Chapter 45: Honorary Count Deon Hart (10)
Chapter 45: Honorary Count Deon Hart (10)
"C-Count, are you all right?!"
Even in the midst of her fluster, Rien, who had bisected a monster that could have been a threat, hurriedly checked Deon's condition.
The arrow had driven deep into his shoulder, embedding itself cleanly. Judging by where it struck, it must have come from behind.
Meaning it didn't fly in from the border side.......
Having quickly sorted that out, Rien called out to Deon again, then paused at his ensuing reaction.
"Huff......."
"......Count?"
Startled- she unconsciously stepped back. A goosebump-inducing revulsion washed over her.
Was this what it would feel like if you combined the aura of the Murderer Knight Order members running amok?
Unhidden excitement and madness seeped from his slowly exhaled breath.
Crrk— an eerie sound made her look down. He was gripping his own shoulder as if clawing into it.
Even as his sharp nails widened the wound and the hand wrapped around his shoulder soaked thoroughly in blood.
Deon Hart was smiling.
"Lady Rien."
"Y-Yes!"
"Cut this off."
"......Pardon?"
"Hurry."
Looking at the arrow shaft he thrust out as if urging her, Rien momentarily hesitated.
The way he was talking, he meant she should cut the protruding part flush so it wouldn't catch on anything. If she cut the shaft that way, it would be convenient for now, but the aftermath when removing the arrowhead later would be considerable.
The more he moved, the deeper the arrowhead would dig in, and to extract it, she'd have to slice deeper around it and widen the wound.
A longer recovery time was a given.
Given that Deon Hart was the Emperor's Sword, she should have stopped him.
But the moment she met the blood-red eyes slithering over to focus on her, Rien, as if mesmerized, drew her sword and swung.
The protruding, swaying arrow shaft dropped with a thud. With the cumbersome thing gone, Deon smiled in satisfaction.
"Now then, kids."
Clop.
As his horse took a step forward, he tilted his head slightly.
Immediately, another arrow—from she knew not when—whizzed past his ear and thudded deep into the ground.
Leaving the horrified Rien behind, Deon used his bloodied hand to flip back the hood of his white robe and looked over the members.
His eyes, exposed under the strong early summer sunlight, narrowed as if the glare was too much, but his mouth still held its smile.
"Time for drugs."
It was battle! The members' eyes shifted.
Their appearance was so unlike the ones she knew, Rien flinched.
Deon leisurely wiped his blood-soaked hand on the hem of his robe and waited unhurriedly for their preparations to finish.
Meanwhile, the ambushers, having no intention of wasting more time, began charging in on horseback, but no one except Rien seemed impatient.
"Got any drugs?"
"Only enough for me."
"Damn. Oi, Cleta, do you have any left......."
"Just the one I brought just in case. Don't tell me you didn't bring any?"
"It was a monster subjugation. I didn't know we'd be dealing with humans."
Milan roughly ruffled his hair as if troubled.
He wasn't the only one who hadn't brought any; several others were milling around the members trying to score drugs.
Deon, who had been watching this, suddenly pulled a pouch from his chest with his now-clean hand.
"Milan."
"Yes? ......Hup!"
Reflexively snatching the thing that flew at him, Milan realized it was a pouch and carefully checked its contents.
Inside, it was full of stark-white pills.
Immediately recognizing what they were, Milan looked up and stared at Deon with puzzled eyes.
"Doesn't Your Excellency handle things well without these? So why would you have......."
"Got them from the liver-swollen junkie when I went to carry out His Majesty's orders."
"Huh? Ah...... Anyway, I'll use them gratefully."
How on earth one goes on a monster subjugation and meets a liver-swollen junkie was a mystery, but better is better. Milan promptly popped a pill into his mouth.
Then his face immediately crumpled hard.
The pill was the type that, if dropped into something like a water glass, would dissolve instantly without a trace.
In other words, it wasn't a pill made for particularly good purposes. The upside was that it was easy to ingest, so if you thought positively.......
'Drugs like this always have side effects.......'
Even high-quality drugs were sketchy, and this was the cheap stuff. If the person who provided it hadn't been the Count, he would have spat it right out.
'Well...... the Count wouldn't give us anything problematic, so the side effects probably won't be that serious.'
Milan, with a reluctant look, was about to swallow the pill rapidly dissolving on his tongue, while others who had been searching for drugs came and started grabbing pills to pop into their mouths as well. Just then—
"Ah, that has sleeping pills and a paralytic mixed in, so sort them out properly yourselves."
"......Ptui!!"
"Ptoo! Ptui!"
The sounds of spitting erupted everywhere at once.
Among those who re-checked the damp pills in their hands by even smelling them, a few returned them to their mouths with relieved faces, while others discarded them on the ground with bitter expressions.
A grumbling voice came from somewhere.
"We have some immunity, but isn't this too much?"
"Your own fault for not telling them apart."
"Now that I look, the sleeping pills and paralytics seem to have extremely severe side effects. Are you even human, Count Hart?"
"I'm not human right now."
"Ah."
"Considering what we're about to do, I can't afford to be human."
"Good heavens......."
At the incomprehensible scene unfolding before her eyes, Rien, who had been watching the situation, hesitantly opened her mouth.
"C-Count...... what are those, drugs......?"
"Narcotics."
"Cough— Na-Narcotics! Aren't narcotics a banned substance in the Empire! If even you, the Count who should be stopping this, are doing it......!"
"It's tacitly permitted for our knight order. Just don't get caught openly."
"What do you mean......."
"This isn't the time to be worrying about that, is it?"
