I Resign From the Coin Mercenary Knights

The Lancart Margrave Territory.

Befitting its frontier margrave status, it was a place known for its rugged character, frequently experiencing battles against monsters. While it didn’t maintain its own knightly order, it employed several knights from the academy alongside a sizable standing militia.

An indispensable stronghold for the Empire.

So it was only natural for the Imperial Knights to be dispatched when this territory came under attack by hundreds of lizardmen.

Rescuing the commoners and reaffirming the loyalty of the margrave lords, pillars of the Empire – it was a glorious mission.

However, the faces of the knights who had come to rescue Lancart were distorted, unbecoming of those undertaking such a prestigious duty.

“We should have found a way out of this somehow.”

Those were the muttered words of the female knight Selina as she showed her battered body to a healer after the recent battle.
The healer glanced at her apprehensively before gingerly tending to her.

“Um, sir knight? Could you raise your arm slightly?”

“No priests?”

“Ah, my apologies. The number of priests with healing abilities is limited.”

“So you’re just going to bandage me up?”

Selina’s sarcastic remark made the healer flinch and glance around anxiously. But no amount of apprehension would grant her a healing spell.

“…Haha, don’t worry. Applying some infection-resistant herbs should do the trick soon enough.”

“Unbelievable, honestly. Patching up knights injured while rescuing your territory with chewed-up grass.”

“…My apologies.”

Selina clicked her tongue dismissively.

The healer tended to her wounds timidly. While healers were people too with feelings, few possessed the courage to argue with an Imperial Knight.

Selina was part of the expedition force deployed to rescue Lancart’s territory.

An astounding twenty-five knights had been dispatched this time.

Considering that the Imperial Knights were at least advanced experts, it was an overwhelming force. Even a faint wisp of an aura or a barely competent novice expert could effortlessly slaughter half a dozen orcs.

So at first, they had assumed the territorial rescue would be swiftly resolved – not just Selina, but the other knights as well.

Three hundred lizardmen? We’ll deal with them quickly and return to the Imperial City.
Yeah, no point wasting time here. That bastard Eric is probably scheming to protect his fortune as we speak.
Sirs, I’ve fought lizardmen during academy training, and they’re no easy opponents.
Quiet, Katie. Do you think there’s even one of us who hasn’t faced those reptilian runts before? Don’t talk nonsense.

At the time, Selina and her comrades were confident of a rapid return.

They possessed the skills to match that self-assurance. While lizardmen boasted several times the brute strength of a grown man, they were ultimately just mindless beasts, were they not? Moreover, the demon lord who had commanded them had already fallen to the hero’s party.
They had believed these leaderless rabble would be swiftly eradicated.

However, upon arrival and engagement, the lizardmen forces proved to be anything but a disorganized horde lacking leadership.

While a bit ragtag, they maintained at least a basic structure and were well-armed. Some of the stronger individuals wielded weapons on par with knights, and there were a few especially formidable specimens as well.

As a result, Selina had suffered a severe beating in the very first clash.

A duel against a towering 2.8-meter lizardman warrior.

‘I’ll take that one!’

He didn’t seem like a pushover. Not just his immense physique, but the peculiar material of his armor and his coldly narrowed, slit-pupiled eyes marked him as likely the champion of an entire tribe.

Selina had resolved to go all-out, drawing upon her full power for this rare occasion.

But for some reason, her ‘full power’ was nowhere near as formidable as she had assumed.

“Selina, you idiot! What are you doing!”

Her aura extraction speed was sluggish compared to before, and even the extracted aura’s quality differed, flickering unsteadily like that of a newly-promoted expert.

Selina herself was as dumbfounded as anyone.

And it wasn’t just her aura that was off.

“Dodge, don’t block…!”

Deflecting the lizardman’s relentless assault was far from easy. Whenever she parried one of its powerful greatsword swings, her breath was struck from her lungs, her joints screaming in agony, until her consciousness began fading.

Throughout the duel, Selina desperately clung to denial.

‘There’s no way I’m this slow and weak. No way my total aura reserves are this depleted. Maybe the opponent is just too strong?’

Such were the frantic thoughts that ran through her mind as she narrowly avoided lethal blows.

In the end, she only barely escaped with her life thanks to her comrades’ intervention after the lizardman was dealt with, but it had been a truly harrowing experience for Selina.

And it was only then that she realized – she had been neglecting her training for quite some time, for an extended period.

For the past few months or so, Selina had spent more time observing Eric’s movements and the Codana market trends than actually training.

