Chapter 20: Strangely, Being Fooled Felt Incredibly Refreshing
The moment Botis hit the floor, I climbed onto his chest.
Then I started hammering both fists down on the armored breastplate like a madman.
Bang!
Crack!
Bang!
Bang!!
Of course, when you smash a steel chestplate with your bare hands, the skin over your knuckles splits open and the bones in your fingers start screaming.
Blood sprayed everywhere, and my hands were shredded to ribbons in an instant.
But I didn’t stop.
There was one thing I’d learned on the battlefield.
Momentum.
It sounded like a rough, almost stupidly simple word, but in real combat, it was everything.
The moment I stopped because it hurt, the momentum would break and the enemy would stick his neck out again.
Even if the bones in my hand shattered, I couldn’t stop until I’d driven pure terror into that bastard—until he thought his throat was about to be torn out for good.
“Kraaagh! S-save me—!”
Bang!
Kaang!!
When I first started pounding on the armor with my bare fists, the Imperial Royal Guard around us had probably been sneering to themselves.
What, is this idiot trying to break steel with his hands?
“I-is that human strength...?”
Every time my blood-soaked fist came down, the round, sturdy breastplate covering Botis’s chest sagged inward with a soft crunch, flattening like wet clay.
Only then did the Imperial Royal Guard soldiers snap out of it and rush toward me in a panic.
“C-Captain! Sir Lassen, stop!”
“Get him off right now!!”
Bang!
Bang!!
Even when the soldiers grabbed at me and tried to drag me off, I lashed out with my bloody hands and sent them reeling back.
“Get lost!!”
My ruined hands, already torn to tatters, flailed upward just so they could become ruined all over again as I shook off the soldiers’ grips.
My arms snapped through the air, my sleeves whipping wildly, and blood flicked across the soldiers’ faces.
I wasn’t landing any real blow, and they should have been able to shrug off my desperate thrashing, but the soldiers still...
“Uuugh...”
As if they’d all agreed beforehand, they took a step back and let themselves fall away from me.
Bang!!
And just as I raised my fist again—
“Stop it!!”
From behind me, a familiar warmth wrapped around my body and held me tight.
“......!”
My raised fist froze in midair.
Slender arms locked hard around my waist.
It was a body heat I knew too well, one I’d memorized from the days and nights we’d spent pressed together in the escort carriage, and then later, in bed with me holding her close all the time.
It was Yuno.
“Stop it, Lassen... please.”
Yuno pressed her forehead against my back and whispered in a trembling voice.
With that warmth against me, the battlefield madness that had been burning my mind white-hot began to ebb like a lie, and reason slowly returned.
I dragged in a ragged breath and lowered my fist.
“Yuno...”
Botis, pinned beneath me, was actually still in one piece; my fists had only caved in the surface of the armor, and his flesh beneath hadn’t taken much damage at all.
“Ugh... uuuugh...”
But mentally, he was already shattered.
“C-can’t... can’t breathe...”
He could barely draw air inside the flattened shell of his chestplate, and all that came out of him was a pathetic, shaking groan.
As I slowly got off Botis, Yuno hurried around in front of me and took my blood-soaked hands carefully between both of hers.
“You... you idiot...”
Her eyes were red at the rims.
When she looked at my mangled knuckles and split flesh, she bit her lip with a face that seemed more pained than if she herself had been injured.
“Why... why would you do something so foolish? You hit armor, and now you’re the only one with broken bones, the only one in pain... why on earth would you do that...!”
Her reprimand, mixed with a thread of resentment, only tickled.
Honestly, now that the adrenaline was wearing off, my hands had started hurting like hell.
I looked down at the mess Yuno was holding and let out a snort of laughter.
“Same thing.”
“......What is?”
I raised my right hand, broken and dripping blood, and gently laid it atop the splinted support bracing Yuno’s own broken arm.
Fresh red seeped through the white bandages.
“Mine’s broken too.”
At my ridiculous joke, Yuno’s brow knotted hard.
“You really... even in a situation like this, you still find time to jok—!”
Her sharp outburst cut off suddenly.
Her eyes stayed fixed on my bloodstained hand resting on the splint.
It seemed she’d realized it was my clumsy way of comforting her, of telling her she wasn’t the only one who’d been hurt.
“......You were thinking about that all this time?”
Yuno’s eyes reddened even more than before.
I just shrugged, trying to look indifferent.
Then—
“Sir L-Lassen...!”
