One day, after I’d spent several days atop the wall, letting time drift by.
Even this peaceful, tedious moment did not last long.
“We’ve got trouble!”
“Huh?”
The mercenary uncle who’d been assigned to wall duty with us came running up onto the rampart, panting for breath.
His name was… “Limson,” I think. His voice, always tinged with the smell of liquor, was especially loud today.
“What happened?”
“The pursuit team! They came back with half their number gone!”
“……What!?”
I doubted my ears.
I’d heard the pursuit team wasn’t just made up of ordinary mercenaries, but an elite formation that included soldiers as well.
At least a hundred men must have been deployed.
And not even half of them came back?
“That can’t be…”
“I’m telling you, it’s true! From what I heard, they were all covered in blood, and there wasn’t even anyone who could talk properly.”
Uncle Limson spoke with his eyes wide open.
His hands were trembling faintly.
If that kind of trembling came from the body of a seasoned mercenary, it meant this wasn’t simply the work of bandits.
“Damn it. Looks like we really are fucked, huh?”
Baldik, who was standing beside me, spat out a curse in a low, rough voice.
“Does that mean we’re going to be attacked again?”
When I asked, he answered in an irritated voice.
“Of course we are! Ah, shit, seriously…!”
Baldik drew his dagger and, gripping it tightly, began rubbing it against a piece of cloth with nervous force.
Perhaps stimulated by the sight, Sailen also pulled the bow from his back, drew the string, and repeated various motions.
His hands were busy, but his eyes remained fixed outside the wall.
“Oh, and! They said all standby units are to assemble in front of the gate! I’m going ahead!”
Uncle Limson strode away before he had even properly finished speaking.
“In front of the gate? What’s going on?”
Baldik tilted his head as if uneasy.
“Maybe they’re going to tell us what we just heard?”
Sailen muttered cautiously.
“They wouldn’t bother gathering everyone just to tell them bad news like that. Most likely… something else happened.”
I nodded at Baldik’s words.
“I see…”
I didn’t know what was happening, but one thing was certain.
It wasn’t anything good.
***
When we arrived in front of the gate, other mercenaries had already gathered in a noisy crowd.
In front of them, soldiers were groaning as they unloaded something from a wagon.
Inside the large wooden crates, all kinds of scrap metal pieces were mixed together, as if discarded by a blacksmith.
Rusty swords, broken shields, dented helmets, even badly worn armor fragments.
No matter how you looked at it, it was junk.
‘What is this? Are they trying to make us do odd jobs now?’
Just as that question crossed my mind, someone stepped forward from among the soldiers.
It was a soldier wearing a short cloak over his shoulders.
“Listen carefully. This is the equipment you will be using.”
He spoke briefly and firmly.
“From now on, only those who think they lack equipment should step forward.”
“Equipment?”
Someone muttered in disbelief.
“Now? They’re handing it out after the battle’s already over?”
“Of course. If another fight breaks out, they’re planning to shove us out first again, aren’t they?”
Murmurs broke out here and there.
But some stepped forward before the words were even finished and began rummaging through the crates.
“What the hell? It’s all trash!”
“Oh, this one looks decent—hey!”
“Hand it over, you bastard!”
The ones who had grabbed the relatively usable gear first began shouting at one another, and soon it escalated into fistfights.
A soldier tried to stop them, only to be shoved back instead, and the atmosphere quickly turned rough.
A large mercenary company headed to a battlefield might have decent equipment, but most of those gathered here were nothing like that.
They were bottom-rung lives who drifted from small city to small city, barely earning the price of their lives, unable to properly prepare even a single piece of equipment.
To people like them, even rusty, worn-out military gear was a precious asset.
“You need even this much to survive… Telling us to go out barehanded is too much.”
Someone muttered that as he pulled out a bent sword.
I quietly watched them.
“You bastard, I said that’s mine!”
“Why is this yours, old man! Damn it!”
At the sound of the commotion, I turned my head and saw a familiar face in the middle of the noisy crowd.
‘…Sailen?’
He was fighting red-faced with another mercenary over a helmet.
His hair was wildly disheveled, as if he’d gotten it crushed somewhere, and he looked even more miserable than usual.
“……Huh? What’s he doing over there?”
In the middle of the brawl, Sailen was gripping a helmet and pushing and pulling against an older mercenary.
His hair was a mess, his forehead wet with sweat, and his eyes held something like desperate madness.
“Sigh…”
Aileen let out a quiet sigh beside me.
Then Sailen’s shout followed.
“Brother! Brother! Please help me!”
That familiar pathetic voice.
Without meaning to, I closed my eyes, then quietly turned my head.
“Should we pretend not to know him?”
“Mm, let’s do that.”
Ignoring the cries coming from behind us, we turned away as if nothing had happened.
Whatever he did, there was no need to get involved.
More importantly… it felt like a waste not to return to the wall and rest.
“Is it manageable?”
At the familiar voice, I turned to see Kalren standing there.
“Oh, Branch Chief.”
Perhaps because of the heavy workload that had continued for days, his tired-looking impression had deepened even further.
“We’re just… doing what we have to. More importantly, I heard something happened to the pursuit team?”
“You’ve already heard. Well, if you’re near the gate, I suppose there’s no way you wouldn’t know.”
He nodded briefly, then continued in a low voice.
“Yes. Most of the pursuit team was defeated piecemeal. A few of the trained soldiers survived and returned, but the mercenary side suffered heavy losses.”
“……”
A short silence. His words contained the plain reality as it was.
“The guard captain will probably announce the situation separately soon.”
“But… didn’t you say you’d be commanding them personally, Branch Chief?”
“The authority is mine, but… I’ll barely have time to take to the field myself.”
He paused to catch his breath, then continued.
