How to Live as a Knight After the Ending

Chapter 90: The Raid (1)

Osian left the mansion after finishing the agreement that he would receive the compensation later.

Dyke stared out the window.

Dustin, his trusted henchman, had been sent away as well, leaving only Delan, the third, to keep him company.

It was then that Dyke spoke up.

“You’ve gotten a lot better at reading people. You’ve picked a good one, a rare one. Don’t let this one commission be the end of our relationship.”

“You don’t have to say that, I know.”

Dyke gave a small shake of his head.

“Delan, do you still resent me?”

“How can I say I resent you?”

“Of course you do, because you’re more like me than anyone else.”

Dyke took a moment to compose himself.

“As for money. How ugly it is.”

“…….”

“People fight and slander and kill each other for it, and there are men who would lick the filth off the streets if they could get it. Some of them pretend they don’t, but in the end they want it. I’ve seen too many of them over the years, too many…….”

It was because of this that Dyke came to judge the world by money.

After the Industrial Revolution, the world became a better place to live than it had ever been before but ironically, the world became more extreme as it became more affluent.

The rich became endlessly wealthy, while the poor became so poor that their skins dried up and rotted.

The harsh labor conditions did not discriminate against children.

Children were charred, suffocated, or burned to death while sweeping chimneys.

They might as well have been sweeping chimneys.

A child lured into a coal mine was even more hopeless.

The long, dark, narrow coal mine passageways were difficult for adults to navigate.

Children were pushed into them simply because they were smaller and moved easier.

Six days a week.

Twelve hours a day.

In damp, dark, suffocating, lightless conditions, they toiled and died.

Dyke could still see it in his mind’s eye.

The shafts shaking. The collapsing ceiling.

His brothers and sisters, close friends who worked with him, were crushed to death, leaving a pool of red blood below.

Dyke was the only survivor of the collapsing shaft.

It was a stroke of luck. He had a few scars, but nothing crippling.

Maybe it wasn’t just luck, maybe it was fate.

In a collapsing shaft, a place with no food or water until someone from the outside came to rescue them, he had seen a vein of gold in a coal mine and that brilliant golden color that shone like stars in the darkness.

A child, unaware of the world’s rationales, saw such beauty in the face of death.

In that moment, the child became a man and a gold madman was born.

“I didn’t meet my current wife out of love either. When I started to make money, I had matchmakers from everywhere, and I met a lady from a family that was the easiest to invest in a new business at the time.”

In the end, his current mistress was also a relationship built on the desire for money.

There was a reason Dyke thought everything was about money.

“But your mother was different.”

“…….”

At the mention of his mother, Delan flinched under his mask of bluntness.

“I thought everyone in the world was greedy for money, and I was a lot more arrogant and convinced of that then than I am now. Yeah, I was a kid, let’s just say it. An asshole.”

“How did you meet my mother?”

“I just happened to stumble upon a possible new gold mine, so I went to explore the area myself. I bumped into her in a village I stopped at, and let’s just say she was very beautiful for someone living in a place so remote.”

But when Dyke met her, he fell in love.

“She was so kind to me, never saying no to me, even though I was arrogant, and yet she was not greedy. Even when I offered her a vast fortune, she said no.”

“That’s amazing, that father loved my mother.”

“I didn’t realize it until it was too late, because I was so full of energy at the time, I didn’t know it was real love. Looking back, I realize she was important to me.”

Dyke flashes a bittersweet smile.

“She hid the fact that I had a child when I left, and she never spent a dime of the money I left her.”

Delan’s mother raised him solely on her own.

She worked in a factory, sewed for a living, and helped clean the house.

She had enough money to last her a lifetime, but she never touched it.

It was Dyke’s money, not hers.

Eventually, she collapsed from overwork and died, and it wasn’t until later that Dyke realized her death and Delan’s existence.

“She was the only light I ever saw in my life, a light more precious and beautiful than gold. The way she smiled, yes……it was like the moonlight that used to grace the night sky.”

Perhaps it was for this reason that when he saw the Moonstone he kept it near him.

It reminded him of the light of the woman he loved so dearly and the flesh and blood she left behind.

A child who was so much more like him than his ugly first and second, a child with eyes like a beast.

“I thought I would never see another like her again, but the world is a big place, and here I am today, facing another.”

Dyke remembered Osian.

His eyes hadn’t wavered when he offered him gold.

If only the woman he loved were like the light of the moon, Osian was like a brilliant star.

“Delan. You are my son. Her last and only gift to this world.”

“…….”

“I didn’t say I was going to show you paternal love now, just life advice from a former patriarch to the next patriarch. Feel free to let it go out of one ear and out the other.”

Dyke tore his gaze away from the window and looked straight at Delan.

“Never let a man like that get away. You can go in with your head down, because a relationship with someone like that is more precious than gold.”

