Tytania:Volume 2 Chapter 2

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Chapter 2 – The Lives and Opinions of Fugitives

I

Mr Fan Hyulick, widely known as Tytania’s public enemy, found himself in dire straits on planet Bargash. Having been driven from his home city for the sake of Tytania and having witnessed the murder of an acquaintance, he had taken his revenge on the Count Arses Tytania before going into hiding in the frontier star systems, where he was plotting on a galactic scale with his comrades to bring down all of Tytania…

If one were to reconstruct the past from the outcome, as in a heroic legend, it would be described in such terms. But the reality was decidedly prosaic. After boarding the spaceship Honest Old Man and arriving on the planet Bargash, Fan Hyulick had no idea what he should do, nor did he know what he was allowed to do, so he simply spent his days idly. There was no longer any choice in life other than to confront Tytania head-on. He understood that much, and he was prepared for it, or so he believed. Yet his mind was completely blank when it came to deciding where exactly to begin.

Fan Hyulick possessed a talent for practical matters, but at present, his capacity for conceptualisation was failing to provide any direction. Until now, his talent had manifested itself in the form of carrying out tasks. He had been ordered to engage Tytania’s fleet in battle, and so he won the Battle of Cerberus. He felt he had to avenge Lira Florentz, so he assassinated Count Arses Tytania.

“What comes after I have brought down Tytania?”

If the implication was that a new overlord would emerge to replace Tytania, then fighting with one’s life on the line would be sheer folly. Fan Hyulick would end up defeating formidable foes only for that person to seize power. It would be utterly ridiculous. That is what he thought, and yet, strangely enough, he had himself no notion of becoming a ruler himself. Consequently, the virtue of striving for one’s own sake was something entirely alien to him.

“I’ll have to set Admiral Hyulick some homework. He’s not the sort to do his own revision.”

Doctor Lee, or Lee Shanchen as he was known, was probably correct in his assessment. Once Hyulick had dealt with the immediate task at hand, he was reluctant to take the initiative and tackle subsequent matters.

One cannot simply conclude that he lacked ambition, but he might well be the sprinting type. Mental explosiveness aside, he seemed to lack endurance and stamina. Although, according to Doctor Lee, it was not so much that he lacked these qualities than he was holding them back.

“Due to various circumstances, the great Tytania and the lesser Fan Hyulick have been fated to clash and contend with one another…”

Doctor Lee described the ongoing situation as though it were an incident that had already been concluded in the past. According to him, it was a nuisance for Tytania to be forced to chase after a mere minor figure such as Hyulick.

“No one has gained any benefit from the emergence of this conflict, and all those involved are convinced that they are victims and passive participants. One must say, it is a rather peculiar state of affairs.”

Wouldn’t it be strange if Doctor Lee were different? While being analysed, Fan Hyulick found himself thinking this. To contribute to hastening the downfall of Tytania simply because one wished to make its rise and fall the subject of academic research, wasn’t that the very epitome of putting the cart before the horse?

In short, Fan Hyulick believed that this Doctor Lee was probably the most theoretically armed troublemaker in the universe. At least for the time being. Hyulick considered that it was far too early to draw any conclusions on any matter, yet there was no guarantee that this wasn’t an overestimation.

As for Doctor Lee, while he loved to judge others, he was indifferent to being judged by them. He possessed a mindset that was the envy of most people.

Planet Bargash was a strategic stronghold in the ever-expanding frontier sector, where spaceships, people and supplies flowed in and out in vast numbers, and where hope, vitality, success and failure danced together in a lively whirl. The Honest Old Man slipped into the ranks of tens of thousands of spaceships and remained fast asleep until the moment it was due to take off. However, the people on board could not afford to do the same. Depending on their respective moods and temperaments, they were either deep in thought or busy going about their business.

In any case, Fan Hyulick had become a celebrity quite against his will. To use Doctor Lee’s phrase, his “fame was riding upon the light”, and what is more, that fame carried monetary value. The other day, a bounty of two and a half million dakar had been placed on his head.

