Chapter 389

Chapter 389: Who Was Before the Queen?

Today, which always ended before sunset, had changed. Ragna—the proof of that change—turned his body.

Behind Ragna, who lowered his sword and steadied his breathing, the Junior Knight who looked like a grim reaper collapsed with a dull thud.

Blood gurgled from the severed cross-section, feeding fresh red into the carpet already soaked crimson.

“How?”

Encrid’s mouth opened. Not horrified, but surprised.

He was genuinely curious, so he asked.

Krang, watching from the side, thought Encrid meant how Ragna had gotten here. It was the perfect assist.

In truth, it was the result of reaching the end of the repeated day—the twisted day—but Krang couldn’t know that.

Ragna silently flicked the blood off his sword, and Encrid clarified the real reason.

“How did you find the way?”

How could he not be surprised?

Ragna had come all the way here alone. He couldn’t have secretly followed behind, so he had to have come from the gate.

This couldn’t happen just because the goddess of luck kissed him. She would have had to take his hand and guide him.

Ragna puffed out his chest as if he had come here for this exact moment.

“I know a shortcut.”

“Luck?”

Encrid’s question was short.

Ragna’s answer was even shorter.

“Skill.”

Krang blinked.

What the hell were these two doing right now?

It was an incomprehensible conversation.

Wasn’t this a conversation between lunatics?

But he couldn’t say anything. The important part was that he was alive.

It wasn’t even night yet.

Krang knew everything had ended before the thing he had prepared even arrived.

“I almost peed my pants.”

Krang said, slumping down.

It wasn’t something a man aiming to become king should say, but it didn’t diminish Krang’s dignity. He was that kind of person.

Why would dignity be diminished by rejoicing that you survived as a human being?

He would have said the same thing even if someone asked.

Encrid ended the short exchange with Ragna and roughly set his twisted right wrist with his left hand.

His eyes stayed on Ragna.

They weren’t the same eyes as when he had been joking earlier.

Fine. Say he found the way.

Then what?

Ragna had pushed away the Junior Knight Encrid himself couldn’t handle and had beheaded him.

Encrid had seen the whole thing.

Anyone who witnessed Ragna’s fight—his sword—would know.

He hadn’t risen to knight yet, but Ragna would become one.

That was his talent. Part of it had thrust out and revealed itself.

Matthew’s eyes widened, his breathing quickening.

That was how shocking it was.

Encrid’s mouth opened.

“Thank you.”

The words were gratitude, but the tone carried something else more strongly than thanks.

Krang’s ears perked and his head snapped toward him.

Encrid didn’t normally show emotion easily, but now it seemed hard to hold back.

Krang looked at Encrid and shouted.

“Healer! Bring the healer!”

His two guards were badly injured. That was urgent too.

Whether out of professionalism or loyalty, two servants and maids appeared immediately.

“Yes, yes, Your Highness.”

They had survived unhurt by hiding somewhere.

No—this was normal.

If the dead Junior Knight’s plan had succeeded, these people would have been the ones cleaning up Krang’s corpse.

Unless he were a perverted murderer obsessed with killing, there was no reason to slaughter servants and maids for no reason.

Even if he had turned traitor, he was still royal guard. Krang knew that, so he called for people.

“Bring the healer.”

Krang repeated as he sat, and the servants and maids hurried away.

Even then, Krang’s gaze didn’t leave Encrid.

“I almost died.”

Ragna opened his mouth.

Of course, he meant Encrid had almost died.

Was it because he felt something in that “thank you”? Was he rebuking Encrid for saying it? Was he packing that kind of feeling into the words?

It sounded like multiple meanings were mixed together.

Krang had a talent for reading the subtle things hidden inside people’s words.

You could call it insight.

Even so, Encrid’s gaze didn’t change.

Encrid dreamed of becoming a knight. You couldn’t stop him, even if you tried.

It wasn’t just Encrid alone. Matthew, Krang’s guard, and another spearman had helped, and still—

He had lost. It was a defeat.

