The Knight Is Powering Up (3)
"—So what's this about? You're not the sort of dutiful brat who'd come all the way out here just to ask after my health."
The rebuke came in without so much as a breath of warning, and he flinched.
"...Your opinion of me seems rather harsh."
"You don't exactly have the face of a man who's polite to his elders."
"I don't know what you mean by face, but from the tone alone I can guess the gist."
"And what's that?"
"Judging a person by how they look, perhaps."
"Heard it exactly right. This is why talking to a sharp one is easy."
"...Is this what they call wounding a man and then handing him the salve?"
Roen Dmitri de Lionel. The young lord of the North kept that blank expression peculiar to him, so the shifts were hard to catch. A face on which feeling scarcely showed—that was one way to put it. Just now, though, the displeasure was plain.
Lee Han must have read it, because he let out a shameless little chuckle.
"So. Was I wrong?"
"...The irony is that, infuriating as it is, you were not."
"Noble brats are rude to their elders by nature."
"...I cannot fathom why you breathe contempt for nobles as easily as air."
"Be glad it stopped at contempt. If some spell-slinger had looked up at me the way you do, I'd have started by ripping the eyes out."
"Hm..."
As a rule, Roen stayed cold through anything, and even the changes in his feelings were faint to the point of vanishing. Temperament was part of it, but so was station. His blood was high. All his life he had been received with deference, addressed with respect, or—at worst, from an enemy—needled through courteous, cunning turns of phrase. A man who handled him this bluntly, this roughly, was difficult to face.
And yet, if someone asked whether it actually felt unpleasant...
Strangely, I am not offended.
There was no base malice in it. If anything, it felt like being treated as a younger brother. Unfamiliar, yes. Even so.
Not bad. ...Truly.
That he was not displeased was, in itself, a curious thing.
"I heard you crossed blades with my uncle."
Just as Lee Han had predicted, the boy hadn't come to pay his respects. Blackie walked in without so much as a blink.
"...Let's eat first."
Even so, Lee Han liked the sincerity of it: a fine set of fruit, and a mountain of cake from a famous dessert artisan.
He gulped. Even as he grumbled, he shoveled in a slice piled high with custard cream—almond-fragrant, soft, and richly thick.
The taste, though.
"Nothing to complain about. And I don't even like sweets that much."
"As the price of a conversation, it should not be bad. Money alone cannot buy this dessert."
"...I'll give you that."
The flavor was excellent enough to permit that confidence, and so Lee Han went on.
"...If the uncle you mean is that monster of a man, then yeah."
"Then I suppose that is correct."
"Filthy strong. ...And he's not a bad man, but if you're asking whether he's a good one, he isn't that either."
"...Uncle does have that side to him. I can guess, more or less, what happened. Allow me to apologize in his place."
"No, keep the apology. Next time you see him, tell him this. 'No matter how I look at it, the books don't balance. You stole my technique, so pay the rest of what it's worth.'"
"...I will deliver it without fail."
The moment the duel with Maximus was mentioned, Blackie smiled a bitter smile, as if he could already sketch what had happened. Watching that reaction from the corner of his eye, Lee Han grew certain the boy had come to ask about the business in the Tunnels—and clicked his tongue at the same time.
He's asking me?
It would have been faster to ask his own father.
Last time I saw them, things with the grand duke weren't exactly warm.
Awkward with his father—no. Openly hostile. It was family business, so Lee Han wasn't about to pry, but still.
Go to any world you like. There's never a shortage of houses falling apart.
He was quietly relieved this kingdom had no custom of home visits. At least he wouldn't have to sit and watch someone else's household come undone.
Lee Han did not grow stingy.
"A fanatic cult dug into the Tunnels, the raising of half-fiends, and a Mystery breeding giant worms there as well... Ha! Every one of those tales is dreadful enough to shake the kingdom."
The information had been hard-won, and he could have complained that he was giving it away for a few slices of cake. But the Blackie Lee Han knew—
"—And yet I, too, seem to have come upon similar people by chance. There was a slave caravan we annihilated recently, and they appeared to be tied to the fanatics. In particular, the vast number of prisoners used to summon that monster, the Ghost King—I suspect that caravan was what carried them."
"...That is one hell of a coincidence."
"Yes. We were truly fortunate."
There it was. A model of thorough give-and-take. Sound information and a clear view of it came pouring out, and the price of not being stingy returned in kind.
"Hm. What this tells us is that the collaborator has held the whole of the southern continent's underworld for decades, at the least. Otherwise the Tunnels, and the slave caravans with them, would never have cooperated."
"Who could build a force like that?"
"Even among those who might be called great nobles, if we set aside Galahad, Lionel, and Tristan, there would be perhaps three candidates. A merchants' coalition, or the mercenary companies taken together, might also manage it. As for other great figures that come to mind... hm. Five more, at the least."
"...That's a disgusting number of suspects."
"And every one of them is difficult to deal with."
"Hmm..."
Lee Han scratched his cheek. The more he heard, the more his head ached.
Tch!
Forget it. What am I supposed to do by worrying? Sis will handle it.
He'd already put a former colleague in her hands. She wouldn't cut corners. He had done as much as he meant to do, and from here on it was a matter for the people up top. He decided to switch his interest off.
"If you accumulate a few more achievements like this one, Instructor, you could become one of those lofty personages whenever you wished."
"No thanks. What's a sword-swinger supposed to do with power?"