Upon learning of this from the news, he sat back in his chair and counted the zeros again. It was a sum sufficient to enable an ordinary family of four to live a comfortable life for a quarter of a century. Truly, whatever faults Tytania might have, stinginess certainly wasn’t one of them.

If such a colossal reward were to come his way, he would like to arrest himself. Just as he was about to say this aloud, Fan Hyulick stopped himself. He recalled having once made the same joke, and that the person to whom he had made it, the late Lira Florentz, was now deceased, and he was overcome by a deeply bitter feeling.

The matter of Lila belonged to the realm of the past, and Count Arses Tytania, who bore responsibility for her death, was no doubt now hosting a lavish banquet, whether it was in the aesthete’s paradise or the common man’s hell, none could say. Fan Hyulick had done everything within his power. All that remained was to pray for the repose of the soul of the deceased.

If only he could bring himself to accept that, but Fan Hyulick was unable to do so. It came as a surprise even to himself. Would he be freed from this obsession if he were to overthrow Tytania, as Lira had wished during her lifetime?

Fan Hyulick was pondering this earnestly, though to outsiders it must surely have appeared ridiculous. This young man was nothing more than the acting chief clerk on a smuggling vessel. He did not even rule a single planet. The idea of “defeating Tytania” was surely nothing more than a fool’s daydream.

Originally, his animosity towards Tytania had been directed solely at the late Count Arses Tytania. There had been a girl named Lira Florentz who had made him a herb omelette; she had been forced to her death for the sake of Count Arses Tytania. Hyulick had to avenge her. For him, that was all there was to it. After all, a revolution was supposed to be a struggle to secure one’s daily bread. What was wrong with fighting for an omelette!

“So an omelette can change the course of cosmic history. It’s quite something. One really ought not to underestimate the power of appetite.”

Doctor Lee, who made this observation, was not merely a man of research and commentary, but a man of action. Paying no heed to Fan Hyulick’s intentions, he was devising a plan to form an anti-Tytania united front.

When this united front would come into being, the Blaze Flag Army would be indispensable as the core of its military strength. When making a snowman, the core needed not to be large, but a core was essential nonetheless. However, the reputation of the Blaze Flag Army was now in steady decline. Anyone who heard its name responded by furrowing their brow and curling their lips.

“The Blaze Flag Army? They’re finished. They were nothing more than a foil for Tytania. No matter how much they try to oppose them, they simply don’t have anyone capable of rivalling Tytania’s Clanner or the Four Dukes, do they?”

That was the prevailing view, and it seemed that the Blaze Flag Army has been reduced to the role of a disillusioned Robin Hood.

“Well, it can’t be helped. We’ll just take it one step at the time. As they say, a journey of a thousand light-years begins with a single step.”

When Doctor Lee uttered this rather trite piece of civic morality, Hyulick, contrary to his habit, objected:

“I think there are more useful sayings than that, though.”

“Such as?”

“Something along the lines of ‘The world isn’t that forgiving’.”

As it wasn’t a particularly high-minded rebuttal, it failed to impress Doctor Lee. Described as “a space pirate who failed to become a university professor” or a “university professor who ended up becoming a space pirate”, Doctor Lee had arbitrarily decided to use Fan Hyulick as his subject to write a major academic treatise grounded in reality.

II

Was this an example of how, when people come together to form a group, areas of responsibility naturally fall into place? Within Fan Hyulick’s gang, the person who came to be in charge of the accounts was Alan Mahdi.

Although he loved his savings with all his heart, even this tender affection was thwarted by the power of Tytania. Unable to give full expression to his love for his own savings, he awoke to a spirit of universal love for money in general and began to raise his voice.

Regardless of the volume of Alan Mahdi’s voice, it was a fact that the party needed funds for its activities. The spaceship Honest Old Man was an armed smuggling vessel brimming with glory and pride, but, unfortunately, it was not brimming with wealth. Mahdi, who detested the God of Poverty far more than the God of Death, could not tolerate his fellow passengers’ lack of financial sense.

