Beware of the Cheeky Apprentice
“That rotten little…….”
Arthur's fist began to tremble. Richt, too, looked to be swallowing down curses he couldn't quite bring himself to say out loud.
Laios, who had been pressing hard at the bridge of his nose, finally lifted his head.
“At least it seems we've learned everything we needed to.”
His face was as expressionless as ever, yet somehow it carried the weary resignation of a parent who had finally accepted that raising a certain child was a lost cause.
It wasn't hard to see why. Lately, just keeping up with Arendt's antics had brought the man to the verge of punching a hole through his own stomach.
For all his faults, the brat did do his job well.
The problem was that he kept jerking people up and down like a puppet on a string.
There was no point in getting annoyed any further. Richt, too, let out a long sigh and hopped aboard the topic change the Commander had made.
“Yes. It seems there is indeed someone keeping watch over the Imperial Palace.”
“What manner of person is this reinforcement, I wonder?”
“Hard to say. Whoever it turns out to be, they won't be easy to deal with.”
Most likely an artifact holder.
Laios glanced down, almost absentmindedly, at his own hand. A black ring sat snug on one of the fingers poking out from his leather glove.
Glenn, who had been silent until now, spoke up cautiously.
— It seems that woman Rebecca is involved with the cult far more deeply than we first assumed. Will he be all right?
The one who had drawn the most of the enemy's attention was none other than Arendt.
He was an infuriating little wretch who deserved to be knocked flat a dozen times over, but he had infiltrated the enemy's den alone, and there was no helping the worry that came with it.
Arthur seemed to be thinking the same thing, because he let out a groan.
“That brat needs to learn the meaning of 'moderation.' Subtly is one thing — no, he's the type to charge straight out into the open, isn't he?”
They already knew full well the kind of man who would use any means necessary so long as the goal was achieved. Just how, and by what sorcery, did one manage to casually swap gossip about the enemy's leadership with their own comrades — within two days, no less?
They had sent him off trusting in that peculiar talent of his, but there was no getting used to the sheer, shameless audacity of it, no matter how many times he saw it. Exasperation was the only honest reaction left.
“Glenn, hold your position there for now. If anything changes, report back immediately. Be careful not to get caught. The moment it turns dangerous, you pull out at once.”
— Understood. And you take care of yourself too, Commander.
The transmission cut off, and Laios shook his head side to side, shaking off the brooding thoughts with it.
“Rest for a while. We move out the moment the sun peaks.”
“Yes, sir!”
The other side would already be fully prepared as well. All that remained was to crush the enemy.
May the gods' blessing be with us.
With himself. With his men. And with that doomed little brat standing alone in the heart of enemy territory.
Laios clenched and unclenched his fist a few times, offered a short prayer, and slowly exhaled.
Of the three days promised to Arendt, a little more than one now remained.
What followed was a stretch of thoroughly tedious time.
After getting an earful from Warren, the mercenaries had grown considerably more wary and no longer tried to strike up conversation with him. Arendt, for his part, didn't bother tormenting them any further.
He had already learned everything worth learning, after all.
“We save those who were forsaken by the God of Light.”
Salvation, my ass.
The chorus of nonsense the mercenaries had spouted still rang in his ears.
Their lives had spiraled into the gutter because the God Luche had abandoned them, and the ones who'd pulled them out were Rebecca and the evil god Cernion. Every crime they'd ever committed, they claimed, had all been done in service of their god — a neat little justification, delivered without a flicker of shame.
They waited for the day the evil god would descend to the world once more, working diligently alongside Rebecca in the meantime, and whatever sacrifices happened to be required along the way were simply the cost of doing business.
Those specially selected to join the organization were only permitted to set foot inside this castle after undergoing separate education and training, followed by a baptism.
A baptism conferred by a priest of the Evil God Cult, hm?
According to the mercenaries, the priest had been shrouded head to toe in black robes, wrapped in a cloak so complete that not even their sex could be discerned.
They had all said the same thing.
When the priest finished praying and laid a hand upon their heads, a warm energy seemed to envelop their whole bodies. And some of them claimed to have glimpsed a strangely shaped bracelet peeking out from the priest's wide sleeve.
It was the Breath of Mnemosyne, without a doubt. This so-called baptism had to be the process of tampering with people's memories.
Seeing them lay hands on each and every follower personally, it was clear the cult poured considerable effort into keeping its secrets.
But what about Warren?
Warren had never received the baptism. He'd stayed at Rebecca's side, exposed to a wealth of information whether he liked it or not — yet no measure had been taken against him.
Which meant either Rebecca's possessiveness and her faith operated on entirely separate tracks, or Warren's presence here had nothing to do with the cult's will in the first place.
Even granting that they'd allowed a werewolf — a rare strategic asset, hard to come by — to remain, any careful operator would have taken out insurance on him, just in case.
Handling every low-ranking grunt one by one, then leaving the strongest among them completely untouched? That was unmistakably strange.
Maybe this is the clue.
The artifact doesn't work on those without faith — that hypothesis began to take shape in his mind.
“That complicates things.”
It meant that whether or not the artifact took hold of someone would reveal, all by itself, whether that person believed.
His mood soured a little at the thought.
Arendt let out a short sigh and squeezed his eyes shut.
He lay sprawled across the sofa, killing time, when he sensed the outside grow noisy. He tried to ignore it and keep his eyes closed a while longer, but then the door swung open and Warren strode in.
