_Clang clang._
The familiar sound of armor started ringing from the far end of the path. I looked up. With the flickering yellow and orange of the torches, knights in silver armor were approaching.
Familiar armor and familiar weapons.
It was Iris, Lize, and Erica. Lize was in the front, with Iris and Erica flanking her. Their weapons confirmed it.
Lize spotted me and turned to say something to the others behind her. Then she strode towards me with quick steps. I also stood up from my spot.
Lize strapped her weapon to her waist and took off her helmet. Her long blue hair flowed down as she shook it out. One of her eyes, uncovered by hair, was gazing at me meaningfully.
She waved her hand in greeting.
“You came earlier than I thought?”
“Is that the first thing you say when we meet?”
I smiled awkwardly. However, Lize didn’t smile back. _Zing,_ her gaze pierced through me.
From her expression and eyes, it didn’t seem like she was actually angry with me, but it was clear that this was not a situation to brush off. There was a strong determination in her eyes that she wanted a solid answer.
“I don’t actually have much to say other than this… _Cough._”
Before I could finish, her gauntleted hands grabbed my cheeks and pulled me closer. Lize’s face was right in front of mine. I tried to create some space, but her palms held me tightly in place.
“I have a lot to say. Right, newbie?”
“I was joking. Sorry. So, could you let go of me?”
She continued to hold my face close to hers for a while, staring at me, before finally letting go. I plopped down onto the ground. Her blue eyes looked down at me.
“Why didn’t you tell us in advance? That you’d go off on your own like this. You could have opened up to us.”
This was a question I had been pondering the entire time I sat here. Lize was glaring at me with eyes that seemed to say she’d better not hear a vague answer.
The most fundamental reason was that I was hoping if we faced the Rock Centipede all at once, its aggro wouldn’t focus on one person, allowing it to bounce around. However, I couldn’t just bluntly state that.
What if the commanders took it as interfering with my plans? Perhaps that was an exaggerated thought, but I didn’t want to give them even a hint of that.
That was absolutely not the case, and I was not thinking that at all. It would be a help rather than a hindrance. If it wasn’t a boss I had to take down, I planned to leave the subjugation to the commanders as it came.
Of course, early on, the experience from defeating bosses is significantly high, but by mid-game, the gap became quite manageable through grinding.
Moreover, in the builds used in the Darkest Light Mod, as long as the Divine Power and Mana were moderately leveled up, it didn’t really matter whether the level went up afterwards.
As long as I could maintain control to overcome the level and stat disparities, I wouldn’t mind missing out on the boss subjugation experience from the early stages.
“Is just brushing it off with that explanation okay?”
“Do you think it will work?”
By then, Iris and Erica had also approached, looking at me with similar expressions as Lize. The weight of their scrutinizing gazes felt immense with two more pairs of eyes on me.
But just like Lize, Iris and Erica didn’t seem genuinely angry either.
If Lize was pouting about why I didn’t tell them beforehand, then Iris and Erica showed a hint of reproach hidden in their concerns.
“So, what’s your answer?”
I blurted out the second, most obvious reason.
“I didn’t want you to get hurt.”
“……?”
In an instant, Lize’s eyes widened. The expression on her face was as if she couldn’t believe what she just heard. Iris and Erica behind her had similar reactions.
“Wait a second. What did you just say?”
“I said I didn’t want you to get hurt.”
“……Hurt? Us?”
“Well, who else is here? Of course, it’s you guys.”
Her blue eyes started spinning in confusion. It seemed she was trying to process what I was saying.
“Newbie, are you seriously saying you were worried about us?”
“No matter how much it’s you guys, you would have died instantly if you fell from that height. I think it’s strange not to worry about that.”
“How high are you talking about?”
Lize’s face scrunched up.
She had to pretend to be upset, but it seemed she was quite pleased that I was worried for them, as her lips twitched in a small smile. It gave her an oddly endearing look overall.
“I would say it felt like almost 20 seconds before I hit the ground. Doesn’t that give you an idea of the height?”
All NPCs, except for a few special ones, were not resistant to falling damage. Though due to game mechanics, it was impossible to defeat bosses through falling, tests by some players indicated that it was indeed the case.
Taking falling damage was structured so that a percentage of your max HP would be deducted at certain heights during a drop, so at a height like this cave’s, death was pretty much guaranteed.
That’s why falling attacks had to bypass that falling damage.
“So you mean you managed to stay unscathed?”
“Of course. I’m over here, alive and moving.”
“And you’re not going to tell us how you did that?”
