Back in the Punishment Room
Chris and Veronica stood before the courier perched atop his broomstick.
“Ha…”
Chris was writing a letter under Veronica’s unrelenting supervision.
“Look, maybe you should think this over one more ti—”
Sensing how wrong this all was, he glanced back over his shoulder to stall for time, yet Veronica’s hand remained right behind his head.
A hand clenched full of coins and gems.
Her eyes promised that any foolishness would get him blown apart on the spot.
Everything about her said there was no turning back.
Should I just close my eyes and fight?
The thought crossed his mind as he glanced down at his waist, but of course there was no sword.
He had come down from the dormitory; he would never have brought a blade with him.
On top of that, Veronica had made it to the quarterfinals of the Dowon Festival.
Chris had only reached the round of sixteen.
The shock of that match had settled the hierarchy between them once and for all.
And this woman was a student sponsored by none other than Daywin Hasgard.
Just like that bastard… she might have more up her sleeve than she lets on…
She might be like Laward—hiding something deeper.
Still, sending a courier after the Silver Knight and Commander Blash while they were on a top-secret mission…
This was nothing like the last time he had dispatched a courier to headquarters.
The letter’s contents could be hidden in code, but the courier himself would expose the Holy Knights’ location.
They could silence him somehow, yet he could never be trusted completely.
Still, the Commander likes that Daywin fellow, so maybe he’ll cut me some slack…
“There’s no way…”
“What are you muttering about? Hurry up and write.”
Veronica’s fist tapped the back of Chris’s head.
It was only a finger, yet it felt as though a gun barrel had pressed against his skull.
“How many weeks in the punishment cells is this going to cost me…?”
Chris murmured in a mournful voice and let the pen nib fall onto the letter paper.
“No—how many months…?”
He had already spent a full month locked away for the grave crime of drawing his sword on Daywin in the marquisate.
I just got out because of that man last time, and now…
He had been released a few days early only so he could compete in the Dowon Festival—and that was barely yesterday. Now he was on the verge of committing another offense.
Consecutive stays in the punishment cells… far from a promising genius, he was starting to look like a complete washout.
What’s going to become of my life as a Holy Knight…? I’ve only just begun…
Scratch, scrape—
With a bleak future staring him down, he forced the words onto the page.
He wanted to run that very second, but Veronica’s gaze left no opening.
“This is pure hell…”
Without realizing it, he spat the strongest curse a Holy Knight was allowed to utter.
“You need a mouth to write? Looks like you could manage without one.”
A gold coin pinched between Veronica’s fingers drifted toward his lips.
“It really is hell… pure hell…”
“You said it feels like shit?”
Veronica’s eyes flashed sharp as blades.
“This bastard still hasn’t learned.”
“…I never said that.”
Chris shook his head with a sigh at Veronica’s habitual language.
Ugly words kept tumbling out of that pretty face.
“Haa…”
With another heavy sigh he finished the letter.
Noticing at once, Veronica snatched it with her free hand and scanned the contents.
“What is this even saying?”
She demanded the moment she looked at it.
“Cipher used by the Order. There’s no way I’d send it in plain text. Not that I distrust this person, but still.”
Chris answered while carefully watching the courier in front of them.
“Write it again. How do I know you didn’t plant some trap?”
“Why would I do something like that? As much as I hate to admit it… the person you mentioned matters to us too. What did you call him again? Karma?”
“Karma-nim, you mean.”
Veronica spoke as though the lack of honorific offended her, and Chris, looking thoroughly disgusted, reluctantly nodded.
“Anyway. If it weren’t for this Karma-nim or whatever, I never would’ve done this in the first place. We’re good now, right?”
Chris jerked his chin toward the courier, signaling that they were finished and she should just deliver the letter already.
Veronica clicked her tongue and handed the letter over.
Then she let several of the coins she still held drop into the courier’s palm.
“Get there as fast as you can.”
The courier nodded, and the wide brim of his hat fluttered.
In a blink the mage on the broom was gone.
“He won’t arrive that quickly.”
“Why the hell are you saying something so ominous all of a sudden? You want to die?”
“It’s not like that…”
Chris scowled as if thoroughly fed up.
“It’s a foreign country.”
“A foreign country?”
“The delivery address is abroad. Even if the courier gets there at top speed, receiving the letter, returning, and then traveling all the way to the South will take time. This is not something that can happen in a single day—not even for the Silver Knight.”
“…Fine.”
“You’re accepting that surprisingly easily.”
“I did what I was told, so I’m done. I kept the promise. Even if that request turns out to be the last thing I ever hear, I won’t regret it.”
Veronica spun around at once.
“I never had high expectations for the Holy Knights anyway.”
“Hey, where do you think you’re going?”
