A Knight Hates Love Triangles (2)
Lee Han had almost never been fishing. Not in his past life, and not in this one. Expensive hobby, he thought. It cost more than people expected—the rod, of course, and every other piece of gear besides, and then the boat rental, and fuel that was never as cheap as it ought to be. Fishing had been a rich man's pastime to him, and coming to this world had not changed his mind. If anything, he suspected it was even more expensive here.
And for good reason.
"...So this is a private fishing spot. No—a private fish farm?"
"Yes. Fish in an ordinary river or lake, and you might be attacked by fish that have turned into monsters, or eaten outright. That's why the nobles build farms of their own, or so I've heard. Even then, unless you're seriously wealthy, you can't manage one. Upkeep, maintenance, the cost of laying it out in the first place—every bit of it is astronomical."
"......"
"Is fishing really that fun? I don't see why anyone would build a whole farm just to do it."
"...Yeah."
He answered, and still his mouth hung half open. If this wasn't pissing money away for the sport of it, he didn't know what was.
This is seawater, right?
Even a man without a sensitive nose couldn't have missed it. The smell of the sea was that plain. And then—
"...Don't tell me that's a sea bream."
Fish that belonged in the ocean. Red sea bream, black sea bream, squid, octopus, and even—!
The water tore open in a sheet of spray.
"Whoa, a shark!"
"......"
They were raising sharks.
Lee Han understood, then, that this vast lake was an artificially built sea, and he was past knowing whether to laugh or swear. I'll stake my name on it. There isn't another artificial sea like this anywhere. Other nobles might keep fish farms, but nothing that could stand beside this. The false sea was one thing. The things living in it were another. A fair number had probably been taken straight out of the ocean and turned loose here. Gold coins melting in real time. Melting... Just to keep an imitation of the sea alive, gold would burn by the second. He was already sick to the teeth of it.
As if there were still more left to sicken him.
"You've arrived, my lady."
"Oh, it's Miss Elsa."
At the farm—no, the fishing grounds—servants stood in lines, waiting, more of them than he cared to count. Maids and attendants alone looked to be over a hundred, with knights and soldiers dotted in among them. It rivaled every crewman he had ever seen staffing a luxury cruise in his past life, all of them added together, and every last one of them was waiting on a single person. Shock, in that case, was the correct response.
"Hmm. A bit short on servants today, isn't it?"
"Her Highness dislikes setting needless numbers in motion."
"Fair. Two or three hundred people moving every time she takes a step is a bit much."
"Even so, given Her Highness's standing, it is my opinion that twice that number ought to move."
"Come on, that's too far."
"Hehe. Is it?"
"........."
What the hell kind of conversation was this?
The chick felt strangely like a stranger. She was supposed to be nothing more than the ordinary girl next door, and now it was like watching her summon a private jet and call it her car. Did that comparison even work? I feel it all over again. The world was unfair. Lee Han shook his head, and once they had passed several dozen servants—
"—So you've finally come."
"......"
A familiar face. Not one he had particularly wanted to see: a man keeping a young, handsome look that no one could ever have imagined belonged to his fifties. The outside was only the outside. Inside, he was raising a few hundred old vipers at the least—a cunning politician, and a power in the kingdom who would take offense at being called second. That was the man. And that man welcomed Lee Han kindly, so that Lee Han, for once, broke into a cold sweat.
"It's been half a year, Knight Lee Han."
"...Why did you come out to meet me yourself? It's a bit much."
"The man who sent the invitation ought to show at least this much sincerity, wouldn't you say?"
"......That sincerity is why they're glaring holes through me."
"Their loyalty runs a little hot. You'll understand."
"......"
I'd understand, if my whole body weren't prickling...
From the moment the duke came out to greet him, a hundred soldiers and the knight order with them poured out a fierce pressure, and Lee Han thought that bolting, even now, might be the wise choice.