An ordinary person would taste frustration, despair, or at least think differently after seeing Ragna.

If you aren’t jealous, you aren’t human. Without envy, can you even be called human?

Krang thought so.

And as he watched Encrid, he thought—

‘That’s not a human being.’

“Let’s spar when this heals.”

Encrid said, holding up his right wrist.

What was the emotion burning in his eyes?

No jealousy.

Only joy, happiness, and a desire to win.

Ragna scolded him for that.

“If you almost died, you should know how to restrain yourself.”

It wasn’t something you’d expect to hear from Ragna, but Encrid really had been too much this time.

Encrid recognized it and nodded.

“Krang?”

He called Krang.

Krang had been thinking and was about to move.

His head was full of things he had to do next.

In Krang’s eyes, his ‘preparation’ was visible. All those years traveling the continent hadn’t been just running away.

This was one of the results.

“You’re late.”

A man with short brown hair approached, speaking as he came.

Ragna looked at him striding out of the hallway and recognized at a glance that he was formidable.

“Sir Ingis.”

Krang called him. Encrid recognized the man’s affiliation immediately.

He couldn’t miss it.

Two swords, and iron-plate armor on his chest engraved with the Sun Beast’s emblem.

“I’m Ingis of the royal guard.”

His voice was young. His face was young.

He couldn’t be more than twenty at first glance.

In reality, Ingis was twenty-eight.

His youthful appearance was a complex for him.

He was also the most talented genius in the Red Cloak Order.

During his days of running and wandering, Krang had surveyed the south as well. More precisely, he met the knight who blocked the region bordering the southern frontier and the Demon Realm.

“Sir Cyprus.”

He met the knight who commanded that unit and spoke with him.

After that, he saw battle in the south.

Krang had nearly lost his head four times there.

Because of that, he understood both the fighting and the danger.

“I will not ascend the throne by borrowing a knight’s power.”

Krang saw the future. He drew the future of the Royal Palace.

That was why he knew he couldn’t bring in a knight’s extraordinary strength right now.

Should he cut away the flesh of the Royal Palace to take the throne?

“You protect your honor. I will do my job.”

He wouldn’t do that.

He would make a foolish, stubborn choice.

Krang chose that path.

Was that why?

He earned a promise, and now he could see Ingis here.

This was the preparation that would appear as a solution if he endured for half a day.

“I came with eight Squires.”

Ingis said.

It was true. The others were cleaning up at the gate, and Ingis had rushed here.

His gaze went to the Junior Knight Ragna had killed.

“Sir Pilten.”

Regret seeped into Ingis’s voice.

But he didn’t resent Ragna or anyone else.

He only stared at the corpse with a brief gloom.

It had been Pilten’s choice.

Ingis knew Pilten had been jealous of him.

Even so, he hadn’t wanted this ending.

Pilten had betrayed them and chosen a side. Right or wrong, it was the road he had taken.

So it was right that he bore the result.

Ingis was also, quietly, grateful.

If Pilten had lived, Ingis would have had to kill him with his own hands.

Ingis soon lifted his head.

“I must go to Her Majesty the Queen.”

Master Cyprus had given him two orders.

Ingis worried about Krang’s safety, but if there was an ominous threat inside the Royal Palace, he was to stop it and put it down.

“I was going to go anyway.”

Krang agreed at once.

Had the blade he prepared been only one Junior Knight from the south? If Ingis changed his mind, everything would collapse. Had Krang really bet everything on one man’s decision?

Of course not.

But nothing else was coming.

Which meant the problem had broken out elsewhere.

They moved as one toward a single place.

The Queen’s main hall.

—

“Is he a tax collector?”

Jaxson, who had reached the Royal Palace, arrived at his final destination.

This was where he had meant to come.

What Jaxson wanted was the client behind the assassin alliance.

At first, he thought it was Baron Mernes, because he had benefited from using the Black Blade Bandits.

