Chapter 172

Senior Knight Edith of Porlang was chatting with another senior knight, Millisha.

“If you say it like that, the Captain’s bound to cut you off without even listening.”

“Then should we start with the sweet talk?”

Edith shook his head at Millisha’s words.

“He’ll just lap up the praise and forget all about the important stuff.”

“…….”

“…….”

They fell silent, both perfectly capable of objectively assessing their own superior.

“So what do we say?”

The silence grew even thicker after Millisha spoke.

What they were debating was how to get the Knight Captain to respond to the territory’s residents dying off in droves.

The Knight Captain was a man with no brains and no drive, but an outsized sense of authority. He absolutely refused to let his senior knights move the troops freely.

Not even in emergencies.

No matter the situation, his standing order was that all troop movements had to go through him without exception.

In a typical noble house, it might have been a reasonable command.

But not in Porlang.

In a place where you first had to hunt down the Knight Captain just to report to him, what was this nonsense about prior approval and post-action reports?

“Ugh.”

Edith and Millisha were racking their brains when—

—Knock knock.

Someone rapped on the door.

The two knights exchanged glances.

“Anyone coming by?”

“No.”

This was Edith’s room.

They were in the middle of scheming how to butter up(?) the Knight Captain, so they were naturally on edge about visitors.

But then—

“Um…… Sir Edith…….”

The voice from outside was trembling, on the verge of tears.

Edith pressed a hand to his forehead. Millisha’s expression soured too.

They’d heard the story of how Ron had unwittingly looted Edelweiss’s carriage not long ago.

“I told him to take a break from training for a while, so why’s he back?”

Edith felt a bad premonition.

—Click.

He opened the door, and sure enough, Ron was looking up at him with a tearful face.

“Um…… Could you…… listen to what I have to say? Like, counseling?”

He clearly remembered that in the Porlang Knight Order, only the Captain had authority for private audiences.

Smart kid…… how’d he end up in a knight order like this…….

Edith clicked his tongue and let him in.

“What’s going on?”

“H-Hello, Sir Millisha!”

Ron, stiff with tension, bowed to Millisha as well.

Millisha returned the greeting while sizing him up.

No visible injuries. Had someone chewed him out for skipping training?

Was there anyone in the knight order who’d say that?

Edith and Millisha were spinning similar thoughts when—

—Rustle rustle.

Ron rummaged in his knight order uniform pocket and suddenly pulled out a money pouch.

—Jingle.

In Edith’s room—a symbol of incorruptibility rare in Porlang—the sound of clinking coins rang out.

Edith was, naturally, flustered.

“Sir Ron?”

Why pull out money after showing up teary-eyed?

But the money pouch wasn’t all Ron offered.

He pulled out a letter too. One that had clearly already been opened.

—Rustle.

Edith opened the letter with a dubious expression, and his face changed.

Millisha, peering over from beside him, reacted the same way.

“This is…….”

A letter from Kikal de Porlang requesting asylum in the Eastern Empire.

Supposedly written in secret with invisible ink, but the type that revealed text when heated was outdated even ten years ago—laughed at as archaic.

But because Kikal had boldly used this old method for his “secret” letter, the Porlang Knight Order learned exactly what he was up to.

“Asylum in the Eastern Empire?”

“Isn’t this basically treason?”

This was no longer something the Porlang Knight Order could handle internally.

“Wh-What do I do……?”

Ron looked up at Edith with teary eyes.

Handing this over would mean execution for treason for Ron too.

“Don’t leave my room for now. You can’t let Lord Kikal see you.”

Kikal had gone to deal with a gate, but who knew when he’d return.

If he spotted Ron after seeing him at the mansion, he’d fly into a rage for sure.

“O-Okay.”

As they reassured Ron, Millisha and Edith exchanged glances.

This isn’t something we can handle on our own.

That was their conclusion when—

“Sir Edith, are you in?”

A voice called from outside.

“!”

Ron startled and looked around wildly.

No matter how incompetent Kikal was, he wasn’t without followers in the knight order.

He was the family’s real power holder, after all.

……Though the family was crumbling because of it.

“Over here.”

Millisha gestured.

After confirming Ron had slid under the bed, Edith opened the door.

“What is it?”

Standing outside was, coincidentally, one of the knights infamous for bootlicking Kikal.

He delivered his message with a nonchalant face.

