The Taming of the Mad Dog
“You…!”
He was already in battle stance!
This bastard still had the count’s blood on his blade!
I reflexively ground my teeth and shoved my hand into my hood.
I yanked Rai out without mercy and swung him hard.
[Eek! Are we fighting?!]
Rai, suddenly grabbed by the scruff, writhed in protest, but I only tightened my grip.
[You told me to bite him!]
[I never said to die!]
No matter how hard my brain worked, my odds of winning were disgustingly low. Still, I was the one who had survived a dragon’s grasp.
Robenin was merely a natural predator. He was not some colossal being capable of trampling a human to death.
In the end, he was still just a human like me.
I had already been on high alert, so switching into combat mode took less than a second. Robenin gave a small, satisfied nod as if pleased by the development. He adjusted his grip on that ominous black blade and strode straight toward me.
My eyes locked onto Robenin’s sword. It was an unpleasant obsidian color, as if it had been fed dead blood.
[I oppose fighting! Strongly oppose! Let us love peace!]
“Shut up. I’m going to win.”
[Ack! There it is again—your baseless confidence exploding!]
I narrowed my eyes with all my might, yet I could still feel a thin layer of sweat forming on my palms.
I gripped Rai’s neck even harder.
Right now Rai looked like a wriggling snake-shaped staff about three spans long. He was functioning as my mana auxiliary battery.
It had only been recently that I started using him this way, since I needed physical contact to draw on the mana stored inside him.
“Come at me! I’ll show you that a mad dog needs the stick!”
“As you wish.”
I clutched Rai like a club, fully intent on calling forth something difficult to control. Robenin had closed the distance, wearing that repulsive smile, when—
“Enough.”
The one who stepped between us, cutting off the violent hostility blazing between me and Robenin, was Ash. That much I had expected.
But I figured it wouldn’t matter since he was the weakest one here.
Like a dolphin getting shoved around in a fight between whales.
[That’s gonna hurt!]
What I hadn’t expected was Ash grabbing Robenin’s perfectly honed blade with his bare hand—and the fact that the legendary Robenin actually froze in place.
Robenin’s eyes flashed with a light I had never seen before.
“I don’t understand.”
“Lower your sword. Now!”
“Why are you interfering?”
Even a madman wouldn’t want to see the blood of his own country’s prince, I suppose.
Though that arrogant expression didn’t match the thought. Blood was already dripping…
Before I knew it, my gaze had fallen to the drops of Ash’s blood falling from beneath Robenin’s blade.
“Young lord, making you understand has always been difficult. But I will make this clear. The one doing something completely unreasonable right now is you.”
“What is the problem?”
“The problem is that you don’t even realize there’s a problem!”
“I don’t understand.”
“It means she is not an opponent you should be fighting!”
As expected, Ash really was kind.
If it were me, I would have already punched that dense, indifferent face that couldn’t understand a single word.
“Is it because the opponent is a woman? If so, I am disappointed in Your Highness. Before the sword, everyone is equal.”
You damn idiot, that only applies when two swordsmen duel! I’m a Spirit Master!
I wanted to butt into the conversation, but Ash was speaking with more determination and power than ever before, so I decided to watch for now.
“I swear on my mother, who was a knight. Never! That is not the reason! She is stronger and braver than anyone. That is precisely why she does not avoid you even when you charge at her like a mad dog. Because she understands honor!”
“Then there is even less reason not to fight, is there not?”
“Young lord!”
“Your Highness, open your eyes and look properly. That woman feels the same as I do. We desire each other.”
“……”
“Very violently and primitively, I might add.”
Hey, what’s with that phrasing?
[As expected! The only sane person here is Ash.]
“……That is not what I meant, but it still sounds unpleasant.”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s enough. Lower your sword first.”
It was clearly an order.
The kind of coercive command a member of the imperial family would unilaterally throw at someone of lower status.
This was the first time I had seen Ash display such intense fury, and honestly… I liked it quite a bit.
It excited me more than when he showed off his superior physical ability with that gentle face.
It made my heart race almost as much as when he took his clothes off.
Maybe I really am a pervert to the bone.
“……Didn’t you bring me here to let me fight that woman?”
“Of course not!”
“Then why did you come here?”
[You really have zero situational awareness!]
“I brought you to a quiet place purely to give you a warning! You never understand the obvious unless I spell it out for you. Since you recognized me, I had to tell you! That sort of thing should never happen in the first place! There is no way I would let the two of you fight unless I had gone insane!”
“But that woman also…”
“Then shove the blade down my own throat instead.”
It was quite a surprising sight.
At Ash’s single sharp rebuke—not even that loud—Robenin’s momentum visibly shrank.
It was like a child being scolded by his favorite teacher.
So the guy actually listened to reason…?
I never imagined Ash could suppress Robenin. It was unexpected.
Of course I sometimes let Ash win, but I usually last a little longer than that.
The relationship between Ash and Robenin looked like a piece of cloth trying to overpower a boulder. Come to think of it, it was strange that the ever-cautious Ash had brought me before Robenin in the first place.
Did that mean he had confidence he could control Robenin to some degree?
