My Husband Was Clearly a Paladin
Chapter 22
“Come in!”
At the sound of his voice—one she hadn’t expected to hear—Irene startled and stood up abruptly.
Wilhelmina was the same.
Soon after, the door opened and Michael entered, looking exactly as he always did.
His short blond hair was neatly styled without a single strand out of place. Below it, his face remained calm, bordering on expressionless. Even beneath his wrinkle-free formal uniform, his solid, muscular build was impossible to hide.
There was no trace of the man who had come to this room in secret last night to ask for purification.
Irene lowered her head, feeling tense at the sight of the orderly Holy Knight she remembered.
“What brings you….”
She started to ask what brought him here, but quickly shut her mouth, realizing how foolish the question was.
This place was provided under the guise of a reward.
In the first place, Michael was the owner of these quarters, and weren’t the two of them a pair? A pair didn’t exactly need a reason to seek out their partner.
Irene stole a glance at Wilhelmina. It seemed Wilhelmina was so distracted by Michael that she hadn’t noticed Irene was acting awkward around him.
Irene pulled herself together and approached him with a smile.
“Sir Michael, you’ve come again.”
She deliberately emphasized the word ‘again’ and checked Wilhelmina’s reaction once more.
Sure enough, Wilhelmina seemed to have caught the implication, as she was biting her lip hard.
Ever since she entered the room, she hadn’t been able to hide her envy.
‘And now that we look close, she’s going to lose it even more.’
It was exactly what Irene wanted. And Wilhelmina would undoubtedly report all of this to Princess Cecilia.
Even when Irene had lived quietly, the Princess had openly ignored and mocked her. Bowing down now would change nothing.
‘Then is there any need to bow?’
The moment she paired with Michael, it was certain the Princess would hate her. There was no need to be considerate of the feelings of someone who chose to hate her regardless.
Just then, Michael replied to Irene’s greeting with a faint smile.
“Yes, I’ve ended up coming again.”
He emphasized the word ‘again’ as if he knew exactly why she had said it that way.
Then, he looked at Wilhelmina.
“Would you mind leaving now? I have something urgent to discuss with my pair.”
His tone was polite. However, the content was closer to an order to get out rather than a request for understanding.
But seeing his gentle smile, Wilhelmina didn’t think that far and nodded vigorously.
“Ah. Yes, yes!”
Answering hurriedly, Wilhelmina rushed out of the room. Even so, remembering the command the Princess had given her, she called out to Irene.
“I’ll send the invitation with a maid! You have to come, don’t forget!”
She ended up slamming the door and fleeing after meeting Michael’s chilling gaze, though.
“I apologize for interrupting your conversation. It seems you’ve received an invitation.”
Conversation, my foot.
Irene thought that to herself, but she didn’t want to explicitly reveal her dislike for Wilhelmina and the Princess.
Irene simply nodded in response and asked back.
“But what brings you here?”
“What else would I want from my pair?”
Though his tone was calm, Irene’s face instantly flushed at his words.
It was because she remembered purifying him last night.
To anyone watching, she must have looked like she was consumed by uncontrollable lust.
Because of that, she had been in a daze even after waking up this morning, unable to fully regain her composure.
If he was asking to do that again in broad daylight….
In her flustered state, Irene reflexively took a step back.
‘Does Michael not know?’
In the past, she rarely had the chance to speak to him, so she never dared to ask how he experienced purification.
‘Regardless, he seems to feel it differently than I do.’
If he felt the same way.
A Holy Knight like him wouldn’t come seeking it in the middle of the day. Then she suddenly remembered that it was a time when maids were still wandering the hallways.
If she attempted purification now and couldn’t suppress her moans like last time….
As her thoughts reached that point, her face grew even redder.
Furthermore.
‘I might have been out of my mind, but Michael would have seen everything!’
In an instant, a wave of embarrassment washed over her, making it impossible to lift her head.
“Ah, um. That, if it’s for purification….”
Irene stammered as she spoke to him.
“Purification is fine. Thanks to you, I can hardly feel the demonic energy now.”
