Chapter 87: Chapter 87

The brown-haired young man flew several meters and slammed into the training-yard floor.

The uniformed knight snorted and dusted off his dirt-smeared clothes, while the group of men behind him laughed as though it were great fun.

"Heh! Serves him right, the vulgar wretch!"

"Dare to scratch our faces ?!"

Their faces were already bruised as if they had taken a beating themselves, yet they kept shouting.

"Young masters, I believe it would be best to stop at this point."

"Whatever do you mean, Sir Arnold! Look what that lowborn cur has done to us!"

"We must rip his arms off so he can never crawl back up again!"

Recalling the single exchange he had just had with Dandel, Arnold straightened his stance with a sigh.

The incident had begun an hour earlier, when Dandel met these men in the training yard.

"Oh? What, is that Dandel?"

Dandel flinched, shoulders twitching in surprise; when he turned, he saw brown-haired men wearing crude sneers.

"So the Penal Corps didn't kill your spirit? And now they say you even got a medal?"

"Ridiculous. You were probably just trembling in some trench like an idiot, begging 'Save me~' right?"

The brothers kept jeering, but Dandel only sighed, making no particular reply.

'Reacting rashly will only tarnish the company's fame.'

Remembering what had happened to the men who had come for him before, Dandel bottled up his rising anger.

Back when he lived with his siblings in the alleyways, the thugs who tormented him had their heads cut off on the spot by his superior.

Perhaps because he also recalled what Yaan had told him, Dandel stood there and offered no response.

"Huh, look at this bastard."

"We're talking to you-where are your eyes looking, huh?"

Still unsatisfied with mere mockery, the brothers stepped right up and thrust their faces in front of his.

"Look here, you vulgar wretch. Your big brothers are here~ Aren't you going to greet us?"

They shoved their faces forward menacingly, jeering. In the past he might have trembled in fear, but now he felt nothing beyond simple distaste.

'After everything I've been through, have I gone numb?'

While he was thinking, the brothers had already come within inches; one put a hand on his shoulder, another on his head, provoking him.

"The great brothers have arrived and you don't even blink-did the army make you grow a spine?"

"What, after rolling around the battlefield for a few months do we look like jokes to you? Huh?"

One of them-Leon Klaus-grabbed Dandel by the hair and started shaking his head left and right.

"Say something, bastard~"

Even Dandel's patience began to crack under such treatment.

"Let go, please. Brother Leon. Brother O'Neill."

He spoke in a stiff voice, but only laughter came back.

"Let go? Let goo~? Who do you think you are to give us orders?"

"A brat born from some back-alley whore's legs, acting all high and mighty with officer rank and medals-shit!"

When the insults turned to his mother, Dandel's fists clenched tight.

'I must endure. If I lose it here, it will help neither the commander nor my comrades...!'

Struggling to suppress his rage, he tried to push them away-

"What's this, a hunting dog? You actually wear trash ?"

Fabric tore, and the Greyhounds' unit emblem stitched to Dandel's shoulder came off in Leon's hand.

"Wow, strong grip, Brother Leon?"

"In a few years I'll be a knight myself. A scrap of cloth ...!"

Watching Leon wave the 87th Independent Company's emblem he had torn away, the last thread of Dandel's reason snapped.

Dandel himself had been the one to bury Edgar's corpse-Edgar who had sewn that emblem onto his uniform.

He remembered nothing more.

When he came to, he was pounding the brothers' faces into pulp, and then the palace guards arrived and began beating him in turn.

"Stop at once, Second Lieutenant Dandel. You've already reached your limit."

Arnold, knight of the Belkuth house, sighed as he looked between the worthless heirs of the Klaus family and Dandel.

Those two cried and screamed after only a few hits, whereas the illegitimate son born of noble blood had taken dozens and still showed no loss of fighting spirit.

'I thought having no mana would make this easy, but he's far tougher than I imagined.'

Finishing the thought, Arnold gathered mana into his body.

He had disliked intervening in a brawl between noble heirs from the start; he planned to knock Dandel out with a single blow to the solar plexus and drag them all away.

'Were they acting with some scheme in mind? Even if it was only a side mission, provoking the vice-commander of the 87th Independent Company-one of the main forces in this battle-inside a ballroom...'

Watching the Klaus heirs still scream for Dandel's death, Arnold's brow furrowed.

Hiram had ordered him to accommodate the Klaus family whenever possible, but this had clearly crossed the line.

'First I have to end this quickly and report to Company Commander Verkut; only then can we contain the situation.'

Dandel's unit might have won honors, but it was still an independent company of Penal Corps, while Arnold's was the Empire's greatest knightly order.

He believed that if he showed a certain level of sincerity, the matter could be smoothed over.

"Dandel. What exactly is going on here?"

Yet the moment he heard Yaan's voice behind him, his mind went blank.

"C-Company Commander...."

