MPNS Ch 39

Chapter 39

An ox cart was, quite literally, a cart pulled by oxen — even without the expense of mixing in iron, the ones cast in bronze carried substantial weight.

What Yullan meant was to yoke the men to one of these and have them haul it around the drill yard until sunset. It was, to put it mildly, a rather cruel punishment.

Allewynn, watching his liege’s expression, asked cautiously.

“Was it that much of a complete loss?”

“They saw the Lily’s bare chest. And I mean bare — no shirt at all.”

“…Ah, the Lily’s bare upper— Wait, WHAT? The Lily’s bare chest?!”

The “Lily” was the figurative nickname the heads of the four houses used for Nikiel — a flower of rare purity whose stalk and roots were laced with poison — and in their mouths, it was an unflattering epithet for the platinum-haired, blue-eyed son of a greedy king.

Now Allewynn was hearing that the entire Black Thorn Knights company had seen Nikiel’s bare torso. He looked at Yullan in shock, but the Grand Duke offered no explanation, only a deepening scowl.

Toweringly tall, built like a masterpiece of martial engineering from an ancient magical civilization, Yullan stood with arms folded in thought.

His sharply carved browline and high nose cast shadow over his face. With the lines of his scowl deepening, the resemblance to a statue — a grim, dangerous one — was too strong to ignore.

“How in the world did he end up shirtless in broad daylight…? What next, an outright orgy? Honestly, that one…” Allewynn clicked his tongue in disapproval.

The calm composure Nikiel had shown the last time Allewynn escorted him back to the Prince’s Palace — that measured retribution against the insolent Count Gaspar — now seemed perhaps a fluke.

On that day, Nikiel had met Gaspar’s petty insults with a cool, decisive rebuke: elegant, restrained discipline. Allewynn, who had previously held firm prejudices against the prince, had quietly admitted to himself he might need to reevaluate him.

The intelligent, piercing look in Nikiel’s eyes and the sharp brow as he patiently laid out the Count’s offenses had actually impressed him. His cadence and diction had been steeped in dignity.

As the eldest son of the Counts of Saxen — vassals who, for generations unbroken, had served only the head of House Balt — Allewynn was raised in proximity to such lords. Like the other three houses, Balt did harsh and dirty things in pursuit of its power, but the heads themselves were always born with a lofty nature, like lotuses blooming in the mud.

Accordingly, the vassal counts of House Saxen were expected to be upright and clean-handed, if a little rigid. Allewynn had inherited that rigidity twice over: from the more insular northern aristocratic culture and from growing up at Balt’s side, seeing all its filth firsthand and reacting by becoming even more conservative.

Because of that, he had never approved of Nikiel’s notorious indulgences.

If only you had kept your conduct proper, you could have been another master of the North. If you’d stood beside His Grace, easing the burden of the Dragon’s Madness, the whole of Iteren would have closed ranks to keep you from being stolen by those filthy reindeer, snakes, or birds.

That had always been Allewynn’s frustration. The prince who had once been pale, quiet, and demure in youth had, at some point, awoken to lust and become the capital’s officially acknowledged rake.

To be born so noble, capable of granting such a gift of peace to Yullan — and yet not to… it was enough to make a man resent him.

But the Nikiel he had seen that day with Count Gaspar had been different; no cloying perfumes to seduce, healthy pink flush in his cheeks, and even a subtle lotus fragrance from his hair.

His tone in chastising Gaspar was like frost — and yet he had stayed just within the bounds, letting the count feel fear and shame without going too far. It had been, in truth, princely.

Allewynn had dared to hope. If Nikiel had truly reformed, perhaps it might be worth persuading Yullan, who loathed the royal line, to seize the chance of the “deliverer’s” blessing.

But now — public shirtlessness? In a Sitata ring? This was the same as returning to his old ways. Allewynn clicked his tongue again.

“I caught him in a Sitata match.”

“…Excuse me?!”

Allewynn looked more shocked than when he had briefly, mistakenly imagined an orgy. Sitata? That delicate prince? It might be better than an orgy, but it was still beyond belief.

Nikiel — the man who insisted no sunlight touch him and had the palace smiths forge an Ossinis parasol twice the normal size, with bronze fittings so heavy they’d given a dozen healthy attendants heatstroke in midsummer?

