What Is a Knight's Cause to Fight (5)
Orthrus was furious.
Kyung—kiiing!
To think it had been reduced to a form this young! By some miracle one head had survived intact, and it had managed to come back—but this was truly the end of the line. It had burned through every scrap of nourishment it possessed. One more heavy blow, and it would die on the spot.
Shrunk to the size of a puppy, Orthrus was so indignant that tears welled in its eyes, and it turned a look of pure hatred on the hulking knight. All of this, it was certain, was that knight's fault.
Grr!
But Orthrus knew exactly how pathetic it had become, and so it could not bring itself to attack. Which meant that, for now—
Kiiing.
Pyiing.
Grrrr...
It needed time to gather strength for revenge. At the moment it was nothing but a pup. If it hunted prey and grew all over again from the beginning, then—then it could take its revenge on the hulking knight who had dealt it this petty humiliation.
Grr!
In the pursuit of revenge, ten years is not too long. For the first time in its life, Orthrus dreamed of a plan measured in decades.
A hand snatched it up.
...Except that, for all the grudge it nursed, Orthrus was pathetic.
"Wondered where you'd gone and hid. So this is where you were?"
!!?
Right now it was far too small—too helpless—to run from that monster.
"We've still got business left, don't we?"
......
"Well, don't worry. I'll send you off without any pain."
Kiiiing...!
Tears brimming in its eyes, Orthrus looked up at the man who had it by the scruff. A monstrous human. Not only had he beaten it down—he had put even that hulking knight down with ease!
Orthrus arranged its face into the most pitiful expression it could manage and played cute, as if begging to be spared. Humans liked cute things. Done this way, it was sure to work...
"Two heads, and a snake tail besides. Real cute, I'm sure."
......
...How had he read its mind?
Orthrus even entertained the perfectly reasonable suspicion that this human might be a monster of its own kind, merely wearing a man's shape. But whether it suspected him or not, there was no mercy in the hand that held it. An axe was already there, and from the edge itself rose an aura vicious beyond words. It was an axe that had taken the heads of countless monsters, mages, and heretics. Orthrus caught the overwhelming reek of blood—and then, with a thin trickle, it wet itself.
This was a human so terrifying that even revenge was past dreaming.
And then—
"Wait a moment."
"?"
"I think it would be better not to kill it."
!
For an instant, Orthrus saw hope. Watching the monster's momentum falter at the words of a somewhat elderly human, it was even moved.
Grr!
Old human, I like you!
For the first time, Orthrus began to feel fondness and affection for the species called humanity—
"Orthrus blood makes an ingredient for high-grade potions. It matches a potion brewed from high-purity living troll blood, or surpasses it. Grind the fur fine and you can make a salve that works well on burns, and the venom from the tail becomes medicine for joint pain and gout. Keep it alive and draw from it again and again, and it will profit you as well."
"Oh."
"The heart and the liver are delicacies, too. According to texts passed down in the family, they have been judged the most delicious meat in the world. And even if you pull the heart or the liver out, so long as the head is intact the organs regenerate on their own. You can keep harvesting them."
"Oh!"
......
"Heh. Beginning to take an interest?"
"Interest? I'm practically drooling."
"Glad to hear it."
...Keheung...
Orthrus wailed, small and pathetic.
You cruel bastards—just kill me!
It was a wail no one would ever hear.
Orthrus cried like a dog.
Knights, as a rule, were people with at least one defect.
It might have been a narrow view, but every knight he had met was like that. Some were mad for a single thing; others were simply broken in the head. And it wasn't hard to understand. They spoke of honor and of guarding the nation, yet a knight's work, in the end, was to stake life against death—against monsters, against criminals, against the knights of other lands. Just as a soldier sent to war came home with grave wounds of the mind, a knight lived forever in the sight of blood, and a crack in the psyche was as good as a passive trait.
So if a man meant to live as a knight, a life balanced on the sword, he needed a firm ego. Stubbornness, in other words. Something close to an unshakable madness.
In that sense—
This bastard is in a class of his own.
Of everyone Lee Han had ever met, he was certain the knight possessed of the most fucked-up madness was that man right there.
"Just as the lion and the tiger reign over plain and mountain with nothing but their own fangs and claws, one born strong is right to fight by maximizing the purity of his nature!!"
"Lions and tigers are beasts."
"Humans, if you think about it, are animals too!!"
"...Say that where a temple can hear you, and they'll have a fit."
"Because it is the truth! I am unashamed!!"
"I get it, so lower your voice. You're loud."
"Understood!!!"
"......"
He understood the point, at least. A knight was already born with talent and a body, and on top of that learned Fighting Art, and even took up armor and weapons such as sword and spear—so to go further still and use technique was simply too cowardly.
