Chapter 17: A Noble's Upbringing

  Two months later, Rudnicki, with his typical fanfare, was ordering Justinian where to move barrels of imported quince liqueur.

  "Carefully now, my dear sir, each of these barrels costs more than you can afford to pay!"

  The boy could only grit his teeth at this irritating lecture, holding onto a deep hope that at least a few of these barrels would turn out to be spoiled.

  'Some of the training seems alright, the duels with his servants are really helping me a lot...' the young man thought. The problem, however, was that this was only part of the picture. The boy was certain that besides these duels and the occasional moral guidance, Rudnicki was treating him like cheap labor.

  'It's especially unbearable that he himself just loafs around all day, yet he's the first to give orders,' the boy lamented in his thoughts.

  He had to admit, however, that he was making some progress. He now felt much more confident using his cultivation, and the battlefield no longer paralyzed him as it had before. This was largely thanks to the noble raids, which Rudnicki organized whenever he started to get a little bored.

  'Thank goodness the voivode recently dug himself out of his work and now has him under his thumb...' he thought.

  In his free time, the boy delved into A Little Devil's Guide, which he had received from Boruta. It was a thoroughly repulsive read and clearly explained why the Church of Justice hated the fiends of hell so much.

  'This book is the complete opposite of the Bible of Justice!' he noted, outraged. The lessons from its reading were so horrible that he even wrote them down to make sure he hadn't mistaken anything. They created a particularly grim picture because the primer was, after all, aimed at devils of a young age:

  "1. The most important goal of every devil is strength and its increase. 2. For the above, the end justifies the means. 3. It is better for others to fear you than to love you."

  The blood-curdling messages were all the more scandalous because they stood in opposition to the values of the church. His faith, after all, preached that the ultimate goal was union with the Great Order, which would only occur if a person lived a virtuous, harmonious life. The Order itself was to be full of love, where justice reigns and the weak will be strong, and the last will be first.

  "How can devils even listen to someone like that?!"

  The answer, of course, stemmed from the book's own message. The Lord of Hell, the King of Names and Symbols, was simply the strongest being of all the devils. Regardless of whether his subjects liked his rule or not—what choice did they have?

  Devilish protests did appear from time to time, but if they actually stepped on this being's toes, they quickly became an example to others of what boundaries they could not cross.

  'Rudnicki says that the Lord of Hell supposedly destroyed 40% of the 67th dimension of hell... All so that he could truthfully proclaim that under his rule are a total of 66 and 0.6 worlds...'

  Justinian could only shake his head in resignation at stories of such madness. In his heart, he was also very glad that he had never had the occasion to stand in the way of someone so terrifying.

  The noble raids, conducted in abundance during the weeks when Boruta was still busy, gave the young man much to think about in the context of understanding justice and prompted him to reconsider some of the positions from the Notebook of Punishments and Sins.

  Instead of a black-and-white view of whether the final outcome was just, he was evaluating how just the outcome was.

  'In judging a raid, we are dealing with many injustices, but also with the straightening out of various neighborly disputes... Looking at it this way, despite the apparent conflagration they bring, they are not, for the most part, so bad,' Justinian concluded in concentration. He could not, however, convince himself that this was the right approach.

  'After all, we are settling with a saber matters that could be resolved differently. But isn't it hypocrisy for me, driven by revenge, to criticize these neighborly disputes?'

  The matter was obviously complex, and Justinian was hindered by his young age and lack of greater life experience. In his mind and heart, beautiful ideals he wanted to believe in seemed to battle with the grim reality of the world, which kept throwing new obstacles in his path.

  He spent many hours on such considerations and, of course, noted appropriate progress in his cultivation. What occupied him at present, however, was a much more tangible problem. In his hand, he held an ear of a unique type of grain he had noticed during one of the raids on neighboring lands.

  It was the grain that hellish animals grazed on, distinctive in their appearance and, above all... it was the exact same grain Justinian had seen in the kingdom of men before the bandits' attack on the city!

  This directly linked the matter of his revenge to the infernal dimension and proved that hellish forces must be behind the attack.

  'But how can I make use of this?' the boy wondered.

  "Sitting lost in thought again?" a cheerful girlish voice, whose owner he knew well, reached him.

  "It's called cultivation. Some of us still have to actually work to achieve something," Justinian replied irritably to the girl, who was only slightly older than him. She had fair hair and a pretty face, though somewhat tanned by the sun. Her name was Aldona Borowiak, and she was the daughter of the neighbor he had saved earlier.

