The Lord Just Wants to Have Fun

According to customary law on the Laterranian continent, inheritance of a territory follows the principle of primogeniture.
However, it wasn’t unheard of for an uncle to assume the position of lord in place of his young nephew.

Especially if it was Shermand, who was highly ambitious for the lordship—there was no way he would refuse the hand that Philip was extending to him.

“As long as I’m alive, Shermand won’t be able to become lord… No, it’s not as if there’s no way.”

One could poison him and disguise it as death by illness. Or allow him to escape, only to arrange for his death by fabricating a monster attack in the forest.

“That way, they wouldn’t have to worry about the surrounding nobles and could install a puppet lord, ruling indirectly.”

Such underhanded schemes were frequently employed by the great nobles who had engaged in power struggles in the past.

“What should I do? Should I comply with the blacksmith’s demand? But if I do, that would be the same as admitting defeat…”

If only Herox, the strategist, were still alive, he would have come up with a good answer.
Unfortunately, he was dead—his skull crushed by the club of a knight who stormed into the village chief’s house.

As Armand hesitated, the voices of the Baron Brandel knights faded away. It seemed the drinking party had ended.

Time passed, and night deepened.

At that moment, the door of the garrison barracks, where he was imprisoned, quietly creaked open.

A man clad in black infiltration gear entered and knelt before Armand.

“You… you’re Torres?”

“Yes, Centurion Torres. I have come to rescue you, my lord.”

An unexpected hand of salvation stretched out before Armand.

Centurion Torres was a 38-year-old knight.

Unlike his peers, who were close confidants of Armand and key members of the knightly order, he was somewhat of an outsider.

In his younger days, he had been closer to Shermand, Armand’s younger brother.

Moreover, he wasn’t exceptionally skilled in swordsmanship, nor was he adept at currying favor with his lord.

Thus, when the knights held a drunken gathering at the Angel Village chief’s house, he had been excluded and left behind at the garrison.

“And now that same man, who had been treated so coldly, has come to rescue me?”

Torres, oblivious to Armand’s skeptical gaze, began to explain.

“The scattered forces that were dispersed by the enemy’s ambush are regrouping at the domain’s borders. I returned to this place to rescue you, my lord.”

“Is that so?”

“But my lord, what are you doing? We must escape before the guards wake up!”

Even as Torres hurriedly untied the ropes binding him, Armand remained seated, lost in thought.

After a moment, he slowly stood up and asked,

“If we escape from here, which route do you plan to take?”

“We must enter the forest. The Brandel domain’s forces have blocked all other paths.”

“The forest, you say?”

“Yes, I’ve hidden horses nearby.”

Armand’s eyebrows furrowed sharply.

A suspicion he had entertained earlier resurfaced.

“The area should have been tightly guarded. How did he manage to get in? Could he have been bribed by that blacksmith? And considering how close Torres was to Shermand…”

Believing he had pieced together an important puzzle, Armand coldly snapped at Torres.

“What reward were you promised in exchange for disposing of me?”

“…Pardon? Dispose of you? My lord, I came to rescue you!”

At Torres’s bewildered expression, Armand exploded in fury.

“Silence! Do you take me for a fool?! You intend to lure me into the forest and stage my death as a monster attack, don’t you?”

“My lord, what in the world are you saying?”

“How much did that blacksmith-lord pay you? Do you think you’ll have power if Shermand becomes lord?”

Torres was at his wit’s end.

It was true that he had been treated coldly due to his past friendship with Shermand.

However, he had never once entertained the thought of betrayal.

On the contrary, he had risked everything on this dangerous rescue mission, hoping to earn his lord’s favor.

As Torres took advantage of the enemy sentries’ drunken state to mount his rescue, his lord, rather than showing gratitude, was spouting nonsense about betrayal.

“My lord, there’s no time for this! If we don’t get out of here now—ugh!”

Torres groaned as Armand suddenly snatched his sword and pointed it at him.

“M-My lord! Please, don’t do this!”

“Silence, you traitorous bastard! I won’t let you live!”

The commotion naturally woke up the sleeping soldiers and knights.

“What the—! Intruder! Block all exits!”

“Don’t let Armand escape!”

The soldiers and knights who came rushing in were met with an absurd sight—through the wide-open door, Viscount Armand was swinging his sword at a man dressed in black infiltrator’s garb.

“My lord, please—urk!”

As Torres dodged and pleaded, his eyes suddenly went wide.

He had stepped backward in an attempt to avoid Armand’s blade—only to impale himself on the spear of a Baron Brandel soldier standing behind him.

“Damn it!”

So this was how he was going to die—so absurdly, so pointlessly.

His body trembled before he collapsed onto the floor.

Torres’ dying gaze, filled with resentment, locked onto Armand.

Armand merely snorted and glared back coldly.

“For someone to betray me so soon after I was captured… If I actually die, everything really might fall into chaos.”

Though he didn’t care much about his own death, he didn’t want to see his domain and family crumble.

Maybe it would be better to swallow his pride and accept the humiliation for the sake of his house.