“I’m not withholding information; I just can’t explain. I rely on instinct rather than knowledge.”
I still wasn’t sure if Iris, Lize, and Erica would have been able to execute falling attacks.
They couldn’t parry enemy attacks, and though I tried to make them roll, they had no invincibility frame during the roll and didn’t trigger special abilities of other weapons aside from their own.
It felt like they only knew what NPCs were supposed to know. It seemed much stranger to think they could perform falling attacks while not being able to parry or roll.
Before coming here, I had asked if they knew how to land safely by using enemies as stepping stones when falling from high places, but all four of them just had question marks hovering over their heads.
“Well, I just tried it and it worked out.” I was in no position to teach them anything. How was I supposed to explain why my rolls had invincibility frames?
“As much as it is, that’s an overreaction, Newbie. You don’t need to worry about us—”
“Why shouldn’t I worry about you?”
“……Huh?”
Erica blinked, momentarily speechless at my answer.
“It’s not like you won’t get hurt or die. If you get hit, it’ll hurt, and if you get injured, you could die. So why shouldn’t I worry?”
Even when facing a Rock Centipede, I intended to explain all its patterns. It’s hard to predict human behavior. I would continue to explain every time I assigned them to subjugate in my place.
Right now, their resilience was so flimsy that they would get stuck in infinite stun if a colossal boss hit them even once, ultimately leading to their demise. In the Darkest Light Mod, intervals between attacks were significantly shorter than vanilla, making it even riskier.
And the most crucial factor was the fact that if the commanders hadn’t dodged early and stayed with me, they would have fallen and died from falling damage.
They couldn’t nullify falling damage. Of course, I had to be worried.
“We’re knights, Newbie. If we must die, we’re always ready for that, and it’s our duty to do so.”
“You are humans before you are knights. You might die someday, but it shouldn’t be today. And it won’t be like that in the future. I won’t let that happen while I’m around.”
There were so many monsters that would need to be subjugated in my place, and I would never accept them dying foolishly from falling or being killed by a Rock Centipede.
Their lives were tied to mine; there was no way I would allow that.
“I’m sorry for not telling you in advance. But in that situation, it was the best I could do. I didn’t want to drag you into something I could handle myself.”
“Newbie…”
Once I finished speaking, Lize seemed to sparkle with her eyes, while Iris and Erica were looking at me with eyes that had evidently changed.
‘Did I make it?’
I had no idea where I had succeeded, but it seemed I had managed to smooth things over for now. I let out a sigh of relief inwardly. I was glad it hadn’t ended badly.
“So about what comes next… Um, are you listening?”
I was going to explain the patterns of the Rock Centipede, but for some reason, they all looked like they were lost in their own thoughts and weren’t hearing my words.
Though Lize always behaved like that, why were Iris and Erica acting like this?
‘An unusual guy.’
That was the thought simultaneously floating in Iris and Erica’s minds. It could only be described as an unusual guy.
Here was a newbie who had just recently joined the knights, but not only had he soloed a monster that even the commanders failed to subjugate, he had also cleared almost a hundred monsters over several days.
Here was a newbie who had just joined the knights but showed no hesitation in his actions and always produced the best outcomes.
Here was a newbie who had just joined but was able to match their years of rigorous knight training and even worried for them.
Such things should not normally occur. Who would ever think to worry about someone else? Even if they wanted to, they wouldn’t have had the strength to do so, given that they couldn’t use their full abilities due to a curse.
‘It feels strange.’
But curiously enough, being worried over by the newbie made a part of them feel ticklish.
They had lived a life quite distant from such feelings. It was only natural to fight at the forefront as a knight, and death had always been nearby.
The Empress had felt the same. Being the strongest in the Empire, she had no reason to care about mere knights.
Many members had fallen to the monsters. Yet, though they mourned and feared death, there was never a thought of worrying about dying.
Fear of death was natural, but dying was just as natural. There was no reason to worry or even accept the notion. If one died, it simply meant their life had reached its end. That was the only thought they had held until now.
‘Being human before being a knight, huh…?’
Yet this man was different. He was declaring that what was obvious wasn’t so obvious. Everything about it was new to them.
In fact, it wasn’t even a pretentious display of concern hidden behind disingenuous words. There was sincerity in his eyes. He was genuinely worried about the commanders who were much stronger than he was.
People could shrug it off saying, “Who’s worrying about whom?” They could joke back, saying, “Worry about yourself and grow a little first.” They could laugh it off as a light-hearted jest.
But no one did. No one wanted to.
For some reason, it felt like a strangely satisfying feeling.
