The sun sank toward the west, and the training grounds outside had long since emptied. In contrast, the knights' quarters had grown loud and lively.
Weise's dungeon sat close to the Knights' barracks, but because it lay underground, no sound from within could reach the surface.
"There's no mistake. You're the Great Demon, Aura!"
No one else was around. The other knights stayed posted outside the dungeon, and most of them were off eating in the mess hall. The newly arrived guard knight seemed unusually agitated.
Aura didn't provoke him the way she had before. She simply stared at the guard knight without a word, fists resting on her knees, looking as harmless and defenseless as a lamb awaiting slaughter.
"Ha! I never thought heaven would favor me so — giving me a chance like this... a chance to cut down an enemy with my own hand—"
There came the hiss of steel as the knight drew his sword.
"Are you really going to defy the Earl's orders?"
Aura shot to her feet and took a step back into the cell, her human-like pupils narrowing slightly.
"I never expected the famous Aura the Guillotine to end up captured alone. I can already tell — without your headless army, there's nothing you can do right now, is there!"
At those words, Aura seemed to stumble back another few steps, as if she couldn't help herself.
Her reaction stripped away much of the knight's caution.
He raised his sword in one hand, aiming it at Aura, while with the other he pulled out the key to the iron bars and fit it into the lock. With a clang, his boot kicked the door open.
"Hey, you know I can't kill you, right, human — defying a noble's orders never ends well for a knight, even one like you!"
Aura's voice carried no trace of emotion.
But a knight who'd dealt with Demons before knew that the Demon Race felt little. If something could make a Great Demon flinch back involuntarily, he must have struck a nerve. The Aura the Guillotine was afraid!
The knight suddenly felt his confidence surge.
"There's no one else here anyway. Killing you would be worth whatever punishment comes — even if it costs me my life, I'd still be the one who took down a Great Demon who's lived for centuries. Isn't that a good trade?"
Without realizing it, Aura found her back against the wall.
The knight tossed the key aside and gripped his sword with both hands, aiming it at Aura. Beneath his iron helmet, all trace of a smile had vanished, leaving only cold resolve.
"Don't come any closer."
The more she said it, the more certain the knight felt.
The scenery of his homeland, the flames of war, more than twenty years of knightly training — all of it converged in the edge of his blade.
With a roar, the torchlight flickered wildly, an unseen gust of wind surged through the cell, the shadows trembled, and the iron armor rattled!
The knight's sword was fast. But fast was all it was.
His body reacted a beat too slow — but Aura's eyes could follow it perfectly.
There came a grinding screech of metal on stone!
A line of blood sprayed through the air even as the longsword slammed down onto the rock wall of the cell, gouging a deep gash into the stone.
Finding his target gone from view, it was the knight's turn for his pupils to shrink. He hadn't let his guard down for a moment, yet an ominous feeling now coiled around his heart.
He felt the touch of something against his armor — a hand had already settled on his shoulder.
"Finally, I've got you."
The moment the voice reached his ear, the knight tried to twist around and strike again.
"Stop."
At those two simple words, the knight's body suddenly felt like a rusted machine — capable of nothing but a faint, resisting tremor, unable to move even an inch.
He struggled to turn his head and look.
On Aura's once-blank face now spread a satisfied, gleeful smile of triumph.
At some point, unnoticed, a tilted scale made of Mana had come to hover above both their heads at the top of the cell.
Magic of Obedience! Deployed and active!
"That was close. Good thing I've had practice — though why is it always the neck?"
Aura touched the small wound on her neck. Blood trickled down along the lines of her palm, and she raised her bloodied hand to her lips and licked it clean, like some kind of beast.
A Demon's body wasn't like a human's — a wound like that would heal within half a day.
"You did that on purpose?!"
"Don't interrupt me."
The knight lost his voice again, able only to let out a helpless whimper. He was now a moth caught in a spider's web, without a shred of freedom left.
"You knights are like turtles — stubborn and hard-shelled. Though, come to think of it, I really should thank you for being so disobedient."
Aura didn't rush to give her next command. She simply amused herself by mocking him.
Despair had already filled the knight's eyes. His head felt disconnected from his body — nothing moved but a faint tremor.
A streak of purple hair drifted past as Aura bent down and picked up the dropped key from the floor.
She raised her hand and snapped her fingers.
Two loud crashes sounded from the neighboring cell.
Schlacht and Draht, held in the cell next door, had received Aura's signal — one sliced clean through the iron bars, the other smashed them apart.
"Good. Now that we have a guide, the jailbreak plan begins."
"My sword..."
Hearing Schlacht's words, Aura remembered she still needed to retrieve their gear.
"Use this one for now. Ugh, what a hassle. Should we just retreat instead? Go back to Gaderia, get Nanoda to come here, and steal all our weapons back properly?"
Aura snatched the knight's sword and tossed it to Schlacht.
"Lady Aura, I think you two should stir up some trouble in this human territory — to make up for the humiliation we've suffered."
Draht spoke up, sounding somewhat indignant.
"That's not a bad idea, actually."
Aura turned her gaze toward the human knight. A pleasant round of interrogation was about to begin.
By then, the knight's heart had gone utterly cold.
Inside Graf Granat's storehouse—
Scales of Obedience: So love does fade, doesn't it?
"There's another group of Demons that attacked the village? Is this information true?"
"Of course, my lord Earl. It came straight from the mouth of a survivor from that village — a young village guard. He personally witnessed two groups of Demons fighting each other."
"Besides that, there's another strange rumor. A woman whose leg was bitten by a magic beast claims a Demon spared her and her child, and drove the beast off."
Graf Granat stroked the beard on his chin, his expression grave.
"How could a Demon possibly spare a human?"
"Perhaps that other group of Demons posed too great a threat?"
The Empire's intelligence officer spoke in a low voice from behind his newspaper.
"This really is troublesome. Let's report to the Empire first that we've captured Aura the Guillotine. I'm willing to leave the judgment of the Demon Race's Seven Sages of Destruction to the Empire's decision."
"I'll relay the Earl's loyalty to the Empire. This will surely be another great victory for humanity!"
"It must be done quickly! That's the Great Demon Aura we're talking about!"
Graf Granat turned back to emphasize the point once more as he was leaving.
But when Graf Granat returned to his own lord's manor, he found the place already engulfed in a sea of flames!
"My lord Earl! Something terrible has happened — there's a fire!"
A knight ran up, helmet removed, his face smeared with soot.
"I'm not blind! What about casualties? Never mind the fire for now — get the army organized to strike back!"
Graf Granat's expression darkened. It seemed he'd already guessed something.
"No casualties! No one was hurt! It's just the Knights' treasury — everything of value has been stolen!"
"What?"
____
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