Shield of the Rose

Though it was wartime, the suffocating shadow of conflict had not yet settled over Peines. Life in the capital remained relatively peaceful and leisurely.

Early in the morning, Merlin was the first to rise. She needed to prepare breakfast for the squad. Richie woke early as well. The previous night’s intense dual training had left him with no soreness or fatigue; instead, he felt exceptionally refreshed, his mind clear and sharp.

The food supply in Peines was abundant. Although beans remained the staple, they had access to fresh pork, which was already a vast improvement. The beans came pre-shelled; whoever was in charge of logistics was clearly wise enough to know that a Knight’s time should not be squandered on menial chores.

Since the ingredients were prepared, breakfast was ready in no time.

Seeing that they still had time before the others woke, Richie slipped behind Merlin. Reaching his hand beneath her hem, he smiled as he felt the slit-crotch trousers she wore.

Merlin let out a soft laugh, propping her elbows on the iron kitchen island and arching her hips slightly.

Richie quickly unbuttoned his trousers and freed his manhood. It hung soft for a brief moment, swaying like a loose hose, but rapidly swelled to a rigid, iron hardness.

Click.

With a swift motion, Merlin shut the kitchen window. She had no desire for the sounds of their intimacy to escape. Two entire squads of Knights were stationed in the town, including a dozen scout Knights like Nora, meaning they couldn’t afford to be careless.

Though the kitchen had been renovated, its soundproofing was nothing compared to the cellar. Merlin had to muffle her voice as best she could. She pulled a leather-wrapped ball the size of a lemon from a drawer and stuffed it into her mouth.

Even as she did so, Richie drove his swollen length into her tight passage.

Merlin loved rough, intense coupling. She craved the most extreme sensations, and Richie could let loose and ride her raw without restraint. Among all the women in Squad 105, Merlin was the one who indulged his desires the most.

Richie’s shaft was clad in a layer of Aura. He had been eager to test the effects of channeling Aura to heighten physical stimulation.

The moment he plunged inside, Merlin shuddered violently, a series of muffled, frantic grunts escaping her nose. A woman’s inner walls were already highly sensitive; the Aura-clad shaft felt like a stiff wire brush sweeping over her raw flesh.

The friction alone was almost too much for Merlin to bear. Worse, when the massive shaft hit her deepest depths, the Aura prickled against her cervix like a thousand tiny needles.

Merlin felt as though she might die, the overwhelming pleasure stealing the air from her lungs. In a reflex of pure self-preservation, she snapped her hips forward, pushing Richie out.

“It seems I’ll have to tie you down,” Richie murmured, having anticipated her reaction. He pulled open a bottom drawer and retrieved a roll of supple leather rope.

The kitchen island was made of solid iron. Richie lashed Merlin’s legs securely to the island’s thick legs. She leaned forward, chest pressed against the metal surface, her hands stretched straight ahead and tied to an overhead iron pipe. A steel hoop locked her waist flat against the table edge. She was completely immobilized.

Richie drove his length back into her passage, his hand reaching beneath her to gently tease her swollen clitoris.

A flurry of muffled, desperate moans instantly filled the kitchen. Merlin’s body shook violently, her pale, bare cheeks rippling like waves under his heavy thrusts.

Within twenty strokes, Merlin was spent. The stimulation was a hundred times more intense than usual, digging deep into her very marrow. Her muscles convulsed out of her control, her mind turning into a white void. A thick flood of juices sprayed from her passage, dripping onto the floor.

Richie watched with satisfaction, continuing his heavy thrusts. But he ceased the Aura stimulation, reverting to a natural, steady rhythm.

After a few minutes, as Merlin slowly regained her senses, Richie tapped his finger against her anus.

Merlin understood his intent instantly and nodded. She knew Richie loved the backdoor, so she had taken the time to perform an enema and clean her rectum after waking.

Richie grinned. After a few deep strokes in her passage, he withdrew his wet shaft and aligned it with her puckered star, pushing smoothly into her rectum.

