Honestly, I’d been hoping.
That maybe, just this once, this journey would end without a fight.
But··· of course it didn’t.
On the sixth day, we ran into a group of mercenaries.
There were about six of them, ordinary mercenaries in light gear.
At first, they were reasonably easy to talk to.
We exchanged information, and it seemed like we would naturally pass each other by—
“Hmm? You’ve got quite a bit of cargo, don’t you?”
—then one of them looked over the wagon’s load, and the mood changed in an instant.
“Yeah?”
“Anything good in there?”
It took only a moment for them to turn into highwaymen.
Come to think of it, this was what mercenaries were originally like.
I must have only been meeting unusually friendly ones until now.
“What the hell, there’s nothing as expensive as I thought.”
“Oh! There’s liquor too! Take it, take it.”
At first, they only rummaged through the cargo.
The coachman quietly shook his head at me, and I, too, stood back from the wagon, intending not to step in.
But then one of them began looking at Aileen with blatant eyes.
The man approached us with greed laid bare in his gaze.
At that moment, there was no longer any reason to endure it.
“Hey, you in the robe, take that off and come—huh?”
Whoom. Crack!
The sound of a watermelon splitting apart from the mace swung with all my strength struck my ears.
The sensation that traveled up my fingertips was a horrible feeling I could never have been used to.
It had been a long time since I had killed someone directly.
I forced down the nausea rising into my mouth.
Toward another man staring at me in shock from the dreadful noise, I silently threw the water bullet I had gathered in my left hand.
When the water bullet flew at him, he flinched in alarm and stumbled, and unfortunately, the trajectory skimmed past above his head.
At the ensuing commotion, the men searching the wagon all turned this way at once.
“What the hell?”
“A-a mage!”
The man who had seen my water bullet shouted urgently.
“A mage?”
“He’s a mage?”
The mercenaries began murmuring at those words.
Their gazes swept over my body all at once.
Doubt appeared in their eyes first.
“He’s wearing armor and carrying a mace. What kind of mage is that?”
“No! That bastard definitely shot some weird magic!”
The confusion spread.
They even began to doubt one another instead.
Well, I suppose it would be hard to decide that someone holding a bloodied mace and wearing armor was a mage.
On top of that, my staff was tucked inside my bag.
Their suspicion was, in its own way, reasonable.
“Wait··· then isn’t it a relic?”
“A relic?”
A flicker of tension passed through me.
I worried they might charge in greedily again, like those thugs last time.
“Then shouldn’t we run?”
“Damn it, if it’s a relic, we run!”
···But they were different.
Rather than a mage, they seemed more afraid of a relic.
The men scattered in every direction and quickly began to flee.
“···?”
For a moment, I wondered whether I should chase them, but the terrain was too rough.
With an empty expression, I had no choice but to watch their backs as they disappeared into the distance.
“Should we consider that··· fortunate?”
Aileen, standing beside me, asked cautiously.
“Mm··· probably?”
I wasn’t certain, but for now, that was the only way to sum it up.
We returned to the wagon and checked the damage.
There had not been anything especially valuable to begin with, and most of it was grain.
It seemed they had taken a few things while fleeing, but in the end, all that had disappeared was a few bottles of liquor.
“You really were confident in your skills.”
The coachman said with a surprised face.
“Are you all right? A few bottles of liquor···”
“Haha, cheap liquor like that is nothing. Compared to the price of my life, it’s nothing at all.”
He looked as though it truly was nothing.
If anything, even though his belongings had been stolen, he seemed to be in a good mood.
“To think I’d get an escort like this for such a cheap price.”
So that was why he was in a good mood.
His face was full of satisfaction.
···Thanks to that, I had to listen to the coachman humming all day long.
***
At last, the final day of the journey.
There had been a variable in the middle, but there had been no major disruption to the schedule.
Rattle! Clatter!
As expected of a village on the frontier, the road was narrow and rough.
“Ugh, my back. You said we’ll arrive before sunset?”
“That’s right. See that peak over there? If we go around the side road there just a little, the village will come into view.”
Not long after I heard those words, the first thing that entered my sight was smoke soaring into the sky.
“Um··· does that much smoke usually come out?”
“No, there’s no way. What is that? Are they holding some kind of festival in the village?”
Smoke was billowing from behind the peak.
It felt different from ordinary smoke.
Black and thick as it rose, it carried the artificial smell of something being burned in large quantities.
Sensing something strange, the coachman increased our speed, and we rounded the peak and entered the road from which the village could be seen.