“I’m heading back.”
“To the South?”
“Obviously. I can’t just sit around after this.”
“Is that so.”
Chris shook his head.
“Hmm. Then maybe I should go too. Separate from that man, as a Holy Knight it feels wrong to hear news like this and not move. Wait a little. I’ll arm myself and come right ba—”
He spoke after a moment’s deliberation, but Veronica had already vanished.
That night.
“We may already be too late.”
In the royal capital of a neighboring kingdom, the Holy Knights in pure-white armor combed through the sewers beneath the city.
Light orbs summoned to illuminate the darkness floated throughout the tunnels.
“Kaine.”
Blash kept his eyes fixed ahead and merely crooked a finger.
“Get over here and take a look at this!”
At his call came the heavy clank of armor approaching.
A towering figure nearly three meters tall.
Among the Holy Knights, only this one was clad head to toe in silver armor that gleamed alone as it waded through the filth of the sewers.
The Silver Knight had sealed every inch of their body in armor without a single gap.
The helmet bore only the narrowest slits for vision, and its shape gave an impression of sharp, streamlined elegance.
Rather than a person wearing a helmet, it looked as though the head piece itself had been forged separately from metal—thin and light.
“Any idea what this is?”
Blash shifted a light orb forward as he spoke.
The darkness that had swallowed the sewer began to retreat around the light.
What Blash had been staring at was a person.
Judging by the clothes, they looked like laborers who had been working in the sewers.
Had been working.
They were already dead.
They must have been.
“They appear to have turned to stone.”
Because they had become stone.
The laborers had stretched their arms and legs in one direction, as though trying to flee somewhere.
Toward the entrance the Holy Knights had just come through.
Expressions of pure despair were frozen on their faces.
They were the most dynamic statues any of them had ever seen.
Paradoxically so.
“I can see that much myself. Kaine, what I mean is—if it’s you—”
“It is not ore.”
The Silver Knight stated flatly.
“It is simply stone.”
“Is that so! Uncharacteristically certain of yourself.”
“I have no choice.”
The Silver Knight slowly raised their right arm.
“It does not move.”
They had tried to move it and received no response whatsoever, they repeated.
Even using the Spirit of Abundance—who could manipulate ores and minerals—had been of no help.
“I see. Stone, then. A suspicious ability.”
“What will you do?”
“We return to headquarters.”
Blash answered calmly.
“Are you certain further investigation is unnecessary?”
“In this country alone we have already discovered four Death God Cult hideouts. Every clue points here! We should head back and report at this point. Hmm, and I ought to send word to Chris that he need not come. It would be disastrous if we crossed paths!”
“Commander, is there no chance that this nation has already colluded with the Death God Cult?”
“There might be. But don’t you find it a little too blatant? As if they deliberately left traces.”
“You mean they lured us here?”
“Who knows. It might not even be us they were after. More importantly, I have no idea how the Church will interpret this information.”
With a resolute face Blash turned around.
“If the Church and the royal family decide this place is a Death God Cult stronghold, we will have to return. Next time we will bring our fully armed brothers and sisters.”
“Could we not simply speak with the royal family here? Whether or not they have truly colluded with the Death God Cult—we would surely find out.”
“It would be fortunate if talk alone settled it. But the evidence is already overwhelming! Even just what we found, the connections to the Death God Cult overflow. We discovered them not only in the sewers but aboveground as well. At this rate it looks as though this country is sheltering the Cult.”
“The Church and the royal family will judge rationally. As long as there is clear evidence and objectivity, the truth will come to light.”
“Kaine, the truth may not matter.”
Blash signaled the knights to withdraw as he continued.
“We have already been attacked multiple times, and following the trail brought us here. That is more than enough for a justification.”
His voice grew lower and more solemn.
“A justification, you say.”
“Exactly. It will serve as justification to deploy the Order.”
Blash’s expression darkened further—and it was not merely because of the sewer’s gloom.
“If it were simply conflict between nations, the Order would not intervene with force. But if the Death God Cult is involved, that changes everything.”
“Us being dragged into a war is not the Goddess’s will.”
“I already told you. The moment the Death God Cult is involved, it becomes the Goddess’s will. How His Holiness the Pope will decide, I cannot say. We were never trained to fight humans, yet the fact remains that we are a military force.”
Blash’s eyes shifted as he looked back at the laborers turned to stone.
“The Death God Cult may be aiming for exactly that—fanning the flames of conflict even higher. If war breaks out, corpses will pile up without end. The larger the war, the more there will be. And every one of those corpses becomes the Cult’s soldiers. War becomes a means for them to swell their ranks massively without lifting a finger.”
Blash tapped his temple and turned his gaze away from the statues.
