Chương 61: Chapter : 61

"Go back to sleep, Ken," Naomi said. Her voice was quiet, and to Ken's absolute surprise, it was trembling just a tiny bit.

"I need to practice. I need to be faster." Ken didn't leave. He took a few slow steps into the courtyard, stopping a few feet away from her. He looked down at her hands.

"You are practicing so hard your hands are bleeding," Ken pointed out casually, as if he were mentioning the weather.

"If you drop your dagger tomorrow because your palm is too slippery from your own blood, being fast isn't going to help you at all." Naomi flinched. She looked down at her bleeding hands, realizing for the first time that she had torn her skin open. She slowly let the daggers fall from her grip. They clattered loudly against the stone floor. She wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of her wrist, leaving a small smear of dirt on her pale skin.

She let out a shaky, frustrated breath, sounding like a person who was carrying a massive boulder on her shoulders.

"I can't afford to fail," Naomi whispered. The tough, aggressive knight persona completely melted away in the darkness, leaving behind a very young, very scared girl. Ken stood quietly, letting his goofy smile fade away. He didn't make a joke. He just listened.

"You don't understand, Ken," Naomi continued, her voice tight with raw emotion. She looked up at the moon, refusing to let the tears in her eyes fall.

"You are just a normal guy from the outer districts. If you fail, you just go back to living a quiet life. But I don't have a normal life to go back to. I don't have a home." Ken tilted his head slightly.

"I thought you said you came from a proud noble line of knights?"

"I do," Naomi said bitterly.

"Or, I did. My family is obsessed with status and power. They wanted me to serve the 2nd Princess or the 5th Prince. They wanted me to be a perfect, quiet, obedient soldier who brought glory to our family name. But I hated how cruel the other Royals were. I hated how they treated commoners like garbage." She looked back at Ken, her green eyes burning with fierce loyalty.

"When I chose to follow Princess Iris, my family was furious," Naomi confessed, her voice shaking with the memory.

"Princess Iris is the underdog. She has no money and no political power. My parents told me that if I joined the 13th Unit, I was a disgrace. They cast me out. They completely disowned me. They told me I was no longer their daughter." Ken's lazy posture stiffened just a fraction of an inch. He hadn't known that. He had just assumed all the rich kids in the Inner City had easy, perfect lives.

"I had nowhere to go," Naomi whispered, hugging her arms tightly around her chest.

"But Princess Iris took me in. She gave me a bed in this crumbling estate. She gave me a purpose. She treated me like a human being, not just a tool for political power." Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. Naomi turned fully to face Ken. Her expression was completely broken, revealing the absolute terror she had been hiding all day long.

"I am terrified of tomorrow, Ken," Naomi admitted openly, the truth finally spilling out of her.

"B-rank missions mean people die. Vane is a monster who uses Curse magic. I am so scared that I am not fast enough. I am so scared that I am going to make a mistake, and my mistake is going to cost Princess Iris her 20 points. If she gets disqualified from the Succession War because of me... I will have failed the only person in this world who actually cares about me." She looked down at her bleeding hands again, her jaw setting in a hard, stubborn line.

"So I don't care if my hands bleed," Naomi swore, her voice regaining a spark of that fiery determination.

"I don't care if I am exhausted. I will push myself until my bones break. I will win those 20 points for her tomorrow, no matter the cost." The courtyard went completely silent. The only sound was the gentle night breeze blowing through the trees. Ken stood there in his socks and his messy uniform. He looked at the red-haired girl standing in front of him. Usually, Ken saw the people around him as annoying obstacles to his lazy, peaceful life.

He saw the nobles as loud bullies, and he saw the Succession War as a highly annoying chore that he was forced to participate in. He spent his entire day pretending to be a useless clown just so people would leave him alone. But as he looked at Naomi right now, his lazy, careless demeanor softened. For a rare, silent moment, the goofy slacker completely vanished. He didn't see an annoying boss lady who yelled at him about his untucked shirt.

He saw a fierce, fiercely loyal warrior who was willing to bleed and die for the people she loved. She didn't have ocean-levels of magic like he did. She couldn't erase shadows or rewrite the laws of physics. She was just a normal human girl, completely terrified of the monster waiting in the Doom Tower, but she was forcing herself to face it anyway. Ken felt a profound, newfound respect for the fiery warrior blooming in his chest. He didn't say anything cheesy.

He didn't tell her not to worry because he had already secretly sliced the final boss in half. He knew that telling her the truth would completely ruin her pride. Instead, Ken just slouched his shoulders back forward, shoved his hands deep into his pockets, and gave her a small, very genuine, very soft smile.

"You are plenty fast, Naomi," Ken said quietly, his voice lacking any of its usual high-pitched whining.

"The training dummies don't stand a chance. But even the best knights need sleep. Go wash your hands. We have a big day tomorrow, and I am going to need you to carry all my snacks for me." Naomi looked at him. She expected him to make a ridiculous joke or run away. Instead, he had just given her a quiet, strangely comforting piece of respect. She let out a small, tired breath that almost sounded like a laugh. She bent down and picked up her bloody daggers.

"You are an idiot, Ken," Naomi said softly, walking past him toward the doors of the estate.

"I try my best," Ken replied happily, turning to follow her back inside. As they walked back up the dark stairs to their rooms, Ken realized that his teammates were not just background characters in his lazy life. They had real stakes. They had real fears.

"She is willing to break her own bones for those 20 points," Ken thought to himself, stepping back into his dusty bedroom and looking toward the window. A quiet, unshakable determination settled deep inside the Sovereign's hidden heart. He wasn't just going to stand in the back and eat potato chips tomorrow. He was going to make absolutely certain that Naomi and the rest of the 13th Unit walked out of that Doom Tower completely alive, with their 20 points secured.