A dull thunk resounded through the discordant howling that echoed across the landscape. A series of quick, quiet clicks followed soon after, the sharp sound of metal on metal briefly cutting through the snowstorm’s intermittent noise of wind lashing through needle-branched trees and cutting straight through fur and fabrics to skin and bones.
The slender boy huddled up to his knees in soft, powdery snow latched the last lock on the small, wood cabin nestled in the far south of the Everlaen mountains and turned in one quick motion to dust off the feather-white flakes that had settled on his mid-length, darkish-blue strands of hair. A sharp eye gleamed with mischief from under the knitted hat he quickly pulled on, before he was glancing up at the velvet-black night sky to judge his direction by the constellations that roamed across the inky darkness.
“Let’s see…”
Chestnut-brown irises narrowed slightly. Dratted beards of dragons.
The blizzard was still gathering up its fury, biding its time before it’d unleash its might upon this quiet wilderness, so he judged that he’d have at most an hour to get down from the mountain before he’d get caught up in the worst of mother nature’s wrath. The only problem was…
“I can’t see with all this snow!”
The harsh wind was prickling his skin with blistering waves of a painful, hot-cold tingling. His fingers were already becoming numb despite being ensconced in three layers of colorful, knitted gloves, and his eyes were so busy blinking back the cartloads of snow that kept shooting into his face that he wasn’t able to see even ten feet ahead of him.
Yeah, yeah, he’d thought the snowstorm was actually blindingly beautiful in its own way when he’d finally finished his preparations to step out of his humble cabin, but it hadn’t been two minutes before he realized why travelers always liked to cuss up a drake when coming across something like this.
Mother nature, you’re truly too cruel.
Stuffing his aggrieved thoughts back into the useless corner they had crawled out of, the high-spirited youth sighed before tugging his scarf closer in to his chin.
“Whatever, whatever whatever!”
With the kind of blazing determination that had predictably landed him in a hot-ton of messes (but also reliably fished him out of them), Renrae let a cheeky grin tug at his lips before he plowed through the towering drifts of snow before him.
“Hahahahahahahahaha!”
A madman’s cackle sounded through the mountainside before the birds huddling in their alcoves and squirrels nestling away in their burrows decidedly ignored the rather familiar lunatic barreling down the snowy slopes.
Renrae couldn’t help but think that surely, this couldn’t have been the worst thing that could’ve welcomed his first day turning fifteen and becoming eligible to be tested into the knight order. Not to mention, the first year that he might see his old classmates again, the first month since the last that he’d see his old friends again, and maybe, he might even get to glimpse someone he’d been hoping to see again since their childhood days together long ago.
Then again, Renrae was the kind of person who thought too optimistically, too far into the future.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
“P…P’w…”
Every breath rattled like heavy weights within his chest, struggling to make its way through his constricted windpipe. His throat felt like sandpaper, and beads of sweat dripped down his forehead to fall with a plink-plonk silently onto the marble tiles.
Ujtgfc rajgfv ja atf qjatfalm rluta yfobgf tlw, ujkxlcu ja atf fztjeralbc mifjgis kgjmxlcu Efcgjf’r atlc ogjwf.
“Renni’ae, Renni’ae, what the hell are you doing?” Pahren finally hissed after snapping himself out of his dumbfounded stupor. “Why the hell are you sweating buckets like some kind of lame ass sleaze?”
“Vte…rtea eq…” Efcgjf ujrqfv atgbeut uglaafv affat. “P…tjv ab gec…jii atf kjs tfgf…”
Mgbw atf ybaabw bo atf wbecajlc ab atf cfjgfra nliijuf ab atf wfgmtjcar’ gbeafr ab atf bearxlgar bo atf mjqlaji ab atf lccfg mjqlaji vlraglmar larfio. Pa kjr j abajiis fztjeralcu pbegcfs, jcv Efcgjf tjvc’a yffc iemxs fcbeut ab fnfc ufa j glvf tjio bo atf alwf.
Pahren wrinkled his nose. “Geez. I bet you cut it to the last minute again and wandered across half the lands for days, am I right?”
Renrae scowled.
Pahren ignored Renrae’s glare of death with the practiced ease of someone who had been subjected to Renrae’s acts of occasional stupidity (and consequent moodiness) many times and proceeded to exaggeratedly glance around the small barracks where all the potential knights-in-training had gathered for today’s exam.
“Weeeeeeellllll,” Pahren said slowly, his tone annoyingly drawn out like he was about to showcase a prize mare for a contest. “I’m sure the judges must’ve seen you burst in here at the last minute anyway, so you can go ahead and bow out early to save yourself the embarrassment—”
“Pahren you little—”
Renrae jumped to his feet, all exhaustion seemingly vanishing within less than a second as he grabbed Pahren’s collar and pivoted on his heel. Before Renrae could finish off his shoulder throw, however, a large hand settled on the back of his neck and jerked him away from Pahren.
Renrae let out an undignified yelp, but it was no use. No amount of wriggling, struggling, and pinwheeling of his arms got him any closer to making the other person put him down from where he’d lifted Renrae up like a momma cat dangling her kitten from her jaws.
“P-Put me down!” Renrae sputtered, but the other teenager only lifted him up higher.
