This Is Strictly For Knightly Research... I'm Only Reading It to Unmask the Culprit Who Planted This Scandalous Book on Me...!
I let out an involuntary groan.
One week.
My freeloader life had devolved into the life of a retake-exam student.
Karin had clearly decided to grind me to dust under the pretext of sword training.
『Lady Veronica’s formal sword lessons are held in the afternoon. And I understand Her Grace the Grand Duchess teaches you literacy in the mornings. That leaves only the hours before dawn, when everyone else is asleep, to train you. Be at the training grounds by five o’clock.』
Under the guise of making sure the young lady’s lessons and my literacy schedule didn’t overlap, she had scheduled my sword training for five in the morning—before the sun even rose.
At first I wanted to grab her by the collar and throw a tantrum. No matter how you looked at it, waking up at five was harsher than standing night watch on the wall.
But.
‘I can’t throw a tantrum, damn it…’
Every morning at five, when I dragged myself to the training grounds half-asleep, Karin was already there in her neat training uniform, a light sheen of sweat on her forehead, waiting for me.
The fact that I was training meant my instructor was also waking up earlier than everyone else to teach me. For the sake of her promise to turn me into a knight who wouldn’t be looked down on even outside the Grand Duchy… in the face of Karin’s devotion—sacrificing her own sleep to whip me into shape—I had no right to complain about the cold or the drowsiness.
“Get up! Fix your stance!”
Thwack—!
“Ugh!”
In the end I had no choice but to pick up the wooden sword again without a moment’s rest. Karin’s wooden blade mercilessly slammed into my side.
My daily routine was no different from that of a student at a Spartan retake-exam academy.
From five to eight in the morning, she worked to break the habits I’d hardened during my time on the wall, leaving fresh purple bruises all over my body every single day.
From nine in the morning until noon, the moment I washed off the sweat I ran straight to the library for literacy lessons with Lady Rebecca. Once the physical torment ended, the mental torment began. Cramming the twisted letters of this romance-fantasy world into a brain that had been idle for a year felt like it was going to set my skull on fire.
From two in the afternoon until five. After lunch, just when I thought I might steal a quick nap, Veronica’s sword lesson would begin. My role there was to serve as both Karin’s additional training partner and the demonstration dummy for technique exhibitions…
『My lady, when the enemy thrusts like this, you deflect it this way to break their balance.』
Thud!
『See? Even a big man goes down easily.』
『Wow! Instructor, you’re so cool! Scar Man, get thrown again!』
Every time Karin demonstrated a move, I went flying through the air and slammed into the training ground floor, while Veronica, seated on the bench, clapped with sparkling eyes.
The little lady, whose wariness and jealousy toward me had not yet completely faded, seemed to find watching me get beaten up by Karin the greatest entertainment of her day.
“……Seriously, freeloader life my ass.”
Panting, I readjusted my grip on the wooden sword. Karin glared at me and angled her blade.
“What are you muttering? Your legs have gone slack.”
“……It’s nothing. Just come at me already.”
I clenched my teeth. Fatigue had seeped all the way into my marrow, but the fire in my eyes refused to die.
One week. It had been hellish, but there were results.
The systematic flow of Karin’s swordsmanship was being forcibly hammered into both my brain and muscles, refining the survival instincts I had only ever learned on the wall.
Taht—!
Karin charged fearlessly into my range once more. A textbook diagonal slash from high to low. A week ago, I would have been too slow to react and ended up getting knocked away while trying to block.
But now.
‘I see it. The flow.’
I didn’t retreat. Instead, just as Karin had taught me, I gave my wooden sword a slight twist and lightly deflected the side of her descending blade.
Kaang—!
Instead of meeting it head-on, the glancing force made Karin’s sword deviate ever so slightly from its path. And in that instant when her center of gravity shifted to the right—
‘Now!’
I kicked off the ground to close the distance and, using the recoil from my waist, drove the tip of my sword toward her left shoulder. It was the essence of a week’s training—the fusion of the wall’s brutal thrusts and the refined trajectory Karin had polished.
Tap—!
“……!”
Karin’s eyes widened. The tip of my wooden sword had stopped precisely after grazing her left shoulder guard. It wasn’t a fatal blow, but it was the first clean hit I had ever landed on my instructor.
“……I got you.”
Even as I gasped for breath, a joyful smile spread across my face.
