Chapter 246: “That’s Right. That’s Me.”

Just as the crowd was getting rowdy, a loud voice shouted out.

"The captain of the National Knights order, Farbin Garibaldi, is coming…!"

The entire scene suddenly went quiet at that announcement.

Everyone, including Shien, turned around to look in a certain direction.

There, several figures came out the camps and moved toward them through the crowd.

"What's with the commotion here?"

An irritated voice came out from a middle aged knight at the lead.

Shien narrowed his eyes and focused on the captain of the National Knights.

———— [The National Knight Order].

Just as the name suggests, this is a knight order that belongs to the Kingdom.

Although the Kingdom also has the royal knights who directly answers to the royal family and are known as the strongest wall, it's also a knights order that only the most elites are capable of joining. Every single royal knight is a least level 70, and the entire order is comprised of only 77 individuals. It's only natural that the entire Kingdom can't rely on just those 77 individuals to protect it.

Thus, the Kingdom has another knight order. It's named alongside the royal knights, but they're not made up high leveled powerhouses, but normal knights.

There's only two requirements for joining this knight order.

1: They're people without any problematic history.

2: They're over level 30.

Thus, the National Knight order is the real basic force that protects the Kingdom. It's divided up into eight major divisions, and each division is comprised of ten medium sized battalions, and each battalion is formed of ten smaller squads, with each squad comprised of 100 individuals.

In other words, the National knights are composed of 80,000 knights in total. Although each knight's level is nowhere near that of a royal knight, their numbers are far above that of the royal knights.

Right now, the middle aged man that's coming here is one of the captains of the National Knights – Farbin Garibaldi.

The captain representing the National Knights, Farbin, has shown up here, and he even had all four of his vice captains with him.

Shien could tell with a glance. For those four vice captains, one is a level 68 elderly night, one is a level 64 middle aged matron, one is a level 63 arrogant looking man, and the final one is a level 61 beauty of a woman.

When the adventurers saw those people, their expressions immediately shifted.

"Is that old knight the Cold Swordsman Jifgause…!"

"Is that matron the Demonslayer Katarine?"

"There's also the two greatest prodigies of the Garibaldi family, Raysig and Lana…"

"D-doesn't that mean that they're fully deploying then?"

The adventurers started getting loud.

"So all of them are here?"

Shien also found it surprising.

Those people are no nameless grunts after all.

According to Shien's knowledge, the Kingdom has a number of noble families that produces a lot of knights, the so called knight families.

Within those knight families though, three stand out greatly from the rest.

Of them, the one unquestionably at the top is the Arbin family. They've been the most loyal knights protecting the royal family for generation after generation. Their family's ancestor was the strongest companion of the Hero himself, and was the descendant of a Hero himself. Every head of the family across the ages were all epic level knights, having monopolized the rank of the captain of the royal knights without exception for the past thousand years. They are unquestionably the top among the knight families, who bears the noble rank of marquis.

The second is the Vladina family.

The Vladina family has 800 years of history. Their ancestor was a famous great knight from 800 years ago who died to protect the king of the time from a crisis. Thus, they were named to the rank of nobility, and over 800 years of development, they're also one of the top nobles of the Kingdom now.

The current head of the Vladina family is the current vice captain of the royal knights, a great knight at level 89. That vice captain also has a genius daughter, who rose to level 70 by the time she was 26 years old and was then recommended into joining the royal knights. Now, she's 28, but she's already been taken in by the first princess Liadella as her personal knight.

That's right, she's the female knight named Charl by Lia's side.

Her full name is Charl Vladina. A level 73 royal knight.

Thus, the Vladina family is known as the knight family within the Kingdom that's only surpassed by the Arbin knight family. Their status is no joke.

As for the last one, that would be the Garibaldi family.

This knight family hasn't ever produced a very powerful knight.

Heck, it hasn't ever even produced a powerhouse above level 80 before.

This is true for Farbin Garibaldi as well. He's already near age 50, but his level is only 71. It's only barely at the point where he's eligible for joining the royal knights.

However, the Garibaldi family has always been the family controlling the National Knight Order.

What's the degree of their control one might ask?

First, every captain of the National Knight Order has to be someone of the Garibaldi family.

Next, the four vice captains below the captain are nearly all knights of the Garibaldi family. Only a few exceptions to that rule has appeared in the past several hundred years.

Following that, among the eight division leaders, 80 battalion leaders, and 800 squad leaders, over half of them are either born of the Garibaldi family or are people with relations and unbreakable ties to the Garibaldi family.

One can say that half the properties of the National Knight Order and all of its authority is controlled by the Garibaldi family. It wouldn't even be overboard at all to call it the Garibaldi family's knight order.

As for why it turned out that way, the reason for that is simple.

Supposedly, back then the knight order was first established, each and every single knight within it was personally selected and recruited by the Garibaldi family.

Thanks to that, the Garibaldi family has always tightly held all authority over the National Knight order. This family might only be of the rank of count, but putting aside their status, if one were to only consider their influence and wealth, they far exceeds that of the Arbin and Vladina families.

Right now, the four names that were mentioned by the adventurers are the four vice captains who were following behind Farbin.

They're also the pillars of the Garibaldi family. They're the top of the National Knight Order. They're also the ones with the highest positions within the family besides the head of the family, Farbin, himself.

That group all appeared here as one and, after moving through the crowd, arrived before everyone here.

"Just what's with the commotion?"

Their leader Farbin impatiently asked around.

The adventurers nearby all went quiet. They showed none of the courage they had back when they were yelling about demanding to see the knights' leader.

"Captain…"

A knight that seems to be one one in charge here moved to Farbin's side and quickly whispered some things into Farbin's ears.

"Her highness's representative?"

After understanding the situation, Farbin visibly frowned and looked toward Shien.

The four vice captains also looked toward Shien.

At that moment, all four of them paused for a moment, and each of them reacted differently.

"Isn't that…"

The old knight Jifgausse seemed to have recognized Shien and showed a surprised expression.

"Is that him?"

The middle aged matron Katarine was also somewhat surprised.

"So he's that adventurer who's been close to her highness recently?"

The arrogant looking man Raysig, looked unhappy and glared at Shien with a gaze filled with hositily.

"So that's him…"

The pretty Lana showed an enlightened expression. Then, her own expression turned somewhat strange as well.

Shien saw how all five of them reacted, and he started smirking in response.

"It seems like I don't need to introduce myself then."

Shien spoke out candidly.

"That's right. That's me."

Those words made the atmosphere turn a bit strange.

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