The backdoor offered a far tighter squeeze than her vagina. Even without any special technique, the grip was enough to drive a man wild. Richie savored the crushing tightness, the fierce suction of the rectal walls, and the raw, rhythmic spasms of her bowels wrapping around his length.

After an unknown stretch of time, the pleasure built to a fever pitch. Richie’s tip twitched as though preparing to rupture. Abandoning all restraint, he accelerated his pace, delivering a dozen rapid, frantic thrusts. With a sudden shudder, his body seized, and he poured a thick load of seed deep into her rectum.

Withdrawing his wet member from her body, Richie unlashed the leather ropes.

“What? Only one round today?” Merlin spat the ball from her mouth and looked at him in confusion. She even reached out to touch his forehead, checking if he had a fever.

“On the journey here, I realized something. Intimacy is beautiful because of the connection behind it.” Leaning in, Richie kissed her lips.

Merlin blinked, but did not pull away.

It was a pleasant feeling. While she loved the raw physical release, endless friction could grow tedious.

A Knight’s life was simple—divided between combat and training.

Since their new encampment lacked a proper training ground, they trained in the wild. The town was built on a river delta, surrounded by a network of crisscrossing, knee-deep channels.

Because of the high water table and seasonal flooding, no crops were grown here. The land was overgrown with reeds, wild grass, ash trees, and water tupelo. Such a wasteland was perfect for training Knights, as they didn’t have to worry about trampling crops or damaging roads, and the soft mud reduced wear on their Magitech Armor.

Squad 105’s training ground lay two kilometers downstream, on a semi-dry riverbed. A shallow stream trickled over pebbles, and a patch of silt in the center had grown into a dense thicket of shrubs.

Richie had already donned his training armor, fitted with extra plating to protect against shockwaves. His weapons were lightweight, special training bucklers that weighed less than twenty kilograms combined. Dana wore a similar suit, wielding a training lance.

The two clashed, darting back and forth across the riverbed. Dana’s attacks came in rapid succession. Her “Thunder Assault” was swift and unpredictable, the lance shifting angles mid-thrust to bypass his guard.

Fortunately, Richie was no longer the novice of old. Defending against his mentor was no longer difficult. His bucklers and elbow shields covered nearly sixty percent of his body, leaving only his head, feet, and back vulnerable.

He spent the session practicing how to close the distance against an armed opponent.

A row of weapons lay on the riverbank, and Richie would occasionally swap his bucklers for a sword or an axe to test different combinations. During the journey, he had been pondering what weapons to pair with his shields.

A defender did not rely solely on heavy shields. They always carried an offensive weapon. Typically, they favored dual swords, sabers, or axes, which paired easily with a shield. Merlin followed this style. A few heavy defenders used long polearms, acting as living battering rams to break enemy lines. Richie needed to find the perfect style for himself.

Lina and the three sisters watched from the bank, occasionally shouting advice. Their tips were highly practical, but Richie still needed to find his own rhythm.

A heavy, stomping din echoed from the distance. Another Knight squad stationed in the town was approaching.

They wore training suits and carried blunted weapons.

“Here comes trouble,” Lina muttered in the squad channel.

Richie and Dana halted their spar. Richie stepped back, knowing this confrontation had nothing to do with him. Back in Glasslovar, Squad 105 had been isolated, so they had never dealt with this. In the military, such provocations were always aimed at the women.

The approaching Knights had obvious motives. The cruder ones would make inappropriate advances, while the smarter ones would attempt to show off their strength. The women of Squad 105 were veterans of such situations.

“Stay back,” Lina ordered through the comms. “I’ll handle this.”

As she spoke, she activated the recording device on her training suit. While such devices were optional for training armor, all members of Squad 105 kept theirs active.

“Hey, you’re trespassing. This training ground is ours,” Lina said lazily, flipping up her visor.

“Our training area is too crowded. We’re just borrowing yours,” the leader replied, opening his visor to reveal a flat, acne-scarred face. His grin was greasy and unpleasant.

“Go ask the quartermaster. If you get written permission, we’ll hand it over,” Lina laughed, appearing perfectly relaxed.

