Chapter 26

There is a phrase: “flipping the palm of one’s hand.”

It’s the perfect way to describe the fickle nature of human emotions—how someone who was kind just a moment ago can suddenly turn cold, or vice versa.

I remember it vividly: the day of my entrance ceremony at the military academy. Stiff with the tension of finally stepping onto the path to becoming a true knight, I was approached by a girl who appeared to be a fellow student.

She was incredibly friendly, a great listener, and a beauty. As a teenager in the peak of puberty, I was blushing and secretly smitten. Now, anyone with good intuition can probably guess the punchline, but allow me to recreate the ensuing conversation.

“By the way, what house do you hail from? I don’t recall seeing you at any of the social galas…”

“Well, that makes sense. I’m of commoner birth.”

“Haah? You’re a commoner cadet? Ugh, what a waste of breath. Please don’t speak to me so familiarly from tomorrow on. It’s unpleasant.”

It was a scene from my tragic youth that made me want to scream from the bottom of my heart: What exactly do upper-class people think commoners are? For the record, while she wasn’t quite as bad as my former classmate Orcus, she did come looking for a fight quite often.

Why she would initiate conversation after telling me not to talk to her is beyond me.

And why she and Sedona were always getting into physical hair-pulling brawls is an even greater mystery.

“A woman’s heart and the autumn sky.” Much like the flipping palm, it represents a changing mind, but her thought process was far too complex for me to decipher. I can usually tell what Nonoka-san is thinking just by looking at her face, though.

In any case, the shifting of the human heart is unpredictable, and my current situation was no exception.

“—So, what kind of stuff do you eat to get that strong? Tell me! Our Captain is young, but he’s got skills we couldn’t match even if we ganged up on him, yet you…”

“It’s obvious. It’s the transcendentally delicious cooking of our Knight Order’s head chef. Though I missed out on it this morning.”

“How did you parry that attack from behind? Do you have eyes in the back of your head?”

“I just took a rough guess that someone would be there and moved to blow everyone away at once.”

“How many Orcs have you cut down so far!? Is it like a hundred!? A ‘hundred-man slayer’ is every man’s dream!”

“…I don’t remember. I’ve probably passed that mark, though.”

Ever since I woke up, the familiarity of the militia members had been off the charts.

Yesterday, they had the attitude of veterans hazing a rookie who dared to waltz into a delinquent hangout; now, they were swarming around me like I was a rare beast that had wandered into a school. I heard I gave some sort of drunken speech, but could that really be enough to break the ice this much?

I was becoming intensely curious about what exactly I had ranted about yesterday.

However, at this rate, I wouldn’t even be able to eat in peace. Since I felt bad ignoring them and kept responding, I never found the timing to actually take a bite.

Sensing my dilemma, the Vice Captain raised his voice to shoo the crowd away.

“Hey, let the man eat in peace! And while you’re at it, drag those guys who are still passed out drunk outside and make ’em wash their faces! Rolling around on the floor all day is bad for business!”

“Roger!! …Come on, wake up!”

“Nngh… is it morning already…?”

“My head is throbbing… Maybe I’ll skip individual practice today…”

“You only drink every night so you have an excuse to skip! You’re hopeless!”

The group with the unpaid tabs—the ones who didn’t even get hangover medicine—staggered out of the shop leaning on each other’s shoulders. The shop master and Baum-chan finished collecting most of the dishes and began tossing leftover scraps into a barrel.

“What happens to those food scraps?”

When I asked the master out of curiosity, he replied without turning around.

“Mostly fish bait. Apparently, there’s too much oil and salt for them to be fed to livestock or spread on the fields. We didn’t use to have this much waste, but having too much of a good thing is its own problem. Processing leftovers wasn’t much work until we started being able to buy abundant food from elsewhere…”

“How is it in your Knight Order? If you eat such delicious food, I imagine the waste is significant too.”

At the Vice Captain’s words, I tilted my head for a moment, wondering what he was talking about, before it clicked. Usually, knights were associated with the upper class, so in the average person’s mind, it was natural to assume our meals were luxurious. Come to think of it, I had the same fantasy before joining the Order, so it wasn’t an unreasonable assumption.

However, reality is cruel. Specifically for the Royal Foreign Hazardous Species Countermeasures Knights.

“Our Order has neither the leeway nor the budget for luxury regarding food. If we’re short on supplies, we forage locally; if we can’t find anything locally, we tighten our belts; if we can’t sustain that, we do our best to eat Orc meat; and if even that fails, we starve to death.”

“Wait, shouldn’t you have the Kingdom arrange food before you die!? Or rather, you eat them!? You eat Orcs with toxic blood!? Eating monsters… as a human, let alone a knight, what is wrong with you!?”

