Silver Dawn Knights – 5

That evening, Iris and I prepared to meet the Lord. Originally, we had planned to go tomorrow morning, but he had sent a servant to tell us to come now.

Iris wore a white sleeveless top and dolphin shorts, as she always did, and I put on ordinary clothes made of suitable fabric. It was truly a relief that the men’s clothes hadn’t changed.

“Do you understand? Absolutely do not act on your own, and if that bastard asks you anything, just keep your mouth shut and stay still. I’ll answer for you.”

“I understand. How many times have you said that already?”

“I’m saying this because repeating it is never excessive. Remember, you don’t know how that bastard will treat you, or what he might try to find fault with. It means you must stay absolutely still.”

All the way to the Lord’s mansion on horseback, Iris repeated her own advice several times. It wasn’t particularly meaningful advice.

If that bastard was truly determined to find fault, such advice would be utterly useless, and more importantly, I knew far more about the Lord than she did.

Iris and the other Knight Captains had simply suffered from his tyranny. But I was an experienced player who had killed that bastard in various ways throughout the game.

If I were to just chop off his head at our first meeting, the aftermath would be extremely troublesome, so I couldn’t do that here. However, including the preparation process, I was confident I could deal with him without any repercussions in about two weeks.

“Here.”

How long had it been since we rode into the city center? Iris stopped her horse in front of a magnificent mansion.

It was a mansion of a size that left me utterly dumbfounded. Its scale was far grander than the mansion I remembered from the game, and I was momentarily speechless, staring blankly at it.

Was the setting that he still couldn’t abandon his vanity, being of imperial blood? It seemed believable even if someone said it was the Emperor’s residence.

‘Come to think of it, the Emperor would be a woman too, right?’

In the NPC appearance retouching mod, the Emperor was also a woman.

No, it was more accurate to think that in the appearance change mod, almost all humanoid bosses were changed to women. It was even rarer to find a boss whose gender remained male.

My head became complicated. Yes, she was probably a woman. I just hoped her personality hadn’t changed too.

“Stop, stop!”

A knight standing in front of the mansion’s entrance checked us and shouted irritably. It was a world of difference from the guards at the city entrance who had treated us with some courtesy.

His posture was sloppy, his face clearly showed annoyance, and his tone was gruff. It seemed he was acting like this, relying on the Lord, even though he was no match for Iris in terms of skill.

“Why are you here?”

A question lacking even minimal courtesy blurted out. I, watching from the side, was utterly dumbfounded, but Iris, as if accustomed to such treatment, spoke with an indifferent expression and tone.

“I’ve come to report on the prison dispatch.”

“Oh, really? Then go on in. Leave your horses somewhere appropriate.”

Now, he was pointing inside with a chin gesture, not even a hand gesture, telling us to enter.

Iris gave me a look that told me to be patient, then dismounted. I dismounted as well and walked past the knight, entering the mansion.

“Wait, who’s that next to you?”

Just when I thought he would let us pass, he pointed at me with a chin gesture this time and asked gruffly.

“He’s a new recruit.”

“A new recruit? Pfft, are you going to get kicked out again in a day? Do you have no learning ability?”

The knight guffawed, and Iris silently tied the reins to a tree. As we walked across the garden and got far enough that the knight’s voice couldn’t reach us, I subtly whispered into her ear.

“Is that normal?”

Even in the game, if you talked to the knights of the mansion when the story hadn’t progressed much, you generally received rude and evasive answers. But it wasn’t this serious.

“You’ll have to get used to it too. The longer you stay in our knight order without getting kicked out, the more you’ll hear such words and actions.”

Iris replied calmly. It wasn’t that she wasn’t annoyed or angry, but rather, her tone was close to resignation.

After that, until we were told to enter the Lord’s mansion and wait in the reception room, I keenly felt the terrible treatment the Silver Dawn Knights had received all this time.

I didn’t know what the problem was, but it was definitely worse than in the game.

In the game, the servants looked down on the player, but they still seemed to do their jobs. Now, it felt like they weren’t even doing their minimal duties because they were too busy looking down on us.

How long had we waited, practically abandoned in the reception room, when suddenly, women in maid outfits rushed in and laid out all sorts of refreshments on the empty table.

“Lord-nim is entering.”

