"I will accept any punishment you deem just, young lord. I made a choice that was never mine to make."
At the main entrance of the manor, the vice commander of the knights knelt.
"That choice, though made with the best of intentions, has brought shame upon me. It is your life that I swore above all else to protect."
Seven remained composed.
Before him was one of those classic fictional dilemmas: if a lord forgives a subordinate too easily, he would be seen as weak.
But if the lord does the latter, he would be seen as someone lacking empathy for his own people.
"Heinrich."
Seven picked up the iron sword Heinrich had offered on the ground. It felt light in his hands, much lighter than it had only a few days ago.
"Take your own life."
He held the sword back out to the vice commander, handle first.
Heinrich took it in almost an instant, head still bowed, and no shred of hesitation or attempts to question the words of the young lord.
After all, he had already braced himself for any consequence before coming down to the village.
"At your word, young lord."
Heinrich unsheathed the sword and turned the point at himself, specifically pressing it against his chest.
"For the honor I have stained, I offer my life in atonement."
Heinrich closed his eyes.
The veins in his hands bulged. A thin line of red surfaced on his tunic.
'Look at this. He's actually going to do it…'
"Stop."
Heinrich froze.
"Young lord?"
"That's enough. I've seen what I needed to see."
Seven walked past the vice commander with his hands in his pockets.
That was a test.
Heinrich's lack of hesitation proved his loyalty. But also stupid, that applies to both of them. There was no telling if another attack were to happen, after all.
If Seven forced Heinrich to kick the bucket, then Seven would be a sitting duck; if Heinrich kicks the bucket, Seven is still a sitting duck.
To put it simply, it was a classic lose-lose situation with the young lord ending up getting cooked no matter what.
Quaa, quaa.
A squirrel squeaked atop the branch of a pine, watching the two stupid giants, its mouth busy munching an acorn.
Seven turned around, forcing himself to recite a pithy but "cringe" phrase he had once read.
"There is no honor in death."
He met the gaze of the vice commander.
"A corpse cannot swing a sword, and a corpse certainly cannot atone for its mistakes."
Heinrich's hand stilled on the hilt.
"Dying is the easy way out. Live with that failure, and ensure it will never happen again. That is the punishment I give you."
'Fudge me sideways. That sounded so edgy.'
Seven felt a shiver of embarrassment at his own words, but he kept his expression.
Heinrich sheathed the sword and assumed a proper kneeling posture, sword by his side, tip pointing at the ground.
"Understood, young lord."
The squirrel jumped off the branch, chasing after a female squirrel likely to mate, winter is a good season for it.
Step, step.
Seven walked to the direction of the camp.
He mentally retraced the damage he had seen aside from the patch on the door of his room.
That is, the hallway and the library wall, the most notable among the traces, looking like a mad swordsman assumed the wall was a potato and cut it into fries.
In that regard, he theorized the attack must have been done by a group, since there was a magician at the camp capable of controlling a person, and it happened to Lythian.
That much made it clear that someone is after his life.
'But why didn't they come straight at me? The window could've been easily broken, and could've attacked me directly instead of using Lythian.'
His face contorted, overwhelmed by trying to fit countless pieces into a single missing place.
"Heinrich."
Seven slowed his pace.
"Have the knights identified the perpetrators?"
"I am afraid not, young lord."
Heinrich replied in a rough voice.
"I believe Lady Eden personally encountered them, but I haven't had the chance to ask for details. But given that they were able to escape her, a possibility is that they were a group of sovereigns, or a transcendent magician like Lady Eden herself."
Seven paused, his brow furrowed.
"...A magician?"
'There's another magician?!'
Then again, if this many magicians really were involved, then the implications were disastrous.
It meant the long-standing tension between House Hart and House Mxvlque, the house of mages and the eternal rivals of the sword, might finally snap.
It could even incite a total war.
"I firmly believe so. Maggots (a/n worms) almost consumed Theirry's deceased body. The same goes with the other knight named Caspian, he had a 6 feet centipede that sprawled lifeless from his throat."
"...?!"
However, that changed everything.
The House of Mxvlque despised such acts of atrocities, the kind that required living sacrifices and ritualistic filth. The magicians in mention are likely not from their house.
In the novel, practitioners of such arts mainly belonged to the GULLET OF IR, a group of cultists with a goal to revive the cardinal of Wrath.
The thing is, most of the members were at least sovereign in level, thus Heinrich being a Paragon at most, might have died alongside the senior knight before those cultists.
Then again…
"Wait. Before that, you said that my eldest sister might have personally encountered the perpetrators, right?"
"The traces of combat back at the camps suggest so."
"Oh."
Think back, Seven hadn't even seen Eden Hart.
His last consciousness was when he fell flat on the snow, probably from the blood loss, thus having no memory of her arrival.
Iria also implied he was found lying in Eden's lap as she hummed a lullaby, with no wounds! That thing didn't add up. Eden carries the blood of a sword, not of a magician.
'She couldn't have possibly healed the gaping hole on my chest even with the current potion of the highest quality. Damn it.'
The mysteries were starting to pile up.
Step, step.
Both of them arrived near the camp, and the true scale of the power gap became clear to Seven.
He ignored the busy knights rebuilding the encampments and focused on the landscape, specifically on the hill that usually overlooked the camp and now gone.
Or rather, the top half was.
It had been sheared off by what looked like a single, massive strike, leaving behind a flat-topped mesa.
If that was Eden's work, then the perpetrator was indeed skilled enough to survive a hit like that and escape.
"This way, young lord."
Heinrich turned right before passing the camp's fence.
"The four casualties hailed from the dukedom. A pity it happened before the ceremony, but I am sure they were glad to have spent their last breaths in your service."
'Glad, my ass. This isn't a paradise.'
Shortly after, four mounds of snowy soil waited at the edge of the clearing.
There were no proper headstones except the iron swords the fallen knights used to wield, their hilts acting as crosses.
Heinrich paused before each one, his voice a low murmur as he honored them.
"Thierry. Caspian. Gaston."
He stopped at the final mound, having forgotten the name of the last knight.
"...Bob."
Seven stared at the iron hilts in silence.
This was the kind of scene where the protagonist would deliver a stirring and tear-jerking eulogy to win the hearts of his men, in which they would then swear their lives to him in a fit of emotion.
But…
He didn't seem to be the kind to do that. He simply turned his back on the graves and walked away.
"What's with today's session?"
"There is none, young lord. Iria requested that today be a day of rest, given that you have only just awak—"
"Heinrich."
Heinrich sighed, trailing after the young lord.
Iria had indeed said that, and so did she about the young lord's stubbornness.
"Our focus shifts today, young lord. I believe you are ready to grasp the intermediate fundamentals of the sword."
"Ah. Please do. But I will be using an iron sword today."
"Yes."
For a brief second, Heinrich glanced back at the four fresh graves. He realized then why the young lord hadn't stayed to mourn.
After all…
Dead men don't need prayers, but for their survivors to be strong enough to ensure their deaths weren't in vain.