“We don’t have a choice! There’s no budget! No budget! Other Knight Orders might be eating their fill, but the amount allocated to ours is… We aren’t the Kingdom’s convenient errand boys! The Kingdom Parliament can go jump in a lake!!”

“Hey Master! The Kingdom’s strongest knight just raised the flag of rebellion against the state!!”

“Shut up, I don’t care! I don’t get it either! Was the Pig-Hunting Knight Order really that poor!?”

“We really are that poor. For the record, my salary is one-tenth that of a knight in any other Order.”

“You’re the Kingdom’s strongest on a low wage!? In a way, you’re getting a worse deal than a commoner!?”

“I don’t want a ‘deal,’ I want meat. Just… not Orc meat.”

For the record, Orc meat is of such quality and toughness that after using magic to detoxify it, soaking it in running water for two days, and stuffing it with heaps of herbs to kill the smell before stewing it with fruit, it finally reaches a level where it’s almost edible.

Honestly, I don’t think there is a meat with worse cost-performance in this world.

And as a bit of trivia: according to Nonoka-san, the “brain is a delicacy.” Needless to say, the idea of eating brains is universally unpopular with everyone else.

“By the way, in this area, there are no beasts or wild plants, and on top of that, we don’t have permission to use the fishing spots, so we’re really struggling. The cooking squad was at their wits’ end.”

Even if we call it “local procurement,” without proper permission from the residents, we’re just ravaging the environment. In that sense, a wasteland like this is the most troublesome location for the Knight Order. Even the Orc Extermination Unit, which makes crying children fall silent, cannot defeat hunger.

“Well, uh… look. I’ll mention the situation to the shopping district people on the quiet. Keep your chin up.”

“I’ll talk to the wall manager about letting you fish by the riverbank. I don’t know if it’ll work, though.”

“I appreciate that, but… can I ask you one thing?”

Honestly, while the consolation was nice, it also felt a bit pathetic. Still, I’d take what I could get.

“Don’t you think I might be lying?”

“…”

A commoner usually has no way of knowing the internal finances of the Knight Order. One could easily assume I was making up tall tales to beg for food. In fact, one could even view me as a sort of operative sent to gain the town’s cooperation. Until yesterday, everyone certainly had enough wariness to suspect exactly that.

At my question, the master gave a short snort.

“You’re an outsider, so you wouldn’t know, but we have an old saying here in Cliffia: ‘The mouth speaks tall tales, but wine speaks the truth.’”

“…Wait, I’ve heard that somewhere before.”

Searching my memory, I recalled a certain day and clapped my hands together.

“Wait, that’s it! Senior Garmon said that once…”

Back when I was a fresh recruit in the Knight Order, fumbling around in a field that demanded harsh, specialized knowledge… Senior Garmon invited me out for a drink. Under the influence of alcohol, I ended up mouthing a few complaints about our workplace.

The moment I said it, I regretted it. It was usually unthinkable for a member of the disciplined Knight Order to complain about their duties, even while drunk. Speaking in a way that denied the work entrusted by the Kingdom could be considered irreverent, and I couldn’t have complained even if I’d been punched for disrupting discipline.

However, seeing me like that, Senior Garmon just laughed.

‘I finally got to hear your true feelings. Ever since you joined, you’ve been such a good kid that I was worried you were bottling up all your bad thoughts inside.’

‘U-Um… that was just a little joke, or rather…’

‘Hahaha, true, you definitely couldn’t let someone like Senior Njya hear that. But it’s only natural to think those things. “The mouth speaks tall tales, but wine speaks the truth”… Even the honest feelings you usually hide need to be let out with a boozy breath once in a while, or you won’t be able to keep going, you know?’

At that time, the senior had also told me the origin of the phrase.

—Once upon a time, a shepherd boy stole another man’s sheep.

Because that man had been on bad terms with the shepherd whose sheep was stolen for a long time, everyone immediately suspected him. The man had responded to the crowd’s interrogation with a defiant smirk, saying things like, “You have no proof,” or “Maybe it just ran away,” which only made them more suspicious.

That night, the man who had lost his sheep went to the suspect’s house to uncover the truth and treated him to some expensive liquor.

At first, the suspect made a sour face, but he was soon lured by the aroma of the wine. He took a cup, and in no time at all, he was overtaken by the drink. Right then and there, he easily confessed to stealing the sheep. The victim was delighted, thinking he had finally secured a confession.

However, the victim was shocked by the grievances the man began to vent afterward.

The thief condemned the victim’s failings, pointing out that his grazing methods ignored the growth rate of the grass, causing it to dwindle, and that he had been forced to rebuild the boundary fence at his own expense because the victim had left it broken. Furthermore, the man pointed out that the stolen sheep had actually been injured in a hard-to-see spot and had been left untreated. “Can’t you even manage your own sheep?” he had demanded in a counter-accusation.

