Dieta, The Snake That Swallows Gold.

She was a merchant renowned even in Cambria. She had her eccentricities and often acted on whatever caught her interest... but all her interests ultimately led back to gold.

A life lived solely for gold.

Her interests, her hobbies, everything that occupied her attention—all of it was ultimately for the sake of earning gold. A girl who seemed to have been born for gold alone.

Some said she had the makings of a great merchant, while others pointed accusing fingers and called her a money-blinded trader. Countless people had their own opinions of Dieta... but those judgments shared one thing in common.

Dieta Arbenia was a born merchant.

Her talent as a merchant was genuine. No one could deny that fact.

Dieta had proved it with her life. Five years. That was how long it had taken her to become the head of a trading company that represented the city.

A girl abandoned by her family had accomplished it entirely through her own efforts, without borrowing her family's power. Nothing could undermine an achievement worthy of being called a legendary success story.

Nothing could, but...

No one could call the road she had walked to achieve it beautiful, even out of courtesy. She had stopped at nothing to earn gold. That was why people called her by the derogatory nickname The Snake That Swallows Gold.

A girl who lived for gold alone.

A miser wearing the guise of a girl.

At least here on the merchants' street, there was no one who did not know... that this was what Dieta Arbenia was.

"..."

"..."

Walking behind Dieta, Najin felt something was off. Unlike earlier, not a single person spoke to him. That in itself was hardly strange, with his sponsor right beside him, but...

'Those looks are sharp.'

Their gazes were deeply unsettling.

Now and then, he felt a look not merely of wariness, but of contempt. Those were familiar to Najin. They were the looks people from the "upper city" used to give him when they visited the underground city.

"..."

Najin silently watched Dieta. He was accompanying her as her guard today, so unlike usual, she walked a step ahead of him. From behind, she looked positively lively and cheerful.

Humming to herself, Dieta made her way along the merchants' street with light steps. Now and then, she turned back and smiled at Najin, as though the gazes flying at her meant nothing at all.

... For some reason, that smile of hers looked familiar to Najin.

Where had he seen a smile like that? He was silently following Dieta, pondering that question, when it happened.

"Tsk."

He heard someone click their tongue.

It had not been Dieta. Both she and Najin stopped at the sound. Looking toward its source, they saw a man approaching from the opposite direction.

He wore clothes permitted only to nobles, and a knight bearing his house's crest accompanied him.

Najin could tell the man was a noble. He occasionally encountered people like him as he traveled around the city. Cambria was a place where class distinctions were relatively loose and nobles' authority carried little weight... but certain basic distinctions still remained.

He knew there was no need to bow his head when meeting a noble, but nothing good came of getting involved with them or offending them.

'Best to keep your distance from nobles.'

That was the word among adventurers.

Getting involved with nobles, who demanded proper formalities, was an unwelcome prospect for an adventurer. Ambitious people aiming for greater heights did take on major commissions through noble connections, of course, but it was all too common for them to lose their heads when things went wrong.

To those of noble birth, adventurers were surely nothing more than expendable pawns, convenient to use once and discard.

That was why adventurers generally waited for a noble to pass them by when one appeared. Dieta, however, was different. Abandoned or not, she too was a daughter of a noble house. Rather than wait for the noble to pass, she stepped forward.

TAP.

Just as Dieta and the approaching noble were about to pass each other, he clicked his tongue again.

"Cambria really must be a fine place."

He glanced at Dieta as though looking at an insect and muttered,

"A whore abandoned by her house can walk with her head held high before a noble. Unthinkable in the capital."

An unmistakable insult directed at Dieta.

Such abuse was unimaginable between nobles, yet Dieta's face was perfectly serene as she tilted her head and met his eyes.

"Do you know me, son of Count Fraunkel?"

Dieta spoke in a gentle voice.

She knew every noble who entered this city and which house they came from. The young noble before her was Danor Fraunkel, Count Fraunkel's son.

By the usual hierarchy, his house could not even begin to compare with the ducal House Arbenia.

But Dieta was an "outsider" abandoned by her family, a noble in name alone, and so Danor had provoked her. Dieta merely smiled at the cheap taunt. She had heard it so often she was sick of it.

"Why? Am I wrong?"

Danor twisted his lips upward.

