Betrayal Knight's Joyful Faith

Chapter 106

This time too, Arendt, who had thoroughly stripped the Crown Prince of his possessions, finally nodded his head in satisfaction like a full cat only after hearing, “Okay, I get it!”“Yes, you should.”

“Haa… He really is a persistent guy.”

As Cantares spoke while sweeping his hair back, his face showed signs of exhaustion after only a few minutes.

Priest Lumiel smiled awkwardly.

“First of all… I understand. I will keep in mind what you asked for, so please come to the temple tomorrow.”

“Yes, thank you.”

“No problem. You helped me out before.”

As expected of an elder, the priest quickly regained her composure, but there was still something that left Cantares uneasy.

“The point is, you want to visit the Border Mountains as soon as possible, right? There’s a high chance that someone named Blake will show up there.”

“Yes.”

“How did you find that out? You can at least tell me where the information came from.”

“Your Highness.”

Then Arendt looked at him with an openly crafty gaze.

“If I could tell you that, would I do this? It would be much easier to just report it to the captain and leave it to him to figure out.”

“Ugh, cough! Cough!”

Laius, who had been quietly listening to the shameless remark that went beyond imagination, eventually let out a dry cough.

Jereon approached him quietly and handed him some warm tea and some stomach medicine he had prepared in advance.

Be that as it may, Arendt just stared at the Crown Prince with his face covered in an iron plate, his characteristically expressionless face.

Cantares sighed deeply while quietly rubbing his face.

“Why did I even ask?”

“Isn’t it time you started learning?”

Do you avoid it because it’s scary, or do you avoid it because it’s dirty?

The strategy of becoming a ‘dirty guy’ that no one wanted to talk to had been one of the most effective methods from the moment he first fell into this world until now.

Eventually, after Cantares took some stomach medicine, the conversation calmed down somewhat.

It was only natural that no one would ask for the source of information again.

“The number of personnel dispatched should be enough to deal with him. However, if we send that number of combat personnel there without a clear reason, it is bound to cause diplomatic problems.”

First of all, it was an area that bordered the country.

“But since we can’t reveal the reason, we have to come up with a suitable excuse.”

“Yes.”

So Arendt chose to ask the Crown Prince.

At first, he considered sneaking into Neumann’s peddling business, but he was concerned that if an armed conflict were to break out, he might run into trouble with a country on the border.

Furthermore, if it was said that knights belonging to the Imperial Family of the Caerleon Empire were among them, the uproar would surely grow even bigger.

“The easiest thing to do is to select a person and send a delegation to the border area to investigate. Since we can’t completely hide our true purpose, we need to find someone who is somewhat flexible.”

Cantares, lost in thought, crossed his arms and looked up at the ceiling, trailing off.

“Actually, it would be most convenient for me to go there myself, but right now I have so much work to do that it’s hard for me to leave…”

“In that case, Your Highness the Crown Prince.”

Laius swallowed the stomach medicine all at once and opened his mouth.

“There is one person who comes to mind.”

“Who?”

“Henry Lou Lancelot of the Department of Justice.”

Lancelot?

Arendt tilted his head at the name. Cantares read the question on his face and answered.

“The second son of Duke Lancelot. That person would certainly be fine. He comes from an influential family, but he’s not particularly politically active.”

“Your Highness, by the way, I understand that the land near the border is owned by the prince’s maternal family.”

When Jereon, who had been listening quietly, spoke up, Cantares nodded slightly.

“Then I’ll have to contact him. I’ll take care of that, and let you know when it’s sorted out.”

“Yes, thank you.”

Arendt nodded in a tone that was not at all grateful.

Just one hit.

Cantares’ fist clenched once and then unclenched.

In fact, what was most annoying was that even if he made up his mind to attack, he couldn’t even touch the collar of that guy’s clothes.

Henry Lou Lancelot.

As he trudged along the main road, Arendt pondered the name.

Judging from the fact that he had no memory of it, it seems that he wasn’t mentioned at all in “The Blue Knight of the Holy Sword”.

Judging from the reactions of Laius, who immediately brought up the name when he said he was looking for the right person, and Cantares, who accepted it without a single objection, it seemed like he had quite a bit of popularity.

‘Then there should be no problem.’

Because the judgment of both of them was trustworthy.

He decided to just ignore it and turned his gaze towards the information he had just received from Priest Lumiel.

The pile of papers in his arms was quite heavy.

One was a book containing the doctrines that all priests of the empire studied when they first entered the path of faith, and the other was a report on the status of the temples distributed throughout the empire.

The doctrine was full of tales of the heroism of the first emperor, the Khan, stories of the priests who were revered as saints, and rules that governed the entire Temple of Light.

“…It’s annoying.”

Did he really have to beat around the bush like this when he says, “Let’s live well.”

As he was roughly reading the text, his eyes were suddenly caught by one sentence.

Harmony, balance.

It was also an important point that Priest Lumiel pointed out at some point.

Even religious groups with small numbers of followers were clearly respected, and the gods they worship were also recognized as great beings.

However, it was an undeniable fact that Luce had a particularly strong influence.

It was not strange for the strong to set the rules and stand above everyone else to rule the world. If the principle of the survival of the fittest was applied, it could be said that it is also a type of harmony…

“Tsk, is harmony in society even possible in the first place?”

