The Knight Doesn't Want to Be Reinstated (6)
Aren still had not admitted his defeat.
I didn't lose!
He had gone down in a single blow, yes—but he hadn't been at his best, and the strike had caught him off guard besides. Not for a moment did Aren entertain the thought that he was weak, or that his opponent had simply been overwhelming.
And why would he? He was the White Lion the Silver Lion Knight Order boasted of. Pendragon's White Lion. A knight who represented the age—that was what he was...!
So he denied his defeat, certain that if they fought again, the result would change.
I can't deny he's strong. But if I'd only drawn my sword, it would have been different!
With a sword in his hand, he was strong. Aren was armored in that certainty, and until a moment ago it had filled him to the brim.
It should have.
Wh-what is that...?
Staring at the carnage spread out before him, Aren could not make his mouth close.
"S-Sir Baker? Sir Rieman..."
Baker and Rieman. They were no masters, but they possessed a knight's proper strength all the same. And yet those two...
They're being taken apart that pathetically?
It was absurd. Had they been caught in a surprise attack, he might have understood. But the ruffian had roared at them head-on like a beast, and both knights had locked up and dropped where they stood, as if some formless force had crashed down over them.
And that was only the beginning.
"S-Sir Dellin. Sir Temern. Even Sir Tovaros..."
The champions the First Knight Order prided itself on lay sprawled to a man, eyes rolled back, broken without mercy. They had drawn steel and charged, and still they had been tossed aside as lightly as a grown man flicking away a child showing off. Even Aren himself could not have put those men down without a hard fight.
But more astonishing than the fact that they had been subdued was this.
"Ha! Call a man a troll every day and he starts thinking he really is one? Why the hell did that bastard grow like that?"
"...He's of a different caliber than when I crossed swords with him. I worked. I truly worked. To think the gap would open this wide..."
"This isn't you falling short. That bastard simply grew past all reason. ...Still, 'putting down more than a hundred knights'—can you even call that growth? And that, too..."
—without a single injury.
...Yes. That monster had casually felled well over a hundred of the Silver Lions.
What kind of monster is that...!
He was sweating and gasping, and yet there wasn't a wound on him. The fact drained what color remained from Aren's face, and at last the monster spoke.
"Anyone else want a turn?"
"......"
"Guess not. Then I'll speak by a winner's right. Don't bother me from now on. I hate political games, and I want even less to get tangled up with the likes of you. Ignore that warning and come at me anyway, and you'd better understand there won't be any more holding back."
A calm warning. The bastard had just warned the First and Second Knight Orders—the very symbols of the royalist and noble factions' armed strength. And not one of them dared ignore it.
The force he had just displayed was nothing short of—
This is insane. He isn't even an Aura User...
......enough to call an Aura User to mind.
The knights could not hide the tremor in their eyes. Among them, one whose pride looked especially fierce opened his mouth, unable to swallow his rage.
"...You think you can do something like this and walk away clean?"
"Threatening me is fine. A threat just needs the skill to back it. A threat from someone without the skill is worse than a dog barking."
"—!"
"If it burns, get stronger. For the record, the way you are now, you couldn't even handle a single Scarlet Eagle. You'd need at least ten of you rushing him at once before it was a decent fight."
"You—!!"
He had compared the Silver Lions to the Scarlet Eagles and judged them far inferior, and the knights' faces flushed as red as faces could flush. Crushed this thoroughly or not, they were still the Silver Lions. The finest knight order in the Royal Capital! It was nothing short of an insult, and bristling was only natural...!
"I told you. If you've got a complaint, come at me. Just know that from here on, the holding back is over."
"......"
The low warning rolled through them, and they learned what it meant for a chill to settle in the marrow. The pressure pouring off him overwhelmed them completely.
...It was the Silver Lions' total defeat.
Lee Han was in the royal prison.
He had not been dragged there by force. Frail soldiers, trembling because their superior had ordered it and they had no choice, had simply crept up to him.
"Um... f-for now, c-could you come with us?"
The sight was so pitiful that he had gone along. And even if they had dragged him—
"If you don't have food and a bed ready, I'll bring this prison down. Figure it out."
"Er... that is..."
"Or should I go back and finish pounding the ones already on the ground?"
"...Is there anything else you need?"
He was behind iron bars, and still no one could lay a careless hand on Lee Han. Locked up, yes—but he could wash with clean water, and if he wanted anything the soldiers fetched it. Comfortable beyond words.
He was thinking a single day here might not be so bad.
"Ahahaha! This bastard—I knew he'd cause a huge mess someday, but this is a truly magnificent disaster! Kwahahaha!"
