CH 308.1

The main square in the center of the royal capital. If you were standing in the center, you would have seen the royal castle to the north, the merchant guild to the east, and the adventurer guild to the west.

「That was close. That was really close. I felt like I’m just one step away from death’s door.」

In a corner of a big room where the pilots do their internal work, a pony-tailed girl with a rather stern face spoke strongly. It was about the damage she had suffered the other day at the lower-class brothel event.

「Please be careful next time. That was not a good expression for a girl to make, you know?」

The reply came from a girl with braided hair and huge breasts, who was her best friend and colleague, sitting opposite her. But she did not look up from her paperwork, nor did she stop running her pen.

Ponytail, who doesn’t really mind her advice, continues to speak with her mouth puckered in dissatisfaction.

「It’s so unfair and dirty to silently shoot me from the shadows while I am coming forward, introducing myself. They don’t deserve to be considered fighters.」

She said with a strong tone, hoping her friend would agree. However, Busty-chan didn’t nod, and she put her pen down on the desk, exhaled deeply, and looked up at her friend.

「No one said anything about fighting in a duel format. Don’t assume that your opponent will act the way you want them to. It’s not that they’re cheating, it’s that we didn’t confirm it ourselves.」

After blinking a few times, Ponytail makes a face like a scolded dog.

As expected, her best friend wouldn’t agree so easily. She was the one who took care of her after she lost consciousness and was brought to the knight’s quarters.

At that moment, the door opened with a bang and two old pilots entered the big room where only the girls were.

「We’re back! There wasn’t anything strange.」

The one who raised his voice in a silly manner was a former adventurer with a wife and children. Behind him, smiling bitterly is another middle-aged unmarried former adventurer.

They had come to the west of Awoke in the B-class Knight to check on the Empire.

「How’s it going? Have the higher-ups decided on a policy?」

The old man with a wife and child puts his luggage on his desk and asks about the movements of the upper echelons of the knight order while he is away. Busty-chan shook her head from side to side, indicating that it wasn’t decided yet.

「I don’t care either way, but at least they would let me try to fight a war we can win.」

The single old man sitting next to me nodded deeply at what the married man said.

The topic of conversation was about whether or not to attack the Empire. There is an opinion that they should take back Landbarn while the empire is having a dispute with the elves.

『We won’t make a move.』

That was the conclusion they arrived at the first time, but since the warring factions are not satisfied with that decision, they are trying to re-propose the idea one way or the other.

「What do you think, missy?」

The old man with a wife and child shifted his gaze to the side and asked Ponytail. The words that came back to him were very simple.

「Nothing. I’m fine either way.」

The old man with a wife and children eyes went wide and made a surprised expression. Then while stroking his stubble, which is beginning to grow, he opens his mouth.

「That’s unexpected. I thought you’d be the one who wanted to fight the most.」

At his words, Ponytail put his pen down on the desk and made eye contact with the old man with a wife and children.

「I think of myself as a sword. If they tell me to fight, I will fight with all my might. If they tell me to wait, I will wait for as long as they want me to.」

She took a breath and continued.

「If the user asks for my opinion, I will answer, but I will not impose my wishes. I don’t want to be something like a demon sword after all.」

The old men looked at Ponytail with admiration as she finished speaking. The old man with a wife and children scrubbed his jaw with a scruff while nodding his head and spoke.

「You really surprised me there. I guess that’s how a member of the knight order is supposed to be.」

Ponytail stares back at him with a dubious look, and the unmarried old man adds from the side.

「We were from the adventurer guild, you see? Even though we worked under the guild’s orders, we still had to save our own asses at the end of the day.」

A former adventurer guild Knight pilot, who senses that she doesn’t understand the meaning of what the old man said earlier, added.

「It’s also up to the pilot to decide if he or she can handle it. If they make a mistake, they will die, so if they think it looks too risky, they will stay out of it. It’s just ingrained in them.」

Recognizing the difference in mindset between them and Ponytail, who had been a member of the knight order of the Kingdom from the start, the old men were convinced.

「Hmm」

However that’s the only impression Ponytail had, and she didn’t go as far as to understand it.

She finished her paperwork and it was past the scheduled time, so she decided to go back to her quarters.

「Oh what, you’re still not healed?」

The old man with a wife and children bent one side of his face and said to Ponytail as she stood up from her chair. Ponytail, which had not fully escaped the effects of the vibration, was slightly hunched over and her butt was trembling.

「Don’t go near me you hear? And don’t you dare touch me.」

As she staggered toward the exit, she warned the old men behind her. However, she still felt uneasy, so she again told them in a harsh tone.

