TMKM 08

Chapter 8

“So when that Garding Knight used the mountain horse as an excuse, you must have thought, ‘There it is.’”

The Jeroli Crown Prince must have been holding quite a grudge over being refused.

The man snorted as if the prince’s petty intentions were painfully obvious.

Hearing that, Chyroneia blamed himself.

“Then it really was because of me. If only I had handled it more wisely….”

“It’s not your fault, Chyro.”

“Maybe I could have turned sooner and avoided him.”

“I said it’s not your fault.”

“In the end, I was the one who gave him an excuse, Captain.”

With Chyroneia continuing to dig himself deeper into self-blame, Duke Paroa finally snapped in irritation. He was a righteous man, but he was not exactly gentle by nature.

“Fuck, will you listen to me? How many times do I have to comfort you before you get it through those tiny ears of yours?”

He then struck Chyroneia on the back of the head with his steel-gauntleted hand.

He pointed toward the outside of the tent and spoke as though the whole situation had become a terrible nuisance.

“Louis, go back and tell them again.”

“Yes, Captain. What should I tell them?”

“All of the Iron Horse Knights are withdrawing.”

Several knights protested their captain’s decision.

Kanne’s voice was the loudest and most dissatisfied of them all.

But in the end, not a single one of them dared go against his will.

To give up the competition simply because their mounts had been taken away might have looked like they were frightened and backing down.

But anyone who had ever heard the name Iron Horse knew the truth.

They had not retreated because they were afraid of losing.

“All the Iron Horse Knights have withdrawn?”

“Then how many matches are left?”

People who had been desperately waiting for the competition to resume began whispering among themselves when they heard the news.

Including Chyroneia and Kanne, a total of five Iron Horse Knights had vanished from the tournament bracket.

Most of them had defeated countless competitors to make it this far and were among the strongest favorites to win.

Just when the competition should have been reaching its most exciting point, people had been killed and injured, and now the main contenders had withdrawn as well.

The number of remaining matches had dropped from six to two.

There was practically no way to hold a proper semifinal.

The disappointment of the spectators upon learning that the schedule had been reduced so absurdly was enormous.

It was not simply a matter of being disappointed that there were fewer matches.

It left both the participating knights and the spectators feeling empty.

With half the teeth missing from the top of the tournament bracket, who could possibly recognize the winner as a true hero?

After all the commotion, the atmosphere that swept through the arena became as bleak as the now nearly empty stands.

The competition resumed with no one truly cheering for the participants.

The knights who had lost their rivals moved one step closer to victory with bewildered expressions.

The man who would face whoever won among them was Xylus.

After Chyroneia, the Garding Knight had only fought one more match.

And he won that match as well, advancing to the final in an instant.

For those who had expected a thrilling, evenly matched duel that would have them sweating with tension, the result was terribly dull and disappointing.

Some people fell silent in disappointment, while others booed and threw stones.

It felt as though everything was Xylus’s fault.

The fact that he had caused the trouble by stabbing the mountain horse in the neck.

The fact that the special horse had been banned from the competition.

And, ultimately, the circumstances that had led all the strongest contenders to withdraw.

Every arrow of blame was pointed at him.

Most of those arrows came from the men.

Unlike the women, the men had no illusions about the young and beautiful Garding Knight’s face.

Amid the boiling outrage, Xylus did not know what to do.

He was so ashamed that he could not even take off his helmet.

“Your Highness, my victory was not honorable.”

The man stood before the Lord and Princess with his face flushed red.

Under normal circumstances, he should have been proudly receiving the glittering glass rose and prize money.

Instead, he sank to his knees, his legs trembling.

“If Your Highness places the glass rose in my hands now, it would be like locking me away in a humiliation I could never overcome.”

The Garding Knight said he could not accept such a shameful and hollow victory.

The sorrow in his dejected voice was obvious.

The princess was equally frustrated that she could no longer bestow glory upon him.

The jousting tournament had been held to celebrate and widely announce her wedding.

Yet at the very event she had organized to enhance her dignity, she had lost even the authority to properly select and honor the winner.

It felt as though her wedding had been ruined along with it, and she could hardly hold her head high in front of her husband, the Lord of Salt Castle.

“Then what are we supposed to do?”

The princess held the glass rose that had been made for the winner and looked helplessly at her younger brother.

The prince was also trembling with humiliation, his fists clenched tightly.

Two guests of equal importance should have been seated on either side of the royal couple.

But one seat was occupied by the prince, while the other remained empty.

That seat actually belonged to Nick Paroa.

He had refused the place of honor that should have been his and was instead sitting curled up inside that wretched tent.

The Pig Prince glared at the tent where Duke Paroa was staying in the distance.

The man was surely sitting inside, happily watching as the festival he had ruined gradually lost its energy and withered away.

Just imagining that hateful, disgusting face made his blood boil.

‘How dare he humiliate me like this?’

Everything had gone perfectly at first.

He had taken a personal grudge and tied it to a perfect opportunity to seize the mountain horses.

But now that things were no longer going according to his wishes, the prince clenched his teeth.

“Your Highness, I have yet to compete against enough knights.”

Xylus spoke to the prince, who was turning over ideas in his mind, desperate for revenge.

The Garding Knight looked as though he had made a very serious decision.

“Please grant me the honor of crossing lances with Duke Paroa, the man who leads the Iron Horse Knights.”

“The duke? You and the duke?”

The prince’s ears perked up at those words, while the princess looked at him with admiration.

“If I can face the man who is praised as the greatest warrior beneath the moon, I will be able to wash away this disgrace.”

There was growing strength in the Garding Knight’s voice.

The prince wanted to believe him.

He immediately rose from his seat as though he might leap down from the VIP section at any moment.

“Very well. I’ll arrange a duel right now. Call Duke Paroa here. No, there’s no way that noble man would come just because I called for him. I’ll go myself.”

The prince hurried away, seemingly eager to escape the endless uproar.

He wanted to silence those dissatisfied voices by any means necessary.

As he passed by the Garding Knight, he even whispered to him.

“Don’t go into this half-heartedly. Challenge him with the intention of winning at all costs.”

The Pig Prince was wearing a dazzling doublet decorated with pink pig embroidery and golden buttons shaped like pig noses.

The pink pig, which was also the symbol of the Jeroli royal family, was considered a lucky animal in Bigland.

But the Iron Horse hated pigs.

“Take up your spear, Nick. Then you can finally get some use out of that heavy iron armor you wear all day.”

The prince said it with a grin in front of the tent.

He showed no sign of being offended that Nick did not fear him, or even bother to come out of the shade.

All the man wanted was to drag Nick, who hated attention, out in front of everyone and make a spectacle of him.

“Perhaps you’ve been sitting around inside this tent because you secretly wanted to participate in the tournament yourself?”

The man in black iron armor remained silent, as if suppressing his irritation at the provocation.

The Iron Horse Knights bowed their heads to the Crown Prince who had suddenly appeared, but they seemed far more concerned with watching the expression of the man they served.

“Your former fiancée came all this way to grace us with her presence, too.”

The prince said it in an especially spiteful tone, as if he had been saving those words for just the right moment.

He proudly waved his billowing sleeves as he walked into the tent and stopped in front of the chest where Duke Paroa was sitting.

“Think of this as a chance to win some points with her. You never know, right? You returned home covered in glory after performing brilliantly in the war, so if you show her what a fine man you are now, Abigail might change her mind and….”

Duke Paroa rose from his seat before the prince could finish.

That was all he did.

The man had a talent for silencing someone simply by standing up.