A Word of Warning
“Kodana? Why bring that up all of a sudden?”
Amber opened her mouth as if to elaborate, then promptly clamped it shut. Even she must have realized how painfully transparent the question sounded.
A chill settled over the space between us. For a few awkward seconds, she shifted uncomfortably under my gaze, her eyes wavering before she finally broke eye contact and stared at the floor.
“Sit down for now,” I said.
Her anxiety was written across every line of her face as she took the seat I offered.
Outwardly, at least, Amber was a flawless beauty. She was remarkably tall for a woman, with striking features framed by dark blonde hair. While her slender frame was perhaps a bit lacking in curves, she had the kind of looks that would turn heads in any ballroom across the Empire. On paper, her face value was extraordinary.
And yet, whenever the two of us were alone, my groin remained resolutely dormant.
Why did a woman this stunning fail to stir the slightest impulse in me? At first, I wondered if there was something physically wrong with me, but that wasn't the case. Before our engagement, during a deployment to relieve a distant estate far from the Imperial Capital, I had shared a perfectly vigorous, spur-of-the-moment fling with a local village maid. My equipment worked just fine.
The reason I became a monk whenever I was around my fiancée was glaringly obvious. It was her behavior.
Within five minutes of our very first meeting, she had audaciously grilled me on my background, finances, and family pedigree. During the early days of our betrothal, she had flaunted her noble status at every turn, playing hard to get and acting haughty. But the second the price of Kodana went into orbit, her demeanor flipped entirely, and she began clinging to me like wet silk.
Amber was the kind of woman who would gladly slap an appraisal tag on her own maidenhead. If she had at least possessed the subtlety to hide it, I might have felt differently.
She probably thinks she’s playing her cards brilliantly.
Still, an arrangement was an arrangement, and she was my fiancée. Politeness dictated that I wait until she regained her composure, but I found myself entirely devoid of patience.
“Doesn't look like you have much to say,” I remarked dryly. “It’s getting late. Why don’t you head home?”
“…You're kicking me out already? Does being in the same room with me bother you that much, Eric?”
“It’s not that it bothers me. I just have no idea what the two of us are supposed to do with our time. Have we ever had an actual conversation? Every time we meet, I talk to myself, you talk to yourself, and then we part ways with nothing but empty echoes.”
“…Other knights tell heroic tales to their lovers,” she murmured defensively.
Heroic tales? Where the hell did that come from?
For a brief moment, I considered actually telling her one, before immediately discarding the thought. What would she want to hear? The five days I spent tracking a band of deserters through the muck without bathing, looking like a drowned rat until we cornered them and butchered every last one? Or the time a handful of comrades and I hacked our way through hundreds of goblins in a mindless slaughter, drenched head to toe in black blood and entrails?
A knight's reality was far from romantic. I could tell her those stories if she really wanted, but I knew damn well that wasn't the sort of heroic epic she had in mind. Even now, she was practically squirming with the urge to bring up the coins again, hesitating only because she was gauging my temper.
“Amber, drop the nonsense about knightly heroics and get straight to the point. What are you actually curious about?”
“…I was just worried you’d form a prejudice against me.”
“I’ve had prejudices about you since the day we met, so don't worry about that now.”
“…Hah.”
Whatever remained of her self-styled noble dignity crumbled. She drew in a sharp, ragged breath and finally spilled what she had been harboring all along.
“Eric. What on earth do you intend to do with all that money?”
“I'll spend it as I see fit. Why does it matter to you?”
“…Of course it matters! I'm the woman who's going to be your wife. Under Imperial law, once formal betrothal rites are concluded, both parties are legally bound to proceed with the wedding as swiftly as possible. Not that you haven't been blatantly ignoring that obligation from day one.”
She wasn't entirely wrong about the law. An engagement between nobles wasn't child's play. If one party unilaterally broke the contract, they faced ruinous penalties in compensatory damages, to say nothing of permanent social humiliation for their house. But that applied strictly to nobility. I was a commoner.
