WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Chen
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The Genius Knight of a Fallen Race ◈
Chapter 53: I Have Come to Take You
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“Princess?”
At Shan’s question, the spiders in the garden swiftly moved and formed new letters.
[That’s right.]
Anyone who saw the sight would have been horrified.
Dozens of spiders moving together to form words. What could be more terrifying and grotesque?
It was the kind of magic an evil witch from a fairy tale might use, but Shan felt intense curiosity rather than fear.
“...Don’t tell me you turned into a spider?”
[No.]
For some reason, the spiders began tapping their legs rapidly, as if offended.
[I’m controlling them.]
“There’s magic like that too...”
His wonder lasted only a moment before a thought struck Shan, and he looked around.
Now that he thought about it, there had not been so many spiderwebs around Weavers Estate at first. At some point, they had started appearing everywhere. Shan had even heard the servants complain about them a few times.
Combined with Princess Serin’s strangely exceptional intelligence-gathering ability...
“Have you been spying on this place through spiders all this time?”
The spiders immediately stopped tapping their legs.
After a long pause, they slowly began moving again and formed new letters.
[I’m sorry.]
“...Well, it’d be better to talk about that when we meet. So where are you speaking from?”
[Blue Palace.]
[I’m trapped in a tower.]
“Even if you say Blue Palace, I don’t know where that is.”
[The queen’s residence.]
Shan did not know the details, but Serin seemed to be imprisoned somewhere inside the royal palace. Since she was asking him to save her, she apparently could not get out on her own.
Just then, the stablehand opened the door in the distance, glanced toward the garden, and asked, “Young Master, did you call for me?”
He had probably heard Shan talking to himself.
“No, it’s nothing.”
“It’s cold out. I’ll put more wood in the fireplace, so please come inside once you’ve had enough fresh air.”
Once the stablehand went back inside, Shan turned to Serin’s spiders.
“So you’re trapped inside the royal palace, and you want me to get you out?”
[That’s right.]
“Since it’s nighttime, I can go right away. Just wait a little.”
In the darkness, getting over the royal palace wall should not be difficult.
As Shan confidently rose to his feet, he noticed the spiders forming an unexpected message and stopped.
[No.]
[Defenses against intruders.]
[You’ll definitely be caught.]
“Is it magic?”
[Both magic and miracles.]
[Security is tighter at night.]
“Hmm...”
Shan remembered entering Count Paless’s estate, which Serin had once used as a villa.
If it was full of magic traps like that, even he would have trouble sneaking inside. If he were discovered, royal knights and guards would surround and kill him...
When he looked at the spiders as if asking what he should do, they moved again and wrote:
[I have a plan.]
[Go to my villa.]
By then, the spiders Serin was controlling seemed exhausted and unsteady. Constantly moving to form letters appeared to take quite a lot out of them.
After quietly watching them, Shan picked up one of the larger spiders and placed it on his bare palm after removing his leather glove.
“Princess, try writing on my finger with your legs.”
[Like this?]
“Yes. That’s right. I can sort of feel it.”
[You can feel a spider writing on your hand?]
An ordinary person could never have done it, but Shan’s sensitive senses picked up even the touch of spider legs moving across the calluses on his palm.
He could feel her disbelief through the letters alone, making Shan chuckle without realizing it.
“This is better than having the spiders write out words. So what’s the plan? We’re going to the villa?”
* * *
After hearing the details from Serin, Shan went inside the estate and asked the stablehand to prepare several things.
“A water flask and... food, sir?”
“Can you manage it?”
“Yes. We have some supplies prepared for emergencies, so it won’t be difficult. The market’s starting to open again too.”
The stablehand looked curious about why Shan suddenly needed food and a water flask, but did not ask.
A good servant did not question the orders of those above them.
A little later, Shan wrapped several pieces of bread and a water flask in a cloth bundle, then left Weavers Estate. Following the familiar road, he soon saw Count Paless’s estate, which Serin had often used as a villa.
Unlike the other noble estates nearby, this place was a wreck, as though rioters had attacked it.
