****
I quickly removed the headgear and found myself back in the familiar scenery of the container barracks, where I saw a burly man whose wrist was gripped by Arsia.
“Sir Dalton?”
He was the Vanguard who had chewed me out on the injury train.
Dalton tried to shake off Arsia’s hand in a hurry, but it didn’t budge an inch.
“What kind of woman’s strength is this!”
I took out the All-Seeing Spectacles from beside the bed and put them on.
As I checked the information through the spectacles, I had to furrow my brow—the reason being that “lust” was listed among Dalton’s status.
‘Well, well? This bastard….’
I made Arsia release her hold on him and then shoved him lightly.
“You’d better explain the situation properly.”
If he had entered my room without just cause, I couldn’t let it slide, no matter that he was a Vanguard.
“As your guard, I was merely checking on the young master, who had been in the game for so long. But this woman came at me out of nowhere!”
At Dalton’s outburst of anger, I expressed my feelings by kicking him in the joint.
“Urk! What the—?”
Had he never expected someone as foolishly good-natured as me to react this way?
Dalton was greatly flustered.
“I told you to message me if anything came up, didn’t I? And even without you checking, Arsia is on standby right beside me. Come up with a more plausible excuse.”
He was the brigade commander and acting lord of the territory—how was I supposed to interpret barging into my room without my permission?
On top of that, everyone knew I had been the target of an assassination attempt.
“What, were you planning to assassinate me?”
“That’s too harsh! What do you take me, Dalton the Vanguard, for!”
“Then make me understand your actions, you moron.”
I saw no need to show respect to a guy who showed none to me.
Dropping the formal speech, I kicked his joint again, and the commotion inside drew the knights waiting outside.
“Arsia, tell me exactly what happened.”
Through the All-Seeing Spectacles, I could tell he wasn’t simply there to relay the division commander’s orders.
At my question, Dalton shot a menacing glare at Arsia.
The vibe was clearly telling her not to say anything unnecessary.
But threats meant nothing to Arsia, the homunculus.
“He tried to separate me from you, Lord Adrian.”
“So he was trying to drag you away?”
“That’s right.”
The first emotion I had seen in him through the All-Seeing Spectacles was lust.
No matter what, he wouldn’t harbor twisted desires toward me, the lord’s son, so it wasn’t hard to figure out the target was Arsia.
After all, every knight knew that the beauty Arsia simply sat quietly by my side for the 4-5 hours I spent motionless once logged into the game.
Moreover, since Arsia was a commoner by setting, he must have figured he could silence her easily.
‘The knights outside were all in on it.’
It clearly showed just how much the family ridiculed me.
But there was one thing the guy had overlooked.
This wasn’t the territory.
The sturdy backing of the knightly order, Cedric, wasn’t here either. I had been granted the brigade commander’s authority by the state itself, and as the acting lord who had come to war in my father’s stead.
“Are you framing me right now!? Young master! Surely you’re not suspecting a Vanguard based on the word of some wench you don’t even know where she rolled in from?”
That damn Vanguard business.
I let out a scoff at Dalton, who kept beating around the bush to the end, and extended my hand to Arsia.
She instantly understood what I meant and drew the dagger from her belt, handing it to me.
“Violation of military discipline. No, this is insubordination, isn’t it?”
The room’s atmosphere grew tense in an instant, but I ignored it and pointed the sword at Dalton, issuing a command.
“Come on. Take one step forward.”
My blade was aimed straight at Dalton’s abdomen, so if he took even a single step, it would pierce his flesh.
“Are you in your right mind?”
“Brigade Commander, please calm down first.”
Dalton snorted as if it were nonsense, while the surrounding knights tried to restrain me.
“Calm down my ass.”
Even so, I stood still, flicking the tip of the blade.
Realizing it was no mere bluff, they all fell silent one by one.
It wasn’t that I had endured everything because I had a good personality all this time.
I had simply killed my own temper to survive.
Here, Anna and Cedric’s influence didn’t reach, so I had no need to watch others’ reactions.
‘And now I have a perfect pretext, so I might as well seize the chance.’
***
“V-Vice Captain Billem!”
Billem, vice-captain of the Lawrence Knightly Order and knight-commander of the expeditionary force, looked puzzled at his subordinate rushing over in a panic.
“What’s going on?”
Was war breaking out or something?
Billem couldn’t think of any other reason for his subordinate to be this rattled.
But the words that followed were so unexpected that he doubted his own ears.
“The Brigade Commander demands your immediate presence.”
“Who?”
“The Brigade Commander. You need to hurry.”
Billem let out a hollow laugh.
He had never imagined a day would come when that stiff Adrian would order him around like this.
“Quit fidgeting like that. Why are you so worked up?”
“The Brigade Commander’s on a rampage, saying he’ll execute Sir Dalton. You have to go now.”
What nonsense was this, like some ghost had eaten the seeds?
Billem couldn’t make sense of his subordinate’s words.
Urged that he’d understand once he got there, he reluctantly started walking, though he didn’t lose his composure.
However….
-Pak!
Upon arriving at Adrian’s quarters, what greeted Billem was a bloodied dagger flying sharply at him.
Billem casually blocked it with his sword, but when he realized Adrian had thrown it, his brow furrowed.
“Didn’t you hear me say to get your ass over here quick?”
And then he saw Dalton clutching his bleeding abdomen, kissing the floor.
“Mind explaining what’s going on?”
Adrian met Billem’s gaze head-on and sneered.
“I can’t, for the life of me, understand how a knight could harass his commander’s woman. What do you think, Vice Captain?”
Naturally, Billem glanced around at the surrounding knights in confusion, and when the subordinates assigned as Adrian’s guards averted their eyes, he realized Dalton and they had screwed up.
“You idiots, what the hell were you thinking!”
Billem scolded his men with a stern expression.
He then frankly admitted the fault and begged Adrian’s forgiveness.
“It’s all due to my failure in oversight. I’m truly sorry. I beg for your leniency.”
At his reasonable attitude, Adrian clicked his tongue briefly and kicked Dalton—who was groaning with his face planted on the floor—sending him sprawling.
“I strip Sir Dalton of his Vanguard status. Confiscate his weapons and throw him in the underground cell. And those three knights who permitted his intrusion are accomplices, so send them to the brig with him.”
“…….”
“As long as I’m the commander here, I won’t entertain any objections.”
It didn’t sit well, but with the current situation being unfavorable, he couldn’t refuse.
Billem nodded in acknowledgment.
Adrian approached him and patted his shoulder.
“This isn’t the territory.”
Billem stood frozen in place, silent, until Adrian left the room.
“The room reeks of blood now, so it’s unusable. I’ll move to the next room over—have the attendants clean this up.”
The knights glanced at Billem as they tended to Dalton’s wound, and the atmosphere grew heavy.
“Is that his true nature?”
It wasn’t a question to anyone—just a mutter.
From Billem’s position, it was an utterly unpleasant situation, yet for some reason, the corners of his mouth curved upward.
‘It must’ve been tough holding back and living like that all this time.’
Billem thought it was time to reevaluate Adrian.