The Trial in the Round
The amphitheater-shaped courtroom served a second purpose as a covert execution ground.
High-ranking nobles, traitors who had shaken the empire to its roots, political prisoners... countless lives had vanished in this very place.
This courtroom was a graveyard for the condemned—those whose crimes could never be paraded before a public scaffold.
The ones who passed judgment on those deaths all sat in high seats, watching the condemned man standing at the center of the circular chamber meet his end. As if only by carving the deaths of those who threatened the empire into their own eyes could they rest easy.
A blade-like chill filled the dim interior.
Every gaze in the room was fixed on the young knight standing straight at the heart of the tribunal.
That youth—famed for his arrogance beyond reproach—had not so much as twitched since being dragged in, his head bowed deep.
As if waiting for someone else to speak first, a suffocating silence hung over the courtroom.
Laios's command cut through it, cold as ice.
"Raise your head."
Arendt's shoulders flinched.
After a beat of stillness, as though obliging the order out of sheer courtesy, he slowly lifted his head.
Only then did a bloodless face and golden eyes emerge into the lamplight.
Those golden eyes rolled silently, sweeping over the figures packed into the courtroom one by one.
From where he stood, the backlight made it impossible to read anyone's face clearly.
The only ones he could make out were the knights seated on the lowest tier of the stepped benches, closest to him.
And among them, unsurprisingly, the most conspicuous were the three Knight Commanders.
Arendt's gaze brushed over the commander of the 3rd Imperial Knights Order—Laios—for a fleeting moment before sliding away.
Next, his eyes rose slightly past the front of the room, toward the judge's seat.
Unlike the seats held by the knights and nobles, an elevated dais supported the bench—and there, a dignified old man was looking down at him with cold detachment.
Lee Su-hyeon—no, Arendt—knew exactly who he was.
Grand Duke Lancelot, the man presiding over this momentous trial in the Emperor's stead.
Because this secret tribunal granted him the authority to deliver the final sentence of death, he enjoyed the Emperor's deepest trust.
He had not appeared often in the novel.
But in this particular scene, he was a decidedly important role.
After all, he was essential to dragging those dazed spectators into the play.
Having confirmed the cast, Arendt offered a light bow and spoke first.
"Arendt von Eckhart of the 3rd Imperial Knights Order, humbly present before your Eminences."
A voice without a single flaw rang out resonantly through the merciless courtroom.
That one line was more than enough to twist the faces of those who held their seats with stony composure.
Breaking the silence of a stage had always been the actor's job.
Now that his life hung by a thread, his mouth had gone bone-dry even now.
But having already begun, Arendt resolved not to hesitate.
His audience was no different from a pack of boorish louts who wouldn't know a fine performance if it bit them.
And he was a luckless actor who had to drag them, somehow, to the final curtain he wanted.
"Hah..."
Duke Lancelot let out a laugh of sheer incredulity.
"I've long heard tell of your insolence, but this truly beggars belief. Do you genuinely fail to grasp what it means to stand in this place?"
"No, Your Grace. I know perfectly well where this courtroom is. I'm not an idiot. I am equally aware that no man who has stood where I stand has ever walked out alive."
Arendt's voice, crisp and razor-edged, flew across the chamber.
At that, the faintest thread of anger began to seep into the Duke of Lancelot's measured tone.
"Then have you still not truly grasped how heavy your crimes are?"
"The one who fails to understand, Your Grace, is you. Before weighing how heavy a crime may be, should one not first establish whether a crime exists at all? That, I believe, is the entire point of a trial."
The meaning behind his words was unmistakable.
But Duke Lancelot—and everyone else in attendance—could not help but doubt their own ears.
These were simply not words that could be spoken in this courtroom.
A frigid silence settled over the chamber.
Only after a long moment did the Duke of Lancelot furrow his brow and ask, as if to confirm:
"You intend to plead innocent, here and now."
"That is precisely my intent, Your Grace."
The golden eyes revealed in the pale light gleamed with unmistakable venom.
For once, the Duke of Lancelot seemed briefly at a loss for words.
Arendt stole a glance at Laios.
Laios, too, wore an expression of sheer bewilderment, unable to tear his eyes away.
If Duke Lancelot was the scene partner whose rhythm Arendt needed to match, then the most important spectator at this moment was Laios.
For while the Duke might deliver the verdict, the man who actually held the power of life and death over Arendt was his commander.
Shifting his gaze back to the front, Arendt fired at Duke Lancelot with a voice like a drawn blade.
"You claim I conspired with a faction seeking to slander His Majesty the Emperor?"
"I do. Have you anything to add?"
The Duke of Lancelot had recovered his composure and replied evenly.
Arendt glared savagely at every single human being looking down on him.
"What I did was not conspiracy. It was a transaction."
"...And what is that supposed to mean?"
The one who asked was not Duke Lancelot. It was Laios.
Arendt locked eyes with him and pressed on.
"Exactly what it sounds like. In exchange for giving something, I received something in return."
Laios's face hardened in an instant.
He growled, low and dangerous.
"You sold information to enemies and pocketed money for it?"
"Oh dear, oh dear. Commander, are you joking with me right now?"
Arendt twisted his lips into a crooked sneer.
