Chapter 46
Chapter 46
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 46
Chapter Title: Reunion with the Knight Captains
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—Clank.
A familiar clanking of armor began to echo from down the road. I looked up. Amid the yellowish-orange glow unique to torches, knights clad in silver plate were approaching.
Familiar armor. Familiar weapons.
It was Iris, Lize, and Erika. Lize was at the very front, with Iris and Erika positioned to either side. Their weapons gave it away.
Lize, who had been leading the group, spotted me and said something to those behind her. Then she strode forward with quick steps. I rose to my feet.
Lize sheathed her weapon at her waist and removed her helmet. Her blue ponytail swayed, cascading down long. The one eye not obscured by her hair gazed at me with deep meaning.
I waved in greeting.
“You’re earlier than I expected?”
“Those are your first words upon seeing me?”
I gave an awkward smile. But Lize didn’t smile back. Her gaze pierced right through me.
From that look and expression, she didn’t seem truly angry with me. Still, it wasn’t something she’d let slide vaguely. I could sense her strong determination to hear a solid answer.
“Nothing else to say... kehk.”
Her gauntlets seized both my cheeks and yanked me close. Lize’s face was right in front of mine. I tried to pull back, but her palms held me fast—I couldn’t budge.
“I’ve got plenty to say. Right, rookie?”
“It was a joke. Sorry. So, could you let go?”
Even then, Lize stared at me for a while, our faces nearly touching, before finally releasing her grip. I collapsed onto the ground with a thud. Her blue eyes looked down at me.
“Why didn’t you tell us ahead of time? That you’d handle it alone. You could’ve confided in us first.”
It was the question I’d been mulling over the whole time I sat here. Lize’s eyes warned me not even to dream of a half-hearted reply.
The most fundamental reason was that if we’d all jumped in together, the rock centipede’s aggro might not concentrate on one person and scatter everywhere. But I couldn’t just blurt that out directly.
They might even take it as me saying their involvement would get in my way. It might be an overthought, but I didn’t want to leave even that much room for misunderstanding.
Absolutely not. I had no such intention. If anything, they’d only help, not hinder. Unless it was a boss I absolutely had to kill myself, I planned to leave the subjugations to the knight captains however they came.
Sure, early on, the experience from boss kills was huge. But from midgame onward, when mob experience scaled up across the board, grinding could close that gap easily enough.
Plus, with the builds viable in hardcore mode, as long as you invested decently in holy power and mana, levels barely mattered up to a certain point.
If you had the control to overcome level and spec gaps, you didn’t need to sweat boss experience from the early game.
“You think ‘I had my reasons’ will cut it?”
“You think it will?”
Iris and Erika had approached unnoticed, eyeing me much like Lize. One set of intimidating stares was pressure enough—now there were two more pairs. The weight was immense.
But just like with Lize, Iris and Erika didn’t truly seem angry at me.
If Lize was sulking about why I hadn’t told them in advance, Iris and Erika’s looks carried a hint of gentle reproach amid their own sulkiness.
“So, what’s your answer?”
I gave the second reason—the most obvious one.
“I didn’t want any of you getting hurt.”
“......?”
For a moment, Lize’s eyes went wide. Like she couldn’t believe what she’d just heard. Iris and Erika behind her wore similar expressions.
“Wait. What did you just say?”
“I didn’t want any of you getting hurt.”
“......Hurt? Us?”
“Who else is here? You guys, obviously.”
Her blue eyes spun in confusion. She had no idea what I was saying.
“Rookie, are you saying you were worried about us?”
“No matter who you are, falling from that height means instant death. I’d think it weird if you weren’t worried.”
“How high are we talking?”
Lize’s face turned sullen.
She had to pretend to be mad or something, but she seemed pretty pleased that I’d worried about them—her mouth kept twitching upward on its own. The overall effect was strangely ambiguous.
“By my senses, it was a good twenty seconds of falling. You have no clue?”
All NPCs except a few special ones had no resistance to fall damage. Sure, game mechanics prevented fall-killing bosses, but user tests confirmed it.
It dealt max health-proportional damage at set height intervals during descent, so a drop like this cave’s height was a guaranteed death.
That’s why fall attacks ignored fall damage.
“So you’re saying you came out unscathed?”
