Betrayal Knight’s Joyful Faith - Chapter 452



Only Noblemtl

The Cheerful God of Betrayal Chapter 452

The hand that slowly lowered the bow trembled.

The prince’s face, usually full of confidence, was pale with tension and fear.

“You succeeded… right?”

Llewelyn stammered in a frightened voice.

I was so nervous that a cold sweat broke out on my forehead.

“It didn’t go astray, did it? It succeeded, didn’t it?”

A building that was quite a distance away was visible, indicating that Jiklin was there.

Just seconds ago, the arrow that had left Llewelyn’s hand had pierced the window and disappeared from sight.

Salem nodded with a serious face, as if to reassure him.

“Yes. Thank you for your hard work, Prince.”

“……under.”

Only then did a suppressed sigh escape Llewelyn’s mouth.

“Haaah… … .”

Bam.

The slipped bow fell limply to the floor.

Llewelyn looked down at his hands in disbelief.

My pale hands were shaking from excessive nervousness.

“This son of a bitch is really… … .”

A weak, snickering laugh came out along with the curses.

“The price I paid for trying to be friends seems too high. It’s getting harder and harder to bear as the days go by.”

“I agree.”

Salem also nodded with a bitter smile.

Although he was pretending not to know, he was just as nervous as Llewelyn.

Even after deciding to carry out the operation, the two men were not sure of its success.

Even with Llewelyn’s Dragonborn artifact and the spirits of Salem, it was never easy to hit a single target accurately from a distance.

Besides, it was a situation where if you let a single opportunity slip away, everything would go down the drain.

“Still, you managed it somehow. Like you always do.”

At Salem’s words, Llewelyn nodded with a tired smile.

Luna and Ray, who had completed their mission, were leisurely returning, flapping their wings under the blue sky.

Somehow the spirits seemed pleased, and Salem couldn’t help but burst into laughter, even with her pale face.

* * *

“… … Cluck, cluck.”

Arendt coughed a few more times and then sat up unsteadily.

“I’m going to die, really… … .”

Sunlight streaming through the broken window stung my eyes, and the wind seeped through the shattered glass, gently shaking the torn curtains.

The homunculus, who had suddenly lost its owner, seemed to not have been able to grasp the situation, and just blinked its countless eyes blankly.

Arendt saw Zicklin lying on the floor with his back to the window.

“You’re dead, huh… … The saint probably already knows. There’s no need for me to tell her.”

As if he didn’t understand what was happening, Jiklin lay dead with his eyes wide open.

From the forehead where the iron arrow was lodged, dark red blood continuously gushed out.

“You have to do it in moderation. If you act too flashy on stage as a supporting actor, that’s what happens.”

In the golden eyes that looked down at her indifferently, the embarrassment, desperation, and pain that had been shown just a moment ago were completely washed away.

Instead, what took its place was a cold indifference.

“ha…….”

But he couldn’t stand for long either.

I felt like I would lose consciousness at any moment because of the fatigue that was creeping in.

Arendt collapsed onto the sofa where Sieglin had been leaning against her.

My eyes were spinning.

‘still…….’

As I wiped my face with my bloody hands, a hollow laugh escaped me.

“ha ha ha.”

Arendt just laid down on her side.

I felt hot blood gushing in my throat, and at the same time, I felt a chill that made my body tremble.

The homunculi surrounding them were momentarily confused by the loss of their master, but they were still alive.

If it came at me again, I would be helpless.

But I didn’t see anything like that right away.

“You look great, you crazy bastard… … .”

A curse escaped from lips that were smiling faintly.

The pungent scent of blood in my nose, the pain all over my body, the sense of crisis that I could be counterattacked by a homunculus and die at any moment.

Everything around me felt overly realistic.

‘It’s not a stage where everything flows according to a good scenario.’

This was a battlefield where you didn’t know who would die, when, or how.

This time it was truly a reckless fight.

Moreover, he moved unilaterally without saying a word about the operation.

Yet no one doubted him.

Even though everyone was nervously asking him what his plans were, everyone believed in him and willingly risked their lives.

“… … This is really going to blow my mind.”

Arendt covered her face with her hands.

Neither Arendt nor Lee Su-hyeon were great people who could receive that level of trust.

But the evidence was Jiklin, who had fallen there and lost his life.

No one treated him as just an actor or a stage prop.

Just as he no longer sees them as puppets on a stage.

“… … .”

My whole body ached.

The things I had left behind, the things I had gained here, and the things I had tried to throw away were all tangled up in my head, until they became a boulder that weighed down my eyelids.

Arendt lay still for a long time, catching her breath, as if dead.

‘Acting… … .’

Even in her dazed state, Arendt continued to think.

The confident and brash Jiklin died in an unsightly manner and left the stage. Considering that he had commanded all sorts of monsters, his end was quite shabby… … and it was the kind of speech one would expect from a villain in a comedy.

If there had been no one person, this kind of development would not have been possible.

Because it was a result that everyone barely managed to achieve with all their might.

Including myself.

‘This isn’t going to work.’

In front of Ludwin, he talked about life as a play and was full of empty boasts, but life was not something that could be done as one wished.

The law seemed to apply equally to both the old stage he had turned his back on and this bloody world.

A lament-like soliloquy flowed out from between his chapped lips.

“If you keep doing this, there’ll be no place to run… … .”

How long has it been like that?

The noise of the battle outside gradually died down. Soon after, the sound of footsteps rushing towards us could be heard.

Judging by the way they are running hurriedly, it must be Arthur and Licht.

Arendt burst into laughter at the sensation.

‘but.’

Running away wasn’t exactly ‘Arendt-like’ either.

* * *

The army, without its commander, quickly fell into ruin.

