Knights Call Themselves the Defeated (3)
The instant blade met spearpoint, his mind went dark—and not his alone. His opponent's must have cut out in the same breath.
It was nothing but a feeling, and yet the certainty of it sat strangely solid. The blackout had lasted somewhere between one second and three. He hadn't tried to count, so he couldn't swear to it, but that felt about right. His guess was that the shock of the Boundless Sword colliding with Heaven-Rend had thrown up a blast even the two of them couldn't endure, and for a heartbeat their minds had simply been blown clear.
…And when he came to, what he saw was this.
"A broken blade, and a spearpoint that wasn't."
"……."
"But even with the advantage, that man yanked himself backward all of a sudden. I didn't see a scratch on him."
"…Why would he do that?"
"No idea. Maybe his judgment went soft in that little stretch he was out. …Or maybe there was some other reason. Either way, the match just fizzled, I was left feeling filthy about it, and that bastard ran off muttering something about how I'd won. …That's the whole of it."
"Haha…."
Lee Han grumbled through the telling, plainly sour over a situation he found thoroughly unpleasant, and Derek laughed in spite of himself. Unpleasant as it must have been to say aloud, the man was forcing the story out and explaining it with such care because he knew it was buildup.
Buildup for what?
"…Still. I'm sorry. I went and broke a precious sword."
"It's really fine…."
Buildup for an apology.
Having learned in his own flesh why a debtor has no choice but to plead his case, Lee Han looked away, and Derek could only smile, awkward and helpless. Lee Han held out the gladius—smashed to pieces, nothing left but the hilt; no, the thing that had once been a gladius—and apologized. He would have brazened his way through most things, but he hadn't sold off quite enough shame to break a precious sword and then wipe his mouth clean.
The man on the receiving end, however, waved it off as excessive.
"I-it's all right. It wasn't that precious."
"If a masterwork isn't precious, then what is?"
He asked because he suspected the other was only saying it to spare him the burden, but Taechang shook his head—not burden, not anything of the sort, as if he were putting nothing in his mouth but the plain truth.
And then, instead:
"A masterwork…. Ah. The swords in that warehouse did all look good, I'll give you that."
He nodded as if he'd just discovered something he hadn't known himself, and Lee Han shot the question back on reflex.
"…Warehouse?"
"Yes. There's a place called the Dwarves' Trash Bin—a warehouse where the dwarves' and hobbits' failures are all piled up. It was abandoned about two hundred years ago, and I use it as Warehouse No. 5."
"……."
"That sword was one of the things I brought out of there. It'd just be a bit sturdier than your average blade."
In other words, among the things rolling around on the floor, it had looked relatively clean, so he'd picked it up. Lee Han came to a rapid, visceral understanding of the gap between his wealth and Taechang's.
"Looking at it now, the richest man in the kingdom was standing right in front of me…."
"I-I'm not quite that rich. ……Th-though… do I make the top ten, maybe?"
"…I'm going to stop talking."
Thinking it over again, regressor or possessor, none of that mattered.
The System Window really is the final boss.
…Enviable bastard. An envy Lee Han had never once felt toward Maximus's talent rose up in him now.
"—So who won?"
"Hm?"
At his junior's abrupt question, Lee Han blinked, and Jord, perhaps taking the reaction for something else, flinched and dropped his eyes. Maybe he'd made the man angry. But curiosity, it seemed, could not be stopped, and he pushed past the fear.
"Y-you fought Sir Maximus, didn't you? The Black Lion of the North…."
He got the question out bravely at last. Only then did Lee Han understand what he meant, and he laughed, easy and hollow, wearing a face that could not have been kinder. A soft smile on his mouth, he said:
"Junior. Do you really have to ask that while I'm eating? Keep it up and I might bite you."
A low warning.
"……I'm sorry."
The moment the first warning landed, Jord bent at the waist with perfect courtesy. They say you don't even poke a dog while it's eating, don't they? Well—they say you leave the dog alone because it bites, and Lee Han bit too, if you poked him at a meal. Being a civilized man, he would only discipline you lightly with his hands rather than his mouth.