Nikiel — rumored to hate any labor involving his muscles, to the point of avoiding even breathing exercises, and never lifting so much as a book for fear of thickening his forearms?

And yet here he was, in the ring, bare-chested, competing at Sitata.

Sitata was universally practiced by Ossinis males at least once in their lives — noble or commoner alike.

It was so popular that merchants’ guilds funded New Year’s tournaments for sponsored players, and on occasion, a king himself would host a match. If the people grow restless, host a Sitata bout — so went the saying in royal political circles.

But there had always been one curmudgeon who loudly claimed not to understand the appeal of the sweaty, physical contest. Nikiel Ossinis.

That he would strip down and step into the sand himself? Allewynn could hardly comprehend it.

“…What on earth possessed him? Was he threatened into it?”

Yullan didn’t even bother to smirk. He had been just as incredulous at first.

He’d set the Hiohkan tailbone as the match prize for a reason: to draw attention.

In truth, the Royal Guards — nominal protectors of the palace — were not much more than a resident gang at court.

That was the king’s will. By day, the Guards patrolled the palace; by night, they were sent out to run loan sharking and illegal gambling houses, funneling kickbacks into the king’s private coffers.

Why would the ruler of a great power like Ossinis sully himself with such rackets? The answer was simple:

“To raise private soldiers outside the Four Houses’ notice.”

The royal family’s continued hold on power was, in reality, propped up entirely by the Four — Balt of the North, Turun of the East, Griff of the West, and Boltwick in the capital — each cursed at their head by the Dragon’s Madness.

Corrupt and complacent, the royals made no effort themselves, using the Four’s strength to rule the people and extract taxes, wielding the curse as a pretext to keep them in line.

It was the Four who truly made Ossinis a great power — yet the royals kept them under heel through the curse and thus controlled the entire realm.

But nothing in the world, as the saying goes, blooms red for a hundred days. For reasons unknown, the old rotation — in which only one head per generation would bear the curse — had broken. This time, all four carried the Dragon’s Madness.

The curse wracked them with pain, but also bestowed immense power. As beasts the size of houses, they could tear apart monsters like wet paper. The whole nation acclaimed them as heroes.

In the streets of Kirnich, the commoners’ quarter inside the capital walls, emblems shaped like each house’s cursed beast sold like wildfire.

Regardless of the personal suffering of the heads, the fact that heroes capable of shielding the kingdom from the threat of monsters had all been born in the same generation drove the populace into a frenzy.

The vile king began to grow uneasy. He fretted endlessly, afraid that the power he had maintained—like a brothel keeper selling off his sons—would be seized by the heads, and thus began raising an independent private army.

The idea of a king having a private army was sheer absurdity. Yet even such illogical matters, if left unchecked, could one day become seeds of disaster.

For the time being, Yullan diverted the Royal Guard’s attention with a Sitata match, then slipped into the captain’s office to investigate what sort of misdeeds they were committing outside the palace.

Since stealing documents was impossible, he memorized them in their entirety and quietly made his exit. On his way back, he stopped by the arena, thinking that surely even the slack-jawed members of the Guard would not lose in a match—though it was only meant to distract them. But there he saw a pale fellow gripping the waistband of a man whose nape was flushed bright red.

When Yullan first witnessed the scene, he thought some lunatic had brought his lover into the training yard and, right there in front of a crowd, was rubbing their bodies together.

That was how flushed the face of the man locked in Nikiel’s grasp was—red enough to burst. The onlookers were so quiet that it almost felt as if they were collectively observing someone’s intimate affair.

Thanks to the man’s taut erector spinae muscles, his waist curved inward in the middle, and a faint mark—called the “goddess’s dimple”—was etched right where the swell of his hips began.

Oil smeared along the waistband of his Ossinis-style bray trousers, combined with his drenched upper body, left the spectators momentarily speechless.

As the corridor encircled the arena like a colosseum, Yullan walked the circular path while keeping his eyes on Nikiel, who stood atop the arena platform.

His sleek body glistened with oil, and his ivory-toned skin, along with the coral-red flush of his flesh, was wet through. The moment Yullan’s gaze fell upon the golden oil pooled faintly in the hollow of his collarbone, he felt the beast within him begin to rage.

 

“No red flower blooms for a hundred days” — A proverb meaning that beauty, glory, or good fortune never lasts forever. Often used to imply that all things, even dominance or favor, are temporary.