And soon, we saw the sight.
“What··· is that?”
A large-scale fire was raging in the village.
At the shocking sight, we stopped the wagon.
“Damn it, we can’t go in any farther.”
The coachman muttered, and I nodded.
Ash scattered beneath our feet, and from afar, the sound of collapse could be heard intermittently.
The flames seemed to have started in the center of the village, and fortunately, because the village was small, the fire’s spread was somewhat limited.
I remained seated on the wagon and looked at the flames.
The smoke rode the wind and flowed sideways, and beyond my field of vision, the scenery wavered hazily.
There was no reason to go inside.
If we turned back here, that would be the end of it.
That was when it happened.
A man staggered out from the mouth of an alley in the distance.
His body was scorched, and his arm showed severe burns.
I quickly got down from the wagon and approached him.
“Are you all right? What happened inside?”
“M-monsters···.”
He barely managed to answer, gasping for breath.
“They suddenly came in. They set fires and tore through the village. I don’t even know who’s still alive···”
For a moment, I was at a loss for words.
The fact that this was the village I had come to deliver the letter to kept circling in my head.
“Are there still people left inside?”
“Yes, there are still··· a few more people. Sir Lusein is inside, guiding the evacuation.”
“Sir Lusein?”
“Yes. He’s the head priest of the Church of Sereon. The villagers all followed him··· and he stayed until the end.”
···Damn it.
He was clearly the person I had to deliver the letter to.
I stood there silently for a moment.
I turned my head and looked at the flames once more.
The buildings burning away, the smoke rising like chimneys.
If I washed my hands of this and turned back now, it would be over.
I hadn’t even been paid in advance, and all I had been asked to do was deliver one letter.
I had no responsibility to confirm that person’s survival, nor any reason to rescue him.
But··· was it right to abandon someone who was saving people inside?
That bothered me a little.
I placed a hand on my waist and looked back toward the wagon.
“Aileen. Go around toward the water.”
“What? What about you, Liv?”
“I’m··· going inside for a bit.”
“Then I’ll go with—”
Aileen, who had been about to say she would come with me, stopped.
She must have instinctively realized that she would be of no help inside.
I looked for a moment at Aileen, standing there with her lips pressed tightly together, then entered the village alone.
Inside was, quite literally, a scene of hell.
The flames were not as large as I had expected, but the flying ash and smoke had dyed my vision red and dark.
I took a strip of cloth from my pouch and soaked it in water.
Covering my nose and mouth, I moved as far away from the flames as possible.
Even so, I had to feel threatened by collapsing roofs and even single sparks flying toward me.
‘Damn it, I can’t find anyone like this.’
The deeper I went into the village, the more even my sense of direction grew hazy.
In the end, I decided to use that method.
I moved my body into a comparatively safe gap and closed my eyes for a moment.
Drawing up my mana, I focused myself with short breaths.
When I recalled the spell, mana slowly began to gather around my eyes.
I inhaled and slowly opened my eyes.
[Azure Eye]
My reddish, murky vision inverted, and the world changed into a deep blue light.
Moisture drying out in real time here and there, and afterimages resembling human forms, drifted through the blue scenery.
Far beyond my field of vision, in the inner part, I faintly caught sight of a group of figures.
One person was in front, and several people were following behind him.
‘Ugh··· is it over there?’
After confirming the location, I forced my unsteady steps forward.
The strip of cloth dried out quickly, and after wetting it again several times, I turned into an alley.
And at last, I encountered that group.
“W-who are you!”
When the man walking at the front discovered me, he immediately moved the residents behind him.
An instinctive reaction that seemed ingrained in his body.
Within it, I could clearly sense a sense of responsibility first.
The man’s face entered my sight.
His blond hair had been scorched, partly burned black, and burn marks remained on his left cheek.
Even so, his clear green eyes had not lost their vitality.
He looked younger than I had expected.
That man··· must be Sir Lusein.
“You are Sir Lusein, correct? I came on a request from the Sereon Order.”
“The Order···?”
I took the seal out from my inner pocket.
When he confirmed the wax seal stamped with Sereon’s emblem, only then did he ease his tension and nod.
“A letter from the Order at a time like this··· there must be a reason for everything···”
“···What happened here?”
At my question, Sir Lusein withheld his words for a moment.
Beyond the flames, something was swaying as though it might collapse at any moment.
“Since you have come from the Order, I suppose I may tell you.”
