Drakal, the free city of Auterica.
Located in the borderlands where the Azerion Empire at the center of the Ion Continent, the Zepia Republic to the east, and the southern desert region met, the great city was bustling today as well, with countless people hurrying to and fro.
Though it had been built on barren land where not even farming was possible, the geographical advantage of being a key transportation hub, as well as the merit of housing the headquarters of the Mercenary Guild—an organization with branches across the entire continent—was more than enough to offset such drawbacks.
‘So this is Drakal!’
The group that had just entered the city was also among those who had come all the way here under the influence of those advantages.
Merchants who had brought several wagons on a long journey for trade, and the many mercenaries they had hired.
‘It’s huge. It’s on a completely different level from the cities I’ve seen so far.’
Among them was Billy, a rookie mercenary who had left the region where he was born and raised for the first time through this trading journey. He was so amazed by the sight of Drakal, which he had only ever heard about in stories, that he kept looking around without pause.
The city near his hometown village could not even compare, and even the fairly large cities they had passed through along the way were not worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as this place.
“Hey, Billy! Come to think of it, this is your first time in Drakal, isn’t it?”
“Huh? Yes, yes!”
At that moment, one of the mercenaries who had come here with him approached Billy, who had been staring blankly, and lightly tapped him on the shoulder.
He was an older man from the same hometown who had played a huge role in Billy, who had always been especially big and strong among his peers, entering this line of work.
If not for him, who had planted fantasies of the outside world in Billy’s head by boasting about all sorts of heroic exploits back in the village, Billy would probably still be feeding fodder to cows and plowing fields.
‘If it weren’t for senior, I’d never have been hired for a long-distance trading journey like this.’
Of course, since he had little experience, he had not been contracted as a formal mercenary but as an errand boy who took care of various minor tasks. Still, wasn’t that how everyone began, by learning as they went?
Thanks to that, he had been able to come out into the wide world and broaden his horizons, so it was not a bad thing for him either.
“This guy’s completely out of it. Come this way! The caravan escort job’s over, and we’ve been paid, so I’ll treat you somewhere killer!”
“Yes! Thank you, senior!”
Moreover, perhaps because he felt some sense of responsibility as someone from the same hometown, he had looked after Billy in many ways, allowing him to adapt to the work faster than expected.
Like now, when he was taking him to famous restaurants in different places and buying him meals.
He was a bit full of bravado, but he was not a bad person.
“If you’ve come to Drakal, you absolutely have to come here!”
And so Billy followed his senior into the meat specialty restaurant, “The Ogre’s Table.”
As he had boasted, the meal was indeed extremely satisfying, but...
Once his stomach was somewhat filled and Billy could leisurely look around, a certain group caught his eye.
Four men and women occupying one table, devouring meat at an incredible speed.
After sneaking glances at them again and again, unable to hold back his curiosity, Billy asked his senior in a low voice.
“Um, senior. Who are those people...?”
In truth, he had been too distracted since arriving in the city to ask, but it was something he had wanted to know from the beginning.
As someone from the Zepia Republic, he had never once seen people dressed in such peculiar clothing on his way here, yet they were wandering around all over Drakal as if it were nothing.
“...Hm? Ah, southern warriors. If you pick a fight with them, it gets troublesome, so don’t stare for no reason.”
“Southern warriors?”
At his senior’s indifferent answer, Billy stole another curious glance at them.
Regardless of gender, they openly exposed the muscles and tattoos of their upper bodies, and their attire was decorated with the hides and teeth of magical beasts that looked as if they had hunted them themselves.
They looked, quite literally, no different from the barbarians he had only ever heard about in stories.
“Oh, and just in case, don’t say the word barbarian in front of them.”
Just as Billy, feeling needlessly guilty, turned his eyes toward his senior—
“Ah, those filthy barbarians are ruining my appetite.”
“Ugh, they reek of bumpkins.”
“Kekeke— What scraps did those barbarian bastards think they’d find, crawling all the way out here...”
Pow—! Crash—!
“Kek!”
“You bastard!”
“Hey, hit ’em!”
A commotion broke out where the southern warriors had been in the middle of eating.
The corner of the restaurant turned into complete chaos as four southern warriors clashed with more than ten mercenaries.
“...That’s what happens.”
His senior sighed and slowly rose from his seat.
They had just about finished eating anyway, and it would be troublesome if they stayed and got caught up in it for no reason, so he intended to leave.
“Ptooey! Fine, I’ve been waiting for this. You picked the right time. Let’s settle this once and for all!”