It was probably because no knight was stationed there.
“None of the servants stayed either.”
[They must have all run away. It couldn’t be helped. I’m in no position to protect them.]
The spider clinging to the back of his neck wrote tiny letters with its front legs.
After entering through the broken front gate, Shan clicked his tongue at the desolate interior. Every piece of furniture had been taken.
Even the portrait of Serin’s mother, Queen Aste, which had hung in the princess’s bedroom, was gone.
Following Serin’s guidance, Shan scratched the floor where the bed had once stood. When his fingernail caught on a slightly uneven section, he scratched it several more times.
A handle popped out.
“Oh... Interesting. Is this magic too?”
[It’s a mechanical device. The mechanism is different, but it works in a similar way to magic. In particular, if you follow the proper procedure, you get the proper result.]
Feeling the words written on his neck in a somewhat boastful tone, Shan checked the items in the hidden compartment.
There was a small dagger, several items that appeared to be magical catalysts, and wigs and clothes of various kinds.
“There’s a lot.”
[I prepared them in case I needed a disguise. I thought they’d become useless because I couldn’t even leave the royal palace, but I guess I’m using them now.]
“Hmm, I’ve never worn women’s clothes before.”
[Don’t worry. I’ll tell you how to put them on.]
Following Serin’s advice, Shan took out and put on the clothes she indicated.
The maid uniform, with its black shirt, white frilled apron, and cap, was a little too large for him. It had probably been made to fit Serin’s frame.
Perhaps she noticed, because she wrote on his neck:
[You’ll have to stuff your chest with a lot of cloth. Tear up some other clothes and use that.]
A little later, a blond, green-eyed maid was complete.
The maid was a little tall for a woman, and the shoulders were somewhat broad, but Shan’s youthful features had not yet become distinctly masculine. At a glance, he looked fairly convincing.
After tying the wig back, Shan muttered awkwardly, “Do you think this’ll really fool anyone?”
[You’re cuter than I expected. You probably won’t be caught.]
Serin’s confident reply made Shan let out a quiet sigh.
Seeing that, Serin wrote again.
[I’m sorry.]
“Why?”
[Because I’m making you dress as a woman.]
Asking an honorable knight to do something like this was enough that it would not have been strange for him to fly into a rage and renounce even an oath of loyalty on the spot.
Shan only shrugged as though it were no big deal.
“It’s fine. Let’s move on to the next part.”
[Okay.]
Shan sorted out only what he needed from the things Serin had prepared, placed them in the bag with the water and bread, then tied it to his shin.
The skirt fell to his calves, so walking was a little inconvenient, but it was not very noticeable from the outside.
“Hmm.”
[What is it?]
“I’ve never worn a skirt before, so it feels strange. My thighs rub together, so it feels like I’m not wearing anything.”
[You don’t have to tell me that.]
As if she found it ridiculous, the spider stopped writing and clung tightly to his neck.
Still wearing the maid uniform, Shan left the estate and crossed the capital through the dark night toward the royal palace.
It did not take long to reach a secluded alley near the palace’s main gate. After standing still and listening for anyone nearby for about a minute, Serin gave him instructions.
[Here. Press the third brick from the top and the fifteenth from the right. When it pops out, pull it.]
When he did as instructed, a rumbling sound came from within the wall and a door opened.
The sight was as miraculous as magic itself, and Shan let out an impressed breath.
“Is this another mechanical device?”
[Half of it is magic. There are quite a few secret passages in Pendia Royal Castle. Most are already under surveillance, but fortunately, Conrad doesn’t seem to know about this one.]
The sound of the door opening had not been loud, but the night was quiet. Shan immediately entered the passage and closed the door behind him.
The secret passage was not well maintained. It was covered in spiderwebs and thick with dust.
Then again, if someone regularly maintained such a place, its secret would quickly be exposed.
Shan brushed away the webs with his hands to keep his clothes from getting dirty and headed deeper inside. The narrow passage, just wide enough for two people to walk side by side, stretched for nearly two to three hundred meters.