The acne-scarred Knight took her relaxed attitude as a sign of weakness. “I’ll report it later. For now, we’ll just use it. Why don’t we spar? The winner gets a little prize. A kiss will do.”

The men behind him burst into crude laughter.

Lina remained calm, simply tapping her recording device.

“…I’ll report it later… winner gets a little prize. A kiss will do…”

The Knight’s words replayed clearly from her suit’s speakers.

Lina smiled at the greaseball. He was too eager, handing her a perfect weapon before the fight had even begun.

Realizing they had been baited, the group’s faces darkened. Before the acne-faced leader could speak, a Knight behind him spat, “Little bitch, you dare trap us? Don’t spit on our courtesy.”

Without a word, Lina snapped her visor shut and grabbed a training sword from the rack.

“Prepare to fight,” she ordered through the squad channel.

Though Dana was the vice-captain and held a higher rank, no one questioned Lina’s command.

Richie was not surprised. In school, such brawls always started after two or three sentences. If people stood around talking for ten minutes, the fight would never happen.

“Kid, have you ever been in a brawl?” the eldest of the three sisters asked.

“Yes. What are the rules here?” Richie asked. In school, brawls meant no blood, no weapons, and no broken bones. Out in the streets, anything went—chains, pipes, and bricks—but you avoided lethal areas.

“What can we even do in training armor? Just break their legs,” Lina replied.

Her definition of a brawl made Richie break out in a cold sweat.

“A brawl isn’t a battlefield. Active skills won’t help you here. Get close and grapple,” Lina instructed as she charged.

She swung her training sword, channeling her Aura to strike the ground rather than her opponents. Since they were on a riverbed, the impact kicked up a dense cloud of water and gravel, blinding the opposing squad.

The three sisters, sharing a volatile temper, were veterans of such fights. They moved as a single unit, launching a coordinated assault. Even Dana showed remarkable experience, gripping her lance near the middle and swinging it like a heavy staff.

Not wanting to lag behind, Richie followed close behind Dana, charging the enemy.

As he closed in, a flash of fiery Aura cut toward him. He ignored it, raising his buckler and plowing ahead. In a brawl, a shield bash was the most effective attack since it carried no risk of accidental lethality.

Clang! Clang!

Richie rammed past two opponents, sticking close to a third who wielded a lance. A spearman was useless at close quarters.

The spearman reacted quickly, bringing the shaft of his lance up to block. But Richie was faster. His hands darted through the guard, deflecting, hooking, and locking the lance like a pair of dancing butterflies.

This was the “Octave Sunder” flurry—a close-quarters martial art he had discovered in the Seventh Legion’s library. It was designed for heavy defenders engaged in close combat. The technique did not rely on raw power, but on sheer speed and continuous strikes to overwhelm an opponent’s guard.

However, the technique required exceptional manual dexterity and fast reflexes. Few heavy defenders possessed such traits, and other Knight classes had no need for close-quarters grappling. Thus, despite being a high-level skill, it had sat forgotten until Richie mastered it.

Richie’s hands were incredibly agile, trained by his Deflected Strike and his self-taught Rubbing Step. The “Octave Sunder” came to him naturally.

He was in no hurry to defeat his opponent. Such a perfect training target was hard to find. Finding the single opponent too easy, he dragged a second Knight into the fray.

As he fought, advice poured through the squad channel.

“Don’t use dead force! Absorb the impact and snap it back like a whip!”

“Watch your hips. Drive the power from your waist, through your shoulders, and into your hands!”

“Fool! You could have struck him directly there!”

“Useless block! Counter immediately! He has no leverage!”

“Good, step inside his guard to break his stance!”

“Faster! Keep the pressure on! Don’t let them breathe!”

Most of the commentary came from Lina, whose tactical eye was incredibly sharp. The three sisters, though less sophisticated, had survived countless street fights, and their practical advice was spot-on.

Richie glanced around. The other troublemakers were already flat on the ground, thoroughly beaten by the female Knights. With no pressure, he focused entirely on his spar, absorbing their advice and applying it to his opponents.