‘I did it! I landed a hit on the shoulder of the woman who’ll become the Empire’s strongest knight in ten years!’
“……Excellent.”
Karin looked down at the wooden sword touching her shoulder and offered quiet, composed praise.
“The timing of your deflection, the decisiveness of your entry—both were flawless. To find a gap in my defense after only a week.”
“Haa, haa…… Thank you, Instructor. Now I’m getting pretty……”
The moment I proudly lowered my sword and relaxed my stance—
Karin’s lips curved into a smooth arc.
And then.
“However.”
Swoosh.
“In real combat, the enemy does not step back with praise just because you landed one hit.”
“……Huh?”
WHAM—!!
My vision spun wildly toward the sky in an instant. Even while still in the posture of having taken the shoulder hit, Karin used only a snap of her wrist to mercilessly drive the pommel of her wooden sword up into my chin. At the same time, her foot hooked behind my knee and swept my legs out from under me.
“Gaaah!”
Crash!
I let out a pitiful scream and tumbled across the sand, landing on my back in an even more miserable position than before.
“Ugh…… cough……”
Sand crunched between my teeth. Karin walked over to stand beside my head, looking down at my dirt-covered form with a cool gaze as she rested her wooden sword on her shoulder.
“It seems we must also correct that habit of letting your guard down. Getting so excited after landing a single blow that you drop your stance—how exactly did you survive on the wall?”
“……It hurts…… I don’t even have the strength to talk……”
I stared up at the sky, tears leaking from the corners of my eyes.
“Stop whining and get up!”
Right. What was I thinking, trying to beat the future strongest knight in the Empire after only a week?
I once again felt the limits of reality as I somehow forced my battered body to stand. The sky over the Grand Duke’s residence, now brightening with dawn, remained indifferently clear and beautiful.
On the fifth floor of the Grand Duke’s residence, Veronica was burrowed under her blanket all the way to her chin, fast asleep on her fluffy bed. She rubbed her eyes at the faint noise coming from outside.
Clack.Thwack—!
The regular, dull sound of wood striking wood. Occasionally mixed with shouts, the noises sliced through the quiet predawn air of the still-dark residence.
“Mmm……”
Rubbing her sleepy eyes, Veronica wriggled down from the bed. She still clutched her beloved rabbit doll tightly to her chest.
The child stood on tiptoe, approached the window of her room, and gently lifted the thick curtain to peer down below.
In the wide training ground on the first floor, visible through the window, two silhouettes were fiercely crossing swords and kicking up clouds of dust.
“Haa! Haa……!”
Scar Man—Veil—swinging his wooden sword with desperate tenacity while breathing hard. And her wonderful instructor, Karin, who drove him relentlessly yet corrected every single detail of his form.
“…….”
Veronica’s plump lips poked out in a pout.
“Mmm……”
Over the past week, the relationship between Veil and Karin had developed at an alarming pace in Veronica’s eyes.
When he had first arrived at the residence, her instructor had glared at Scar Man as if she wanted to devour him. Veronica clearly remembered the reliable look in her instructor’s eyes when she had stepped forward to fiercely stare down Veil after Veronica herself had been teased and hung her head in shame.
But now.
『Again! Your center of gravity is too high! Put more strength into your legs!』
『Ugh…… Understood, Instructor!』
Though their voices were strict and fierce during training, beneath it flowed a deep bond of mutual recognition and guidance.
When the man fell to the ground, the instructor would reach out a hand to help him up, and even while dripping with sweat, he would rise again without a single complaint and pick up his wooden sword.
‘……They’ve gotten really close.’
Veronica tightened her grip on the curtain.
At first she had hated Scar Man for monopolizing her father’s attention and hugs. When even her mother started spending time helping him study letters, she had felt a sense of crisis.
But now even the instructor she considered the coolest person in the world was growing closer to that very Scar Man, sharing secret predawn hours with him alone.
It felt as if the adults were building a bridge that only they could cross, leaving her completely out.
“I want to practice swordsmanship with Instructor in the mornings too……”
But for a ten-year-old child’s stamina, waking up at five o’clock before dawn was nearly impossible.
In the end, every morning Veronica could only watch the two of them sweating and bonding beyond the window with a mixture of envy and jealousy.
And above all.
Lately, whenever she walked down the corridors of the residence, she frequently overheard servants gathered in twos and threes whispering.