A slightly petty part of Renrae was at least smugly gleeful to see that Pahren had been subjected to the same treatment, but still. It was embarrassing that this brute of their other friend had managed to pick both of them up with such ease.
“Seriously,” Gaxen sighed with a long-suffering look on his brooding face. “You two need to chill out. Do you really want to get thrown out before the examination even starts?”
Renrae huffed out a breath and crossed his arms. His expression of pretend petulance would’ve probably been more effective had he been standing on the ground on his own two feet, and not dangling from Gaxen’s oversized hand gripping the nape of his neck.
“It’s not me who would’ve been thrown out of the exam,” Renrae jibed, and Pahren immediately jumped in.
“Not you, my ass. They would’ve tossed you out like a pile of roc dung, so fast that your puny little head would’ve spun—”
Gaxen violently shook the both of them, causing Pahren to wince and Renrae to, unsuccessfully, try and kick Gaxen.
“You two are both idiots,” Gaxen hissed, before he was dropping them like a sack of potatoes onto the ground.
Pahren landed in an undignified tumble, while Renrae tried to turn his roll into something graceful. Needless to say, it ended with him accidentally rolling beneath one of the benches in the barracks in a very undignified way anyway.
“You two. Are you both done horsing around?”
Renrae flinched from where he’d wedged himself between two bench legs trying to crawl back out. Pahren had already scrambled up to stand next to Gaxen, and the other boys in the barracks had lined themselves up along the wall as well.
Renrae bit back a curse as he heard Pahren quickly apologize.
Dragon’s arse, why does nothing ever go my way.
“And you? Boy with the disheveled hair.”
At least he isn’t calling me scrawny.
Ignoring the disdainful looks some of the other boys were shooting at him, Renrae finally managed to wriggle himself out from under the bench and smoothly stood up in a two-fingered salute above his heart, face carefully blank and gaze calm. Embarrassment had nothing on him when his drive to succeed was far greater than his pride. Sort of.
“Yessir.”
The cadet with the long hair tied back into a bun harumphed before turning away from Renrae to face the rest of the candidates. Renrae fought to keep his surprise off his face at the cool treatment.
Wow, I expected him to harp on me more. They usually fall over themselves trying to harass the “weaker” ones, after all. Maybe the Veill Academy’s standards really are far better than the others I’ve heard of.
In that case, Renrae felt like he’d chosen the right place. For more than one reason, anyway…
“This isn’t going to be your standard, run-of-the-mill exam where you wave your swords and call it a day. The knight’s order serving the Veill Academy is a prestigious guild of its own within the Vae Kingdom. Some of our members even go on to serve in the Crown Prince’s or King’s Guard, though you’d have to be exceptionally talented to even have a shot at such an honorary status.”
A stiff silence settled over the narrow barracks room where twenty-plus candidates stood at attention in front of the narrow-eyed, imposing cadet leader who swept them all with a discerning gaze.
Renrae’s expression remained as blank as a smooth slate. His emotions were so far hidden away in the deep crevices of his mind that he felt nothing at the cadet leader’s words. He wasn’t standing in the barracks, he was standing in the turbulent landscape of his memories.
Don’t wish, don’t hope, don’t think, don’t feel.
“You’ll all get a chance to test into the knight’s order here, under the command of Captain Von-couhe of the Crown Prince’s guard. You should feel lucky that you even get to experience her teaching first-hand, if only for the briefest of moments during the exam.”
The cadet leader’s words, while devoid of emotion, were crystal clear.
I suspect that none of you will actually pass the exam to enter the order.
Yeah, okay. Renrae didn’t care what anybody else thought of what his abilities had to offer. It was true that he didn’t have the world’s greatest potential for knighthood or whatever, what with his lackluster build and commoner status. In all reality, his temperament was better suited for something more flamboyant, and his skillset was more attuned to nifty, intellectual tasks. A job where he’d have to take orders, and work quietly day in and day out, wasn’t a job ever meant for a person like him.
But what’s done is done, and there was nothing Renrae could change about the fact that he’d been born with a defective body. He couldn’t chase after his true calling, but he could still chase after his true purpose.
Whatever it took, Renrae would make it happen. Talent or none, he would make it work.
Nothing had ever stopped him from achieving his goal thus far. Nothing except…the fact that…Well. It didn’t matter anyway. Renrae could always keep dreaming.
yamyam has something to say:
Yullooooo~ yamyam here!! \(*^▽^*)/ hope ya’ll enjoy this silly little tale and forgive me for all the multitudinous plot & logic holes that probably riddle this story like a swiss cheese sandwich, ahem~ if just one reader finds it fun to read my story, I’ll consider my life to be worth more than a crushed chestnut (we can all tell how many hours of sleep I’ve gotten today hahahaha ⊙ꇴ⊙ ), and as always, thanks for the readership and see ya next week~ ( ´ ▽ ` )ﾉ
Thanks for the opening salvo! ❤️
If a salvo is composed of bullets made of cheese, then yes~ thanks for reading!! (≧v≦)
Thanks for the chapter
I fell in love already
(´༎ຶㅂ༎ຶ`) aaaah y-you’re too sweeeeeet OwO gives hug
This looks like fun! (~￣³￣)~
//>w<// aaaaa I’m glad you think it is?!???!! Thx for reading~ <3
He sounds like such a cute MC. Can’t wait to see what trouble he may get into. 😁