Chapter 24

After seeing off the foolish man who was dragged out of the tavern by the surrounding crowd—clearly disgusted by the preceding comedy—I adjusted my grip on the wooden sword and faced Nagi once more.

‘Looking at it again, that spear stance is slightly different from Senior Garmon’s.’

The positioning of his fingers on the shaft and his posture were a bit more forward-leaning than the senior’s, giving the impression of an offensive-oriented style. It was likely a self-taught deviation from the spearmanship his brother had taught him. Even so, the fact that he looked so much like his brother to an onlooker was a testament to how complete Senior Garmon’s martial arts truly were.

Now, truth be told, I didn’t have much experience fighting Senior Garmon in a serious match. Because Senior Garmon utilized a primarily defensive strategy, I often struggled to find an opening to break through. Inevitably, our bouts would drag on until the practice time ended. While the records of the Imperial Matches showed that I defeated opponents stronger than the senior, I couldn’t be optimistic when considering compatibility.

Even if he had been humored, I couldn’t afford to be careless against a man who had held his own in a near-equal fight with the senior.

As silent as when I go for an Orc kill, I lowered my center of gravity and held the wooden sword in my right hand. By the regulations of a knight, I couldn’t simply entrust my actual sword to someone else, so I had tied the crossguard tightly with cloth to ensure it wouldn’t accidentally slip out during the fight. Now, as for the rules.

“Let’s confirm first. This is a sparring session, not a duel, but we’ll follow the format of a duel. The fighters are you and me. No rewards. A single-match bout until one side concedes or is knocked down. The people of this tavern will be the witnesses. No protests. No targeting vitals. Let’s keep it within a range that won’t interfere with tomorrow’s activities.”

“No objections. It was just a personal test of skill from the start… let’s keep it clean. Vice Captain, I’ll leave the signal to you!”

“Understood. Now, both sides, announce yourselves!”

Our gazes locked head-on.

“Nagi, Captain of the Clifia Militia!”

“Varna, Knight of the Royal Foreign Hazardous Species Countermeasures Knights.”

A faint stir arose in the surroundings at the introductions, but noise is unnecessary for battle. Brimming fighting spirit and sharpened intent. At the root of it all, both had to possess a thirst for victory.

“…Begin!!”

“No hard feelings, Varna!!”

“My line exactly. I won’t be doing any ‘courtesy’ playing!!”

With personal circumstances and hidden motives riding on their blades, the two warriors clashed.

In all his life, Nagi had never known a man stronger than his brother.
In all his life, Nagi had never known a human wiser than his brother.
In all his life, Nagi had never known a human kinder than his brother.

To Nagi, the man named Garmon was exactly that.

From the time their grandparents were still healthy, Garmon had often played with Nagi and was the model student everyone relied on. Nagi, too, had a high learning capacity that allowed him to master things as soon as he was taught, and there was a time when they were hailed locally as a pair of prodigy brothers.

When exactly had the relationship with his brother soured, making it impossible to face him honestly? Before he knew it, with each passing year, Nagi became more unruly like a delinquent child, while Garmon grew into an increasingly great man. Even his brother’s military exploits, which had once been as joyful as his own, were now things Nagi wanted to blow away with a huff of annoyance.

His brother never said anything to Nagi. If Nagi said he wanted something, Garmon would buy it; if he threw a tantrum, Garmon would help him until he was satisfied. To top it off, when Nagi complained about not being able to win at chess, Garmon started taking it easy on him. That attitude—always seeming to spoil Nagi while maintaining a certain distance—was infuriating to him.

‘—If his subordinate gets thrashed, surely even that mild-mannered brother will finally get angry.’

The weight of the accumulated years and the distance between them had warped Nagi’s heart to the point where he harbored such twisted thoughts. Although he had told the knight Varna there would be “no hard feelings,” Nagi intended to beat Varna down with every ounce of his strength. Internally, he was scheming to leave at least three or four lasting swellings on the knight’s face as an example.

It was all for the sake of changing the attitude of that brother of his, who was kind to a fault. And it was also fueled by the will to pull a fast one on this elusive knight.

But the reality before his eyes was different—the subordinate of his faultless brother was himself faultlessly strong.

“Deyaaaah!!”

“Too slow—‘Water Mower’!”

The horizontal sweep Nagi swung with all his might was parried cleanly by the wooden sword. In that split second, thump!!—with a step so deep the floor shook, a counter-sword came flying in. Nagi barely blocked the strike with the flat of his spear, thinking it might pierce the center of his chest, but the sword’s trajectory suddenly shifted. From there, it became a storm of infighting as the knight refused to let him escape his reach.