"I'm not the sort to behave so disgracefully. Did you truly think that I—that I, Arendt von Eckhart—would stake my life over a few miserable coins? Honestly?"
His voice dripped with venom.
Perhaps there was a note of mockery mixed in as well.
As if cowed by that venomous audacity, silence settled over the assembly.
Arendt continued, enunciating each word with care.
"A transaction only holds when both parties profit. I am not so contemptible that I'd risk being hunted down for the sake of mere money. And lest there be any misunderstanding—this was not for any private grudge of mine, either."
Arendt's gaze landed on Laios.
"As you know, I don't care for borrowing another's hand. I prefer to do everything with my own."
"..."
"Whether it's holding a blade to your throat, Commander... or raising the banner of treason against this very empire—I would rather do it with these two hands, myself."
The atmosphere turned as if someone had dumped a bucket of ice water over the entire chamber.
Some burst out in groans of disbelief, while others stared at him as though they might devour him on the spot.
"That insolent wretch..."
"To hear such filth spill so brazenly from his mouth."
Somewhere in the room came the low, grinding sound of teeth clenched in fury.
Arendt didn't bother to check whose rage it was.
At some point, the courtroom had already filled to the brim with hostility aimed squarely at him—so much so that any single remark barely registered as remarkable anymore.
The response is getting pretty heated.
Arendt swallowed without meaning to.
Still, he felt fine.
An audience reacting in any fashion at all was a hundred times better than cold indifference.
And—even now—Laios was holding on to his composure.
That was what mattered.
Duke Lancelot burst into a coughing fit and bellowed:
"Order!"
As if that single word were a signal, the briefly rattled courtroom settled once more.
The Duke of Lancelot spoke again.
"Continue."
"Your Grace!"
One of the furious nobles called out to him sharply.
But the Duke of Lancelot raised a single hand, and that gesture alone quelled the outcry once more.
"Go on. Say your piece."
Just as the novel had described, Duke Lancelot was strict, but not a man beyond reasoning with.
By now, he seemed to have a rough idea of what Arendt was trying to say.
The corners of Arendt's mouth curved into a smile.
This one wasn't manufactured. It welled up from genuine feeling.
"Information. Concerning the ones plotting to slander His Majesty the Emperor."
"...!"
This time, a different kind of uproar filled the frozen courtroom.
Arendt closed his eyes slowly, as if savoring the sound, then opened them again.
One of the Duke of Lancelot's brows remained twisted.
Laios's face had gone as rigid as rigid could be.
Whining about innocence here would accomplish nothing.
Even if he escaped immediate execution, the moment he lost his usefulness, he could be killed at any time afterward just as easily.
In the worst case, they might carve off his limbs and leave him to rot in a cell.
Which meant that what he had to do now was the maximum possible self-defense.
So that he could walk out of this place under his own power, without a single hair on his head harmed.
Arendt poured out his words, deliberately laced with accusation.
"Before arresting a man you intend to kill, out of nowhere—if you had quietly given me so much as a hint, everything would be different. We might have burrowed all the way to the heart of their organization. And instead, you mean to put me to death over a single contact?"
Arendt's golden eyes flashed with fury.
"You caught the tail. In that case, what you should have thought of was following that long, trailing length to its end and taking the head. Did I ask too much of you cowards?"
"Hooo..."
Someone let out a long, groaning exhale.
They seemed too dumbfounded to manage actual words.
Duke Lancelot looked down at Arendt with troubled eyes.
Having been thrown into a dungeon and hauled out only for this, he was a sorry sight indeed.
The immaculate apprentice knight's uniform hung in disarray, and his pristine silver hair was matted with filth.
It was precisely the appearance befitting a man who had committed a grave crime and awaited execution.
And yet the eyes glaring back at them like a rabid, venom-drenched beast made it impossible for anyone to look away.
The clear voice, the expressions, the gestures... every one of them seized the gaze and held it fast.
Is that intentional?
The boorish, haughty conduct and the provocative way he spoke were difficult to view kindly.
But what if even that was a deeply deliberate piece of staging—designed to force the dignitaries present to actually listen to his words?
The Duke's eyes narrowed.
Intentional or not, this was not something that could simply be let pass.
Merely by making everyone in this room weigh his words, that condemned man was amplifying the persuasiveness of everything he said.
The crowd was murmuring again.
Having calmed the assembly once more, Duke Lancelot asked evenly:
"You're not about to confess falsehoods at this stage, I trust."
"Hardly. I won't grovel and beg for your belief—it would spoil the look of things for us both. But there is one thing I can guarantee."
He raised his bound hands and tapped his own head twice with his index finger.
"If I lose this, it will prove a rather painful loss for all of you as well."
"..."
A thick, weighted silence flowed through the courtroom once more.
Some seethed at his audacity, while others turned the words Arendt had just laid before them over in their minds, lost in thought.
Arendt stood quietly and gave them a moment to digest it all.
The one to break that heavy, restless stillness was none other than Laios.
"If we spare your life here, can you prove the worth of it?"
"I'll have to—since you fools apparently can't see it for yourselves."
As if he had been waiting for that very question, Arendt flashed a razor-thin smile.
The chill in Laios's eyes deepened.
Arendt drove the point home like a hammer to a nail.
"The information inside my head will be worth something, I assure you. Far more than the example made by condemning a single knight."