"...Laugh a little quieter. You're going to burst my eardrums."
"Haha! How am I supposed to keep from laughing at something this funny? Kwahahaha!"
"...I'm going to lose it."
Quiet was clearly a lost cause. Every time the man laughed, Lee Han's body vibrated until he was shaking all over, as if a massive speaker were blasting him point-blank. The laughter alone called up the Lion's Roar he himself used.
Why does everyone call me the monster? The real monster is standing right here...
Beside Lee Han, the middle-aged man was small. White-haired, and by all appearances he ought to have been as frail as a withered branch—and yet he overflowed with strength past mere vigor. The fierce light kindling in his eyes held a vitality no less intense than a young knight's. Past seventy, and still unmistakably hale.
Baltar. A living legend and a great hero, or, by reputation, Pendragon's strongest and finest knight. That was him.
...So this old man was this strong.
Lee Han felt a chill. Was it because this year he had been through an absurd string of disasters? He had been forced to grow whether he wanted to or not, and fortunately he had survived. Surviving, he had grown stronger. Training that crossed the limits of the body, miraculous elixirs, and the experience clawed out of fights that staked his life—at last it felt as if all of it had leveled him up. So Lee Han had been confident he had grown quite strong.
...And yet.
Not even close.
Cold sweat poured off him like rain as he finally felt the gap between himself and Baltar. Growing had only made him feel it more clearly: the difference in power between him and the man called Baltar.
......It was hopelessly far.
I thought I'd caught up... Turns out he was more than a hundred laps ahead of me.
He could not even see the man's back.
"...People really do have to stay humble."
"Only realizing that now?"
"Damn it..."
A bleak doubt—whether he could ever get out from under this old man—settled over him. Even so, Lee Han refused to give up the will to stand against him.
I will catch this old man. No matter what.
Even if the man was a hundred laps ahead—no, a thousand! All he had to do was run harder and faster until the gap closed. The moment you quit because the distance is too great, it's over. Self-affirmation, and a happiness circuit spun until it smoked. Lee Han was performing the most extreme mental maintenance imaginable, like a mop-up pitcher, or a soccer manager who has to stand tall even after running his team into the ground. Lose now, and win later. That was the mindset.
Watching him, Baltar laughed in a different key from before, as if he could never tire of the sight.
"Heh heh. What's with all those faces, all by yourself?"
Somewhere in the laughter was the satisfaction of a master, or a father, watching a disciple or a child grow.
Baltar had not come to the knight order in the dead of night merely to scold Lee Han or to tease him. He was not that idle a man.
"You are idle, though. You barely work. You just play around with your lovers."
"Hey now!"
"...I'm right, aren't I?"
"That foul mouth of yours looks like it needs a beating."
"...I'll shut up."
Lee Han closed his mouth. He had no desire to spend the entire day unconscious.
"Heh heh. Thanks to you, the palace is in an uproar."
An incident in which one hundred and thirty-five men had been beaten to pulp by a single person. Because of it, Baltar—nominally captain of the Third Knight Order—had also been summoned in the night. Some were blustering that the man who had caused the riot ought to be punished...
"They ought to be ashamed instead. How wretched must the knight orders' standard be, for every one of them to lose to a single ordinary knight?"
But Baltar did not think Lee Han was in the wrong. Rather, it was right to feel shame, and to reflect, on the fact that more than a hundred had lost to one man.
"Fools. A disaster like this in the middle of a war, and they still want to argue who was right and who was wrong..."
"...Ahem."
There seemed to be a great many grave signs behind those words. Lee Han turned his head, feeling as if he had put an old man—one who ought to have retired and been living at his ease—through needless hardship.
...He was aware he himself had gone too far.
Still.
Some of it is unfair, though...
Saying it now, Lee Han had never meant to take things this far. He had only planned to give a light warning to the few agitators who had picked the fight, and be done. But—
"You bastard! Don't you slander us!"
"How dare you say we used His Highness the prince...!"
"Have you ever seen so lawless a man!"
...they had flown into a rage, more or less like that. It was the picture of guilty men flinching at their own shadows, and they only raised their voices higher, and little by little—
They were the ones who blew it up.
Knock one down, and another came. Knock that one down, and suddenly they were calling allies. Knock the allies down too, and gradually they started shouting.
"A-an attack! We're under attack...!"
Men who cried ambush without a shred of shame. And so—
"Even the Second Knight Order showed up and piled on?"
"...Men who know no shame."
Past a guilty conscience, they had wanted other people's help. This was nothing less than the knight orders' shame. Their disgrace. But the greatest shame of all was this.