  "Exactly, only some!" the she-devil smiled at his irritated behavior. That didn't apply to her. Due to a rare trait in her family's bloodline, she automatically grew stronger with age. Of course, this had significant limitations, but for the environment of the 66th dimension of hell, it was definitely enough to stand out in a crowd.

  "What has Rudnicki come up with this time?" Justinian asked, guessing that he was the one who had sent the devilish girl here.

  "He's supposedly throwing a feast to celebrate your farewell!" she said excitedly.

  As someone who had grown up in these lands and was young enough not to have been soaked in cynicism, things like feasts and the customs of the devilish nobility thrilled her greatly.

  "Yeah... he just wants to trick me into carrying barrels for his feast..." replied the more experienced boy, at least in the last few weeks.

  Despite everything, however, he made no secret of the fact that he actually owed Rudnicki a great deal. Training with the colorful nobleman had allowed him to look a little more realistically at the perspective of justice and what reality was often like for the different social classes of devils. The young man suspected that if he had stayed with Boruta, he wouldn't have learned as much. Therefore, he gladly agreed to carry the wine barrels and didn't complain as much as usual.

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  Besides, the pipe he had received from the nobleman was strangely relaxing, and even though he didn't smoke it, its mere proximity often put him in a good mood.

  The feast, like every other one at this manor in recent weeks, was very rich. Servants carried new meat dishes prepared by the local chef, and at one point, there was even an unusual scene where... live birds flew out of a large, baked cake. Everything was accompanied by the clamor of drunken revelry and the clinking of beer mugs. This was how the nobility lived in the 66th dimension of hell, and it was a life to be envied.

  "To our very own human!"

  "To the generosity of the master of the house!"

  "To good fun!"

  The feasting devils raised their toasts. Today, Rudnicki's neighbors had come to his party, including Borowiak and others he had happened to raid. Consequently, in accordance with the principle that devils cause their enemies the greatest displeasure with their own successes, the revelry was particularly lavish.

  Devils loved to show off their prestige to others, and even their attire—fancy ?upans and kontuszes—was essentially fashion copied from human, or even devilish, kings from other dimensions. Generally, the richer a nobleman was, the more brightly and attention-grabbingly he dressed—often to the chagrin of his envious neighbors.

  After all, as the old devilish saying went: "The apothecary hanged himself when the colonel's life went well."

  "You must have spent a year's income from your grain on this!" shouted a clearly jealous Borowiak in the host's direction.

  This brought smiles to the faces of his servants and even a few other neighbors, who also didn't feel too good seeing Rudnicki's wealth.

  "That would be the income if I were selling the goods I looted from you over the past year!" Rudnicki shouted back with a laugh.

  Of course, his retort made some of the guests clench their fists in indignation. After all, over the last few weeks, he had truly harassed them with raids far beyond the norm, and it had taken a toll not only on their wallets but also on their status.

  The noble brethren were particularly irritated by the raids for another reason. One of the nobleman's guests touched upon this reason, almost entirely by accident:

  "Honorable Sir Rudnicki! I heard you have in your care a human from an authentic kingdom, whose name is not to be spoken in our venerable lands!" said a slightly tipsy devil from afar, a friend of the host.

  "Aye, it's true, it's true," Rudnicki replied, twirling his mustache.

  This caused murmurs to spread at the table, as if in disbelief of these facts. Interestingly... the faces of the invited neighbors seemed even gloomier than a moment ago!

  Of course, this detail did not escape the host's notice, who was laughing inwardly at their situation; he knew he would have a lot of fun tonight. Ever since the young man had started participating in his raids, two rumors had swept through the area with the speed of lightning.

  The first: Rudnicki had gone mad and was constantly attacking innocent neighbors, bringing fire and destruction in his wake, sparing absolutely no one. The second, much more improbable, concerned a certain human youth he supposedly had in his service.

  "I sent for him a short while ago, and he should be here any moment," the nobleman said, smiling mysteriously. It seemed his neighbors, with Borowiak at the head, grew even more sullen.

  "Oh, there he is! Justinian, my dear fellow, come over here to us!" he called cheerfully to the young boy who had just appeared in the doorway of the banquet hall, conversing with the young Miss Borowiak.

  What happened a moment later surpassed the wildest expectations of Rudnicki's guests who were not familiar with the matter.

  As soon as the boy was called, terror appeared in his eyes, and a moment later, he even hid his face in his hands. But it was too late to change anything. For as his name cut through the air, the crowds throughout the hall were electrified!

  "Justinian?! Where is he?! I must thank him!"

  "I want to meet this noble young man!"

  "They say he's very handsome and so romantic!"

