The Cogwheel Declares (6)
In the past—no, in his previous life—his superior, Dokgo Gupae, would watch anything so long as it was fun, genre be damned, and he had even taken to calling himself a yellow mutt, the sort that ate whatever was set in front of it.
Well. The man who kept company with a fellow like that was hardly in a position to judge anyone else.
There was, however, one genre even that man refused to touch.
“Ah. This one’s a revenge story.”
“You like revenge stories, don’t you?”
“I do. Just not the rofan kind. The way they go about it rubs me wrong.”
“What could possibly make Brother Dokgo, of all people, turn one down?”
“Mmm. Boil it down, and it goes like this. Emperors, kings, empresses—high-and-mighty types show up as the villains all the time, and those bastards torment the protagonist from the time they’re little. Kill the protagonist’s parents. Abuse them. Go further than that: torture, the stake, torn limb from limb. Every pain you can’t even put into words.”
“Just hearing it is enough to make me sick….”
“Right? But you know what makes you sicker? In the end, the rofan protagonist finishes the revenge by forgiving the villain, or locking them away. Happens all the time.”
“Suddenly I can’t breathe.”
“Same here. And the part that chokes worse is that they actually think that’s revenge. From where I’m standing, it isn’t. Not even close.”
“The philosophy kid in our squad, the one who watches those garbage dramas and picks them apart, says people write endings like that because everybody’s convictions and philosophies are different….”
“Guess my philosophy’s the kind that can’t swallow it.”
“Hm. Then what does revenge look like to you, Brother?”
“Mmm…. First, you fix it so they can’t even eat gruel.”
“…?”
“You pull every tooth. Then you pull every hair and leave them bald, and then you stick them up for mortar practice! That rotten battalion commander bastard!”
“…I feel like this conversation just went somewhere strange….”
He had argued, yes. Even so, Lee Han had agreed with Dokgo Gupae in his heart.
Yes. Revenge ought to taste clean. Cold and satisfying.
Why should a high station earn a man a gentler sentence?
And so—
Brother Dokgo. Are you watching?
The feeling was new in him. That conversation had lived only in imagination. To think he would get to carry it out.
Wham! Wham!! Wham!!
Never thought I’d actually get to do it.
Tuk. Tuduk—.
Watching the teeth come out one after another, he felt a warm satisfaction rise of its own accord—the satisfaction of fulfilling his past-life superior’s dream—and a gentle smile settled on Lee Han’s mouth. Whatever the man beneath him was trying to mutter, Lee Han kept his attention on the work in his hands.
Whack!
Oh. Four wisdom teeth. This gentleman came fully equipped.
Now and then he even paused to admire his own extraction work.
Rumble!
Knights poured into the banquet hall.
Silver Lion knights. The First, Second, and Third Orders, who could not stand one another, had come running all together in a panic, and they had no time to be disgusted at finding themselves in the same room. They were simply pale.
They could hardly be otherwise.
He’s mad, he’s mad! What kind of report is this!?
I—I must have misheard. It can’t be. How could anyone do a thing like that in the middle of the royal palace, in a banquet hall!
The attendants saw wrong. Of course they did!
The Silver Lions denied reality with everything they had. Then they saw it anyway, and understood that the attendant’s frantic report had been the truth.
Wham! Whaaaam!!
Someone was being beaten.
Who?
“Mmmph……!”
……King Edmund.
“…….”
The knights’ faces, already bloodless past all reason, went whiter still, as if the blood were draining out of them.
The sight was that impossible to believe. They wanted to deny it.
Of course they did. Because the man beating the king was—
“So it was you lot. Hold on a minute. I’ve still got about twelve teeth to pull.”
—a knight in the dress uniform of the Silver Lion.
The most famous man in the Silver Lion Knight Order, and the most infamous. A knight risen from the common folk. Ihan Turtle.
He was beating the king to a pulp.
…But wasn’t that strange?
Inside the banquet hall, not a single noble or knight, not one loyal soldier or attendant, was trying to stop him.
For a moment it seemed he must have threatened them.
“Hm….”
“That looks like it hurts….”
“You’re telling me.”
…It looked, rather, as if every one of them had simply decided not to see. The air of people watching someone else shoulder the thing they themselves could not bring themselves to do.
The Silver Lions, still unable to make sense of the situation itself, were swimming in something like vertigo when a voice broke in.
“B-but… sh-shouldn’t we… s-save His Majesty…?”
“…….”
“Why is everyone just… standing there?”
“…Then you do it.”
“…….”
“You want to throw yourself at that man? Not unless you’ve lost your mind.”
“…Fair.”
“And besides…”
Crunch!!
“If he’s doing this, he must have a proper reason.”