"You tried to win Duke Arbenia's approval by flaunting your looks... but he threw you away in the end. Everyone knows you're no better than a whore, don't they?"

Danor sneered, and the guard knight beside him laughed as well. Even faced with insults directed at her, Dieta simply kept smiling. At the sight, Danor clicked his tongue and turned away.

It was not the reaction he wanted.

"What did I expect from a bitch with neither honor nor pride?"

Just as Danor was about to walk past...

"Ah, now I remember."

Najin, the guard standing beside Dieta, gave a brief exclamation. At the unexpected voice, Dieta's expression changed. She turned to look at him.

He had been watching her face all along, and now wore a look of relief, as though he had finally remembered something.

"I was wondering where I'd seen it."

Najin was still looking at Dieta, as though he had never even registered Danor or his guard knight.

Touching the corners of his mouth, Najin smiled.

As though imitating something, or remembering it.

Dieta's eyes widened at that smile. Though they looked nothing alike, the smile Najin wore now resembled hers. It was the smile he had always worn in the underground city.

'No wonder it felt familiar.'

It was an expression he had always seen in mirrors, in spilled blood, in drinking glasses. The distinctive, servile smile of someone worn down into resignation. It was a smile that did not suit Dieta, the head of the city's most successful trading company... and that was why he had not recognized it immediately.

"You...?"

Dieta, her eyes wide, was about to say something.

"What a frivolous man. Birds of a feather, indeed. Wearing a sword doesn't make everyone a knight..."

Danor, who had briefly stopped at Najin's voice, glanced at him with a sneer. The knight laughed too, echoing his master's amusement. Najin, however, paid no attention to their voices.

"Let me ask you one thing."

Najin asked his question while looking at Dieta.

"Can you handle it if I cause trouble?"

"... What are you planning to do?"

"I just don't like it."

Najin smiled, looking only at Dieta. With no way of knowing what he was thinking, she could only be bewildered.

"Well... I suppose it'll be fine as long as you don't touch the noble?"

The moment Dieta murmured that, Najin interpreted her words—it's fine as long as you don't touch the noble—to mean that it did not matter what he did to the knight standing beside him.

"A man calling himself a knight shouldn't be so quick to smirk..."

Najin muttered loudly.

Danor and his guard knight stopped in their tracks and turned back toward him.

"What did you just say?"

Danor asked the question.

Najin did not answer him. Instead, he looked at the guard knight and murmured,

"Respect your opponent. Shun ridicule. Reject insults and embrace humility."

The virtues of a knight.

"Aren't those virtues a knight should uphold?"

Najin spoke without expression.

"You've just violated more than four of them. Are you actually a knight?"

The knight opened his mouth in disbelief at Najin's question.

"Did you dare invoke a knight's virtues before me?"

"What, do I need some grand qualification to recite them?"

"It is an insult. For someone who isn't a knight to discuss knighthood before a knight..."

"You don't seem to have become a knight through skill with a sword, either. How did you become one?"

"... What?"

Narrowing his eyes, Najin pointed to the knight's waist. The sword hanging there bore no wear from his hands. A sword that showed no signs of use.

A provocation, and an insult.

The knight's brow furrowed, and his master's face twisted. Realizing he now had control of the situation, Najin pushed the knight a little further.

"Why so much talk?"

Najin spoke expressionlessly, tapping his sword hilt.

"If you're so confident, come at me."

And that was how the situation had reached the present.

2.

A knight stood with his sword drawn in the middle of the main street.

Facing him, Najin flicked his sword tip.

Dieta and Danor, the knight's master, watched with completely opposite expressions. Danor's face was twisted in displeasure. Dieta, meanwhile, was bewildered by Najin's sudden intervention, yet the corners of her mouth trembled with laughter she could not quite contain.

The situation was strange.

It was an insult she could have brushed aside as usual. Words she had always heard, an insult she could simply let pass as she always did. The sight of Najin raising his middle finger straight at such an insult was something new to Dieta.

There was nothing in particular to gain from acting that way.

Why was Najin behaving so bizarrely?

Dieta could not tell. It did not seem that he had stepped in because his mistress had been insulted...

"Come at me, brat."

"I'll give you the first move."

"What...?"

While Dieta was still puzzling over it, Najin continued.

"I seem to be better with a sword than you."

"You insolent...!"

The duel began.

Eyes wide with fury, the knight lunged at Najin.