“It seems someone in the Death God Cult actually knows how to use their head. If a war between nations erupts, neither side will be the victor. The victor will be the Death God Cult.”
“Commander, even so, for us to enter a war—”
“There are rumors that the Central Bank has its eye on part of the royal railway network. In the worst case we might become a bargaining chip in a deal between the Church and the royal family… No. Better not to worry about it in advance.”
“Commander.”
In the middle of the conversation the Silver Knight stopped dead in their tracks.
“Why do you keep speaking as though the Order is nothing more than a component of the Church?”
“You still don’t know?”
“Pardon?”
“Kaine, that is precisely what the Order is. We are the Goddess’s sword, and whether that sword is drawn is decided by the Church. The Church is the scabbard, and we must obey the Church. His Holiness the Pope is the proxy who hears the voice of the divine.”
“I do not understand. The Goddess is omnipotent—why would She need a proxy…?”
“We will pretend I never heard that.”
“It is strange that a Church which ought to show mercy to the neglected is busy fattening its own coffers. Do you not think so?”
Blash deliberately tried to ignore it, but Kaine would not stop.
“I do not think so. No—I do not think anything at all. As long as my brothers and sisters of the Order can return safely to the monastery, I will entertain no thoughts and ask no questions.”
“But—”
“Say one more word and I will personally interrogate you and submit the report myself. You do not want to be burned at the stake, do you?”
“…I apologize.”
Kaine bowed their head and followed after him.
“Yet you said conflict might arise. According to what you said earlier, a safe return this time may be our last.”
“That is exactly why I would prefer to return as slowly as possible. We have obtained far too heavy a piece of information. All we can do is pray that the Goddess watches over us.”
Once the knights returned aboveground they handed their passage permits back to the guards who were pinching their noses against the stench.
“Kaine, in the end it all depends on who becomes king.”
While waiting for the train, Blash spoke again.
“The vote is not far off.”
“Ah, come to think of it, it is next year, is it not?”
“Even the same information will be interpreted differently depending on who takes the throne. One may choose war, another dialogue, and yet another silence.”
“It is a shame I do not have a vote.”
“I never knew you harbored such ambition. Do your best and rise to archbishop. I shall pray for you.”
“If it were me, I would cast my vote for the Seventh Princess.”
“As a Holy Knight that is only natural. Of all the candidates she is the most favorable toward the Holy Knights—thanks to her knight.”
“Yes. Because the Seventh Princess has Daywin Hasgard. Do you not think the archbishops share my view?”
“I believe their hearts have already tilted that way. Still, they will want to see a little more. Casting a vote solely because the Seventh Princess’s knight is that man would look far too blatant, would it not?”
“What does it matter how it looks? The whole point of having a vote is to give it to the side your heart favors. The fact that they possess the judgment for it is why they are lords.”
“Safety measures must be put in place for the next generation. Not everyone lives like Grand Duke Oskar—as though tomorrow does not exist, let alone the next generation. Ah, it is nearly time for the train.”
The moment Blash looked up at the clock tower—
Whoosh—!
In front of the great clock hands, a courier flying on a broom came into view.
The courier seemed about to pass them by, then glanced downward and made a sharp turn.
A U-turn.
The courier swiftly flew right up to Blash and dismounted from the broom.
“You are the Holy Knights, correct?”
The courier who had appeared out of nowhere.
Blash and the Silver Knight exchanged glances.
“Someone named Chris requested this delivery. The original destination was not here, but… meeting you along the way is fortunate!”
“Chris…?”
With a complicated expression Blash absently accepted the letter.
“Commander, allow me to educate him.”
“No. He is not the sort to do this without reason.”
“I disagree. I will educate him properly. Please let me be the one to do it. Commander, I insist.”
“Do you think I would allow that? I cannot leave a promising Holy Knight to die.”
“I will not kill him.”
“You would half-kill him.”
“Yes, exactly.”
“See? How am I supposed to entrust him to you when you say things like that?”
Blash clicked his tongue and opened the letter.
“Hmm.”
“May I ask what nonsense that fool wrote?”
“What kind of way is that to speak?”
Blash gave a dry laugh and folded the letter again.
“Speak of the devil. It is about that Daywin Hasgard.”
“What? How would Chris and he…?”
“I will explain later. Kaine, you and I are departing for the South immediately.”
“But the report—”
“I wanted to take my time with it anyway, so this is perfect. Hahaha! We can simply say the situation in the South was urgent and we handled that first.”
Blash laughed the way he always did.
“Yes, understood.”
“I had wanted to speak with him about this matter as well—excellent. Ah, though the situation in the South does not sound good at all. Kaine, we will need to move as quickly as possible. Can you go faster than a train?”
“Do not worry. I can fly.”