The Silver Lions had sworn loyalty to the king. They knew full well that fury was the proper answer to seeing him beaten, and that stepping in was the obvious duty. Strangely, all they felt was bewilderment. The will to stop it never rose.
Was it because Ihan Turtle’s martial power frightened them?
No. It was not that.
They might have been proud of their station, arrogant about it, but their pride was not so thin that it would kneel to force. If keeping that pride meant dying, they would step forward. They would.
And yet they did not, most likely because they had already seen.
—A knight who had faced the Archdemon without flinching. A knight a Sacred Relic had acknowledged. A knight the Great Saintess had favored.
And so.
There must be… a reason.
Had he not already shown them, in deed and in outcome, what it meant to be a knight?
“……Ahem.”
The knights chose, for the moment, to let it be.
For now.
He won’t kill him. He won’t….
They chose to look on.
W-why will you not save Us!!
Through the pain hammering his whole body, through the hideous agony of living teeth being torn out, Edmund looked at the knights with blurring eyes and resented them. Anyone ordinary would have lost their mind under pain like this. As the knight had judged, he was no king’s caliber—but the part about his stubbornness was true enough. Perhaps it was the hardiness carried in Pendragon blood.
Edmund, however, felt no gratitude toward his bloodline now, and no respect. He found the situation, the knights, and the ministers who did nothing but watch utterly loathsome.
Wretched traitors, the lot of you!!
Just as King Edmund was about to pour that hate-filled curse inward—
“You’ve got grit, I’ll give you that. Most knights would’ve fainted or blacked out by now, and your eyes are still full of venom.”
“!?!”
“Funny, though, isn’t it? You’re only still in one piece thanks to the Mystery of Pendragon. The same one you called a damned thing.”
“Y-you… you bastard…”
Five teeth left.
Proper speech was beyond him, but Edmund packed his eyes with venom and hate and glared at the knight. Not a shred of remorse in that look. Nothing in it but resentment.
The knight did not look away.
Was he accepting it?
…He was not kind enough to take the resentment of a man he despised.
“What are you glaring for?”
Thuk!
“Mmmmmph!”
King Edmund’s eyes screamed, for an instant, with a heat like a burn.
He had not stabbed them. There was no mark on the eyes at all. He had simply taken hold of the muscles of the face, the ones around the eyes among them. The pain that followed would feel as if the eyes were about to burst. That was all.
“And there’s a complimentary extra.”
Eeeeeeennn—!!
After the eyes, the noise at his ears grew worse. It was as if dozens of insects had crawled into them, and he could not even draw a proper breath through his nose.
Crick! Crackle!!
It was the very essence of flesh-manipulation. Without a profound grasp of the fine muscles that made up a face, not even Holy Law would be able to undo it.
Why?
Because I’m using this gentleman’s own blinks and swallows to drive the pressure in.
Not magic. Not Fighting Art. Not shamanism, not Mystery, not Holy Law. Nothing but the manipulation of complex fine muscle. It would not be too much to call it a curse that could never be released unless one were a master who had taken Tendon-Splitting Bone-Dislocation, the Bone-Compression Art, and the Reverse Circulation Art all to their utter limit.
“Get this, you miserable bastard, lower than a beast. There were slaves kidnapped by the Blood Cross Army you revived thirty years ago and used for human experimentation. Most of those slaves died in the hands of Illegal Mages. And the children who died among them numbered in the thousands. Tens of thousands.”
“Mmmph!!?”
“Looked into it later. They said if three children out of a hundred survived the experiments, you could call that lucky. And the survivor standing here is me.”
“!!!!”
Edmund’s eyes tried to fly open. They wanted to. The muscles would not obey, and all he managed was a cracked squint and a twitch.
“Ridiculous, right? I think so too. I never figured the real culprit would be this close.”
Tuduk.
At last the final tooth came out, and Edmund felt as if his breath would stop with it. Push him a little further and he would die here of heart failure.
“Can’t have that.”
Thump—!
“Mmmmmmmp?!!”
The knight, kindly, protected his heart and his vital organs. Personally. With his own “power.”
“Don’t die. You don’t get to die. You’ve got to live a long time. Come on, you’ve got more screaming in you, don’t you?”
The knight’s tone was the gentlest in the world. He even blessed him, wishing Edmund health.
“There’s still plenty left to do. Last year our kids nearly died, and I’ve got to collect on that too. Where do you think you’re going, trying to wrap this up?”
As if begging him to live long. As a promise that he had not the slightest intention of granting an easy death.
And so—
“Ah. Let’s pull the hair this time. Awfully thick, you bastard.”
……For the first time, Edmund thought that he wanted to die.