The Hero Disciple Is Back

EP.46 – 45. Have you been protecting Master’s friends?

Rolling, rolling, rolling, rolling~~

As the snow piled up in the front yard, perhaps it was the first time the dragon Alea had seen snow, he was busy rolling over it and playing.

“Is it snow? I hate it.”

Unlike the dragon Alea, who I like so much, I don’t like snow. It was because looking into his eyes brought up bad memories.

“Wasn’t it just a bad memory?”

I had never believed in the words of adults that any memory becomes a good one after time passes, but… . It seemed that this case should be made an exception.

It was a really crazy hard time, but it wasn’t that there weren’t good moments in it.

“Is time a medicine?”

♤♤♤

It’s cold in the north. it’s so cold. very cold. It’s really not a good environment for people to live in. Even if you are born in a ducal family that rules the north, no one envy you. It is because the northern duke’s family cannot meet the wealth at all, and it is a role that must be maintained by governing such a crazy and difficult neighborhood for the rest of one’s life.

The North is such a crazy town.

In such a town, there were not enough monsters, so even barbarians attacked.

barbarians of the north

Hunting in the North is also difficult. It wasn’t that there were no wild animals at all, but it was difficult in many ways because all of them hid well or ran away well. So, the barbarians of the north began to pursue beings that were easier to hunt than those wild animals.

As a result, the empire had to send many imperial knights and soldiers to the north, and at the same time, it was a very natural phenomenon for mercenaries to gather for money after seeing the reward for the barbarians in the north.

I, who was a B-class mercenary at the time, was also among them.

Money was not the purpose. It was because the northern barbarians had a boss and the damage suffered by the northern barbarians increased dramatically. But few people paid attention to it. Even if there was a boss and moved a little more cleverly, even if it was a barbarian, it wouldn’t change much, and everyone had judged that there was such a lack of tension.

And even Balik said he should go to the north and earn some money… . I couldn’t bear to look at it, so I followed it together. At that time, I was making quite a name among mercenaries, and since I had the status of a B-class mercenary, my name worked quite well for a mercenary. In addition, if it was a B-class mercenary, even nobles and knights might listen to me to some extent.

As a result, I may be able to reduce the damage by going. Thinking so, I couldn’t stay still.

As a result, I almost died.

I thought I was on guard, but in fact I was also on my guard.

I never thought that the northern barbarians would have prepared a trap using the cliff like that. But fortunately, I could feel it right before the trap was triggered, so I moved quickly and tried to make sure I didn’t trap even one more person. Then, while trying to help one of the knights who was too big to speed up, the trap was triggered… . In the end, he and the knight fell off a cliff.

The name of one was Galahad Patton, an Imperial Knight.

♧♧♧

“It is finished.”

“… You have suffered a lot.”

The first prince looked at Galahad Patton, who was offering an example as a knight in front of him with a face that was difficult to explain.

He was even called the ‘steel knight’ because his loyalty was like steel, so he was seen as the most difficult knight to change his mind. However, even the first prince could not have imagined that he would give up the will of the royal faction and come under a new flag and swear allegiance.

Thanks to this, the internal situation of the imperial knights, which was considered the most difficult, was also able to change quickly. It was because there was no way that the royal faction within the imperial knights could be maintained since Galahad, who represented the most pro-royal faction, changed his mind.

In the end, the first prince was able to completely change the flow of power faster than he thought. He didn’t know that it was thanks to Galahad that he was able to do that. But I also didn’t understand. I wonder why a person who was so loyal to the point of being called ‘the emperor’s loyal dog’, and therefore a person who was wary of thinking that he would be the last wall to protect the emperor, gave up his loyalty so quickly.

The first prince, who had enough of the existence he could not understand was the ‘Hero Sera’ he feared the most in the world, so he had no choice but to ask the person concerned.

“It’s really a pleasure for me that Kyung was the first to stand under my new flag… . Can’t you tell me the reason now?”

“Many people get it wrong, but I wasn’t particularly loyal and followed orders faithfully. Because that is the role of a knight, I only valued that role as a knight.”

As a knight, he fulfills his role as a knight. The driving force for that is loyalty. Therefore, the first prince wondered if that was loyalty in itself. But as much as he said it wasn’t him, he knew it wasn’t like that.

“I died once.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was ordained a knight in the north and fought against barbarians in the north as a knight of the empire. Have you ever heard of the northern barbarian leader?”

“I heard you. Due to the appearance of the boss, the barbarians in the north moved like an army unlike before, and the damage increased until the boss died. That’s what I heard.”

There were many signs that the barbarians of the north had changed, but no one thought that the barbarians of the north would change that much. That was the beginning and eventually led to enormous damage.

“Even at that time, I fought. Then, he got caught in a trap dug by the leader and fell off a cliff. With a strange mercenary.”

“A strange mercenary?”

“Your Highness may have never properly experienced a mercenary. They all have their eyes on profit. They have no honor, no faith, no justice. But that’s normal. They drew the sword for profit. So, there is nothing strange about it because it is their choice to prioritize profit above all else. Therefore, the mercenary will be a strange one.”