But after gathering evidence and moving, he realized there was one more person.

Jaxson gained a lot by wiping out the assassin alliance.

This was the result.

He learned who the leader of the Black Blade Bandits was, and who the client was.

He hadn’t uncovered everything alone.

It was the result of outside pressure.

To be exact, it was thanks to a trick Krang had played.

Krang had physically divided the nobles.

So—

‘I can’t say it was without the Captain’s help.’

The Black Blade Bandits had been beaten so badly that things spilled out.

If that hadn’t happened, the assassin guild wouldn’t have pressured itself into uniting, and there wouldn’t have been a request placed.

No—Jaxson wouldn’t even have stepped forward himself.

“Did it fail?”

The question came back as another question.

A man stood with his back to a wide window. He was big. Jaxson nodded.

“It was impossible.”

“Why?”

“Difference in skill.”

“You’re kind.”

“I have something I want to ask. Will you answer honestly?”

“I will.”

A man who started as a merchant, bought a noble rank, and became a tax collector—an official who collected taxes for the royal family.

A man who sold his soul to the devil to reach this place.

“Is it the Black Lily?”

The tax collector twisted his lips. It was a smile, but his face was too warped for it to look like one.

“Damn it. I should’ve killed and burned them all properly back then.”

The image of a burning mansion rose at his words.

Jaxson had come to the right place.

He drew his sword.

“The rightful son of the Bensino family has returned.”

The tax collector had kept his hand hidden beneath the table while speaking.

Now he pulled it out from under a thick, sturdy, expensive rosewood desk.

Two crossbows.

Modified crossbows.

Bolts already loaded, ready to fire the moment he pulled the triggers.

“Can you avoid this in a narrow room?”

“I will step forward in the name of someone who lost his family, and a child who lost his parents.”

“Stop talking and attack.”

It was pathetic, calling this the last resort after moving the Black Blade Bandits and doing everything else.

But Jaxson didn’t criticize him.

He only hoped.

“Please. Don’t beg for forgiveness.”

He meant it.

“Bullshit!”

The tax collector fired the bolt in his left hand.

The string snapped, and a black-painted bolt shot into the darkness cast by the setting sun.

The tip was coated with Ten Breaths poison. A graze would be enough.

Jaxson didn’t hide in the darkness to embarrass him.

This was a moment to do as he pleased, and he wanted his opponent to see his face clearly to the end.

He swung and knocked the bolt aside.

Nothing special.

With a clack, the bolt cracked, ricocheted, and bounced across wall and floor.

The second bolt followed immediately.

A timed follow-up.

Jaxson pulled back and struck the second bolt as well.

A broken shard of the bolt scraped his cheek.

He didn’t want to avoid it, so he didn’t.

A thin scratch opened on his cheek.

A stinging heat spread.

Poison.

“Got it!”

The tax collector shouted. His voice was strangely light for his size. Jaxson hated it.

He didn’t want his revenge to be against a great man.

But what was this?

Wasn’t he just a shabby human being?

“Are you propping me up in your head? Do you think the bastards who burned your family needed a grand reason?”

His teacher’s words came back.

They were right.

He had believed great people committed atrocities for great reasons.

A demon’s altar. The resurrection of a heretical god. It should be at least that level.

Or a great noble who controlled the country.

He thought it had to be. He built his opponent up like that inside himself.

Otherwise, there was no reason.

No—there was a reason.

Humans could kill for small greed.

It was a mistake.

That was fine.

He could fix it.

Hadn’t Encrid shown him?

What do you do when you walk the wrong path?

‘Come back.’

He could start again.

What if he failed again? What if mistakes piled up one after another?

That was fine too.

Repeat it.

Do it until it works.

Encrid had held his sword and chased the dream of becoming a knight.

Was that dream absurd? Funny? Something to mock?

Not at all.

He built his tower by repeating, moving forward, and not giving up.

That was how to do it.