Turning to a Brandel knight, who was staring at him in disbelief, Armand spoke.

“Tell that blacksmith bastard—no, tell Baron Brandel—to stop playing these petty games and start proper peace negotiations.”

*****

“What? There was an intruder?”

“Yes, my lord. They came to rescue Viscount Armand.”

Philip, who had been rudely awakened, looked annoyed at first—but his expression quickly changed to surprise.

He had anticipated that such an event might happen, but he never thought it actually would.

“And Armand attacked the subordinate who came to rescue him? Because he was convinced the man had been bought off to kill him?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Hah… What, has he developed some kind of paranoia?”

“Paranoia, my lord?”

“Oh, I mean, sometimes people let their anxiety and assumptions get the better of them and start acting irrationally.”

Back in Kang Hyunsoo’s days, he had seen it before—a YouTuber who had misunderstood a competitor’s video and gone on a smear campaign, flooding it with defamatory comments… only to end up sued.

It was then he had realized—when people are pushed into a mental corner, they can do utterly ridiculous things.

“So he lashed out in paranoia… Was this part of your plan, my lord?”

Philip’s original scheme was this:

Having learned that Armand’s younger brother was at Melk Monastery, he decided to use that information.

By implying that he intended to install a puppet lord and take control of the Viscounty of Mirabeau, he had hoped to pressure Armand into negotiating peace.

And now, Armand had come forward for peace talks—meaning the plan had worked perfectly.

“If rumors spread that the viscount killed a loyal knight, the vassals of Mirabeau will be greatly shaken.”

“The relationships between Armand and his subordinates will be something to behold from now on.”

“Incredible! You even calculated this outcome, my lord. Now Armand will be too busy dealing with internal strife to threaten our domain.”

‘…I didn’t actually plan that far ahead, though.’

Philip forced an awkward smile at Carpenter’s admiration before asking,

“But what were the sentries doing while an intruder was sneaking in?”

“Well, um… they were really drinking at the gathering, my lord. It seems they let their guard down after winning the territorial battle so easily…”

“Oh, come on!”

He had told them to pretend to be drunk and spread false information—but they actually started drinking and blabbering?

“That’s exactly right.”

If the man who came to rescue Armand had been someone completely beyond suspicion—someone Armand could truly trust—he wouldn’t have hesitated.

Instead of engaging in negotiations, he would have bolted straight back to his domain.

And if that had happened, the territorial war would have dragged on indefinitely. Even if Baron Brandel’s side eventually won, the human and material losses would have been severe.

As Philip let out a sigh of relief, Carpenter spoke with a hardened expression.

“We need to punish those who neglected their guard duties.”

Under military law, drinking without permission and failing to maintain vigilance during wartime were serious offenses.

Carpenter insisted that strict punishment was necessary to reassert discipline among the troops, who were still intoxicated by victory.

“But the battle is already over, and they did successfully spread false information, as they were ordered to. Isn’t severe punishment too much?” Philip countered.

“Then how will you handle it, my lord?”

“They won’t be severely punished, but they do need to feel the weight of their mistake.”

Philip then whispered his specific plan to Carpenter.

A moment later, Carpenter, now wearing a satisfied smile, saluted and withdrew.

Philip smirked ominously.

“In any case, the pig viscount wants to negotiate—so let’s prepare.”

If he wanted to squeeze every possible concession out of Armand, he needed to first break his pride.

And so, Philip began crafting another scheme.

******

“Ughhh…!”

“P-please, have mercy!”

The knights and soldiers who had been on guard duty the previous night were now lined up in front of the barracks—hands clasped behind their backs, heads planted firmly in the dirt.

It was a punishment called ‘Wonsan Bombardment’, something their lord had apparently learned somewhere.

At first, they had thought, Well, at least it’s better than getting executed or flogged.

But as time passed, they changed their minds.

Their heads felt like they were about to split open, and their necks burned with agony, as if they were about to snap.

Above all else—it was humiliating.

Every time a villager or fellow soldier passed by and snickered at them, they felt it would be better to just die.

They should never have drunk that much—but in the euphoria of an easy victory, they had forgotten.

“Ssss! Trying to sneak your hands onto the ground, are you?”

“Ah, n-no, sir!”

“If anyone touches the ground, I’ll double their punishment time. Keep that in mind.”

At Carpenter’s warning, a young knight who had been subtly shifting his weight hurriedly clasped his hands back behind him.

Meanwhile, Armand, who was being escorted from the barracks, took in the scene.

“That damn blacksmith… What a bizarre form of punishment.”

If he wasn’t going to execute them, wouldn’t it be simpler to just flog them?

Seeing Philip issue such an eccentric punishment only deepened Armand’s suspicion that he had conspired with Shermand’s faction.

“I need to get back to my territory and clean everything up… quickly.”

“This way, my lord.”

The place Armand was guided to was an open field outside the village.

As he neared the area, a sudden, explosive noise rang through his ears.

BANG—!

“W-what the hell?!”

Startled, Armand instinctively turned toward the direction of the gunshot.

There, holding a flintlock pistol, stood Philip.