—————————————————————–
Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: Yuziro
—————————————————————–
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
“…An unexpected monster. It seems Lord Sigelrad prepared thoroughly.”
Merna approached him.
“How did they follow us so quickly? Is there really a traitor within the royal guards?”
Blood oozed from the crevices of the knight’s armor.
“Do you think I’ll answer that?”
She raised her hand.
“I also know healing spells. If you draw your sword now and let me heal you, you can still live.”
The heavily-armored knight, Estian, let out a low chuckle. With trembling hands, he removed his helmet.
“…Sigelrad made a foolish judgment. If he truly wished to stray from His Majesty’s attention, he should not have become a lord in the first place.
And to bring his son into this…? To the Golden Shield, our current forces are merely a handful. My failure only signals our new preparations, not your victory.
I don’t know why he revealed the son he had been hiding so carefully, but it doesn’t matter. All that awaits Sigelrad’s wretched bloodline is death… Long live the King.”
A bluish light seeped from his calmly muttering mouth. In an instant, Merna stepped in front of Valian as before, chanting an inaudible spell. A yellow barrier formed, and Estian exploded.
The explosion was not large, but it left no trace of his body, creating a small crater.
“…Self-destruction. It seems he implanted some kind of spell stone inside his body. These central nobles certainly have money.”
Merna muttered as she looked at the knight’s remains. Then she turned to face Valian.
“…It seems the rumor that you single-handedly killed the Manticore wasn’t a lie. Tremendous power. Are you perhaps descended from a giant’s bloodline?”
“I’m not sure. The only known ancestor in my lineage is one person.”
“Who?”
“Valtazar.”
Merna let out a snort of laughter.
“Then your body has been blessed by the gods.”
She then approached one of the frozen horses and began gathering the intact supplies. Drigen sheathed his dagger and followed her. Econ spoke to Valian with a slightly disgusted look.
“I can’t decide if you were like an ancient hero or a bloodthirsty murderer. Perhaps those two are synonymous.”
He too then joined in gathering the supplies.
For Valian, their reactions were rather refreshing. In his years of experience in this medieval land, the typical responses of those who witnessed Valian’s ruthless abilities and unbelievable power were fear, reverence, rejection, and condemnation.
Few reacted otherwise. Yet here, the reactions of these three were precisely those rarities – a bit of admiration, then back to their own tasks.
It boded well that their future impressions didn’t seem unfavorable. After briefly pondering this, Valian approached them to help organize the supplies.
Then Econ called out, “Those people!”
The knights who had been lying on the ground appeared to have regained consciousness while Valian slaughtered the chain-mail warriors. A shield knight staggered to his feet, using his uneasy hand to support a two-handed swordsman. With his helmet removed, his face revealed a quite aged middle-aged man. A piece of paper was clenched in his mouth, and he mumbled something indistinctly.
Seeing the paper in his mouth, Merna reached out her hand to cast a spell.
But only ripples of air formed at her fingertips, and the spell did not manifest.
“Damn…”
After her brief exclamation, the spell scroll activated. A hazy blue light appeared, followed by a small swirling vortex. When the light faded, only the sword the knight had failed to retrieve remained.
“Ooh…”
In contrast to Merna’s furrowed brow, Valian looked astonished. For as far as he knew, these spellcaster-less spell scrolls that could manifest spells were extremely expensive and rare – so rare that he had only heard rumors of them in his wanderings.
“Not good.”
“What is it?”
Econ, who had been watching the knights disappear with a blank expression, caught Merna’s mutter. She explained,
“Those guys just came back alive, didn’t they? That means our party has been exposed. As that noble knight said before his death, the Golden Shield won’t give up after just one try. More precisely, the King won’t give up. So more assassins will come after us, but since those knights are alive, they’ll prepare countermeasures against our party. More specifically, countermeasures against that terrifying warrior.”
She gestured with her chin toward Valian.
“They’ll definitely come prepared to deal with the likes of him.”
Upon hearing this, Econ’s expression also turned grave. Watching Valian retrieve his throwing axes, he asked, “Then what do we do?”
“What do you mean, what? We killed one knight for a hundred gold coins and thirty assassins. We even used a precious spell scroll. The guy boasted that their current forces were just a handful before he died, but that was probably a bluff. No matter how much money and troops the King has, that’s an overt force. That’s probably why he created the Golden Shield as a covert force. So they definitely have limits.”