Blake Vivian de Galahad, the Duke. The kingdom's one and only duke, its finest swordsman, the greatest successor to the Magic Sword in all its history, the greatest Galahad of the age. The glittering titles did not stop. He was the noble among nobles, and there was even a rumor that a single conversation with him could change a life.
Some bastards burn through their whole family fortune just for one talk with this old man, don't they?
Lee Han turned over a rumor he had picked up without meaning to, and scratched his cheek. True or not, facing a giant like this against his will sat wrong, and nothing else. Others might have envied him. For him—
Ha. I just want to go home, eat, and sleep.
It was nothing but a bothersome hour.
"Hmm. Impious thoughts, I see."
"...What do you mean?"
"Don't lie. Reading your face isn't merely simple. It's transparent."
"......"
"And there you go, thinking nonsense again. I have no talent for reading minds."
"...Did you pick up mind-reading somewhere?"
"Ahaha! If I had, that would be truly splendid. Unfortunately, your expression is simply very easy to read."
"...Mmm."
Somehow, everyone he met seemed fond of telling him that. That his face was easy to read. ...Should I start wearing a mask? Just as the idle thoughts the duke had named were about to run on, the duke guided him himself.
"Come. Sit."
"...?"
Before he could even wonder why the duke was escorting him in person, Lee Han blinked at a display of fishing so lavish it bordered on obscene.
Water broke.
Divers—not the women of the sea, the men—were hauling seafood up for them. Sea urchins, shellfish, shrimp and the other crustaceans came rising, and the rod—
"A big one."
Gilded, no, made of actual gold, it reeled in a massive tuna and made a spectacle that had no business existing.
...If old Santiago had seen this, wouldn't he have felt cheated?
Lee Han had been struck by the old man's desperate fight for a tuna in The Old Man and the Sea, and watching one get hauled in at a farm-side fishing spot was simply absurd. Was there even a river in this world where tuna lived?
"A tuna. Have you eaten one before?"
"Uh, once or so?"
"Oh? Difficult to come by inland, and yet you have. Fortunate. Then you won't balk at the eating. Butler."
"Yes."
"Break it down and bring it."
"As you command."
A tuna well past six hundred pounds was held up in one hand and passed over, and the old man called the butler took it in one hand of his own. Not an ordinary butler. A former knight, most likely, who had trained his Fighting Art to a considerable height. The butler's skill wasn't even the surprising part.
Has everyone here learned Fighting Art?
Not one servant of the ducal house was a lightweight. From the maids to the attendants to the people doing odd jobs, a considerable presence rolled off all of them. Quasi-Knight at the very least. The soldiers, being fighting men, were each as good as a hundred, and send any of them to some provincial town and a Knight's commission would not have been hard to come by. As for the knights—
Upper ranks of the Scarlet Eagle, even?
There wasn't one among them who wouldn't match the upper tier of Tristan's eagles. In other words, the place was overflowing with men fit to be vice-captains, or captains, of a knight order.
Well, damn. So much for the Silver Lions. White Cats, the lot of them.
The levels were simply different. Put it the way Taechang would: the royal house's average strength, Silver Lions included, barely scraped Lv.4, while Galahad's average sat at Lv.6. Taechang's line was that a single level of difference was the gap between a sparrow and an eagle. If that held true—
Without Uncle Baltar, the royal house would've been swallowed ages ago, no?
The country's name might switch from Pendragon to Galahad any day it pleased. Lee Han understood, then, why that sister of his had shown such wariness toward Galahad. A force like this. From a royal's seat, of course it was a worry.
While one astonishing thing after another kept coming, unlike his usual lot—
"The food is out. Eat."
"......"
"A delicacy rarely tasted inland. You would do well to have some."
"...It looks good, but the seating is pretty hard to stomach."
Tuna and every kind of seafood had come out in heaps—carpaccio, ceviche, and more besides—and still his appetite refused to stir. For good reason.
"Understand them. Their loyalty runs excessive."