Upon reaching the exit, Shan did not immediately leave. He waited and spoke with Serin for a while.
There was no way to leave before dawn anyway.
“Do you know why the fighting started?”
[Of course I do. I did everything I could to stop it. How could I not know?]
According to Serin, Elvin was the first of the two princes to attack.
The reason was so absurd it was almost unbelievable. One of the knights he had summoned had become involved with a maid.
While the two had gone to the garden at night for a tryst, an emergency summons was issued. Elvin noticed one of his direct subordinates was missing and mistakenly assumed Conrad had attacked first, so he ordered a counterattack.
That was how the civil war between the two princes began, for a reason that would make anyone who knew the truth burst out laughing.
“What kind of idiot...”
[Even without that incident, Elvin had already been nervous. If the lords supporting Conrad earned great merit in the ogre hunt, his position would become even worse. Though from what you’ve told me, it seems he was worrying for nothing.]
Elvin’s surprise attack had been highly effective.
Though they had been somewhat wary, Conrad’s knights had been relatively unprepared and suffered heavy losses. Conrad himself had nearly been captured by Elvin’s knights.
Marquis Abel was the one who resolved that crisis.
The kingdom’s strongest knight, wearing nothing but pajamas and carrying a single sword, cut down three heavily armored knights in the middle of the night before successfully escaping the royal palace with Conrad.
[After losing Conrad, Elvin took control of the royal palace. I tried to escape around then too, but unfortunately, I was caught along the way. Kagon died during that chaos as well.]
Serin spoke calmly of her subordinate’s death, but Shan did not miss the slight tremble in the spider’s front legs.
[Then Conrad, after regrouping outside, launched a counterattack. Elvin defended reasonably well by relying on the royal palace walls, but he was so outmatched that he eventually couldn’t hold on and fled. He took Father with him too.]
“So His Majesty the King is still alive.”
[He won’t die easily. The highest-ranking priests bestowed a special miracle to keep that man alive.]
The problem was that Elvin had fled after locking Serin in the tower of the Blue Palace.
The queen’s residence had been empty for over a decade after Queen Aste, the third queen and Serin’s mother, died and no new queen took her place.
The servants who normally cleaned the palace regularly had no reason to visit an ownerless palace under these circumstances either.
In the end, Serin had endured day by day in the tower with her dwindling food and water until Shan arrived, finally finding someone she could ask for help.
She wrote lightly, as though joking that she would have died in there if he had arrived even a little later.
“Didn’t you call for anyone from the Magic Society? I thought you were quite close with them.”
[The Magic Society fled as soon as Conrad took the royal palace.]
Even Shan could easily imagine what would happen to mages under Prince Conrad, a devout follower of the Old Faith.
According to the stablehand, Conrad was even planning policies to expel all the Altos from the capital. The Magic Society had made a wise choice.
[Besides, even if they had stayed, they wouldn’t have had the ability to rescue me. Most of them are bookworms.]
As they continued chatting, the spider paused its front legs for a moment before writing new letters.
[The sun is up. I think you can go out now.]
At those words, Shan cautiously opened the secret passage’s exit.
* * *
The exit was beneath a statue in the corner of a garden at an annex on the southwestern side of the royal palace.
After emerging, Shan first used Serin’s help to brush all the dust from his body. Following her instructions, he immediately took a broom from the annex storage room.
[If someone sees you, pretend you’re cleaning with it. There are plenty of fallen leaves since it’s early winter, so it won’t look too strange.]
Holding the broom, Shan moved through the royal palace corridors. Whenever soldiers or knights passed by, he swept the fallen leaves nearby.
Sure enough, the soldiers only glanced at him and showed little interest.
“This is actually working...”
[It would never work under normal circumstances, when proper royal guards are patrolling. But most of the people in the palace now are Conrad’s private soldiers.]
Since they did not know what the maids who worked in the royal palace looked like, they had no choice but to let it pass if he was dressed convincingly and sweeping.
