The Escort Knight Whose Workload Exploded
‘Hmm…….’
True to her moniker as the Purple Knight, Rachel sat by the moonlit window with her deep violet hair unbound, savoring the dark.
As a child she had loved the day; now she preferred the night. A life spent defying hardship and adversity seemed to have carved darkness into her heart.
‘Master, huh…….’
The proposal that had dropped out of nowhere that afternoon was costing her a sleepless night.
Rachel swept her loosely spilled hair back over her shoulders. Her thoughts were as tangled as the strands.
‘How the hell am I supposed to do something like that?’
She had never taught anyone. She had never been taught by anyone either.
It had begun with a wooden sword she had pestered her father into giving her, and with the mindless thrashing she had dealt a straw dummy propped up in the fields. She had never walked the orthodox path. She had simply cut down and knocked over whatever came at her, surviving by any means necessary—pure brawler’s combat.
For someone like her, Elden’s request that she become his master was more than enough to keep her staring at the ceiling until dawn.
‘I never even thought about having a disciple.’
And he had said it would start tomorrow. Just as Elden claimed, his flaws were glaring—sometimes frustratingly so. The trouble was that she could neither articulate those flaws nor decide how he ought to fix them.
“Tch.”
Worse, she had no idea what weapon to recommend to a man who had spent his whole life solving problems with his fists. Even her own specialty—the sword—looked wrong for a maniac like Elden.
Her wild thrashing with a wooden sword had eventually led her through daggers, spears, axes, halberds, shields, bows, and more. Which of those suited a pure chaos agent? Sadly, bare-handed fighting had never been her forte either.
“Huuuum…….”
Rachel let out a long sigh. What sudden wind had blown through that idiot employer of hers to make him decide he wanted proper training? Truly the most bothersome master imaginable.
Whoosh!
She opened her left hand and kindled a small flame. A purple fire rose like a heat haze. Whenever worry gnawed at her, Rachel liked to stare into the fire like this—her own private “fire-gazing.”
Of course, from everything she had observed so far, the madman called Elden Raphelion would lose interest the moment things got hard and quit. That much was obvious. He was the type who had coasted through life without ever learning what effort meant—preferring dissipation to growth, pleasure to achievement. A man pickled in the short-term thrills of wine and women was never going to endure the long pain of real improvement. Someone who had never even respected his own parents was hardly going to accept a master’s scolding. After a few falls he would refuse to swallow his pride and simply walk away. That was the Elden Raphelion she knew.
Lately, though, he had been showing strange signs of change. Was this another of them? She had never feared him in the first place, so whether he changed or not barely mattered—yet she could not shake the feeling that a string of bothersome events was about to begin.
Whoosh.
She could not seem to finish her fire-gazing. Inside her head, memories of thrashing straw dummies flared up like the flames themselves.
And with them came another memory.
“Haha. That’s some spirited swordplay you’ve got there. Though I think you’d do better if you gripped the hilt a little lower.”
Even while looking at the slender hands swinging a sword with something like pity, her father had still given her instruction. To a little girl it had felt closer to play than formal teaching, yet if anyone ever asked the Purple Knight who her master had been, she would name the father who had cut and played with her. That fun little game had become the driving force that forged the Purple Knight, after all. And that was why the weight of the word “master” was tying Rachel’s thoughts into knots.
There was always the one-in-a-million chance that her teaching might actually spark something in him—make him hunger for growth.
She had lived giving everything she had. For the sake of improvement she had never refused any task and had simply gotten it done. Hardship and adversity she had treated as shortcuts to growth and had cut straight through them. At the end of that road she had arrived in the shade of the sunny side and loafed about, doing nothing much.
A splendid battle maniac who handled his own punishments. A battle maniac whose natural instincts kept him ready for threats. A battle maniac skilled enough that he never got himself beaten half to death. Thanks to all of that she had been more of a standby unit than a proper escort knight, and loafing had become habit. Polishing a spirit that had grown a little slack, sharpening a blade that had dulled—he would make excellent raw material for that.
Rachel extinguished the purple flame that had been dancing on her palm, rose from the window, and stood before the mirror. A thin white silk dress caught the moonlight and outlined her sensual figure—soft, elegant, full curves that spoke of mature beauty. She ran a cool, unimpressed gaze over them, then climbed into bed and tried to sleep.
And the next morning—
“Sword.”
“Axe.”
“Bow.”
“Spear.”
“Dagger.”
“Shield.”
“Halberd.”
Rachel stopped by the training-weapon rental shop and borrowed no fewer than seven different weapons. Not knowing what her new disciple might prefer, the master simply rented every type the shop had in stock.