  Conversations immediately broke out, shocking everyone who hadn't known the full story. Almost all the she-devils from the surrounding villages began to search nervously for Justinian!

  This was due to the almost legendary reputation he had built for himself by participating in the noble raids. Rumors portrayed him as a grim warrior who did not stoop to the pathetic disputes of the corrupt nobility, but instead watched the battlefield in contemplation, as if longing for his distant home.

  "He saved me from a blow!"

  "They say he's unmarried!"

  "And have you heard with what sacrifice he embarked on the path of cultivation?!"

  The she-devils, who were culturally very different from human women, began to literally fight over this famous man, of course... to the considerable outrage of the devils, especially the noblemen sitting at Rudnicki's table!

  Often during the raids, they suffered twice—once, because of the attack by their recalcitrant neighbor, and twice, because their daughters and wards, charmed by the mysterious man's behavior, would often ask them for matchmaking! This was particularly hurtful because it wounded the pride of the local devils, who—through hundreds of years of tradition—had grown accustomed to a different role in the process of finding a partner.

  Justinian himself did not see the whole situation in such rosy colors at all... the truth is, he didn't understand why the aggressive she-devils were throwing themselves at him so much. He just wanted to train so that one day he could get his revenge and achieve justice.

  This, of course, only encouraged them more, adding to his mysterious atmosphere.

  Finally, however, he managed to break through the sea of enthusiasts to face the nobility, where he bowed awkwardly to old Rudnicki.

  "Greetings, honorable sirs."

  "How are you, my dear graduate?! Tell me, as a representative adept, when do you begin your journey through the mountains?" Of course, the nobleman mentioned this only to boast about his ward's status and to rub it in the faces of his noble brethren present.

  Ignoring the sounds of admiration from the crowd, Justinian answered truthfully:

  "In two weeks, I am to appear on the mountain of the devil Eusebius. Then Greedius, and if permission can be obtained—the mountain of Maleficius."

  The journey of representative adepts through the mountains was part of the sacred tradition of the devilish games—during them, many matches, pranks, and other things that devils naturally consider virtuous in their corrupt nature took place.

  The problem concerned the mountain of Maleficius, who had forced his way in, chased away all the adepts, and did not communicate much with the outside world. The journey was supposed to include all the mountains, but here there was a real risk that the adepts would be killed if they tried to enter.

  "Excellent, excellent, and tell..." Rudnicki clapped his hands before his question was interrupted.

  "I see you know how to brag. A shame you won't mention that you'll be the biggest laughingstock in the history of the journeys!" a young man, the son of a local nobleman, blurted out. He was clearly jealous of the attention Justinian was receiving.

  This, of course, caused outrage in the crowd of she-devils, and Justinian also furrowed his brow at this blatant insult. After all, he had been among devils long enough to know that matters like saving face and sheer strength were of enormous importance here.

  He knew little, however, that Rudnicki had counted on this turn of events and was only fanning the flames by adding fuel to the fire. All for the sake of an exceptional spectacle at his feast.

  Before the human could respond to the taunt, the host had already seized the opportunity:

  "Hohoho! Arrogant words toward my ward! If you cannot back up such an insult with your own strength, you had better get on your knees to apologize right now!" he shouted threateningly, feigning rage.

  The young man blushed a little and didn't know what to say; he had simply been too consumed by anger, which devils, after all, considered very virtuous. But now he was expected to fight?

  His parent, who saw where this was heading, was about to intervene and amicably resolve the danger, but then Borowiak joined the verbal skirmish.

  "Are you his mommy to be defending this human like that?! I bet this year's harvest that he wouldn't stand a chance against our devils in a raiding tournament!"

  Immediately, the emboldened noblemen, who were fed up with Rudnicki's arrogance, rose to their feet.

  "That's right!"

  "Borowiak speaks the truth! Pour him a drink!"

  "This human will be begging for mercy before the night is out!"

  The resulting noise even drowned out the indignant she-devils, who were worried something would happen to their romantic hero. Rudnicki furrowed his brow and began to think seriously, when Justinian spoke up.

  "Let's find out then. But I have one condition."

  The word was spoken, and the noise that had just filled the room turned into true pandemonium! The devils sensed their opportunity and intended to beat the human who didn't fit in with all their might!

  "Speak! Anything within reason, you stupid little human!" Borowiak replied mockingly.

  Justinian, of course, felt the dislike with which the nobleman spoke of him and promised himself that he would not let the matter rest. But now he had something more important to arrange.

  "If I win, you will give me your saber!"

  The hall, which had been terribly loud a moment before, now fell dead silent!