Having said that, Galahad quenched his thirst with the drink from the cup given to him by the first prince. After that, he continued.

“It was an on-the-fly situation. There was nothing strange about putting your own safety first in that situation. However, the man put others before his own safety, even though he was the first to figure out the situation. In the short time given to him, he tried to save even one more person, and in the end, he reached out to save me too, and was swept away. I couldn’t help but think that he was a man who really did not get along with mercenaries. After that, I fell off a cliff with that man… . What awaited us like that was hellish darkness.”

“Did you survive in it?”

“It would be more accurate to say that he was saved.”

“Are you saved?”

“Originally, my ability to handle auras wasn’t that great. That’s why even if they fell off a cliff, there was no way they would be safe. It was thanks to the strange mercenary who fell with me that I was able to live. That strange mercenary, unlike me, had an excellent ability to handle auras, so the aura should have allowed him to be safe. But that strange mercenary protected me with it. As a result, I was safe, but the strange mercenary was as good as a corpse. Even in such conditions, the strange mercenary did not die. It wouldn’t be strange to die right away, though.”

Galahad Patton never forgot that moment.

I asked a strange mercenary who was almost like a corpse in the northern cold wind that seemed to be torn apart by freezing his flesh.

why did you save yourself

To that, the strange mercenary replied:

“’I thought I could save it, so I saved it.’ That strange mercenary said so.”

“… What a man.”

The first prince had never seen that strange mercenary before, but he couldn’t help admiring it nonetheless. I had no choice but to admit it as the same man. I mean, he’s a really great guy.

“Then he said: ‘I dream of a quiet secluded life after I retire. There is no way I will die until I achieve that dream.’ And he really kept his word. He did not die until the rescue team came, and after receiving treatment from the rescue team and recovering safely, he left a letter and left.”

“What was the content of the letter?”

“’Don’t think you owe your life. It is only natural that a friend saved a friend, and there is no such thing as a space for debt between friends.’”

“You must have been reading as a hobby. But a mercenary whose hobby is reading… . What a strange mercenary you are.”

It was a passage from popular classical literature. The content of the letter left by the knight who was willing to ride his horse to death for his friend was written exactly as it was in the letter to Galahad Patton.

“So, did you find him after becoming an imperial knight?”

“When I found him as an imperial knight, he had already retired and retired.”

“Didn’t you find it?”

“Since I was in hiding, of course I couldn’t go. I just tried.”

“What is effort?”

“It’s an effort to protect that friend’s retirement.”

“What did you do?”

“Knights and mercenaries have something in common. Do you know what?”

As the first prince, it was bound to be an embarrassing question. Knights and mercenaries… . In the first place, honorable knights and dishonorable mercenaries can never be bundled together. He was taught that way and took it for granted. It wouldn’t be strange if he never imagined that he would be asked such a question, and that he would receive it through the mouth of a knight.

“I don’t know.”

In the end, he had to say he didn’t know. As if expecting such an answer, Galahad nodded and opened his mouth.

“In the end, it’s something that makes you bleed. No matter how grandiose an expression may be used, in the end, a knight wields a sword to shed blood for loyalty, and a mercenary wields a sword for profit to shed blood. And it is also natural that blood will come back if it is made to bleed. So, no matter how much he retired and lived in seclusion, it was only natural that the blood he shed would return as blood.”

“I hope sir… .”

“I have only followed Your Majesty’s orders. It just ‘accidentally’ overlapped.”

“… … .”

The Iron Knight was the Iron Knight.

It’s just that he wasn’t the emperor he was loyal to and risked his life to protect.

When the emperor gave an order, he used it appropriately and swung his sword to protect the one he truly wanted to protect. In other words, he pretended to wield the sword according to the order of the emperor, but in reality, the sword he wielded was only for that strange mercenary.

The emperor only sees the results. The process doesn’t bother me that much. If, with his power, a strong man named Galahad Patton seemed to do his best to fulfill his orders, he would be satisfied with that.

Without ever seeing the truth of who was really being taken advantage of.

“… Right. Sir, he has never changed the object of his allegiance.”

“I just kept my soul.”

The first prince shook his head as if he had lost.

“May I ask the name of that strange mercenary?”

“It’s called ‘Jade of Steel’. He is the teacher of the candidate Sera.”

I never thought I’d hear the name Sera here… . No, wouldn’t it be the right reaction to be surprised by the person named Jade, the teacher of the warriors who wielded enormous influence on both Sera and Galahad?

“Right. Does it have the same name as Sir?”

“A funny coincidence, but a delightful coincidence for me.”

Is it really a coincidence?

I thought about that for a moment, but no matter how hard it was, I was the first prince who wet his head thinking that it would be impossible.

‘But the disciple is the teacher… . In the end, the emperor, who seemed never to be shaken by the two of them, fell off a cliff.’

He said he wouldn’t make that mistake

The first prince promised again and again.