Attack

The middle-aged servant watched as his nephew with the lunchbox knocked on the heavy wooden door of a house, and after three regular knocks, he strained to push the door open and enter. The door closed with a heavy thud.

The middle-aged servant took a deep breath as he silently blessed his nephew and wished him a good start.

Ever since becoming a servant, he had been very good at observing what was going on around him. At the end of the battle at that time, he saw the scowling Squire enter the house where his nephew had gone in. There was nothing more he could do now than to pray silently that the gods he believed in would bless his nephew.

Not to speak of the servant, but of Maetos.

Having found his house, he followed the sturdy stone staircase to the first floor. Here he quickly found his own bedroom, training room and dining room.

Pushing open the door to the bedroom, the room was decorated to Maetos' satisfaction.

Eight wall sconces hung from the walls of the bedroom, lit with thick candles, and although the walls around them were unadorned, the floor was covered with a thick wool blanket. There is a window in the wall facing the street, but it is covered by a thick black velvet curtain.

Next to the window is a stone bed with a thick mattress and a iron chain at the head of the bed, which manipulates the mechanism above it so that at any time he can lower the boulder above to press against himself for training.

In the corner of the bed was a large wooden barrel, and even though the barrel was closed, Maetos could smell a familiar medicinal scent. This was the ointment necessary for Squire's training. Without this ointment, his body would be worn out within a few days of training, and it would be hard to say whether he would be able to maintain his current strength, let alone become a knight.

In another corner of the bed, near the door of the room, there was a huge iron frame. That was used to hang the Squire's half-armour and weapons. Of course, there were no stables in this room, and the Squires' war horses were brought together by the servants to feed them.

As Maetos surveyed the room with satisfaction, he suddenly heard a knock at the door below. Pulling back the curtains, he saw a young servant knocking nervously on the door of his room, before pushing his way in.

Seeing this, Maetos could not help but frown slightly and was somewhat dissatisfied with the servant's approach, so he decided that he would teach him a good lesson when the servant appeared before him.

Judging by the sound of his voice, the servant entered his house without making much of a stop and came straight up the stairs towards the top.

From the sound of those footsteps, Maetos heard unease and uncertainty.

"What an interesting boy, eh! Just like those new servants on the manor." Maetos tugged at the corners of his mouth and an ugly smile came out. The white teeth, illuminated by candlelight, were so noticeable.

The sound of footsteps came closer and closer, finally stopping in front of the training room in the room. After a rhythmic tapping, it was not long before the footsteps moved once more to the dining room. Again there was a rhythmic tapping before the footsteps finally came to the front of the bedroom.

"Come in! I'm right here." Maetos took a high-backed cushioned chair and placed it in front of the window, just sitting there in his half-armour and carrying his battle-axe.

There was a sharp pause in the breathing outside, then a rush once more. A creak sounded in the quiet room, and then a lowly servant came through the door with a lunchbox. His thin body trembled under Maetos' gaze.

"Tell me, what are you doing here?" Maetos swept the lunchbox in the servant's hand and swallowed spit before pretending to enquire.

"Your humble servant has brought you your supper, my honourable knight." The thin servant held the lunchbox with trembling hands and handed it towards the front. He stole a glance up at Maetos, then hastily lowered his head again.

"Put it on the table, and you may leave." Maetos frowned slightly as he felt that the young servant's heartbeat was not so violent, although he was breathing very heavily, and as he got closer, he sensed an extremely strange aura emanating from the servant, an aura that made him extremely annoyed and uncomfortable.

Doubt instantly wrapped itself around Maetos' mind and he couldn't help but grip the battle axe in his hand, feeling the coldness it brought to his heart before he settled down.

"I, Maetos, think I have not clashed with anyone at all since I left the manor, apart from killing a bastard, so why are you coming after me?" Just as the young, scrawny servant set his lunchbox aside on a long table and turned to leave, Maetos snapped up a loud query.