“So you’re saying…”
“We proceed as planned. Even if they send more assassins after us, it will take them a while to catch up. They’ll only be able to chase our trail. We need to reach the Twin Steel Towers before they can completely catch us. Then it’s over.”
“Well… but…”
Merna nodded.
“Were they too fast for you today? Is it possible there’s a traitor within the royal guards?”
At that moment, her gaze turned icy cold.
“…For now, that person will live until Drigen reaches the tower. But after that, I’ll make them pay tenfold for what they’ve done. With my own hands.”
Only then did Econ avert his gaze and nod. At that moment, Drigen, who had overheard everything, spoke up.
“Merna?”
“Yes? What is it?”
“I’m sleepy.”
It was an abrupt and bewildering childish complaint. Merna opened and closed her mouth for a moment before finally saying, “Drigen, we still have a long way to go. You can’t sleep just yet.”
The boy stared at Merna with a sullen expression, then heaved a sigh and said, “The horses are all dead.”
“Yes, they’re dead.”
“So we’ll have to walk?”
“Yes… I suppose so?”
“…Walking is hard.”
Merna’s expression turned to one of realization. Initially, she had thought they could make swift progress on this journey because the boy Drigen was an excellent horseman and enjoyed riding.
In the Anga of Dustic, he had ridden horses almost constantly, except when receiving instruction from Carltis or Elia. That’s why she had planned this rapid cross-country journey from the northeastern kingdom to the south – at the pace they maintained in Anga, they could reach their destination within a month.
But now he was saying they had to walk? Of course, they would procure horses whenever they reached a village or town along the way. But the boy was clearly talking about right now. Walking right at this very moment.
Merna raised a hand to her throbbing head. Not only was her brain drained from excessive spellcasting, but she was also vexed by the situation.
She and Drigen were not close. To Merna, who could barely manage her own life, the child was merely a nuisance. And the child, of course, quickly realized the adult’s attitude towards him.
So there was a rift between them. The reason she had taken on this task was not due to any closeness with Drigen, but because of a divination.
A divination that said if she led the journey, they would safely reach their destination. Since Lord Sigelrad and the royal guards had benefited greatly from Merna’s divinations in the past, she had no choice but to serve as their guide, regardless of her personal wishes.
Merna had tried to be proactive instead of begrudgingly accepting the task. But less than half a day into the journey, assassins had attacked, forcing her into a life-or-death magical battle, and in the end, she had even let some of them escape. She desperately needed to enter a meditative state to heal her injured consciousness from the spellcasting, yet this brat was complaining about walking.
Sensing her foul mood, Econ carefully suggested, “Um, I can carry him on my back for a while, if you’d like?”
“…Could you do that?”
“Sure, no problem. When I trained under my master, I had to carry heavy boulders while running up mountains. Drigen seems much lighter than those rocks to me.”
“I see…”
As a result, Valian ended up carrying most of the gathered supplies. Though Merna had tried to divide the load, Valian ignored her pallid face and cold sweat, shouldering the bulk of it himself.
The group set off again. Left behind were a decapitated elderly man, the mutilated corpses of some thirty armed soldiers, a crater, four frozen horses, piles of scrap metal, and a thick frost coating the riverbank and grass.
As they departed, Drigen, riding on Econ’s back, glanced behind him. A truly disturbing scene lay before the child’s psyche, yet the boy’s face remained expressionless.
Valian caught a glimpse of that expression and wondered – was that blank look a defense mechanism against an intolerable event, or the prepared face of a noble trained to rule from birth?
Perhaps he was already accustomed to such sights. As evidence, neither Econ nor Merna said a word about it, either. Then another thought arose – could a mere twelve-year-old really be so familiar with such carnage of blood, torn flesh, and disemboweled entrails?
As Valian indulged in these pointless musings, Drigen’s head turned back forward. He buried his face in Econ’s shoulder and seemed to fall asleep, becoming still and quiet.
And then Valian realized – the trembling shoulders and back, the tightly clenched fists gripping Econ’s collar, the muffled, shuddering breaths he had mistaken for fear, were the sounds of a child trying not to cry.
The image of a frightened child.
“…”
He considered offering some words of comfort but decided against it. Since Econ and Merna remained silent, he found it bothersome to take the lead. Besides, as the one responsible for the terrifying scene, his reassurances would likely have little effect.
With the softly weeping child and the handsome blond knight, the redheaded mage, the dark-haired warrior now twice as large from the bulk of supplies on his back, they continued forward under the bright sunlight.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
King or seer?