Naturally, these refreshments weren’t for us, but for that bastard, the Lord, who was about to enter. What was he going to gobble up now, after leaving us neglected while he had dinner?

As soon as I heard someone entering, I finally raised my head, thinking I would get to see his face.

‘…Wow, holy shit.’

And then, I was horrified by a visual that was far more grotesque than I had imagined.

Not only was his entire body covered in layers of fat, but the fat had even spread to his face, burying his features, and his whole body was so enormous that I wondered how he even walked around with that physique.

It was the first time I had ever seen a human whose vertical and horizontal dimensions seemed almost identical.

I felt like applauding the fact that he hadn’t rolled in but had walked in on his own two feet. His knee joints were fine even though he walked around looking like that?

‘He was fat in the game too, but not to this extent.’

The Lord waddled in, then let out a long sigh and plopped down onto the sofa. The spot where he sat sank deeply. The first thing he did after sitting down was to eat the snacks on the table.

After a long time of slurping sounds, the Lord finally let out a long, drawn-out burp and opened his mouth.

“So, you’ve returned, Iris.”

“…Yes, as you commanded, I investigated the prison.”

Perhaps because he was of imperial blood despite his appearance, Iris was using extremely honorific language towards the Lord. However, her own face, while speaking politely, was unusually contorted.

“Report.”

“Everyone inside the prison, including the prisoners and guards, except for one person, was attacked by monsters. By the time I arrived, the situation had already occurred, and there was no time to intervene.”

“Tsk, I told you to prepare thoroughly. I don’t know why you didn’t listen to me.”

Well, that monster, you lured it, didn’t you?

Knowing the full truth of the situation, I scoffed internally. To lure a human butcher into the prison by having someone do it, and then pretend to have foresight, there was no bullshit like this bullshit.

“Is that fellow next to you the sole survivor of the prison?”

Still, it seemed he had quite a bit of experience playing politics in the imperial palace. He glanced at me sideways and immediately recognized my identity. Iris nodded.

“That’s right.”

The Lord seemed to ponder something deeply, then grabbed a handful of snacks from the table, munched them loudly, and then looked at Iris, gesturing for her to leave. Iris was greatly flustered.

“You may leave, Iris.”

“Excuse me? But-“

“I told you to leave. Are you going to defy my command?”

“……”

Iris looked at me with anxious eyes, but there was nothing she could do. She bit her lip once, then roughly bowed her head and went outside, closing the door with a bang.

Encountering such a situation at the very first meeting was unexpected.

Well, it didn’t really matter to me. After all, it was an event that I absolutely had to go through at least once to eliminate the Lord without any repercussions.

In the game, you could only have a private audience with the Lord from the third meeting onwards, but if he was speeding things up like this from the first meeting, it was actually a blessing for me, who wanted to deal with him as quickly as possible.

Once we were alone, the Lord arrogantly draped his arm over the back of the sofa and even put his feet on the dining table. It was an attitude of completely disregarding me.

Well, from the Lord’s perspective, I was a prisoner, so he would naturally think such behavior was acceptable. Would someone who even looks down on a Knight Captain care about a mere prisoner?

In fact, considering that the personalities of the people in the mansion had generally become much more awful than in the game, it wouldn’t have been strange for him to cross the line long ago.

“Hey, you.”

“Yes, Lord-nim.”

“You said you were imprisoned, right?”

“That’s right.”

“And you barely survived by meeting Iris?”

“That’s also true.”

“Did you have any trouble with the knight order in the middle, or ever fight one of the Knight Captains?”

“No.”

Thinking of the choices that appeared in the game, I chose only the answers that would prompt the Lord to make me an offer. The Lord nodded knowingly, then thought for a long time.

“Why were you imprisoned?”

That’s it.

I confirmed he was asking the exact question I expected and scoffed internally. It seemed things would go quite well.

“Why would I be imprisoned in such a place? My crime probably isn’t much different from what Lord-nim is thinking.”

“Hmm, I see, so that’s how it is…”

I deliberately put on the most wicked smile I could.

If it came to this, digging the grave was almost done. Now, all that was left was to prepare the burial goods, and make this bastard walk into his own grave of his own accord after seeing them.

The Lord, who had been lost in thought again for a long time, finally opened his mouth.

“Are you interested in women?”