No Excuses in My Life (3)

Pandemonium.

No other word could have suited the horrific disaster spread before their eyes. And yet, to speak precisely, one might just as well have called the calamity a human disaster—for it was nothing other than a disaster in the shape of a man.

Not that anyone present had the mind to dwell on the distinction. And small wonder.

"Y-Your Lordship!!"

"Save our lord...!"

"Th-the servants in the mansion?"

"There are no servants in the mansion! Just confirm that His Lordship is unharmed!"

"Y-yes, sir."

The head of Tristan—Marquis Jennimia—still lay somewhere between life and death. By a miracle, the intruder's assault had brought down only the mansion where the marquis himself stayed. Sensitive as his senses were, he could not sleep soundly if anyone lingered nearby in the night, and so after dark he sent every servant out of the house. Fortunately, that meant there had been no loss of life. If only the marquis himself were safe...!

"H-His Lordship is safe!"

"Waaaaah!!"

In effect there had been no real damage at all, and the servants of the marquis's estate had to let out a roar of joy. They had confirmed that their master was unharmed.

...Except.

"Surround the enemy!"

"...Ngh!"

"Don't any of you get close! Surround him, but from a distance! Step in and you'll die like dogs!"

The enemy, for all that, had not withdrawn. Soldiers drew together into a ring and closed around the attacker, yet not one of them dared to approach.

Blood dripped from his face. He looked a little worn, and this might have seemed the moment to rush him—but no one grew careless, and no one looked down on him.

"Where did a monster like that even come from...."

He was the brute who had not so much broken through the main gate of House Tristan as demolished it head-on. Most of the soldiers had seen what he had done; those who had not had heard it from their comrades, and none of them dared to slight him. They were afraid. Terrified. Elite or not, not every soldier could be brave.

And into that moment—

"—What lawless wretch dares attack Tristan!"

They had come.

"Th-the knight order! The knight order is here!!"

At the sight of the newcomers arriving beneath a snapping banner marked with a red eagle, the soldiers finally breathed again. The men who had arrived were knights with the strength to stand as a hundred each.

An order of long tradition and renown, its name known not only within the kingdom but beyond its borders—and now that Tristan had been attacked, not ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a single knight among them failed to appear.

A low hum gathered in the air. It was said that the mere assembly of ten knights could turn the tide of a battle. There was exaggeration in the saying, no doubt, but the point of it was the astonishing martial power each knight possessed. This much, however, could be said without hesitation: if the Crimson Eagle Knight Order fielded even ten of its own, those ten would have been more than capable of changing a war. They were strong beyond comparison with any other order, held to rival the White Silver Lion Knight Order in the days of its prime, when the Martial God himself ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had commanded it.

Everyone pretended otherwise, but in truth, barring Galahad and Lionel, they were the strongest force in the Royal Capital. Unlike the White Silver Lions, worn down to a shadow of themselves, the blood-red eagles still lived in their golden age. And of those Crimson Eagles, there were a full hundred. The spirit and fury pouring off a hundred knights was enough to shake the ground and raise a shimmer of heat.

Flame roared up in a presence like a fire-fiend. A grandeur that made them forget even the overwhelming might the brute had shown lifted the soldiers' hearts.

And then—

"—Honestly. A man goes to sleep, and look at the trouble he wakes to. Honestly."

The moment he showed himself, the soldiers were close to tears.

"Your Lordship!!"

"Ah, ah, don't shout. You know my ears are sensitive."

Out of the ruined mansion came a red-haired man of middle years—no, a man so finely made he could not have looked a day past his mid-thirties—walking toward them at an unhurried pace. One might wonder whether such looks belonged on a man past fifty, and yet he was handsome enough to take a stage that very night and not be found wanting. He was not, however, merely a pretty man.

With every step an uncommon presence flared off him, and the enormous horn bow that raised that presence without limit radiated a conqueror's pressure. The bow looked taller than the average woman. It had been wrought from the horn of a monster called a giant ox-demon—a minotaur, by another name—and it was the bow that symbolized the master of House Tristan, a marquisate that had produced master archers and divine bowmen for generations.

"You there, young man. You knew what it meant to aim at Tristan—no, at me—and you laid a hand on us anyway, didn't you?"

The bow-knight who was both the current head of House Tristan and captain of the Crimson Eagle Knight Order hurled the words at him, calm, and yet brimming with spirit. No answer came. Perhaps the arrival of a hundred knights, and of a prodigy like Marquis Jennimia, had drawn him tight. The marquis, as if he had not particularly expected a reply, only shook his head.

"My lord, the moment you give the order, I will bring you that man's head!"

Had the intruder's insolence scraped the nerves of these loyal knights? They burned, and they wanted the command given at once, so they might take the enemy's head. But the marquis shook his head.

"I don't think he's a common brigand. He attacked us, yes, but no one was hurt."

"That was only chance..."

"Do you truly think so?"

It was not a thing they could deny. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠As the marquis said, that brute was strong. Had they not seen it themselves, even from a distance—that monstrous strength, hurling an iron gate? And yet a man with strength like that had killed no one. He had brought the marquis's mansion down, and still there was not a single casualty. This was not a story one could dismiss as miracle or coincidence.

In truth—

"He spared my life, did he. Well, now. Humiliation hardly comes worse than this."

It meant the man had left him alive on purpose.

"And that intruder knew. He knew I was the only one in the mansion."

"Th-then that only makes it more outrageous..."

