CIATB Chapter 300: Ill say it only once.
Chapter 300: Ill say it only once.
“…Ha.”Cantares didn’t bother to suppress his sigh, because he felt like he would go crazy if he didn’t at least let one out.
There was only one cause.
It was because of Arendt who suddenly showed up, dressed neatly in his uniform.
He looked so much better than he did a few days ago, that if it weren’t for the bandages and plasters that were stuck here and there, he would have been mistaken into thinking that nothing had happened.
“Hey.”
“What.”
The rude, short reply made all kinds of words surge up, but he couldn’t even decide what to say first.
‘Fuck, this bastard…’
The moment Jereon saw Arendt, he quietly left the room, saying he would bring him a snack.
The aide who returned later would be holding some snacks for the apprentice knight, along with some stomach medicine for the Crown Prince.
It was a clear expression of intent of not wanting to end up with a hole in his stomach as well.
“…There’s so much I want to say right now, but let me ask you this first.”
“What is it?”
“Why did you do that?”
Although it was a question without a subject, Arendt was able to understand it without difficulty.
He was talking about the incident a few days ago where he suddenly entered the Great Temple and destroyed a statue.
Arendt tilted his head.
“Are you asking because you really don’t know?”
“…Haaaaaah.”
In response, Cantares let out another deep sigh.
Something that happened a few days ago came to mind.
An incident occurred during the night when someone broke into the Great Temple and damaged the statue in the prayer room.
The most beautiful statue in the temple was found not just broken, but decapitated.
It was only natural that the Great Temple and the Imperial Palace were turned upside down.
An investigation began immediately, but because it was so late, no witnesses came forward.
Even those who had been on guard duty all night said they had not seen anything, making it impossible to narrow down the suspects.
However, the moment Cantares and the Third Knights heard the news, they couldn’t help but think of one person as the prime suspect.
It was Arendt who was now standing shamelessly in front of the Crown Prince.
Cantares pressed his temples, trying to suppress his surging headache.
“You have no intention of hiding it?”
Desecrating the statue in the Great Temple was a serious crime.
Since it was something that happened in a temple, it wasn’t something that could be easily covered up just because he was the Crown Prince.
But Arendt, as always, was nonchalant.
“Why bother doing something so meaningless? You’re asking already knowing the answer.”
Arendt, with his hands deep in his pockets, responded indifferently.
“Are you going to lock me up in prison for blasphemy now? Go ahead and try if you can.”
“…Ha, that’s enough. Let’s stop talking.”
Cantares placed his hand on his forehead that kept pounding.
All that remained was a wish for Jereon, who had run away, to return quickly with some stomach medicine.
‘To be honest, it was just a feeling.’
Since the afternoon before the night of the vandalism incident, Arendt had been locked in his room, suddenly complaining of fatigue.
Moreover, for some reason, he fell asleep for three whole days and couldn’t wake up.
Arendt, who had been sleeping so deeply that he did not respond no matter how many times he was shaken, only woke up at dawn this morning.
‘Thanks to that, there are no suspicions at all.’
So, if Arendt were to say, “I don’t know about that,” Cantares would have been willing to just pretend not to know.
But that reckless guy didn’t seem to have any such intentions.
“Yeah… since you seem determined to confess, let’s first find out what happened. Explain.”
Instead of giving an answer right away, Arendt stared blankly at the Crown Prince.
Cantares wore an expression as if he were about to be sick, but he didn’t utter a single word of reproach.
He was just wondering how to handle this situation.
Arendt clicked his tongue inwardly.
‘I was thinking of using a pardon if necessary.’
It didn’t seem necessary after all.
The knights’ reaction was not much different from Cantares’.
No one blamed him, even though they sighed deeply and looked at him with complicated eyes.
A look of concern briefly passed through Arendt’s eyes as he looked at the Crown Prince.
‘Regardless of who they are, they are all backing off.’
But before Cantares could even notice it, Arendt skillfully straightened his expression and spoke.
“To be honest, I did it in the heat of the moment.”
“Hey, is that something you can say in front of me right now?”
“I should have behaved properly before that kind of talk reaches your ears.”
“I’m really going to lose it. Who do you think caused this?”
Arendt naturally ignored the Crown Prince’s interjections and continued to say what he wanted to say.
“Anyway, you don’t have to worry. Honestly, I didn’t even think about cleaning up the mess, but since there were no witnesses, I think Lexion has already taken action.”
“Why is Lexion suddenly being mentioned?”
“From that day on, we decided to ally with each other.”
“…”
He couldn’t follow the content at all.
Cantares, who had been holding his head again, raised his head after a while and asked again.
“Explain the process, you punk. So you’re saying we weren’t on the same side until now?”
“It just so happened that we coincidentally got along and moved together, but we only saw each other occasionally. It’s too much of a hassle to talk about the process, so I’ll skip it.”
“If you don’t want to talk about it, just say so. Stop making me mad.”
Cantares suppressed his irritation and shouted, but it still had no effect.
“Take it easy. That’s what’s important anyway.”
Arendt shrugged slightly.
“The dragon from the Hero Khan era is on my side.”
Arendt added absentmindedly, looking at the Crown Prince whose face hardened for a moment.
“At this point, breaking one statue is nothing, right? There are plenty of people to pin it on, so let’s just let it slide.”
“…”
Cantares didn’t respond for a while.
His head became complicated as he tried to organize his jumbled thoughts.
After a while, he started to speak again.
“So, the reason you and Lexion have started working together is… it has to do with the fact that you destroyed the statue, and Sir Arthur witnessed the scene?”
Since Arthur was with Arendt that night, it seemed natural to assume that he had also accompanied them to the scene.
