EP.80 – The Knight Sets Out on the Journey Once More (6)
Thud! Boom!
A construction site erupted out of nowhere.
Someone might well ask what kind of building you meant to raise where there were neither materials nor hands to raise it — but a god of the jobsite had descended on this mountain.
Bang! Bang! He hauled in the trees lying fallen or dead across the slopes. Shhk! A hand axe dressed every length of timber. Crack! And once he added the monster materials he had quietly amassed all this while, the essentials were gathered in no time at all.
It was over in a flash. He had piled up enough not for a mere house, but for a high-rise — and yet he had not collected all that material to get rich in real estate.
"I'm building your house with this."
"Wiiing?"
A house for the bees. An apiary.
"I'm leaving this mountain. Some suspicious bastards found out where I live."
"Wiiing!"
At those words the bees beat their chests in fury, brimming with confidence, as if to say that if the suspicious bastards came, they should be left to them.
The strongest honeybees alive, carrying on like that, were nothing if not reassuring. Even so, Lee Han shook his head.
"I don't mean to demand that kind of sacrifice from you. You've already helped me more than enough."
He meant it.
These bees were not merely puppy-sized. Their loyalty, once they had acknowledged someone as master, was every bit as doglike.
That was why they had abandoned a nest they had only just built and followed him all the way to Vulcan.
He was truly grateful for it. He was sorry for it, too.
"From now on, settle here on Vulcan."
"...Wiing."
"I'm not abandoning you. It's only a parting, for a while. We'll see each other again someday."
"Wi... wiing."
"And I'm not simply turning you loose. You think I'm building you a house for nothing?"
"Wing?"
Gratitude for their help was part of why he was building it. Gratitude alone was not why he was raising an apiary this enormous — a house this enormous.
"Grow your strength. Grow it enormously. In the end, a bee's power comes from numbers. And if I need help later, help me then. You can do that, can't you?"
"...Wiiiing."
Thump. The Queen Bee struck Lee Han lightly on the chest, as if to tell him not to say what went without saying, the corners of her eyes gone somehow wet.
And so Lee Han and the Queen Bee shared their friendship, and promised to meet again.
"...Wol."
...Give me a fucking break.
Orthrus watched the whole scene from behind and clicked his tongue. Even he, a canid to the bone, had never seen such doggish nonsense. Were they filming a youth melodrama?
Honestly.
"Haa..."
Nobody was sane except him. Not a single one of them.
Orthrus let out a long, deep sigh.
Unlike a certain canine monster sighing his lungs out, what Lee Han was doing was not the shooting of some coming-of-age play.
Best to prepare ahead of time.
Vulcan was, in a sense, no different from Lee Han's own fortress. That such a place had been breached could only be bad news, and if enemies slipped in while he was gone, one of the places he could stay would simply cease to exist.
Even so, he could hardly squat on this mountain until he died.
I need someone to guard it in my place.
The champions of Vulcan's wilds, who would tear into and hunt anyone brazen enough to set foot on this mountain! And the name fit, didn't it — Tiger-Wolf Bee.
Well, unlike tigers, the little things were unbearably cute. Even so, gather only five of them and they could make sport of any decent knight.
The trouble was that there were not yet fifty of them. Let the swarm pass a hundred, then a thousand, then ten thousand, and even a grand shaman or an Archmage would not bring them down easily. Teach them the right tactics, and they might well devour the intruder instead.
In that sense, Lee Han was investing in the ones who would keep this mountain — keep Lee Han's retreat.
Ogre sinew, troll hide, wyvern leather. Frog venom, the goblins' mixed poisons and weapons. With that, it'll be a sturdy apiary.
If he was going to build it, he had no intention of building it halfway. He would put monster materials to serious use, and Vulcan's wrath had already toppled trees in plenty. Materials were ample. Pour in the care, and he would have an apiary sturdier and stronger than most fortresses.
Of course...
—It would be an absurdly mighty apiary, for an apiary.
If he was doing it, he would do it properly! Even if the time came to leave, Lee Han meant to leave prepared down to the last detail. There was a saying for it: be prepared, and disaster has nothing to feed on. Get the preparations right, and what worry could remain?
Thock, thock!
"A week ought to do it."
He had no hammer and no saw, so he set to work with his fists and the edges of his hands.
Shall I build it in the shape of the Pentagon?
For the first time in a long while, the urge to create boiled up in him.
Thud, thud!
And so a ruin was born — one that later ages would count among the Ten Wonders of the South, an impregnable fastness that a million invincible honeybees would render utterly beyond the approach of humankind.
