Menesteil (9)
Alsaetin was still wearing an awkward smile, having never expected such a dramatic reaction, when Nick quietly appeared at his side and pressed a towel into his hand.
Alsaetin thanked him for the consideration and wiped the beer from his face.
"Forgive me. My ears must have failed me—I thought I heard something quite strange."
Watching him, Karl forced a crooked smile and rubbed the back of his neck.
"You heard it right."
"You're telling me you genuinely asked whether there exists a grown man who enjoys being berated by a little girl?"
"I did."
"Why would you ask that?"
Karl's brow furrowed, his expression dead serious—the look of a man who genuinely could not fathom why such a question would ever be directed at him.
"Why? Are you asking in earnest?"
"How could I not be? I am a knight of House Alrn. Being suspected of such a thing is nothing short of offensive."
"...You're serious?"
"Let me turn it around. What made you look at me and think that in the first place?"
"Just look at how you act toward the Young Lady of Alrn!"
It was the first time Alsaetin had raised his voice, confronted by Karl's insistence that the accusation was unjust.
"You're delighted when she treats you like a dog! You get sad when her insults get watered down into politer words!"
"Ahh. So that's the part you were referring to."
"So you finally understand."
"And what, pray tell, is wrong with it?"
"What?"
At the question thrown back at him, Alsaetin pressed his palm hard against the bridge of his nose.
Does this fool honestly believe there's nothing wrong with him?!
I'd always thought something was loose in that head of his, but never this bad!
"You graduated from the Academy as an elite—how do you have no common sense? Did you take a blow to the head at some point during your knightly duties?!"
"No, I understand why you found it strange. I can see how it would look that way."
Alsaetin watched Karl nod along, and the suffocating frustration swelling in his chest drove him to down his drink in one go before shouting.
"Then how, HOW, does 'what's wrong with that' come out of your mouth?!"
"Then let me explain properly. Listen, and I shall tell you."
"Haah. Fine. Go ahead."
"First, there is something you must know: my dream. I wished to become the ideal knight of the bards' songs."
With that, Karl began to recount the tales of knights as he remembered them.
The one who guarded his master's tomb until he himself was turning into a skeletal knight. The one who always stood at the vanguard of every battlefield to fulfill his lord's wishes. The one who kept faith even as an enemy prisoner, and lost his head for it.
And on and on Karl went, recounting the deeds of the countless knights who lived within song.
"Do you know what they all have in common? They each served an ideal master."
Karl had never once wanted to be the protagonist of a tragedy.
Not even when a master's incompetence was precisely what made a knight's competence shine.
Because Karl wished to achieve the ideal, not to earn pity.
"Think on it. Setting aside the young lady's somewhat coarse manner of speech, does she not come close to the ideal of masters?"
When Karl first resolved to serve Lucy, it would be hard to call it respect for her.
He had sought to repay the person who forgave him for his own incompetence and shortcomings—not to acknowledge Lucy and swear her his loyalty.
But as he remained at her side, his thinking had gradually changed.
She was someone who could throw away her own life for the sake of others.
She was a person who could overcome hesitation when she believed it necessary.
She was someone who knew no surrender, even in the most extreme circumstances.
She possessed talent enough to overwhelm everyone at Soul Academy, where the kingdom's finest talents gathered.
"At some point, I realized it: the young lady is the ideal master I had dreamed of."
What a miracle it was.
The person he had sought to serve in atonement had turned out to be the very ideal that could fulfill his dream!
Even if Lucy had possessed no ability at all, Karl would have followed her. The gratitude he felt was simply that enormous.
But Lucy had more than he could have hoped for.
She had the power to make his dream come true!
How could he not be thankful?
How could he not treasure this bond?
Karl poured his story out with fervor, but Alsaetin's reaction was, in truth, less than impressed.
"Yes, yes. I understand that the Young Lady of Alrn is everything you ever hoped for. But why on earth do you rejoice in her bratty speech and antics?"
"Because it's the young lady doing it!"
Lucy treating him like a dog was Lucy acknowledging him as her hound.
And so, naturally, it was something to be glad about.
Lucy using insults she never used on anyone else meant she was treating him as special.
And that, too, was naturally something to be glad about.
"Do you see? The cause and effect are reversed. I do not enjoy being berated by a little girl. I rejoice because it is the young lady doing the berating! This is not some perverted desire—it is loyalty!"
Karl straightened his shoulders and bellowed, utterly without a trace of shame, and Alsaetin simply stared blankly at his face before draining another drink.
So in the end, he admits he was happy being cursed out by the Young Lady of Alrn.
How is that any different from enjoying being berated by a little girl?
There is no way a sane mind can wrap itself around this.
Haah. What a tragic waste.
He looks fine enough, he's got real ability, and yet what's rattling around inside him is this pathetic. Truly regrettable.
Marriage is a lost cause for him.
Unless he meets someone exactly as deranged as himself, he'll be spending his entire life alone.
Alsaetin thought all of this, but kept it behind his teeth.