"Biting would be kinder. Discipline someone with those hands and one slip turns it into murder."
"Enough of the bullshit. Tell me how things stand."
"It isn't bullshit, it's the honest truth, but…."
Lee Han crammed his gut in a rush with bread, sausage, and the like, hauled out of the all-purpose System Window's inventory, and asked after the present situation. He'd peeled off onto the Secret Path and had no idea how things stood.
"You didn't forget the mission, at least."
Sloppy posture or not, Jake felt a private pride in his friend for remembering the work that was actually his. …Of course, say that admiration out loud and he was liable to get bitten in the junior's place, so he kept it inside and summarized, stating only what had happened: Aren's exploits, the number of Half-Fiends they had dealt with, and last—the thing that mattered most.
"Fortunately, thanks to our helper, we've got the fanatic in custody. The mission is effectively a success. …We never did see those hundreds of Half-Fiends you said you'd seen, though."
"……."
News enough to harden a face in an instant. Lee Han tipped the rest of what he was eating into his mouth and swallowed it down.
"…Did they already get out through some passage we don't know?"
"If you want to look on the bright side, there's also the chance they were all crushed under the dirt."
"That would be best."
Lee Han had cut the numbers down some, and when the tunnels collapsed, a fair number of Half-Fiends must have failed to get clear. A third fewer—no, maybe only a fifth? But even reduced that far….
"Let even one or two of them loose and they're threat enough."
"Hmm. Should we search the area with the soldiers, even now?"
"You think so? There wouldn't be much point. They went uncaught for over ten years. They won't be easy enough to find just because we're looking now."
"…Sharp observation, for a face like that. …Once in a while, anyway."
"Drop the useless talk, will you?"
They scratched their heads. They had worked themselves raw clearing out a termite nest, and still the unease remained: those termites might yet be alive, and headed for the city.
"……Hah. Nothing for it."
Lee Han let the breath out, and Jake, who could guess well enough what he was thinking, answered with a bitter smile edged in fatigue.
"Suffering a little longer is one way, I suppose…. A fortnight—no. Do we have to sit on this for a month?"
The conclusion they shared amounted to orthodox grunt work. To track the Half-Fiends they would extend their stay and visit every village spread through the area, one by one, to protect them. Textbook misery, scheduled in advance.
"Life…."
Just thinking of the hardship ahead dragged a groan out of him.
"…You seniors really are diligent."
Jord found them absurd. They didn't actually have to take that suffering on themselves, and yet here they were, volunteering for it. No one was ordering them, and doing it would bring no reward. They were moving only to stop a tragedy that might break out somewhere—moving only to see a responsibility through. And Jord thought he suddenly understood why their rank sat so low.
No wonder these people never get ahead.
Once they took a job, there was no flexibility in them. They worked by the book and gave it everything, so that no one else would come to harm. Who worked like that these days? No one was going to praise them for it. It was nothing but self-satisfaction.
……And yet, because of that.
"First, I'll get a map of the nearby villages."
They were worth following.
And then—
"—The First Knight Order will take that on. You lot, go back."
As if to prove he was not the only one moved by them, a man called out.
"Sir Aren? What do you…."
Eyes gathered on Aren Pendragon's declaration, and Aren, wearing that arrogant look peculiar to him, declared it again.
"I mean precisely what I said. The search for the Half-Fiends and the fanatics—I will see to it myself."
"Together with the First Knight Order, you mean?"
"Yes!"
"…Must you?"
"Hah! What do you mean, asking me again!"
"……."
"I told you to answer!"
…How was he supposed to say it with his own mouth? Trusting the man and the First Knight Order was still, well….
"Trust Geumjjoki and a pack of halfwits? I'd sooner hand it to our bears. How am I supposed to trust the lot of you with it?"
……Ironically, there was someone present who could say that out loud—open contempt for a royal and the First Knight Order—and, more unfortunately still, the fact that the remark was grounded in truth was what set Aren boiling. He couldn't tell what Geumjjoki meant, but from the tone alone he could guess it was an insult. So Aren shot a finger into the air.
