"Kehk, kehehk…"
To not even react properly when someone grabs your neck right in front of you.
I don't even feel contempt. Instead, anger wells up.
"Say it again." "Khhak…! Y-you madman…!"
This trash was one of those who endured until the end against the aura filled with the intent to openly crush them.
He is by no means a person who can be called weak.
That makes it even more disgusting.
A soldier, a knight, and one who stood as a leader before others.
Even though the opponent, with whom you've exchanged clear hostility, is standing there unharmed and not fallen…
You just hand over your neck, one of the most obvious vital points, this easily?
It's unthinkable. It shouldn't happen.
"Le-let go…! You're doing something irreversible right now…!" "What's irreversible is you being completely broken."
A leader is responsible for the morale of the entire group.
If the leader collapses, the entire group they lead collapses, and the probability of a battle leading to defeat increases exponentially.
That's why you must never show weakness before others. You must never be the first to fall.
If a desperate situation arises where retreat is impossible, you must fight to the end somehow, and if that fails, you just have to die. So that even one more subordinate can survive.
A leader must be like that.
—Crrrrack!
"S-spare me…! F-fine! You win. Is that enough? So let go now…!"
But what is this person doing now?
How careless must he have been, how many years must he have lived with a rusted, dulled blade, to be begging for his life over just this?
Such a person has no right to be responsible for others' lives.
Also, this ugly, disgraceful fellow should not be given the title of former knight commander who stepped down honorably.
Even the title of loser is excessive. He's literally trash.
Trash should roll on the ground as trash does.
I threw his oily body towards the ground below the platform.
—Thud!
"Kha! Uheuh… Gulp, gulp!"
It was in front of the subordinates he had commanded all along.
He must feel an immense humiliation, enough to want to challenge me to a duel to the death.
But I doubt he has the courage and guts for that.
"Pietro de' Medici. You can challenge me to a duel, or mobilize your esteemed family's power to plan a sordid revenge." "Y-you crazy bastard… What on earth makes you so bold?"
Of course, I have something to rely on.
Among the spoils gained from fighting risking my life and the gifts received for loyalty to the imperial family, there are things that can easily smooth over such trivial disputes.
But that trash doesn't need to know that.
"Do I need to believe in something?"
When I said that with an expression of not understanding what he meant, the head that had been held stiffly high until the end, even while rolling on the ground, completely drooped.
Meanwhile, no one even paid attention to the ugly back of the former commander, who had started fleeing in a panic, having even dropped the plaque of appreciation or whatever it was.
In this very moment.
While I was struggling with that guy, the gazes of the Black Lion Knights members, who had now regained their senses, were focused solely on me.
The former commander left behind only an ugly sight, but at least in his final moments, he certainly laid a solid foundation for his successor to properly lead the unit.
In the silence, I faced my subordinates.
Fear and awe. Expressions as if looking at an incomprehensible being.
Along with that, turbulent waves of various emotions were swirling, and the atmosphere was incredibly heavy, but…
One single fact must be deeply engraved in their minds.
The clear fact that I, standing before their eyes, am their new leader.
Agnes von Ichelheim.
Sitting at the desk in her office to carry out the first task entrusted by the new knight commander…
She was suffering from an unfamiliar phenomenon she had never experienced before, which began right after the storm-like inauguration ceremony ended.
'My head is hot. Why is my heart beating so hard?'
It seemed somewhat similar to the symptoms right before that unwelcome monthly moment arrives.
But that day was still far off.
"Phew…"
Ultimately unable to concentrate at all, she suddenly stood up from her seat and, looking at the mountain of piled-up documents, recalled one thought.
'Why am I still trying to do this all by myself?'
That's right.
The deputy commander's role is to review completed documents, not to write them from beginning to end.
Although she had become excessively accustomed to the abnormal division of work until now, the person originally in charge of that work was someone else.
—Bang!
The sound of the firmly locked wooden door being shattered miserably.
Agnes, her sky-blue mane flying unrestrained, stormed into the administrative office.
"Administrator!" "Wh-who… Gasp, Deputy Commander?"
Leaving behind the amusing sight of the startled, monkey-like figure, she narrowed her eyes and stared at the administrator's neat and organized desk.
It was a stark contrast to the messy desk in the deputy commander's office.
'Just how comfortably has he been living all this while?'
Agnes clicked her tongue. There was no longer any reason to leave him be like that.
The time had finally come for the knight order's administrative system, which had been running backward, to return to its proper place.
"Forms for disciplinary resolution requests for 550 personnel. It's an order from the newly arrived knight commander, so carry it out as quickly as possible."
—Thump!
The numerous documents carried in Agnes's arms were dropped onto the administrator's desk with a heavy sound and a cloud of dust.
"Understood?"
A few fluttering papers weakly brushed past his head, which had no shortage of hair.
The administrator's appearance, staring blankly at the mountain of piled-up documents, was like an octopus facing a fishing hook.
That truly ridiculous scene was captured entirely in Agnes's greenish eyes.
"Hehe!"
Immediately after, Agnes, with a smile that had unconsciously spread across her lips for the first time in a long while, tried to leave without looking back, but…
The urgent voice of the administrator stopping her came from behind.
"Deputy Commander! Isn't this too sudden! If the Commander learns of this…" "Commander, who are you talking about?" "Why, of course, Pietro de' Medici. Ah...!"
The administrator's voice, filled with complaint and protest, was cut off mid-sentence as his expression gradually turned to despair.