Knowing this madman, he would only spout something like, What does being alone matter, so long as I can stand at the young lady's side!
"There! I have answered your question properly. Now it is my turn to ask."
"You're asking why I followed the Young Lady of Alrn here, aren't you?"
Alsaetin shot the question back at Karl while, quite casually, activating the spell stored in the ring on his finger.
"...Hm. A sound-dampening charm?"
"Sharp as ever. It's nothing like the commonly known spells—you shouldn't have been able to recognize it."
"I didn't identify it by sight. I noticed because the sound vanished."
At Karl's reply—that he had caught the fact that Nick's breathing had disappeared—Alsaetin let out an awkward laugh.
His skill is real, at least. That one works the underworld too—he'd have been lying in wait with his presence fully suppressed, and Karl still sensed him.
"Well. Never mind that. Answer the question."
"Simple enough. The person I'm looking for is here."
"You mean Karia—the one the young lady spoke of?"
"That's right. My teacher."
The woman who, back when they'd actually been together, had heard the word "auntie" far more often than "teacher."
At the sound of her name, Karl crossed his arms.
"She must be precious to you."
"She's the one who picked me up as I was dying in a garbage dump and raised me."
Alsaetin snorted softly and began to spin the story of his past.
How he'd been abandoned in a back alley the moment he was born. How he'd had to beg on the streets as soon as he learned to toddle. How he'd been beaten within an inch of his life whenever he failed to meet his quota. And how, by pure chance, he'd been picked up.
"Most of everything I have now, I learned from her."
Perhaps because a reunion he'd yearned for all these years now stood within reach—or perhaps simply because he was drunk—Alsaetin's tongue was looser than usual.
As Karl listened to the deeds of the woman called Karia spilling from his lips, he murmured quietly to himself.
"She sounds like a remarkable person."
"Isn't she? She's even raided dungeons alongside Sir Benedict Alrn, back in the day."
"...What?"
Seeing Karl's face freeze solid, Alsaetin snickered and pressed on.
"I'm not joking. You'll see her face soon enough anyway—I'm just warning you in advance."
"Karia, once called the Shadow of the Royal Palace, is YOUR teacher? Ha. If you're going to lie, at least make it a believable one."
"I'm telling you it's true."
Alsaetin continued with a hint of laughter in his voice, but Karl showed not the slightest sign of believing him.
Naturally so. How could anyone accept that a woman once counted a legend alongside Benedict was the teacher of some informant living in the back alleys?
Alsaetin, apparently having never expected his words to land anyway, merely shrugged and moved on to some other old memory.
The day after spending an entire day recovering my condition, I went over the items in my inventory one more time.
Where I was about to go was more dangerous than any place I had ever set foot in. And with good reason—that place was where the Evil God who governed fire had been sealed.
The world of Soul Academy held countless gods.
These gods weren't omniscient, omnipotent absolutes—they were closer to the layered, flawed deities you'd find in Greek and Roman myth, and their behavior was every bit as human.
You know how a crowd of people bunches together and forms a faction, right? The gods of this world were no different.
They had split into two camps: one clustered around Armadi, the pathetic pervert lolicon, and one clustered around Agra, the petty skinflint.
Of the two, the former wished to maintain and stabilize the world, while the latter wished for the world to be destroyed, once and for all.
They clashed bitterly over their respective positions, and when they finally realized words would settle nothing, they went to war.
At war's end, the victorious side of Armadi sealed the evil gods away in various corners of the world, and that was how the conflict was brought to a close.
But there was one thing the gods had failed to anticipate.
Sealed or not, a god was still a god.
Their divine authority naturally seeped into their surroundings, giving rise to things that should never have existed in the world.
Those things were the great dungeons.
Abnormal environments born not of Agra's power, but of the residual aura of the evil gods.
Places that could never vanish so long as the wedge—a sealed evil god—remained within them.
Places where catastrophe would begin the moment a seal broke.
Now you see why the quest to save Menesteil from calamity exists, don't you?
Because right now, there's someone in that place trying to shatter the seal.
And the pathetic Chief God wants me to be the one to stop them.
The opponent I'm about to face is stronger than anyone I've ever fought.
Nakrad? Compared to what's coming, he's an absolute joke. Even putting them in the same sentence is an insult to my next opponent.
The Alchemist? He looked like an absolute power within his own dungeon, sure, but he was something Karl's level could handle just fine.
But this one is different. If it's them, they could overwhelm Karl outright.
Is beating such a monster even possible?
Of course it is. Why else would I be here?
Besides, that whole calculation only ever held true in the case where I showed up with nothing prepared.
Why on earth would I grant my enemy a fair and honest fight?
Granting your enemy the worst, and your allies the best—that's combat one-oh-one.
"Phew."
Having finished my inventory check, I stretched my arms toward the ceiling.
Alright. I'm ready to show them exactly what kind of filthy, min-maxed gremlin a true veteran can be.
I'll wrap up this annoying chore quick, and then it's off to visit Joy's territory!