𖹭 Chapter 3 𖹭
Dietrich could no longer contain his anger and suddenly stood up.
“Are you seriously trying to toy with me?”
“Everything I said was sincere. Rather, it is Your Grace who is not taking my request seriously.”
“So you’re saying the Duchess truly meant she would join the knights?”
“Yes.”
The knights began to murmur again.
A divorce demand was already outrageous—but now she was saying she wanted to become a knight?
The woman who had spoken all this so calmly did not look sane in their eyes.
“If that is truly what you meant, then it’s even more problematic. Does the Duchess think so little of the Gluck Knights that she believes she can simply stroll in and out whenever she pleases?”
Dietrich’s jaw tightened with a grinding sound.
The knights’ atmosphere grew even more hostile. Their blatant hostility spread through the air like a cold wind replacing the falling snow.
“Do you know how my subordinates earn their knighthood? They must survive a month in the northern blizzards, hunting monsters in the snowy mountains just to become junior knights. Or they must capture infiltrators planted by foreign tribes to even qualify as probationary knights. And you’re saying what now?”
Dietrich could not relax his expression, thinking Adriana was treating the knight order like a playground.
But there was something none of the people of Hielo had considered.
“I have never looked down on knights. I was once a knight of the South as well.”
Adriana had once been the master of a naval fleet, a knight who fought off southern invaders and sea monsters.
She could not look down on them—because she had been one of them.
Adriana decided she could no longer persuade Dietrich with words and reached for her bow and arrow again.
She did not know when she might “truly” die and fall back into the river of oblivion, so she had no time.
As she aimed her weapon at Dietrich, the duke’s guards all drew their swords at once.
“How about expelling me for threatening His Grace?”
“Rejected. I did not feel threatened, so it is meaningless.”
Even threats did not work. Then what would?
Should she really shoot him?
No… that would be—
As Adriana lightly touched the bowstring, she began to feel something was wrong.
She had assumed this was all happening somewhere within the river of oblivion, but the flow of events felt strangely real.
While she was lost in thought, Dietrich signaled his guards to stand down.
“Lower your swords.”
“But, Your Grace—”
“If you remain armed, I will take it as meaning you consider me an incompetent lord who cannot handle a single woman.”
Reluctantly, the knights lowered their swords, though their eyes remained fixed on Adriana.
Ignoring the metallic sounds behind her, Adriana released an arrow.
This time, it was a clean, sudden shot with no warning.
“If what Your Grace said earlier is true, then please confirm where my arrow landed.”
“You keep making increasingly strange requests.”
Dietrich pointed toward where she had shot, as if annoyed.
A junior knight ran off toward the impact site, frowning.
“Aaagh!”
Soon a scream echoed out, and several knights rushed after him.
“Y-Your Grace. You need to come see this.”
At the returning knight’s words, Dietrich followed.
There, pierced by an arrow, was a man.
Dietrich immediately recognized his identity—and felt a sinking dread.
“…No way.”
He wore a bizarre outfit made of layered monster hide. It was the clothing of a northern foreign tribe. Beside him lay papers covered in strange coded writing.
“A spy.”
Adriana had captured an infiltrator hiding among the participants of the competition.
“That can’t be! How could a rat be hiding among all of us without anyone noticing?”
The panicked knights searched the man’s body and face—but his dark skin, foreign ornaments, and other clear traits confirmed he was indeed a northern spy.
“You said earlier that if I capture a spy, I would qualify to join the knights.”
Adriana asked calmly as she approached.
No one knew how she had accurately targeted him—but she showed no sign of shock.
“Since I have accomplished a merit, am I qualified to join the knights?”
“I do not wish to insult Hielo’s knights, but at this rate, I cannot even call them competent.”
At her calm criticism, the knights looked away in shame.
A spy had infiltrated a gathering of elite knights—and none of them had noticed. Only the Duchess they despised had sensed something wrong.
There was no greater humiliation.
“Your Grace. This is what we found on him.”
Dietrich examined the coded documents retrieved from the spy’s body.
Although he could not fully understand them, they appeared to contain intelligence estimating Hielo’s total military strength based on the number of knights present at today’s competition.
If leaked to foreign tribes, it would have caused serious problems.
Dietrich bit his lip and approached Adriana.
“Why do you want to join the knights?”
“I do not intend to lie.”
“Are you after military authority?”
“I have no interest in any of Your Grace’s authority.”
She could have easily made excuses, but her answer made it clear she would not reveal her true reason.
Realizing this, Dietrich pressed his temple in frustration.
“One last time, Duchess. Do you truly intend to join the knights?”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“I cannot assign you any important position.”
“I do not mind even being a probationary knight. I only ask to be allowed to accompany me—and three southern knights—in the next monster subjugation.”
“Are you referring to the man named Ijan?”
“Ijan, and the other two as well.”
Adriana had already expected that her divorce demand would not succeed immediately.
Her divorce from Dietrich was not a simple matter between two families—it involved too many interests. It required a proper process.
To submit a divorce petition to the Emperor, she needed steps.
And the first step… was joining the Gluck Knights.
She had made the divorce request appear easier than it was so that her “wish” would not be rejected outright.
“We will discuss the subjugation later.”
“No. There is no ‘later.’ Would you delay even if this were a battlefield?”
“…Fine. But accompanying the next subjugation as a probationary knight is the most I can allow as a temporary arrangement.”
“That is all I need.”
“Then I will recognize the Duchess as a member of the Hielo Knights. But stop talking about divorce.”
Adriana immediately knelt on one knee.
“What are you doing?”
“I have been appointed a knight. You must perform the knighting ceremony.”
“Is this really necessary?”
“I need confirmation.”
She wanted an irreversible guarantee.
Dietrich clenched his fist tightly and raised his sword, lightly touching her shoulder and head.
“I hereby appoint you as my knight.”
“I swear loyalty to my lord.”
The most glorious moment of a knight passed in an absurdly hollow manner.
There had never been a knighting ceremony so careless in all of history.
After the ceremony, Adriana turned away from Dietrich and looked up at the sky.
The weather was clearing. The violent blizzard had stopped, and the sky above the eternal snow felt unusually pure.
She had clearly died in Dietrich’s arms inside an illusion.
So what was this sense of reality?
At first, she thought it was a dream and acted freely—but the longer she stood on her feet, the stronger her suspicion grew.
It felt as if she had returned to the past and was truly alive again.
The spy who had infiltrated the competition and observed Hielo’s military strength was later expected to reveal himself—and then commit suicide after claiming he had been working with Adriana.
It was the event that had caused her position to become truly unstable in her previous life.
If this was truly the past, then the strange presence she felt earlier in the corner of the arena must have been that spy.
So she had aimed—and actually caught him.
That spy had been skilled, hiding his presence with unknown techniques. Yet Adriana had sensed him clearly.
Something was wrong.
The world was the same—but slightly misaligned.
A subtle distortion made reality feel real.
What confirmed it most clearly was the sensation of shooting the arrow.
Adriana was the empire’s greatest archer. When she shot, she could feel the world itself.
The wind, the sunlight, the tension of the bowstring, the sound of air splitting—none of it could be felt by a corpse.
This was how a knight understood life.
And so, she had no choice but to accept the impossible truth.
Ah… I really have come back to life.
At that sudden realization, Adriana’s eyes widened.
