Knock, and It Shall Be Opened
Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.
There are two ways to make a person angry.
The first is to stop talking mid-sentence, and the second—
Is to keep saying the same damn thing over and over.
“Her Ladyship the Countess is occupied with pressing affairs of state, and has asked me to convey her deepest apologies for being unable to spare the time.”
So this is how nobles operate.
The Countess was every inch the aristocrat. Whether she believed I had deliberately chosen the Guardian blessing just to spit in House Remington’s face, she was now returning the favor by snubbing House Revan—through the classic method of simply never showing up.
And today marked the third straight day of it.
What are they playing at?
The heir of a viscount’s house had arrived as the acting lord of his territory. Even if they couldn’t greet him with open arms, locking him in a waiting room for hours—let alone three full days—was beyond the pale. This was the sort of insult one reserved for a mortal enemy. In a society of nobles who prized honor above almost everything, it was grounds enough to start talking about a territorial war.
Yeah. This is exactly how Guardians get treated.
House Remington was ranking the Guardian blessing I had received on the same level as this open rudeness. And yet it was hard to pin the whole mess on them alone. Any other house would likely have pulled something similar.
If this keeps up, there’s no end in sight.
If I was the root of the problem, then I was the one who had to fix it.
“Steward.”
“Yes, my lord. How may I serve?”
“I’ve heard rumors that House Remington has several knight trainees of roughly my age. I may be newly blessed and still lacking, but as the second son of the knightly House Revan, I would very much like the chance to cross blades with them.”
The steward’s eyebrow twitched. His gaze flicked, ever so briefly, to the back of my right hand.
“Training is an indispensable part of the path for one who bears the duty of protecting the world. Of course I shall guide you.”
He accepted the proposal with suspicious eagerness, as if he had just been handed the perfect opening. The Countess’s discourtesy was walking a razor-thin line. If the Guardian himself now made a spectacle of himself, that rudeness would suddenly acquire a convenient justification—namely, that I had chosen the Guardian blessing first, specifically to humiliate House Remington.
My brother shaped the words silently with his lips:
Win. Or we die.
If I actually lost here, House Revan would be left in an extremely awkward position.
Sure. If I lose.
I mouthed back:
I know.
On the road to House Remington I had hunted whenever the chance arose, and during the long stretches of travel I had used Hector’s training method to grind the proficiency of my Pain Resistance passive. This time I had also brought proper heavy plate instead of light armor.
Level eight right now…
With my current build I could handle a Warrior or Knight up to level ten or thirteen without much trouble. If the opponent wasn’t even wearing armor, I could push it as high as fifteen—so long as they didn’t come at me in a life-or-death grudge match.
I sorted my thoughts as I followed the steward. We arrived at a training yard where the newly blessed trainees had gathered.
“We have arrived.”
A count’s house out here on the frontier was practically a king in miniature. Young men who dreamed of becoming knights or soldiers flocked here for room and board. The steward had led me to the place where those fresh green sprouts—just recently granted their blessings—were trying to put down roots.
“This is Young Master Edwin of House Revan. He expressed a desire to exchange pointers with all of you, so I have brought him.”
“I am Edwin Revan, second son of Viscount Revan. I have come hoping to learn a thing or two from those of you who will one day form the pillars of House Remington.”
I delivered the polished greeting expected of a noble heir. They, however, showed little interest in my manners.
“Why’s he only carrying a shield?”
“Ah—if he’s the second son of House Revan…”
“A Guardian?”
“Ha… a Guardian?”
“Is he serious?”
In plain terms, they were talking trash right to my face. Their eyes held the same contempt one might reserve for stepping on a bug. It was not the sort of behavior one showed a noble who had just introduced himself—yet in another sense it was perfectly aristocratic. That was simply how the Guardian blessing was regarded in this world.
Exactly the reaction I expected.
Which, honestly, I appreciated. These were the people I needed to thrash in order to win the war of justification against House Remington. If they had welcomed me warmly, I might have felt guilty. As it was, I could knock them flat with a clear conscience.
“They say a child cast out of his own home never learns even the barest manners…”
I let the sentence trail off while I looked over the twenty-odd trainees. One of them, bristling, strode forward.
“Have you ever seen a noble introduce himself to a beast?”
“Oh? So I’m a beast now?”
“If you’re not a beast, then how do you have the face to walk around after picking something as pathetic as Guardian?”
The trainee—dirty blond hair shot through with black—gave a theatrical shrug. The mood around him turned approving, as if the whole yard agreed.
That was enough.
I tugged off one glove and tossed it against his chest.
“Pick it up.”
He scowled and ground the glove under his heel—the maximum possible rudeness for anyone who aspired to knighthood.
“I’ll show you the difference in our stations.”