By distracting the occasional passerby with his sweeping, Shan made his way toward the Blue Palace far more smoothly than he had expected.
A few minutes later, his body stiffened at the sight of a knight approaching from the opposite direction.
‘Ah...’
A middle-aged man in his late thirties or early forties, with a distinctive scar running along one side of his face.
Marquis Abel, the Lord Protector, was walking toward him in light clothing. Two young men who appeared to be squires accompanied him.
He was here because he was heading to the Red Palace, the king’s residence where Conrad was staying.
As befitted the queen’s residence, the Blue Palace stood directly beside the Red Palace. Of course, several hundred meters separated the two palaces.
[What are you doing? Turn around quickly!]
Snapping out of it at Serin’s sharp rebuke, Shan quickly turned around and swept the fallen leaves.
For some reason, Marquis Abel stopped walking and quietly stared at Shan from behind.
‘What is it? Did he recognize me? Because I stared at him too much?’
They had stared each other down once during the ogre hunt departure ceremony, so it would not have been strange if Abel had recognized him.
Still, Shan was wearing a wig and dressed as a woman. Recognizing him at a glance should not have been easy...
A moment later, Shan realized why Marquis Abel was paying attention to him.
As usual, Shan was sweeping the leaves “naturally” according to his own standards. That had likely drawn attention.
He deliberately disrupted his efficient movements and began sweeping the leaves messily, like everyone else.
It was something he had done his entire life in Willow Vilalge, so it was not difficult.
“What is it, my lord?”
“...Nothing. I suppose I was mistaken. Forget it.”
A moment later, Marquis Abel murmured those words in response to a squire’s question and passed by. Shan breathed an inward sigh of relief.
“I thought I’d been caught...”
[Hurry. We’re almost there.]
“Yes.”
After passing two soldiers and a knight, Shan hurried into the Blue Palace and realized someone was following him.
It was the last knight he had passed.
‘What? Did he really recognize me this time?’
Had entering a palace that should have been empty drawn his attention?
As Shan wondered what to do, he finally turned toward the approaching knight as if he had only then noticed his presence and bowed at the waist.
It would be a natural response for a maid.
“What are you doing here?”
“Yes, I was ordered to clean.”
“Hmm. Is that so? I should check. Follow me.”
“Pardon? Ah!”
For a moment, Shan did not understand what the knight meant by checking. Then the knight suddenly tried to embrace him, leaving Shan startled.
What should he do? Should he fight back?
The two soldiers they had passed earlier might still be able to see them...
Yet instead of dragging Shan outside, the knight embraced him and led him deeper into the palace.
Then he took Shan into a secluded section of the garden and grinned.
“Heh. I’ve been starving for weeks. I normally wouldn’t care about a young thing like you... Don’t go around saying anything unnecessary. You’ll be the only one who loses out. I’ll let you go once I’m done.”
The knight rambled as he shoved a hand into Shan’s clothes. Only then did Shan roughly understand what he wanted.
Shan let out a humorless laugh, then raised both hands while still in the knight’s embrace.
Since the knight had conveniently led him farther inside, Shan intended to at least kill him without pain as thanks.
“Huh? What is th-”
The knight found a bundle of cloth instead of soft, rounded breasts and looked confused.
At that moment, two fists flew in from either side and struck his temples with perfect accuracy.
The attack, imbued with powerful Spirit, caved in both sides of the knight’s head. He collapsed on the spot.
[Good job killing him.]
“It was nothing.”
Shan decided to throw the knight’s corpse into a corner of the garden.
The interior was one thing, but this garden had not been maintained for years. It would not be discovered until the smell became unbearable.
Having dealt with his pursuer, Shan approached the tower in a corner of the Blue Palace.
As Serin had told him, the tower door was securely locked.
With a single swing of the sword he had taken from the knight, all three locks were cut cleanly in half and fell away.
Bang!
Shan kicked open the door and declared, “I have come to take you, Princess.”
“You came...”
From within the dark tower, Serin answered in a weak voice.
Shan’s rough, callused hand met hers, thin from hunger and dehydration.
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