A woman in white garments emerged from the village chief’s house.
“Lady Luna, have you finished your investigation?”
“Yes. Let’s go to the forest where the demonized one appeared.”
Watcher Luna nodded and walked down the village road.
The sky was perfectly clear, yet one corner of her heart had sunk heavily.
That mage. Was his name Liv?
There were many suspicious things about him.
For one, a rare free mage was working as a mercenary in a remote village.
And that such a person had dealt with a demonized one alone was even stranger.
It made no sense.
To call it simple coincidence, every single element overlapped in far too strange a direction.
And most decisive of all was that question.
“Do you think the demonized one was targeting you?”
The question had been simple.
But his gaze had wavered.
The reaction of those trying to hide the truth.
She had seen eyes like that far too many times.
Lost in thought for a moment, she raised her head at the voice beside her.
“Lady Luna, we have arrived.”
“...So this is the place.”
An abandoned cabin at the edge of the forest.
As if it had already lost its function as a structure, the walls leaned, and the roof had collapsed.
Traces of battle remained around it.
Deeply gouged footprints, broken branches.
As she drew closer, the fishy stench unique to a rotting corpse stabbed at her nose.
There was no body inside the cabin, but blackened bloodstains remained stuck to the floor.
“They said the body of the village youth was found here?”
The one who had come searching for the hunter and become a victim.
May the peace of God reach his soul.
After offering a brief prayer, she looked around the cabin, but there were no clear clues.
She immediately stepped outside and stood at the spot where the demonized one was said to have fallen.
After slowly examining the surroundings, she closed her eyes.
At that moment, sacred energy slowly spread through her entire body.
Like transparent ripples running over her skin.
[Demonic Energy Tracking]
When she opened her eyes, a faintly trembling blue light soaked her vision.
Soon after, black and ominous traces emerged from within the darkness.
The traces left the cabin and continued deeper into the forest.
It was evident that someone had deliberately lured the demonized one, or induced its birth.
“A suspicious flow of demonic energy has been detected. This must be reported officially.”
Luna slowly raised her head.
This was no coincidence.
Demons, and demonized ones.
There was always a human hand behind the birth of a demonized one.
They... had begun to move again.
She furrowed her brow and declared in a low voice.
“The demon worshippers have returned.”
***
“Ah, this is so nice.”
How long had it been since I’d had a sweet rest like this?
I was rolling around on the bed, where the sunlight fell just right.
Worried someone might notice I had returned early, I had crept carefully back to my room at the inn.
Thump! Thump! Thump!
At the sudden knocking on the door, my heart dropped.
Should I pretend I’m not here?
Don’t tell me... that old man Brigan came looking for people again?
“Mr. Liv. Are you there?”
Only after hearing the voice could I breathe again.
Thankfully, it wasn’t Brigan. But it was still an unexpected guest.
I pulled the handle and cautiously opened the door.
“Millen, what brings you here?”
“You were here. I was asked to deliver some medicinal herbs.”
He carefully held out a small bundle.
From within the cloth wrapping came the strong smell of crushed grass.
It was a familiar scent. I wrinkled my nose.
“Ugh... I’m always grateful, but does this stuff really work? The smell is pretty strong.”
“You’re not eating it, you’re applying it. And your wounds haven’t festered, have they?”
...I had nothing to say.
I applied it to my arms after training every time, and strangely enough, the bruises faded quickly and the wounds never got badly infected.
I couldn’t exactly refuse to believe it.
“Have those people left?”
“Those people? Ah, if you mean the priests... they went into the forest just now.”
I see.
That meant they were still staying in the village.
If I went outside for no reason and happened to run into them, it would only become a bother. Better to just hole up quietly in my room today.
That aside... it was about time I found new work.
The silver coins I received from the last request had been more than I’d expected, but once I got my equipment in order, there wouldn’t be anything left.
I couldn’t laze around forever.
“Millen, is there perhaps... any work worth doing in this village?”
“Work? Hmm... ah!”
Millen seemed to think for a moment, then nodded.
“Could you investigate the lake in the forest that I mentioned before?”
“The lake?”
It sounded like I was hearing it for the first time, but as I searched my memory, something vague came to mind.
Ah, right.
The day before I went into the forest, he had told me to be careful around the water.
“Yes, Delhar has something like a superstition. They say that on clear days when it isn’t raining, a monster appears if you go to the lakeside.”
“A monster?”
This sounded like something out of a children’s fairy tale.
“It’s not a laughing matter. Quite a few people claim to have actually seen it. It’s just that no one has been attacked yet.”
“Then there’s no need to subjugate it?”
“Since there hasn’t been any damage so far, that’s about right. Hiring mercenaries costs money, so everyone is just getting by by being careful.”
...At those words, the corner of my mouth twitched.