“The fact that you can suddenly wander around like this is thanks to Lexion’s magic. And the fact that there are no witnesses other than Sir Arthur means that Lexion has already taken care of it for you, right?”
Arendt nodded, confirming Cantares’s reasoning.
“That’s correct.”
“…”
Unlike the apprentice knight who had an extremely light-hearted attitude, Cantares’s eyebrows showed no sign of unfurling.
Silence fell again in the Crown Prince’s office.
“Haaaaaah… Okay, I get it, you damn bastard.”
Breaking the silence, Cantares let out a deep sigh for what may have been the umpteenth time.
It was effectively a declaration of surrender.
“I guess I’ll just have to clean up the mess. I’ll just let it be the work of the Evil Cult who held a grudge against the Holy Sword’s resurrection. I’ll just say you were sick in bed all night that day.”
The atmosphere had been so chaotic lately that he thought that kind of excuse would be enough to get the job done.
But that didn’t mean everything was resolved.
Cantares looked at Arendt with troubled eyes.
After a while, a rather random question came out of his mouth.
“Are you okay?”
“…”
Arendt blinked for a moment, unable to grasp the true meaning of the question.
“What do you mean?”
The way he asked with a slight frown showed that he truly did not understand.
Cantares, too, didn’t ask the question with any particular focus.
From the state of his body that had just come back from the dead…
Even the cooperative relationship with Lexion was established only after the enormous act of destroying a statue of Luce.
There were countless things to worry about.
Especially the part about damaging the statue.
‘He doesn’t have a face like that right now, but…’
To anyone who saw it, that face was an expression of hatred and anger.
‘How could I trust that guy’s expression?’
It was not something that a man who survived by the grace of God would do.
The dragon that was Hero Khan’s comrade was even less likely to offer something like that as a condition of the contract.
‘What on earth happened to that guy?’
But it didn’t seem like asking now would get him an answer.
Even if he heard the answer, he wasn’t confident he could fully accept it.
Cantares simply changed the subject.
“By the way, did you have any problems when coming?”
“They stared at me a lot, but that’s not something that just started yesterday or today.”
The apprentice knight also willingly went along with it.
“But no one dared to say anything. I don’t know why.”
“Since you don’t know, should I tell you? Your captain made a fuss at the meeting yesterday.”
Cantares burst into laughter.
“It was scary. I thought someone was going to die.”
Arendt’s expression turned pale.
“What happened for that to be the case?”
“It was a meeting held because of the destruction of the statue… and your name came up there.”
It was simply a question asking how Arendt was doing.
But even that attention seemed unpleasant to Laius.
“At first, he spoke quite politely, saying that you were still in bed and was only an apprentice knight, so they should please refrain from showing too much interest.”
But there were too many people in the world who didn’t understand even when he was speaking nicely.
“… the moment those words came out, the captain saw red.”
There was no raised voice, but it might have been less brutal if he had yelled.
The moment the Empire’s strongest knight quietly exuded murderous intent, the conference room was plunged into silence.
Laius looked straight at him and spoke bluntly.
“I will say this just once more. Please refrain from any unnecessary interest in Sir Arendt von Eckhart. Any further mention will be regarded as a threat toward him, so I ask for your wise conduct.”
…
To put it simply, it was a similar threat that if you keep crossing the line, you will be killed.
Arendt’s face was filled with disbelief.
“Is he crazy?”
“Right? That’s how I saw it too.”
There was not a single person who could withstand Laius’ momentum and add another remark.
Even Cantares was hesitant, so that said it all.
Cantares leaned forward slightly and asked secretly.
“Looking at your appearance, it seems like you haven’t met Captain Laius yet?”
“I heard he won’t meet me.”
Cantares frowned as Arendt answered reluctantly.
“He won’t meet you? Are you saying you got kicked out?”
“No, he’s running away.”
When Arendt first opened his eyes this morning, he immediately went to the dormitory to pick up his uniform.
Although he had deliberately gone when Laius was in his office, when Arendt knocked on the door of the captain’s office, Laius was already gone.
“My seniors said that he suddenly left right before I came.”
“…What is he doing?”
When Cantares asked in bewilderment, Arendt answered plainly.
“Well, we’ll have to settle this sooner or later. Even if he runs away, he’s still the captain.”
“…You are probably the only one in the world who can say that to Captain Laius.”
He had a feeling that sooner or later, Laius would be looking for some stomach medicine for the first time in a while.
Cantares, who had been muttering reluctantly, suddenly spoke again as if he had just thought of something.
“Oh, and don’t forget to take care of the other side too.”
“The other side?”
Arendt asked in surprise at the unexpected remark.
Then Cantares kindly gave an answer.
“From the crying and hysterical little attendants to the Vice President of the Khan Union, it seems like they’ve all lost their minds. I didn’t inform the Eckhart family separately, but soon news will reach the Count’s ears.”
“…”
“Oh, there’s also Prince Llewellyn. I heard he was seriously injured, and it was Diana who had a hard time trying to dissuade him from coming to the Empire right away.”
As the story continued, Arendt’s face became more and more rotten.
“For the time being, don’t even think about showing off and just focus on recovering. You brought this on yourself.”
Cantares burst into laughter, perhaps liking the change in his expression.
“I guess I’ll have to deal with the statue you destroyed. It’s annoying, but since you said it was to win over Lexion’s heart, I’ll let it slide for now.”
The Crown Prince looked unusually pleased as he spoke.
It was natural, because the opportunity to tease Arendt didn’t come easily.
“I have done something wrong, so I will let it go for now…”
Arendt, who had been staring blankly at the Crown Prince, slowly opened his mouth.
“But I remember everything, so please look forward to it.”
Since ancient times, petty revenge has been said to be more enjoyable the longer it is left to simmer.
Cantares’ laughter abruptly stopped.