“Normally, I would have entrusted it to one of the gold-plaque mercenaries, but as you know, they’ve all left the city.”
“Then…”
“For now, you’ll have to move together with the soldiers.”
In any case, the same situation had continued for days.
There was nothing especially new to change now.
“Things must be bad.”
“There’s no problem with the bandits, but those…”
“The demonic humans?”
“Yes, those demonic humans. The ones the Order talks about. They’re the problem. From what the survivors say, they’re no different from monsters.”
I had only faced a demonic human once, but that statement wasn’t wrong.
There was nothing particularly human about them, and if anything, they seemed even more instinctive and dangerous than monsters.
The stone embedded in their chest was the only weakness I knew of, but battle was too chaotic to aim for it.
In a melee, it was hard enough just to deal with the killing intent right in front of you.
“Doesn’t the Order have any countermeasures?”
“Normally, the priests would have stepped forward… but this time they were ambushed, and with the number of wounded increasing, most of them withdrew to the rear. That’s why things became even more complicated.”
“Priests can deal with demonic humans?”
“I don’t know exactly, but I’ve heard a priest with a certain level of skill can. If that weren’t possible, the Purifiers would have stepped in.”
So the clichés often used in games applied here too.
“Purifiers? Who are they?”
“They say the Order has separate organizations that deal with demons. I don’t know the details either. There are only rumors that they exist, and almost no one has actually seen them.”
The Order had an organization like that too?
Purifiers… It was a name I was hearing for the first time, but strangely, it didn’t feel entirely unfamiliar.
I felt as if I had heard it in passing somewhere recently.
“They said the Order requested support from higher up as well… but there still hasn’t been any news.”
“Don’t tell me other regions are also…”
“There’s a high possibility of that…”
Were other places being attacked too?
I couldn’t be certain, but if not, there would be no reason for there to be no news.
“Aileen, there’s news for you too.”
“Huh? For me?”
“Yes. That guy Chad sent a letter.”
He took a small envelope from inside his coat and handed it to Aileen.
Aileen’s eyes widened.
“F-For me?”
“Yes.”
Kalren drew a small envelope from his clothes and passed it to her.
At a glance, the envelope was coated in dust.
Its corners were slightly crumpled, and a strange pattern was stamped over the traces of a wax seal.
I didn’t know what that pattern was, so I glanced at it, then turned my head away.
At a glance, it was clearly something unrelated to me.
Aileen froze for a moment.
The hand holding the envelope seemed to tremble faintly.
“……It’s from Sir Chad.”
She murmured softly and carefully broke the seal.
Aileen’s eyes moved quickly left and right as she unfolded the letter.
As she silently followed the words, her lips twisted ever so slightly.
“Are you all right?”
I asked carefully.
Aileen nodded.
“Yes… It’s just been a long time.”
She neatly folded the letter.
Seeing how tightly she held it, her heart did not seem to be at peace.
I didn’t ask any further.
“What kind of relationship do you two have?”
I had asked casually, but it was a question I’d been curious about for some time.
Just what sort of person was this Chad? Why did he care so much for Aileen, a complete stranger?
Kalren avoided my gaze for a moment, then gave a faint laugh and asked in return.
“Why are you curious about that?”
“Just because. I wondered how close you were for you to care that much. An ordinary person wouldn’t go that far.”
He rubbed his chin with one hand and let out a deep breath.
His eyes were cold as always, but a subtle softness seeped into his voice.
“The truth is, I owe Chad a great debt.”
“Sir Chad?”
“Yes, that friend.”
Kalren looked down for a moment at the plains below the wall, then slowly continued.
“A few years ago, when I found myself in a rather difficult situation, Chad appeared and helped me. If it hadn’t been for him, I probably wouldn’t have made it this far.”
“Ah…”
He smiled lightly, but that smile held a weighty gratitude.
“So now, I’m helping Aileen, whom Chad cherished. That’s all.”
His words were calm, but sincere.
I drew in a short breath.
Helping someone because you had once been helped yourself was, unexpectedly, quite a heavy and meaningful thing.
“…I see. I understand.”
“There’s no need to try to understand. I have no intention of forcing it on you.”
He ended the matter plainly again.
As if that was all, and he had no intention of saying more.
“…Though it seems you’re already doing the same thing yourself.”
“No, I’m only doing it because I accepted a request…”
“Most people wouldn’t accept just any request like that.”
He wasn’t wrong.
Anyone in their right mind wouldn’t get involved in something like this.
I suppose I hadn’t been in my right mind back then.
“Brother! Why didn’t you help me!”
From far away, Sailen came running over with a helmet on his head.
Maybe he’d been hit once, because the area around one eye was bruised blue, but his joy at obtaining the helmet seemed far greater.
Sigh. If I’d known this would happen, maybe I should have bought him a helmet.
Though he’d said he wouldn’t buy one in the first place, so it was his own karma.
“…A companion of yours?”
“No, he’s someone I don’t know.”
“……I see.”
Lightly ignoring Sailen’s words, I asked one final question.
“Then… when do you think the attack will come?”
“…I can’t say exactly when, but probably—”
Boom!
A heavy vibration rose from somewhere below the wall.
The impact was strong enough to make the wall tremble faintly.
“……W-What was that just now—”
Boom!
This time it was closer.
A chilling silence flowed among the people on the wall.
Rumble—
The soldier who noticed first shouted.
“Abnormality ahead! Something in front—!”
At that moment, a bell rang from inside the city.
Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!
The bell announcing an emergency rang out in succession.
“—It’s an attack!!”
A messenger came running like the wind, and then the guard captain’s shout filled the wall.
“Mercenaries! Everyone to your positions!! Check your weapons and prepare for battle!!”
Something was truly coming.