Rookie Holy Knight Azadine (4)

The soldiers, who knew all too well what a vicious being Rijen was, couldn’t believe what they were seeing—Rijen being dragged around like a dog right in front of them.

“I hope that thick skull of yours can take this much!”

Azadine twisted Rijen’s arm and hurled him straight into the well.

The moment Rijen lifted his head inside the stone-lined well, Azadine charged in and punted Rijen’s jaw like a ball.

Rijen’s head snapped back and slammed into the well’s stone wall.

“Kuh?!”

The shock made Rijen’s vision flash white. Azadine pinned Rijen’s head against the stone wall and kicked again.

-THUD! CRACK! CRUNCH!

‘Didn’t he say he wouldn’t kill him…?’

‘He looks desperate to kill him!’

Watching Azadine trap Rijen in the well and beat him, the soldiers’ knees went weak.

A normal person would’ve died just from smashing their head against the well’s edge—yet he was kicking on top of that. It wasn’t ordinary cruelty.

No matter how you looked at it, it had to be pent-up emotion. If someone could beat a person like this without any emotion at all, it meant their nature was that vicious.

-Kurrrumble!

When the well finally collapsed, Azadine stopped the beating.

“Ah. It collapsed. Well, a werewolf is tough, so he should endure this much, right?”

Azadine shrugged and turned away.

“W-watch out! Azadine!”

Camilla, who had been watching, screamed. From the rubble of the collapsed well, the werewolf Rijen rose again.

“Ugh….”

Rijen panted—yet his expression was clearly strange.

-KWAAA-RUMBLE!

With thunder rolling, Rijen’s body trembled.

“Y-you’re the best.”

“Uh… yeah. I don’t usually say I’m scared of what I see, but you’re kind of scary.”

Even Azadine—who had just toyed with a werewolf barehanded—admitted fear at the sight.

“Platoon Leader… I lost. I swear loyalty to you. Ugh….”

Rijen collapsed forward, face-down in a posture that was either prostration or a blackout—or both—and started snoring.

If a human got knocked down and started snoring, it was a sign of brain damage—usually death. But Rijen was a werewolf, so he would recover.

“No, seriously—this guy’s terrifying.”

The one who had beaten Rijen down—Azadine—shuddered at Rijen’s grotesque sincerity.

When the rain stopped, the soldiers began restoring the collapsed well.

Kallan and Rijen—who had challenged Azadine and been thoroughly, “cleanly(?)” defeated—and even Komek, who had been dragged along simply because he was a squad leader. All three squad leaders of Vermilion Fortress gathered and knelt before Azadine.

“Stand up. Why are you kneeling?”

“We apologize for our rudeness, Captain.”

Kallan bowed his head.

“Don’t call me Captain—shouldn’t it be Platoon Leader?”

“By rank, yes, it should be Platoon Leader… but we realized you aren’t someone meant to remain in a tiny fortress like this. I will serve you for life, Captain. Please permit me to serve you for the rest of my life.”

Half-elf Squad Leader Rijen also bowed—his face completely dazed.

His eyes stayed locked on Azadine, and the blissful look on his face was chilling.

“Ah… um. ‘For life’ might be a bit much.”

“No. I will serve you for life, without fail. I realized the reason I was born into this world was to meet you today, Captain.”

“…….”

Azadine felt fear for the first time as he looked at Rijen, who seemed ready to pounce at any moment. When Rijen had charged as a werewolf, it hadn’t been scary at all—this was hundreds of millions of times scarier.

“Forget it. Now—tell me about this ‘curse.’”

“Well, the thing is—”

The cinnabar mined at Vermilion Fortress was an essential alchemical material—so much so that this post had originally been considered the best assignment any Holy Knight could want.

Because even skimming off a little of that cinnabar could build enormous wealth.

Bribing the Knights’ headquarters on the Chadra Plateau just to be stationed here was routine.

Even so, a backwater was still a backwater—especially a place with only men—so dissatisfaction inevitably piled up.

And so, the Holy Knights stationed at Vermilion Fortress had broken the Rescue Knights Order’s code and purchased slaves.

The squad leaders explained the situation with earnest speed, as if they had never been insolent in their lives.

“Slaves? Are you insane?”

Azadine recoiled when he heard the fortress’s disgusting truth.

“The upper ranks know as well. Too many incidents happened when people started touching farmers’ wives and daughters.”

“The Knights’ upper ranks tolerated it?”

“Well… isn’t the Knights Order basically slave trading?”

It was an open secret that the Rescue Knights Order brought people in under the pretense of reform, relief, and charity, then made them work.

And Vermilion Fortress was remote even by Chadra Plateau standards—relatively free from public scrutiny.

“So? What happened?”

“A Holy Knight who came before brought in a female prisoner. She was a witch—beautiful enough to stand out.”

“A witch?”