“Why don’t we raid a mining planet or a merchant ship to raise some money? If we’re serious about taking on Tytania, we’ll need military funds. Enough that even if every star in the galaxy were turned into gold coins, it still wouldn’t be enough!”

While there was some room for doubt regarding the “serious” aspect, the core of Mahdi’s argument was correct. As long as human society as a whole was based on a monetary economy, without war funds there was simply no way to pick a fight with Tytania.

“Yeah, right. Just do something about it then.”

As far as Alan Mahdi was concerned, while he had every reason to loathe Fan Hyulick, there was absolutely no necessity for him to feel any goodwill or sympathy towards him. He’d like to sell him off to Tytania, but it was all too clear that such an act would only end up cutting off his own nose to spite his face.

As someone who had once belonged to one of Tytania’s subordinate organisations, and had effectively defected from it, Mahdi knew that unless Tytania were to fall from grace, he would be unable to rescue his lost lover. Fan Hyulick was a man he detested down to his very cells, but it was a fact that an extraordinary military talent had taken up residence within a part of his genetic makeup, so he could not simply put this man up for sale at a bargain price.

Consequently, Mahdi was devising a plan of his own to convert Fan Hyulick’s military talent into economic value. Wherever Hyulick looked, meddlesome strategists were busy drawing up equations.

In any case, Fan Hyulick had grown weary of behaving like a fugitive on the run. Doctor Lee had observed as much. If that were the case, he was just a hair’s breadth away from his pent-up energy exploding, and as far as Doctor Lee was concerned, he needed to have the needle ready to burst that balloon.

Doctor Lee was a man who spared no effort in the pursuit of academic truth. And in the fairy tales that moralising adults were so keen to impose on children, it was always the diligent who triumphed over the lazy.

And so, while the leaders of the Tytania clan were debating about Fan Hyulick, the man himself made no attempt to devise a counter-strategy, merely squandering a great deal of time and a little money. Just when one might have thought he was deep in thought in the Honest Old Man’s cabin, he would shove his remaining money into his pocket and head out, without even contacting his comrades. It was a rather pathetic state of affair that his former subordinates, who had gone to look for him on the assumption he would be in the red-light district of Latour, spotted him almost immediately.

“Where is Admiral Hyulick?”

“Under the ceiling, atop of a woman.”

In that situation it could hardly even be called a joke. Fan Hyulick was not a young man who could be described as particularly lecherous or licentious. He was merely the possessor of a healthy body with ordinary cravings. If one could not find anything else to do, it was only natural for an ordinary person to choose pleasurable activities over painful ones. However, there was certainly an element of unconscious escapism at play. Whenever he was alone, he would inevitably find himself recalling Lira’s expressions and words, and Hyulick would become utterly despondent.

The two former subordinates accompanying Fan Hyulick, Mikhail Walenkov and Louis Edmond Pagès, expressed a decidedly optimistic view upon seeing the wanted poster of their superior.

“Well, Admiral Hyulick’s become quite the celebrity, hasn’t he? To think only a short while ago, he was just a hired commander.”

“We’d love to rise to a position where such a bounty is placed on our heads, wouldn’t we?”

Of course, despite their words, they weren’t actually optimistic about their own situation. After all, they had made an enemy of Tytania. It was tantamount to having the whole of human society against them. While they could not help but feel a shudder of dread, when they thought about it, a more terrifying situation was simply impossible.

Given that, the only way to maintain their mental equilibrium was to throw caution to the wind and remain defiant to the end. Both Walenkov and Pagès quite naturally chose to laugh it off rather than wail and lament. That said, as one’s jaw could sometimes dislocate from laughing too hard, both the burly Walenkov and the medium-stature Pagès were eagerly awaiting the day their superior would get serious.

Like them, there was a married couple waiting for the day when Fan Hyulick gets serious: Compton Casimir, the shipowner of the Honest Old Man, and his wife, Miranda.

