Chapter 26
“Ha, you really do have the nerve to meet my eyes.”
“I’ll make sure to teach him a proper lesson!”
“Leave. I need to speak with this man.”
The man who had brought Leopold saluted and left. Once they were alone, the platoon leader glared at Leopold and spoke.
“You’re a low-ranking soldier now. You’d do well not to expect the treatment you received before.”
“When did I say I expected it?”
“Speaking informally, are you? You still don’t know your place. Do you want to be thrown into the brig for insulting a superior the moment you arrive?”
“Ah—your rank is higher than mine, then?”
Leopold nodded with an expression as though he had truly just remembered a fact he had forgotten. At his lighthearted tone, the platoon leader’s face crumpled in anger.
“Sorry. I have a bad memory.”
“You seem to think this situation is a joke.”
The platoon leader roughly seized Leopold by the chin. Even when he exerted enough force as though intending to crush his jawbone, Leopold’s smile did not disappear.
“Try gripping it harder. It feels like a massage, and it’s quite refreshing.”
“You!”
In the end, the fist he could no longer restrain slammed into Leopold’s face.
Leopold’s face, which had briefly turned to the side, slowly returned to face forward. As soon as it did, the platoon leader struck his opposite cheek.
“You have a lot to learn here.”
Thud, and Leopold’s head jerked with the impact. After beating him a few more times, the platoon leader clasped his hands behind his back and straightened his posture.
“A soldier’s first virtue is obedience to his superiors. I hope you learn to obey well while you’re here.”
Only now had the smile disappeared from his face, revealing sharp eyes that stared directly at him.
Something inside his mouth must have split, because the metallic scent of blood lingered in his breath. Leopold swallowed the dull pain and answered briefly.
“Very well.”
Perhaps his unexpectedly compliant attitude was surprising, for the platoon leader’s eyebrow twitched.
However, there was nothing more to find fault with in the man standing with his back perfectly straight. The platoon leader clicked his tongue and spoke displeasedly.
“As the bloodline of a filthy dark mage, you’re not someone who can easily be trusted.”
“Then don’t trust me.”
“Such shamelessness…….”
The platoon leader’s military boot kicked Leopold in the shin without warning. Then he grabbed Leopold by the collar and forcibly pressed him down to eye level.
“With that attitude, you’ll have a hard time keeping yourself alive. There’s someone who has personally come to visit you for your reformation.”
I’m starting to get annoyed. How long am I supposed to put up with this? It was just as Leopold was looking at the man’s face.
The barracks door was roughly thrown open, and footsteps approached without hesitation.
“I heard he was brought here. So it’s true.”
“You’ve arrived, Sir Urhel.”
The platoon leader released Leopold’s collar and stepped back.
At the same time, he deliberately stepped down on Leopold’s foot, seemingly hoping to make him kneel, but Leopold stubbornly remained standing straight.
When he turned his head, there stood a red-haired woman.
“Yes. It’s a pleasure to meet you like this. Leopold Hagen.”
Judging by the way she deliberately emphasized the name of the family that had already disappeared, the woman seemed to harbor no favorable feelings toward Leopold.
As Leopold tried to recall where he had seen her before, the platoon leader stepped forward and explained personally.
“Salute. This is Sir Urhel, who has personally come to judge you.”
The woman, who had once dreamed of becoming a noble priestess, began displaying strange superhuman strength one day, claiming that she had come to understand the will of God.
Now, she was better known by the name of an Inquisitor, carrying a halberd as large as herself over her shoulder and going around smashing the heads of heretics.
“Sir Urhel. He doesn’t seem inclined to listen easily. He has poor manners.”
“Of course not. Once, he must have thought himself to have blue blood.”
Leopold stared at her, wondering what was going on as she openly mocked him.
At his insolent gaze, Urhel seized him by the shoulder. Leopold was startled by her strength and tried to resist, but in his ruined physical condition, it was impossible.
“Don’t entertain any foolish thoughts. Whatever you do, God is watching you.”
It’s not God watching me. It’s you, isn’t it? Leopold found the obvious contempt directed at him amusing.
