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Side Story Chapter 15

“We… lost?” he dumbly repeated.

“That’s right.”

“Cain de Harry—!”

“Didn’t you already see it coming, rebel leader? Anna bel Grace is in my custody,” Cain said.

Dargo\'s eyes widened—the worst-case scenario had come true.

“And she agreed to become one of us.” Cain smiled.

“Bullshit! You mean she betrayed me and my army?”

Dargo really couldn’t let Cain’s remark slide this time. Anna was one of the Three North Stars, so why in the world would she betray him and the other rebels? It was truly nonsense and wasn’t even funny.

“If I was lying, you’d be able to find out soon enough, so why would I bother coming all the way over here to lie?”

Dargo’s face quickly darkened. Cain was right: if something hadn’t happened to Anna, she should have contacted the rebels somehow before any of this took place.

“Then, she really…” Dargo’s fists trembled faintly as reality set in.

“Let’s make a deal,” Cain suddenly proposed.

“A deal…?”

“Fortress Raymond has a reputation for being tricky to take down. No matter who emerges victorious, my presence in the fortress will certainly prolong this war.”

That was an undeniable fact. Dargo had requested reinforcements from the north rebel army for a reason.

“In addition, the Wind Witch is with me now, so you really can’t guarantee your victory now.”

“…What are you trying to say?” Dargo asked with a thin frown.

“Dargo rane Suspen, I propose a knight’s tournament against the southern rebel army.”

Dargo’s eyes widened. A knight’s tournament was literally a battle between two armies’ best warriors. The participants fought against one another, risking their lives on their skills alone. Under usual circumstances, Dargo would consider himself lucky and take the offer right away.

‘…But it’s Cain de Harry, the Combat Emperor Star,’ Dargo thought.

Dargo clenched his fists so tightly that his fingernails dug into his flesh as his troops began to murmur among themselves. The Combat Emperor was quite clever; if Dargo said no right now, his knights and soldiers would be disappointed and morale would decrease drastically. Nevertheless, Dargo couldn’t readily say yes because he still remembered the shock of the knight’s tournament that had taken place in this same location over twenty years ago.

In the past, Count Valder had been the late Duke Pontier’s vassal. When Duke Pontier had failed to recover from his illness, all hell had broken loose and Lady Charles di Pontier became the next head of the Pontier family even though she had been just twenty years old at the time. Some noble lords thought that that was their chance for them to become the new rulers of the southern region and rose up against the Pontiers. Among those noble lords was Count Valder, who had been the most powerful and also openly greedy for the Pontier Merchant group.

A territorial conflict in the southern region had soon broken out, but the Emperor of Avalon had made a dramatic appearance and stopped the conflict from turning into a full-scale war. After that, the two families had come to an agreement that they would resolve their conflict through a knight’s tournament and the winner would take hegemony of the southern region.

As a result…

“…Each family picked out one hundred of their best knights, but Count Valder suffered a devastating loss,” Dargo recalled.

It had been truly jaw-dropping. The Pontiers hadn’t really had a proper knight’s order because they had just gone through a long, violent territorial conflict. Therefore, the new Duke Pontier had to urgently recruit at least fifty free—and relatively less skilled—knights to participate in the tournament.

However, the leader of those knights had been the deciding factor in the Pontier Family’s victory. The Combat Emperor, the man currently standing right before Dargo, had personally led the Pontier knights, used all the right tactics, and single handedly beat up over twenty knights. In the end, the Ducal Family of Pontier had won by a mile. That kind of feat couldn’t be found anywhere else in the history of the Empire. That legendary figure was offering Dargo a knight’s tournament.

“…Ugh.” Dargo grunted quietly.

“Dargo rane Suspen, I heard you’re quite skilled at tournaments,” Cain said.

Dargo’s authority was from the White Tiger, one of the Four Guardians. Using his authority, Dargo could surely thrive in a knight tournament since his ability to increase morale strengthened when he used it in a more narrow area. In fact, Dargo was confident that he could build an order of one hundred knights that would be invincible so long as he was using his authority of the White Tiger to raise their level.

But he still couldn’t take Cain’s offer.

“…Combat Emperor, why should I take such a deal?” Dargo asked.

“You’re scared.” Cain smirked at Dargo. Dargo bit his lip so hard that it bled.

“Well, fine. I’ll give you a handicap,” Cain said with a shrug.

“What…?”

“I won’t take part in this tournament.”

For a moment, Dargo didn’t understand what Cain said, but his eyes quickly widened into full moons. The Combat Emperor was the one who proposed a knight tournament, but he wasn’t going to participate? Dargo knew that the knights residing in Fortress Raymond weren’t talented—he was actually being generous with that assessment. Those knights were less skilled than a Count’s ordinary knights, just like the Pontier Family’s knights had been in the past.