“Kuh… Daah!!”

“…”

As Nagi stepped back, he tried a parry aimed at the legs, but Varna silently escaped outside the interval in an instant, his feet almost skimming the floor, and pointed his sword straight at Nagi while stepping sideways. Without his breathing being disturbed, silently and calmly, he was aiming for Nagi’s opening.

In contrast to his brother, who fought fiercely, this man’s presence relentlessly shaved away at Nagi’s nerves.

‘Hey, hey, you’ve gotta be kidding… I figured he’d be weaker than big brother, but is every single person in the knight order a monster like this!?’

Nagi had assumed he had the advantage in reach since it was spear versus sword, but Varna left absolutely no room to exploit. If Nagi tried to measure the distance, Varna would be in a nasty position; if Nagi tried to take the initiative and attack, Varna would suddenly close the distance aggressively, moving into a range where the spear was difficult to swing. Large-scale attacks were parried, and when Nagi tried to attack with volume, he was toyed with by lateral movements.

For now, he had somehow managed to repel the knight from his immediate space, but this was the first time he had ever used so much nervous energy in a single exchange. Nagi was being toyed with by a solid defense and irregular movements that thoroughly disrupted his pace.

—If Nagi had known a bit more about the knight order, the name Varna might have rung a bell. However, Nagi, whose heart was occupied far too much by his brother, failed to realize the true identity of the man before him.

Gradually, his body grew heavy and lacked precision. In contrast, Varna did not break his movements, remaining as precise as a clockwork mechanism. The tide of the match steadily and surely cornered Nagi.

And then—the moment the outcome was decided arrived.

In the midst of the fierce offensive, the arm blocking Varna’s sword was a fraction too slow.

“Guh, not yet… not yeeeet!!”

He blocked with his spear, forcing a frantic recovery, only to fall behind again. With every blow he parried, the delay grew and his form crumbled further, the displacement of his stance magnifying until he could no longer manage the deflections. He desperately wanted to reset his posture, but Varna’s assault only intensified, as if he refused to allow him even a single breath to regroup.

Then came the inevitable limit, and the sharp strike that had seen it coming.

“Eighth Form—White Crane.”

“Guwaaaaah!?”

An upward diagonal slash that seemed to appear suddenly from a blind spot knocked his spear upward, along with his leaden arms numbed by fatigue.

Immediately after, the tip of Varna’s wooden sword came to a halt mere millimeters from his throat.

As his mind went white, only the word “defeat” remained vivid in his consciousness.

I lost? Me, to my brother’s subordinate… to someone other than my brother…?

Only Nagi’s ragged breathing echoed hollowly in the deathly silent tavern.

His throat wouldn’t work properly. Yet, no situation could be more explicit than this.

Defeat—yes, this was defeat.

Staring at the wooden sword leveled at him, Nagi finally acknowledged the reality.

“Do you wish to continue?”

“…!”

Nagi could say nothing in response to Varna’s perfectly composed voice.

His mind was a blank; he didn’t know what to do next.

Varna began to withdraw his wooden sword, seemingly interpreting Nagi’s stunned silence as an answer. But in that instant—the members of the militia, who had been watching quietly, suddenly leveled their training weapons at Varna as if to protect Nagi.

For a moment, Nagi couldn’t comprehend what they were doing.

Varna, however, immediately narrowed his eyes and questioned the room with a voice like thorns.

“…And what, exactly, is the meaning of this, gentlemen?”

“That’s enough, Sir Knight. We can’t just stand by and watch any more than this… This practice ends with our Captain winning. Do you catch my drift?”

“No matter how elite or strong you are, you can’t take this many of us at once. You think we’d let you walk out the winner after you waltzed into our territory? Don’t be an idiot!”

“Don’t get cocky, kid! This is our turf! You should’ve thought about what happens when you act like a big shot here!!”

Amidst the menacing atmosphere and the flying insults, Nagi’s stalled brain finally restarted.

He had been shaken a moment ago, but a match was a match. At this stage, Nagi had no intention of complaining about the result. However, those around him were clearly heading in a direction contrary to his own.

Are these guys planning to twist the result through intimidation!?

The militia members had apparently decided that because Nagi always spoke ill of the knights, he was finally taking action, and they intended to fabricate the fact of Varna’s defeat no matter what. And they were doing it through the worst kind of betrayal—threatening him with numbers rather than respecting a man’s resolve.