He drew his sword in one smooth motion and settled into a stance that was nothing like the formal salute before a duel. It was the posture of a man who had just spotted a bandit or a monster. Pure animal hostility.
I returned the courtesy anyway.
“Edwin Revan, second son of Viscount Revan.”
The only answer I received was a sword swinging without hesitation.
A harsh metallic screech rang out as the blade scraped across my kite shield. That was the starting gun. The blond’s assault began in earnest.
Blessing: Knight.
I raised the shield into a solid guard and calmly dissected his attacks. He was using a family sword style, but his experience was still too thin; the techniques and the skills granted by his blessing had yet to fuse properly.
So this is the level we’re dealing with.
His sequence flowed smoothly enough: a horizontal cut, a simultaneous retreat and recovery into a diagonal slash, then either a probing feint or a reckless charge depending on the distance. Textbook swordsmanship that combined offense, defense, and pressure all at once—yet against someone wrapped in plate and a heavy shield, it lacked real teeth.
He seemed to realize it too; his brow furrowed.
His footwork changed completely. The new stance telegraphed the next move as clearly as a spoken warning.
Giant Hunt’s wind-up.
Body coiled, pommel drawn back, the whole posture screaming an imminent thrust. One of the Knight skills that any serious user of the thrust eventually learned. I watched the motion and simply counted the timing. When someone so helpfully announced their skill in advance, catching it was hardly difficult.
The sword scraped up the angled face of my shield and shot harmlessly into empty air.
“Ugh—!”
His entire guard was blown open. Panic flooded his face.
Nothing but openings.
One solid punch.
He went tumbling across the dirt, sword clattering away, both hands clutched to his face as he groaned.
The entire exchange had lasted fewer than ten exchanges. The winner had used no weapon but a shield; the finishing blow had been a bare fist. The loser had already heaped insults that no mere discourtesy could excuse, and more than twenty witnesses had watched every second. The justification was complete. I now had every right to return the humiliation in full.
“Does swinging a sword well make someone a knight?”
But did I really need to?
“Then the bandits who plunder the villages of the domain would also be knights, would they not?”
He twisted around on the ground, glaring up at me with fury.
“That’s absurd!”
“Exactly. We do not call a man a knight simply because he can swing a sword without conviction.”
I extended a hand toward the figure still sprawled in the dirt.
“By that same measure, if a man holds an unshakable conviction even without swinging a sword—can he not also be called a knight? Allow me to introduce myself once more. I am Edwin, second son of Viscount Revan.”
The boy I had just punched stared up at me with a dazed expression, as though turning the words over in his mind. Then, as if something had clicked, he bit his lip hard, bowed his head, and took my hand.
“…I apologize for my rudeness. My name is Royta Campbell.”
Royta rose properly and bent at the waist in a formal bow of contrition. I couldn’t see his face clearly, but the back of his neck and the tips of his ears had gone red, and a tremor ran through his voice. It wasn’t wounded pride from being beaten by the Guardian he had openly scorned—his expression was too clean, too free of resentment for that.
This should be enough.
The moment a person received a blessing, the world treated them as half an adult. In actual years, though, most of them were only seventeen. An age still free to make mistakes—and free to learn from them. There was no need to grind them further into the dirt. From the start they had only been tools for stripping House Remington of its flimsy justification. That purpose was already achieved. Anything beyond this would simply be ugly behavior, the sort of thing better suited to street thugs than to nobles.
And with the catastrophe five years from now in mind, making allies rather than enemies was the wiser path.
“…Well met. I am of House Neldein—”
Several more spars followed. As the wins piled up without a single loss, the atmosphere shifted in the space of a breath.
“I apologize for my discourtesy. I am of House Amos—”
“I have learned much. I am—”
“Edwin. If it would not be an imposition, might I also have the honor of facing you?”
The ability to subdue live-steel opponents with nothing but a shield, combined with the insistence on proper courtesy even after being insulted, had forced every one of them to reassess the person standing in front of them. That day I sparred with twenty-three trainees in total and finished without a single defeat.
It hadn’t been difficult. Their understanding of their own blessings was still shallow; their bodies were being dragged around by their skills rather than the other way around. When you already know what attack is coming next, that kind of edge is lethal against opponents of roughly equal raw ability. There had simply been no reason to lose.
This should be more than enough.
As if to prove the judgment correct, the Countess who had left us cooling our heels in a waiting room for three full days finally announced that she would see us.
As we followed the steward, my brother asked with his eyes:
Did you win?
I answered with a look of my own.
Of course.
He snorted a quiet laugh and gave me a thumbs-up.
All right. From here on out was the main event.
Time to go meet the face of the Countess who had been far too busy with “pressing affairs” to receive her guests for three days straight.