“You barbarian bastards, where do you think you are, skulking around here? Get back to your own country!”
“Bullshit. In Drakal, what’s this about your country and my country?”
“I’ll make you shit blood!”
More than a dozen people tangled together, exchanging rough curses, but the reactions of those around them were remarkably plain.
They simply shook their heads as though it were nothing unusual and moved away.
In the first place, Drakal itself was practically a “nation of mercenaries,” so disputes like that were hardly rare.
When mercenaries, who were more than merely rough and could turn into bandits in remote places, gathered in one place, how could it be otherwise?
It was an everyday event born from uncontrollable hot blood, pride full of bluster, and overflowing stamina all tangled together.
“Let’s go. Still, those guys sure have guts. If they fight inside the shop, the losing side has to pay for everything.”
Unless it was a one-sided assault, that was the unwritten rule regarding disputes in Drakal.
Along with “do not use weapons” and “do not deliberately kill your opponent,” it was something the Mercenary Guild paid attention to, so there was no getting out of it.
Perhaps because of that, the employees did not seem to regard the fight as anything serious either.
Some were even watching with interest and making bets among themselves on who would win.
The restaurant owner also paused his work for a moment and carefully watched to see which side would pay for replacing the old furnishings.
Creak—
But before Billy could leave his seat with his senior...
The restaurant door suddenly opened, and another barbarian... no, another southern warrior stepped inside.
“Huh? What’s this? Why’s the mood in here like this?”
***
A man with a brawny frame more than a head taller than most large men, his body engraved with splendid tattoos that overwhelmed those of other southern warriors.
“Tsk, what the hell are you doing in a restaurant, kicking up dust like this?”
He looked at the ongoing brawl with narrowed eyes and clicked his tongue in displeasure.
That was the entirety of his impression of the fight.
“Owner! Thirty servings of the special assorted grilled meat!”
He casually threw an order to the restaurant owner, who had been watching from the side, then trudged toward the battlefield.
Then, tapping the shoulder of a mercenary who was in the middle of gaining the upper hand through numerical superiority, he spoke to him kindly.
“Hey, friend? It’s fine if you want to play among yourselves, but I have to eat now, so stop—”
“Who are you? ...Huh? This bastard’s a barbarian too!”
But the reaction that returned to his kindness was rudeness.
The mercenary, whose blood was boiling all the way to the top of his head from the heat of battle, did not think deeply and threw a punch without warning at the man who had spoken to him.
Thud!
Though it was a bare-handed strike, aura dwelled within it, making it a fierce attack powerful enough to break an ordinary person’s bones in an instant.
It landed squarely on the exposed abdominal muscles.
Crack—
Immediately afterward, a horrible sound came from the attacker’s arm.
“...G-Gyaaaah!”
“What? What is it!”
“There’s a barbarian behind us! Rob got taken down!”
“Are they reinforcements?!”
Several of the mercenary’s companions turned around at the scream.
Thanks to their numbers being three times greater, they still had plenty of leeway.
At this point, dealing with one more barbarian who had cowardly ambushed them from behind was nothing.
“...That man, could he be...”
“Huh? Senior, do you know him?”
But unlike the reactions of the mercenaries involved, those who had been watching from a distance since the beginning could sense that the situation was turning into something unusual.
After all, they had clearly seen with their own eyes what had crushed the arm of a mercenary imbued with aura.
“...That’s possible with just the recoil of his bare body? Hah, what is he, some supermassive monster...?”
It was not as though the mercenary was low-level either.
He was a veteran who would have been treated as an elite even in a large mercenary corps and had hunted many monsters, yet he had incapacitated himself with a single attack.
“Gyaaah!”
“Ugh, what the hell is this!”
“Stop! Stop!”
And that was no exception for the mercenaries who followed him and rushed in to bring down the man.
Swept up in the excitement of battle, they attacked the person standing there blankly, only to, as if by agreement, clutch their shattered body parts and roll across the floor.
One of them, who had operated his aura with all his might, even suffered internal injuries and vomited dark, dead blood from his mouth.
Once the situation reached that point, even those continuing the fierce fight on the front line could not help but have their attention drawn that way.
The rough exchange of blows became passive, and soon even that entered a lull, with a few steps of distance opening between the two sides.
They kept each other in check while glancing sideways toward the source of the commotion.
Properly recognizing variables on a battlefield was directly tied to survival.
“...The Mark of a Great Warrior?”
“No, no! That’s...!”
The first to grasp the situation were the southern warriors, who came from the same place as that variable.