“The Family Head orders the knight order’s defense perimeter reduced further. The Captain has naturally approved.”

“What?”

Edith froze. In that moment, the knight rattled off like a machine gun.

“For this reduction in defense perimeter, troop movements are delegated to you, Sir Edith. That’s all.”

The knight delivered the message and left.

—Slam!

The door shut, and Edith muttered the order in a daze.

His eyes met Millisha’s—fuming and unable to hold back—and Ron’s, who was wriggling out from under the covers with a shocked expression.

“……Shrinking the perimeter further here means not even one in ten territory folk will get knight order protection.”

Millisha said.

“No choice.”

Edith furrowed his brow.

“Troop movements are delegated to me, after all.”

After a brief internal conflict, he declared.

“I refuse the defense perimeter reduction order.”

Ron’s eyes went wide.

Defying orders was a grave sin in a knight order where chain of command was everything.

“Oh, knights!”

Edith did the exact opposite of the viscount’s order—he expanded the defense perimeter.

The Porlang territory folk, who had barely survived by forming militias, naturally welcomed them.

But word that Edith had defied orders and expanded the territory’s defense on his own reached the viscount’s ears soon enough.

“These bastards! Is the Family Head’s word not law?!”

Edith, Millisha, and the other knights with a shred of sanity protested.

“We didn’t become knights to rust away in some warehouse storeroom! Let us protect the territory folk!”

Defying orders on the battlefield allowed summary execution.

Unfortunately for the viscount, this wasn’t wartime.

Besides, their justification was “to save the territory folk,” wasn’t it?

Letting it be known in noble society that he’d prioritized his own neck over gate victims dying in droves wouldn’t look good.

So there was only one answer.

“Exile the knights who defied orders!”

“……!”

The exile decree rocked the Porlang Knight Order.

Most senior knights like Edith and Millisha, plus the competent ones, were expelled en masse.

“You knew getting exiled for insubordination would mean branding, right?”

The furious Porlang Viscount had red-hot irons pressed into the backs of every exiled knight’s hand without fail.

Marking them as knights exiled for defying orders.

No noble house would hire knights with that brand into their orders.

“What is this?!”

The territory folk wept openly at the sight of the knights emerging with their right hands bandaged.

But the exiled knights could no longer stay in Porlang.

“We’ll at least take down any monsters on the way out.”

The knights said with regretful faces. Then they delivered the crushing reality to the folk.

“Lord Porlang has no intention of protecting the territory residents. Our final order was to limit the defense perimeter to around the mansion.”

Shouts of outrage erupted among the folk.

“What does that mean?!”

“We held out with militias thinking the lord would support us eventually……!”

One furious, despairing resident asked.

“Where are you knights headed?”

The knights pondered briefly.

The first place that came to mind for leaders Edith and Millisha was Edelweiss territory.

With that brand on their hands, they couldn’t join a knight order, of course.

But maybe they could work as mercenaries there?

“……We’re heading to Edelweiss territory.”

“What?”

“Edelweiss?”

“Isn’t that the place with the best gate management?”

“Where Lady Senia—no, the Count—is…….”

The mood among the folk shifted. And soon, they dropped a bombshell.

“We’ll carry your luggage and handle the chores, so can we come to Edelweiss with you?”

“Pardon?”

Edith’s eyes widened.

The curtain rose on Porlang’s great exodus.

Nice stat boost!

“Whew.”

I gazed at the God’s Shop window with a satisfied grin.

Including miscellaneous quests and monster kills, the rewards pushed my coins well over 100k.

Time to buy another skill key!

I couldn’t hold back my laughter.

In short, unlike Soyeri Hunter’s steady decline before entering this dungeon, I’d surged upward dramatically.

It had been just 12k not long ago—this was explosive growth.

That was when Joo Hunter Yian’s anti-gambling campaign line #11 dropped.

“Family Head!”

Helen’s urgent voice rang out.

What? Did a gate break? But there were no unmanaged gates…….

“What is it?”

The office door flew open as I replied.

And Helen uttered something absurd.

“Refugees are pouring in!”

“Refugees?”

No, refugees from where?

“Hasn’t the Eastern Empire refugee procession been sorted?”

Helen shook her head at my words.

“From inside Karman!”

“???”

Refugees coming from Karman to Karman?

I blinked.

That Dungeon’s S-Rank Time-Limited Young Lady (Chapter 173)