She had barely practiced the meditation techniques to hone her aura sensitivity, and her spars with juniors had become perfunctory. While occasionally dispatched to rescue nearby territories, the opponents had only been orcs and goblins, hardly providing meaningful experience.

She had even been drinking heavily, virtually every other day.

A knight’s prowess was an asset that tarnished more easily than one might expect.

It was only after arriving at Lancart that Selina was acutely feeling the effects of her deteriorated skills. Until then, she had been oblivious to her own declining abilities, with all her attention consumed by Eric’s Codana fortunes.

At least she was regaining her edge now, but the price in blood and injury had been considerable.

“…If not for that bastard Eric.”

Selina spat out the words, recalling her recent ordeals.

“Pardon? What was that, sir knight?”

“Nothing, just bandage me up.”

“Ah, yes.”

Even the healer seemed fed up with Selina’s irritable attitude, silently tending to her wounds while firmly securing the bandages.

Regardless of her unpleasant demeanor, she was currently an indispensable presence in Lancart.

“…Thank you for enduring the treatment, sir knight.”

Without acknowledging the healer’s courtesy, Selina headed for the shabby barracks.

It was time for the knights’ daily evening gathering, held at a fixed hour.

While supposedly to prepare for the next day’s battles or provide mutual encouragement, that was regrettably not their true purpose.

Their main objective was to lament their plight while discussing Eric’s activities.

“Dammit. We’ve dealt with over half the lizardmen, can’t we just withdraw at this point? Let Lancart handle the rest with their own forces.”

“…I understand the sentiment, but do they even have the capacity? Their margrave status is already hanging by a thread.”

“Enough idle chatter, let’s get to the main topic. What about Eric?”

“He acquired the Clodaine Viscount’s vacation villa for 2.5 billion, and also purchased a treasure previously owned by one of the Emperor’s uncles. …Meaning he’s diversifying his assets. Heard he’s also looking into acquiring a grain silo.”

The veteran Ramsey recited Eric’s recent movements.

While obtaining information on Eric’s activities from this frontier territory was no easy feat, the knights were pooling all their connections to monitor him virtually in real-time. Each evening, they would gather to exchange that intelligence.

“…Hah. The madman is really going on a spending spree. Is there no way to stop him?”

“The commander is shielding him, so how could we? And even if we could, what’s in it for us? There’s no chance Eric would willingly hand over money.”

Surprisingly pragmatic attitudes from the knights.

There was a resigned acceptance that extracting funds from Eric, who had already successfully diversified his assets, would be difficult.

Even denial had its limits.

However, separate from their ambitions of extortion, their resentment towards Eric only grew more intense.

‘While we’re wallowing in this hellhole, that bastard is buying vacation villas?’

As soon as the gathering ended, Selina gnashed her teeth, her anger towards Eric reigniting.

Of course, she understood her rage wasn’t entirely rational, but the daily grind of perilous combat and accumulated fatigue and minor injuries had gradually clouded her judgment. Eric seemed to be the cause of her deteriorated skills, her extreme exhaustion, every lingering ache.

‘Now, it’s no longer about the money.’

Venting, even if only as an outlet, felt necessary to ease her anguish.

By venting, she didn’t simply mean slapping Eric around.

Selina intended to join forces with the other knights to seriously impede Eric’s path forward. To force him to live each day consumed by unease despite clinging to his vast fortune. With dozens of knights banding together, it didn’t seem an impossible task.

But first, she had to survive their deployment in Lancart. Barely suppressing her seething frustrations, Selina retired for the night.

The next morning, a piece of good news and an ominous report arrived in succession.

First, they were receiving reinforcements.

While not on par with the Imperial Knights, the formidable Black Iron Knights were dispatching 40 of their own to bolster the ranks.

The problem was that it wasn’t a simple reinforcement.

“Goblinoid tribes are on their way to join the lizardmen forces. They were barely detected at one of the frontier outposts.”

Upon hearing this, Selina’s expression froze.

Goblinoids and lizardmen.

While it was true that the humanoid races currently served under the Demon King’s army, cooperation between them was hardly seamless. After all, they were simply tribes subjugated by the Demon King’s forces, not true demonic races born and raised in the Demon Realm.

And yet now, they were mobilizing like a unified military force, as if commanded by some overarching authority governing all the humanoid races.

“But the Demon Lord was definitely slain by the hero just recently… What in the world?”

Selina let out a bewildered murmur before trailing off. For the first time, Eric’s existence had faded from her mind, the humanoids’ suspicious movements taking precedence.