Through the Manager Scouter, I could see their detailed profiles, and most of them had truly extreme dispositions. Cruelty (evil), wrath (evil), madness (evil), and so on. A terrifying combination of dispositions that wouldn’t normally come together so easily.

"To catch them this easily... Seeing the result with my own eyes leaves me speechless."

"Just chalk it up to intuition. If you’re thinking of imitating it, give up."

"Even if I wanted to, that would be impossible."

Since I was commanding through the Scouter, it looked outrageous to ordinary people, but the results were so impressive that they were left at a loss for words. It would be easier on the mind to just write it off as genius.

Fiel had genius-level abilities too, but they were overshadowed by mine. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

Not that he minded.

"Ngh, damn it."

It looked like the Schwarz Wolf’s leader had come to. After glancing around, he realized he was surrounded by the soldiers who had ambushed them. He must have realized that things had gone completely sideways, too.

"Verdammt nochmal!"

"Schwarz Wolf. You’ve committed quite a variety of crimes all over the place."

"What do you want? If you want money, I’ll give it to you—just let us go!"

"No need. More importantly, do you know where you are?"

The leader looked around and recognized the hunter’s cabin where he’d spent the night. I could feel the murderous intent in his eyes as he glared at me.

"Who the hell are you?"

"Have you heard of Streit?"

"Streit—you mean the Lord of Feuzen?"

"Among other things, I command the Gale Knights, the Grand Duke’s personal knightly order."

"I’m honored to meet such a renowned knight—ptooey!"

"How dare you!"

Whack! Whack!

The members around me started stomping the leader who had spat at me. Viktor hurriedly wiped my face with a cloth. I was the one who’d been spat on and the most furious here, so why were they turning him into ground meat before I could?

Now I couldn’t even beat him myself.

I splashed water from the well onto my face.

"Hahh, hahh! We didn’t even attack Feuzen! Why come after us?"

Since we had no connection whatsoever, the leader couldn’t seem to make sense of the situation. But even without a connection, I couldn’t just leave men who had committed such heinous crimes alone. I’d received the list from the Judicial Department.

"The order’s duties include suppressing bandits. Near Eisten, you targeted Vice Commander Falkenheim’s family, and that’s why I personally came out to hunt you down. But you must have seen me that day."

"Ngh! Khh! Damn it, the cavalry that ruined our plan that day—that was you bastards!"

This was just my guess, but the Schwarz Wolf had probably been watching from somewhere to confirm the Falkenheim family’s massacre. Then the fifteen cavalry I led showed up and slaughtered the attackers instead.

After confirming that the operation had completely fallen apart, they killed everyone at the Berten hideout to eliminate evidence and fled.

The leader’s face twisted as he looked at Viktor.

A chance encounter this ill-fated becomes destiny.

"Damn it, the contract was doomed from the start!"

"That’s what I’m most curious about. Who hired you to attack Viktor?"

"Will telling you keep us alive?"

"The execution grounds in Breisburg are waiting for you."

I’m not soft enough to let depraved men go free. That would be absurd. And since they were going to die anyway, I gently nudged them to drag down whoever had put them up to this.

"Fine. The one who hired us was an old man from Breisburg. I don’t know if he was a noble, but he agreed to pay six hundred silver coins to wipe out the Falkenheim family. We got three hundred up front as a deposit. The plan was to collect the rest after the job was done, but—kuh! Kuh!"

He must have taken too many hits, because blood spurted from his mouth.

After a rough bout of coughing, he caught his breath and continued.

"The plan was perfect—using those idiots from Berten so we wouldn’t expose ourselves. Damn it, you bastards showed up and ruined everything. So we killed the ones who had seen our faces, took the money, and ran. To think we’d get caught right before crossing into Offenburg."

"You can thank the victims at the hunter’s cabin for that. The time you wasted there is what allowed us to catch you."

"Heh heh heh, so the fun we had is what did us in?"

His eyes were filled with madness.

I didn’t know if he’d given up on life, but he truly seemed insane.

"I’ve had plenty of women up to now, but that hunter’s daughters were really something. We took turns with them right in front of their father. If they’d come quietly, we wouldn’t have killed them. Stupid girls. Heh heh heh."

Enraged by his vile remarks degrading the victims, Fiel kicked the leader in the mouth.

