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“Again! Your hand again!”
Shouting, Margaret glared at Yurhi, whose face was covered in tears and snot.
“Can’t you at least have pretty nails?! If you bite like that, it’s all ugly!”
“Uwaaaaah!” Yurhi cried.
“There’s no hope in this damn Tilrods. They can’t be saved! What happens when there’s money? It all slips away from the hands of that incompetent, stupid patriarch. All the children I gave birth to are all lost cases, which gave me nothing but pain to my stomach. And your older sister? Watch very carefully how that detestable wench tries to survive. And your brother? When the hell will your brother come to his senses?”
“Uwaaaaaaah!”
“Shut up! You don’t know anything else except to cry, right?”
Margaret shook her little daughter’s shoulders like crazy.
“Yurhi Tilrod, you’ve just been tormenting me all this time!”
“AHH! Mom, stop! Please stop!”
As Yurhi screamed in fear, Margaret pushed her away.
Yurhi fell to the floor even more as she hit the floor loudly.
Crying on the ground in a disarray, Yurhi looked really pitiful.
Yurhi couldn’t even breathe properly and started wheezing as she cried.
Strangely, after seeing her daughter’s miserable appearance, Margaret felt relieved.
“Stand up, Yurhi Tilrod!”
“Huk, uhuk, uhuuuk!”
Even as it felt like the whole world was crashing down on her, Yurhi reflexively raised her body.
The child was overcome with fear. If she didn’t listen to her mother, she would really be abandoned by her entire world.
Yurhi’s fear was not unfounded.
In fact, didn’t her mother also abandon her older sister, Radis, to that extent?
“Hiic, huuuk, uwahhh!”
Yurhi kept trying to think that Radis hadn’t been abandoned.
However, she still had a hunch, like an animal instinct.
It was as if, on a rainy and windy day, her mother had bitten her sister’s neck and stepped out of the nest—and she knew instinctively what she had done even if she didn’t witness it firsthand, the quiet death of her sibling.
Suck, suck!
Yurhi sucked on her thumb and desperately clung to Margaret.
Margaret glared at Yurhi with her narrowly opened eyes.
“Why are you acting like a baby? You’re already fourteen!”
But strangely enough, after seeing her daughter’s behavior regressing in age, Margaret felt calm and felt better.
An eerie smile tugged up on the corners of Margaret’s lips, not knowing whether it was a smile out of glee or despair.
It was an insidious smile, like an old queen reaffirming her dominance through acts of tyranny towards those who would point fingers at her.
Margaret wiped Yurhi’s tears and runny nose with the hem of her dress, then she spoke with a strict voice.
“You have to be good to your mom, Yurhi Tilrod. Don’t you know how much I sacrificed because of you? Don’t you want to repay your mother? You have to become a great person and marry well. That’s all mom wants, okay?”
Looking half out of her mind, Yurhi continued to suck on her thumb as she nodded.
“Alright. Go wash up now. Oh my goodness, your face is a mess. Gosh, where did my senses fly off to. I should go find the enemy. It’s obvious where the enemy would go right now.”
Driving her daughter’s heart further into the abyss, Margaret stood up with a very relieved face and pulled the rope to call a maid.
After asking Irene to take Yurhi and wash her, she fixed her own appearance.
Of course, she was about to find Jade.
Maybe Jade was drunk out of his mind in a regular bar right now, or maybe he was sitting in front of a table with cards being dealt to him, his shoulders tense after being there for a long time.
If he wasn’t in those places, maybe he was in Flora’s house, staying in that rathole-like place all this time.
However, Margaret’s plans fell through because of an unexpected guest.
“I am Felice Roschilde.”
It was Felice, the man from the knight family of Roschilde who Radis met at the banquet.
Although he was a guest who came without any notice, Margaret knew what she had to do since it was a Roschilde.
There was no other choice but to invite Felice in since he was from a prestigious family, and so her trip outside was postponed.
Before a maid could even bring out some tea for them to drink, Felice went straight to business.
“Madam Tilrod, did you hear about me from Miss Radis?”
She didn’t know what she was talking about, but the moment she heard Radis’ name being uttered, Margaret felt that something ominous was coming about.
Trying to raise the corners of her lips as much as possible to make a smile, Margaret replied.
“Umm, she’s not at home right now. That child really couldn’t be stopped. I didn’t even hear from her about you, Sir Roschilde. Did she do anything wrong?”
“Forgive me for the discourtesy. I was actually impressed by the young lady. As the eldest daughter of the family, Miss Radis seemed to have deep thoughts about the future of the household. She asked me for a position in the Roschilde family’s subjugation squad.”
“Oh my, is it perhaps David’s…!”
