The Genius Knight of a Fallen Race - Chapter 66

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Chen

◈ The Genius Knight of a Fallen Race ◈

Chapter 66: Better to Offer It Yourself Than Be Struck and Robbed

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After the battle ended, Shan’s army entered Zerkan City and first stripped the surrendered enemy of every weapon and piece of armor.

The knights and heavily armed soldiers were taken prisoner, while those who were no longer combatants after being disarmed were disbanded.

Then they began plundering the city in earnest.

Had Zerkan accepted the first offer of surrender, they would have taken only the strategic supplies announced beforehand. But now the city had fought and lost, so it was time for the victors to claim their rights.

If they did not set an example here, the other cities would surely think they could resist for a while, lose, and suffer no worse consequences.

“You can’t take that! It’s a family heirloom...!”

“Dear, just give it to them. We need to survive first.”

A barefoot woman ran outside and clutched the jewelry box a soldier was carrying away, but at her husband’s urging, she tearfully returned inside.

Thanks to Shan’s prior orders, there was no arson or indiscriminate slaughter. Still, those who resisted too fiercely sometimes lost their lives.

The spoils were loaded one after another onto the wagons brought into the city.

It did not take long for the homes of wealthy merchants, craftsmen, and officials to be thoroughly turned upside down.

The final flourish of the plundering came at the lord’s estate and its various annexes within the inner castle.

Even a rural noble was still a noble.

They found plenty of valuable items, from ordinary gold and jewels to lower-grade holy relics, a magic device or two, and antiques with long histories.

As an extra bonus, they obtained five more magic stones. In addition to the two installed in the outer and inner gates, there had been reserves prepared for emergencies.

While those assigned to the plundering scraped together every last item, several soldiers clearing the bodies scattered through the inner castle clicked their tongues.

“So three people killed all of them and captured the lord’s family?”

“After climbing down that insanely high cliff with their bare hands.”

“That’s not human. Seriously.”

“Even if someone promised me an entire kingdom for pulling that off, I couldn’t do it.”

Since word had spread of the operation they had kept secret in case information leaked, the soldiers now understood why the battle had ended after they had done nothing but shout for so long.

Even to the ignorant soldiers, it was not merely absurd. It was downright unfair.

Climbing down a cliff where one misplaced step would leave you crushed to death, slaughtering dozens of enemies, and kidnapping the lord’s family to end the battle?

In terms of chess, it was like everyone else moving straight or diagonally while one piece alone moved ten squares forward, turned sideways, and took the king.

Calling that a war was laughable.

“Sir Shan’s fame will spread even further after this.”

“Cliff Climber, Night Raider, the list of his titles keeps growing.”

“Night Raider sounds a little dishonorable...”

As several knights chatted, Shan sat in a chair placed to one side of the inner castle and rested.

Roden stood beside him, wiping the blood from Shan’s armor.

“You’ve worked hard, Sir Shan.”

“What about casualties?”

“Of course, there are none. I’ll report again if anyone is harmed during the plundering.”

“Good. Take care of the mercenaries and Count Tenon too.”

Ravana and the other mercenaries injured during the battle, along with the Head of the Magic Society and Ravana’s daughter Kiri, whom they had rescued from the prison, were being treated by military priests in a relatively clean annex.

They had brought fairly skilled priests from Pales, so they would likely recover soon enough.

After answering that he understood, Roden glanced at the soldiers whispering nearby and lowered his voice.

“I thought you might pull it off, but you did it even more cleanly than I imagined. A feat like this is enough to earn a noble rank.”

“Is it really that much?”

“Of course. What mad knight in the world captures a city with over ten thousand people by himself?”

“Biko and Tavera helped. Everyone else cooperated from outside too.”

“It’s a given that squires accompany a knight doing something like this. And if you call shouting from outside help, everyone will laugh.”

Shan’s solo cockatrice hunt had been supported only by physical evidence, while he had hunted the ogre pack lord alongside an army of thousands.