“A witch who used Nether magic. Everyone feared her, but at the time, the platoon leader and the female prisoner maintained a common-law marriage. And then…”

“The platoon leader died and a new bastard arrived. More precisely, the new bastard was the previous leader’s superior. He wanted the woman and the income Vermilion Fortress produced, so he killed the previous leader and stole the post.”

“The woman ran into the wasteland and vanished. After that, the newly assigned Holy Knight was torn to pieces. Since that day, every time a new platoon leader arrives, a week later—each night—a whispering voice in the darkness…”

“Rijen. You checked it, didn’t you?”

Azadine turned to Rijen. Rijen brightened.

“Of course, Platoon Leader! You know I’m brave.”

“No—I mean, a werewolf wouldn’t be afraid of the night. So what was it?”

“It was a Shade Hag.”

“A Shade Hag?”

“Yes. Out in the wastelands of the Chadra Plateau, witches who use Nether magic become tainted by Nether power—fingers turning into hook-like claws, noses becoming hooked—until they become fiends. The female slave was quite beautiful before, but now she’s become a dreadful monster.”

“Ha….”

Azadine exhaled a bitter sigh, confronted with the Knights Order’s ugliness. Breaking the code, sacrificing humans to filthy desire, turning them into monsters.

“So that’s why you all treated me like a dead man walking. Because the Shade Hag would surely kill any Holy Knight. How many have died so far?”

“Six, so far.”

“What? Then the curse should be finished.”

“Huh?”

“Ah—no. The very first, the former platoon leader, wouldn’t have been killed by the Shade Hag. So only five were actually killed by the Shade Hag.”

Azadine counted. In Nether magic and primal magic systems, six was also a sacred number—a number of completion.

If the woman had prayed to the Shade Hags and begun transforming into one of them, she would need six sacrifices to complete the change.

If she began killing platoon leaders as a curse of revenge, she would try to fill six. And by coincidence, the final platoon leader would be Azadine himself.

“That’s unfortunate.”

“Yes? Unfortunate? Captain—don’t tell me you pity that witch?”

“Yes. If the curse is going to conclude, it needs to fill the wild-magic number six—and to complete that number, it would have to kill me. But sadly, I can’t die for her.”

“…….”

Everyone listening was stunned. How arrogant could he be?

But Azadine had decided this after making a conservative calculation.

A Shade Hag’s abilities couldn’t harm Azadine—because he was the Emperor’s one and only Messenger, and because Arael had paid everything to save her younger brother.

“The reason the soldiers rely on drugs is…”

“We tried to run, but the Shade Hags have the village surrounded. They won’t let anyone involved with Vermilion Fortress live. So we used the profits from selling cinnabar to buy comforts and luxuries, and fine liquors from every region. If we hadn’t, everyone would’ve gone mad already.”

“And merchants can come and go?”

“Yes.”

“Then it sounds like the ones who wronged that woman weren’t only Holy Knights.”

“Hahaha. Not me.”

Rijen said it while staring at Azadine, as if enraptured.

“R-right. Not you.”

“Hmm? Platoon Leader. Don’t be fooled. This one can do it with women too.”

Kallan warned Azadine.

“What do you mean, ‘do it with women’—no, I have not even a speck of interest in your sex life, so stop talking. My head hurts. More importantly: if that’s true, why does the Shade Hag attack only Holy Knights and not the soldiers?”

“Seems it only kills those who try to leave Vermilion Fortress. Maybe it’s trying to starve us out.”

“And the merchants?”

“The merchants never laid a hand on the woman or her husband.”

From the story, a woman who hated Vermilion Fortress and the Knights Order had become a Shade Hag. Then she hunted and killed incoming Holy Knights, leaving the place leaderless for half a year.

“Haa… fine. Now that I understand, I’ll clean it up.”

The moment Azadine said that, everyone looked impressed.

After crushing their mutiny with sheer skill, he still didn’t hate them—and even promised to save them. They couldn’t help but see him favorably.

Rijen, especially, was worse.

“My heavens. How beautiful.”

“Shut your mouth.”

Azadine called for Macdogal.

“Yes—coming, I’m coming. What on earth happened here?”

Macdogal, apparently unaware of what had happened during last night’s storm, looked flustered to find all the squad leaders bowing before Azadine.

“Macdogal. First, halt all cinnabar mining operations.”

“What? Halt operations? The losses will be enormous.”

“Cinnabar is highly toxic. The sooner we stop, the more people live.”

“Platoon Leader, I’m grateful you’re thinking of people, but the Knights Order has a cinnabar quota. If we don’t send it—”

Azadine would be punished. Macdogal raised the point, but Azadine remained calm.

“Perfect. There’s a way to solve it.”

“You can solve it?”

“Yes. But there’s something we need to do first. Ah—and conduct a household registry survey too.”

“A household registry survey?”

“Yes.”

Everyone, including Macdogal the scribe, felt baffled.