"No. It's funny, if anything. Do you see? Only the side opposite my bedroom came down."

"If this is chance or luck, then I ought to go looking for the Holy Grail this instant. Ha ha!"

The Holy Grail, treasure of Avalon. A relic that existed only in legend, and they knew that setting out to find it was absurd on its face. And so the marquis's meaning was this: the brute had never meant to kill anyone from the start, not even though the chance had been his, beginning with the soldiers and ending with the marquis himself.

And so—

"Name yourself and surrender. Do that, and I will guarantee your life, at least."

The marquis showed mercy. A generosity that seemed ready to forgive his opponent outright—

"Hey, pretty mister. If you do that from over there, doesn't it make it pointless that I deliberately didn't throw an iron shot at your bedroom?"

"......"

Pretty mister.

The marquis was struck dumb by a form of address he had never once heard in his life, and the knight order was no better off. But the man went on without a hitch.

"I picked a fight with you today. I picked a fight because I want to fight...! So all you have to do is force me to my knees or kill me, and I'll thrash with everything I've got. But you don't get to forgive me. Then what was the point of me coming all this way!"

"...Ha."

Shameless past the point of speechlessness. What was this man? Offered his life, and he urged them to kill him. The marquis could have boasted of meeting every sort of human specimen in nearly half a century, and still this type was a first. At a loss for words, he let out an empty laugh. The man paid it no mind and jabbed a finger at the knight order.

"You're the same. I just threatened your master, and I insulted him too. I'm a brigand who dared break into a marquis's estate in the dead of night, and I destroyed the estate's property. On top of that I half-wrecked the mansion where the marquis sleeps. And what are you doing, standing in front of a man like that? You're knights—why the hell haven't you drawn steel already—!"

He stamped. The tremor-step set the earth ringing: displeasure, and anger. The consideration the marquis had shown—a noble's dignity, a noble's high-mindedness—was, just now, none of his concern.

"Is that precious justification of yours still not enough? Then I'll give you one. From this moment, I'm going over there to hit your master's pretty face. Stop me. If you can't, that face won't be pretty anymore today."

Teeth ground.

"You bastard...!"

"You d-dare!"

"He insults His Lordship! You! Have you ever seen a wretch so fit for hellfire!"

Steel hissed. Blades rang. A vicious edge. Swords and spears came free. The killing intent pouring off the knights' bared weapons was immense; even if the marquis had ordered them to stop, he could not have halted them. To leave untouched a man who had defiled their master would have meant throwing away the name of knight.

The ground detonated under their charge. The Crimson Eagle Knight Order—a hundred knights—hurled itself at a single man, to take the head of the one who had insulted their lord.

And the one who had provoked a hundred knights, only then—

"Yeah. This is right."

Satisfied, he threw himself into the wave of killing intent bearing down on him.

"Form the great-monster hunting formation!"

However fury had seized them, the knights were anything but stupid. If anything, their anger had made their minds endlessly cold, and they opened a hunting formation meant for the man at once. They had already witnessed his monstrous strength. They would not commit the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠folly of underestimating his martial power, and they set out to hunt him with everything they had. It was the formation used to hunt large monsters, and a hundred knights moved in perfect order, like a single living thing.

Each of them carried out the role assigned to him without fail. A heavy boom, a crushing crack, a flare of force—the momentum a hundred knights poured out was no mere momentum. It was fighting-energy, fiercer and more savage than the pressure of an army of ten thousand, and no individual could dare stand against it. This was the first stage: pressure. No matter how enormous a monster might be, it could not slip free of the fighting-energy net they cast. No monster in history had ever escaped this formation, and the knights meant to strike him down in a single breath.

...Except.

"...Ha!"

That was the story when the opponent was a mere monster. It was not a rule that applied to him. He—Lee Han—burst out laughing, even though this was no situation for laughter. A hundred knights were trying to kill him, and the skill of those hundred was nothing ordinary. Even if each of them fell short of Champion, they felt like the genuine article: veterans. Before the fighting-energy such men poured out, Lee Han felt as if his whole body might be crushed at any moment, and in fact his joints were already creaking.

...And yet, why did this pressure feel familiar? Then he understood. He had already felt a momentum and a pressure like this.

...The same? No. Maybe even stronger.

The Ghost King. Equal to the pressure the thing called the troll's king had poured out—or greater.

This is fun....

This was why the world was interesting. He had thought knight orders were all frail things like those White Silver Lion bastards, and here was an order not merely intact, but fit to stand against the Ghost King. His whole body tingled with it. A sense of crisis that carried even the fear of death—let his guard slip, and he would die. And yet he could endure it, ironically, because he had already lived through the monster called the Ghost King. Because he had the experience, he could bear it; because he had not grown idle afterward, because he had worked, because he had not let even a single day go to waste, the net crushing him—

With a grinding crack, he tore it.

Gladly.

"Wh-what kind of monster is that!"

"Loose the spears!!"

"Thrust as one...!!"

He hammered the fighting-energy net as if he were beating it with a mallet, again and again, until at last he poured out a momentum to match their spirit in return. The Crimson Eagles faltered. ...But if they had heard what was in Lee Han's heart, they might have felt more than dismay. Shock, and humiliation.

He—

If I don't want my kid holding a grudge, I have to finish this without killing anyone, don't I?

He would end it by subduing them, without killing a single one. With that private resolve—one that drove an already brutal fight up into something vicious—Lee Han drove his foot down.