“Have you really gone nuts…?” Dargo murmured. He couldn’t help himself from letting his thoughts slip out—under those conditions, it was a fight he couldn’t lose.

* * *

After thirty minutes, Cain finished negotiating and returned to the fortress, but when he noticed two people talking near the fortress’s entrance, he halted.

“Ca-Can I just wait around here?” Anna nervously asked.

“Why would you do that?”

“B-But your knights won’t leave me be… E-Especially the Combat Emperor…” Anna trailed off timidly.

Cain intentionally made a sound. Kiruea and Anna’s heads swiveled toward him.

“Si-Sir Cain?” Kireua stuttered.

Cain wordlessly drew his sword. Anna instantly turned pale.

“Wa-Wait, Sir Cain! Let me explain!” Kireua shouted. “Put down your sword first—!”

“Anna bel Grace,” Cain muttered, instantly silencing Kireua. “Any last words?”

Anna trembled like a puppy in the rain. “D-Do something, Prince! No, master!”

“Ma-Master?” Kireua flinched in surprise.

“You said I should be your loyal servant for the next ten years! You went through all that to recruit such a high-skill worker, so are you really going to let him kill me like this?” Anna shrieked.

Kireua had no choice but to stand between Anna and Cain. “Sir Cain, calm down.”

“It’s okay, Your Highness,” Cain answered.

“…Pardon?”

“I saw everything already.” Cain smiled and sheathed his sword.

“You mean you…?”

“I shadowed you, Your Highness,” Cain said.

Kireua knew that Cain was going to follow him regardless of everything else that was going on right now, but he felt touched nonetheless. Cain must have been worried about Kiruea, so he had shadowed Kireua to interfere instantly if Kireua fell into danger.

“Anna bel Grace.” Cain turned his head to look at Anna, who had been nervously watching the whole conversation.

She trembled faintly as she answered, “Yup…?”

“You know that my master—His Majesty—is looking for you.”

“I-I’m well aware of that, but the Emperor of Avalon is…”

“He’s away right now, but it doesn’t absolve you from your crimes,” Cain firmly asserted. “He may still look for you after he returns to the Palace.”

“I…guess so.”

“But I believe he isn’t looking for you in order to punish you,” Cain continued.

Anna’s eyes became as round as a rabbit\'s. “Wh-what…?”

“It’s been decades since the incident. Besides, you were so young that you couldn’t think for yourself, so there’s no way His Majesty would still hold a grudge against you.” Cain shrugged.

“He… really doesn’t resent me?” Anna trembled for a different reason now. “But I…”

“Yes, you tried to harm the late Queen Mother Lucia, His Majesty’s mother, which is indeed an unpardonable crime. You and the War God could have stuck to your superior’s orders and focused on knocking down the Agnus Family, but you two were too loyal and went too far.”

“W-We didn’t have a choice back then! If the Dark God didn’t take over Avalon according to the plan, our years of effort were going to go down the drain—!”

Cain nodded. “Yes, His Majesty is well aware of that.”

Silence fell upon the area. Anna was frozen up like a statue, but her hands kept shaking.

“Still… if I was him, I would want to rip the person who tried to harm my mother to shreds,” she said. “But he doesn’t hate me… Is that even possible?”

“His Majesty had his revenge. Although I don’t know what initially set him on the path of revenge… he did say one thing.”

“One thing…?” Anna repeated blankly.

“The end of revenge is very empty.”

Anna had a rough idea of what Joshua meant. Revenge resulted in another revenge; Anna had also actually dreamed of a vendetta without reflecting on what she had done. Of course, she had given up on it at the time because she couldn’t bring herself to go up against the Martial God.

If Anna thought about it now, she wouldn’t think about taking revenge if she regressed back to that time. Her father had been a member of the Imperial Family of the Swallow Empire, but he had lost his throne and ended up harboring a grudge. Duke Agnus, the Dark God, had wanted to avenge the rape of his mother by a Britten, but how the Dark God and War God met their end?

They had used everything to accomplish their goals without regard for right or wrong and created enemies of their own. In the end, they died lonely.

“Then… Why does the Emperor keep looking for me?” Anna asked.

“It seemed he wanted to ask several questions about your father since you’re the only one in this world that has the answers to his questions.”

“…Cain de Harry, do you forgive me?” Anna cautiously asked.

Cain tilted his head. “You must be misunderstanding something right now. I never held a grudge against you since I never had any reason to. I just followed my master’s wishes.”

Anna closed her mouth. She felt the remnants of her hesitation buried deep in her heart disappearing.

“So remain loyal to His Highness Kireua and I won’t say anything else about this,” Cain said.

Anna brightened up, and Kireua smiled faintly.

“I hope we get along,” Cain said as he passed by Anna.

Looking at Cain’s back, Anna shouted, “Me too!”