"So if I take it that way, that's the idea?"
"Impressive. To refine a theory that absurd into something so coherent."
"Well. I've got a lot of strange people around me."
"Doesn't feel like someone else's trouble. You've suffered plenty yourself."
"......"
Lee Han felt a little sorry for the old man. What had possessed him to take a disciple like that and grind his heart down so badly?
"Heh. Even so, the talent is exceptional."
"...Was it that obvious?"
"No one's ever told you your face is easy to read?"
"......"
"Heard it often, I see. Heh."
Look at him and he was nothing but the uncle from next door, but perhaps this was what it took to be called a knight captain. The quiet presence that felt so natural was anything but ordinary, and both his manner of speech and the keenness of his eye were grave and sharp. Not merely a knight who was strong, but a knight who possessed the cunning of long years.
...That other old man was just a layabout.
Recalling the only knight captain he knew, Lee Han shook his head. Then again, what use would that man have for seasoned cunning? If he put his mind to something, there was nothing he couldn't do.
While Lee Han was nodding along to himself, carrying both sides of the thought like a man beating drum and janggu at once, he caught sight of the noisy one still slung over the old knight's shoulder like a pack, chattering without pause.
"Master! I believe we must extend our training hours even further!"
"...And what do you mean to do by bulking up any more than that?"
"More strength! Even greater muscle...!"
"...Just shut up. I'm about to burst a blood vessel."
"Is that not serious!? Have you been injured!!?"
"...Why did I take this fool as a disciple and spend my twilight years like this..."
"I respect you, Master!!"
"......"
...Or maybe not. Living out one's days as a knight captain the way a layabout would might simply have been that man's method.
Better than taking stress from someone like that.
Lee Han resolved that if anyone ever tried to saddle him with a bothersome role like captain, he would flee with everything he had.
And then—
"But you lost to me in strength, didn't you?"
"......"
"It's true you dropped me with technique in the latter half, but from the middle on I overwhelmed you with strength. That's a fact. So you lost to inborn strength, which means your theory's wrong, isn't it?"
"......"
"Even if your theory is right, I was born stronger than you. Doesn't that make you the weak one...?"
"Nnnngh...!"
As if a Heart Demon had come over him, Felix let out a stiff groan, shut his mouth, and sank into grave thought, chewing over Lee Han's words. At last, he had stopped talking.
"...Thank you. That was refreshing, right down to the gut."
"It's nothing. Has no one given him advice like this before? Even you, elder, seem stronger than that man."
"...In capability, I would win. But including me, there is no one who can beat this fellow in strength."
"Then..."
"I am treated as one of the weak as well."
"......"
"And, terrifying as it is, on that theory alone he has won one hundred and ninety-eight of two hundred single combats. The rest he lost miserably."
"...Right."
"Ah, now that I think of it, he has added a fresh defeat to the record! And this time he met a proper match, heh!! Serves him right!"
"......"
He looked like a perfectly gentle gentleman, and yet he rejoiced without end in his disciple's defeat, as if the boy had wounded him deeply. Lee Han felt a flicker of pity, wondering just how thoroughly the disciple must have driven him mad.
And then—
"Ah, come to think of it, you said you were Sir Santa Rihan?"
"...I'm not someone who ought to be called sir."
"It is fine. There is a presence one cannot hide, however one tries. And if not a man like you, who could be called a knight?"
"?"
"Hm, hm. Yes. You have done something truly worthy of thanks. No... beyond thanks. All of Mordred is in your debt."
"???"
What was he saying?
Lee Han tilted his head, watching the man suddenly shed tears in the middle of their conversation. No—was the man even talking to him?
Who is he talking to?
The moment he realized the old knight was speaking to something in the empty air—
The man sank to his knees.
"Thank you. Truly. For saving that child—my granddaughter—thank you so much..."
"......"
"It is hardly a proper repayment, but I will exorcise every vengeful spirit clinging to your back. Strangely, there are a great many mage spirits. Well, judging by their colors, every one of them was a mage who spent life on wickedness and murder, so they all seem to have deserved death—but there are far too many. This must easily exceed a hundred. Have your shoulders felt heavy? Have you had nightmares?"
"......"
"Hm? Why that expression?"
"...Does it not occur to you that you've left out a great deal of the explanation in the middle?"
"??"
"...This gentleman isn't normal either."
Lee Han began to suspect that Mordred was not so much a closed-off house as a house the rest of the world had ostracized.
Suddenly curse a man by telling him ghosts are stuck to him—who would like that?
He could not shake the reasonable suspicion that being left alone for five years had, in fact, been for a reason.