A small, thin voice reached us.
“Lady Celine...?”
The child who’d spent days cowering in a dark room, unable to take even a single step outside because of her trauma, was now walking into the sunlit center of the garden with both fists clenched tight, gathering her courage one trembling step at a time.
“Sir Lassen!”
Lady Erpe wiped at her tears and followed after Celine.
“You lot, get some ice water! And bandages!”
The servants of House Calista, who’d been hiding in silence all this time, poured out into the garden too, hurrying toward me with worried faces as they looked at my bloodied hands and shoulders.
At the edge of that strangely heartwarming scene—
taking advantage of the chaos—
the Imperial Royal Guard were laboring to haul their captain, Botis, up off the ground, where he was practically half-unconscious.
“Captain, wake up! We have to get the armor off him!”
The soldiers tugged and twisted at the hideously dented black armor.
But—
My merciless fists had flattened the steel chestplate over his torso so completely that the neck opening had caved inward too, tightening from the recoil.
“K-Kraaagh! It won’t come off! My neck... my neck is being crushed!!”
Every time they tried to pull the armor upward, Botis’s head jammed tighter into the narrowed collar, leaving him unable to move an inch.
“S-Stop! Don’t pull, you idiots! I feel like my ears are going to rip off...!”
“Captain! His head’s stuck and it won’t budge!”
Watching that pathetic farce in silence, I finally couldn’t hold it in anymore.
I let out a snort, then burst into laughter so hard I doubled over.
“Kwahahahahaha! Ngh, ah, that hurts... hahahahaha!”
“Lassen...?”
Everyone’s eyes turned to me as I clutched my shattered hand, blood dripping from my fingers, shoulder cut open, laughing like a lunatic.
The cautious, peaceful retirement plan I’d treasured so much had been blocked up and ruined like that idiot’s head stuck in the armor.
Ah, this feels amazing...
Strangely enough, being fooled felt incredibly refreshing.
“A demon... It’s not the Holy Spear, it’s a demon...!”
The Imperial Royal Guard, covered head to toe in blood and watching me howl with laughter, turned ashen and trembled as though they were staring at something inhuman.
As the Calista estate garden filled with the stench of blood, bursts of laughter, and pure disorder—
“What in the world is going on here!”
the tightly shut front gate of the manor flew open, and a man with dazzling red hair strode in quickly with knights at his back.
He had come to check the situation at House Calista.
It was Michael, First Prince of Valerian.
Behind him stood the First Knight Order, drawn up in neat ranks.
Michael’s gaze swept rapidly across the garden, where blood and dirt were mingled together.
Me, laughing like a madman, apparently not even realizing my own right hand was ruined.
And Botis, the Imperial Royal Guard captain, with his head jammed in the dented throat of his armor and flailing helplessly.
“Your Highness! Your Highness!!”
Spotting Michael, Botis crawled across the ground like a man who had just seen salvation and dragged himself toward the prince’s feet.
His chestplate had been flattened so badly that even breathing seemed difficult, and his voice rang out from inside the armor with a harsh metallic rasp.
“L-Look at me! That Europian traitor bastard! He assaulted me, the captain of His Majesty’s Imperial Royal Guard, without provocation! Punish that man for treason at once and cut off his head—cough!”
Botis shouted with bloodshot fury, stabbing a finger at me.
Of course, with his face hidden, all he was really doing was thrusting his hand into empty air.
But Michael only looked down at the gasping Botis as though he were a bug.
“How ugly. Back away.”
At Michael’s bark, Botis’s flailing body went rigid.
Michael ignored him completely and walked over to Lady Erpe and Celine.
“Madam, were you badly frightened?”
He bowed politely before Lady Erpe, then took a sealed parchment letter from within his robes and opened it.
“The contents of this secret letter you sent me... are they all true?”
At Michael’s question, Lady Erpe gripped the hem of her skirt tightly and nodded.
“Yes, Your Highness. Not a single word is false.”
Oh... Lady Erpe. So she wasn’t just taking it lying down?
When Celine had been driven to the brink by the assassin trauma and collapsed screaming, Lady Erpe had spent day and night at her daughter’s side.
And yet, as Sabre’s wife, she had secretly been documenting all the abuses Botis had been inflicting on them.
It seemed she’d also secretly sent a letter to Michael, the one prince in Valerian’s royal family whose righteousness was as rigid as his blind faith in chivalry and who could not abide injustice.