As Leopold staggered and his knees buckled, the platoon leader felt awe at that strength. Urhel pressed him down and growled.
“The Crown Prince saved you once, but if you show any more suspicious movements, I will kill you with my own hands. You wicked seed.”
“Who exactly did you say saved me?”
“You know neither gratitude nor remorse.”
Urhel still could not understand the Crown Prince’s decision. Even if he had not intervened of his own accord, this man must have learned something from observing and being raised by his father and mother.
This man would inevitably become a source of trouble someday. Urhel firmly believed so.
“We must educate him thoroughly.”
“Of course. How insolent…….”
“As one who knows nothing of the greatness of light, it would be good for him to learn its preciousness.”
“Ah, that’s a good idea. It would be best to keep him in solitary confinement for a while.”
The platoon leader and Urhel decided Leopold’s fate as they pleased. Then they called for people and had Leopold dragged somewhere.
Before he left the barracks, he heard the greetings they exchanged among themselves.
“May the Mother’s light shine upon you.”
“May you receive the grace of the noble light.”
The moment he heard those greetings, Leopold could no longer hold back and burst into a chuckle.
He did not care whether the soldier dragging him looked at him strangely. Light, huh? There had only been one thing that had illuminated him throughout his entire life.
Remembering that radiant face, Leopold unconsciously turned his gaze toward a distant place. Because of that, when his footsteps suddenly stopped, the soldier became irritated.
“Hey, walk properly!”
“Ah, sorry, sorry. It was funny, that’s all. Light, huh……. It would be nice if it were silver light.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Hey, stop answering him every time. He really doesn’t seem to be in his right mind.”
“I think so too. Wasn’t he a knight? Then he should have some dignity or…… Anyway, he doesn’t look like one at all.”
The soldiers grumbled among themselves as they dragged Leopold to a warehouse.
They stopped in front of a large crate used to store supplies. A crude ladder had been placed against it so that one could climb onto the top of the crate.
“Hey, get up!”
“Ah, is this my room?”
Leopold casually looked over the crate that reached about shoulder height. In the end, the methods of controlling humans and controlling beasts were not all that different.
It seemed to be the same whether it was a peaceful city far away or a battlefield where lives hung in the balance right before one’s eyes.
“Before that, could you untie my hands? They’re starting to get uncomfortable.”
Before climbing into the crate, Leopold held out his bound hands. However, the soldiers shook their heads.
“There was no order to untie them.”
“Ah……. Then I’ll untie them myself.”
Leopold pulled his hands in the opposite direction and exerted force. The rope pressed painfully into his skin.
However, physical pain was the easiest kind of pain to endure. Leopold did not stop exerting force, and eventually, with a dull, ripping crack as the individual strands tore apart, his hands were freed.
“That’s much more comfortable.”
“W-what is this…….”
“Do I just get in here?”
Leaving the flustered soldiers behind, Leopold obediently stepped onto the ladder. Then he slipped inside the crate and roughly curled up his body.
‘Hmm, I can manage this.’
Perhaps their confusion lasted longer than expected, because the lid of the crate closed more slowly than expected.
Leopold cast a deep blue gaze at the soldiers closing the crate and waved his hand.
“See you later.”
“……Is he really insane?”
Eventually, the light disappeared completely. It was a darkness in which there was little difference between closing one’s eyes and keeping them open.
Sitting curled up in the cramped space where he could not even fully stretch out his arms, Leopold thought of a distant place.
‘Where could she be? Eli.’
When he closed his eyes and pictured her, cruelly, what came to mind was not the moments when they had naturally stayed by each other’s side, but her recent face, which had seemed somehow anxious.
Leopold had realized that Eliza had suddenly changed, and he could also tell that it was because of his parents.
Then what had she been anxious about? Was she anxious about having to abandon him?
‘I was fine.’
The situation had changed drastically, and they had parted without having a chance to talk.
But Leopold did not think this was a permanent farewell.
A tamed beast would find its way back to its owner in the end, no matter how far away its owner abandoned it, and place its neck back into the collar.
It had been foretold from the very moment Eliza sang beautifully in that shabby inn.
From the moment Leopold first found her.
