Four days later, at dusk.
The knights who had filled the Holy Knight Order’s training grounds dispersed with a vigorous shout, their voices ringing out across the yard.
Left alone in the haze of settling dust, the Vice Commander removed his helmet. A trainee knight came sprinting toward him.
“Sir Leon! The Commander is asking for you!”
“Tell him I’m busy.”
“…Pardon?”
The trainee, barely three or four months into his induction, let out a dazed, slightly strangled sound at Leon’s reply.
Whether he cared or not, Leon simply shook the sweat-soaked hair from his face, his expression unreadable.
What do I do? Do I actually have to pass that along?
The very thought of relaying the message — the Vice Commander says he’s too busy to come — to the Knight Commander, whose face alone was enough to make a man’s knees buckle, sent the trainee’s head spinning.
Objectively speaking, the Vice Commander standing before him was the polar opposite of that hulking, rough-hewn Commander. Leon Aranias had the face of a knight from a minstrel’s ballad — breathtakingly beautiful, with manners to match.
And yet, somehow, he radiated an aura just as forbidding as the Commander’s — sometimes even more so. The trainee found it nothing short of mystifying.
In the end, he turned to go without managing a single word. But before he had taken more than a few steps, a swift and heavy footfall overtook him.
“Never mind. I’ll go myself. Get some rest. We depart soon — go straight home and don’t get into any trouble.”
The trainee turned to see Leon’s tall figure already striding away into the distance. He snapped to attention with a bright salute.
“Yes, Vice Commander!”
“What did you want?”
After a brief knock, Leon pushed open the office door without ceremony. Knight Commander Alex Leding looked up and slowly shook his head.
“You seem more energized than ever. You’ve barely slept in four days getting ready for the expedition.”
“I’m fine. What did you want to say?”
Leon replied sharply, pushing damp, dust-streaked hair back from his forehead. He looked haggard, no question — but there was a vitality about him that had been absent for some time now, and his eyes were clear and bright.
Alex studied him for a moment before speaking gruffly.
“What do you think I want. I told you to hand off the Tyrot ducal family’s illegal tali distribution case to Sir Sask before you left. He says you haven’t told him a thing. What’s going on?”
“That’s not possible.”
“What do you mean, not possible — Leon, you really—”
Alex pressed his fingers to his temple as if trying to stave off a rising tide of blood pressure. But Leon’s utterly unruffled expression was too much, and his composure finally cracked. He bellowed without a shred of dignity.
“What is your problem? Why are you so hell-bent on bringing down the Tyrot family? The Great Temple sent down instructions to handle this quietly — I told you that!”
On any other occasion, Alex Leding made a considerable effort to maintain the image befitting his title as Commander of the Holy Knight Order. Yet even his thunderous roar — which would have made any other knight wet himself — did not so much as make Leon blink.
“I was granted full authority over this matter. Please leave it to me. I will see it through when I return from the expedition.”
Leon’s response was blade-sharp, carrying a gravity entirely unbefitting someone in a subordinate position.
Right. This one’s always been like this. Even when he was twelve.
Alex shook his head. Still — setting aside that innate, maddening self-possession of his — the stubbornness Leon was showing now was, in fact, deeply unlike him.
Even as a boy, Leon Aranias had been a rigid perfectionist who left everyone around him speechless. His impeccably proper conduct put senior knights to shame, and while it was insufferable, he had never once defied orders or acted according to his own whims.
So why are you suddenly like this, Leon.
Alex pinched his temple and narrowed his eyes.
“…Was it you who tipped off the Arkin Daily about this case? Tyler Mariano, the editor — he’s a friend of yours, isn’t he.”
Ever since the Arkin Daily, the capital’s leading broadsheet, had splashed the tali distribution scandal across its front page, the elders at the Great Temple had been in a thoroughly foul mood.
They had apparently planned to quietly bury the case after accepting a generous donation from Duke Tyrot — and then the very person they doted on most, the so-called Jewel of the Empire, Leon Aranias, had gone and blown the whole thing wide open.
Of course, unaware of that particular fact, the elders were currently directing all their displeasure squarely at Alex.
This little — he never pulled stunts like this at twelve, and now at twenty-four he decides to lose his mind!
Alex swallowed a torrent of curses and gestured to the chair across the desk.
Leon sat, reluctant but compliant.
“Is there something else?”
“Leon.”
Alex’s voice shifted — serious now.
“Yes.”
Leon replied with the same steady calm.
“His Imperial Highness Crown Prince Nigel has appointed you as the sole commanding officer of this expedition.”
Leon paused, almost imperceptibly.
“…Does that mean the Imperial Knight Order won’t be deploying at all?”
“He says he’ll detach twenty lower-ranked knights. Barely a token gesture. The bulk of the force will be us — the Holy Knight Order.”
It was true that dealing with the monsters surging from the ruins of the old magical kingdom had long been the Holy Knight Order’s domain.
But this was different. This was what people called a stampede — a monster outbreak of unprecedented scale. If the great Count Rüschino himself had sent a request for reinforcements to the imperial palace, then the situation was dire indeed.