「Absolutely don’t touch me, alright? Really, don’t touch me.」

Those words seemed to have the opposite effect, the old man with wife and children walked wobbly after her and patted Ponytail’s tight butt with one hand.

Ponytail shouted instantly.

「Unggyaa—!」

She turned around while launching a fist at him, but the old man dodged it with a graceful backstep.

He is a professional fighter and trains himself every day. He won’t let a blindly thrown fist even graze him.

Even if it had hit him, he would not have suffered much damage from an attack without any weight.

「Naive!」

The old man told her as he jumped to the side and turned around.

When he attempted to hit Ponytail again, Busty-chan approached him from behind.

He noticed this from the movement of Ponytail’s eyes.

「I won’t let you surpass me just yet.」

He grinned and mercilessly flicked the tip of her cannonball-shaped super big breasts with his finger.

Busty-chan felt a tingle and let out a moan, and Ponytail sat flat on the floor with her hands clutching her hips.

She looked at him with a resentful gaze, and he spoke lightly in return.

「We were the ones sent out on patrol since you missy are still only allowed to do internal work. So I thought I should at least give them this much credit for that.」

The girls have nothing to say in return because it is completely true.

「Hope you both get well soon and get back in the field.」

The old man with a wife and children began to get ready to go home himself with a grin on his face.

***

Heading west from the royal capital is Awoke, and further west lies the frontier territory of the Margrave from the Empire.

Right now, in the lord’s mansion in the central city of Landbarn, the top civil and military leaders were sitting on the lounge sofa, holding a report session to wrap up the day.

「There is no significant movement on the border with the Kingdom.」

The man who spoke just now was a middle-aged man in a pilot’s uniform. He is the commander of the frontier knight order, as indicated by the knight commander’s emblem on his chest.

His eyebrows are wrinkled and his eyes are narrowed, probably because the Margrave’s head shone brightly in the western sunlight. Seeing the surprised expression on the middle-aged lord with a thin head of hair, he added.

「The main forces of the Imperial Army are gathering in the north to attack the Spirit Forest. And the Kingdom is probably unaware of this.」

The Margrave’s territory is the furthest from the Spirit Forest and was taken from the Kingdom just a year ago. It is also the location of the 『Great Pit』 one of the largest golem mines on the continent of Ost.

「The army moved all at once, not one at a time. I doubt they wouldn’t have noticed.」

The voice coming from the second-in-command, Handle mustache while shaking his head.

The reason for his stern expression was that he, too, was dazzled by the sunlight. The round, oily head of the Margrave was efficiently dispersing light to the surroundings.

「If that’s so, then there’s only one reason.」

The Margrave nodded and opened his mouth to the figure with the dark gaze, the Grim Reaper, who crossed his long legs on the other side of the room.

Incidentally, the Elven knight order continued moving southward through Empire territory, and the Imperial Army had already invaded the Spirit Forest. However, the news had not yet reached them.

「As I thought, the presence of Lord Reaper must have been a big factor. If he had left to join the main force, we might have been in a battle with the Kingdom’s Knights by now.」

A man with a vicious look on his face slightly lowered his head and the captain of the Yellow Lily Squadron of the Lily Knights, who strongly agreed next to him. She is a woman in her mid-twenties with long blond hair in a braid, which she wraps around her head like a crown.

Watching her head shake vertically, the Margrave let out a small breath.

(The Frontier knight order and Lily Knights alone were frankly not enough to keep me at ease. I’m really grateful to His Majesty and the Lord Reaper for that.)

Grim Reaper and his A-class Knight combination are said to be one of the strongest in the Empire. Thanks to the eerie sounding nickname of his, he has a tremendous deterrent effect on the enemy.

The reason that such a force did not participate in the decisive battle against the elves was because the Emperor ordered him to guard the rear.

However, Grim Reaper has a tendency to seek a deadly place. If there were no Metal Golems at the bottom of the Great Pit, he would have headed there even by making a direct appeal.

(A high-ranking golem that can fight on equal terms with the Lord Reaper is nothing more than a threat. But in this case, I was grateful for its existence.)

A huge mortar-shaped hole 1.000 meters in diameter and 500 meters deep. Naturally spawned golems dwell within, and the deeper one goes, the stronger the species that appear.

The Lily Knights hunted Stone Golems in the upper levels and transported them as mineral resources, but Grim Reaper descended to the bottom alone and fought to the death every few days.

「By the way, can I talk to you a little bit about something else?」

The Margrave, who has already discussed all the important matters, turns to the captain of the Yellow Lily Squadron. When called out by a senior official of the most powerful nation on the Ost continent, she straightens her posture and waits for his next words.