This was a method I’d seen all the time when I worked at a company, wasn’t it?
“Don’t spend money until a problem happens.” And then later, it would always blow up in a big way.
Places where people live are all the same.
“Hmm, understood. I’ll go take a look if I have time.”
“Really? Thank you. I always seem to receive help from you, Mr. Liv.”
Millen bowed his head and thanked me.
I nodded slightly and closed the door.
“A lake monster, huh... Well, it wouldn’t hurt to go see.”
Muttering to myself, I set the medicinal herbs on the desk and flopped down on the bed.
When resting, you had to rest properly.
Whether it was that lake or whatever, for today... a nap came first.
***
I did not head straight to the forest lake.
It didn’t seem like I would receive any particular reward, and my body was exhausted just from training every day. There was no reason to go wandering around and waste more energy.
Then one day, during training, Mr. Brigan suddenly opened his mouth out of nowhere.
“Why are you trying to learn swordsmanship?”
“Pardon?”
It was so sudden that I ended up asking back.
Hadn’t I said this before? Was he about to bring up something meaningful?
“When I run out of mana, I need to be able to at least defend myself.”
“No, why ‘swordsmanship’?”
Ah.
Thinking about it, that wasn’t such a random question.
There were plenty of weapons besides swords—axes, spears, hammers, bows...
The reason I specifically chose the sword, huh...
I wondered how I should answer, then ended up being honest.
“Well... swordsmanship is cool, isn’t it?”
Mr. Brigan looked at me silently, then declared with a dead-serious face.
“You crazy bastard.”
Ah, did I just get cursed at?
His forehead wrinkled heavily as he continued.
“You have no talent for swordsmanship.”
Those words struck more painfully than I expected.
To be honest, it wasn’t as though I didn’t know.
At first, I couldn’t even swing properly, and only after several months had I barely become able to match footwork.
Even so, my win rate had been going up little by little lately.
So I thought I was finally starting to get the hang of it...
And then came the sudden declaration of “no talent.”
This was a bit of a blow to my mentality...
“Huh? Then what should I do?”
“What do you mean, what should you do? You should look into another direction.”
At those words, so blunt and merciless, I almost laughed, then stopped.
Which direction was I supposed to turn to next?
If the sword wasn’t it, then what came next?
“Hmm...”
After thinking for a moment, Mr. Brigan walked silently behind the cabin.
Then he picked something up and came back.
Thud.
The thing placed in front of me was...
“Is this... a mace?”
A simple weapon with a heavy weight attached to the end of a long wooden shaft.
No matter how you looked at it, it was a mace.
“A mace? I’m a mage, and you want me to use a mace?”
“What’s the problem? Then does it make sense for a mage to use a sword?”
...To refute me with such a cowardly sound argument.
I had nothing to say.
Mr. Brigan crossed his arms and looked down at me as he continued.
“A sword is a harder weapon to handle than you think. Leaving aside cutting and thrusting, there’s maintaining distance, keeping balance, controlling speed... It’s complicated.”
“Then is a mace on the easier side?”
“Of course it’s easier than a sword. You just smash things with it. It’s intuitive.”
...He really wasn’t wrong.
Thinking about it, with a sword, you had to have the correct angle to cut, and sometimes it would bounce off.
But with a mace, you just... bam.
Once it hit, that was the end of it.
“Besides, you said you use some magic that makes something like a shield, didn’t you? What shield was it?”
“Yes, well, I do, but it breaks pretty easily...”
“It still blocks, doesn’t it? Then it’ll go well with a mace too. Block, then hit.”
Aha.
Block with the shield, counterattack with the mace.
Not bad.
It was a more realistic combination than I’d expected.
“...I’ll think about it.”
I didn’t know if this was the right choice.
But at the very least, Mr. Brigan hadn’t given up on me.
He was trying to find a path that suited me.
That fact alone made me feel a little more at ease.
I picked up the mace and swung it once.
A heavy, dull sensation.
In a way, maybe this was closer to my reality.
“The weight feels nice. I could really hit someone with this.”
“Don’t say that while smiling.”
Mr. Brigan sighed and swept back his hair.
“Starting tomorrow, practice with that. If you really need it, I’ll make you a practice one with the balance adjusted.”
“Yes, thank you.”
And so, I accepted my new identity as a mace mage.
...Something about this is weird.
***
After accepting my new weapon, my win rate in sparring began to rise to a bizarre degree.
Of course, for the first three days, I did nothing but get beaten.
I wasn’t used to the center of gravity, and because of the short reach, thrusting and keeping my opponent in check were both awkward.
At first, I was busy swinging it ignorantly.
I landed one or two hits by chance, but a counterattack came immediately after, and I tasted the dirt floor often.
But on the fourth day.
As if some switch had been flipped, my vision changed.
The angle, distance, and timing of my opponent’s sword coming in.