"Even so, does it not grate? This situation, in which Aren Pendragon walks away with all the credit."
"...You seem more put out about it than I am."
"When I think of how much further that incompetent will swagger, now that honor is his, I am already displeased."
"Oh, ho."
A scathing denunciation of royalty. The hostility in it was no small thing, and Lee Han looked at him as if seeing the fact afresh.
Blackie. So you've got bad blood with Geumjjoki too?
Well, Geumjjoki was hardly the sort Blackie would take a liking to. If Blackie was a wolf that had survived a brutal struggle out on the wild plain, Geumjjoki was a chihuahua raised in a greenhouse. The worlds that had shaped them were different, and if they ever did meet, hostility would come down between them at once. That was how it looked to Lee Han, at least. And if they had clashed—!
Odds are Geumjjoki was the one who got thrashed.
He'd have bet on it. Before the regression, those two had fought two or three times without fail. He could ask Taechang about it later. For now—
"I'll say it again. I don't particularly need illusions like power or honor. I'd rather have something practical."
"...Did you receive a price to your liking?"
Perhaps he had caught something in Lee Han's tone. He asked it back, and Lee Han...
"......To some extent."
He murmured it as if soothing Blackie, and let his gaze slip aside.
"This cake is ridiculously good. What is this... why is the standard this high in a medieval world?"
"Lady Irene, have some tea as well. You'll choke."
The two girls were chattering away, and his eyes had settled, in particular, on the girl whose hair shone like light on water.
"Well. I think it's a fair price."
"Is... that so."
...Roen saw it. The satisfaction that colored that gaze, just for an instant.
And he remembered. The people of House Folt, whom his subordinates had been watching, suddenly shaking like victims of a seizure, foaming at the mouth, and collapsing. And also this.
They said a tattoo like a burn had been carved into the face, the neck, and the back.
And that tattoo, without a doubt...
It was the tattoo that should have been on Jan.
His friend, whom he could no longer see. But a friend he thought it fortunate not to see—because, apparently...
So you've truly found your freedom...
Roen lowered his head and called it a relief.
—Looking at a friend's face, empty of worry and care, he felt, somehow, that tears might come.
Congratulations, Jan. No... Levi.
He offered, in his heart, a sincere congratulations he had never once given anyone in his life, and he was silent. As if savoring the lingering taste of it.
...Curse Transfer, was it. Sis really does know a lot of strange things.
Lee Han knew the unwholesome curse no longer clung to his student. More precisely, it was not wholly gone, but she had said something like nine-tenths of it had been removed.
"Curse Transfer is exactly what it sounds like: a method of passing a curse on to someone else. But to use it, a number of troublesome conditions must be met, and the price is considerable. Be grateful. For your sake, I bore both the sacrifice and the cost. In sum alone, it would have come to a hundred thousand gold coins."
"......And why don't you do that for me?"
"Impudent brat! You ought to be grateful, and you lead with an objection?"
"No, do it for me too!!"
"Impossible. Do you think you and your student are the same? That child is not wholly one with the curse; it has a fixed form, a tattoo. Yours has become one with the blood running through your body, has it not? Of course, if we drew out all the blood and removed only the curse, it might be another matter. Hmm. The chance you would live is no more than two percent. Would you still attempt it?"
"...What, are you telling me to hold my own funeral and be done with it?"
"I have stated only the facts. ...Hm. Enough wordplay. Even so, caution is still required. Five years must pass before the curse fully settles in those who received it through Curse Transfer. If, during those five years, any one of them should die, it will return to the host."
"...So they just have to not die for five years? Then couldn't we freeze the ones who took it and store them that way?"
"...Now and then I think my sworn younger brother's ideas are truly ignorant. When you thaw frozen meat, is it still sound?"
"...So frozen people don't work?"
"......They say a knight is more excellent the more of a fool he is. My sworn younger brother is, without a doubt, an excellent knight. Ho ho."
"......Ugh."
Remembering the day a medieval princess had corrected his common sense, he let out a groan. A truly humiliating experience. Even so.
"Five years, hm... What if we froze them? That would be easier to manage."
"......"
"...Why are you looking at me with such warm eyes?"
"No. ...I was merely thinking that you, too, are an excellent knight."
"?"
"There is such a thing."
Lee Han was glad to have an excellent comrade.
The talk had been more or less settled. Sunset was sinking, and dusk was about to come into the yard. Roen rose quietly from his seat.
"The conversation ran longer than I expected. I will take my leave."
"Got everything you came for, so you're going? Cold bastard."
"...Shall I treat you to dinner? I did open a restaurant recently."
"A restaurant?"
"Newly, on Central Noble Street."
"...Isn't the land expensive there?"
"The investment was costly, yes. But I am confident I can draw that much profit back out of it."
"......Why is everyone around me nothing but rich people?"
Lee Han grumbled, as if he were the only pauper in the lot. Even so.
"Forget dinner. Do a little exercise before you eat, then go."
He had something more interesting than the boy's fortune, or anything else, and so he made the offer.
"...Exercise before a meal..."
"Light exercise before dinner. That's all."
"......I suspect it will be anything but light."
"Now that's a line I like."
Lee Han was satisfied with the reaction. And well he might be.
"Because you didn't refuse."
"...There are times I, too, wish to loosen up."
At some point Blackie had drawn his sword, and Lee Han rose, well pleased.