“That’s pretty normal coming from a gold maniac.”

“You change with age, I guess, although I don’t know about those other three crazy old men.”

*

Osian got into the car and drove away.

It was a brand-new car from the Goldiron family, and it came with a chauffeur.

‘They said they’d send the tax man later.’

Staring out the window at the passing scenery, Osian reflected on what he’d gotten.

‘I finished the job, learned how to reduce my taxes, and made a solid connection with the Goldiron family.’

He’d even saved the life of the next Lord Goldiron, Delan Goldiron.

No debt is as great as the debt of life.

At least in Osian’s opinion, Delan was not the kind of man to ignore his debts.

‘I’ve gained the most important thing a fixer lacks: a backer.’

Fixers may work with brokers, but that doesn’t mean they’re a tight-knit group.

Violet Fox was an outlier. Basically, their relationship was cold business.

If a fixer has a problem, the broker cuts them off and often leaves them in the dark.

The broker’s union may or may not defend the fixer but fixers were strictly individuals.

‘The fixers could get together and form a union, but it’s funny, because they’re freelancers, it’s hard to organize.’

Usually, you have to be recognized by the industry to form a union, and there was no need for a union at that point.

It’s a world of self-reliance.

Sometimes they would work together on a project, but the next day they would be enemies.

It was a harsh world where yesterday’s comrades-in-arms were shooting at each other today.

Working in such a place, fixers were desperate to have a ‘backer’.

‘That’s why fixers with a reputation are often employed by or under the aegis of a company or organization.’

And what is a good backer?

Big business, Tirna’s civil service, the military?

Different people have different preferences, and the answers will vary widely, but Osian will tell you this.

‘A very rich godfather.’

Not the kind you bow down to, but the kind of benefactor that owes you his life.

‘However I got something more important than that idealized relationship.’

It was the power of Moonlight.

Along with the Starlight, it is the power of the Knights of the Sky.

Unlike the seemingly monotonous power of the Starlight, it allows for a variety of responses in a myriad of situations.

‘The power of Moonlight. And the form in which it has remained in this world.’

It took the name Moonstone.

Could other fragments of power remain like this stone?

Osian didn’t think so.

‘In the case of Starlight, it grew even stronger during my time with Princess Orlea, which means that shards of power don’t simply remain in material form like the Moonstone.’

Power could also be strengthened by the bonds between people.

‘In other words, a person could have a shard of the power within them.’

Some people might not even realize it but there will inevitably be those who wield it.

‘I have more work to do.’

Whatever this power is, Osian didn’t think much of it.

His senses, or rather, his knightly intuition, guided him through this latest apparition.

‘It’s a bit unexpected that my senses have become strangely enhanced. I don’t recall the original Sky Knight having this trait.’

Like when he saw something red in the muzzle of the gun aimed at Princess Orlea before she was assassinated.

Or seeing red flashes in dangerous places.

I don’t know if it’s because I’ve taken on the body of a knight, but my sense of danger has increased to the point of near-precognition.

I can’t see danger to others, but I can sense danger to myself.

Like right now, for example, when the interior of the car is flooded with red energy.

-Boom!

The vehicle flipped violently and rolled on the ground with an explosion.

The cause was a mortar from outside.

It was a surprise attack as we drove through an undeveloped area between districts, so the driver had no time to react.

And even though the car was bulletproof, as modern vehicles go, the power of the blast far exceeded that.

“That’s killing it!”

One by one, shadows emerged from among the incomplete buildings.

They whistled at the sight of a junked car engulfed in red flames and belching black smoke.

“I guess you get what you pay for, huh? No matter how expensive a car is, one shot of gunpowder like this and it’s bang, isn’t it?”

“The guy in the back would be dead in a heartbeat.”

“That’s why I shot him. It’s a shame, because rumor has it that he recently touched a lot of money but he’s gone before he could use it properly.”

“With that kind of power, even the most physically enhanced mutant would be reduced to charcoal.”

The raiders chuckled.

They felt no guilt for killing a man.

It was then that I heard a voice overhead.

“You ambushed me, I see.”

“Who are you?”

The raiders turned to follow the voice.

Osian stood atop a ramshackle steel beam, looking down at them.

“Uh, how?”

The mortar had been a surprise and he shouldn’t have had time to notice and react but Osian didn’t bother to answer.

As soon as he saw the ominous red aura, he slammed the door and ran outside, and the car exploded immediately afterward.

Distracted by the explosion, the attackers didn’t notice that Osian had escaped unharmed.

He survived, but unfortunately, the driver did not.

“It’s a shame, because I kind of liked the car.”

As a fixer, you build up grudges somewhere along the way, but he never expected to be ambushed in broad daylight so soon.

“As for who you’re working for, I’ll have to take my time.”

The sword at Osian’s waist, sheathed in a bluish frost, glowed.