And yet the Crown Prince had decided not to deploy the Imperial standing army.
What that meant, in plain terms, was this: if the expedition failed, Leon — as its commanding officer — would bear every ounce of blame and consequence.
But Leon heard it all and remained, as ever, perfectly composed. As though he had anticipated every word.
“It doesn’t matter.”
Well, aren’t you something.
Alex met Leon’s unhurried gaze with barely restrained exasperation.
He had always been like this. From the very first day.
Alex had first met Leon when the boy was twelve. When word came that the eldest son of the grand Aranias ducal house had actually enlisted in the Holy Knight Order, Alex and every other knight had snorted in derision.
Let’s see how long the young master lasts. Three days, maybe.
The Holy Knight Order was the only knighthood in the empire that placed no restrictions on rank or birth for admission. If one possessed sacred power and skill with the sword, the doors were open. Sons of prostitutes and stable boys rubbed shoulders with the sons of nobles, and the only way to hold such a group together was through hellish training and ironclad discipline.
Alex himself had been the third son of a hardware shop owner on the outskirts of the capital, a man who had clawed his way up through sheer effort. He had no reason to look kindly on a pampered heir to a grand duchy from the start.
His opinion of Leon had only changed when Leon, still a trainee, became Alex’s squire.
Alex had put the boy through hell, hoping to watch the lordling give up and walk away.
He ruined training clothes Leon had carefully laundered, rendered swords Leon had painstakingly sharpened useless within a day. He humiliated and taunted Leon in front of the other trainees without hesitation.
And yet no matter what Alex did, Leon remained unchanged.
He completed every task assigned to him with that beautiful, impassive face — and simply bore in silence every insult Alex flung at him, words the boy had surely never heard in his sheltered life.
Then, one day, as Alex was berating Leon with his usual ferocity, something struck him.
This pampered young lord was not struggling to endure. He was not flailing against the misery and injustice of it all. Bearing suffering — bearing what was unfair and cruel — was to this boy as natural as breathing.
A boy barely in his teens. What kind of life had he lived, to make this second nature?
After that day, tormenting Leon lost all appeal. Alex watched from close by as Leon became a full knight, then a senior knight, and finally rose to the rank of Vice Commander.
Through every grueling trial, Leon never once complained. No one called him the lordling anymore. The entire knighthood respected him deeply — from the bottom of their hearts.
If every man in the Holy Knight Order had to choose one comrade to cover his back on the battlefield, they would all name Leon without hesitation.
Insufferably exceptional — and yet when that excellence never wavers, even the most reluctant heart is compelled to look up. That was Leon Aranias. Unswervingly consistent, so much so it bordered on the uncanny. A man, in a word, half-mad with discipline.
Then, about a year ago, he had begun driving himself even harder — to a degree that unsettled everyone around him. People had watched in unease, half-expecting him to snap at any moment.
And then Leon had changed again, abruptly. He had gone soft — staring into space like a man with loose screws, skipping training on a whim. Twelve years of perfect conduct thrown out the window, and everyone around him was walking on eggshells.
I heard he’d fallen in love. But I never expected it to change him this much.
Alex, not being of noble birth, knew nothing of Kasha, and held no particular bias against her. He had simply assumed that any woman capable of changing a man like Leon must be no ordinary person.
And honestly? Alex hadn’t minded seeing Leon transformed.
In a strange way, it was the first time Leon had ever looked human. And there was a certain quiet satisfaction in being able to raise his voice at a subordinate who had never, in all their years together, actually felt like one.
Up to that point, he had been fine with all of it. But then Leon had come back from his vacation early, and suddenly he was acting like a man possessed again.
Seizing sole jurisdiction over the investigation into the Tyrot family. Ignoring direct orders from the Great Temple to stand down.
Up to there, I could write it off. But why does this damned kid have to face another trial like this on top of everything else.
Alex exhaled inwardly.
He had a bad feeling about this monster expedition. It started with the Crown Prince’s manner — cornering the Holy Knight Order as if he had been waiting for just such an opportunity.
Was he thinking this was his perfect chance to shake the Temple and its Holy Knights, who had long been thorns in the imperial side?
But the strangest thing of all was this: even Alex himself, the Order’s Commander, found himself nodding along unquestioningly whenever the Crown Prince spoke — bowing for no reason he could name.
It made no sense at all. Every time he stood before the Crown Prince, he felt the urge to fawn and scrape like the most spineless of nobles — as though someone were pulling his strings.
Something isn’t right. Nigel, the Crown Prince.
The problem was that such thoughts never came to him while actually in the Crown Prince’s presence. Only when he had withdrawn and returned to his senses would he tear at his hair, bewildered by his own words and agreement.
Today had been no different.
He had sat there nodding like an idiot before an order that so clearly placed every burden on the Holy Knight Order alone, then walked away.
And the cost of his idiocy and irresponsibility would now fall entirely on this insufferably handsome subordinate of his.
