Clayton opened up, "Back in the military, I feigned being a royalist, but in fact, I hated the guts of the royal family."
As a member of the Rushing Stream Guard, the royal family's direct troops, he was destined to serve as a weapon for the royalists, regardless of his will.
The Dorne Kingdom had not evolved into a republic as Milentie and Terrels had.
Over the preservation of the monarchy, many a civil war had been fought. Up to now, the political parties had been in an unspoken rivalry over it.
However, the phantom shook his head, saying, "It sounds important, but scarcely amounts to a big secret. For it would have changed little even if you had laid it bare back then. People like you are not uncommon. It is a mere personal position. A secret earns its name because of the dire need to keep it secret. Once spoken out loud, it would redirect people's course of life."
Clayton lifted his head, looking lost in his thoughts. "Maybe, then here's another thing."
"Before moving to Sasha City, I had been a veteran soldier who had fought all throughout the Lauren War. Upon the war's end, when I was taking part in the Victory Parade alongside my troops, an invitation from the royal family, bearing Queen Heron IV's signature, was delivered to me through my captain. I declined it, citing illness, but actually, I was pretending in order to avoid the Queen. Even at the last moment, I had no idea why she had invited me."
Even the phantom evaluator was dumbstruck. "Oh, this is quite a secret. And you're an admirable man. May I help you put in perspective what opportunity you passed up?"
"I'm all ears. I am also curious why my captain looked so amused when hearing of my illness."
"You missed an investiture ceremony. In the past, the King would select battle-honored warriors for a feast, where the King would confer upon them the noble title of Knight and throw light on the true fabric of the world. But all this wouldn't be mentioned in the invitations, as a tacit rule. They would invite more than one soldier, then settle upon the strongest, both mentally and physically, loyalist to bestow the sword upon on the spot. Your refusal would be interpreted as a failure to meet the standards, if not an insult to Ursula I. Your path into the nobility would be ever barred."
The phantom was unconcerned about things like a noble title or honor. Given his loss of most sensations, his sole joy welled up only the moment his curiosity had been satisfied.
Nonetheless, for most people, such things still held a singular allure.
He was now curious to see Clayton's reaction to this piece of information.
"Sounds like there was indeed no reason to accept that invitation." Clayton seemed even-tempered.
"Had I seen Her Majesty the Queen in person, I might have thrown up. Things might end up worse than now."
"You find her ugly?" the phantom asked.
Clayton shrugged. "The notes feature her profile. Despite my sentiments, I wouldn't dispute the beauty of Her Majesty. But she is a liar. Countless people have died on their paths seeking the vain glory that she has planted in their minds. A few of those idiots happen to be close to me."
"I got it."
"I have another question, but I'm unsure whether my secrets are enough to pay for it."
This time, the phantom appeared lenient. "I am okay with you putting it on your account. If your secrets aren't good enough, you can gather more later."
"The Holy Grail Society sent subordinates after me. They looked to be Darkins, but actually were not. They seemed to have undergone indescribable tortures. How had the Holy Grail Society mangled them like that?"
Clayton was unable to forget those watchers with deformed limbs.
Even though acting on orders to spy on him, their drive was definitely not loyalty but rather some hidden pain, Clayton believed.
"This intel is not very valuable. I think you can afford it." The phantom evaluator's voice was heavily laden with emotions. "That's a secret technique of the Holy Grail Society's. They call it 'the Blood of Desires'."
"After the Dark Moon left at the end of the Old Era and the Prophet of the Holy Grail Society, Sirilus, was expelled from Faryamas by the Papal Court, their option was to join up with Darkins, taking the numerous secrets of the Church along with them, including the data that the Inquisition had extracted from their research on Darkins."
"To rebut the views of Vanis, the writer of 'The Theory of Species', on reproductive isolation, the Inquisition took a brutal approach to their research in an attempt to disprove the impurity of human beings. To this end, they arrested scores of Darkins who had transformed from human beings and half-Darkins whose transformations had stopped halfway due to the Dark Moon's receding. Some heinous offenders were removed from prison for research purposes. Even abandoned babies were also raked in from all the countries to serve the purpose. "
"They ran experiment after experiment simulating the transformation of Darkins, which yielded unsettling results. Some clergymen, wavering in their belief, began to believe their experiments to be a massacre. Inevitably, they turned to the Holy Grail Society's argument on the Source of Wisdom and Life, which differed from the Papal Court's, the mainstream one. Thus, they fled, taking along the fruits of their research."
