A Villain with Quite the Backstory
"Right after I left the village, a mercenary company Rebecca had personally assembled set up camp nearby. It was a warning aimed at me."
Warren let out a self-mocking laugh.
"So I lived as her devoted lover for years. Killing when she told me to kill, fighting when she told me to fight, even whispering sweet nothings in private."
Because if I hadn't, the village would have paid for it.
"Then last year—no, maybe the year before—a guest I'd never seen before came looking for Rebecca. She went to considerable lengths entertaining them, so I decided to dig into it. I figured something was up."
That's where the real story began.
"Rebecca trusted me completely as her lover, so naturally I picked up this and that. They were exactly the people you mentioned."
Warren lifted his head and looked Arendt dead in the eye.
"At first I took them for just a slightly strange set of business partners. But it wasn't like that at all. Rebecca herself was involved with them fairly deeply."
"The others in the merchant guild too?"
"Rebecca, that woman, and every subordinate they commanded—all of them looked thoroughly consumed by the lot."
Warren answered Laios's question flatly.
"Rebecca especially was completely immersed. But when it came to anything important, she never shared it properly. She only ever ordered me to handle the occasional job connected to them."
Most of those jobs involved hurting people.
"Then how did you find out about the artifact?"
"Overheard it by chance. The Frost-Tinged Touch had been stolen, and it seemed to have made its way to the imperial family... They were talking like that while holding a communication crystal ball. Saying they thought there was a traitor inside."
The traitor they spoke of was, of course, Arendt. The knights' gazes drifted naturally toward the man in question.
Arendt met their expectations with an expression of boundless boredom.
"The word 'traitor' follows me everywhere I go. I'm touched, honestly."
"......"
The stares withdrew. A silent collective decision had been made: simply do not engage. Watching them, Warren muttered in visible displeasure.
"I get why you keep him at arm's length."
"Pay him no mind. Continue."
Pressing hard at the bridge of his nose, Laios urged him on.
"After that, news trickled in now and then. Territory seized, someone in a key position dead. And in the middle of all that, you people completely demolished one of Rebecca's gambling dens."
The rest could be pieced together without another word.
Arthur groaned as he spoke.
"So regardless of who it was, an order came down to kill the current owner and retrieve the artifact?"
"Yeah. That's the short version."
"Hmm..."
Arendt's eyes rolled thoughtfully.
"So someone out there gives Rebecca her orders. And whoever it is, they're probably one of the top figures in that damned Evil God Cult—or Broken Heart's Sword, whatever they call themselves."
"Is she working for them in exchange for payment?"
"No. My guess is it's voluntary."
Arendt answered Richt candidly, then frowned slightly.
"That woman's a fanatic, isn't she?"
"...Probably."
After a long pause, Warren slowly nodded.
"Since when?"
"A few years ago, most likely."
"That hometown village you mentioned? Still standing?"
"As far as I know."
"First, we send people to confirm that."
Having grasped the situation, Laios put in a word—but Arendt fell silent, sinking into thought.
"How cliché."
And a moment later, he burst out with a snort of laughter.
Warren's face contorted violently.
"What did you say?"
"Nothing, really. It's just—think about it. A witch who fell into some shady religion and lost her mind, and the beast she raised."
With sweet words and threats alternating in turn, the witch slowly tamed her beast, and the rebellious beast, brainwashed, at last sank into a world of darkness.
The novel itself never bothered to show the full circumstances, but Warren's story carried all the melodramatic weight of a staged tragedy—very much the flavor of The Blue Knight of the Sacred Sword.
"Either way, I can follow the broad strokes. Run away, and the village burns. Fall out of love with Rebecca, and the village burns..."
"......"
"And if you'd failed a mission and died cleanly on the spot, you figured at least your family would be spared. Isn't that right?"
Arendt needled him mercilessly.
"Well, well. A villain with quite the tragic backstory, aren't you."
A heavy killing intent settled over Warren's gaze.
"Shut your mouth."
"And if you failed to die properly and just stayed locked up, Rebecca would take it as betrayal, and your family's lives would be finished. So that's why you were so desperate for someone to kill you."
But Arendt, utterly indifferent, only let out another snickering laugh.
"I'll never understand why everyone's so obsessed with a dramatic death. It'd be a dog's death either way."
"Hey—hey!"
Arthur lunged in alarm to cover his mouth, but his hand cut only through empty air. Having dodged the blow with ease, Arendt carried on in a perfectly even voice.
"Even if things had gone your way, that village would probably have been wiped from the map anyway. Going by the temperament you've described Rebecca having."
"What?"
"Your adoptive father rebelled against Rebecca once already, didn't he? So why would that insane woman do something as quaint as issuing threats, and just let it go?"
"......"
As Arendt's unusually clear voice continued, measured and unhurried, Warren's face stiffened degree by degree. Only now was he truly understanding the words.
"She schemed to have you in her hands from the very start. She picked a fight with your father deliberately, right where you could see it. It might even have been Rebecca herself who leaked the information to him."