"Tell me, boy, do not deceive a Squire; the price of deceit is simply beyond your reach." Maetos narrowed his eyes and looked at the servant with a fierce look on his face as he questioned loudly. The voice was so loud that it carried far in the quiet of the night and was probably heard by the Squire's in several of the neighbouring houses.

"My lord, your humble servant did not mean to target you, but just happened to come across you." The servant's breathing smoothed out at Maetos' loud pursuit, his shrunken form shrinking even further. "Obey my master's call, and you must die this night." The servant wavered his palms slightly as he spoke.

This extremely small movement was sensitively perceived by Maetos, who saw a foot-long scroll emerge from the servant's hand.

This scroll was red in colour, with countless subtle patterns and strange arcs depicted on it, and it was from this scroll that the strange and incomparable aura emanated.

"What is this thing? Why does it give me such a dangerous feeling?" Maetos narrowed his eyes, and his body lashed out like a tiger, lunging out of his chair and slamming into the servant.

Maetos' sharp battle axe arced towards the scroll and slashed across his shoulders, using his shoulder armour to strike the servant's body.

The servant did not expect Maetos to be so fast, he only felt the huge Squire sitting on the chair in front of him sway for a moment, then felt a strong wind blowing over him, and by the time it had blown out, he was dizzy and lost all thought at once.

When he came to his senses once more, he found the hideous Squire standing where he had started, and he tried to turn his head to see where he was, but no matter how much he swung his head, he could not feel it move.

"Maybe it worked, maybe it didn't, this damn assassination mission. Maybe I shouldn't have come to take this last job, I should have taken my money and gone to a remote town or village where there were beautiful and innocent girls whose elders would have been happy to marry them to me. Damn it, using such a precious scroll to kill a random Squire, damn it, what a shameful waste." The servant-attired assassin's consciousness grew less and less fuzzy as he remembered the strange quest, the lucrative bounty, and the precious scrolls.

But none of this had anything to do with him anymore, as his entire body was knocked out of the way by Maetos' impact, his body hitting the hard wooden door, which in turn shattered it and sent it flying into the opposite wall's. Almost all the bones in his body were shattered by the repeated impacts.

Broken ribs pierced his heart and lungs, and without the help of a priest, death awaited him.

After knocking the strange servant out of the way, Maetos didn't stop for long. With a twist of his body, he turned and leapt out towards the outside of the house.

It turned out that just as his battle axe slashed at the strange scroll, a scarlet glow burst out of it and spread around. The scarlet glow made Maetos feel extremely dangerous, so without thinking, he smashed through the wooden shutters and jumped outside the house.

A violent explosion rang out in his room, accompanied by a blaze of fire that engulfed the entire top of the house.

Maetos fell heavily to the ground, a practice he had undergone in his knightly training, so that he was not hurt at all by the fall from the height. Instead, after falling to the ground, he hurriedly and quickly rolled to avoid the possibility of another attack.

After rolling on the ground several times, Maetos was able to stand up. By this time, all the Squire's living in the street had heard the unusual noise and rushed out of their houses.

Each of them was fully clothed, carrying a knight's longsword or a battle-axe. A few of the Squire with huge, heavy shields quickly surrounded Maetos to protect him, while the big, fat Squire who had just fought with Maetos paced the street with a chain hammer and growled in agitation.

"Who is it? Who is attacking us? Master of Tulip Manor, come out and answer us, why are we being attacked here?" The big, fat, angry Squire roared hideously in the light of the fire, his chain hammer swinging rapidly in his hand, a gust of bad wind whistling around him. Maetos took a moment to calm his breathing, pushed aside his protectors with his battle axe and stood out to look around.

Angry faces swirled before Maetos' eyes, and some of the irascible Squire's had even rushed to the stables to mount their horses, waving their weapons and snarling loudly, snarling to kill those who had attacked them. After all, everyone knows that if someone dares to sneak up on Maetos here today, then someone will dare to sneak up on them tomorrow.