『Oh my, did you see Sir Karin and Sir Veil walking to the training grounds together just now?』
『Yes! They’re both so tall and well-built; even from behind they look like a painting.』
It was a conversation Veronica had accidentally overheard yesterday afternoon from behind a corner in the hallway.
『And did you know how kind-hearted they both are? Yesterday old Tom was groaning because his back hurt and he couldn’t finish mowing the lawn in the garden.』
『Ah, that’s right! But Sir Veil saw it while passing by, rolled up his sleeves, and cut all the grass for him, didn’t he?』
『That’s not all. They say Sir Karin personally gave old Tom a southern-style hot compress that’s good for his back. Since they’re both commoners, they don’t feel the slightest shame in helping people like us with our work.』
The maids’ voices were filled with respect and affection for the two knights.
『As expected, His Grace and Her Grace have an exceptional eye for people. How did they manage to bring such fine, handsome, beautiful, and kind-hearted individuals into our household?』
『Exactly! Honestly, don’t the two of them have a strangely similar vibe? They’re around the same age, too. It would be wonderful if they got together properly and settled down here in the Grand Duke’s residence. Hohoho!』
Fine man and beautiful woman. A well-matched pair. It would be nice if they got together.
Every time those words echoed in Veronica’s ears, the child’s heart churned with complicated emotions.
‘Everyone likes Scar Man……’
At first she had been scared of his terrifying scar and enormous build. That was why she had hidden behind her father and run away screaming.
But when she thought about it calmly, Scar Man had never once gotten angry with her or raised his voice. When she was frightened, he had willingly crouched down and covered his face with her rabbit doll. When his seat at the dinner table was taken, he had looked awkward and apologetic. When she had been scolded by her mother in the library and started crying, he had even made up a plausible lie to paint her as a wonderful child.
‘He’s always been kind to me too.’
Rubbing her cheek against the rabbit doll, Veronica faced a truth she didn’t want to admit.
There was a reason the adults looked favorably on Veil. There was a reason her father cared for him so much, why her instructor sacrificed her predawn sleep to teach him the sword, and why the servants praised him.
‘Maybe…… I’ve been too mean and prickly toward him all this time?’
Her heart ached with guilt at the thought that she might have acted too spitefully out of needless jealousy.
But.
“Still…… I don’t want to lose.”
A strange competitive spirit blazed in Veronica’s violet eyes.
Guilt was guilt, but she couldn’t just sit still and watch as the attention of all her precious people turned entirely toward Veil.
“I’m going to train with Instructor in the mornings too. I won’t let Scar Man take everything.”
Veronica clenched her small fist tightly. She made a firm resolution to break her habit of sleeping in and somehow wake up early starting tomorrow to join the morning training.
The warm rumors among the servants of the Grand Duke’s residence that had ignited such inner conflict and determination in Veronica were, of course, deliberately started by none other than the Grand Duchess Rebecca.
“My lady, please drink the black tea before it gets cold.”
“Ah, thank you, Hanna.”
While reviewing documents in her office, Rebecca elegantly took a sip of the black tea her personal maid had brought. Then she casually lifted her eyes from the papers, glanced toward the garden outside the window, and brought up the topic in a perfectly natural yet secretive manner.
“By the way, Hanna. Don’t Sir Veil and Sir Karin make a rather lovely pair these days?”
“Yes, my lady. They are both so dedicated and sincere in training the young lady that the servants can’t stop praising them.”
“Right? Hehe.”
Rebecca opened her fan to lightly cover her mouth and smiled with her eyes.
“Seeing them cross swords and sweat together from dawn in the training grounds is like watching a painting. Since they’re both commoners of similar age, they seem to share a lot in common too.”
Rebecca was very cleverly planting the image of the two of them as a couple into the maid’s subconscious.
“To be honest, I think the two of them suit each other perfectly. A dependable man who has crossed life and death on the battlefield, and a strong, beautiful female knight who overcame prejudice. Doesn’t it sound like a romantic story straight out of a novel?”
“Oh my, now that you mention it, my lady, it really does. There has always been a special atmosphere when the two of them are together.”
“Doesn’t it? It would be nice if everyone in the residence watched the two of them with such warm eyes. Who knows? Perhaps a truly beautiful and heartwarming match might be born right here in our Grand Duke’s residence.”