A brawl was different from a duel; it lacked lethal stakes but carried far more urgency than a standard spar. Losing meant losing face, so both Richie and his two opponents fought with everything they had.

Richie’s movements grew smoother. Techniques that had puzzled him in the manual suddenly clicked into place. The combination of live feedback and real combat accelerated his progress. Initially, managing two opponents had been challenging, but he soon handled them with ease. Eventually, he was simply playing with them.

Suddenly, Richie stamped his foot, sending a tremor through the riverbed. A surge of power rose from his heel. He twisted his waist, arched his back, and rolled his shoulders, channeling the kinetic force into his arm.

His arm snapped forward like a leather whip.

This was the “Whip Strike”—the most devastating finisher in the “Octave Sunder”. He had infused it with the power-transfer techniques the women had just taught him.

The blow landed with a muffled thud, like a heavy sack hitting the ground, rather than a loud metallic crash. The impact, however, was terrifying. The Knight flew ten meters through the air, flipped upside down, hit the ground headfirst, and rolled to a stop, motionless.

Everyone froze.

Initially, no one had paid much attention to Richie’s fight. But when the women saw the Knight lie limp like a log after rolling several meters, they realized something was very wrong.

A Knight was trained to fall. Even when thrown, their reflexes would ensure they landed in a way that minimized damage. Lying limp meant only one thing: the Knight was unconscious before he hit the ground.

Richie’s face turned pale.

---

The gendarmes and military police arrived shortly after, followed by Captain Calli and the rest of Squad 105.

A military ambulance sped onto the riverbed. The medical officer and four nurses rushed to the fallen Knight. No one dared move him or remove his armor, fearing a spinal injury. They simply popped the chest plate of his training suit.

The medical officer checked his vitals, whispering instructions to the nurses. They carefully lifted the injured Knight onto a stretcher and sped away.

“Multiple internal ruptures, spinal trauma, and a potential cranial hematoma. He’s badly hurt. He’ll be in the hospital for at least four to five months, and a full recovery will take a year,” the medical officer reported to the gathered officers before departing.

Richie stood surrounded by gendarmes and military police. One of the officers was currently removing the recording device from his training armor.

A military command vehicle sat on a dry patch of the riverbed. The recording devices were taken inside to be reviewed.

Lina’s recording was reviewed first, detailing the entire provocation. Six officers crammed into the vehicle. Among them was Calli, a cold smirk playing on her lips. Opposite her sat three officers with dark, furious expressions: Captain Magno of the Seventeenth Legion’s Second Medium, Vice-Captain Raven, and Squad Leader Taylor.

Officers were protective of their own. The three had arrived furious, demanding severe punishment for the assailant.

But when they saw Richie, their expressions turned highly awkward. Richie was far too young. The fact that their Knights had been beaten by a teenager was humiliating enough; having their men complain about it was even worse.

When they watched Lina’s recording and saw the cause of the fight, the three officers wished they could smash the device. It was an embarrassment.

Provocation was common; every officer had done it in their youth to impress female Knights. What was humiliating was that an entire squad of grown men had been beaten to the ground by a few women in minutes. Worse, two formal Knights had been toyed with by a minor, an Apprentice Knight who used them as training dummies.

If they could, they would have destroyed the evidence, but the two gendarme officers in the vehicle made that impossible. Though the military police were rarely impartial, the facts were too clear to rule in favor of the Seventeenth Legion.

One of the gendarmes, who had a poor relationship with the Seventeenth, watched with a cold smirk. The other, wishing to avoid a larger conflict, stepped in to mediate.

“Let’s review the other recording. A standard training suit shouldn’t be able to deliver a blow of that force.” The officer implied that Richie’s suit had been illegally modified.

Such modifications were common among frontline veterans, who often disabled the output limiters on training suits to use them as backup gear. Randy had done exactly that for Richie in the past.

Richie’s recording was loaded. The officers skipped the fight, jumping straight to the final blow, replaying it at normal speed.

None of the six could make out what had happened; the strike had been a blur.

