Chapter 4
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1.
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The Holy Principality of Rimasoth, a land of peace and freedom.
Though it was a small nation wedged between great powers, the Principality possessed a deep rooted history and unshakable legitimacy. By leveraging its authority as the seat of both the powerful Temple Knight Corps and the central headquarters of the Benignus Chivalric Order, it survived for many long centuries.
For that reason, the most important state affairs of the Principality were, naturally, the administration of the Chivalric Order and the operation of the Knight Corps, and the two became an inseparable community bound by shared destiny.
The Chivalric Order nurtured and produced the Temple Knight Corps, and the Knight Corps carried out the Order’s commands. This tradition, passed down for over five hundred years, eventually took root as the very foundation of the duchy. As a result, to speak of ‘the knights of the Rimasoth Principality’ came to mean the Temple Knight Corps itself, and the training of knights anywhere outside this system was strictly forbidden.
Bjorn first formed a connection with the temple of Benignus in the year he turned eight. He still could not forget that day, which even now often appeared in his nightmares.
‘As if I could forget the day I was abandoned by my parents.’
Amid the desolate scenery of a wartime tent, Bjorn thought dryly. The sorrow that had felt as though his world were collapsing may have faded somewhat, but the raw wounds left in his heart continued to torment him even now, long past his coming of age.
If only they had abandoned him when he was so young that he could not even remember it, would things have been a little better. Led by his mother’s hand and entered into the temple at an age when his mind was already fairly formed, Bjorn could recall everything vividly. The appearance and expression of his birth mother as she turned away after entrusting him to the hands of a priest, even her shabby attire.
The temple did not turn away orphans with nowhere to go, and a few years later, after Bjorn manifested divine power, they became all the more eager to make full use of him.
Naturally set upon the path of a paladin, Bjorn grew into an excellent knight who exceeded the temple’s expectations. Of course, that was a separate matter from his own satisfaction.
From Bjorn’s perspective, life as a paladin could hardly be called good, even as empty words.
The sudden plunge into communal living did not suit his sensitive and fastidious disposition, and for a child, the knight order’s training was excessively harsh.
Cursing the parents who had thrown him away here, he endured with everything he had for a full twelve years.
What awaited Bjorn, who had expected that at least a little freedom would be granted to him upon reaching adulthood at twenty, was…
‘The role of a pretty figurehead.’
A unique duty of the Temple Knight Corps, commonly referred to as ‘Sacred Flower’. The name literally carried the meaning of the ‘Flower of the Temple’.
High ranking priests would dress it up as ‘a noble means of maintaining the temple’s fame and inducing financial patronage’, but everyone knew the truth.
It was sacred male prostitution for wealthy noble ladies, noble young women, and occasionally men with peculiar tastes.
Whether a paladin with divine power or an ordinary knight without it, anyone with even a moderately decent face could be selected as a member of the Sacred Flower. Bjorn, who had stood out for his neat good looks even before reaching adulthood, was no exception.
Thus forcibly made into a Sacred Flower, he had to participate in public activities while biting back tears, and as a result, countless women of the capital, including Leila Bailey, ended up chasing after Bjorn like swarms of ants following aphids.
If life in the temple and knight training had been harsh and painful, then life after becoming a Sacred Flower was…
Just recalling the three years after coming of age, memories he did not even want to think about, made him shudder in disgust.
For that reason, the outbreak of the holy war around this time could almost be called good news for Bjorn.
On this wretched battlefield, where life and death were decided dozens of times a day, his past meant nothing at all.
That time gone by was nothing more than insignificant fragments, destined to be buried and vanish together when he met a glorious death here.
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