Every time the duke showed kindness, the ducal servants turned their hostility on Lee Han. In a situation like this, as if food would go down easily.
"...Like I could eat in a situation like this. ...Huh. It goes down fine?"
"...Shameless as ever, I see."
Astonishingly, the meal the duke had set was delicious, and whether they showed their hostility or not, Lee Han ate the raw fish with open pleasure. Whoa. So this is what tuna tastes like! For the record, the only tuna he had ever eaten was the all-you-can-eat kind. Raw tuna like this was a first in his life, and he demolished the slices without coming up for air. Someone might well have called it shameful, gorging himself so freely in front of a duke.
"Our instructor really tucks in, doesn't he? So happily."
"A man shouldn't pick at his food. That's how you're supposed to eat!"
The mage chick already had love's blinders on good and proper, and she and the ghost girl alike simply liked the sight of him eating well.
"Tea. It will aid your digestion."
"Digestion's already done. Just give me more of that cake. It's good."
"...If you wish, shall I have some packed for when you depart?"
"Even better. Thank you, butler."
"Haha..."
At the brazen request, the old man who seemed to be the butler looked flustered, and still he nodded. Brazen, and yet polite enough that he was not the sort one could dislike.
"...You'll be well liked by your elders."
Duke Blake, who had barely touched the food, spoke as if impressed. Lee Han had eaten through enough seafood for twenty people on his own, and was still putting away cake and fruit. It was no ordinary sight.
"I'm picky by nature. I don't usually eat food other people make, but the ducal kitchen suits me. Your chef is excellent."
"...Our head chef would be pleased to hear it."
Lee Han lied without taking a breath. He ate anything. He had lived as a slave, as a mercenary, and as a soldier. Where was there room to be picky? Only the part about it being delicious was sincere. The finest meal of my life. He meant it with his past life counted in. Money and power, and you can eat well no matter the age. With the state of his wallet, he probably wouldn't taste a lunch this refined again. And because he had been treated so generously—
"So. What are you trying to ask for, treating me this well, Duke?"
"What do you mean?"
He wanted, at last, to get to the point.
"Meaning aside, there's no way you'd show me favor for no reason. I can't begin to guess why you'd go to the trouble of serving a meal this expensive."
"Hmm. Might I not simply have taken a liking to you, and treated you to a meal?"
"Nah, that's not it. You'd never summon me for a reason that simple."
"Oh? And your reason for thinking so?"
"Mmm. Because you're the same sort as the powerful men I know well...?"
"......You presume to appraise me?"
"You're reading too much into it."
Lee Han shrugged. He wasn't enough of a lout to be rude to a man who had fed him well, but right now a little rudeness seemed allowed. Because—
"Powerful men get kind when they want something. In that sense, Duke, it looks like there's something you want from me."
"......"
"Or not. Forget I said it."
Today, it seemed, he wasn't the one who had to bow. He was the one being courted.
"...Your face and your wits don't match. You're sharp."
"......What's wrong with my face?"
"Haha."
"I was asking seriously..."
"I was impatient, I'll grant you that."
Duke Blake seemed to be reflecting on his own manner. He was admitting that his eagerness had shown, plainly enough to be obvious. And then—
"You're right. There are three things I wish to ask. You needn't grant the other two. But one request, I would very much like you to grant."
"...?"
"...Was it Pierre? That young inquisitor girl you keep with you."
"......"
"......"
"...Why do you look at me like that?"
"...Duke, you might want to listen back to what you just said."
"Hm? What about it is strange?"
"......"
Did he not realize that, on the words alone, he sounded like a criminal? Lee Han was dumbfounded, and then their eyes met, and only then did he understand. Looking again—
This one's eyes have gone a little mad, too?
The dark one was like that. This gentleman was like that. How come—
Why do they all say they'll kill someone, and make it sound sweet?
He drew a long, thin breath.
Red's got a mean fate on her, too.
......Was this supposed to count as popularity?
Truly.
It was nothing if not a love triangle with murder waiting in it.