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Chapter 14
By the time the cleaning was finished, the room looked far more livable.
Luna flopped onto the bed and watched Kata, who still seemed reluctant to stop scrubbing stains off the floor.
“Hey.”
“Hmm?”
“When you do embodiment… what memories do you think of?”
“The memory of holding my breath.”
Luna fell silent for a moment.
“…You were sticking your face into a basin again back then.”
“Yeah. It’s a habit.”
“What a bizarre habit. Why do you do that?”
“Hm.”
Kata thought for a moment before answering.
“It’s an old habit… and it clears my thoughts. Makes everything complicated just disappear.”
It was an honest answer, but for some reason Luna didn’t look pleased. She shifted her posture on the bed and sat up properly.
“Isn’t embodiment supposed to be about recalling memories that make you want to live?”
“Yeah.”
“And you feel a will to live from holding-your-breath memories?”
“It actually works.”
Luna frowned.
As if to interrupt the conversation, another piece of candy flew through the air.
Kata caught it with her hand.
“Have you seen Coward Cassius?”
“I haven’t met a Cassius, but is that a knight?”
“No. It’s a play.”
Luna looked at Kata silently for a moment, then lay back down without explaining further.
“…”
Kata blinked in confusion.
Her roommate’s way of speaking was not just unfriendly—it was excessively so.
“Luna? What does Coward Cassius even mean?”
“It doesn’t mean anything.”
That indifferent reply made Kata blink again.
Well… Luna had helped clean and even given her three candies.
That was enough.
Kata happily chewed the candy.
Perinem glared at Simon, who looked unusually refreshed.
“So, you’re saying…”
“Yeah.”
Simon grinned.
“I’m planning to take Katarenia along for the monster subjugation in the Barony of Kaster.”
“Why?”
Perinem growled.
For rookies, missions were opportunities to earn merit.
That was exactly why he had swallowed his pride and asked Simon to make him his squire.
“You seriously have to ask? Because she’s skilled.”
Perinem bit his lip.
“She got beaten up by Zellus Aragon recently.”
“She was unarmed.”
“And during training, she was clumsy enough to get hit too.”
“That was her first training, sure…”
Simon continued undeterred.
“I still think Katarenia has potential.”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe the hero foretold by prophecy is actually Katarenia—”
Perinem burst into laughter.
“Oh my god! You’re serious?”
“….”
“Sir, even the followers of the End Cult don’t care about Donovan anymore. And those people are obsessed with slaughtering for the Demon King. You know what that means, right?”
Despite Perinem’s ridicule, Simon remained calm.
“Recently, Katarenia was seriously injured during a spar with Sir Soran.”
“….”
“Perinem, do you really think Sir Soran would lose control against a rookie?”
“Maybe Donovan is just worse than expected.”
“You know that’s not true.”
Their gazes clashed in the air.
Finally, Perinem said coldly,
“I didn’t expect you to rate a coward who fainted at the sight of a monster so highly.”
“She was ten years old then.”
“So she was weak-willed.”
“And how mature were you at ten? You’ve conveniently forgotten what you said to me back then, haven’t you?”
Perinem’s expression darkened sharply. After glaring at Simon for a moment, he spat out,
“…Do whatever you want.”
Early evening.
“Dax.”
Peter held out his palm, and a small blue tit fluttered down to peck at the nuts in his hand.
He gently stroked its head with his finger.
“Thanks again today.”
The bright-eyed bird looked up at him. Peter took a deep breath and closed his eyes.
There were rare people on the continent who could link their senses with animals, and Peter was one of those “connectors.”
In the dull life of a knight, seeing the world through a free bird’s body helped him forget his worries.
It always did… until—
“Agh!”
“….”
“Ahh! Ghk—help! Someone help!”
A violent scream echoed from somewhere.
Following the sound, Peter quickly flew into an alley.
There, he saw his roommate calmly adjusting his cuffs.
Zenon Korel.
“Get up.”
At his feet lay Zellus, beaten and barely conscious.
“I said get up.”
Zenon kicked him lightly.
Peter gasped and quickly severed his connection with the bird before rushing into the alley.
Turning the corner, he met Zenon’s eyes.
“Peter?”
Peter panted.
“K-k-killing inside the knight order is a capital offense…! Unless it’s a duel, but even about 60 years ago there was a case where a knight killed a comrade and was executed—”
“He’s just unconscious. He’ll wake up soon.”
“…”
Peter eyed the motionless Zellus uneasily.
“What are you going to do? If he wakes up and reports this to the higher-ups…”
“He attacked first. Since he lost so badly without a weapon, he’ll probably keep his mouth shut out of shame.”
Peter couldn’t argue.
Zellus was extremely sensitive to defeat and humiliation.
Even if he did report it, it would likely be treated as a minor disciplinary issue since it wasn’t a weapon-based fight.
Peter groaned as he lifted Zellus’s limp arm onto his shoulder.
Zenon warned him,
“Leave him. He’ll wake up on his own.”
“Still, just in case—”
“You said you worked as his servant for a long time, right?”
“Eh? Y-yeah…”
“Then you should know whether he’s worth caring for.”
Zenon grabbed Peter’s collar and pulled him up.
Before he could react, he was dragged away roughly.
Once they left the alley, Peter spoke again.
“…Hey, Zenon.”
“What.”
“What did Zellus say to you?”
Zenon slowly opened and closed his right hand.
Only then did Peter notice the skin on his knuckles was peeled.
Zenon said flatly, as if it had nothing to do with him.
“Just the usual things.”
“You think I don’t know what people whisper about?”
Thud!
“A filthy bastard…”
Crack!
The wooden sword couldn’t withstand his strength and snapped.
Zenon tossed aside the broken hilt and slumped down on the spot, drained of energy.
“Zenon?”
Zenon slowly turned his head.
Green eyes looked down at him with familiarity.
It was obvious why she was here at the training ground so early in the morning.
She’d had another nightmare.
“You were training?”
“…”
After a silence, Zenon finally spoke.
“How long are you going to keep pretending to be close?”
A flicker of hurt crossed Kata’s face, but he continued anyway.
“We were only close for a short time when we were kids. There’s no need to act like that now that we’re grown.”
“….”
“Stop treating this like childhood play.”