I narrowed my eyes and stared hard at the back of Ash’s head.
[Decision made. Ash is mine.]
[What the—? Wasn’t he already Master’s anyway?]
[He was, but now I want every single strand of his hair. He’s more useful than I thought.]
[Why are you suddenly burning with such perverted possessiveness?]
[Because I finally found Robenin’s weakness.]
It really was darkest under the lamp.
The moment I realized that the one who might know that guy’s weakness—the weakness I thought might not even exist in this world—was Ash, a wicked smile crept across my face.
While I was busy plotting my sinister scheme, Robenin got thoroughly scolded by Ash and had his sword taken away almost by force. That carried several significant implications.
For a swordsman to hand his blade to another person first meant absolute trust. And the fact that he surrendered his sword even though he could have won by force meant the other party was important enough to make him swallow his pride.
It was only possible because the opponent held great meaning to him.
After me, now he’s even handling Robenin… At this point, maybe we should call Ash not the imperial mother bird, but the demon tamer.
I loosely wrapped the snake-shaped Rai around my wrist, turning him into a golden snake bracelet, then slowly walked up behind Ash.
Ash, noticing my approach, turned and raised his left hand sharply as if telling me not to come any closer. His gaze was stern.
There were only two or three steps between me and Robenin. Ash stood in the middle like a beast tamer standing on the razor’s edge.
“Both of you, please calm down and listen. We do not need to fight. There must be some misunderstanding.”
“There isn’t. I just hate him. I wish Robenin Pedri would drop dead.”
“Jeanie!”
Whether getting scolded or not, both Robenin and I kept perfectly blank faces.
Ash getting angry wasn’t scary—it was just admirable effort.
The reason the beasts didn’t eat their tamer was probably for the exact same reason.
They could devour him in one bite anytime, but his belly was already full anyway, the tamer wasn’t a threat, and he occasionally played with them.
They found him cute and therefore excluded him from the food chain.
“It seems this is the only chance I will get.”
“What chance?”
“For the sake of my feelings, I hope the two of you can clear up this misunderstanding through conversation.”
“There’s nothing to misunderstand. I already told you I just hate him?”
“Exactly. You are confronting and opposing each other because you don’t truly know one another. If you understand each other just a little and let go of your hostility, you will soon realize there is no reason to hate each other. The bad blood between you two is… a kind of cultural difference.”
“Cultural difference?”
“It’s like the misunderstanding that arises between dogs and cats due to differences in expression.”
Ash’s pacifism was on a completely different species level from mine.
Did he really believe Robenin and I could become friends?
His effort was admirable, but there was no hope.
“Ash?”
“You are both so aggressive that you only look at the surface and see each other as enemies. In truth, there is no need for that…”
“That’s enough. That’s purely your own wishful thinking. From what I feel, Robenin and I have been incompatible since birth. We might even be natural enemies chosen by the gods. That’s how much I hate that guy.”
“That can’t be true. Jeanie, let me formally introduce you while we have the chance. You probably already know him, but this is the eldest son of the Pedri family, Lord Robenin Pedri. Please greet each other.”
“What? Why?!”
“You have never properly exchanged greetings with the young lord, have you?”
“……Well, that’s true.”
“And yet you speak of natural enemies. That seems strange.”
Damn it. It feels like he dragged an etiquette teacher here.
I shut my mouth sullenly. Robenin didn’t seem to like the situation either.
His face looked like we were in a staring contest to see who could look more unpleasant.
“The young lord has this kind of personality, so he has many enemies. He acts faster than he speaks, and because of his status he often uses informal speech and gives orders, which leads to the misunderstanding that he looks down on people… But that is simply how he was raised, and he has never had any problems because of it, so he doesn’t even realize it’s wrong.”
“Not realizing it’s wrong is already a problem, isn’t it?”
“Even though he challenges anyone to fight, he doesn’t do it out of malice. He is simply obsessed with proving his strength… He does not torment the weak. He is dangerous, yes… but he is not a bad person. Once you get to know him, you might find that the two of you actually have things in common.”
Maybe the informal speech habit or the part where he challenges anyone to fight.
The fact that the human himself is dangerous must be included too.
I understood what he meant right away, but I didn’t want to admit it, so I snorted and answered crookedly.
“Not a bad person? Him? Even you sound a bit off saying that, don’t you? Hm? Ash, why are you defending a guy like that? How dangerous do you think he is? I heard the number of bandits he’s killed is enough to fill an entire village.”
“……He does kill people sometimes, but he never kills the innocent.”
“It’s not sometimes, it’s often.”
“There are many kinds of people in this world. There are people like me who unconditionally oppose killing… and people like you, Jeanie, who believe that death can pay for sins. The young lord’s way of thinking is probably closer to yours than to mine. I think the two of you are quite alike.”
Why does he keep comparing me to someone?
The only ones I killed were slave traders. I have taste and principles when it comes to killing.
I do touch other people sometimes, but… now that I think about it, the only one who unconditionally takes my side is Ash.
When I realized that defending Robenin, whom everyone found repulsive, came from the same logic, I felt strange.
To think I was on the same level as that guy!