Arendt cracked one eye open and looked at him.
“What?”
“Sir Laios has been spotted approaching the area.”
Warren's face was drawn tight with tension.
“Come with me.”
Arendt eyed the mountain of a werewolf with a distinctly unimpressed look, but rose to his feet without a word of complaint.
Not once, the entire walk down the corridor, did Warren say a single word. The other mercenaries, already receiving their orders for battle, headed to their stations without sparing the two of them so much as a glance.
Only when their surroundings grew quieter did Warren finally speak.
“If it truly comes to pass that there's no chance of winning —”
It was a dry remark, stripped of any feeling whatsoever.
“— then I will finish today the duty I failed to carry out that day.”
“…….”
He was saying that if Laios failed, he would kill Arendt with his own two hands.
“Curse me if you like. I'm the one who dragged you into this place, after all. But I…….”
“You've done nothing but take beatings this whole time, and now you've got a lot to say?”
But his words never reached their end.
When Warren stopped dead in his tracks and shot him a look of pure incredulity, Arendt answered with a snort of laughter.
“Then by all means, give it your best shot.”
With a light thump to the man's shoulder, Arendt strode boldly ahead.
“There you are.”
Rebecca greeted the two men as they entered the office warmly, as if welcoming dear old friends.
Beside her stood a tall, lanky man, utterly without presence, erect as a statue.
Just as Vincent had, this man concealed his face behind a pale white mask — and at that moment, he turned his head to look their way.
Pervert Mask Number 2, is it?
His presence was like a ghost's. Even standing directly beside Rebecca, he gave off almost no sign of a living person at all.
“You. The one who killed Vincent.”
A voice came out, warped and flat, as if modulated through something. Taking no notice whatsoever of Warren, who had come along, the man watched Arendt in silence.
“And if I am?”
“…….”
Srrk.
Without a sound, the man began to move, closing the distance slowly, one measured step at a time — like a great predator stalking toward its prey.
He came to a stop directly in front of Arendt, and the air around him turned bleak and crushing.
“And yet you had the gall to beg for your life.”
The killing intent that had been blurred and hidden behind his faint presence now surfaced in full, naked in the eyes behind the mask.
Arendt felt it instinctively: this man could kill him in a single breath, the moment he chose to. He, by contrast, had neither sword nor artifact on him.
The sensation that flesh might be cleaved open at any instant made his fingertips go numb.
But a face that stiffened at a mere threat to its life was not the face of 'Arendt.'
Drawing his breath in slowly, he let the tension drain from his body.
“Why couldn't I? We're all just trying to make a living here, aren't we?”
Staring straight into the eyes hidden in shadow beneath the mask, he let the familiar smirk curl across his lips.
“If you don't want to die, you bite first. A life that can be taken by a mere apprentice knight was never going to last long anyway.”
“…….”
“If you wanted to live long, you should never have started hurting people in the first place.”
The man studied him slowly, the way one might dissect a curious specimen.
From the unshaking eyes, to the youthful face that poured out insolence without wavering a hair's breadth, down to the legs that held their ground with easy, unhurried composure.
Arendt met that gaze head-on and accepted it without flinching.
But inside his head, he was combing through his memories at full speed.
A ghostlike presence. A man built like a branch, all wiry length. Movements that swayed like cloth in a lazy breeze. A voice cold as frost. And at his hip, a longsword of conspicuously unusual length.
Blake.
A single name surfaced, smooth and unbidden.
One of the core combatants of the rebel forces in The Blue Knight of the Sacred Sword.
He had predicted an artifact holder would show himself — but Blake was a variable he hadn't accounted for.
And it was no wonder.
This man was the original owner of the Frost-Tinged Touch.
So he's gotten hold of a different artifact.
It was a small regret that the robes swallowing his entire frame made it impossible to see which artifact he now carried.
“Interesting.”
After a thick silence, Blake spat the words out flatly, without a trace of emotion.
He turned on his heel and drifted back to Rebecca's side.
“I will deal with Laios de Winfried and reclaim the artifact. Left alive too long, he will one day become a great enemy of the cult.”
“Everything is ready, Lord Blake. Those who came with you have already moved to their positions.”
“Good work. I should get moving myself, soon enough.”
“Yes, sir.”
Rebecca bowed her head briefly to Blake, then turned and issued her order to Warren.
“Warren. Bring Sir Arendt his sword.”
“What?”
“You'll be fighting alongside us, after all. Weren't you the one begging for your life?”
And as she said it, she cast Arendt a glance laden with meaning.
Blake added, in a voice that rose and fell not at all:
“Face Laios de Winfried before my eyes. If you cannot, I will kill you first.”
The flat tone, delivering nothing but plain fact, made his sincerity all too clear.
Warren found himself glancing involuntarily at Arendt's face — and could only stand there dumbfounded.
Because even now, the man was smiling.
“My, my. Since when was my life so cheap, that this many people keep lining up to take it?”
In his golden eyes settled a chill as biting as frost — a coldness befitting the master of the Frost-Tinged Touch.
“If I bring back the Commander's head with these two hands, will that be enough to cover the price of this humble little life of mine?”
“…….”
The eyes behind the featureless white mask raked over Arendt, unhurried and unreadable.
The way one might examine a fascinating curiosity.
But the scrutiny lasted only a moment before Blake tore his gaze away and turned to leave.
“We move.”