"Say that damned Geumjjoki one more time, and then I'll—!"
"I might pull that finger off nice and clean."
"…Th-then is then…. Ahem. I wasn't raising it at you. Don't misunderstand."
Angry as he was, Aren had learned enough not to raise his voice openly at Lee Han. Or, more precisely, was it the fist he was afraid of?
"…E-even so, I would like you to leave it to us."
He seemed to have been shut down pathetically, and yet Aren found his courage again. And then:
"I know as well as anyone that the First Knight Order is lacking in many ways. But how can we leave them idle simply because each man's ability falls short? That is a waste of manpower, and it is no different from a knight—no, a soldier—throwing his duty away. It is a deception practiced upon the nation. Therefore I, Aren Pendragon, as the captain charged with the First Knight Order, have a mission: to carry out that duty and that responsibility."
"………"
…Lee Han blinked.
No…….
Why is this bastard suddenly talking like a normal person?
Even he found the change in the grown-up Geumjjoki unsettling.
Aren kept arguing whether the man was surprised or not.
"Of course, at the First Knight Order's level they couldn't even handle Half-Fiends, and I know full well they will not carry out their duties in good faith. But if I mobilize the Second Knight Order as well and push with numbers, we may not beat the Half-Fiends, yet we can pin them down. And the ill will they bear each other will make them perform the tasks they are given all the more diligently."
"…You believe that makes sense?"
It would be ideal if things fell out that way, but the First and the Second were political enemies—water and oil, itching at every moment to be rid of each other. Put them together, and if blades came out, or they started killing one another, then what?
"—Should such a thing occur, I intend to treat it at once as insubordination and put them to the headsman's blade."
"……."
"Before they are rivals, the Silver Lions are a knight order, and soldiers of the army. If they disobey orders and move for private grudges and personal advancement, beheading them is only proper. I cannot watch everyone, of course. But any knight who loses even a single member of his squad, I intend to execute on the spot."
"Th-that's too extreme."
"I am only doing what is necessary."
"…Ha."
Jord, who had raised the objection, was sunk. What came out of him was not admiration. He was simply struck dumb by the man's nerve.
"The outcry will not be small."
"I know. But what would you have me do? The First Knight Order is half-witted. Their skill is lacking, and there is no useful corner to them. The Second is the same—useless. And! A useless knight is a rotten root of the kingdom. Therefore—"
A thin, cold smile.
"……."
Jake was sunk in the same instant.
The Way of the Hegemon.
A vicious Way of the Hegemon. Perhaps because there had always been an arrogant streak in him, Aren's education in kingship overflowed with extremes. Had he become the king's heir, it would not have been strange for the nobles to rise in rebellion on the spot. But he was a prince with nothing to do with the succession, a man in a station where he could earn as much of their hatred as he liked. He also carried the epithet White Lion, an alias manufactured for propaganda. Even if he put knights to death at his own discretion, neither the royalist faction nor the noble faction had left themselves room to make an issue of it. They had piled too much weight behind him.
From the nobles' side, no matter how much weight they lent him, they had probably thought him nothing but incompetent and given the matter no thought at all.
Could they have predicted it? That a hopeless child would become a different man overnight.
"Why is Geumjjoki suddenly like that?"
"……."
Ah…. Now that he thought about it, no. Aren hadn't become a new man overnight. He had been forced into it. Right.
Recalling that, Jake's eyes and Jord's slid, just slightly, toward him—toward the man who could fairly have called himself an authority on the education of character. Lee Han, who had beaten an incompetent royal into usefulness with the rod of love (?), only looked on.
"Geumjjoki. You didn't hit your head somewhere, did you?"
"I did not! And stop calling me Geumjjoki!"
"…You're still an ungrateful brat, though. How did this guy end up like this?"
"Y-you—!"
He had no idea the change was an achievement of his own making. He only watched, as if it were a curiosity.
"…Is that guy actually a specialist in beating sense into people?"
"Seems so…."
A moment when the thought rose on its own: perhaps he ought not to have been a knight at all, but gone down the road of a teacher.