The administrator was lazy and incompetent but far from dull; he was a shrewd person. Of course. If his mind worked slowly, he wouldn't have become an administrator in the first place.
"Things have changed now, haven't they?"
Seeing the deputy commander, who was practically just eye candy, suddenly act like this, clearly something happened at the inauguration ceremony or she managed to impress the new commander beforehand.
The administrator, having glanced up once at the deputy commander's smirking face, soon meekly picked up his pen.
Seeing that, Agnes felt a refreshing sense of relief.
'Anyway, he's someone who'll be replaced soon, so let him suffer to his heart's content until just before being fired.'
Returning to her office with steps lighter than ever before, Agnes.
She began to savor the awkward leisure she had regained for the first time in years.
Of course, she wasn't just lazing around. Unlike those who equated having leisure with not working.
On her desk were the handover documents she needed to review one last time for the newly appointed commander.
'I need to visit the Commander soon. But before that…'
—Tingle!
"Ah… Haa… What's really wrong with me?"
It started again. This time, her head grew hot, and her lower abdomen began to throb faintly. It felt as if that day had already arrived.
This strange phenomenon that started after the inauguration ceremony, no… after seeing that appearance.
When the new leader of the Black Lions revealed his spirit to the world.
'He's truly a respectable person. It's as if he was born to stand above others.'
Amid the panicking subordinates and the pressure constricting her entire body, the only thing that entered Agnes's eyes was his back.
Wolfgang von Schwarz. The 14th Black Lion Knight Commander.
Someone who could likely win even if fighting the whole world alone.
As a knight herself, how could she not feel awe upon encountering such a person face to face?
Her heart raced with the spontaneously rising respect from deep within, and she blushed, ashamed of her own weak self.
Simultaneously, a strange thought occurred.
Just how terrible and great was the war that ended in only half a victory, even with someone like him participating? That kind of thought.
She realized just how narrow the world she had known until now was.
Also, how suffocating it was when she incurred his anger by showing a clumsy appearance under the pressure of the new commander's aura.
'Deputy, did you perhaps not understand my words properly?'
The cold anger contained in the commander's low, quiet voice whispering in her ear.
Agnes imagined that frightening appearance once again and unconsciously swallowed.
"Haa… Heet…"
Commander.
A word Agnes had used until now with a meaning not much different from "bastard."
But from a moment ago, that short word began to take on a completely different meaning for her.
An immensely respectable person. More manly than anyone. A true model of a knight. The embodiment of overwhelming martial power. The savior of the Black Lion Knights.
"Commander, Commander Wolfgang… The person I will serve from now on."
Agnes's expression grew increasingly dreamy as she repeated the new knight commander's name.
Her memory had, at some point, returned to the moment before the inauguration ceremony when she first met the commander.
'You are an excellent knight.'
"Haa…"
When she was recognized by the commander. It was undoubtedly a very pleasant feeling.
But now. In Agnes's heart, the meaning of the commander's words was becoming even more specially colored.
The man she thought was just exuding a slightly larger and extraordinary aura than others…
Immediately upon taking office, he perfectly bent the Black Lion Knights to his will and proved his ability.
Moreover, when the current commander grabbed the neck of the former commander, whom she couldn't even stand to look at, and slammed that fat body onto the training ground floor…
How fierce and refreshing was the wave of exhilaration that swept over her?
Time-wise, not even half a day had passed since they met, let alone a day.
But, the existence of the new knight commander was already too deeply engraved in Agnes's heart.
'I want to, I want to be praised by the commander again.'
The commander's low, thick voice that tickled her entire body. The meaning of recognition contained within it.
Although she herself didn't clearly know the reason, Agnes at some point discovered herself craving the commander's praise.
"Hat!"
Thus, after being lost in a dreamy gaze and immersed in the sea of the unconscious for a while, Agnes…
Only after sensing the extremely shameful result produced by her body, which had momentarily lost control now and then, could she regain her senses.
—Squelch
Because a clear discomfort was felt in her lower body.
Rushing to the restroom to check, she found her underwear had, at some point, become damp with a transparent, sticky liquid.
"Wh-when on earth did this…"
At a glance, it wasn't a trace created in a short time.
No wonder it kept feeling like that day; it wasn't just her mood.
In her childhood, she was too busy swinging a sword to even glance at men, but…
Ironically, after puberty, due to her unintentionally striking appearance and burdensomely large chest, she had suffered countless approaches from men.
However, for Agnes, tormented by heavy duties, romance was a story from a distant land.
Embarrassingly, she had not even a single common romantic experience past the age of twenty.
But even she had received basic sex education, so she knew all there was to know.
Feeling intense shame and self-loathing, Agnes banged her head against the restroom wall and roughly tore at her innocent hair.
"Am I, perhaps, a pervert?"
She had an idea of who caused this, but Agnes desperately wanted to deny reality.
Falling in love at first sight with a man you saw for the first time today, who is also your new superior, is a beautiful story that might appear in fresh romance tales.
But instantly going into heat and soaking your lower body is a story beyond weirdness; it's utterly vulgar.
"No, I'm not a pervert…"
Amidst this, an image of the commander's face, covered in scars, whispering with disgust, rose in Agnes's mind.
'To think the deputy commander is a pervert, truly disappointing.'
"Kyaaaaah!"
An untimely scream echoed through the Black Lion Knights' deputy commander's office.