Whether it was this world or the world he originally lived in, a society where many creatures who could think and speak gathered together was bound to be a mess.

A peaceful world was an illusion that didn’t exist, because society wasn’t a play that goes according to the script.

‘It’s incomparable to the level of accidents that occur on stage.’

They say that peace was achieved after the evil spirits were driven out by the hands of one hero, but in the end, the ghosts of the past were slowly creeping out and trying to overturn the world, and it’s the current situation.

Tsk, he put the book down and looked ahead. It would be better to go back to the dormitory and slowly look back on this later.

The moment he was about to open the relatively thin report, Arendt felt eyes on him.

He instinctively raised his head and made eye contact with a man staring intently at him.

The expressionless but clearly embarrassed face was not that unfamiliar.

He had crimson hair, a tall stature comparable to that of Laius, and white skin.

As he searched his memory for a moment, his name immediately came to mind clearly.

Arcus von Eckhart.

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He turned his body and walked with a limp. It was as if he had seen something he absolutely should not have seen.

Arcus, perhaps not expecting Arendt to act like that, quickly approached and blocked his path.

“Wait a minute.”

But Arendt was not a knight for nothing. As he passed him with smooth movements, Arcus, who was getting impatient, reached out and grabbed his brother’s shoulder.

“Can’t you hear me telling you to wait?”

“…!”

He couldn’t help but frown and look back.

Only then did Arcus have time to breathe a sigh of relief at his younger brother’s gaze turning towards him, and he was left flustered once more.

“Why are you grabbing me?”

“You…”

“I think it was the Count, not me, who suggested breaking off ties first.”

Arendt frowned and spat out irritably.

“You were definitely there, and I think there is nothing more to say between us now.”

The voice that used formal honorifics without even mentioning father or brother was unusually cold.

“Let go? That’s where the injury is.”

“Huh? Oh, okay. Sorry.”

When Arcus suddenly came to his senses and let go, Arendt patted the place where his hand had touched.

“If you don’t have any business, I’ll leave. I’m busy.”

Arendt quickly walked past Arcus, not even wondering why his brother, who should have been at the Count’s territory, was here.

Unable to muster the courage to catch him again, Arcus could only watch his brother’s back as he walked away.

At that moment, someone spoke from behind.

“What are you doing standing there? Arcus.”

“Uh?”

When he looked back, a familiar face caught his eye.

Only then did Arcus’ expression soften a little.

“Henry.”

Henry Lou Lancelot.

He was almost the only person Arcus could call a friend.

“I was wondering who you were looking at, it was Sir Arendt.”

A young man named Henry also noticed Arendt’s back as he walked away.

Arcus asked complicatedly.

“You guys know each other?”

“We’re not personally acquainted. He’s the second most famous person in the palace after Sir Laius. I’ve only seen him from afar a few times.”

Since Arendt was always running around the palace and his appearance was quite striking, it was inevitable that people would see him.

“And since my father was quite interested, I heard various stories about him. He must have been very active. This time, he infiltrated the enemy lines to extract information and took the lead in the suppression operation.”

“…Okay.”

Arcus’ expression hardened again.

Henry glanced at his friend’s face and snickered.

“Are you on completely bad terms?”

“It wasn’t a very good relationship to begin with.”

Arcus, who answered in a complicated manner, checked the other side of the street again. Arendt’s back was already gone.

“It’s only natural that he would push me away. When he really needed help, it was his family that pushed him away.”

“Huh? You seem to be aware of it, huh?”

“…”

When a cold gaze returned to the joke he had casually thrown out, Henry looked away awkwardly.

“It doesn’t seem so bad even now. Sir Arendt has established his position in the palace in his own way… Of course, his methods are a bit flashy. There are noble children who become independent from their families in that way.”

“Are you doing this on purpose now?”

“Did I get caught?”

Hehe, Henry’s smiling face didn’t look as innocent as it seemed at first glance.

It was clear that he was deliberately scratching the sore spot.

Arcus let out a short sigh and looked across the street again.

“…I know very well that it is shameful to do this now.”

“Then how about you just leave him alone? I heard from my father that he has a very eccentric personality that even His Highness the Crown Prince can’t handle at times.”

The face of Duke Lancelot, who had been laughing happily while talking like that, came to mind. The word eccentric probably did not have only a negative meaning.

“It can’t be helped that you are concerned since you guys are blood relatives, but the Count himself said he would cut ties with him… It seems strange that you are stepping forward for no reason. Above all, I don’t think Lord Arendt will be very pleased.”

“I know.”

When Arendt was thrown into the cold prison, no one offered him a warm hand.

“He must have felt betrayed.”

It had been like that since before. The Count had only pushed Arendt away, and Arcus had no courage to reach out to his wandering younger brother either.

But it was only after things had turned out this way that he vaguely realized it.

A conversation they had one day came back to him vividly.

Arendt’s harsh remarks were not wrong at all.

He knew it was shameless, but if only he could fix it now.

“…Still, I would like to have a proper conversation at least once.”

The only thing that could be felt from the side profile of him reciting the words calmly was sincerity.

Henry, who had been staring blankly at his friend, followed him and turned his gaze towards the place where Arendt had disappeared.

“Yeah, well. I hope it goes well.”

Little did he know that it would not be long before he would be able to make that wish come true.