"They came at you that cowardly, lost every last one of them, and still came begging me for help... My word. Even a mercenary company wouldn't stoop to this."
The servility of asking even a worn-out, powerless (?) old man for help. That, truly, was a spectacle.
"How did it look to you?"
"What did? The knight orders' level? Or the part where they mobbed me and still lost?"
"Both."
"...Hmm. They were definitely shoddy. Individual skill? Plenty of them were barely scraping the average for knights. Some looked like they'd stopped growing—like they weren't even training. Those ones will destroy themselves before long."
The external forging he had stressed to the sword faculty when he took up teaching. In other words, the Silver Lions were full of men who trained only their inner energy and neglected the outer work, until their bodies were no better than glass. For now they were holding on with youth, talent, and Fighting Art. Once age wore the body down, youth and talent would be gone. They would fail to withstand the explosive force Fighting Art produced, and destroy themselves.
...But the greater problem, in truth, was something else.
"See, I had a fight with a knight order recently."
"I heard. You smashed those red chicks."
"...That was supposed to be a secret. How do you know?"
"There are ways of knowing everything. Anyway. What is it you're trying to say?"
"...Just this. A knight order—sure, the skill of each knight matters. But cooperation and trust between the knights matter too."
He had won the duel against the Scarlet Eagles, but Lee Han's guts had gone cold that day. He had learned how terrifying knights became once they locked into a single formation, and he had taken their blows until he understood what power a renowned knight order actually held. Even now, thinking of that day made his whole body ache.
If he had slipped even a little—no, if the knight order had been only a little more underhanded? If they had set honor and duels and all the rest aside? If they had devoted everything they had to killing Lee Han... what would have happened then?
The conclusion was easy.
"I'd be dead."
That was how strong the knight order—no, Tristan—had been. The Silver Lions, by contrast—
"They were all off doing their own thing. And they were so wary of each other that it actually made them easier to put down."
Even with an enemy in front of them, they did not focus only on the enemy. They watched the others. You could see them afraid someone would stick a knife in their back. In short, the Silver Lions did not trust one another. They saw each other not as comrades but as political rivals, and a knight order like that...
"If I'd felt like it, I could have put them down even faster. They didn't have attention to spare for me, and they were still scattered like that... Honestly, it pissed me off, so I hit them harder."
"Heh heh."
"Anyway, the way I see it, that isn't a knight order. If they want to call themselves one, they need to move more like a single body. So I didn't fight a knight order today. I fought one-on-one, over and over, and broke a string of shoddy men."
Men who grew weaker the more they tried to cooperate. What he was saying, in effect, was that the Silver Lions were not a knight order at all. A few words that cut to the bone, aimed at an order as old as the kingdom itself. An assessment shameful enough that the leadership, knight orders included, might as well have drowned face-first in a saucer of water.
But the unofficial apex of that leadership—
"Ha, there it is! Teaching must have widened your eye. The you of before wouldn't even have noticed."
...was not imagining the joy. Baltar was delighted even as he listened to Lee Han's harsh review, and Lee Han looked sour.
"...Why are you so happy?"
"Because you've finally understood what a knight order is. No matter how I taught you chivalry and knight orders, it went in one ear and out the other. Now you finally know a thing or two, haha!"
"......"
"You can be reinstated soon enough. The moment you return to the knight order, I'll hand my seat over to you, heh heh!"
The knight order had suffered a historic humiliation, but so what? It had helped widen this young knight's view, had it not? Even if the entire order was humiliated, confirming Lee Han's growth was joy enough. So Baltar wanted him to wrap up the instructor's work and be reinstated. Now that he had proven himself with skill, was this not the perfect time to return—and the chance to become captain?
Baltar held that expectation, and—
"I'm not getting reinstated."
"...?"
...was, unfortunately, thoroughly betrayed. As if to prove he had grown, and grown ruder with it, Lee Han shrugged insolently.
"And I'm not becoming captain either. Why would I do something that annoying?"
"...It is an honorable post."
"Give it to somebody else. Plenty of people who'd want it."
"......"
"What?"
"...I was just thinking your manners have gotten even worse."
"Want to try fixing them?"
"...It has been a while since I hit you."
Lee Han's eyes and Baltar's collided. Neither looked away first. Savage pressure gathered between them, and then, as if it were only the natural next step—
BOOOOM!!!
They crashed together.
......That night, the clash of the two men—no, the two monsters—stopped only after twenty iron bars had been broken in half.
And of course no one ever guessed the truth. Those two monsters had fought over nothing more than a petty quarrel between a knight who didn't want to be reinstated and a knight trying to dump his work on someone else.