I am a mercenary.
A person with a profession destined to be used as a meat shield all across the world until that damn Demon King dies.
Someone never given any particular importance anywhere, who operates in the shadow of those so-called Hero’s parties.
That’s me.
Ordinary people only pay attention to the achievements of the Hero’s party. They don’t really care how hard people like me are busting our asses behind the scenes.
“Please hold out against an army of fifty thousand demons for one week.”
Fuck, fuck me…
No, Hero, my dear Hero…
If I were capable of taking on an insane request like that, you’d be the one busting your ass and I’d be the Hero.
“Please accept the request, Evan.”
……
Sigh.
You Hero bastard. If you were even a little less pretty, I swear I’d really—
Ha…
“Fine… I’ll give it a shot.”
Once again, let me say this: I’m just an ordinary mercenary.
Though with a reputation as an all-purpose problem solver attached.
-- Prologue (End) --
Every person has a dream.
Farmer, chef, guild receptionist… and so on.
There are many different professions in this world that can become someone’s dream.
But even among them, there are naturally popular jobs and unpopular jobs.
If we’re talking about popular jobs… no, rather than jobs, should I say the thing people most want to become in the future?
Anyway, for example…
“The Hero has returned after cutting off the head of a vicious monster!!!”
“Wooooooaaaaaaaaah!!!!!!!!”
A Hero… something like that.
Or,
“Did you hear? They’re only thirteen years old, but they’re already at the 4th Circle!!”
A mage who travels with the Hero.
And so on.
The professions that can join the Hero’s party are the most popular.
But,
I was a little different from other people.
“Whoa there. You all right?”
When I was only five years old.
A swarm of monsters came to a small village on the outskirts of the Astra Empire… in other words, the empire I lived in.
I was an ordinary boy who lived in that village,
and an orphan with no parents.
Back then, I envied children who had parents.
Because the sight of them holding hands with their parents as they went around the village to shop, or returning home with toys in their arms, looked so incredibly happy to me.
That was why I wanted parents, and why I dreamed of having them.
But now, looking back, I think that because I had that absence back then, I was able to survive like this.
Since there was no one I needed to look after besides myself, I could run out of the village without hesitation.
And thanks to that, I was rescued by a mercenary band that happened to be passing through the forest near the village.
“Kerek!”
After lightly cutting down the goblins that had been chasing after me, the leader of the mercenary band asked me why I had been running.
I explained the situation and guided the mercenary band to the village, but
by the time we arrived, the village had already been burned and was turning to ash.
I stood there blankly, staring at the village as if I were zoning out in front of a fire,
but I didn’t particularly feel anything complicated.
Rather, what remained vividly in my memory to this day was the terrified expression of one mercenary as he patted my back and comforted me.
It was only much later that I learned that expression had been connected to the Demon King’s resurrection.
Anyway, with nowhere else to go, I ended up joining the mercenary band that had saved me.
Some people would ask me questions like this.
“Weren’t you forced into the mercenary band?”
“They might mistreat you, telling you to pay them back for saving you.”
But that was just prejudice born from the social image mercenaries had.
The mercenaries I saw were a more romantic and cooler profession than what the world made them out to be.
What people think a mercenary band is: a hired group that cleans up after incidents.
What a mercenary band actually is: people who risk danger and take the lead in checking dungeon threat levels, maintain public order in the back alleys, and at night clink mugs in taverns to wash away the toil of the day.
More than the Hero’s party returning in glory amid drifting flower petals, I liked the mercenaries I could see every day, the ones who had directly saved me.
“You really want to become a mercenary? I know I’m one to talk, but… there are plenty of jobs better than this, you know?”
“Yes.”
“No one will recognize you for it. If you just like swords, wouldn’t it be better to become a knight? Everyone acknowledges knights! Their income is stable too!”
“No. I’ll become a mercenary.”
“Sigh…”
The mercenary uncle clicked his tongue and said to me,
“Fine, do whatever you want.”
That was when my life as a mercenary began.
At first, of course, there was nothing I could do except odd jobs.
There were plenty of request forms plastered all over the walls of the mercenary guild,
but my mercenary rank—in other words, my credibility—was rock bottom, so those were the only requests I could accept.
“Hey!!! You damn cat!!!!!!! Get over here, will you!????”
Finding runaway cats.
“Grandpa!!!!! Are you all right now?????”
“I’m fine!!! The water ain’t leaking anymore!!! Thank you!!!!!”
Repairing old houses.
“You already gathered them all? The number is… yes, exactly twenty. I’ll settle your payment right away.”
Gathering medicinal herbs in the forest near the village,
and then,
“Cheap! It’s cheap!!!!! We’re closing soon, so there’s an extra discount!!!!”
even selling dead stock.
Doing odd jobs like these, I lived day by day.
Ah, and just in case, let me say this. I’m not complaining.
I wasn’t the type to dislike helping others.
That didn’t mean I intended to spend my whole life doing only this sort of work.
—Thud! Thud!
I practiced swordsmanship every day, striking wooden posts,
“Evan! Try taking down that wolf magical beast!”
and sometimes I followed the mercenary band on magical beast subjugation requests.
If I was lucky, there were days when I even received instruction from a fairly famous mercenary.
And as time passed, this year, when I turned eighteen.
“Philip!!! Left side!!! Block it no matter what!!!!!!”
“Fuck!!!!!!! Send more people, then!!!!!!!!!”
“We don’t have any people!!!!!!!!!”