They clicked together in my head like puzzle pieces.
Holding the mace, I began to strike with light taps.
They really were “taps.” Even without putting strength into them, the heavy mace dealt enough impact.
When I held a sword, there were many things to worry about.
Lowering my body, adjusting the angle, calculating while watching my opponent’s wrist and eyes at the same time.
But the mace was different.
If I just swung it, that was the end.
It was simple.
And that simplicity suited me well.
“Mr. Brigan, should I switch to a mace too?”
A bronze-rank mercenary who had been hit by the mace and dropped his shield asked.
It hadn’t been a direct hit, but his eyes were quite serious.
Seeing him like that, I laughed without realizing it.
Mr. Brigan replied as if dumbfounded.
“Figure it out yourself, you brat!”
“Haa, I didn’t think even I would lose...”
As he grumbled while rubbing his forearm, I shrugged.
We did not use magic in sparring.
It was a rule decided from the beginning.
Instead, saying he would help with my training, Mr. Brigan lifted the restriction on my use of a shield.
That was what had come into my hands today.
A crude wooden plank with its nails not fully driven in. It was an unremarkable shield.
Even so, combat became much more comfortable.
Block, and strike.
It was a truly simple combination, but I won more matches than when I fought with a sword.
Perhaps because of that, the gazes around me changed too.
Before, I had been the guy who couldn’t do anything without magic, but now I was more or less a usable mercenary.
Of course, my magic was still sealed.
I couldn’t use it in the sparring grounds.
Instead, as I watched the sparring, I was habitually imagining in my head the Water Bullet ricocheting and the Water Current Barrier rising.
Strangely enough, that imagination seemed to help with my actual sense for magic too.
...But that was a story for outside the training ground.
Right now, I was holding a shield and waiting for Brigan’s next words.
With his arms crossed, he looked down at me and said,
“Good. Starting today, let’s do this a little more seriously.”
“...Are you saying you haven’t been serious until now?”
“Yeah. I’m saying I haven’t been taking you seriously.”
I nearly laughed, but held it in.
I gripped the mace again.
I liked the heavy feel of it in my hand.
Mr. Brigan brought someone with him.
A loud, familiar voice reached me first.
“Oh! Been a while.”
It was Tral.
So he was alive. That was the first thought that came to me.
I didn’t ask where he’d been or what he’d been doing.
We weren’t close enough to ask each other things like that.
Even now, it was still awkward.
His curt way of speaking hadn’t changed at all.
I still couldn’t tell if he was being arrogant or just didn’t think much.
These days, I simply assumed it was the latter.
“You want me to fight him?”
When I frowned, Mr. Brigan said,
“He uses a weapon similar to yours. You’ll have something to learn from him.”
True, the way he’d performed in the fight against the bandits had been impressive.
Tral pulled a short club from his waist and strode toward me.
Seeing that it had no nails, it must have been a training club.
Without another word, he threw off his outer garment and loosened his wrists.
Then he pointed at me and said,
“No points. Until one of us goes down. One bout.”
He came at me the instant he finished speaking.
Seriously. No warm-up, nothing.
The club came in fast, curving through the air.
It was quicker than I expected, and I failed to block it, taking a clean hit to the wrist.
Thwack!
“Ugh…”
My wrist went numb. It was heavier than I’d thought.
The weapon was short, but it felt like he was driving in with a long weapon.
Was he striking as if pressing down with his elbow?
After taking one hit, my stubbornness flared.
It’ll be hard to knock it aside. Better to let it flow past.
I lowered my upper body and slipped to the side.
I dodged the club by a hair’s breadth and raised my mace at the same time.
Thwack!
This time, I landed a hit.
But Tral didn’t even budge.
“Harder.”
One short word. The look in his eyes changed.
Clang! Thwack! Crack!
Both of us clashed with nothing but our blunt weapons, no shields.
It was sparring where we allowed ourselves to be hit, focusing instead on flow and evasion.
Getting hit, dodging, I kept learning.
Tral used angles and his center of gravity rather than strength.
Strikes created not with his arm, but with his entire body.
The club, drawn from behind his head, lashed in like a whip.
Even though he didn’t seem to be using much strength, it was incredibly threatening.
I tried imitating him.
At first, my timing was a mess, but after a few attempts, I began to get the feel of it in my hand.
After three or four tries, I managed to mimic it somewhat.
Thwack!
In the end, I struck Tral’s shoulder cleanly once more.
Of course, after that, I took several more hits and went rolling across the ground.
It was a complete defeat.
“…Not bad.”
Tral said, looking at me.
Was that praise?
I nodded.
“You too. You’re more delicate than I expected.”
“I’m just hitting.”
I couldn’t tell if he was serious or if he’d simply blurted it out by habit.
But strangely enough, this sparring match had been rather fun.