As I said before, the original plan was to explain the whole situation to the guards as best I could.
Or just make up some plausible excuse.
Since I’d become friendly with a few guards while working as a mercenary, if someone I knew happened to be on duty, there was a good chance they’d let me pass without any trouble.
After entry to Mount Thusnis had been blocked off, a few tourists had secretly gone up the mountain and gotten caught, but they’d only paid a small fine, enjoyed the rest of their vacation, and returned to where they originally lived.
It was never a place where the punishment was that severe to begin with.
It wasn’t a restricted area because there was some secret to protect or any special reason behind it.
They’d only blocked access as a precaution to protect tourists and prevent troublesome incidents in advance.
But once I descended the mountain, it seemed impossible to get out of here without trouble using the method I’d originally planned.
“Lock it down completely! Don’t let even a single rat through!!!”
“Search party over there!!! Hurry up and get ready!!!! Are you going to take responsibility if that intruder bastard gets away!?!??”
The security was far stricter than usual.
‘Ah, don’t tell me it’s because of that?’
About a month ago, I think I heard they were holding a competition to select a suitable mercenary with enough skill to handle odd jobs for the Hero’s party.
And the place where the competition was being held was, of all places, right here in Rotten.
If the Hero himself was coming to personally confirm the successful candidate, of course security would be tight.
On top of that, if my guess was right, it was also around the time when the saintess of the Lunnia Church would soon visit Mount Thusnis to take the holy flame.
Talk about terrible timing.
Well, when had life ever gone according to plan?
I turned around and headed back up the mountain.
‘If my guess is right, north should be...’
After checking the direction, the moment I got my bearings, I sprinted straight north.
Because I’d thought of the only way to resolve this situation.
My thoughts were cautious, and my actions were swift.
To the north lay the Demon Realm.
A place even Rotten’s soldiers avoided.
Most of Mount Thusnis was located within Rotten, but because of its enormous size, part of it extended beyond the Caliseo Wall.
There was no wall built over the mountain.
Rotten used the mountain as a kind of wall, skipping over it and continuing the Caliseo Wall again from the opposite side.
Wouldn’t that mean monsters could invade through the open section?
The answer to that was, “The exact point where the Caliseo Wall cuts across is near the mountain’s middle slope, so monsters can’t approach.”
Because from the middle slope upward, the holy flame was burning.
Monsters could never pass through that place.
Even if they tried to force their way through, they would burn to ash halfway.
In any case, I ran north, where there was a possibility that the encirclement would be thin or absent altogether because it was close to the Demon Realm.
My final goal was to return to Rotten through the Demon Realm.
Not only was everything I’d built up until now there, but if I didn’t go to Rotten, I’d have to head to another city, and from the Demon Realm, getting anywhere other than Rotten would probably take months on foot.
I had no choice.
I didn’t know whether they were coming because they knew I had climbed Mount Thusnis, or whether all this was because of some other intruder besides me.
If it was the former, then there was nothing I could do.
It wasn’t as if I could have done anything bad on Mount Thusnis, and above all, I was innocent.
Once I reached Rotten, I could simply cooperate with the investigation in good faith.
If it was the latter, I could just continue my daily life as if nothing had happened.
Though the idea of crossing into the Demon Realm, a place where no humans lived, was a little frightening.
Still, in my opinion, this was the only way.
“Haa... haa...”
The scenery of the Demon Realm spread out before my eyes.
A red sky and barren land.
A place where no one lived...
Or at least, it should have been.
‘Why does it feel so familiar?’
The landscape of the Demon Realm, which I should have been seeing for the first time, didn’t feel unfamiliar at all.
As if I had spent quite a long time here.
‘No, that can’t be right. I’ve never gone out into the Demon Realm...?’
Wondering if I had perhaps been to a similar place during my mercenary days, I searched my memories, but I had never been anywhere particularly similar.
Of course not.
Our mercenary corps had never left the north.
Barren, desert-like land on this scale could only be seen if you went all the way down to the Shamat Empire at the southern end.
‘If I really make it back to Rotten safely, should I stop by the cathedral and get myself examined or something...?’
It was already unsettling that I had suddenly woken up on Mount Thusnis with my memories gone, and now memories that shouldn’t exist kept surfacing.
My mind could only grow more and more confused.
‘For now, let’s get back to Rotten. That comes first.’
Holding on to my uneasy heart, I headed toward Rotten.
***
I had safely crossed into the Demon Realm and was walking along the Caliseo Wall toward the entrance.
“Hey!!!”
A guard in the distance spotted me and waved.
I had been extremely tense in case I really was wanted or something,
but judging by that guard’s reaction, Rotten’s current situation didn’t seem to have anything to do with me.
“James! Been well?”
I greeted him first with a smile.
