The Reason for Helping That Knight
Thud.
"......"
The black puppy — at a glance, nothing so much as a husky only just born — lost its grip on the hourglass it had been carrying in its mouth.
Jewel-dust filled the glass in place of sand, plain proof that the thing was a treasure of no small grade, and yet there it lay, rolling across the ground with all its dignity gone. Enough to stop a heart.
The baby husky, however... no. Orthrus, the high-grade monster with two heads and a serpent's tail, could not bring itself to close the mouth that had fallen open.
Monster though it was, its wits were high, and its face was rich with feeling. And so—
"Wah. Woof."
It shuddered from end to end, as if it might wet itself, and came utterly undone with fear.
Nor was that any wonder.
A wet, heavy patter......
Thirty thousand monsters, every last one of them, had been taken apart like butchered meat and heaped into a mountain!
Thirty thousand was a dreadful number on its own. What truly raised the hackles was that not one of those monsters was weaker than Orthrus.
Even the specimen that looked feeblest stood equal to a fully grown Orthrus. Such equals numbered ten thousand at the outside. The other twenty thousand were, without exception, either stronger than Orthrus, or — in more than a few cases — more intelligent besides.
To see monsters of that order displayed like carvings, like ornaments, it was no exaggeration to say the dizziness rose in Orthrus like a tide.
And still fear outran the dizziness. The reason—
Pat, pat.
"See? Told you you were clever. Led the way nicely, too."
"......"
"Hm? What are you staring at?"
"...Khhk..."
"Ah, that? Wasn't on purpose. I was cleaning up, and it just piled itself. Thirty thousand of them, after all — it's a mess. A complete mess. Tch."
Because that "work" was something this one male human had raised all by himself.
"......"
Orthrus understood, all over again, that the male — human or monster, it could no longer tell — had truly been looking after it. Dazed past thinking, it meekly accepted the hourglass when he offered the thing like a bone.
"Hang on to it. That's borrowed."
"......"
"You going to answer?"
"Waaang!!"
"Right. Answers ought to have some spine in them."
Orthrus was stroked exactly as one strokes a dog, a humiliation it bore without the slightest sign of resistance.
Resist for no good reason, and—
"...Woof."
—it, too, would become part of that mountain.
He had lounged at his ease in front of the puppy, but inside, Lee Han was badly shaken.
So badly that he could not remember the last time anything had thrown him like this.
No — what?
"Why did so many of them come...?"
The numbers were wrong.
He had thought ten or so would already be a crowd. This was four hundred and more, wasn't it?
Familiar presences had brushed him, recognized or half-recognized, and he had known reinforcements were here — but not how many. Taking in that more than four hundred had come, Lee Han blinked, and blinked again.
What was all this supposed to be?
...I definitely told them to come help if they were free.
The day before he entered the Hidden Grotto, Lee Han had written five letters in all and sent them out.
To the five people he could, at a stretch, call acquaintances — and, so far as he knew them, reasonably trustworthy.
What he wrote was nothing much.
He had not explained Mordred's circumstances. He had not written why he wanted them to come.
Only this.
If you're free, come and help.
One short sentence, and that was all he sent.
There would be people ready to scold him for calling that a letter. In truth, though, every last person he had written owed him a debt and shared a bond with him, and underneath the carelessness lay a calculation: even a note this rough, they would not pretend not to see.
Because I couldn't have handled it alone.
He knew.
However great one person's strength, a single man cannot settle everything.
Charging out alone is nothing but reckless arrogance, or a child's stubbornness.
Lee Han was not the sort to mistake courage for foolhardiness, the way unseasoned knights so often do. In that sense, calling for reinforcements against the chance of disaster was, to him, simple common sense.
Which was why the thing that shook him was this: a message sent barely two days ago had drawn so many people.
And also—
"Why did that woman come in person?"
Crown Princess Isis.
The next heir of the royal house of Pendragon stood in a splendid military uniform, taking the situation in hand, and Lee Han could only wonder whether she was in her right mind.
You didn't come to a place like this yourself unless you'd lost it.
Could it be—
"Has she gone senile already?"
"...Impious brat. Is there anything you won't say?"