All this the phantom said in a calm tone, without a single cynical or disparaging word.
He was just recounting that part of history.
"The Blood of Desires is part of those fruits. It is the closest to success, but still can't produce a real Darkin. All it manufactures are half-humans, recognized by neither humans nor Darkins. That's one of the reasons the Holy Grail Society lost its sway later on. Yet, some people remain committed to developing the technology even now, thinking there is profit to gain down the road."
Clayton suddenly recalled the look in the eagle-bodied demoness's eyes and at last understood her.
To command such a monster, the Holy Grail Society must have promised to return her to a human or completely transform her into a Darkin.
However, from his experience, neither could be delivered.
The eagle-bodied girl must have wised up to this as well. She just could not make up her mind, so she had looked to Clayton to fire a shot, freeing her from her life.
"It was your turn," the phantom urged.
Jolting from his reveries, then clearing his throat, Clayton knew it was time to pay the bill. But he felt ashamed of the secret that he was about to retell.
"For all my frontal conflicts with the knightly forces of Taunton, I never secured an actual triumph. In the only one-on-one duel, I nearly had my heart poked through and, even at the last moment, failed to defeat my opponent. But all onlookers bragged that I had won a triumph. The rumor then spread like wildfire, which even earned me a promotion."
During his Lauren service, he deemed himself an expert in wielding both a lance and an army saber.
All his confidence lasted till one day when he, tipsy at a pub house, was goaded by another drunk, before the muddle-headed him led his horse, with a few other drunks trailing behind him, over to the cavalry camps of Taunton, yelling for a duel. To anyone's surprise, the cavalry really arranged for a knight to take on his challenge...
The phantom asked inquisitively, "You were still sealed back then, right? That means that your fitness was on par with an average human's, or at most slightly better..."
Until 'Hunters' showed up, Taunton's 'Knights' had been the only Extraordinary combat arm on the battlefield.
This never meant that there were no Beyonders in other countries, but said more about those Extraordinary individuals' unwillingness to risk their lives shuttling through a bullet and cannonball-torn battlefield.
Instead of engaging in life-and-death battles, most Beyonders gravitated toward claiming a larger slice of the pie at home, where they could use their special abilities to their advantage under a gun ban, as the soldiers of the ordinary man brought gold home from the colony.
Taunton's singularity stemmed from its traditional culture of mercenary, something hardly replicable.
As an ordinary man, Clayton's survival in a duel with a Knight was, by all appearances, admirable.
"Yes. And back then, we fought on foot instead of on horseback. My opponent wore an iron-clad armor that day, yet I was in a suit of tactical clothing..." Only after sobering up did Clayton realize that the duel was somewhat unfair.
"I wonder how you were able to survive," the phantom asked, interested.
"In fact, it was a day during the Holy Creation Festival. A temporary truce had been agreed on. Those Tauntonese were no less drunk in their celebration, though that didn't mean they would show any mercy in a duel. I suffered a complete defeat. My opponent was much swifter and more skilled than I. In a few exchanges of blows, he shredded his lance through my tactical clothing and canteen, leaving the spearhead broken off in me. I bled terribly. Certainly, I also directed my lance at him several times, but he warded it off with the remainder of his lance. I can't quite remember what happened later, but the duel gradually degraded into a wrestling match..."
Those memories rose to the werewolf's lips alongside a bitter taste. "My opponent was less skilled in the art of wrestling, but stronger. He beat the tar out of me, throwing me across the ground. At last, I saw an opening and pressed him to the ground, yet my stomach started churning... I vomited everything onto his face, drowning him in his helm. Even after I had finished retching, he was still trying to take off his helm and clean its ventilation holes and visor. Before I could land a few more punches on him, gawkers pulled us apart."
"That day, my opponent fell into a coma from suffocation, while I spent the Festival with nurses in a field hospital due to bleeding and broken bones..."
"The duel ended with no winner," Clayton concluded seriously.
When he bumped into Taunton's cavalry again, he had already been elevated to a junior officer, commanding a squad of thirty. Under his leadership, his subordinates never devised tactics of close combat with the Tauntonese cavalry, a horde of monsters with each horseman and mount clad in iron. They took great pains to secure victories in other ways. So did their brother squads.
He claimed to be, with a clearer conscience, an expert in flinging grenades rather than one wielding a lance or an army saber.