Having said that much, Deon kicked off the stirrups and leaped up.
Lightly clearing Rien, he twisted his body in midair, wrapped his arm around the neck of a guy charging at her, and dropped to the ground with him.
Falling from a horse! At worst, that could lead to severe injury or even death!
Startled, Rien followed Deon with her eyes and looked down. He had landed skillfully, using the opponent as a cushion, and was now pinning the guy to the floor by driving daggers into both his shoulders.
Both shoulders, then both hands. As the opponent thrashed in pain, Deon slowly lowered his gaze and—
"Should I do the legs, too?"
"......."
The words were dead serious.
Seeing the glistening red eyes, as if tasting something, the guy froze as though paralyzed.
Deon grinned *shik* at him and then stood up.
If only he had a generous supply of daggers, he surely would have done it, but regrettably, only two remained.
So, as he turned his gaze toward the members who had already entered the fray, he tossed out a remark to Rien, who stood by with her sword drawn on standby.
"Lady Rien."
"Yes, Count."
"Keep this one alive and watch him well."
"I will carry out your orders."
Now he didn't need to worry about that side anymore.
He took in the sight of the members fighting on one side like madmen.
Their eyes were all out of whack. An ordinary person watching would have certainly thought they'd lost their minds.......
Deon's eyes narrowed.
"What are you doing right now?"
A monotonous voice, not particularly loud or carrying any specific emotion. Yet for some reason, everyone's eyes turned toward him.
Setting aside the enemies' gazes, even the bloodshot eyes of the drug-addled members staring at him would have been quite burdensome to bear, but Deon paid it no mind.
Step.
He slowly strode toward that space between reason and instinct, where a precarious madness flowed.
Entering a place packed full of horses was tantamount to suicide, but there was no sign of hesitation.
"Lost the touch since it's been a while......."
"......."
"Or did you think that now you're knights, you can fight like humans?"
"!"
In an instant, he vanished from his spot and appeared right beside a horse ridden by the enemy, stabbing the opponent's thigh with his dagger. As the man's balance crumbled from the unexpected pain, Deon seized the chance, raked his sharp nails over the wound, grabbed his clothes, and dragged him down.
The sight of him mercilessly plunging his dagger down at the moment of the fall made even the members, who were not only accustomed to such acts but had committed them themselves, turn their gazes away.
Yeah, that.
If they'd truly lost their minds, they wouldn't have looked away like that.
A sneer rose on Deon's lips.
"Why are you suppressing the drug's effects?"
What was the point of taking drugs if you were just going to act the same as always?
As if they themselves hadn't been aware, the members' eyes widened. Meeting the gazes directed at him one by one, Deon spoke as if they were pathetic.
"You don't have that level of skill yet."
The skill to survive without becoming cruel.
Nor was it that they were immune to cruel acts. Nor to the guilt toward the victims of those acts.
So they had to get wasted. They had to blow the memories away with the drug's haze.
"I'm sure I've said it over and over."
Thwuck— a horrific sound was heard.
Between eyes curved like crescent moons, blood-red pupils slid sideways.
There stood a guy who'd been approaching with a weapon, whether trying to exploit the distraction and launch a sneak attack, his eyes wide open as if he couldn't believe it.
A dagger driven through the guy's heart, though no one saw when it was swung.
Deon applied force to his hand, twisted the dagger, and pulled it out. Blood splattered copiously, staining his white hair and cheek red.
Deon didn't stop there; he grabbed the guy's hair, yanked his head back, and started repeatedly plunging the dagger into his face.
In contrast to the rough, almost madness-laced action, his voice was utterly mismatched—composed.
"Reason is only needed enough to tell friend from foe."
Blood that hadn't yet seeped in trickled down his bangs and dropped with a drip.
And the moment they met the same-hued red eyes hiding behind it,
[Be consumed by madness.]
Those words, which had been etched so vividly into their minds, seemed to echo again, and the members could do nothing but freeze solid.
* * *
While Deon and the Murderer Knight Order were dealing with the suddenly appeared enemies, across the border on the Kingdom's side, great confusion was brewing.
The commander tasked with the crucial role of defending the border stared blankly at one spot and muttered in a dazed voice.
As if he couldn't believe it himself, his voice was laden with deep disbelief.
"That's Deon Hart, right? The Empire's hero."
"Seeing the white hair, it seems so."
"Judging by his fighting style, it's correct as well."
"We're too far to see his eye color, but seeing the white attire, it seems so."
"The uniforms of the fellows with him are definitely from the Murderer Knight Order. So it's probably right."
"Damn it."
Why on earth had they come to this side?
Even calling it a simple monster subjugation felt suspicious.
Typically, at least two knight orders were mobilized for a monster subjugation, but that was far too small a number.
The notion that they'd handpicked an elite few and come to snoop around, rather than for a mere monster subjugation, was starting to weigh more on his mind. At that very moment, a bigger problem erupted.
"Now what's that?!"
The one who appeared to be Deon Hart was struck in the shoulder by an arrow that flew in out of nowhere.
And a new battle broke out with newly appeared forces who looked suspicious at a single glance.
Just as their side was in chaos, their own side across the border was also in chaos, albeit of a different kind.
What was this? To go so far as to try to harm the Empire's hero, there had to be a figure in a fairly high position backing them. Was it an internal conflict? Was the Empire suffering from severe internal strife?
Or was it a show of force aimed at our kingdom? No, calling it a show of force didn't make sense—the arrow was lodged quite deep. Their arm's use would probably be seriously hampered for the time being.
......Huh? For the time being......?