"H-hold on a second. Isn't that a stretch?"
"It might be a stretch. But it's hardly impossible, is it?"
Arthur, cutting in in a rush, found his mouth hanging open at the coolly added remark.
"What do you think? Is your lover the sentimental type, so devoted she'd cling to a useless card?"
"......"
"Either way, the move you intended wouldn't have worked. So there's exactly one option left for you. Cling to us."
A cold silence settled over the underground prison.
Arthur and Richt eyed Arendt with faintly queasy expressions, while Laios kept his mouth shut and simply waited.
Warren's jaw began to tremble.
"You vicious little bastard..."
That young whelp might well be worse than Rebecca.
"Now then, let's bin the rest of this low-nutrition storytelling."
"That brat's temper, I swear..."
Arthur's muttered grumble was smoothly ignored.
Richt, quiet until now, finally spoke.
"If every word of this testimony is true, matters have become rather thorny."
"Undeniably."
Unless they moved with the utmost speed, there would be no guaranteeing anyone's safety. Days had already passed since Warren's arrest.
Laios deliberated a moment with a grave face, then steeled himself and issued his orders.
"We'll have to carry out the suppression and the rescue simultaneously. Once I report to His Highness the Crown Prince today, we begin preparations at once."
"You don't mean we sortie straight out and crush them piece by piece, do you?"
"......"
A sing-song voice sliced his sentence neatly in half. Arendt, naturally.
The poor commander performed a dry wash of his face.
"What. Now. What is it."
"I only thought... you were about to say we split our forces in two—one side strikes Rebecca, the other rescues the villagers—in that magnificently leisurely tone of yours."
"......"
"That's not it, right?"
Laios said nothing.
He was a knight universally acknowledged as bold and resolute, yet for some reason, the moment that brat seriously opened his mouth, all his fighting spirit drained clean away.
Meanwhile, the arrow swung back around to Warren.
"How long from the Imperial Palace to that village?"
"A day or two? Not even close. There's a mountain to cross as well."
"And to Rebecca's main base?"
"I could reach it in a single night... but for most people, two days or more."
An apprentice knight needling the commander in front of everyone—a scene of absurd insubordination that left Warren dazed, and he answered without thinking.
Arendt shot an insolent glance at his commander and the senior knights, making sure they saw it.
"And with the twitch of a single finger, Rebecca can have a whole village wiped out, yes? Everyone dies on the way there."
"......"
"Well, fine. Let's say we get lucky and succeed. But the people we actually need to catch right now aren't just Rebecca—it's those accursed cultists. Do you really think they'll sit quietly waiting for us to arrive?"
"......"
"They'll cut the tail and bolt. Or else they'll muster every hand they have and prepare outright war against the Imperial Knights. The first is a problem, and so is the second."
The most infuriating part was that not a word of it was wrong.
Pressing hard between his brows, Laios smothered his irritation.
"Then what, exactly, would you have me do?"
"Aaagh, Commander! You mustn't say that!"
Only when Arthur's shriek tore through the room did Laios realize his mistake. He jerked his head up—and met Arendt's eyes, the corner of his mouth curling ever so slightly.
In truth, the course Laios had proposed was the most reasonable one under the circumstances.
Since they couldn't win everything, it was only right to abandon one thing or the other.
The problem was that that brat, time and time again, always came up with some outlandish method that let go of nothing at all.
"There is exactly one way that's, oh, slightly more interesting."
Golden eyes, holding a faint gleam within them, glittered strangely.
"A fine opportunity has presented itself, after all. It's only polite to dig a little deeper."
"......"
And as always, the unease became reality.
Warren, who hadn't grasped a thing, blinked his bulging eyes in stupid silence.
And exactly twenty hours later, the Imperial Palace was turned upside down.
A few days prior, the demihuman prisoner who had attacked Arendt von Eckhart had exploited a lapse in his surveillance to smash his way out of the dungeon and escape.
After felling the two knights standing guard, the condemned man had fought Arendt von Eckhart—who happened to be making his patrol rounds—subdued him, abducted him, and fled.
Every knightly order in the palace had turned out to hunt him down, but catching a werewolf fleeing in deadly earnest was no easy feat.
While the palace rang with the uproar of a search that dragged on past midnight, one room alone lay wrapped in perfect silence. It was the small parlor where the three Knight Commanders and Cantares sat gathered.
They had all just heard the report containing Laios's lament. He was a man who rarely let his emotions show, yet lately he seemed to display a remarkable variety of expressions.
Nearly all of them concerning the apprentice knight beneath him—Arendt von Eckhart.
"Come to think of it again,"
Cantares began, lounging comfortably against the sofa and sipping his tea.
"That one really is insufferable to manage."
"......"
From far off drifted the voices of the knights still conducting the search, roaring at one another at the top of their lungs.
Laios simply covered his face with both hands and heaved sigh after sigh.