“Of course! I’ve been well. What about you?”
“I’ve been well too.”
James pointed at the castle gate with his thumb and said,
“Come on in. Since it’s you, Evan, I’ll just check the records and be done with it.”
The records he meant were the list of people who had gone outside the walls.
It was true that the Demon Realm was a restricted area, but there was a system that allowed people whose identities had been confirmed to go into the Demon Realm for a set amount of time to train and improve their skills.
Since problems could arise, anyone going outside the walls had to record their name and expected duration on the list.
‘My name probably won’t be there.’
The last thing I remembered was going to the castle to receive my pay after finishing a request.
I had no memories after that.
My last memory was inside Rotten, and the place where I woke up was Mount Thusnis.
Since my last memory was inside Rotten, unless something strange happened, I must have climbed the mountain from inside Rotten.
In that case, there was no way my name would be on the Demon Realm entry list.
Unless I’d gone insane, left Rotten through the Caliseo Wall, gone into the Demon Realm, and then made the inefficient and deranged choice of returning to Mount Thusnis inside Rotten through the Demon Realm.
—Gulp.
My saliva struggled its way down my throat.
“Let’s see... Evan... Evan...”
Never before had the sound of paper turning seemed so chilling.
As I stared at the list in a state of tension,
“Oh, found it. One week ago, Evan, training purposes. Planned duration: one week.”
“Huh...?”
“You came back a day late. But well, between us, I can let this much slide. Be careful next time.”
“Y-yeah.”
With a half-dazed expression, I returned to Rotten.
‘So I really climbed Mount Thusnis through the Demon Realm...? Was I actually out of my mind...?’
Holding the questions that filled my brain, I entered the mercenary corps building.
—Creeeak.
““Evan!!!!!””
The mercenary uncles greeted me fiercely.
“Why are you late! You clearly said you’d come back after just one week!”
I don’t know either...
That was what I wanted to say, but I couldn’t say that.
“I felt like I’d found a clue to my growth.”
I scratched my head and smiled, glossing it over.
“Even so! You know how dangerous the Demon Realm is! If you’d been even a little later, all of us would’ve gone looking for you!!”
When the mercenary uncles’ anger and nagging showed no sign of ending, I had no choice but to pull out the all-purpose nagging exemption card.
“Whew... Actually, I became a Sword Expert this time.”
“What...!??”
The mercenaries who heard my bombshell announcement swarmed in from all directions and surrounded me.
““You awakened aura!?!??!?!???””
Among knights, people who had reached Expert were more common than one might think.
Because one had to be at least that capable to enjoy the honor befitting the title of knight.
Knighthood was such an honorable profession, one that only those approaching the Expert level or stronger could attain.
But in the case of mercenaries, it was a bit different.
An Expert-level mercenary?
There were truly only a handful of those.
Why?
Because with that level of skill, becoming a knight was far more stable and better than working as a mercenary, whose role was to act as a meat shield.
Unlike despised mercenaries, knights could receive the admiration of everyone.
If one was an Expert, people would probably go wild trying to recruit them from all over the place.
In any case, that didn’t mean having an Expert in a mercenary corps was completely useless. A mercenary corps with an Expert-level mercenary did rise quite a bit in value.
You could say the perception shifted from useless meat shields who could die without anyone caring, to high-performance meat shields worth keeping alive so they could be used for a long, long time.
After all, it was a mercenary corps with an Expert they could treat more casually than a knight.
Well, even that much was a sufficiently positive change in perception.
At the very least, from their perspective, we would gain value worth keeping alive, so equipment and supplies would improve considerably.
Dragged along by the excited mercenary uncles, I was taken to an open lot where dust rose from the ground.
It was the Torch of Dawn’s own training ground inside our mercenary corps building.
“Show us once. It’s not that we don’t believe you, but it’s better to confirm with our own eyes whether it’s really aura.”
At the mercenary uncles’ request, I drew the famed sword I’d brought with me...
“Hm...?”
Its appearance had... changed?
Before, it had definitely been a sword with a dark red blade engraved with patterns reminiscent of flames, a sword that looked like a famed blade at a glance.
But now it looked like just a well-forged dwarven iron sword? Something like that.
‘Ha, shit... I really need to go to the cathedral as soon as possible...’
I kept seeing things, and I had partial memory loss too.
Judging by the symptoms alone, I was practically a lunatic.
I even started to wonder if my climbing to the summit of Mount Thusnis and seeing the altar there had all been hallucinations.
Well, for now, none of that mattered.
The aura itself wasn’t an illusion or hallucination; it was truly circulating inside my body.
I raised the sword as if I were a knight making an oath and slowly drew out my aura.
The world of wavering flame slowly stretched outward and completely dyed my sword.
—Whoosh.
Dark red flames revealed themselves to the world.