
“Back then, nothing mattered to me except revenge.”
“And now, how do you feel?”
“Well, I thought I’d be overwhelmed with emptiness, but surprisingly, I feel at peace. I can always prepare again for revenge, step by step, from the beginning.”
His answer wasn’t quite what I expected.
I had thought he would say that rage still boiled within him, or that he planned to throw himself wholly into tracking down his true enemy as soon as he returned to the Empire.
In the original story, the duke grew increasingly consumed by the idea of revenge, becoming sharper, more frayed, and more unstable. As the ending neared, his madness worsened until he seemed almost like an entirely different person.
But the duke before me now somehow seemed lively, even relaxed.
It wasn’t easy to guess why.
Not that I could very well ask him, “Why are you different from the original story?”
“Why the sudden expression?”
The duke asked curiously, catching me off guard. I startled like a child caught misbehaving.
“M-my expression? What about it?”
“You were making a face that said, ‘What’s he doing, if not pursuing revenge?’”
The duke gave me a teasing smile.
“Of course not. If Your Grace feels at peace, that’s good for me too. After all, when the employer’s heart is at ease, the employee’s work environment improves as well.”
I forced a smile and replied casually, though my thoughts were tangled.
Why the sudden change of heart? Revenge is supposed to be a defining theme of Duke Ruppelen’s life.
A duke not obsessed with revenge—it was hard to believe, even as I saw him with my own eyes.
A faint chill crept over me, though I couldn’t quite say why.
Maybe he’s just adrift, unable to find direction with his enemy no longer in front of him.
Sooner or later, wouldn’t he refocus and devote himself again to vengeance?
I shook my head lightly, as if to scatter such thoughts away.
Our cruise ship continued to sail toward the Kinsia Sea.
The farther south we traveled, the paler the color of the sea became. It was fascinating—almost the same vivid aquamarine as the jewel set into my shoes.
I found myself staring out the window in awe.
“It’s really beautiful…”
“Didn’t you say you hated the sea?”
“Hating it is one thing, finding it beautiful is another.”
“I don’t quite understand, but if my little diver says so, then so it must be.”
The sky was cloudless, the sun blazing down, and the aquamarine sea sparkled so brilliantly it felt healing just to look at it.
And yet, more than the sea, the thing that most drew my gaze… was Duke Ruppelen’s strikingly handsome face.
When the wind blew, his neatly groomed hair ruffled, casting shadows across his features. That slight dishevelment, so unlike his usual fastidious neatness, made my heart race.
Normally, he always wore his military uniform, but aboard the cruise ship he had dressed more casually. Just a simple white shirt—and somehow, it looked impossibly good on him.
He had rolled up his sleeves a few times, undone two or three buttons at the collar, and the casual look was so alluring I found myself staring, entranced.
I thought he just had a handsome face… but his body is perfect too?
His broad, solid torso formed an inverted triangle that a thin shirt could hardly conceal. His long, straight legs were model-worthy, and the well-developed muscles of his thighs and calves showed through his trousers, hinting at their strength.
And on top of it all, he stood well over 190 cm tall.
Perfect. Absolutely perfect.
When I tired of looking at the sea, I’d study the duke’s face. At mealtimes, we cooked seafood together.
At night, I’d hum a tune while gazing at the moon reflected in the waves until I drifted off to sleep.
In every sense, it was a perfect vacation.
After several days of sailing, we finally reached the entrance to the Kinsia Sea.
“So this is the famous hotspot?”
Casting a net woven from strands of magical light, I hauled in a catch bursting with plump shrimp.
“Your Grace, would you like to try fishing?”
“Fishing? How does that work?”
I fashioned him a fishing rod from a branch, dangling with threads of magical light, and handed it to him.
When he cast the line into the sea, the magic strands writhed beneath the water and snagged a shrimp.
“Now! Pull it up!”
“Like this?”
“Yes, that’s it! A big one!”
Dangling at the end of the glowing line was a shrimp.
The duke glanced between the shrimp and me, then burst into an incredulous, radiant smile.
“This is actually quite fun. No wonder my father sometimes neglected his duties to go fishing.”
He found his first fishing experience so enjoyable that I had to make him several new magic rods in turn.
After catching a mountain of shrimp, we lit a bonfire on the deck, watching the sun sink beyond the horizon.
The duke insisted on grilling the shrimp over an open flame himself. Eating shrimp pre-cooked from the galley, he said, would ruin the atmosphere.
Crackle, crackle.
The shrimp sizzled on coarse salt, the sound blending perfectly with the night sea. It felt almost like a campfire gathering.
Ssshhh—
The shrimp heads fried golden in butter, releasing an irresistible aroma.
“Surely wine is the drink for an evening like this.”
The duke appeared with several bottles of white wine from somewhere, smiling with the air of a seasoned bartender.
How thorough of him to have prepared.
We shared the wine with shrimp as a snack, and warmth soon spread through me.
“This reminds me of the day I first met Your Grace.”
“The day you met me? What about it do you remember?”
“That day, too, you were drinking white wine. And I was just watching from the side.”
“Ah, the day my little diver made me that seafood stew? That red broth was unforgettable.”
“Yes, and I was speechless because you didn’t even offer me a taste.”
“You could have just said you wanted some.”
“How could I? Back then, I was so tense, worried you wouldn’t even let me on board.”
“Now I feel bad. From now on, if there’s something you want, say it right away.”
“Then I do have a request! Instead of amending the contract, could you just terminate it?”
“That’s impossible.”
The duke rejected me immediately, smiling mischievously.
“If the contract ends, I’ll never again get shrimp peeled by my little diver, will I?”
“I could do it occasionally as a favor.”
“No, I don’t trust that.”
Though he looked delighted, his refusal was absolute.
