Ch#38
Marianne opened her eyes vacantly.
“What do you mean ‘no’……”
“After Father passed…… that time……”
Silence fell between the three.
When Raoul couldn’t continue for a long while, Enzo stepped in.
“Mom cried every night and kept trying to walk into the lake whenever she had a chance……”
Marianne hadn’t been in her right mind.
She’d started worrying excessively that Raoul and Enzo might leave the world just like her husband.
On days when her stress peaked, she’d even have seizures and faint.
“We quit the Holy Knight Order not because Dad died.”
It had been to calm Marianne even a little.
But the twins hadn’t told her that outright.
At the request of their grandmother, the Wavebrill Marquis.
‘……Raoul, Enzo. This old lady’s begging you.’
‘…….’
‘There’s only one way to save your withering mother. You two.’
Only Raoul and Enzo could keep Marianne tethered to life.
‘I have to save my daughter Marianne somehow. Even if it means using you boys she cherishes so dearly.’
Raoul had pretended to hang out with delinquent friends as the Marquis instructed.
Enzo had pretended to starve himself, holing up in his room.
After that, everything unfolded just as the Marquis had predicted.
Marianne slowly came to her senses seeing the twins unraveling.
She’d secretly been pleased when they left the Order and accepted the Pearl City Governor position.
“……I was scared too. Just like Grandmother.”
Enzo bit his lip and muttered.
“That’s why we quit the Order. To make Mom feel even a little better.”
Marianne’s expression grew more and more dazed.
She’d never dreamed the twins were thinking like this.
“Enzo’s right. Mom always seemed relieved when we were falling apart without her having to do anything. Of course, we knew in our heads that wasn’t it. We knew she was doing it out of worry for us……”
Raoul ruffled his hair as if conflicted.
Marianne still couldn’t reply.
Because deep down, she’d vaguely sensed it too.
‘……Yes.’
The boys were right.
She’d wanted to take their swords away and keep them by her side forever.
Out of fear she’d lose them just like her husband otherwise.
Tears slowly welled in Marianne’s eyes.
“The Governor position…… Grandmother arranged it herself.”
She collapsed into her seat.
She’d thought it odd that the offer came to her, whose administrative experience was limited to family chores.
The twins quitting the Order had felt the same.
Raoul and Enzo took after their father—always upright and strict.
Grieving their father’s death was natural, but abandoning their swords entirely like they’d lost all will seemed excessive.
Yet she hadn’t stopped them.
She hadn’t urged them to keep striving.
As a parent, she’d left her faltering sons be, as if waiting for it.
Her throat burned fiercely.
“Mom……”
Enzo approached and met her eyes.
“We’re not resenting you.”
Raoul placed a hand on her shoulder too.
“We’re not saying we quit the Order because of you or abandoned our swords because of you.”
A single tear slid down Marianne’s cheek.
She knew.
She knew best of all.
No one knew Raoul and Enzo like she did.
“Raoul, Enzo……”
Shame hit her, clearing her mind in a flash.
She’d watched the Necrolord wield the souls of the dead against enemies the whole time.
When she’d seen those shadowy human forms, one thought had filled her head.
‘My husband might be……’
Until now, she’d thought death was the end.
That her husband had returned to dust, never to be seen or met again.
But the Necrolord had shown her.
A path where people could exist even after death.
“If your father was watching me, he’d have been disappointed.”
Marianne clenched her fists.
Her husband had wanted to raise Raoul and Enzo into proper men.
They’d joined the Holy Knight Order following him because they’d inherited that will.
“Instead of being your pillar, I……”
“That’s not true.”
Enzo hugged Marianne.
Raoul gripped both her hands tight.
“Your very existence is our pillar.”
“…….”
“That’s why we’re taking up the sword again. At first, we thought just putting it down would make you okay, but it didn’t seem like it.”
Marianne nodded, her face complicated as she froze.
When she’d first learned Raoul and Enzo were stranded at sea, her vision had gone white.
Without this conversation right now, she might’ve kept them from ever leaving the Governance Hall again.
Marianne’s lips parted after the long silence.
“……What do you plan to do?”
Did taking up the sword again mean returning to the Holy Knight Order?
Raoul and Enzo had inherited holy power like their father, so resuming training now could still make them proper Holy Knights.
If not, they could be knighted within the family.
But what came from the twins’ mouths was utterly unexpected.
“We’re going to follow those people.”
Marianne’s eyes widened at Raoul’s words.
Enzo lowered his voice beside him.
“We’ve never told you properly. Why Father…… ended up like that.”
To the speechless Marianne, Enzo explained calmly.
“It was at the Capital’s border. A battlefield where four units were sieging a large Mana Stone together.”
“…….”
“Near the end of the siege, a small Mana Stone spawned, right in a civilian area. The problem was it was technically outside the Capital borders.”
Marianne’s lips parted slightly.
Mana Stones outside the Capital were mostly handled by mercenaries.
Holy Knights stepped in sometimes, but it was rare.
Holy Knights were the empire and church’s forces.
They moved only on imperial or church orders, so permission for outside sieges was hard to come by.
“Dad kept pushing to siege it. The higher-ups seemed to think we should for civilian protection too……”
The issue was the empire refusing, citing irreplaceable troops.
Unable to mobilize fully, a small unofficial squad formed within the unit.
Raoul and Enzo’s father had fallen at the front like that.
Through the commander’s consideration, he was recorded as dying inside the Capital.
Otherwise, he’d have been dishonorably discharged as AWOL, dying in an accident.
“……If permission had come faster, Father wouldn’t have ended up like that.”
That civilian Mana Stone had been small.
A few more troops could’ve prevented casualties like that.
“Pearl City too.”
Marianne looked up.
“The way the Capital uses Holy Knights is inefficient from the start. Pearl City’s basically part of the Capital now, but we got no help today.”
“…….”
“Holy Knights effectively only protect the imperial family, church, and nobles clustered in the Capital core.”
Raoul was right.
Marianne recalled the mercenaries refusing the siege earlier.
Without Agabert, she couldn’t even imagine how much the village would’ve been destroyed tonight.
“If saving lives and slaying monsters is a holy mission, mercenaries feel holier than Holy Knights sometimes.”
Enzo nodded too.
He stared at the Necrolord gathering Monster Cores from the deck.
Black shapes still floated around her.
Church higher-ups would be horrified, calling it sinister power, but
“……Me too. To my eyes, that feels more like holy power.”