Because of the reckless reckless charging of Leo and the 3rd Knights, more than half of the enemies had already been killed.

In the midst of all this, as soon as Jiklin died, the enemies fell into confusion, and it was easy to deal with the remnants who were wandering around without even being able to properly figure out what to do.

But the Allied forces also did not understand what was happening.

However, the apprentice knight who knew the whole story right away was carried back by Licht, exhausted and passed out, so it was not something he could immediately catch and question.

After dealing with the homunculus and collecting the body, they became even more bewildered when they discovered the arrow that was Jiklin’s signature.

“Isn’t this what Prince Llewelyn uses?”

Rider nodded sheepishly as Glenn muttered incredulously.

“It seems like you were plotting something with Arendt… … .”

“Come to think of it, I haven’t seen the prince even once. And neither has Salem.”

Glenn frowned and covered Jiklin’s body with the cloth he had brought earlier.

“This seems suspicious.”

“Let’s investigate together with the captain later.”

The rider chuckled with a scarred face.

After the soldiers carried the body out on the stretcher, the knights and Prince Ludwin also returned to the barracks.

The people who welcomed them back with their tired bodies were Llewelyn and Salem, who had awkward smiles on their faces.

“Hehehe. Thank you for your hard work, hyung.”

As soon as he saw Llewelyn, holding a bow in one hand and smiling bashfully, Ludwin hit his forehead with a loud sound.

And that evening.

An interrogation session was held under the guise of a meeting, with most of the key personnel, excluding those with serious injuries, gathered together.

“No, that’s what I meant… … . How should I put it? He told me that since it was a matter for the Everan Kingdom, I should take care of it myself.”

Llewelyn, who had been targeted, scratched his cheek with a pretended troubled expression.

“To borrow Arendt’s words, it was all a play.”

“A play… you say?”

Llewelyn nodded as Ludwin asked doubtfully.

“Yes. From the beginning, Arendt’s plan to kill Sieglin was a lie.”

Everyone had no doubt that Arendt would personally destroy Sieglin. Even Sieglin himself believed so firmly.

“As you pointed out at the beginning, Jiklin can use teleportation. Plus, there’s always a spirit guarding her side.”

In fact, it was nearly impossible to approach and kill them directly.

“That’s why I came up with this method. Captain Lyos moved to retake the castle, and Arendt led a separate force to deal with Gecklin. That’s how I got Gecklin’s attention.”

“Because Sieglin also wanted to kill Arendt.”

Salem, who had been silently standing next to me, chimed in.

“Lord Arendt called the two of us aside and spoke to us. He told us to use the spirits to tell Lord Arendt where Ziklin was, and then we were to hide and wait in a spot where we could aim our arrows at her.”

Finding a suitable location also required the help of spirits.

Llewelyn continued.

“If Salem’s spirit is hovering around, Zicklin will surely realize that Arendt is after her.”

From there on, it was a play to trap Jiklin.

“There is prey right in front of you, and it seems like you can get it if you do it right… … There is no way that the greedy Sieglin would run away so easily. That is what Arendt said. I did prepare for the possibility that Sieglin might run away first.”

Salem added hurriedly to those who were looking at Llewelyn with faces full of betrayal.

“So at first, Luna checked, and when Arendt got close, Ray checked in turns. If the enemy got away first, we needed to come up with a plan for the next step.”

Arendt charged into the enemy lines with a terrifying momentum, like a hunting dog that had found its target.

Jiklin also willingly accepted his challenge, confident that he could escape at any time.

Since Jiklin, who cannot fight directly, can only use human wave tactics using ghouls, it was fully predictable that he would try to solve the problem by using his overwhelming numbers.

“Arendt, who had broken through the enemies and reached Ziklin, created a brief opening for me to shoot an arrow. The spirits watching nearby gave a signal to Salem at the right time.”

It was a situation where the hero of the Holy Sword and the apprentice knight known as the arch-enemy of the Chernion Church were running wild. In such a situation, no one would pay attention to the secret movements of just two people.

In fact, Ludwin was also completely unaware of Llewelyn and Salem’s whereabouts.

“When I shoot using the artifact, the spirits will control the direction of the arrow and aim for Jiklin. That’s the strategy. If the spirits intervene, at least the risk of missing will be reduced.”

Since Ziklin was initially only interested in Arendt, he probably didn’t even care about the youngest prince.

“And the reason why I kept it a secret from everyone… … .”

Llewelyn swallowed hard and continued to speak hesitantly.

“Since both my brother and the Knights are so clumsy at acting, if you act rashly and without any plan, you might get caught before you even take a single step.”

Although he tried to package it and convey it in nice words, it probably came across as even more rude and arrogant.

Ludwin, who had been listening to the explanation with a blank expression, licked his lips.

“No, what is this… … .”

It was extremely risky. First of all, it was a plan that could only be accomplished if we could break through the monsters’ encirclement and reach Jiklin.

If Jiklin had noticed the operation in advance and fled, or if Laius’s forces had been pushed back even a little in the battle, they would have been in an awkward situation.

There would only be one chance, so it was entirely possible that Llewelyn would make a mistake.

But Arendt risked it all and even risked her life to act as bait.

Even though no proper countermeasures were explained, the Imperial Knights who simply believed in Arendt and ran wild were also beyond common sense.

‘No.’

In fact, the most absurd thing is that it all worked out so well.

Moreover, it was outrageous that his younger brother, who had the merit of killing the enemy leader, was watching him closely as if he had done something wrong.

“……ha.”

Sighs could be heard here and there, as if others were feeling the same way.

Ludwin pressed his temples to relieve the mounting headache.

Rather than trying to understand it with my head, I thought it would be better for my mental health to just accept the results right in front of me.