That was all he had to do.

Jaxson decided he wouldn’t be disappointed just because his enemy was shabby.

“Ten Breaths?”

Instead, he named the poison.

“…Was it really Daggers of Gaor?”

The tax collector sounded shaken. Embarrassment and tension flickered across his face.

At the same time, he secretly pulled out another object and threw it down.

Bang!

Smoke burst up.

A smoke bomb.

A vibration numbed Jaxson’s hearing, and the smoke swallowed his vision.

But there was nothing to worry about.

He had done this hundreds of times.

He read through it.

With his senses—presence, air movement, instinct—he pinned down the tax collector’s position.

He was trying to escape through the window.

Jaxson strode in, grabbed him by the back of the neck, and threw him back.

The tax collector swung his arm. A hook-like weapon flashed in his hand.

Jaxson caught and flung him with his left, then drew his Stiletto with his right and raised it.

He blocked and deflected the strike, then advanced a few steps toward the man he had thrown.

The man didn’t scream or groan.

In the smoke, he spat the words he thought he needed.

They were meaningless to Jaxson.

“If you spare me, I’ll give you wealth you’d never dream of! Treasure! I know the Black Blade Bandits’ secret vault!”

“I know the secret vault of the continent’s best assassin guild.”

Just the Black Blade Bandits’ vault?

Sweat beaded on the tax collector’s face as he grasped the meaning.

Jaxson opened the door.

Several corpses lay scattered outside.

His work.

The people who had blocked his way here.

Bodyguards and assassins.

This was what the leader of the Black Blade Bandits had prepared for him.

There had been survivors, but there was no reason to harm servants and maids who had hidden in a corner without attacking.

Jaxson waited for the smoke to thin, then turned his head.

He saw a curved dagger in the tax collector’s hand—held upside down, hidden beneath his thigh.

Jaxson simply crushed the intention by stabbing the man’s thigh once with his longsword.

Thud.

The tip lodged deep.

“Argh!”

A scream tore out.

Jaxson moved as if he were only swinging.

He pulled the blade free and stabbed again and again—arms, legs—until tendons were severed.

Then he took the weapon, tossed it aside, and wrapped the wounds with a wide cloth, tying tight to slow the bleeding.

“You crazy bastard!”

The tax collector hissed, voice packed with malice.

“I’ve heard that often. It’s still unpleasant.”

Jaxson answered dully, then took out his Stiletto and a whetstone and began sharpening.

As he did, he also brought out a dagger with a saw-toothed edge.

Then awls, tongs, and other tools meant for pain.

“What do you want? The Black Lily? Should I tell you who the rest are? What else? What do you want to know? What is it, you bastard!”

Jaxson blinked a few times and replied.

“Nothing.”

“…What?”

“I’m telling you not to say you’re sorry. The tongue is last.”

Jaxson didn’t think his revenge was beautiful.

He didn’t think it was justified.

“So what? I don’t care.”

Encrid’s words came back.

He didn’t want to stab his friend in the back just because it was convenient.

He wanted to look around, not only forward.

Did everyone really live by tearing others apart?

There are people who aren’t like that.

Anyway, it was none of his business.

He would just do as he pleased.

“If anyone asks, tell them Jaxson of the Bensino family sent you. I’ll send all my friends. One of them is already there.”

“Aaaaaaaagh!”

The collector’s scream echoed through the mansion.

“It wasn’t me! It wasn’t meeeee!”

The collector kept shouting that it wasn’t him, but Jaxson didn’t listen.

* * *

“Should I say it’s been a while?”

The Queen’s audience chamber was also a mess. There had been a commotion here as well.

The Queen was sitting on the throne, with a Mage on one side and Frock Ruagarne on the other.

Below them, a few nobles were seated.

To Encrid’s right was the Marquis of Okto, and an old man who looked like Marcus, but whose face he didn’t recognize.

On the opposite side, he saw the guy who said it had been a while.

It was Count Molsen.