84. Damn Young Masters (5)
Looking back at the stage at his classmate’s words, Mikhail hugged his friends in joy.
The opponent fighter was foaming at the mouth and twisting his limbs after being hit in a vital spot.
While the fighter struggled between life and death, people were excited just thinking about winning money and being right in their judgment.
To them, the fighters’ lives were worth less than ants.
Just as Mikhail’s favored fighter was about to kick the dying fighter’s stomach again, someone pushed him aside.
The next fighter had come up on stage.
Seeing his face, Mikhail yelped and hid below the seats.
“What’s wrong, Your Highness?”
Mikhail didn’t answer his classmates’ questions.
‘Why is Brother here again!’
Mikhail was having terrible luck today.
As the existing fighter was carried away on a stretcher, Nikolai began his match with the opposing fighter.
Though he could subdue anyone instantly with his strength, he only dodged the opponent’s attacks instead.
He was buying time until Katya and the knights could find the Despot Club members.
Moreover, he wanted to somehow stop this horrific scene where commoners and lower-class people killed each other for money.
‘You dare do this to my people?’
Looking at the nobles sitting in the audience, anger boiled up and his jaw clenched involuntarily.
From conversations in the waiting room, he learned most fighters were former mercenaries.
Though the warrior nation—the Grand Duchy of Hersen—was the world’s largest mercenary exporter, many people lost their jobs as peace came to various countries.
The mercenaries only knew martial arts, but entering knight orders or the military was difficult.
Positions were limited, and the nobles running knight orders and military officers only recruited and promoted children of noble acquaintances.
Their incompetence didn’t matter.
‘Thanks to that, all the knight orders and military organizations in this country are rotting from within.’
Even in times of peace, security was important.
Military power wasn’t only needed for waging war.
One needed strength to protect the country from enemies.
Meanwhile, Katya walked through the vast audience searching for Despot Club members.
Since they might be hiding in commoner seats rather than noble sections, it was important to sweep through everything without discrimination first.
Behind her, the Grand Duke’s knights followed pretending to be companions while protecting her.
“Ah!”
Looking around and thoroughly searching the seats, Katya crashed into someone without watching ahead and fell backward with a thud.
As she touched her aching forehead that felt like it had been pounded, the other person extended a hand to her.
“Are you hurt?”
The nobleman asked while helping her up.
Though Katya wore commoner’s clothes, this handsome man spoke formally to her.
He might just be polite, but something felt off.
“No, I’m fine. I wasn’t watching where I was going. I’m sorry.”
“Not at all. I was distracted too.”
Seeing him keep glancing at the main entrance beyond her shoulder during their conversation, the man seemed quite busy with something.
The matches were still ongoing.
Leaving now meant not getting any money.
While gambling addicts stared at the stage with bloodshot eyes, he seemed interested in something other than the matches, like Katya.
“Are you hurt, noble sir?”
“Pardon?”
“You have bandages on your arm. I’m worried the wound might have reopened when we bumped into each other.”
Katya asked, pointing at his arm.
“I’m fine. If you’ll excuse me.”
The man quickly walked toward the door past her.
Standing still in that spot, Katya seemed to realize something and turned to run after him, grabbing his arm.
“What are you doing?”
“It’s been a while.”
“What?”
“Nice to see you again, Fulano Mengano.”
He was Fulano Mengano who had acted as manager at the Ghost Hotel.
Though his appearance was completely different from the hook-nosed, mustached Mengano, Katya recognized him from two clues.
First was the bandage knot. Before he disappeared, she had treated his wound and wrapped the bandage herself.
She was actually terrible at knots.
Like the laces on her current dress, the bandage knot on the man’s arm was tied with poor skill.
Such a sloppy yet unique knot pattern was probably only possible by her in all of Hersen.
Well, even this could be written off as coincidence if one was generous enough.
‘And the footsteps.’
Though Katya was good at recognizing footsteps, that was limited to people she had known for a long time like family.
Yet she recognized Mengano’s footsteps because they made a special sound different from normal people.
It was a sound only heard from flat feet.
When two coincidences overlapped, it was worth being suspicious.
And decisively, when she said ‘Fulano Mengano,’ a flash of confusion crossed the man’s face.
Her deduction had been correct after all.
But Katya still didn’t know he was Pavel, Ivan’s older brother.