Of course, she was under a misunderstanding.
What Radis asked Felice was a position for herself, not David.
However, Radis’ explanation wasn’t enough due to her nerves, and Felice was under the clear prejudice that a young woman wouldn’t ask for a position in a subjugation squad for herself.
So Felice surmised that Radis made a request on behalf of her brother, not for herself.
“Recently, the academy has been regarded as a gateway for becoming a knight, but it wasn’t like that when I was young. I believe that it’s experience and not the academy which fosters a true knight.”
“The experience you’re saying, sir…”
“The traditional way. Get out of the nest—the family—and start from the bottom as a squire in another family’s chivalric order! There’s no other way than that to become a great knight.”
Hearing the words ‘great knight’, Margaret widened her eyes as if a golden rope started dangling from the heavens.
Seeing Margaret’s expression, Felice continued to speak with a pleased look.
“Actually, it’s been a while since we’ve opened recruitment. However, even though she was a stranger I had never met before, I couldn’t turn a blind eye to Miss Radis’ earnest heart. She took a lot of courage to ask this favor of me.”
“Oh my, oh my!”
Margaret’s thoughts went into a frenzy.
Objectively speaking, David’s current skills would only land him in a third-rate academy, but even then, she’d have to expend a lot of money just to get him in.
His admission would be possible with the money Marquis Russell had given, but unlike the Imperial Academy, the third-rate academy was a place where David might struggle to even get the position of an apprentice after his graduation.
Wouldn’t it be much better to trust and follow Felice Roschilde’s words?
Margaret cheered inwardly.
‘Radis, that wench! She must have asked Marquis Russell for a favor like this! Even if she pretends to be strong, she couldn’t turn a blind eye to her family—to her blood. But tsk, I’m sure it would have been better if it was with the Marquis’ chivalric order…!’
Margaret smiled and nodded vigorously.
But there was something that Margaret did not know.
When a subjugation squad was more well known, it meant that there were more times that they go hunting for demonic monsters, and the squad members would only be treated well if they worked hard enough. And, the lower they were in the ranks, the harder the work was—they’d have to roll around and literally shed blood.
It was a matter of little thought to see why noble families would refuse to send off their child through the traditional way of starting from the bottom. That’s why they would go to academies instead even though a lot of money would be needed.
However, Margaret was completely convinced by Felice.
The blind belief that a parent would have for their child sometimes led to complete blindness.
Margaret happily accepted the contract without asking David for his consent, expecting that her son would change.
Looking at the contract, Margaret asked carefully.
“Is… Is there no salary?”
At Margaret’s words, Felice’s face grew red as though he had been insulted.
“As the Madam knows, resources and money are spent on new recruits in the subjugation squad just to educate them until they can carry their own weight.”
“Oh my! I see!”
“In fact, there’s a reason why I personally don’t get sick these days. It’s because I’m energized by raising young men as great knights, and this cost of labor can’t be ignored.”
“Oh my, oh my!”
With Felice’s good speaking skills, Margaret began to feel like this was a better opportunity compared to entering David into the Imperial Academy.
She hurriedly signed the contract for fear of Felice taking it back. She didn’t even read its contents.
After she finished signing it, Felice smiled nicely and took the papers.
At the same time, he did not forget to add this.
“As I said earlier, recruitments aren’t officially open, but I made an effort to come here.”
“Ohoho! We won’t forget this grace, Sir Roschilde!”
“Hahaha! After seeing Miss Radis do this for her younger brother, I could recall how much my own sister suffered because of me, so I couldn’t help it.”
Felice spoke as he reminisced.
“I’ve become a decent knight now, but I strayed a lot when I was young. My sister suffered a lot because our mother passed away early.”
“Oh my, what an amazing older sister.”
At this remark, Margaret felt sorry for David, whose own sister wasn’t like that.
“The Sir’s splendid older sister, is she doing well now?”
Felice laughed pleasantly at Margaret’s inquiry.
“Hahaha, I believe so!”
Compared to him saying how grateful he was to his sister earlier, his answer now felt indifferent.
But as Felice saw Margaret’s curiosity on her expression, Felice added.
“She already has her own family. Her husband is a foreigner, so there’s nothing strange about not hearing from her after she got married. No news is good news, right?”
Margaret nodded, though her expression was bitter.
“O… hoho… T-That’s right…”
And so, their conversation ended.
After a while, David Tilrod, the eldest son of the Tilrod family, learned that he was now a squire of the subjugation squad of the Roschilde household, the shield that protects the empire from demonic monsters.
It was natural that, even though he’d been told that the contract had already been signed, David screamed at the top of his lungs.
—
t/n:
minor spelling change: Rosilde -> Roschilde