Miranda possessed a spirited temperament, but she was by no means lacking in intelligence. Her husband, Captain Casimir, while appearing gentle and thoughtful at times, has also taken resolute action: he threw his lot in with the anti-Tytania faction, took Hyulick under his wing, and participated in the assault against Count Arses Tytania. His actions were nothing short of daring. “His boldest act was definitely marrying Mrs Miranda,” remarked Doctor Lee. But since Miranda herself agreed with a laugh, this could hardly be considered an insult.

One day, a man became entangled in the web of connections of Miranda and Captain Casimir. Having once been Her Highness the Princess of the Principality of Casabianca, Miranda possessed a rather extensive network of contacts.

“His name is Salam Amzekar. So? Does that ring a bell?” asked Miranda, her expression suggesting she was undoubtedly overestimating Fan Hyulick’s memory.

It took him a moment to recall the name, but in the end, Fan Hyulick managed to pinpoint it correctly. Salam Amzekar was a young admiral who had served in the Vardana Imperial Army and had acted as military adviser to the Duchy of Turanzia’s fleet during the Battle of the Syracusa System. Defeated by the flawless combat command of Duke Ariabert Tytania, he was unable to return to his homeland and had gone into exile from the battlefield. He had been given no opportunity to demonstrate his abilities, and the defeat could not be attributed to him. Even so, the fact that he was on the surface of the same planet as Hyulick was surprising.

However, this was likely less a matter of chance than the result of both parties making unremarkable choices. It was, so to speak, common sense for a fugitive to choose Bargash as their immediate destination. Upon arriving in Bargash, they made the decision whether to blend into the planet’s population or to set off once more on a journey to another star.

To cater to their needs, people from various professions and their respective groups thrived on this planet. Orthopaedic surgeons, document forgers, people smugglers, make-up artists, anyone who would certainly never be commended by those in power were all active here. It was through these channels that Miranda was able to make contact with the disgraced defeated general.

“Admiral Amzekar hates Tytania, and he’s got connections. I reckon we’ll be able to join forces in future. You’ve probably got your own plans, but why not at least go and meet him?”

Without a word, Hyulick nodded.

III

It was on Friday the 1^st of September that Fan Hyulick found himself forced to postpone his meeting with Amzekar, which was due to take place the following day. He had encountered a certain man.

The man appeared to be in his mid-thirties. Although his features were not unattractive, there was something about him that strangely aroused Fan Hyulick’s animosity.

They met at a pub called the “Chance Encounter Pavilion”. Hyulick and Miranda had gone there to book a table to meet Amzekar and to do some preliminary research, but although they had taken precautions, their preparations were not entirely foolproof.

While Miranda was negotiating with the innkeeper, Hyulick was sipping rye whisky at a table in the corner of the pub. Suddenly, a figure appeared from across the room and sat down without so much as a word. Hyulick was forced to look at something he would rather not have seen. A grey military uniform and a man who seemed to take pride in it. Observing his expression, the Tytanian confirmed in a drawling tone:

“So you’re the idiots who’ve rebelled against Tytania and are now playing heroes, aren’t you?”

“You’re the idiot who’s had a dog collar placed by Tytania around your neck and are pretending to be her loyal subject, aren’t you?”

Both finding the other’s vitriol tiresome, Fan Hyulick and the Tytanian exchanged hostile glances. Having missed his chance to flee, Fan Hyulick had no choice but to look for an opportunity to strike back. It was still unclear whether his opponent was armed.

Even if he were to live for five hundred years, there was no way he could ever become acquainted with this man. Fan Hyulick was well aware of that fact. He could never possibly get on with the sort of person who took pleasure in being collared and chained. That very temperament would in the end, shape his life, and influence the course of history. As Hyulick stood up, the man rose as well, as if to counter him, and introduced himself without being asked:

“I am the secretary to His Excellency Donald Farah, Counsellor to Tytania’s Clanner.”

“So he’s a retainer of a retainer of Tytania”, thought Fan Hyulick with malice. The malice was even stronger on the man’s part. The man licked his lips and issued a warning.