The officer rewound the footage, replaying it at twenty-times slow motion. Every detail was laid bare.

The device recorded not just visuals, but energy output. The gendarmes checked if the core’s output had exceeded the limit.

The vehicle fell silent.

“How is this possible?” the bearded Magno gasped, leaning close to the screen.

The output numbers were yellow, indicating the energy had reached the upper limit of the safety zone but had not turned red. The armor was unmodified.

“I don’t believe it,” Magno shook his head. “If the output didn’t exceed the limit, how could it cause such injuries?”

“It is possible,” the silent gendarme remarked, pointing to the frozen frame. “It was a direct hit with no deflection. If he used a resonance wave, the shockwave would pass straight through the armor to the pilot.”

“Do you think I’m an idiot?” Magno snapped, pointing to the energy conversion data. “With that little energy, how could my man be crippled?”

The gendarme had no answer. Under normal circumstances, that level of energy would at most cause mild internal bruising or a minor concussion, requiring two weeks of rest.

“Perhaps someone else struck him from the shadows?” Vice-Captain Raven suggested darkly.

“That’s easy to verify. We’ll check the other recordings.”

The four other devices were checked. Within minutes, the truth was clear. Dana and the three sisters had been watching from a distance, never moving.

The gendarme felt a headache coming on. Someone was severely injured, and there had to be a scapegoat. He decided to place the blame on Richie. Richie was male, he had no valid reason to join a fight that wasn’t aimed at him, and he had delivered the blow.

The officer reached for a form to write the charge.

“Old fox, how do you plan to write that report?” the younger gendarme asked.

“Do you have a suggestion?” the veteran replied with a grin.

“If I wrote it, I’d list it as a training accident. A mutual settlement.”

The veteran pondered. The Seventeenth Legion’s officers had no desire to pursue this publicly and display their humiliation. But he worried that letting a severe injury go without punishment would cause trouble with the high command.

The younger officer sighed. “An Apprentice Knight beating two formal Knights like children is unheard of. Either our formal Knights are garbage, or that kid is a monster.” He smirked. “I bet on the latter.”

“True. An Apprentice Knight with thirty-two confirmed kills is something else,” the veteran agreed, catching his drift.

In the military, it was wise not to offend a talented youth with an limitless future.

Seeing the veteran hesitate, the younger officer added, “Captain Calli already knows what happened. When she watched the replay, she looked thoughtful, then pleased. She hid it well, but I was watching her.”

“I don’t follow.”

“If her subordinate is about to be punished, why would she look pleased? She should be worried,” the younger officer explained. “Unless something occurred that was worth celebrating, making the punishment irrelevant.”

“Did the kid break through?” the veteran asked. “No, a breakthrough doesn’t look like that. And how did he deliver that blow?” The veteran paused, a realization striking him. “I see. The kid had been practicing some high-level technique he couldn’t master, and he finally found the knack during the fight.”

He frowned. “It was clearly a resonance strike. But what kind of resonance wave has that kind of power?”

---

“What kind of resonance strike is that magical?” another voice murmured.

Brigadier Hagert stared at a copied segment of the recording. Only three hours had passed since the incident, but he already had the footage.

He was not alone. A dozen men sat in the room, all far older than him. To sit in this room, one had to be an Honor Knight. Hagert’s exceptional talent had allowed him to join their ranks early.

Ever since meeting Richie, Hagert had kept a close eye on the young man and Squad 105. When the brawl occurred, the news reached him immediately.

The Junior Army held massive sway in the capital, and the younger gendarme was a firm supporter. He had recognized Richie’s potential and wanted to recommend him to the Junior Army’s leadership to earn credit. That was why he had helped Richie, and why he had leaked the recording to Hagert.

The senior Knights in the room fell into deep contemplation. In the history of the Republic, countless combat techniques had been recorded, and resonance strikes were rare.

“This is fascinating,” a balding, bearded elder remarked, squinting at the screen. “He didn’t simply combine the strength of his leg, waist, shoulder, and arm. He converted all that kinetic force into a single resonance wave, releasing it at the moment of impact.”