The fact that I had nearly been drafted into the Hero's party, or that I was among the very top fighters in the Imperial Guard Knights, changed nothing about my bloodline.
“Amber, you seem to have forgotten something. I’m not a noble. And you’re the daughter of a titleless noble. If we call off this engagement, nobody with real power is going to care enough to blame either of us.”
“…Even if the legal binding is loose, you’re a renowned knight, and I’m the daughter of a High Prosecutor! If you break our betrothal, your reputation—”
“I know. Which is precisely why I’m warning you to watch your step, so you don’t make me want to break it. Coming over in the dead of night to pry into what I plan to do with my Kodana isn’t doing our relationship any favors.”
“……”
Despite my bluntness, my actual intention was to keep the betrothal intact, provided no catastrophic disaster occurred. Calling off a formal match without ironclad justification was a logistical nightmare, and setting her personality aside, Amber's objective qualifications as a prospective bride weren't bad at all.
First of all, her family possessed neither great wealth nor high standing, meaning they had no leverage to boss me around. The fact that her father served as a prosecutor was another plus.
Prosecutors were imperial officials tasked with auditing state expenditures, monitoring the use of imperial authority, and prosecuting legal infractions. If they rubbed a true titan of the nobility the wrong way, their heads would roll, but within everyday imperial society, they commanded substantial practical clout. It was a great pipeline for building useful connections.
Marriage, at the end of the day, was a practical calculation. So long as Amber didn't parade her greed too aggressively, I was content to proceed based on the mutual benefits of the match.
“Leave the Kodana to me,” I told her flatly. “Whether we end up walking down the aisle or not, those coins remain strictly my property.”
I laid down the decree and met her eyes.
I hope she's smart enough to read between the lines…
Judging by the sullen frost hardening her expression, she had absorbed nothing. She seemed entirely blind to the fact that I was actively giving her a pass.
She glared at me with narrowed, resentful eyes for a long while before rising to her feet. Then, unable to swallow her bitterness, she spat out a parting barb.
“You really think you’re something special, don’t you, Eric?”
“I wouldn't call myself mediocre.”
I was in my mid-twenties and operating at the highest peak of the Expert rank, bordering on the Master tier. I might not have crossed the threshold into a Sword Master, but my sword was not something to be scoffed at anywhere on this continent. False modesty from me would have been an insult to the ninety-nine percent of knights who possessed far less talent than I did.
Amber flinched as the reality of my strength struck her, but her sneer returned a second later.
“That doesn't make you some peerless genius hailed across the entire Empire! Being halfway decent with a blade doesn't mean you can survive in this world all by yourself.”
“I'll keep that in mind.”
She fired one last venomous glare in my direction, turned on her heel, and stalked out the door.
Her residence was roughly a thirty-minute walk from my quarters. Trudging all that way through the dark after getting stonewalled was bound to be an unpleasant journey. It certainly wouldn't put her in a cheerful mood. If the quiet trek forced her into some genuine soul-searching and prompted her to rein in her avarice, that would be ideal. But…
If she doesn't, that's her problem.
Lately, I had been feeling an acute need to purge dead weight from my social circle. There was no rule stating Amber Hyde was exempt from the chopping block.
The walk home was a grueling reminder to Amber of just how pathetic her current circumstances were.
A true noble lady would never have been forced to wear down her own shoe leather for half an hour in the dead of night. Unfortunately, her household was far from wealthy enough to maintain its own carriage.
With every step, the throbbing ache in her calves intensified, and just before she reached her front gate, disaster struck — the heel of her shoe snapped clean off. Humiliation washed over her in waves.
As physical misery gnawed at her body, her resentment toward Eric grew into a suffocating rage.