“Then hire some!!!!!!!!!”
“We don’t have money!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
“Then earn some!!!!!!!!!!”
“We have to get out alive to receive the reward, you son of a bitch!!!!!! Shut up and block it!!!!!!!!!”
I had risen to a position where I commanded a unit within the mercenary band.
It feels a little strange to say it myself, but my growth was quite fast, from rock-bottom credibility to being treated as a pretty decent mercenary.
According to some of the people who taught me, my talent was abnormal or something.
There were people who asked me to become their disciple, but for some reason I didn’t feel like it, so I refused them all.
Well… the bigger reason was that after seeing their techniques a few times, I could copy them right away.
Anyway.
—Slash!
I cut down the last remaining monster’s neck.
From the tip of my lowered sword, black drops of blood dripped stickily.
“No casualties, right!!!!?”
“If we just put some medicine on it and sleep, we’ll be fine!!!!!”
After making sure there were no comrades who had lost their lives or suffered serious injuries, we headed to a nearby village.
We had to let the villagers know that the danger had been successfully removed so they could live in peace.
“Thank you, young man.”
“Not at all. It was something we had to do.”
“Even so, gratitude is gratitude. Why not have a meal before you go? The people in our village are very good at cooking.”
“Unfortunately, there may be another place that needs us, so I think we’ll have to hurry as much as possible.”
The village chief, wearing an understanding expression, no longer tried to hold us back.
“If anything happens, I’ll call you again.”
“Personally, I’d prefer that there be no need for that.”
“Hohohoho.”
Leaving behind the villagers who came to see us off, I set out on the road again.
This time, my steps were for the sake of receiving fair compensation.
It goes without saying, but a small village like this cannot directly hire our mercenary band.
Of course, it’s true that mercenaries are among the cheapest armed groups one can call upon, but we’re not running a charity either.
The place that called us was a large city called Roten.
How large, you ask…? Sert-ham Roten, the lord of Roten. His title is marquis.
A title that stands shoulder to shoulder with counts, and at times is even considered a little higher.
In effect, you could think of him as a hiiiigh-class noble standing at the very top among nobles.
Naturally, the castle he resided in was also quite large.
Anyway, the marquis had far too much territory to protect.
Roten itself was no small place, and on top of that, he had to guard the border while fending off magical beasts that surged in without rest.
And was guarding the border the end of it?
No.
If a dungeon, a place where monsters appeared internally, was generated, the dungeon had to be conquered before the phenomenon known as a “Dungeon Break,” where monsters came out of the dungeon, occurred.
For that reason, even with the position of marquis and the military power he had built upon it, it was practically impossible to perfectly defend the entire territory.
This was when mercenaries like us were hired.
In particular, the mercenary band I belonged to had a good reputation, so we often received requests from large cities like Roten.
That was why, this time as well, I arrived in Roten familiarly to receive our reward, but…
“Sir Evan. There is someone looking for you.”
It seemed there was one more bothersome procedure today.
“They’re probably asking me to become their disciple again.”
This kind of thing wasn’t common, but it happened once in a while.
Because rumors had spread about how outstanding my talent was or whatever… I couldn’t help but suffer through things like this.
Still, perhaps because I had turned away so many until now, they didn’t swarm me annoyingly like they used to.
“I’ll beat them, then send them off quickly.”
Requesting a spar, saying I wanted to see what kind of teaching they could give me.
That was the method I had used until now to drive away those people.
Clean, easy for the other side to acknowledge, and leaving no room for complaints afterward.
It was a template I used very often.
But… at a glance, it didn’t seem that the person waiting for me this time would be an easy opponent I could deal with that way.
“I will deliver the payment to someone else. Sir Evan, please follow me.”
I nodded silently.
Normally, I would have received the payment here and simply returned.
That was because people volunteering to become my master usually waited at the mercenary guild.
But since I was being told to follow him, that meant the person waiting for me was inside the castle.
And that meant the person waiting for me was someone of a standing high enough to receive such treatment from the marquis.
“They are waiting here.”
Leaving behind the servant who bowed to me and quietly disappeared, I carefully opened the door.
“Ha… sh… I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
With the instincts I had gained from a certain amount of mercenary life, I was sure at a glance that something incredibly troublesome was waiting for me.
But what could I do… I had no choice.
I let out a deep sigh and grabbed the doorknob.
—Creak.
When I opened the door, the person sitting before me was an old man.
I had expected it to some degree before entering, but as expected, he was no ordinary old man.
“His presence is… faint.”
He was like a ghost.
A being that could appear at any time, and disappear at any time… something like that.
And also a being I could never defeat at my current level.
That was my first impression of the old man.
“Seeing your eyes dart here and there, it seems you have many thoughts.”
A heavy, low voice that seemed to press down on the surrounding air just by being heard filled the room.
“How could I thoughtlessly face someone like you, elder, not knowing what might happen? I should at least keep hold of my lifeline.”
“If I meant to kill you, I would have done so the moment you entered the castle.”
“Please think of it as a mercenary’s instinct.”
“…Your mouth does not seem nervous at all.”
With those words, an awkward atmosphere continued for a while without either of us saying anything.
The old man’s abyss-like, empty eyes seemed to pierce through my inner self.
And after a short while, the old man rose from his seat first.
“Let’s go.”
The old man left the room without even looking back.
As if he were certain I would follow him no matter what.
“I’m not some dog that comes when called.”
……………
Woof woof.