The others had guessed as much. The armor’s output was within safety limits, but the combined kinetic energy of his body was immense. The riddle was how he had sustained the vibration.

The elder sighed, lost in memory. “There is indeed such a technique.” He let out a long breath. “Alas, I am too old. I doubt I will live to see this divine art restored to its full glory.”

The room fell silent. In their circle, techniques created by Heavenly Knights were called secret techniques. Those above the Heavenly stage were called divine arts.

While nearly two hundred secret techniques survived, only seventeen divine arts remained, most inherited from the ancient civilization.

“The Harmonic Lightwheel…” Hagert whispered, stunned.

“He is still far from the true Harmonic Lightwheel,” the elder corrected. “Only two people in history have ever mastered it. One was in his forties, and the other was seventy.”

“Even if it isn’t the complete art, mastering a high-frequency vibration blade is incredible,” another remarked. That was far easier than the complete divine art, but it remained a legendary secret technique that few had ever mastered.

---

Richie knew nothing of the attention he was receiving. Currently, he was staring in frustration at his punishment notice.

Compared to crippling a fellow soldier, the sentence was light. He was barred from any promotions or rank evaluations for the next two years. It was a symbolic punishment, lighter than a week in the brig.

But to Richie, it was infuriating.

A formal Knight received a significantly higher salary than an apprentice. Other Knights might not care about the coin, but Richie had a massive household to support.

Worse, Margaret was dragging him along to her formal Knight evaluation, her face glowing with excitement. He couldn’t refuse; she was his girlfriend in every sense of the word.

To accommodate them, Calli had granted them a day of leave. The evaluation was held at a military camp near the city.

The camp lay in a scenic suburb close to the city center. The surrounding streets were lined with sixteenth-century houses, mostly two or three stories tall, decorated with cobblestone facades and featuring large flower-filled balconies with iron railings. The rooftops and porches were adorned with small gardens, lending the entire district a romantic air.

A military camp looked completely out of place amidst such beauty. The fortress-like structures spanned two city blocks, built of dark, grim granite. From above, the camp was a perfect square with a massive plaza in the center, enclosed by thick walls that housed barracks and offices. The outer walls resembled a medieval castle, featuring narrow slit windows and smooth, unscalable stone. The main gates were backed by a one-inch-thick iron portcullis.

Two guards stood watch at the gates.

Margaret showed her credential and walked straight inside. Richie was surprised by how relaxed the security was; the guards barely glanced at her card.

Hoping to slip through unnoticed, Richie showed his card as well, only to be stopped immediately.

“He’s a late-awakened Knight,” Margaret explained.

The guards checked his card, nodded, and let him pass.

As they walked, Margaret smirked. “In the future, just follow me and act natural. This camp has hundreds of Knights coming and going, and there’s nothing top-secret here. Security is always loose. Your nervous behavior is what made them suspicious.”

“Richie! Richie!” a voice called out.

Richie looked up to see Jason and John waving from a third-floor balcony.

“Are they your friends?” Margaret asked.

“Met them when I registered my credentials.” Richie was not particularly enthusiastic, though seeing familiar faces was pleasant.

Jason and John hurried down the stairs.

Once they reached the ground, the two paid little attention to Richie, their eyes locking onto Margaret.

Seeing the hungry look in their eyes, Richie let out a cold snort. He wondered if all Knights had hyperactive libidos; the moment they saw a beautiful female Knight, they turned into tomcats in heat.

“This is my girlfriend, Margaret,” Richie warned sharply.

“That’s fine, I don’t mind,” the thick-skinned Jason grinned. “I will win her heart with my charm.”

“You’re an idiot,” Margaret spat. She had always been cold to such pests, and her attitude had not changed.

Richie ignored the fool, turning to John. “Do you know where the evaluation hall is?”

John was far more sensible than Jason. He knew he had no chance with a girl like Margaret, so he had kept his distance. Richie’s question saved him from his awkwardness.

He looked at Richie in surprise. “Are you here for an evaluation? Have you already reached the level of a apprentice Knight?”