Crack! Crack! Crack! I hadn’t seen Fiel this angry since the tournament.

"Shameless piece of garbage!"

"Stomp on him all you want—just don’t kill him."

The leader’s face was a bloody mess.

He let out a groan and let his head drop, though he appeared to still be conscious.

But the other prisoners who came to had to endure merciless beatings from the members, who were just as enraged as Fiel. We barely kept them alive through the night at the hunter’s cabin.

Since these were men with righteous dispositions, their fury was genuine.

In a quiet moment with just the three of us—Viktor, Fiel, and me—Fiel asked about what had just come to light.

"Who is targeting Vice Commander Falkenheim?"

"That’s what I’d like to know. I have no idea what anyone could possibly gain from coming after me."

Naturally, neither Viktor nor Fiel could even guess. But after pondering for a moment, Viktor looked at me with a hesitant expression and asked, his eyes filled with conflicted emotion.

"Commander, could it be because of what I witnessed that day? But the only person who knows about that besides me is you."

"You weren’t aware of this, Vice Commander, but most of the survivors of that battle have either died or gone missing."

"Is that true?"

Viktor seemed deeply shaken. Fiel was hearing this for the first time and appeared to be struggling to understand what was going on. In the end, I shared Old Man Bertheim’s information with them.

"A friend named Jakob had been corresponding with his former comrades, and he reported their deaths to Marquis Bertheim. So the Marquis looked into it through the Administrative Minister and found that seven had died and the remaining six were missing. Two of the survivors are you and Jakob."

"Jakob—has he gone missing too?"

"I don’t know. He may have been killed somewhere."

"What on earth is going on!"

The shock hit Viktor like a raging storm, and his legs buckled as he sank to the ground. Fiel still seemed lost and frustrated. As an outsider, this was all completely new to him.

"Vice Commander Viktor is a survivor of the third battle in the Great War five years ago—the one where the Lord of Rosenheim and my father were killed. The people I just mentioned are also survivors of that battle."

"And those survivors are now..."

"I don’t know what the goal is, but someone is having them assassinated. They probably hired men like these to do it. The survivors were all reportedly killed by bandits."

Fiel, now grasping the situation, seemed at a loss for words. The Schwarz Wolf’s contract killing made it impossible to dismiss as coincidence. He intuitively understood that this was no ordinary matter.

I organized the new information I’d just acquired.

The client was an old man from Breisburg. And the phrase "I don’t know if he was a noble" probably meant he carried himself with that level of refinement. Like Marquis Bertheim’s butler, Göring.

Things were still hazy, but the picture was clearer than before.

"Grrr, it has to be the royal family. Not satisfied with driving the Lord to his death, they’re going after his surviving comrades! And now my own son’s life!"

"Calm down, Viktor! Calm down."

"How am I supposed to calm down right now?"

His face was twisted with rage and anguish.

"If you trust me, leave it to me."

"Leave it to you, Commander?"

I gripped his shoulders and said,

"Marquis Bertheim is currently digging into the conspiracy. And I’m gathering information little by little too. Getting directly involved would be dangerous, but if we slowly collect clues from each of their deaths, won’t they eventually form a complete picture? When that time comes, the truth will come to light."

He wasn’t completely convinced by my argument, but he was at least showing me trust. Even though he despised the Grand Duke, he had joined the Grand Duke’s personal knightly order as Vice Commander entirely because he believed in me.

"I’ll trust you. You saved the lives of me, my son, and his wife."

"Stay under my protection, and Simon and Natalie will be safe too. I’m not easy to mess with. So trust me and wait. Acting on emotion will only make things worse."

Viktor placed his hand over the back of mine and nodded. His trust in me—within it was also faith in me as the son of Aseldorf, his friend and brother-in-arms.

"Hey now, the two of you making a pact without me feels a bit hurtful."

"Oh, I forgot about you. You’re involved now too, so don’t think about running away."

"A knight of Steinhof neither tolerates injustice nor runs from it."

Fiel placed his hand on top of ours.

It was like something out of The Three Musketeers, but unfortunately, the road ahead wouldn’t be so simple.

When I returned to Breisburg with the Schwarz Wolf in tow, I received an unexpected invitation. It was from the Second Prince, Louis, with whom I had absolutely no prior connection.