The Grand Duchess’s blatant matchmaking spread like wildfire among the servants through the mouth of maid Hanna. Since it carried Her Grace’s official endorsement, the servants naturally began to view Veil and Karin through a pink-tinted filter.
The reason Rebecca was conducting such a meticulous and secretive public-opinion campaign was simple.
It was all because of the erotic novel she had been secretly devouring whenever she had a spare moment while handling official duties.
In Rebecca’s mind, the faces of the novel’s male and female protagonists had been seamlessly replaced with Veil’s and Karin’s.
The desire to vicariously enjoy the stimulating and indecent text of the scandalous novel she was reading in real life. And the wish that the secret knowledge she had acquired to restore her husband’s lost masculinity would be sweetly realized by these two young people.
‘I even casually asked Veronica about it yesterday.’
Rebecca leaned back in her office chair and hummed a little tune.
Yesterday evening, before dinner, she had asked her daughter in passing.
『Veronica, what do you think of Sir Veil and Sir Karin? Don’t the two of them make a lovely pair?』
She had hoped to hear a firm “Yes, they suit each other so well!” from her daughter’s lips.
But Veronica, who had been sulking because both her parents’ attention had been stolen away, had turned bright red and shouted, “Hmph! I don’t know! I hate both of them!” before running off.
“Veronica must just be feeling shy. Hehe. At any rate, the atmosphere is ripening very naturally, just as I planned.”
Lady Rebecca smiled with deep satisfaction and resumed stamping the territory documents. In her head, she was already imagining the grand wedding scene of Veil and Karin.
However.
Contrary to the pink-tinted expectations of the people in the Grand Duke’s residence, the little lady’s cute jealousy, and the Grand Duchess’s lewd fantasies—
“Get up!! Your legs are slack!!”
Thwack—!
“Ughhh……!”
I squeezed strength into my trembling arms and barely managed to stand.
‘Romance? Chemistry? Fine man and beautiful woman? Bullshit……’
I had heard with my own ears the Grand Duchess and the servants saying our training looked like a painting, but inside me there wasn’t the slightest trace of any fluttering emotion or tenderness toward Karin.
There was only one feeling filling my head.
‘Just one hit…… I’m really going to land one solid punch, not just a graze like before……!’
Pure competitive spirit.
“Stop whining and get up! Fix your stance again!”
On the surface, Karin shouted with a strict expression. But the moment she turned to prepare the next stance, the tips of her ears were burning red.
‘That smell of sweat…… those rough, panting breaths……’
Karin felt sweat beading on the tightly gripped handle of her wooden sword.
For the past week, Karin’s nights had been just as hot and fierce as her days.
The nameless brown leather book that Lady Rebecca had secretly left on the desk in Karin’s room that night.
『The knight’s thick fingers brushed through the lady’s damp hair as……』
The first time she had opened the book and seen the explicit spring paintings and illustrations, Karin had almost thrown it across the room in shock. She had never brought such an indecent book into her room. It must have been left there by mistake.
But.
‘Th-this is purely as a knight…… I’m only reading it to find out who planted this scandalous book on me in order to frame me……!’
Without realizing it, Karin had made up an excuse and every night she locked her door, lit a candle, and turned page after page of the erotic novel.
The bookmark had already raced toward the final chapter.
Every time she read the description of the male protagonist with the rough scars, Karin’s mind automatically replayed Veil’s scarred face and solid, muscular body as he charged toward her at dawn in the training grounds, covered in dirt and with a fierce glint in his eyes.
The sight of that wild man letting out suppressed groans and dripping with sweat every time she knocked him down.
‘Have I gone mad, Karin? Why am I imagining such embarrassing things while looking at that guy’s face in the middle of training……!’
Karin mentally slapped her own cheeks as hard as she could. Even the move she had just used—striking Veil’s chin and sweeping his legs—reminded her of a position from last night’s novel, and she staggered backward in panic.
“Hurry up and get up! Stop dawdling!”
To hide her flustered heart, Karin shouted louder and sharper than usual.
“I’m getting up! I’m getting up, okay! Have some mercy on a guy!”
I brushed the sand off myself with annoyed swipes and stood up.
‘Why is she suddenly so angry again? She’s the one who hit me.’
Completely unaware of the meaning behind Karin’s reddened ear tips and trembling eyes, I greeted the morning.