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“Jun!” I suddenly heard. Just as I was feeling depressed thinking about Jun, her parents pushed their way through the crowd to reach me, burning away my sentiments. I wondered how they got so close—where did the Dark Knights go?

A glance around and I discovered that the corps members were watching me cautiously. Mayer had personally declared that I would join them as the vice-captain and entrusted me to Axion, an elite member of the Dark Knights. In this situation, anyone could tell that I was about to become someone in a position of power; this seemed to be making the ordinary members walk on eggshells around me and also why they had allowed my parents through. Unbeknownst to them, that had been the wrong decision. The correct choice would’ve been to stop them, even if they were my parents.

I clicked my tongue, displeased. But regardless of how I felt, my parents—who had used me as a ticket past the wall of Dark Knights—looked flushed as if they thought they were receiving special treatment. My father haughtily walked forward and asked in a voice much louder than usual, “Jun! I want to express my gratitude to the grand duke for saving you. Where is His Excellency?”

“His Excellency is busy. And as for expressing gratitude, I’ve done that plenty enough,” I said.

“Oh, child,” he cooed, “your thanks alone isn’t enough. You’ve got to show an example, especially when it comes to this sort of matter. Come now, lead the way.”

No matter how I looked at it, he seemed more interested in something other than saying thanks. The real Jun might’ve felt hurt, but me? I just found it annoying. “Didn’t I say His Excellency is busy? Also, there is honestly nothing for Father and Stepmother to say thanks for. Me coming back alive? You’re not even happy about it,” I said sharply, refusing them.

“Child, how can you talk like that? Is making us look bad the only way for you to feel better?”

“That’s what you were like when I went inside the dungeon. You people pushed me in there to die. Did you forget about that already?” I sneered.

“Goodness! Look at what she’s saying,” exaggeratedly muttered my stepmother. If there weren’t people around us, she would’ve stared daggers at me by now, maybe even clutched me by the hair. Unfortunately for her, Axion was standing beside me. It was laughable seeing how she tried to look like a good person in public.

“I see you’ve been feeling very unhappy…” she said. “But still, we’re family—so don’t be angry.”

I really felt like I was going to lose it. Dealing with these shameless, brazen-faced people was not the way to go. I was trying to come up with a way to get these people to leave when Axion spoke up for me. “I believe that’s enough of saying farewells.”

“…Saying farewells?”

“Jun Karentia is now part of the Dark Knights corps and we must depart immediately. There are other dungeons we need to close so we cannot delay here any longer,” he explained.

The disbelief on my parents’ faces as they gazed between me and Axion was almost palpable. Their jaws dropped in shock; they were having a hard time believing that the child they had ignored so much had become part of the corps their village had tried so hard to make ties with. “Jun is… one of you?”

“Jun… W-what happened?”

“What happened? I did well is what happened,” I replied apathetically. I didn’t intend on revealing my new affiliation; it was awful just thinking about them going off selling my name, boasting about a successful daughter. Seeing the faces of my parents twist, though, telling them didn’t feel like it was such a bad idea.

Mere seconds later, I realized I had underestimated them too much. Perhaps they had gone mad from denying reality because they began to spout nonsense. “Did you make trouble for them, Jun? You must have begged them to take you in; otherwise, how would they accept a child like you…? Could it be that the Dark Knights need people? Why, that’s just perfect! How about having our Eugen join up as well?” One of them said.

“…Eugen?” I parroted, dumbfounded. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“You! How can you be like this to your little brother? Are you trying to steal our Eugen’s opportunity to join the Dark Knights just because you barely managed to be accepted by them?” They shouted. “What do you think family is for? Do you think it won’t benefit you to have Eugen doing well?”

They didn’t know when to stop. “He’s only ten years old!” I screamed.

It wasn’t that I disliked my half-brother Eugen, but enlisting a kid who was barely capable of swinging a wooden sword into a dungeon-raiding expedition corps? Ridiculous. It would be utter insanity to send the boy on an actual dungeon raid; even having him as an errand boy would be a nuisance. Regardless, my parents continued to blather. “A boy’s got to become a squire from an early age anyway. Eugen is smart and agile too so…”