🏛 Name: Honey Pentarium
⚔ Fame: One of the Ten Wonders of the South
📍 Guardians: A million invincible honeybees
💀 Reputation: Impregnable — humans dare not approach
Even while he built the apiary, Lee Han prepared to leave in earnest. He made jerky and dried rations, and fashioned all manner of tools for camping besides.
Why go to such pains, when he could simply buy food if his stores ran short?
...Because he had no money.
When he left the kingdom, Lee Han had not even collected his severance. Not a single coin to his name. There were things that would have fetched a decent price if sold, of course, but he had neither the leisure to gather them nor to sell them. He had merely asked people he trusted to look after them in his stead.
I'll have to look up a guild in some decent city later.
The Hao Sect Leader was not the sort of man to stab him in the back. Surely he was managing the funds properly.
"That's right. Mr. Simon can be a little sly, but he would never betray you, Sir Knight."
"...Maid, didn't you say you couldn't read minds?"
"I can't. I still can't."
"......"
"Hehe."
"...No matter how I look at it, that isn't true."
Lee Han clicked his tongue, and still he could not hide the apologetic look he turned on her. And no wonder.
"Maid, are you really coming with me? You won't stay on this mountain?"
"I am!"
"...It'll be hard on you."
"I've got plenty of stamina."
"That much, I know."
How could he not know that in stamina and toughness alone, she might well stand above him? Even so, it nagged at him. He kept thinking she would only suffer for following him.
"You'd be more comfortable living on this mountain..."
"Even so, I don't want to be alone."
"That's..."
"And just traveling with you is enough for me, Sir Knight. So don't feel sorry. Please don't, Sir Knight!"
"......"
...How was he supposed to not feel sorry, when she said it like that?
So a man can find his shoulders heavy just from being trusted too much.
Kindness and affection that asked for nothing in return. If Lee Han had a weakness, it could only be kindness and affection of that sort. It was far more than he deserved.
"...Haa. It will be hard."
"That's all right."
"It really will be hard, though..."
"Hehe."
A smile that said persuasion would not get through. Lee Han smiled bitterly, as if to admit he could not win.
And then, in the midst of it—
"But, Maid. Why do you keep calling me a knight?"
"?"
"I'm not a knight anymore, you know."
He asked something he had wondered for a while. He had already thrown away his knighthood, and still she called him a knight. He had thought perhaps she found it awkward to use his name, but she shook her head.
"Because to me, Sir Knight, you are a knight."
"I don't even have the title."
"Even without a title, you're more of a knight than anyone, aren't you? You respect the weak, and you protect them."
"I don't know about that..."
To Lee Han, it was nothing but an embarrassing thing to hear. He had always thought himself less knightly than anyone.
"The weak, as I see them, aren't simply people without power. Plenty of people live wickedly even when they have none. So my standard for who counts as weak is probably different from other people's, and it's entirely my own."
In that sense, Lee Han could not bring himself to sympathize with chivalry. To him, chivalry was a story that stirred no fellow feeling at all. Must you protect someone simply because they are weak? Are they pitiable simply because they are weak? No.
"There is no such thing as the weak in this world. All there is, is the situation a person is in, and their circumstances. And when those circumstances move me to sympathy, I help. That's all. I don't respect someone just because they're a child, or a woman, or an elder. If talking with them draws respect out of me, I offer a little help. Nothing more."
"Is that so?"
"That's how it is. So a man like me has no right to call himself a knight."
Lee Han shrugged, as if he meant every word.
But—
"—Then that is your chivalry, Sir Knight."
"What?"
She was smiling brightly.
"From what I know, the South never had knights to begin with. Even the ones who existed were not the sort who deserved the name. Bandits who plundered other people went around calling themselves knights. It was an abnormal state of things."
"......"
"Then a certain man called himself a knight, and that knight made an oath of his own."
"......"
"And that oath is all that later came to be called chivalry. They say that failing to keep the oath doesn't mean you aren't a knight. Rather, the knight who made the oath said this."
"......"
"So to me, Sir Knight, you are a knight. As far as I know, you've never drawn your sword to defeat someone and boast about it, have you? You draw it to help someone."
"That was just... how things turned out."
"Hehehe."
Lee Han insisted he had never intended any such thing, but the maid only laughed harder at those words, as if he were already testifying against himself.
"See? Sir Knight, you are a knight."
"......"
...Lee Han could not refute her.
He had plenty he might have said. And yet, somehow—
Why won't the words come out?
For the first time.
—For the first time, being called a knight sounded like something to be proud of, and he did not want to deny it.
Embarrassing as that was.