I Will Be the Greatest Knight
Chapter 150: Snow Turned Red

Chapter 150: Snow Turned Red

The purpose of having apprentices assigned to knights was intentionally done to ensure the kid’s safety. Unfortunately, there was no such thing as a perfect plan.

The sheer amount of people willing to attack the Royal Family’s carriage as it moved through the north was far more than they could have ever predicted. It threw the carefully planned strategies to the wind as it escalated into a full-blown battle.

The traveling party was merely lucky these people hadn’t attacked before they picked up more knights at the Duke’s Tower.

There was something particularly feral and desperate about a group of people throwing themselves entirely into a fight. Based on the way they gave off a sense of reckless abandon, it seemed they were okay with dying as long as they got their point across.

It wasn’t entirely apparent if they were there to steal something from the richest people in the kingdom. Perhaps they were there to make an example of what the north was capable of—a group of people that felt already slightly abandoned by the monarch considering his slowness in deciding things that regarded that very large area of land.

Chemois was an ancient kingdom that fell to Peroda after being weakened by monsters. After they were finally weakened enough to agree to become a duchy rather than an independent nation, they felt like an afterthought. It became quickly apparent that the King was merely wanting to check them off of a list of conquests but wouldn’t bother them beyond that.

It was a big reason why most in the dukedom refused to call it Tenetium and still called it Chemois.

Sir Gunnar bore his sword fearlessly in the face of fellow men knowing that he was more than just protecting the Prince and Princess, but the apprentices who agreed to fearlessly follow him in the stark coldness of winter.

It became more of an instinctual battle than one practice as things fell apart and the viciousness of the attackers was underestimated.

He had slashed down at least two people, but when he was tied up with the last one, Gunnar witnessed a large man go to attack Irene.

The knight nearly got his head knocked off of his shoulders while half his mind was worried about his apprentice. When the large man over Irene fell, he was given brief respite until he saw someone genuinely take the girl down. Their spiked bat hit her armor. She tried to fight back until they lifted her in the air and threw her back down.

He blocked his present opponent’s sideways slash with a loud clank of metal to metal and Gunnar’s jaw clenched as he bore his teeth.

Leif was nearby and seemed that he had successfully knocked someone over.

"Leif!" Gunnar shouted. "Iro!"

Nothing more needed to be said.

Gunnar was going to get himself killed if he continued focusing on something other than the task at hand.

Leif had only been hit with a blunt weapon to his chest so, while the wind was knocked out of his chest for a moment, he was mostly unscathed.

The moment he heard his name being shouted, he was on high alert knowing it was their head knight calling his name.

His eyes went towards Iro after he heard the other apprentice’s name. He saw red hair against the backdrop of white snow and sky after Iro had his hood knocked off of his head during an attack.

Leif rushed from behind Iro’s opponent and, seeing that the man was about to swing on the other apprentice once more, all he decided to do was take down the enemy to the best of his abilities.

With one thrust of his arming sword through the man’s body, he heard Iro drop to the ground and the man’s legs gave way under him.

Considering Leif’s sword went clean through, he realized that must have meant he missed the backbone and pierced one of the lungs. As the man fell to the ground with a pathetic wheeze, that much was confirmed to him.

It seemed that most had been taken out so he felt free to tend to the other apprentice.

Irene’s shoulders were heaving and she held her sword pressed against her body as her gloved hands hugged her shoulders. There were holes in her clothing and blood falling down her left arm but she hardly noticed anything.

Someone had just been murdered directly in front of her.

The conversations with her father about believing all life deserved acknowledgment struck her. Perhaps it was also to do with the way that the man had been killed in the same way she had in her past life.

She knew she was trembling, that was about all that registered for a few moments.

There was a lull in the action but not all of the assailants were dead.

Some of the traveling party was tasked with cleaning up while others began gathering information off of the bodies that may lead them to a conclusion about what on Earth had happened in the past twenty minutes.

A couple of the Royal Knights used extra rope to tie those still living to trees. Another knight would walk through and ask them questions. If the knight was met with unsatisfactory responses, he showed no mercy as the promise from before came to fruition. His gilded blade sliced through the throats of the assailants easily.

Irene and Leif both flinched as screams from one of the people were silenced and a terrible gurgling took place.

"We don’t need to hear that right now," Leif uttered.

He was just as horrified as Irene was but he was managing to keep it together better than her.

He placed his hands over the younger apprentice’s ears.

Meanwhile, Sir Eitan and Felix got onto their horses and rode ahead to the village to make contact with the village leader and request a cart to move the bodies. Normally they would burn the bodies due to the risk of necromancy, but because of the nature of the attack and the Royal Family’s involvement, it would require more investigation.

The Royal Knights would also need to know if anyone in the town could identify any of the bodies. They had questions for those still living.

When the last of the assailants was killed, Irene managed to pull herself together even though she felt a heaviness within her.

At that point, all she wanted to do was go to an inn and lie down for a while. She wasn’t entirely sure if she could stomach any food after she witnessed the white of the snow turn red as blood polluted the forest that late afternoon.

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