Winning the jousting tournament had been impressive, but someone won it every year.

Infiltrating a city alone, slaughtering dozens of enemies, and escaping with the lord’s family was a feat from the realm of myth.

What was more, the city’s residents and hundreds of soldiers and knights had witnessed it clearly.

It was the kind of event that would remain a legend in this region, perhaps across all Pendia, for a long time.

Even among knights who earned noble ranks through their accomplishments, there were few, if any, who could claim a feat like this.

“At the very least, the next lord who takes this city will always warn people to watch the cliff by the inner castle. They won’t want the same thing happening to them. No, they might move the inner castle altogether.”

“I don’t get why they built it like that in the first place. If it were me, I’d be too scared to build a city so close to a cliff.”

Zerkan City itself had been built to mine the iron ore beneath that cliff.

Building it right against the cliff had also saved considerable material and labor that would have gone into the walls.

Rather than explain all that in detail, Roden only gave a wry smile.

In any case, this boy, his friend, had truly accomplished something no one else could.

Not quite understanding that what he could do was beyond other people was a minor flaw at most.

* * *

After spending a night at the lord’s estate, Shan heard that Ravana had awakened and headed to the annex to visit her.

Inside the building, which had been emptied out during the plundering, he found the rabbit-eared woman lying in bed with bandages wrapped around her whole body, while her daughter sat beside her.

The moment Kiri saw Shan and Roden enter, she sprang up and prostrated herself.

“Please forgive my mother!”

“Kiri...”

“Mom attacked you because of me! If she hadn’t gotten worked up when she saw me...”

“Enough.”

Shan stopped the girl’s frantic words, lifted her up, and seated her in a chair.

Then he sat across from Ravana, who tried to rise only to groan in pain.

“I heard roughly what happened. You took a berserker’s elixir?”

“Yes. Even if I lost my reason, I behaved terribly toward my benefactor.”

Ravana, the Butcher Rabbit, bowed her head politely in apology.

Unlike the previous night, when she had rampaged with her eyes rolled back, her expression was gloomy and subdued. Her drooping rabbit ears looked pitiful.

Shan had already heard much of the story from her companions the night before.

While they were facing off against the army outside the walls, soldiers who had fled from the inner castle ran out shouting that some demon-like knight had broken in and was slaughtering everyone, begging for help.

When Ravana sternly asked what had happened to her daughter, their answer had been...

“I don’t know! That monster bastard probably killed her! Damn it, hurry up and come give us support! The people outside aren’t the problem right now!”

She had already been forced to act as a guard dog because her daughter had been kidnapped. Once the kidnappers said that, she had no reason to protect the place any longer.

Ravana insisted on storming the inner castle to confirm her daughter’s safety, while the knight commanding the wall guards opposed her. A fight broke out between the two sides, and Ravana used a berserker’s elixir to overcome the overwhelming numerical disadvantage.

“The berserker’s elixir... Its effects were greater than I’d heard.”

Even after being badly wounded by attacks flying in from every direction, her physical abilities had not declined in the slightest. She moved as though nothing had happened.

Even her attacks against Shan carried enough Spirit that it would not have been strange for her to collapse from exhaustion soon, yet she remained fine.

“Yes. Fortunately, it suits my constitution, so the effects are strong and the side effects are mild. I still had some control over my reason then, but...”

Seeing her daughter, filthy from being locked in a cold, dark prison, and the face of the lord responsible for it all had made her snap.

She did not regain her senses until she woke here.

“I won’t hold your attack against me. I know it wasn’t intentional.”

Mother and daughter both let out sighs of relief.

Roden lightly cleared his throat to draw their attention before asking a question.

“There are a few things I’d like to ask first. How did you come to travel with Count Tenon?”

“Count... Tenon?”

Unexpectedly, Ravana did not seem to know who that was.

Kiri quickly spoke up.

“You mean the mage grandpa!”

“So he wasn’t lying when he said he was an important figure in the Magic Society...”

Ravana muttered quietly before explaining how she had met Count Tenon.

