Two massive gates made of iron opened up before Jacob and the knights as they neared the Duke's estate. It was unsurprisingly located at the edge of the city facing the direction of where the main capital of the Kingdom would be, it both made escape easier as well as serving a good enough power play for anyone from the opposite direction who wanted to visit the Duke by making them walk for half an hour before reaching the massive mansion.

Like for example, Jacob.

Though, he does want to give it to the man who owned the place, it was at least well maintained and the servants working here looked eager enough that they gave Jacob the impression of being well cared for by the man they're working for. Everyone did look at him weirdly as he entered the gate on top of a horse that they probably recognized as a stallion that belonged to the knight captain- the Duke had been expecting Jacob and as a gesture of good faith, he thought that giving him a stallion of his own didn't sound so bad for a first impression.

And, it certainly worked because Jacob is starting to appreciate the capabilities of a Warhorse that doesn't mind traveling for hours on end by foot. The breed that the spotted brown stallion is also a good one and Jacob isn't really well versed in that sort of thing but the fact that his horse is taller than the other horses around him is a good enough indication about the validity of its "superior breed", as the stable boy would put it.

What's more, the [Knight Captain] that he took the horse from didn't really mind Jacob taking one of his many horses, in fact, the man smiled at him as he grabbed the horse's reins while saying something along the lines of him appreciating another powerful person finding their way into the Duke's lands.

Despite the captain's enthusiasm, Jacob only smiled at him in reply because he found the guy a tad too... handsy for his taste.

Regardless, nothing really happened so Jacob was more than happy to let things be and take the horse for himself, and now, he's riding it into the estate of the man who more or less "owned" the entire city.

The Duke was waiting for him at the end of the path, he stood directly on top of the wooden stage in front of the door of his mansion, Jacob saw that the stage shone even from where he stood. The Duke himself wasn't any less attention-grabbing, he wore a suit colored in a deep bronze with brown accents and golden accessories, thin ropes of gold ran along the cloth and glistened under the light of the lanterns hanging on the pillars the Duke stood between.

Jacob met the Duke's eyes and nodded, and the Duke, in turn, did the same while rubbing his fingers together, the golden rings the Duke wore clinked against each other with every move.

When they got near, the Duke greeted him first, "Welcome!" He called out enthusiastically as he walked away from his front door and met Jacob halfway through, "I'm so glad that a prodigious mage such as yourself gave someone like me time," Duke Lezatian turned back to the mansion and started walking back with Jacob trailing behind him, not at all surprised about the whole 'prodigious mage' part of the man's sentence just now. If the System that he was given can be defined, it would be the word Cheat.

"I'm happy that you invited me over too," Jacob replied casually as he looked around the place, the grass in front of the house was trimmed, the bushes were nicely cut, and between the circles, squares, and other odd shapes were humanoid cut outs, with a few of them even managing to strike poses. A few stone statues were also placed around the area, some looked like babies with wings, others were giant wolves, while most were this Boar with daggers on either side of its mouth, replacing the otherwise normal looking tusks.

"I see you're eyeing the symbol of my family," The Duke said, prompting Jacob to stare at him, as the Duke went on about how he and his brothers went on the journey to the capital that eventually led to him killing a boss alone, Jacob tuned his words out and observed the man's build-

He was, for the lack of a better term, chubby-leanish in terms of his body: He was tall, just a few inches shorter than Jacob really, with a small gut that his suit couldn't hide on his stomach, brown hair and matching eyes, deeply tanned skin, and a small beard that covered the lower half of his face- that last part, Jacob didn't get because he assumed that most nobles would consider something like that "barbaric" but apparently, Duke Lezatian didn't, which probably spoke about a military background that the Duke decided to let go of in favor of the leadership of his territory.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

The effects of it are still there because the man does have muscles, that much is evident when Jacob eyed his biceps and legs, and his bearing was pretty good too, and was something that Jacob assumed is found more commonly in militaries instead of upper class nobles.

"- there were women coming at me left and right during that time," Jacob hummed just to show that he was listening to the Duke's story, "- but I wasn't interested in any of them, not even at one of the three daughters of the Cenosian Duke, no- I had my eyes on one woman during that time and it is her that I married and started a family with,"

"She sounds nice," Jacob said, hoping that'll continue the conversation, Duke Lezatian would've probably talked about it regardless of his words, but Jacob felt like he was starting to end his story there.

"She was." Ah. Was. Did the Duke's wife die? Jacob held back a grimace at the thought of that, the Duke wouldn't get offended by him wanting to further the conversation would he? He is a noble and Jacob's sure that the Duke caught on to what he did just now, and he's sure that forcing the Duke about someone he didn't want to talk about in the first place is probably a bad idea.

He should've just started a new topic.

"Xenacia was the best woman in this Kingdom," huh, was the Duke sounding like an old man?.. The Duke was sounding like an old man. "And I was lucky enough to be her husband till her death, she was kind, caring, and was my morale compass during the times I waged war further up the frontier," the Duke chuckled, "she would always, always tell me to not be ruthless and that I should stop burning the crops of the people for the sake of stopping the flow of resources, that I should give the slaves a chance or something childish like that."

"I wish I was able to meet her," Jacob replied, smiling genuinely. Come to think of it, just who was the Duke before he met his wife? Back then, he sounded like the typical soldier, one that's sort of uncaring about the consequences of his action and is more than willing to murder anyone that got in his way, and usually, those types of people would end up traumatized from war, or so Jacob assumed.

But overconfidence in War within a world that has magic can potentially birth someone who may or may not be competent enough to not just survive, but thrive.

Jacob forced himself to smile as the Duke rambled on about the things that his way made him stop to do such as pillaging during winter, using alchemical reagents to silently attack enemy camps, grabbing [Mage]s and forcing them into servitude or else die, kidnapping women to make his men happy during the down times of war, and so much more. Most of it is pretty morbid, like the times the Duke was stopped by his wife from creating effigies of their enemies by impaling them with sharp poles through their asses and out their mouths and the more Jacob listened, the more he was thankful that the Duke had a wife that he both respected and loved enough to listen to, as well as someone who was willing to stop the Duke's atrocities.

Though he didn't know if what the Duke is telling him is real or not, Jacob can only hope that maybe Duke Lezatian was slightly exaggerating about his tales.

"When she died," Jacob focused back to the Duke's story as the man's voice turned solemn and sad, "I thought that maybe I should take my revenge on the people that forced us to bear through the plague without assistance and rebel against the Kingdom but then I saw my only daughter and thought, 'do I want her to live in a world that her mother would hate?'." Duke Lezatian chuckled, "of course, I didn't and so, I forced myself to hold back on going to war because of her and to honor my wife's memories,"

"Good for you for respecting her like that," Jacob replied, hoping to not meet the Duke's daughter because he was pretty sure that if there was anything that the man in front of him would be killing him over, it would be him being a shotgun Dad for his daughter, and Jacob didn't know if there are shotguns in this world, but he didn't want to be at the end of something similar.

"I just want what's best for her you know?" The Duke said, "And- oh! There she is!"

Jacob's eyes went to where the Duke was pointing and he saw a girl, teenage, standing in front of the mansion's door. For the first time, Jacob saw something other than brown for hair color, the girl in front of him had hair the color of deep purple and cat-like eyes, she had light blue fur on her forearms and two fox? Bear- Bear ears on top of her head, she was as tall as Jacob and she was staring at him with a soft smile.

And so was the Duke.

Jacob closed his eyes in contemplation. What the hell did he just walk into?