Please Vote for Your Knight! Chapter 55

A new banner was soon hung up.

It was a banner displaying the names of the members of each group.

< Group 1 >
Joan Ginola, ?th place
David Sheffield, 41st place
Kusto, 3rd place
Dmitri Cassel, 27th place
Killian Grouchy, 7th place
Olivier Morty, 15th place
Grimal Baldo, 9th place
Clover Reed, 31st place
Paul Videta, 22nd place

< Group 2 >
David Vertier, ?th place
Maurice Arnaud, 6th place
Arsene Tan, 10th place
Christian Ron, 12th place
Pierre Simon, 19th place
Raphael Laurent, 8th place
Pavel Shurbe, 4th place
Denny Vinosh, 5th place
Travis Jicon, 52nd place

But each banner had two names paired together.

Except for the last person.

“Why are they paired up like that?”

“Are they going to make the two of them do something together?”

“What about the person left alone at the end?”

The knights murmured among themselves.

“All right, everyone, gather with your respective groups!”

Edith called out.

“Oh, and the knights who are paired together, line up in two rows!”

The knights quickly formed their formations.

Then Edith revealed the secret they had been hiding.

“All right. From this point on, you’ll be doing the courage test in pairs of two.”

“Figures.”

The knights weren’t particularly surprised, as if they had expected it.

They still have a long way to go before they’re surprised.

Edith smiled sweetly and continued.

“Fortunately, the last person left alone will be exempt from the courage test!”

The knights who had been left alone immediately shouted, “Wooo!”

Then, perhaps realizing how un-knightly they were acting, they quickly shut their mouths.

Suppressed laughter trickled through the crowd.

So they’re still this cheerful.

Soon, hell will unfold.

Edith laughed inwardly like a devil and said,

“You’ll enter the inside the arena and complete the assigned missions.”

“Yes!”

“The team with the lowest combined completion time will get to choose which mounted formation they want to perform! The mounted formations will be revealed after the courage test!”

“Yes! Understood!”

“Then, Group 1, first pair! Joan Ginola and David Sheffield! Please enter!”

The two stepped forward and followed a servant into the interior of the arena.

They then descended through a door that had been opened on the floor.

“There was a door here?”

Joan asked, and the servant gave him an eerie smile.

“That is why it is called a secret passage.”

The inside was damp and cold. Spiders and insects crawled around here and there.

The servant handed them a torch.

“Then I shall give you one torch. Have a safe trip.”

“Wait, you’re leaving already?”

“Have a safe trip.”

The servant said only what he needed to say and walked out.

“Wait!”

Bang!

And the door slammed shut.

 

***

 

How long had they been waiting?

At exactly six minutes and thirty seconds—

Crash! Bang!

The two burst out through the door they had entered, making a tremendous racket.

“AAAAH!”

“AAARGH!”

The torches they had been carrying had already gone out.

And the state they were in was absolutely pitiful.

They looked as though they had fallen down and rolled across the floor.

“Hey! What were you thinking, putting out the torch in there?!”

“Was it me who put it out? You shoved me when you got scared—!”

The two were arguing when they suddenly felt everyone’s eyes on them and quickly shut their mouths.

Edith gave the two who had just experienced hell a bright smile.

“Your record is six minutes and thirty seconds.”

“Ah, that’s faster than I thought…”

“We were pretty fast…”

“But you failed to complete all three missions, so you receive a ten-second penalty for each one. That’s a total penalty of thirty seconds, making your final record seven minutes!”

Joan and David’s faces crumpled.

Both of them clearly wanted to blame the other.

But they held back.

They were both desperate.

Joan had been fighting for first and second place all this time, but lately, he had occasionally fallen outside the top three.

David had started out near the top, but his ranking had plummeted after he coldly abandoned the dropouts during the naval battle. He was currently in forty-first place.

They had to make a good impression on the people—the so-called ‘Knights Commanders of the Empire.’

“All right, next is Group 1’s second pair! Kusto and Dmitri Cassel!”

The two entered with faint smiles on their faces.

Dmitri accepted the torch and politely addressed the servant.

“You may return now.”