The clerk asked with a dazed face,
“You’re… renting all of these?”
“Yes. Is there a problem?”
“Ah… no. Just write the purpose of rental here and I’ll get them ready for you.”
Rachel looked down at the ledger the clerk handed her, picked up the pen, and wrote the purpose.
Purpose: Employer Education
It said “education,” but it really ought to have been read as “re-education.” Looking at the entry, the clerk felt a sudden chill, as though something terrifying was about to happen, and watched the knight’s retreating back with genuine concern as she marched out loaded with seven weapons.
Knock knock.
—Come in.
Having arrived at the annex without incident (more or less), Rendler knocked and opened the door, then called to Rachel, who was tightly tying her hair into a ponytail.
“Rachel?”
“Yes.”
“Young Master says he’ll be waiting at Training Ground Six.”
“Understood.”
Rachel finished the ponytail and checked her appearance in the mirror. She hated looking sloppy. That was why she always preferred a shoulder-length bob, and for any official duty she made a point of binding it into a ponytail.
A knight’s work involved a great deal of movement; even a tenth of a second of obstructed vision could mean life or death. Even so she kept the bob length because the ponytail, with its leftover bangs, was the last scrap of femininity she allowed herself to keep.
A woman who stepped into a man’s world had to abandon many things simply to survive. To overcome innate frailty she had to work several times harder; to become first-rate in a harsh world she had to discard femininity itself. For Rachel, who had already discarded so much, the short ponytail was something like her final attachment to womanhood—or perhaps a lingering regret.
Once her hair was in order she walked over to the weapons propped against the wall. Rendler watched with bated breath, wondering which of the seven she would choose to recommend to the man she protected.
Thump.
Rachel slung the spear diagonally across her back.
Thump.
She slung the halberd on the opposite diagonal.
Thump.
She hung the bow over one shoulder.
Thump.
She thrust the axe through her left belt loop.
Thump.
She thrust the dagger through her right belt loop.
Thump.
She took the round shield in her left hand.
Thump.
She gripped the sword in her right hand.
“……?”
Loaded with every single weapon, Rachel looked less like a knight and more like a walking arsenal—the ultimate war machine.
At Rendler’s astonished stare she asked, puzzled,
“Is something the matter?”
“Ah… no. I was just wondering if perhaps you were off to fight a war.”
“Ah.”
Only when she checked her reflection did Rachel finally sense the dissonance.
“I simply brought everything because I don’t know which one the Young Master will choose.”
“R-right. Well… be careful on the way.”
“Yes. Then.”
She gave a light nod and set off toward the training ground where her employer waited. With every step the weapons clashed and rang—
Clank, clink.
Clank, clink, clink.
Amid the noisy jangle Rachel walked in silence. She had once crossed blood-soaked battlefields, surviving by turning broken swords into daggers, snapped spears into clubs, shattered halberds into axes. Weapons had littered the ground more thickly than corpses. She had swung them all without discrimination, and thanks to that there was no weapon she could not handle. Her specialty was the sword, true—but she was a magic knight who had taught herself magic and then forged that magic into whatever blade she held.
Clink, clank.
People stared and whispered at the walking armory. Rachel paid them no mind. Training Ground Six’s entrance finally appeared before her.
And right then—
Bang!
The door flew open and someone came striding out.
“?”
It was her employer, Elden Raphelion, walking with purposeful haste for some reason. Rachel eyed him suspiciously and called out,
“Young Master?”
“Ah, Rachel. Let’s go, quick.”
“Go where, exactly?”
Elden glanced back at the training ground and flashed a bright, satisfied grin—the grin of a man who had just pulled off a perfect rest-and-recovery plan.
“We’ll start training tomorrow. Today’s better spent resting.”
“Excuse me?”
Whoosh.
With that he breezed right past her. Rachel could only watch his retreating back with faintly hollow eyes.
She had stayed up all night because of the training that was supposed to begin today. She had fretted endlessly over whether she could even play the part of a half-baked master. She had racked her brains until they ached trying to figure out how to explain things she had only ever learned through real combat. It was only a one-day delay, yet every one of those worries and deliberations suddenly felt like they had been for nothing.
“…….”
Meanwhile the clueless employer skipped along, clearly delighted about something.
“Nice weather today~”
“….”
“Rachel? You coming?”
“…I’m coming.”
In the end she had to turn and follow him, leaving behind a strange sense of disappointment.
“Oh, and starting tomorrow, stick right next to me until the Engagement Grand Match is over.”
“Has something happened?”
“The sudden moves of villains are hard to predict, so of course we have to prepare for them.”
…That’s my line, she grumbled inwardly.