Duke placed a bag filled with coins on the table in front of Naku and Carlon.

'If this isn't enough, you can ask for more.' Duke smiled at them.

Carlon looked inside of the bag and counted the coins, Carlon's eyes widened as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing. He saw a huge pile of platinum coins in the bag and a total of 200 platinum coins.

'D-duke! this is too much!' Carlon answered with a worried face.

'Is it? I think it's still not enough.. I even want to give you more.'

'N-no duke this is enough.. even more..'

'Then for me okay~' Naku quickly took the coin bag that was in Carlon's grip.

'?! NAKU DO NOT BE GREEDY!' Carlon tries to pull the bag of coins out of Naku's hand but it doesn't work and they tug at each other until Carlon gives up.

'Haah... then hold on to that first.' Carlon sighed and patted Naku's shoulder.

'Hehehe..' Naku giggled and smiled.

'...Now that the business regarding my daughter is over.. I want to check something.' The duke raised his head and looked straight at Naku and Carlon.

In an instant the sound of the surroundings dimmed and was devoured by the sharp mana aura of the Duke who stared at them with yellow eyes sparkling by the surge of mana in his body and stared at them like a beast that had just woken up from its slumber, Carlon and Naku's subconscious survival instincts shook and released their mana aura to protect themselves. The gaze given by the Duke made Carlon and Naku not move and felt like prey that would be devoured by wild animals, Naku who saw the huge mana aura smiled thinking that there were various kinds of humans who were very strong even beyond the deep wolf forest he fought against, Naku's eyes who saw Duke reflecting his great curiosity and desire to find out things he didn't know made Duke smile and released his aura.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

'Ahaha! sorry sorry I just wanted to find out something, and I've seen it.' Duke laughed while patting their shoulders.

Carlon paused and sighed. 'Oh..'

The duke then looked at Carlon and asked him a question. 'Are you one of the retired knights from this kingdom?'

Carlon reacted to the Duke's question and looked his way. 'H-how did Duke know..'

'After seeing how you controlled mana, I immediately knew it was the Kingdom of Zealuterra's Mana Control Technique.' Duke answered while leaning his body on the sofa.

'..Yeah.. I'm a Zealuterra knight who retired due to... a reason.' Carlon answered while lowering his head and a sad expression written on his face.

'...Is it because of that war?'

'...Yeah, because of the war I retired as a knight and returned to the village.'

'The battle of Zealuterra against Vivid in the land of chaos.. not many people know about that incident because of the king decide to hide the truth and only important people of this kingdom knows about it, the incident also have a lot of unknown thing due to the strange factor of the battle, and maybe you are someone who saw the strange factor..' Duke looked at Carlon sharply while waiting for the answer he would give.

'...Yeah..' Carlon's face turned pale thinking about the events he went through during the war.

Another memory that he couldn't forget started popping up in his mind and drifted into his consciousness.

10 years after the incident that caused the village he lived in destroyed by an unknown creature's attack, he slowly trained hard to protect his village so that the same incident would not happen again. He trained hard until he was accepted as a Knight of Zealuterra and underwent royal training. Little by little Carlon became stronger and became one of the strongest and most moral new knights in the kingdom. Carlon gradually regained his hope after seeing the smiles of the citizens he saved. The village chief seeing Carlon come to life after setting his goal made him relieved and happy, but Carlon's hopes did not last long until an incident that would hit his morale and mentally hard would make him fall into despair once again.