“Your run of devil’s luck is over now. Duke Zarlisch Tytania will tear you to pieces with his brute strength. He seeks revenge for his cute little brother.”

The word “cute” was laced with something that was neither poison nor miasma. The strained relationship between Zarlisch and Arses was a well-known fact within Tytania. Hyulick saw the man’s expression change drastically as he delivered this news.

Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Miranda. She had just finished her negotiations with the innkeeper and was leaving the office. Her eyes were ablaze with fury. The man suddenly staggered. He was trying to make a run for it.

“Wait!”

It was as if her voice solidified and was hurled at him. The man dressed in a Tytanian uniform, staggered, turned pale, and exuded panic and terror from every pore of his body.

With his eyes and mouth wide open, he tried to turn away but fell over with a thud. Miranda had grabbed a vase from the desk and hurled it; the vase roared as it flew through the air, striking the man on the head and shattering.

“Who the hell is this guy?”

When Fan Hyulick posed this obvious question, Miranda replied over her shoulder:

“Someone I need to take revenge against for my husband!”

With those words, Fan Hyulick understood.

Captain Casimir, Miranda’s husband, had his vocal cords destroyed on the orders of Count Arses Tytania. Although it was Arses who had ordered it, someone carried out that cruel command, and Miranda had been tracking him down. Although his affiliation within Tytania had changed, and he must have felt at ease, he had unexpectedly found himself face-to-face who wanted revenge. It was a one-in-a-million chance, but perhaps the name of the establishment had brought good fortune to one and misfortune to the other.

“Well, we finally met again. It’s a wonder you’ve managed to stay safe and sound all this time without having any accidents.”

No matter how carefully she chose her words, it was clear that Her Highness Princess Miranda was seething with a passion for vengeance. The Tytanian man dragged to his feet amidst shards of a vase and a small pool of blood, forgot the pain of his wounds and began to defend himself desperately.

“Wait! It was the Count Arses Tytania who did it. I was merely following orders!”

“That perverted count paid for his sins with his life. Now it’s your turn. In this world, we must stick to the proper order of things, right?”

As Miranda grabbed him by the collar and began to drag him away, the Tytanian lackey let out a scream. It was a truly pitiful, pleading scream, but it failed to lure Miranda into the trap of sentimentality. Miranda simply laughed off the man’s cheap theatrics.

“Ah, what a fine scream. My husband was made unable to scream, no matter how terribly he was being treated. I’m sure he’s longing for some company.”

At that moment, the wall of onlookers who had been laughing and watching from the sidelines suddenly crumbled. Amidst the violent clamour, shouts of “It’s the Tytanians” rang out.

Countless grey military uniforms surged forth. It was as though a gigantic, foam-like monster had appeared. Uniforms, discipline and obedience, these three elements had transformed the soldiers of Tytania into expressionless, semi-mechanical beings.

Miranda shot a sharp glance out of the window. Beyond the toughened glass separating the shop from the street, a sea of grey figures was thronging.

“Run, Hyulick! They’re after you!”

There was no doubt that Miranda was right about this. Fan Hyulick leapt aside. A hard rubber truncheon swept horizontally across the spot where his head had been just half a second earlier. He sharply swept his own leg out to stagger his opponent off balance.

The Tytanian soldier toppled to the floor like a rotten pillar. His scream was drowned out by another as Miranda took the blow of the rubber baton across the face of her prisoner. The unfortunate man had his nasal bridge shattered by a comrade’s rubber baton; his face stained red, he lost consciousness.

“Don’t shoot them. Keep them alive, it’s an absolute order. If you disobey, Tytania’s wrath will definitely fall upon your heads.”

The mere mention of “Tytania’s wrath” brought the soldiers’ movements to a halt. The one issuing this order from outside the maelstrom of chaos was a middle-aged man clad in a nondescript business suit. He muttered under his breath:

“Goodness me, what a tedious job. No room for ingenuity, nor any opportunity to be creative. Anyone would do that kind of job, not just me.”