"I asked what is happening."

At the cold, hard tone, Leon and O'Neill flinched violently.

Even a knight like Arnold swallowed a dry breath; that killing aura was not something pampered young lords could withstand.

"I-it's my fault. I couldn't control my emotions...."

"Not that. Your shoulder. Did you tear it?"

Seeing the Greyhounds' emblem that should have been on Dandel's uniform shoulder ripped away, Yaan asked, and Dandel answered at once.

"No, sir! This is...!"

"Then someone else tore off our company's symbol?"

With the sound of military boots, Yaan slowly approached; his gaze fell on Leon, who was frozen in terror.

Seeing the emblem in Leon's hand and Dandel's pulped face, Yaan reached out toward Leon.

At Yaan's two words, Leon's legs shook as he stepped forward and placed the emblem into Yaan's hand.

Yaan examined the cloth for any damage...

...then crushed Leon's knee joint with his heel, bending it backward.

Leon collapsed on the spot, foaming at the mouth from the pain.

The feeling of his joint dislocating and twisting brought ever more dreadful agony the more he struggled.

"B-brother! What are you doing...?!"

For O'Neill, it was his fingers.

When O'Neill rushed forward shouting, Yaan seized the man's fingers and bent them backward.

Finally, a single punch to the face.

Four broken front teeth flew out and O'Neill dropped instantly. After glancing at the fallen man, Yaan stepped toward both brothers.

"That is far enough, Sir Yaan Verkut!"

Arnold was already facing him, sword drawn.

"The Klaus heirs have certainly been discourteous, but your methods are excessive! If you harm them further...!"

At Yaan's low, gravelly voice, Arnold's words stopped mid-sentence.

"You just drew your sword, didn't you?"

Hearing that, Arnold's face went deathly pale.

A sword reflexively drawn, as he always did against common thugs. But the man before him was no such thing-he was a knight, like himself.

What did it mean for a knight to draw his blade on another knight?

Feeling the sharp pain from below, Arnold hurriedly looked at his foot.

A massive military greatsword, pinned to the ground by Yaan's foot, had run straight through the top of his foot.

The moment he tried to pull away, his foot would be torn in half.

"The instant you drew your sword."

Yaan's knee slammed into Arnold's thigh. The body, enhanced by nanomachines, literally shattered the mana-reinforced bone of Arnold's thigh and sent him crashing to the floor.

Straddling the fallen man, Yaan began ruthlessly punching his face.

With every blow to the face, broken teeth and bits of gum spewed out like a fountain.

"Stop...! Stop...! I-I surrender...!"

"I'll kill you before that."

Sensing that Arnold's will to fight had vanished, Yaan clamped a hand over his mouth to prevent any declaration of surrender and began focusing his strikes on the eye sockets.

Crack! Crack! Crunch!

He twisted aside the hands flailing in desperation and didn't stop the beating until the eyeballs burst and fluid ran down.

This wasn't a knight's duel fought with swords-just one-sided violence. A murder committed with utter indifference.

Leaving behind Arnold's corpse, limp and lifeless, Yaan rose and looked straight at Dandel, who was staring at the scene in shock.

Head bowed, Dandel muttered that, and Yaan asked him back.

"I let my emotions get the better of me and caused trouble again. A knight is dead, so the unit's reputation..."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Cutting off Dandel's words, Yaan opened his mouth while looking at him.

"The company commander of the 87th Independent Company, enraged by the insult to the unit's emblem, took it upon himself to assault noble heirs and kill a knight. You tried to stop me and saved those little brats' lives."

Dandel, stunned by the smooth fabrication spilling out, asked Yaan again.

"But... if it goes like that, your evaluation..."

"What's left to drop for a Penal Corps bug?"

At those words, Dandel clenched his fist tight.

A major disaster: a knight killed at the Emperor's own banquet. Even if it was ruled self-defense because the other side drew first, Yaan's standing among the nobility would plummet to rock bottom.

"If you understand, go report to the guards. I'll shut these bastards up."

Saying that, Yaan approached Leon and O'Neill, still writhing in pain, and began resetting their dislocated joints.

As they came to their senses, writhing in agony, what they saw was Arnold's corpse, beaten to death, and Yaan's face dripping with blood.

"When the investigators come and ask what happened, tell them I did everything."

"If you don't, I'll kill you."

No more questions were needed.

Seeing both men nodding frantically, Yaan approached Dandel-who had finished making the report-and handed him the unit's emblem.

"You did well this time."

Patting Dandel's shoulder, Yaan then raised both hands above his head as the guards approached from behind Dandel.

"Don't move, Sir Yaan Verkut!"

"To murder a knight at His Imperial Majesty's banquet-such blasphemy!"

"Restrain him! At once!"

Soon the guards' rough hands bound him, and Yaan vanished with them out of the banquet hall.

To be continued in the