Irene swallowed a sigh of relief at Michael’s answer.
‘Does he really feel it differently?’
Besides, he had looked quite different then compared to now. He had looked unraveled, as if he were searching for something.
‘Did the demonic energy cloud his reason?’
If so, he might not clearly remember how unsightly she had behaved.
“Then, for what reason….”
If not for purification, was there any other reason for him to seek her out? No matter how much she thought about it, she couldn’t find one.
“I would like you to go to a dungeon with me.”
“…!”
Irene’s eyes widened at Michael’s words.
Of course, for a normal pair, entering a dungeon together was expected.
But that wasn’t the case for Irene and Michael.
His abilities were so overwhelming that he rarely got hurt, and the rate at which he was poisoned by demonic energy was incredibly slow.
“It is dangerous, so please wait at the fortress.”
In her past life, he had said those words and never took Irene into a dungeon.
So she had assumed he would naturally roam the dungeons alone this time as well.
In fact, during the week since they arrived at the fortress, they had never entered a dungeon together, except for Dungeon 181, which Irene had specifically asked to enter.
To suddenly be asked to go together was bound to be bewildering.
“Ice-type monsters will appear, so please dress warmly. I will be waiting outside.”
Having said that, Michael gave a polite nod and stepped back out.
Left in a daze, Irene hurried to her dressing room.
‘What is really going on?’
The fact that he was taking her along felt strange.
It was something she had desperately wanted in her past life. Every pair entered dungeons together to prepare for potential dangers.
But he had called it dangerous and left her behind at the fortress.
To put it kindly, it was protection from danger. But in truth, Irene wasn’t unaware that it meant she was of no help and should stay tucked away in the fortress so as not to get in the way.
‘And yet he’s asking me to accompany him. Just what kind of dungeon is it?’
It must be a dangerous dungeon where even her weak purification abilities were necessary.
Tense, Irene made sure to layer her clothes and put on basic protective gear.
*
*
*
And an hour later.
“This place is….”
She didn’t even have to ask the Kingdom Alliance staff standing far off from the entrance. This place was….
“It’s an unstable dungeon.”
Unlike other dungeons, the entrance wasn’t a neat circle.
Seeing the entrance warp and shift its shape several times even as they watched, those seeing an unstable dungeon for the first time would have let out gasps of surprise and stepped back.
It wasn’t just the shape of the entrance that was different. While other dungeon entrances were pitch-black voids, unstable dungeons sometimes took on different colors.
Even so, the fact that one couldn’t see what lay beyond remained the same.
“Are you well-acquainted with unstable dungeons?”
“Just a little.”
Unstable dungeons had appeared several times in her past life as well.
In the first place, hadn’t all the ones that appeared in the Kingdom of Tyrrenia been unstable dungeons?
Unlike regular dungeons, their internal structures were different, and new types of monsters often appeared within them.
That was why they were difficult places to attempt a subjugation.
More than that, what sent a chill down Irene’s spine was the size and ominous aura of the dungeon entrance.
“But this… it looks like it’s at least Intermediate-rank. Is that right?”
“Most likely.”
Michael answered as if it were no big deal, but Irene felt a shiver run through her body.
Neither in her past life nor in this one had she ever entered an Intermediate-rank dungeon.
‘Even Lower-rank dungeons that were close to the lowest rank were scary….’
She wondered if she would truly freeze up from fear once she stepped inside.
Regardless, she had to enter, so Irene prepared herself mentally and asked him a question.
“If it’s an Intermediate-rank unstable dungeon… how many other pairs are we going with?”
A regular dungeon might be one thing, but the risk of an unstable dungeon was far too high.
‘Even in the past, he never entered this kind of dungeon alone.’
Since he had gone in with others while leaving his pair, Irene, behind, she had only learned of his participation through the records after the subjugation was over.
She couldn’t count how many times she had swallowed her bitterness while looking at subjugation logs that lacked only her name.
Still, she asked him, thinking that this time she would at least be able to put her name on the log.
“It is just the two of us.”
“…Pardon?”
An answer she hadn’t expected at all came back to her.