In the end, it was said that this clash of true feelings led the two men to reconcile.

The lesson to be gleaned from this folk tale is that a person’s true nature and suppressed feelings come out precisely when they are overtaken by drink. Only after showing each other what lies at the bottom of their hearts can people truly evaluate one another.

When I shared my hazy memory of the story, the Vice Captain nodded, saying that was essentially it.

“There are truths you can’t say unless you’ve had a drink. That’s why we judge a person only after we’ve shared a round of drinks and gotten drunk together. You’re a man worthy of our trust, and a fine knight the country should be proud of.”

“…Thank you.”

“Is that something to say thanks for? You’re a strange one.”

Well, it was true that saying thank you was a bit odd in this case. However, there was a reason I felt like saying it anyway.

“It’s been a long time since someone acknowledged me like that.”

The Royal Foreign Hazardous Species Countermeasures Knights are sandwiched in a power struggle—stuck between the state and the Holy Knights above, and the commoner society below. Even if we are hailed as the country’s only practical knight order or the “Sword of the Commoners,” we often have heartless words thrown at us by those who don’t understand our work or our mission.

Doing this job sometimes makes me feel like I’m drifting further and further away from the noble knight I admired as a child, leaving me filled with anxiety and frustration. I intend to uphold a code of chivalry that I wouldn’t be ashamed of in front of children, but I often find myself questioning if I’m truly walking a straight path.

That was why being evaluated by an elder as a “fine knight”—based on seeing the real me rather than just the title of “Kingdom’s Strongest”—was a bit embarrassing, yet deeply heartening.

I see… so being acknowledged by others felt this wonderful.

Involuntarily, a single tear escaped and rolled down my cheek.

Hey, look, the ‘Beheader’ is crying. Just how much of a hardship has he been walking at such a young age?

I’m starting to get scared of the Knight Order. Overworking a powerhouse of justice like him for such low pay… that place is way too ‘exploitative.’

At the time, I had absolutely no idea that a bit of reputational damage—or perhaps, a bit of the truth—was beginning to spread.

The food in Cliffia was a bit too salty, but it was delicious.

Apparently, there’s a place nearby where rock salt is harvested, so salt is abundant here. Since the rocks evidently get hot enough to fry eggs in the summer, I figured the food might have become salty to help with mineral replenishment. After finishing breakfast and heading outside, I set off into town, waving goodbye to the group of drunks who were feeling a bit down.

Since it was already winter, a dry, cold wind was blowing through the town in the early morning.

“Ah, come to think of it, I never explained to Nonoka-san why the guild system isn’t working out… well, it doesn’t have to be right this second. Nonoka-san isn’t a kid; if she’s really curious, she’ll ask someone else.”

Muttering to myself, I walked along the town’s main street, which curiously curved. I hadn’t noticed in the evening, but the street seemed to follow the shape of a waterway.

“I haven’t seen that face before. I wonder who he is?”

“No merchants are coming through right now, so maybe he’s from the Knight Order… Look, he’s carrying a sword.”

“I wonder what business he has in town. It’s a bit scary, isn’t it…?”

“What are you talking about? That Garmon-san is in the order, so they won’t do anything strange!”

The eyes watching me as I walked were half-curious and half-distrustful. I was wearing civilian clothes, but as an outsider dangling a sword, it was immediately obvious to anyone with eyes that I was associated with the knights.

The militia at the tavern had accepted my presence for the time being, but that was a personal matter between us, not a move toward the Knight Order itself. To the town as a whole, I was still just a suspicious outsider.

There was a sense of discomfort, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as the snide atmosphere of the privileged classes. Fortunately, there was no sign of anyone aggressively confronting me, but I didn’t want to overstay my welcome. If possible, I wanted to take inconspicuous back alleys, but unfortunately, this town had a lot of space, and the gaps between houses were wide. No matter where I went, I’d likely be spotted.

Now then, once I get back to the mobile base, it’s a shower—no, before that, I have to bow my head to the Vice Commander and everyone in the cooking squad. My heart feels heavy…

In addition to going out without permission and breaking discipline, not returning for breakfast meant I had to expect a considerable scolding. In any normal knight order, saying “I spent the night drinking with the locals☆” would lead to severe punishment or demotion—at worst, being kicked out.

Furthermore, skipping a meal without notice is the ultimate nuisance to the cooking squad, second only to leaving leftovers. It affects their meal planning significantly because they end up using extra ingredients for a person who wasn’t there.

I have to make things right.

Hardening my resolve, I stood before the mobile base.

However, a few minutes later, I would hear unbelievable words from Tamae-san.