A tattoo so splendid that it was on an entirely different level from the “Warrior’s Mark” engraved on their own chests.
It was their first time seeing it in person, but they had known for certain what it was before they came here.
“The Mark of the Fighting King!”
“The Overlord of Kalkos...?”
The king of the south, born for the first time in hundreds of years, and the trendsetter of an era who had brought back into fashion the traditional clothing that had been a remnant of the old generation.
Fighting King Harley.
That was the identity of the one who had suddenly appeared.
‘Fuck... I’m fucked. Why did it have to be now...?’
And though he was a little late, the leader of the mercenary group also recognized his opponent.
Even if his clothing itself was similar to that of the other barbarians, those splendid tattoos, that massive frame, and the distinctive odd eyes were not things anyone could dare imitate.
There had been no news of where he had disappeared to for a while, and yet he had suddenly appeared like this.
His pupils shook violently, and cold sweat streamed down his face.
Soon, his gaze turned toward his comrades, who still had not properly grasped the situation and were only rolling their eyes around.
“W-What do we do? Rush him all at once?”
“...Are you insane? If you want to die, die alone.”
Naturally, there was no more fighting after that.
***
The noisy fight ended anticlimactically, with one side tucking its tail.
“Hehe... We’re sorry for disturbing your meal. There was, well, a very slight misunderstanding, so a small quarrel broke out...”
“A misunderstanding? You were the ones who picked a fight first...!”
“O-Of course! We’ll take full responsibility and compensate for everything! The shop’s repair costs, and even those people’s meal expenses... Ah! Of course, since we also disturbed Lord Harley’s meal, we’ll include that as well, yes.”
The representative of the mercenaries bowed and scraped almost pleadingly, forcing a smile with great effort, while behind Harley, the southern warriors straightened their shoulders and raised their voices proudly.
At the opponent’s nearly desperate attitude, Harley nodded as if it were no big deal.
“Really? Are you sure that’s okay? I eat a lot, you know.”
“O-Of—of course! Ha, haha...”
Of course, he had no intention of going out of his way to refuse what they were offering.
For having dared to talk back to the “Fighting King Harley,” it was an exceedingly merciful judgment, but in his mind, his assessment of that group had already fallen to less than the level of buzzing flies.
To the point that, with a delicious meal right in front of him, he found it annoying to even pay attention to them.
Of course, if they kept pestering him to the end, he would simply crush them to death, but if they were going to offer tribute and withdraw on their own, there was no need to see more blood, was there?
‘In the past, I would’ve smashed them all regardless.’
Harley, once the incarnation of ceaseless madness and struggle.
However, after visiting Ganghwan Realm and learning the “Mantra of the Mad Emperor (Revised),” a certain degree of discernment had arisen in him as well.
As a bonus, he had also become able to properly regulate the aura that used to recklessly pour out of him at all times.
‘Come to think of it, in the past, they wouldn’t even have dared attack me at all.’
The moment he appeared, he would have forcibly drawn everyone’s gaze and pressured them.
Of course, even now, compared to ordinary people, his boiling point was still ridiculously low—
‘Those guys are just...’
Harley glanced over the mercenaries, who were doing nothing but watching his mood, and smacked his lips.
Their level was so pathetic that they could not even satisfy that.
It would be more constructive to wonder whether grilled meat or boiled meat would be better.
“Here is the special assorted grilled meat!”
“Ooh! The aroma is incredible. Then next, the special assorted boiled meat!”
“Yes, sir!”
Of course, there was only one answer to that dilemma.
To eat both.
‘I wasn’t planning to worry about money from the start anyway.’
Above all, did he not now have a patron?
Food eaten for free was always the most delicious in the world.
“Twenty more servings of this...”
“Mm, excellent. Thirty servings...”
“Talking is a hassle. Just bring out everything you have!”
The faces of the mercenaries who had not charged at Harley and thus had not been carried away gradually lost their color.
And after quite some time had passed, when their faces had turned as pale as corpses...
Drakal’s meat specialty restaurant, “The Ogre’s Table,” recorded its highest sales in history as all of its meat sold out, and the mercenaries, short on funds, ended up in a position where they had to pay off their debt with their bodies.
“Mm, I’m still a little unsatisfied, but I’ll leave it at this. Thanks for the meal, friends! Wahahaha!”
“Ah... Aah...”
And that incident, through the witnesses who had been present at the scene, became a splendid celebratory cannon blast announcing the king’s return, spreading like wildfire throughout all of Drakal.