The Kept Man of the Princess Knight, Vol. 1 by Toru Shirogane and Saki Mashima

Author:Toru Shirogane and Saki Mashima
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yen On

This was bad news. I couldn’t even win in a battle of arm strength with her. Her rage was getting to her, too; her arms began swinging very wildly and out of control. All I could do was hunch my neck so that her punches, coming with all her weight behind them, hit my forehead instead of a more vital spot. My body was still as tough as ever, at least. Once she started feeling pain in her fists and let up for a bit, I slipped out from under her.

“If you want your drug, go down and get it. Slurp up the mud down there, and maybe you’ll still catch a whiff of the stuff.”

At last, Arwin seemed to come back to her senses. She looked at her red, swollen fists, the gutter ditch, and then me. Feeling overcome by shame, she curled up and hid her face behind her hands. I thought she might be weeping, but I couldn’t hear anything.

After a minute, I got to my feet, patted off the dust, and held out a hand to the princess knight.

“Come. Tell me your story.”

I took the princess knight to the second floor of the Adventurers Guild. There were a number of rooms inside the guild building where adventurers could hold confidential meetings. They were built well so that even louder speaking voices were inaudible from the outside. That also made them a convenient place to conduct vigilante punishment of other adventurers. We wouldn’t have to worry about being overheard here. I’d thought about taking her back to my place, but I didn’t want anyone getting funny ideas about what was going on. Polly was out working, incidentally, and wouldn’t be back until very late.

In the center of the little room was a table covered in marks and scars, like some grizzled veteran warrior. The princess knight sat down in the wobbly chair I offered her.

She rested her hands on her knees, looked at the floor with her face pale, and waited, like a guilty criminal anticipating judgment.

“You don’t have to be so uptight. Think of me like a priest or something.”

I’d given up on religion while I was still in the womb, but I was more than capable of hearing people talk about their problems.

“Let’s be honest,” I said. “You’ve got dungeon sickness.”

She still said nothing, but her clasped palms and pressed knees told me all I needed to know.

“It happens all the time.”

The dark and dangerous dungeon was a place where disaster lurked at all times. You had to deal with terrain, monsters, traps, and your fellow man. There was no telling when Death himself would come creeping up on you. I’d seen many people like her since coming to this place.

Once you had dungeon sickness, not even magic could cure it. A cleric’s miracle might increase your battle instincts, but only temporarily; very soon, you would be like a frightened kitten again. Those with a lighter case of it might be all right in another town, as long as they didn’t go into another dungeon.

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