The moment he realized this, Nagi felt a volcanic rage and screamed.

“Stop it, you lot! This is—!!”

“—This is a fight between me and Nagi. If you’re going to meddle in Nagi’s consent after the fact, I won’t permit such tactlessness!!”

Slightly faster than the scream could echo, Varna’s wooden sword and his sheathed blade moved at a speed the eye couldn’t follow, parrying the surrounding weapons away. It was a feat—no, a supreme technique—that knocked away over a dozen blades with absolute precision in directions where no one would get hurt, all while handling the weapons in each hand independently. The faces of those around him turned pale.

Varna’s eyes were as sharp as a beast’s, perhaps out of fury that a proud one-on-one battle had been defiled.

Under that god-like strength and overwhelming pressure, everyone in the room stood frozen, unable to move a finger.

“Ha… Hahaha!”

“C-Captain…!?”

Amidst it all, Nagi laughed.

The rage of this man—the one he thought he understood the least—was surely almost identical to the rage Nagi himself felt. In short, this knight named Varna was someone who was honest to a fault. He was the kind of “idiot” that Nagi himself strove to be.

“Damn it all… when you pull off a move that cool right in front of me, I’ve got no choice but to admit defeat! I give up! You win completely!!”

Nagi, who had rarely lost in his life, wore an expression more radiant than it had been in years.

Meanwhile, back at the Knight Order…

“Varna-kun isn’t here?”

“No. Apparently, he left and hasn’t come back… It’s almost lights-out, but he’s not even in his room. I wonder where he went?”

Looking at the worried face of Calme, one of Varna’s few juniors, Rock pondered for a moment with a brain that somehow still functioned despite being soaked in alcohol.

As his roommate, Rock didn’t particularly mind if Varna was missing; in fact, he felt he could do as he pleased more easily without him. However, for a man who officially held a seat in the knight order to break the rules without permission was not exactly a good thing.

For a second, Rock wondered, Is he out partying? But he couldn’t imagine the serious Varna, who lived like an old man with a cycle of sleeping by 10 PM and waking at 5 AM, doing such a thing with a mission looming.

“Senior Rock, couldn’t you be miraculously useful for once at a time like this?”

“You’re really looking down on me now, aren’t you, Calme-kun? Well, it’s not like I don’t have an idea… He’s ten-to-one performing an armed reconnaissance at the home of Squad Leader Garmon’s brother.”

“The Squad Leader’s brother… wait, armed reconnaissance!? That’s just a figure of speech, right!?”

If the meaning of “armed reconnaissance” was what Calme imagined, it was cause for great concern.

…Mainly regarding whether the heads of those attacked by Varna were still physically attached.

“Better to ask the man himself on that front. Alright, the old man will handle the rest. Thanks for letting me know♪”

“Y-yeah… well, I’d be grateful if you handled it, Senior Rock… but I’d be even more grateful if you took the fall for him, got punished, and moved into the disciplinary room instead…”

“Since you have a private room, Calme-kun. I’d almost like to trade places with you myself♪”

Calme’s room happened to be situated on the border between the women’s and men’s quarters, which, from a male perspective, wasn’t exactly a bad spot. Additionally, Calme would probably be grateful to room with the familiar Varna. Probably.

Of course, it goes without saying that if one were to sneak into the women’s quarters, they would be turned into a punching bag, crucified like a scarecrow in the training ground, and denied food for a day. Since it was a summary execution, there was little way to escape it.

At any rate, what needed to be done before bed had to be done.

To earn a favor from the “Beard” who would be troubled if a pathetic stain appeared on the record of the kingdom’s strongest knight, the drunkard stood up.

“Well then, now that that’s settled, shall I go weave a little scheme for my cute junior and the future of our order…?”

“…Senior Rock, is that centipede-infused liquor really necessary to ‘weave a scheme’?”

“Abso-lutely! This is what works best to shut up the Chronicler, who’s always the loudest about these things♪”

“Ah, I see… I wonder if that person’s liver will be okay?”

“I’d be more grateful if it worked on his brain than his liver—! I’m going to blow away all those inconvenient memories with alcohol!”

Once again, there was no day of rest for Chronicler Yagara.

What was about to occur was mere misconduct disguised as the anachronistic ritual of “nommunication.” The tragedy of memory loss, repeated under the guise that it’s the fault of the one who lets the drink take them, would likely evoke Yagara’s cheap alcohol allergy again tonight.

Calme, who was kind to everyone except a certain few, felt a tiny bit of pity for Yagara and offered a silent prayer in his heart.