Richie realized that for his age, challenging the Apprentice rank was the expected path.

“I’m just accompanying her. She’s already an Apprentice Knight, and she’s testing for her formal Knight title today.”

Their jaws dropped. Jason, who had been trying to get close, took several steps back, his enthusiasm instantly vanishing.

In the Knight world, a man had to display superior strength to win a woman. A massive gap in rank meant he had no chance. If he made a nuisance of himself, she might simply beat him up. Getting thrashed by a girl in public would make him a laughing stock.

With the two guiding them, Richie and Margaret quickly reached the evaluation hall on the ground floor.

It was a massive chamber, over twenty meters long, with a floor covered in dry dirt and sand to facilitate easy repairs. A single desk stood at the far end.

To Richie’s surprise, the group from the headquarters was already there. Rost, the arrogant white-haired youth, stood fourth in line. Ahead of him were three youths who carried themselves with a distinct air of nobility.

The first was a handsome blonde with indifferent blue eyes named Gerold. The second was a redhead whose features closely resembled Lina’s—likely her cousin, Reta. The third was a large-headed youth with a high brow and cold grey eyes.

Richie could sense the difference in these three. They possessed a quiet, innate arrogance that he had only seen in Lina and Robin. They were from noble houses.

In their world, noble Knights had a massive head start, blessed with superior manuals and inherited bloodline talents.

As Richie inspected them, the group returned their gaze, their eyes lingering on Margaret with obvious interest. The lesser Knights quickly looked away, knowing their limits, but the three nobles made no effort to hide their gazes.

Richie knew this would be a common occurrence. But the hostile glares directed at him were annoying.

Lina had warned him that having a beautiful girlfriend meant facing endless challenges and duels. She had laughed when she said it. Looking at Reta, Richie wondered if he was Lina’s brother. If the redhead provoked him, Richie wouldn’t hesitate to teach him a lesson.

His school years had taught him one truth: to avoid being bullied, you either had to remain completely low-profile, or use your fists to beat everyone into submission. To display your strength, you had to pick a fight, and it was best to pick a fight with the strongest.

Richie decided to take the initiative.

Holding Margaret’s hand, he walked up to Gerold at the front of the line.

“I’m Richie, and this is my girlfriend, Margaret. I’m accompanying her. Have you heard of ‘ladies first’? How about you step aside?”

Gerold ignored Richie entirely, offering Margaret a polite bow. “I’m Gerold. It is my pleasure to yield my place to a beautiful lady.” He smiled. “Are you here for the Apprentice evaluation, Lady Margaret?”

“Yes,” Margaret replied coldly, maintaining her icy facade.

Her reply forced several hopeful gazes to retreat. Challenging the formal Knight title at her age was a feat few could match.

Gerold turned to Richie, his eyes cold. “And you? Still an Apprentice Knight?”

“I broke through at the front lines,” Richie smirked. “I was just waiting for her to catch up so we could get our titles together. But I had a bit of bad luck. I beat up two fools a few days ago, sending one to the hospital, so I’m banned from evaluations for two years.”

“I don’t believe you,” Carnad, the “Viper,” spat, stepping forward. “I haven’t heard of anyone getting sent to the hospital recently.” He inspected Richie. “Have any of you seen this guy before? I don’t recognize him.”

“I didn’t say they were your age. They were formal Knights from the Seventeenth Legion. I handled both of them myself.”

The door opened, and a middle-aged instructor and a young assistant instructor walked in, overhearing Richie’s boast.

“Arrogant brat,” the young assistant muttered, looking at Richie. Senior Knights loved to put arrogant juniors in their place. “If you are indeed under a ban, I’ll have a record of it. Name and ID?”

“Richie. 2325748.”

The assistant walked into the adjoining archive room. With a name and ID, finding the file was simple.

He emerged a moment later, silent.

The gendarme’s report and the punishment notice were in the file. Though brief, the facts were clear.

But the young assistant had no intention of letting the arrogant junior off. He wouldn’t fight him himself—losing to a kid would destroy his reputation. The best way was to use a borrowed knife to strike.

​