After the war in Libert, they had apparently hit it off by chance in a tavern in a small western town while returning from the front.

They had all been drinking and talking together when he casually joined their table and struck up a conversation.

“He said he was fairly well regarded in the Magic Society. He also said we’d receive a great reward if we brought him to Princess Serin.”

He even demonstrated a few simple spells, so Ravana had allowed the old man to travel with them without much hesitation.

They were heading to seek Serin’s protection anyway, so their interests aligned.

He seemed a little unhinged and was frail because of his age, making him inconvenient to travel with. Still, he often played with Kiri during the journey, so he had been helpful enough.

“He’s very important to Princess Serin, so we’ll protect him from now on. Of course, I’ll report that you brought him here to the Princess.”

“Thank you.”

Though Ravana bowed deeply, suspicion lingered in her eyes.

She suspected that Shan might quietly bury their contribution and claim it as his own.

Over more than twenty years as a mercenary, she had seen knights do that countless times.

It had happened during the Libert civil war just a few months earlier as well.

“And I’m only asking, but have you considered becoming Princess Serin’s knight?”

“...What?”

“I’d like to recommend you to her. Bringing Count Tenon here is more than enough merit, and there’s no need to mention your skill after seeing it firsthand.”

Knowing well that Serin desperately needed capable warriors, Shan made the offer without hesitation.

He had tested Ravana’s ability himself the night before. There was no room for doubt.

The taboo against making an Alto a knight had long since been crossed when Shan received his own knighthood.

Ravana looked dazed as she answered.

“It would be an honor if you recommend me.”

Becoming a knight had always been her dream.

She had joined the Libert civil war in the first place to earn great merit and catch the attention of the nobles.

Hearing that, Shan remembered that he too had once faced a similar choice.

If he had gone to Libert instead of leaving for the Demon Realm after completing his training, perhaps he would have met her sooner.

“Thank you very much, Sir Shan.”

Ravana accepted Shan’s offer and chose to join Serin’s side.

They also gained the fourteen seasoned mercenaries who followed her, which marked considerable progress for Serin’s forces.

* * *

After another day passed and the plundering and cleanup were mostly complete, Shan led the army out of Zerkan City.

The Viscount’s family was escorted in barred prisoner wagons.

They could likely be used later to negotiate ransom with their relatives or their liege, Conrad.

Ravana had rested for only a day, yet she had recovered enough to walk on her own.

Considering the severity of her injuries, it was an impossible recovery. Her resilience was beyond that of an ordinary person.

‘Should I suggest that she get a physical examination from the Princess later?’

Serin would likely be delighted to have another interesting specimen.

In the meantime, Ravana’s daughter Kiri became the darling of the Alto mercenaries.

Whenever the cute girl with fox ears and a tail ran around handling errands, everyone smiled fondly.

An army full of sweaty men needed something like that to lift its spirits.

Naturally, a few men entertained inappropriate thoughts. Yet whenever that happened, Ravana would stand behind them with a huge axe resting on her shoulder, her eyes gleaming sharply. None dared bare their teeth and reveal those intentions.

Two more days passed before Count Tenon, the Head of the Magic Society, finally regained consciousness.

Until then, he had been receiving care from military priests while riding in a carriage requisitioned from Viscount Zerkan’s estate.

Perhaps the steady healing miracles, water, and thin rice gruel had helped. Despite only just waking, the old man already seemed to have regained some strength.

“Grandpa!”

“Oh, my darling... Move aside for a moment. You’re too heavy for this old man.”

Count Tenon, only vaguely conscious, patted Kiri’s back as she hugged him and struggled to sit up.

After filling his stomach with water, porridge, and melted cheese, he heard an explanation of the situation and thanked Shan.

“I am Orum Sagat, Head of the Magic Society and Count Tenon. Thank you very much! You have saved a true intellect of this age and a beacon of civilization.”

It was a rather unusual way to express gratitude.

Orum was unlike anyone Shan had ever met.