He exhaled quietly and continued.
“There was an attack by a fiend.”
“···A fiend?”
It was a word both unfamiliar and familiar.
The last time I heard that word was with the hunter I killed in Delhar Village.
I never thought I would become involved with one again.
“It would be difficult to explain everything in a place like this. Let us move first.”
Sir Lusein said that and turned around.
Among the people he led, I quietly matched their steps.
I thought we would immediately get out.
But our destination was not outside the village.
He was checking one by one to see if there were more people left in the village.
The flames were still threatening, and time was not especially plentiful.
After hesitating for a moment, I opened my mouth.
“There should be a few more people over there.”
Upon hearing those words, Lusein did not hesitate.
Without even asking how I had confirmed it, he immediately divided the people and sent them out, continuing the rescue.
We retraced the alleys through the flames, and fortunately, we were able to rescue some of those my sight had caught.
Only after it was judged that no one else remained were we able to safely escape from the flames.
“Father··· where is Mother···”
“Waaah—”
Outside the village had already turned into something like a temporary shelter.
Elderly people who could not walk properly, parents clutching their children and sobbing, even injured people lying unconscious.
···It was truly a disaster.
The smell of blood and burning, tears and ash mingled together, making even the air feel heavy.
Through the gaps between them, sobbing continued.
The wails of those who had lost family drifted around the village entrance, quiet but desperate.
Sir Lusein moved among them sparingly, saying little.
He held the hands of the injured and lightly placed a hand on the shoulder of a child holding back tears.
And a short while later, he came toward me and quietly bowed his head.
“Thank you for your help.”
“No, don’t mention it.”
To Sir Lusein, who greeted me courteously, I also bowed my head awkwardly.
I had only observed him for a short while, but there was in his bearing not merely a priest, but the weight of a person carrying others on his back.
I could not treat him carelessly for no reason.
Sir Lusein offered a handshake and carefully introduced himself.
“My name is Lusein Eravon. Though I am of little worth, I serve as the head priest in this village.”
“I’m Liv. I’m, uh, a mercenary.”
As he slowly withdrew his hand, Sir Lusein continued in a gentle voice.
“I should continue what I was saying earlier. There was an attack by a fiend.”
“The resident I spoke to earlier said it was a monster···?”
When I asked cautiously, he nodded and added an explanation.
“Because of its grotesque form, people commonly make that mistake. What they saw with their eyes was certainly closer to a monster.”
True.
The fiend I had encountered in Delhar back then had also been difficult to call human in form.
“What kind of attack was it?”
“At first, he entered the village like an ordinary traveler. He greeted people, asked about the village, and walked around. He was quiet, well-spoken··· not suspicious at all.”
Sir Lusein’s voice was low and calm, but there was a suppressed anger in it.
“And when it was close to midnight, he came to the cathedral. He said there was something he was curious about and requested a private conversation with me.”
“What was he curious about?”
“He asked about the way God bestows grace upon people. Whether God’s standards are fair, whether that grace does not become suffering for some··· At first, I thought it was academic interest. But that was not it.”
With a grim expression, Sir Lusein slowly shook his head.
“After we had spoken for a short while, he took a small black stone from his breast. And then he··· put it in his mouth.”
“In his mouth?”
“Yes. The moment he put it in his mouth and chewed, flames surged from his body. His skin split, his eyes turned red, and he transformed into a being difficult to describe as human.”
“···A fiend, then.”
“I··· had no choice but to face him on the spot. And the wound I received then is this.”
He slowly pointed to the left side of his face with his hand.
A red burn covered in blisters.
The skin was distorted, and even without being told, I could feel how fierce the flames had been.
“That man··· where is he now?”
“It would have been good if I had defeated him, but···”
Sir Lusein quietly lowered his eyes.
“Perhaps judging that he could not kill me immediately, he left the cathedral, set fire to the village, and fled.”
On his face remained the guilt of not having stopped him then.
“Do you remember what he looked like before he transformed?”
“Yes. He was wearing a dark blue robe··· and had a tonsure.”
“A tonsure···?”
“Yes. It is a custom in which monks shave part of the scalp as a sign of ascetic practice or devotion. The top of his head was clearly exposed. The hair around it remained as it was.”
A dark blue robe, a head without a lid··· it was familiar.
The man I had met a few days earlier in front of the wagon stuck in the mud.
His calm manner of speaking, his plate-like hair, and that strangely quiet smile.
He··· was the fiend who had attacked Sir Lusein.