“Of course. See? Alive and kicking.”
“And you won’t teach us how.”
“Not won’t—can’t. It’s instinct for me, not knowledge.”
I still wasn’t sure if Iris, Lize, or Erika could even pull off a fall attack.
They couldn’t parry enemy strikes, and while they’d tried rolling, it had no invincibility frames. They couldn’t activate special abilities from weapons other than their own, either.
It really felt like they only knew pure NPC basics. It’d be far weirder to think they could fall attack without parries or rolls.
Before coming here, I’d even asked if they knew how to land safely from a height by using enemies as footing. All four just floated question marks over their heads.
It worked for me when I tried, but that’s “it just worked” level—I wasn’t in any position to teach. How should I know why only my rolls had invincibility time?
“Even so, that’s excessive worrying, rookie. You don’t need to worry about us—”
“Why not? Why shouldn’t I worry about you?”
“......Pardon?”
Erika blinked, at a loss for words at my response.
“You’re not immune to pain or death just because it’s you. Hits hurt, injuries can kill. So why shouldn’t I worry?”
Even against the rock centipede, I’d planned to explain every pattern fully. You never know with people. I’d keep doing it every time they subjugated in my place going forward.
Right now, their toughness was abysmal—one solid hit from a mega boss would lock them in infinite stagger, leaving them groaning until death. Hardcore mode had way shorter gaps between attacks than vanilla, making it even deadlier.
And the most important part: if the knight captains hadn’t dodged first from up top and stayed with me, they’d have plummeted to their deaths from fall damage.
They couldn’t shrug off fall damage. Of course I had to worry.
“We’re knights, rookie. If we must die, we’re prepared for it anytime—and sometimes we must.”
“You’re humans before you’re knights. You might die someday, but not today. Not ever on my watch.”
There were so many monsters ahead they’d need to subjugate in my place. I absolutely wouldn’t tolerate them dying pointlessly to a fall or some rock centipede here.
Their lives were my lifeline—did I seem like the type to let that slide?
“I’m sorry for not telling you ahead. But in that moment, it was the best call. I didn’t want to drag you into something I could handle alone.”
“Rookie....”
As I finished, Lize’s eyes were somehow sparkling. Iris and Erika were looking at me with clearly changed expressions.
‘Did it work?’
I had no idea exactly where I’d succeeded, but it seemed we’d gotten past it safely. I let out a quiet sigh of relief. Better than expected—good.
“So about what comes next... hey, you listening?”
I’d been about to explain the rock centipede’s patterns, but they all seemed lost in their own thoughts, ignoring me.
Lize was always like that, fine. But why Iris and Erika?
‘An unusual guy.’
The thought surfaced simultaneously in Iris and Erika’s minds. He was unusual—that was the only way to put it.
A fresh recruit who’d just joined the knights, subjugating alone a monster even the captains had failed against. And that wasn’t enough—he’d cleared nearly a hundred more over several days.
A fresh recruit who’d just joined the knights, acting without the slightest hesitation, always producing the optimal results.
A fresh recruit who’d just joined the knights, matching knights who’d trained rigorously since childhood—and going so far as to worry about them in return.
It shouldn’t have been possible. Who was worrying about whom? Especially when he couldn’t even use his full abilities due to that curse. He wasn’t in any position to worry about others.
‘A strange feeling.’
Yet oddly, receiving worry from the rookie made a corner of their hearts itch.
They’d always lived far removed from such things. As knights, standing at the forefront in battle was simply how it should be, and death was ever near.
The emperor was the same. As the empire’s strongest, he had no reason to fret over mere knights.
Many squad members had fallen to monsters. They grieved the dead and feared death itself, but no one worried about dying.
Fear of death was natural. Death itself, just as natural. No reason to worry about it or accept such worry. If you died, that was just how far your life went. That had been their mindset all along.
‘Humans before knights...’
But this man was different. He called the natural unnatural. It was all so new.
And it wasn’t some feigned performance hiding his true feelings. His eyes brimmed with sincerity. He truly worried about the knight captains, far stronger than he.
You could scoff at who should worry whom. You could chide him to grow more before speaking up. You could laugh it off as a light joke.
But no one did. No one wanted to.
Somehow, it didn’t feel bad at all.