Then, as if regaining his composure, the man raised his voice.

“It doesn’t matter if you shoot the others. They’re vermin who’d be of no benefit to society if left alive. Eradicate them thoroughly while you’re at it.”

This man was none other than Mr Donald Farah, Tytania’s foremost election strategist in Tytania, if not in the universe. As he held action and terrorism in contempt, this order felt crude and brutal compared to his usual election campaigns. He wanted to get this trivial task out of the way as quickly as possible so he could return to his proper duties.

Elections to renew half the delegates from the planet Bargash were due in twenty days time, and without Farah’s skilful intervention, there was a strong likelihood that the pro-Tytania faction would lose seats. Compared to that excitement and thrill, the action unfolding before Farah’s eyes was nothing but a noisy distraction.

Of course, for Fan Hyulick and Miranda, that commotion was directly linked to their fate. The pair swam through the crowd, punching and kicking, ducking to avoid blows, landing elbow strikes, and snatching their opponents’ rubber truncheons to land a blow of their own.

Farah was forced to click his tongue some forty times in all. Yet “being outnumbered” was one of the greatest truths governing the balance of power amongst men. The mass of grey military uniforms surged towards the rebels like a rising tide, engulfing them, bearing down upon them and pinning them down.

Although several were shoved aside and fended off, they ultimately succeeded only halfway in their mission. While they managed to pin the man to the floor, the woman slipped through the swarm of soldiers with the swiftness and cunning of a witch, and managed to escape.

Thus, following his recent capture by Count Arses Tytania, Fan Hyulick found himself seized once more, this time by the count’s elder brother, Duke Zarlisch Tytania.

IV

“I do get caught a lot,” thought Fan Hyulick, half in admiration of himself. He wondered whether this was simply bad luck or whether he was just a fool, but the correct answer lay elsewhere. Tytania’s organisational prowess had outmanoeuvred the fugitives’ calculations. To apply Lieutenant Mahdi’s line of reasoning, Tytania got serious before the anti-Tytanians did.

Although Hyulick was not subjected to any particular abuse as a prisoner, he was certainly not treated with courtesy either. The surveillance was extremely strict, with men who could only be described as burly constantly watching him in groups. On top of that, he had been fitted with a metal collar, and having been told that high-voltage current would be passed through it, he had no choice but to err on the side of caution rather than bravery.

Since Donald Farah never gave his full name to the prisoners, Hyulick had no way of knowing his true identity. It was an unnamed Tytanian who revealed his fate to him as follows:

“It appears that Duke Zarlisch has vowed to make you lose three kilograms while you’re still alive.”

“So he’s going to put me on a diet, then?”

Fan Hyulick’s reply seemed to lack imagination. The Tytanian laughed pityingly as he explained that the total weight of human skin was three kilograms, and that Fan Hyulick would have his entire body flayed alive by Duke Zarlisch’s mother. It was a story so horrifyingly amusing that Hyulick’s laughter froze on his lips.

As far as Donald Farah was concerned, capturing Hyulick and handing him over to Duke Zarlisch was nothing more than a side project born of chance. His passion and interest lay solely in the election.

With no opportunity to escape and no knowledge of events outside, Fan Hyulick ate about fifteen meals. They were by no means meagre, but the flavour did little to stimulate his poor appetite.

Even so, was it really acceptable to die in such a ridiculous manner as that Tytanian had suggested? The thought made Fan Hyulick seethe with anger.

He had always found himself in a position of opposition to Tytania, though this was not by choice. The reason he had defeated Ariabert Tytania at the Battle of Cerberus was simply because he held the post of commander of the City Fleet of Euria. As for the assassination of Arses Tytania, that was because that perverted count had caused Lira Florentz’s death. Hyulick had always been in a passive position and had never been the one to pick a fight.

However, Hyulick did not put this thought into words. He did not believe the term passive carried any profound significance.