“You are indeed sharp-minded.”
Not denying it further and immediately admitting his identity, Pavel turned the doorknob and opened the main entrance.
At the same time, armed men poured inside.
“Nobody move! By order of the Chief Justice of the Southern Region!”
The Chief Justice was the second highest position after the Supreme Justice.
The soldiers he sent quickly surrounded the audience with guns.
As an unannounced, irregular crackdown suddenly occurred, the arena instantly turned to chaos.
The organizers were equally surprised. This crackdown had definitely been taken care of by bribing the justices.
“Huh? Why are you here?”
A soldier asked in surprise, recognizing the Grand Duke’s Knight Commander.
“Seems like for the same reason as you?”
As it inadvertently became a joint operation, the court soldiers and Grand Duke’s knights cooperated to arrest the event organizers.
Pavel and his men also joined in to clear out the resisting groups.
Seeing a familiar silver-haired back trying to escape somewhere, Katya chased after him and jumped over the audience fence.
“Tia!”
Just as Nikolai spotted his wife from afar and climbed the stairs, the doorman who had rushed to handle the situation recognized him.
He had thought something seemed suspicious—so this one was a spy who had sneaked inside.
Just as the doorman charged with a knife to stab Nikolai’s back, he was helplessly struck by an attack from the side.
“Argh!”
Rather, the doorman cried out in pain as his arm was cut.
Only then did Nikolai turn around.
“Are you alright, Your Highness?”
Nikolai knew the face of this man who had saved him.
It was Pavel Petrovsky, the winner of the recent jousting tournament.
“I’ll thank you later.”
As Pavel nodded in understanding, Nikolai turned and ran to find Katya.
“I shouldn’t have listened to these idiots!”
After eagerly watching the match just fine, Mikhail cursed his friends as he flung open the bathroom door.
He didn’t care if his classmates were caught. Right now his own safety was most important.
Seeing how angry his brother had been at the clubhouse earlier about something, those member bastards must have plotted something dirty.
And if his brother found out about illegal gambling on top of that–!
Not just his mother Oksana, but he especially didn’t want to show such a disgraceful side to his brother.
Though it might appear undignified, he decided to escape through the window.
Despite the narrow space, Mikhail’s slender build and slim waist seemed capable of squeezing through.
Just as he opened the window, the bathroom door he thought was locked suddenly burst open behind him.
“Where are you trying to escape to?”
Thinking it was his brother, chills ran down his spine, but it was a woman’s voice.
With confidence that he could subdue one woman despite being weak, he turned around.
And was shocked.
It was that woman who had flown like a butterfly and stung like a bee at the clubhouse earlier.
“Do…… do you know me?”
Recognizing who was the stronger one, Mikhail quickly became servile and desperately pretended not to know her.
“Hey, you were at the Despot Clubhouse! Illegal gambling too, you’re doing all sorts of bad things? You’re really something else.”
“What do you know! Get lost!”
Mikhail threw whatever he could grab at her randomly.
Though it seemed like a strategy to create a diversion and buy time to escape, it was clumsy.
“You little brat, really!”
Katya angrily pulled off the smelly towel that had been thrown over her.
Meanwhile, Mikhail had already stuck his upper body out the window.
As he struggled with his legs in the window gap trying to escape completely, Katya ran and grabbed them.
“Hey, you crazy! Let go!”
“How did you know? That I’m the crazy b*tch of this area? Want me to show you what real madness is?”
“What kind of girl is this strong!”
A battle ensued between him and some woman over his thin body from inside and outside.
As Mikhail grabbed a pillar outside and pulled, Katya’s grip on his legs started slipping.
Not wanting to lose him, she desperately grabbed his pants, causing Mikhail’s bottoms to come off completely.
Suffering visual trauma, Katya was momentarily stunned and let him go.
“Aaaaah!”
Suddenly feeling exposed, Mikhail screamed in shame as he realized what had happened.
His snow-white thin legs like dried firewood flailed in the air before Mikhail abandoned his pants and fled.
Katarina Smirnov, no, Katarina de Vasily.
Age 21.
Whatever sins she had committed in her past life, before seeing her husband’s supposedly impressive lower half, she ended up seeing her troublemaker brother-in-law’s underwear that she had never wanted to see.