To put it kindly, he had an excessive amount of self-regard.

At every opportunity, he called himself one of the greatest geniuses of the age, saying the only reason he was not the greatest was because Serin existed. He also called himself a beacon of civilization and a giant of humanity.

He never said it outright, but he seemed to think everyone who was not a mage was an idiot.

Even so, he cherished Kiri like his own granddaughter.

“Is the Princess doing well?”

“Yes. She says she needs someone like you, Head of the Magic Society.”

“Of course she does. Only a handful of geniuses like me can understand her.”

Shan had known Serin was a genius, but it was still strange to see that even someone so full of self-regard did not dare place himself above her.

After hearing how matters stood in Pales, Orum clicked his tongue.

“I can more or less see what happened. It can’t be helped. The Princess may be the greatest genius, but she is lacking in those matters. No, perhaps it is because she is a genius.”

“What matters?”

“The ability to understand idiots. Ordinary people who can look at one thing and grasp only four or five things from it, who need to read a book dozens of times to memorize it. Explaining things at their level is one of my specialties.”

In Shan’s experience, mages generally liked showing off what they knew. Yet the Head of the Magic Society, Orum, was exceptional even among them.

Shan privately suspected that his arrogance was why he had failed to reach Pales with the other mages and fallen behind along the way.

After boasting for some time, Orum looked outside through the carriage window and suddenly asked,

“So, how long will it take to return to Pales? I don’t wish to complain, but carriage travel at my age leaves my entire body aching...”

“It will take a while. We have more cities to visit first.”

Shan’s army had just arrived at Barza, a small city west of Zerkan City.

When the bell warning of an enemy attack rang, they began preparing for battle and were about to send a messenger as before.

To their surprise, the gates opened, and an envoy carrying a white flag came out.

“The Baron of Barza wishes to know whether the terms of negotiation are the same as those previously offered to Viscount Zerkan.”

The story of Shan suddenly kidnapping the lord in Zerkan City and capturing the city without even laying siege had spread through the surrounding area.

Frightened before the battle even began, Barza surrendered.

As a result, Shan’s army secured every magic stone installed in the fortress and strategic supplies such as stockpiled iron ingots without fighting.

The same continued as they headed south and visited two more cities.

The fear that the Cliff Climber or Night Raider might cross the walls and attack them at any moment was stronger than expected.

About a week later, the army’s transport capacity had nearly reached its limit.

That was true even after they requisitioned carts and carriages from every city.

With the expedition’s objective met, people naturally began talking about returning.

“We should head back soon.”

“We truly can’t carry anything else.”

The knights deciding to return had mixed expressions of relief and regret.

It was good that they had not needed to risk their lives in battle, but they had also lost their chance to earn personal merit.

Pressuring the enemy as part of the army and gaining supplies could still be considered an accomplishment, but it could not compare to winning fame through battle.

With vast amounts of supplies, Shan’s army began its slow journey home to Pales.

As they passed through familiar paths and the cliff of Zerkan City came into view in the distance, an Alto scout with unusually large eyes, who had been specially taught to ride, came racing toward them.

“Sir Shan! An army is pursuing us from the rear! Around one thousand armed infantry! I can’t be certain of the cavalry numbers, but there are roughly sixty to seventy!”

Everyone’s faces changed at the scout’s report.

If it was true, the enemy force clearly outnumbered them.

“Could Conrad already be here?”

“He’s fighting Prince Elvin now. He shouldn’t have enough strength to mobilize that many troops...!”

“Has Conrad completely crushed Elvin already? Otherwise, it makes no sense!”

Even the several territories they had visited had only thirty or forty properly armed infantry and three or four knights in each city.

They had only inflated their numbers by conscripting hundreds of young men.

Most of their available troops had been sent to Conrad’s army to fight the war in the south.

In other words, even if every nearby territory abandoned its defenses and formed a combined force, they could never produce such numbers.

Unless Prince Conrad had turned his troops back north.

“The flag?”

Having regained his composure, Roden quickly asked.