"It's not that I won't say it. It's the opinion that comes naturally. Do you even know where this is, showing up here?"
"...You aren't even surprised."
"I've got the confidence now not to be surprised even if you change shape."
"......"
A talking mole came up out of the ground without warning, and Lee Han took it in stride.
He felt no hostility, and the presence was somehow familiar, so he had wondered — and sure enough.
"Some kind of familiar?"
"A golem. One I made in the shape of a beast."
"They really do come up with the strangest things."
"Grind people into it— no. Put in effort enough, of every kind, and such a result does emerge."
"......"
Her remark stopped his mouth for a moment. Then Lee Han let out a sigh.
Golem ground out of people or otherwise, what mattered now was this.
"So why did you actually come? All you had to do was send my classmate and one junior."
Why come in person — and why bring the White Cats?
With their skill, they would not survive here.
"This is still the progress of a crown princess, is it not? To bring an army along is only proper. And rotten though they may be, are they not knights? They will serve well enough as a supply corps."
"......"
"And as for why I came myself... do you truly not know the reason?"
"?"
"Did you not ask for help?"
"And what of it?"
A man can ask for help. Why was that such a great matter?
Lee Han tilted his head, plainly failing to follow her, and it was Isis who found herself at a loss.
"They say the hardest thing is to know oneself. You are exactly that case."
"??"
— ..........
Coincidence, perhaps, or else the same thought striking all of them at once: the five who received the letters, Isis among them, were thrown into no small confusion by Lee Han's request for help.
"This scoundrel is asking for help?"
"A harbinger of ruin..."
The Champion of Galahad, whose face had never once cracked no matter what befell, doubted his own eyes in his dismay. Lionel's great warrior, who made a joke of everything, went so far as to let his expression harden — a rare thing.
Lee Han's SOS was that serious.
Why?
...Because he had never once, until now, said anything that sounded like a plea.
No matter what crisis came down on him.
Who was he?
A man who had laid favors on several great nobles and never once asked for so much as a single coin.
A man who, whatever the crisis, solved it himself if it was to be solved, and had never actually asked to be helped.
Those who had fought beside him, or traded fists with him, knew best how alien it was for him to request aid. It was no different from the warning of a disaster he could not bear alone.
And so.
"Your Highness, I will be away from my post for a while."
"Brother, I'm stepping out."
A pretext for going to help? A reason?
They never stopped to weigh such things. They simply moved as their hearts moved, and they did not hesitate to make for Mordred.
As for the two sovereigns...
"Wait."
"Your Highness?"
"Take the knight order with you."
"Your Highness?!"
As if a chain had been tripped, Galahad's sentinels fell in behind them.
"Let us have you take the knight order as well."
"?"
"A chance has come to repay the debt incurred because of you."
"What did I even do?"
"...I shall say no more."
"??"
The envoys of Lionel rose.
"Ho ho. Fortunately, it lies close by."
"Mother, please have the swordsmen made ready."
Tristan and Offen hastened their preparations as well.
It was the moment when powers gathered that could, should they set their minds to it, cast an empire down.
A miracle rare even in the history of Pendragon.
For this was the moment those great nobles — heavy of body, and without a word of unity among them — had joined their strength.
...And surely no one had seen it coming.
That the reason they rose together was nothing other than a letter sent by a single knight.
Not a long plea, not a desperate entreaty. Only one sentence, light as air: if you are free, come.
......And yet, absurd as it was—
"......"
"...Well, now."
Listening to her explanation, Lee Han could not help a hollow laugh.
No — what...
Is that really how you take 'come help a little'?
He was grateful. He was. But it was the sort of thing that made a man want to hide his face.
"Nngh!"
Lee Han let out a groan.
"...This is nothing to be ashamed of. If anything, even pride would fall short."
Isis murmured it as a soliloquy he would not hear, and a faint smile touched her lips.
He did not seem able, even now, to judge exactly what he had done. Isis could weigh it precisely.
From this very moment, you have become the knight who represents Pendragon. Whether you intended it or not, it was your conduct — your resolve — that moved them to grateful tears.
And a thing like that...
...was something even the Military God himself never managed.
Isis was nearly jealous of the feat her sworn younger brother had achieved.
...Proud of it, as well.