A somewhat self-deprecating mood had taken hold of him. Striking back only when cornered, humm, wasn’t that the behaviour pattern of a herbivore? Of course, herbivores were not inferior to carnivores. That said, wasn’t it a convenient reaction for a carnivore to never tire of repeating the same pattern of defence and counter-attack?

The reason Fan Hyulick had been pondering these matters at length was simply that, as a prisoner, he had nothing else to do. Yet even this idle, unproductive life of confinement had an end. It came walking towards him of its own accord. Around the sixth day since Fan Hyulick had become a prisoner at the Tytania’s representative office on planet Bargash.

The cell door opened silently, and a middle-aged man in a grey military uniform appeared. The man, who appeared to be a mid-ranking officer in Tytania’s military, had extremely short hair and hard, cold blue eyes; he introduced himself as Lieutenant-Commander Kaits, a staff officer to Duke Zarlisch Tytania.

“Come. His Grace Duke Zarlisch Tytania wishes to see you in person. Consider yourself fortunate, given your lowly status.”

“I’m not particularly keen to meet him, you know.”

Fan Hyulick’s childish defiance failed to impress the officer in the slightest. The officer approached the prisoner with a cruel-looking smile, seized his arm as if to say he knew nothing of the expression human rights, and yanked him along roughly. Fan Hyulick was flung about two metres across the floor and planted in the midst of a circle of non-commissioned officers who were waiting for him.

Surrounded by grey walls, he was now forced to walk a distance of about eighty metres. He turned several corners, passed through a series of opening and closing doors, and finally reached a door that seemed unusually large in its two-dimensionality.

Following the standard formalities, the door opened before Fan Hyulick and closed behind him. As the procedure leading up to this point had been carried out with such perfect mechanical precision, Fan Hyulick had no time to feel any fear or anxiety; he had simply been transported in like a piece of cargo.

The figure standing before Fan Hyulick was a man who surpassed him by several degrees in both presence and intimidating aura. There was no need to ask his name. With his majestic build and thick musculature, he was the very embodiment of the word “valour”. Although this man was supposedly two years younger than Fan Hyulick, his appearance and bearing made him seem the elder.

This man, Duke Zarlisch Tytania, scrutinised the prisoner who had been brought before him for about ten and a half seconds. His gaze was the sort one might reserve for observing a panda walking upright. When he finally ceased his scrutiny, he spoke for the first time:

“Are you the lawless traitor known as Fan Hyulick?”

“I’m not.”

“You’re not? Are you trying to conceal your true identity at a time like this?”

Zarlisch cast a contemptuous glance at the prisoner’s face.

“If you are not Fan Hyulick himself, then who the hell do you claim to be?”

“His twin brother.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, you dunce!”

Zarlisch’s thunderous roar pounded against his eardrums, and it took Fan Hyulick five and a half seconds to gather himself to reply. Shaking his head to clear the lingering echo from his ears, he finally fired up his sharp-tongued retort:

“You’re the one being ridiculous. I have no recollection of ever committing treason. Treason, as I understand it, refers to a subordinate or vassal turning against their lord. I’ve never once drawn any kind of wage from Tytania.”

“You’re running your sharp little mouth.”

Zarlisch clicked his tongue but, contrary to Hyulick’s expectations, made no attempt to resort to brute force.

“Very well. Go ahead and sharpen your tongue as much as you like, and see if you can outwit my mother. It is not my inclination to inflict pain on those who are bound, but my mother is different. She is also Arses’ mother. I’ll just leave you with that.”

Zarlisch turned on his heel. His broad back made it abundantly clear that he had no intention of engaging in any further fruitless conversation with Hyulick. Hyulick realised that he was a figure of no consequence in that person’s eyes. To Zarlisch, Hyulick was nothing more than “someone to take revenge against for his mother’s second son”, a living tool to appease his mother’s paranoia and blind devotion. And eventually, he would become a dead tool.

Yet, at that moment, Hyulick had made up his mind. He had been driven into a corner far enough. He was determined to break free from his current predicament, a plight so dire that even a herbivore would fight back.

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