Although, J was not protecting Lisa but compensating for the husband.
...
Did Ekaros know? Certainly not. If a noble like Ekaros were to know of infelicitous behavior of a woman in their family, they certainly won't let it slide.
Lisa had the power and privilege to be able to keep the things hidden, that is because neither Ekaros nor her husband had visited her for months, and the servants would not dare speaking ill of her.
Ekaros was not allowed to visit because of the Viscount and as for her husband, Ekaros did not let his son leave for home, not for a normal visit at the very least.
...
His butler John greeted Terias, ready to begin another of his usual daily reports.
"I have found some leads, mylord. There is a man I have found, he belongs from one of those fallen families, powerful in past when our family acquired the province."
The time when the acquisition of areas under the province took place was way back,decades ago. The fallen family John referred to were one of the families who had control over the area, the minor nobles and such at that time.
Terias's family took over the land as they had gained the title of the Viscount back then, the title was granted to his ancestors because of their contribution to the army.
The land takeover and killing of local leaders only took place when some of them rejected to let the Viscount rule on the land, they banded together to save whatever amount of land they could by fighting against Viscount's forces, thus the killings.
...
"What did he say?"
Terias knew the tad bits about that history, as he had read a lot of books because of his search for clues. There were small mention of trouble with local leaders for land, which his family won. So, he directly asked about the guy's words.
"He gave me some names, and the potential families involved. Unfortunately, I could not get much out from him, before he died."
John replied with slight regret as he was not able to get more info out of the man he had caught and interrogated.
'Died? Did he come here just after torturing him.'
It was new experience to Terias, his past life was of a normal civilian, without any involvement from fights and killings except for the movies he watched and news around the globe.
...
Although he did not feel scared, because he knew what that guy would have eventually done would be fatal to Terias. When it came to his survival, he didn't feel anything over the death of another human.
'There is a drop of blood on his hair.' Terias saw a drop, red in colour, which must have remained uncleaned after the torture session.
"Why do you think they set their objectives to this? The revenge for land? Or for the deaths back then?"
Terias wanted an opinion from his butler, he asked John as he wanted to brainstorm together with John.
...
"It should be for the land, the man I interrogated was clearly being manipulated by people above him. He thought he was in this for revenge and to fight oppression."
John answered Terias, adding his perspective, he believed that the young man was just being used due to his young and naive mind. The real reason was not death of his family members but land, at least that was the case for people behind him.
"It's never a revenge when people with various interests work together to achieve a goal, the motivation behind them is always profit."
Terias also felt the same, this was not done for revenge, the word revenge would likely be used as an excuse to justify taking over his land, if the rag tag group really does kill him.
Though he did not forget that there was actually an Earl out there going for his life. The motivation for the youth was his miserable life but the support given to him was indirectly from an Earl.
...
"What about the families he mentioned? Did he confess truly or just mislead us further?"
Terias was aware of what those people could do, he did not want to suffer another attack. Since, lady Alice had generously given him an important news, he needed to make appropriate use of that.
"I have had doubts about some of these names but their crimes were not enough to severely punish and execute them. Now, that we have a confession against them, I believe we should act and arrest them. "
From what John said about his suspicions on certain people, it seemed likely that they were involved.
"Alright, make a list of the people you suspect and arrange it in an order, according to their position and power, align their names with whatever crimes they have committed. Kill the top five, secretly. "
"Also, send the list to me. "
Terias decided to kill the top five who had most crimes and power. He did not need to feel bad as the top five being killed were also criminals who have committed crimes.
...
"Kill? Yes, mylord, I understand. "
John first questioned about killing them, it was a surprise for John to receive an order like that from his master. But he recovered in an instant and accepted the task, before his words could sound like a question to Terias.
Before leaving for his mission preparations, he left a note for Terias. The note contained the information on Lisa and the servant J with whom she was in an affair.
John was courteous, he did not want to discuss and explain the details on it to Terias. This topic involved family and it would not be appropriate for him, an outsider, a butler to give opinion if Terias asked.
...
"Finally, done with the terrible part. Now comes the information which John has gathered. "
Terias had made a habit of reading books these days. Unfortunately, the habit was not born from his personal desire to read but his necessity to search for clues about the Ian.
During these boring and tough reading sessions, his only pleasure was to read something left by John. The butler provided info with extreme details with the background stories and such, which made it far interesting to read, rather than the history records in his library.
Although, he was complaining about reading the bland books which contained nothing but records of events with no clear reason behind them, he also found some spicy news among them.
...
For example, there was an event where a noble had to see his wife eloped with a ki warrior. The warrior was quite strong for the noble to fight and he had to bear the humiliation.
The noble used a strange ritual from God knows where and became a frenzy killer whose strength grew upon killing others.
However, in the end, the noble died of certain side affects which affected his ki core.
In level four of ki warrior, the warrior begins compressing their ki in the dantian, which later in level five solidifies into a solid.
The noble who had killed many people just to increase his ki and take revenge on that NTRing bastard, died shortly after taking his revenge. The Noble's solid ki in his dantian had cracked from the unstable ki, leading to his demise.
(Power stones)