"I don't know what makes him so confident, but he'll make a fool of himself soon enough. With a mistress like that, no wonder the servants aren't kept in line."

Certain of victory, Danor sneered. Letting his confident voice go in one ear and out the other, Dieta watched Najin.

'Was he always like this?'

Hadn't he been more taciturn and quiet?

Dieta had thought Najin a rigid man who kept his emotions in check. But the Najin before her was different from his usual self. Here was a young man who was lighthearted, who taunted his opponent, who wore a more vivid smile.

It was as though something had prompted him to let his true personality loose. It was not difficult to guess what that trigger had been. The smile he had shown her moments earlier.

"..."

Dieta silently recalled that smile.

A smile astonishingly like her own. A smile that even made her feel a sense of kinship. It was difficult to dismiss it as mere imitation.

'Just who...?'

Dieta looked at Najin.

A young man whose age and name both seemed to be lies. Yet the smile he had shown in that moment had been real.

CLAAANG!

Najin's sword collided with the knight's.

Naturally, the knight crossing blades with Najin had reached the level of a Sword Expert, but he did not produce sword aura. What little pride he had would not allow it.

He would bring Najin to his knees through swordsmanship alone.

He would show this insolent brat the difference between them.

With those thoughts, the knight swung his sword.

Yet Najin parried the knight's blows with utter ease. As he did, his expression grew colder and colder.

'The knights I know...'

Were nothing like this.

Their swords were neither this frivolous nor this light.

The knights Najin knew, the knights he had seen, were not like this. This was not the kind of knight he dreamed of becoming. Weren't knights noble beings possessed of honor and pride? He could sense no honor in the knight before him.

Nor any pride.

All he could sense was stubbornness.

Najin, who had done nothing but parry until now, took a step forward. The knight was forced a step back. Najin kept advancing, and the knight began retreating, breaking into a cold sweat.

Watching them, Danor lost his air of composure. The knight's face twisted as well.

CLANG, CLAAANG!

Najin's swordsmanship had already found its footing.

His eyes read the paths of the knight's blade with utter ease. Bringing Najin to his knees through pure swordsmanship was something only the priests of the Order of the Sword, who devoted themselves to the sword, could accomplish.

Najin's sword was neither so light nor so careless that a knight who had neglected his training could break it.

"Guh!"

Cornered, the knight's sword glimmered. Radiance gathered upon it. Seeing the knight finally abandon even his stubborn resolve and attempt to produce sword aura, Najin clicked his tongue. Just before the radiance could take the form of sword aura, he reached out.

He clamped his hand around the knight's wrist. Then came a single breath. The sword aura about to rise over the blade scattered in an instant. Neither the spectators nor even the knight himself knew what had happened in that moment.

"Wow."

Only Merlin realized what Najin had just done.

"You're completely insane, aren't you?"

Merlin gave a disbelieving laugh.

Najin's mana training method drew in mana from outside his body. Using it, he had intercepted the mana about to flow from the knight's body into his sword.

As the knight faltered in confusion when his sword aura failed to appear, Najin twisted his wrist. Then he brought his sword's pommel down hard on the back of the knight's hand.

"Argh!"

The knight dropped his sword.

The knight was unarmed, while Najin still held his blade. The result was so overwhelming that no one needed to declare a winner. The murmuring of the spectators grew louder.

"What is this...!"

Danor's face had gone red.

The knight's eyes were wide.

With victory and defeat decided, Najin walked over to Dieta, who had been watching him. He looked at her quietly.

Her expression was a mixture of bewilderment, satisfaction, and disbelief. Looking at Dieta's natural expression, her mask stripped away, Najin spoke briefly.

"That's better."

"... Pardon?"

"I said it's better than the face you were making earlier."

Dieta blinked blankly.

Najin had remained expressionless even when he won the duel against the knight, but the moment he saw Dieta's changed expression, he smiled.

His reason for causing all this trouble was simple.

He just hadn't liked it.

He hadn't liked seeing Dieta wear the same smile he had worn in the underground city. Only after seeing her expression change did he seem satisfied, and he offered his hand to the seated Dieta.

It was the simplified escort etiquette he had learned from Pasion.

Dieta had always been the first to offer Najin her hand, but this time he offered his first. After blinking in disbelief, she burst into laughter.

"You really are an interesting person."