“Are you certain? This is the . It is crawling with vengeful ghosts.”

“Haha. I don’t believe in such things.”

“If you insist…”

The servant left.

Bang!

Both Kusto and Dmitri flinched at the sound of the door closing.

But they pretended nothing had happened.

“Kusto, you just flinched.”

“What are you talking about? I did no such thing.”

“Really? Because I did the same.”

“This sort of thing isn’t frightening in the slightest.”

“Same here. After going through so many fierce battles, I’ve learned that the most frightening thing in this world is humanity.”

Dmitri spoke with a melancholy expression.

Kusto nodded with a cold gaze.

“I learned the same thing while living as a slave and working as a mercenary. Humans are the most frightening. Ghosts? One has never even appeared in front of me—”

That was when it happened.

Something bright red suddenly dropped from the ceiling.

“Kyaaaaaaaaah!”

It was a woman hanging upside down, her hair hanging loose.

But she was drenched in red from head to toe.

She opened her mouth, covered in blood, and screamed.

“Kyaaaaaaaah!”

“U-Ugh, AAH!”

“AAAAAAAH!”

The two men who had been acting so tough moments ago immediately bolted toward the end of the passage, neither waiting for the other.

 

***

 

“Gasp…”

“Haaah…”

Edith looked pitifully at Kusto and Dmitri, who were standing there with trembling legs.

Then she announced the results.

“Your record is three minutes and forty-seven seconds. Since you failed to complete one mission, you received an additional ten-second penalty, making your final record three minutes and fifty-seven seconds.”

Pale-faced, Kusto and Dmitri trudged back to their positions.

They looked like defeated soldiers returning from battle.

Even they seemed unable to believe the disgraceful spectacle they had just made of themselves.

“A-Are you okay?”

Killian cautiously asked.

“No.”

“I want to die.”

Dmitri and Kusto answered gloomily.

“Next up, Killian and Olivier!”

At Edith’s call, Killian stepped forward with a worried expression.

It was one thing for Joan’s team to turn out that way, but Kusto and Dmitri, who had been through every kind of hardship imaginable, had also come out looking like that.

Inside , Killian accepted a torch from the servant.

“Then I shall be leaving.”

“W-Wait a minute…!”

Killian hurriedly called after the servant, but the door had already slammed shut with a bang!

Olivier snickered.

“Are you afraid of ghosts?”

“I’m not afraid, exactly… M-My leg seems to be hurting again. Perhaps it’s because of the ghost?”

“No. Think about it. Scientifically speaking, ghosts don’t exist…”

Just as Olivier began displaying the cold rationality befitting the academy’s top student—

A blood-soaked woman suddenly dropped from the ceiling.

“…dooooooOOOOOOOAAAH!”

Olivier screamed and collapsed onto the floor.

Killian also flinched and bent his knees—not because of the blood-covered actress, but because of Olivier.

“AAAAAAAH!”

“I’m sorry.”

Killian dragged Olivier past the actress.

There was a button in front of him.

< Press the Button >

This must be the first mission.

Killian pressed the button and grumbled.

“What happened to ‘scientifically speaking, ghosts don’t exist’?”

“I-I-I-It was just a physiological response to being startled…”

Olivier hurriedly regained his composure and made an excuse.

But then—

“WAAAAAAAAAAAH!”

Olivier’s screams continued for quite some time afterward.

 

***

 

After the courage test.

Olivier practically had to be carried out by Killian.

Judging by his appearance, it was obvious what had happened inside.

The scrying orbs must have gotten some fantastic footage.

Edith suppressed her excitement at the thought of Editing it later and asked,

“How was the courage test?”

“I have to admit, ghosts are indeed frightening.”

“I-It was fine. G-Ghosts can’t be scientifically proven to exist, after all…”

Killian dragged Olivier away before he could finish.

“Killian and Olivier took five minutes. They also completed all the missions, so there is no penalty!”

The next pair, Grimal Baldo and Clover Reed, also failed miserably, recording a time of six minutes and twenty-three seconds.

Now it was Group 2’s turn.

“David Vertier and Maurice Arnaud! Please enter!”