Chapter 10: Interlude
[author] Plot continues until Chapter 13. Chapter 14 would have Cecile❤[/author]
Charles Balto frowned. He was the second son of Count Balto, who would soon inherit his father's title. His father wanted to give the territory to Charles and knight order to Alex. Charles loved math, while his brother loved going out and playing. Even though neither of them was the best, their father saw them as two sides of the same coin and hoped that they would bring prosperity to Balto's domain.
Charles had a good relationship with Alex. However, he hated Balto's knight order with every fiber of his being. Knights must be respected, and anyone who defied them would be cut down on the spot. Most of the knights kept order, but some used their authority to get free meals or harass girls on the street. The fact that he had no talents for sword fighting made him hate them even more.
Moreover, they were expensive. Each knight needed about 10 gold for their salary every month. Count Balto had been lax with his spending, and thus, when Charles saw the finance report, he almost fainted on the spot. If Alex were there, he could negotiate to decrease or cut down some knights, but since Alex was dead, some knights went rogue.
The news about Alex's girls came to him. When the knights abducted such girls, he didn't mind at all, even if they killed them. He barely knew Rebecca and Nana. Moreover, he also didn't want to touch secondhand goods. However, when the news of their escape reached him, he panicked.
When he said Balto's knights were weak, it was not an understatement. The best knights all went to the imperial capital to become royal knights, while the nobles got the dregs. All of them were knight's orders, so people assumed they were similar or maybe slightly weaker than royal knights, but nothing could be further from the truth.
This preconception was because the royal knights and feudal knights had similar levels when they were accepted. But the apprentices of the royal knights underwent a sadistic training regime where over 30% of them literally died because of it. They had to kill monsters every day and hone their skills until night, while the feudal knights merely patrolled and sometimes swung their swords at a dummy.
This led to a status disparity. Most royal knights were at least level 60, while the feudal knights could barely reach level 40. Some of Balto's knights were even lower, at level 20. They would even lose to some bandits. This fact was only known by the count and himself.
It was okay for the time being. However, a beginner adventurer, level 10 at that, had now escaped their grasp. If this led some people to question the capabilities of Balto's knights, his reform would be in a pinch. Bandits and thieves would run rampant in his territory if they knew Balto's knights were weak.