Michael held the letter and began reciting Botis’s crimes in a booming voice.
“Captain of the Imperial Royal Guard Botis. Under the pretense of obeying His Majesty’s orders, you remained here at House Calista and committed the crimes of abandoning your post, neglecting nighttime guard duty, drunken misconduct, and unlawfully entering a civilian’s private chambers while armed.”
Lady Erpe, shrewdly, had only gathered evidence for violations of Valerian knight law—offenses that could be severely punished under military code—carefully selecting the ones that would stick.
Botis’s intrusion into Celine’s bedroom today, and my own rampage, had no doubt gone beyond what she’d expected, but she’d already had the knife in hand to cut his throat legally.
“For trampling the honor of a knight and staining the name of Valerian. I will hold you accountable for that responsibility.”
At Michael’s words, Botis’s eyes nearly rolled back in his head.
“Y-Your Highness! This is slander! And even if I did violate discipline, that traitor bastard over there smashed my armor and tried to kill me! Isn’t his assault the more serious crime?”
Apparently unwilling to die alone, Botis screamed and pointed my way.
On that point, I had nothing to say.
No matter how pissed off I’d been, I really had beaten the captain of the Imperial Royal Guard until his armor caved in with my bare fists. That was on me.
But—
“I am the one charged with the discipline of the knight order.”
Michael drew a cold line straight across Botis’s face.
“Sir Lassen is currently retired from public service and living in seclusion as a guest at House Calista. In other words, he is not an active knight under my jurisdiction. Punishment for his private assault can be rendered only with His Majesty’s approval.”
...Huh?
That rigid, inflexible honesty of Michael’s had just defended me.
From the perspective of someone like Michael, who followed law and principle to the letter, he had no authority to send the assault of a civilian pensioner who was not currently serving as a soldier to a military tribunal.
“But you are an active knight and the captain of the Imperial Royal Guard. You cannot evade judgment under military law. Arrest him at once!”
At Michael’s command, knights of the First Knight Order rushed forward and seized Botis’s limbs, lifting him up with his head still stuck in the armor.
“N-No! Let go! My neck! My neck is breaking!! Lassen, you son of a bitch! I won’t let you get away with this—!”
Botis’s pitiful thrashing was dragged away by the knights, disappearing outside the manor gate before long and growing faint almost at once.
The swarm of Imperial Royal Guard troops that had been flitting in and out of the estate like flies also went pale at the sight of their captain being hauled off, and they quickly lowered their weapons and retreated.
It almost looked as if peace might finally return to the garden.
“And, Madam.”
Michael turned once more to Lady Erpe.
“His Majesty’s orders are still in effect. The protection of this manor and of Queen Yuno must continue.”
Michael’s eyes brushed past me briefly.
There was still deep contempt and disgust in them whenever he looked my way, but at least it wasn’t cheap or filthy like Botis’s.
“Therefore, beginning today, the First Knight Order, under this prince’s direct command, will take over all security for House Calista. You need not worry; there will be no further disgraceful incidents like the ones you’ve suffered.”
At Michael’s announcement, Lady Erpe let out a relieved breath and bowed deeply.
I clenched my right hand, the one hanging there broken and useless, and clicked my tongue inwardly.
He’s a hundred times better than that garbage Botis. At least Michael isn’t the type to barge through someone’s front door without a reason or throw a tantrum over his meals.
Michael was upright and inflexible to the core.
He would probably despise me, the traitor, as if I were a bug, but rather than make it personal through petty harassment, he would almost certainly just ignore me as though I didn’t exist.
But—
Haa... Still, the original male lead just set up a base camp in our front yard. That’s exhausting in its own way.
Unease crept up my spine at the thought that the man blessed with protagonist-grade disaster magnetism was now going to be stationed at the manor.
“Lassen! What are you standing there spacing out for!”
Then Yuno came up beside me and seized my unharmed left arm.
“Your hand’s about to shed bone dust, and you’re just calmly thinking about something else? Get inside right now and let me treat you!”
Yuno, whose face had gone even paler than mine at the sight of my bloodied right hand, practically dragged me into the manor by force.
“A-All right. I was already starting to feel like I was going insane anyway...”
I let out a pained groan and let her lead me away.
Behind me, Botis’s dying screams as he was dragged out of the front gate and Prince Michael’s cold stare fixed on us both faded into the distance.
My rough life in this manor, my tangled road toward a peaceful retired existence, had just turned another corner.