His dry, clipped tone. That icy indifference entirely devoid of basic courtesy. And above all, that patronizing gaze that looked at her not as a cherished bride-to-be, but as a shameless freeloader angling for a ride on his coat-tails. He had known perfectly well that she arrived on foot, yet he hadn't even offered to hire a hackney cab for her.
The dam finally burst the moment she stepped inside and saw her father.
“Father. I won't mince words. You need to teach Eric a lesson.”
“A lesson? To Eric?”
Her father blinked in surprise, his brow furrowing as he took in his daughter’s disheveled, limping state.
“You're a prosecutor, aren't you? A High Prosecutor, no less!”
“…Amber, whatever happened between you two, your father does not abuse his official authority over personal grudges. Furthermore, prosecutors cannot easily meddle with the Imperial Guard Knights. In some respects, their order is harder to touch than high-ranking nobility.”
“There’s nothing hard about it, Father! Eric is already on the outs with the knight order anyway!”
When Amber made her shrill demand, her father let out a weary sigh.
“…Did you two have a lovers' spat? I understand you're upset, but what kind of prosecutor digs up dirt on his own prospective son-in-law? Go to sleep, and we will discuss this in the morning.”
Her father's infuriating caution made Amber’s blood boil.
Fortunately, unlike Eric, her father was someone who could be manipulated. He was a man who lived his entire life prioritizing safety above all else — the sort of bureaucrat who would stay up all night cross-referencing ledgers just to indict a couple of low-level tax collectors. So long as she convinced him that his actions wouldn't inflict fatal damage on Eric's career, he would move. She was certain of it.
“Father, I’m not asking you to ruin him!”
“Then what on earth are you asking for?”
“I kept quiet because I didn't want you to worry, but ever since Eric struck it rich, he’s treated me like dirt! Can't you see why he hasn't even set a wedding date yet? If this keeps up, he’s going to abandon me entirely!”
“Absurd… A sworn knight of the Imperial Guard would never behave so dishonorably.”
“Do you really think Eric gives a damn about the Guard right now? He's sitting on enough gold to buy an entire fortress outright! Someone needs to give him a wake-up call before it's too late!”
“…Amber.”
“Have I ever begged you for anything like this before? I'm asking because our future depends on it!”
Worn down by his daughter’s desperate pleading, the old prosecutor finally relented.
The very next morning, he mobilized his prosecutorial authority and began combing through Eric's official record. His goal was to find a minor infraction — something that wouldn't ruin the man's career, but would generate just enough friction to shake his arrogance.
Twenty years of service in the judiciary had not rusted his instincts. Before half the day had passed, he struck oil.
“…It seems a civilian grievance was filed against Sir Eric last year,” her father reported, holding up a file. “While tracking a squad of deserters, he apparently conducted an excessive and aggressive search of a nearby village. It isn't an indictable criminal offense, but the prosecutor's office can certainly send a formal administrative recommendation to the Guard requesting a verbal reprimand.”
“A verbal reprimand? That’s perfect. But Father… you aren't putting your name on it, right?”
“…Naturally. I entrusted the filing to a junior colleague. The official narrative will simply be that an ambitious young prosecutor requested internal discipline from the sacred sanctuary of the Imperial Guard Knights.”
Her father sounded reluctant, but Amber was already beaming.
She nodded in deep satisfaction, convinced this slight pinch would be more than enough to snap Eric out of his haughty delusions.
That ought to teach him not to look down on me.
Of course, this maneuver would extinguish whatever tender romance might have existed between them. But since their relationship had gotten off on the wrong foot anyway, establishing boundaries through power was the only way forward. She had to show him that she was not a woman to be trifled with. Once he recognized her family's reach, she could always extend an olive branch and play the gentle, forgiving partner.
However, matters quickly careened in a direction Amber had never anticipated.
Upon receiving the prosecutorial recommendation for discipline, the high command of the Imperial Guard Knights sprang into action with ferocious, unprecedented zeal. They had zero intention of settling for anything as gentle as a verbal reprimand.