Chapter 11 - The Praying Mercenary (2)

“Herd them forward!”

“Tighten the encirclement! Don’t let them get away!”

A winter forest that should have been silent.

It was a season when all life should have been quietly asleep, but now it was filled with more violent noise than ever.

SCREEECH! SCREECH!

“Damn, you bastards are ugly.”

CRACK!

Every time the armed men’s ragged breaths rose from their mouths, drops of blood invariably sprayed into the air.

“Advance!”

Around the goblin settlement, the mercenaries were closing in with the encirclement packed tight.

It was a settlement of some size, so the mercenaries were advancing carefully, yet boldly.

Goblins were monsters famous for their outstanding reproductive ability.

If even a few escaped here, a settlement of similar size would appear again by the next winter.

If that happened, the employers in Varna would not be very pleased.

“Die, you bastards!”

SCREECH!

Goblins were among the lower ranks of bipedal monsters, so the mercenaries were cutting them down skillfully.

But life was a series of unpredictable things.

“Ah, shit...”

The mercenary man who had laughed and chatted until yesterday could not have known his head would burst open today.

CRACK!

And at the hands of a hobgoblin, something said to be rare.

GRAAAAH!

A ferocious roar rang out over the snow-covered winter forest.

“Squad Five’s been broken through!”

“It’s a hobgoblin! A hobgoblin!”

The mercenaries, who had been cutting down goblins for some time, caught sight of a being far too huge to be called a goblin.

Over its sticky-looking brown skin, massively split muscles loomed in a threatening way.

GRAAAAH!

A single hobgoblin, which looked like the chief of this settlement, was pouring out its boundless rage at the humans who had killed its kin.

“Are you fucking kidding me? Why the hell is that thing here!”

With the appearance of the difficult-to-handle being called a hobgoblin, the mercenaries quickly retreated and regrouped.

“What are you doing! Step forward at once!”

“Nobody told us there was a hobgoblin!”

“You think you can act like this and still get paid!”

“Then why don’t you step up yourself, Sir Knight!”

At the shout spat out by one of the fiercer mercenaries, the knight in command was left speechless.

“Y-You bastard!”

The knight’s thick cheeks merely trembled, and he could not bring himself to draw his sword.

Even in his youth, his skill had not been particularly impressive, and now he had grown old as well, so it had been a long time since he had lost the ability of a knight.

“Damn it! You can just attack it with several men at once!”

As the knight, who did not dare think of stepping forward himself, said, if men who worked well together grouped up, they could at least stand against a hobgoblin.

But the people here were not men dispatched as a group from any one mercenary company.

“Then you should have hired expensive mercenaries!”

Not only was there no one who had fought together long enough to coordinate well, there was not even anyone skilled enough to catch a mercenary company’s eye in the first place.

SHING.

Except for one man.

“... This time, I’ll do it.”

When the enraged hobgoblin was looking for its next prey.

FWISH!

White snow sprayed up behind the hobgoblin’s back.

GRR?

What the hobgoblin saw when it turned its head toward the presence was nothing more than a snowstorm someone had created.

“Hup!”

A man rushed in cleverly from its blind spot and closed the distance to the hobgoblin in an instant.

The gleam made by his unadorned sword sliced past the hobgoblin’s heel in a flash.

GRAAAAH!

[Above.]

“I saw it.”

Only then did the hobgoblin see the man who had charged at it, and it brought down its huge club with an enraged roar.

BOOM!

“Aaagh!”

“What the hell kind of strength is that!”

It was terrifying force.

The hobgoblin possessed arm strength so powerful it was hard to believe it was the same kind of goblin.

The aftermath of its strike became a bolt of snow and sprayed up toward those around it.

“Back away!”

“I can’t see anything!”

A pure-white curtain made of snow was covering everything nearby.

[Now!]

And now was the moment.

The moment the man had been aiming for.

The hobgoblin had struck the ground with all its strength.

The instant it stiffened briefly after pouring out all that power.

“This time, I’m really going to do it.”

A strange light gleamed from the blond man’s blue eyes.

GRR?

The hobgoblin saw it.

The cold gaze glaring straight at it even through the snowy mist.

It was different from the eyes of the humans it had seen until now.

It was like the gaze of a predator aiming at its prey.

“...!”

In that instant, a flash colder than snow swept past the hobgoblin’s waist.

It was a clean horizontal slash made before the snow that had sprayed up could even fall back to the ground.

It alone moved in a moment when everyone else had stopped, and it was not a mere swing, but the path of a sword with intent.

I will cut you.

GRAAAAH!

When the sensation of hard steel pierced through its hide, the hobgoblin that had been triumphant only moments ago could not help but let out a single scream.

“Shit!”

[Get out!]

It had been excellent.

But shallow.

Listening to the hobgoblin’s scream ringing in his ears, the blond man realized he had failed to cut down what he had aimed for in a single strike.

“I failed again!”

GRAAAAH!

Vlad’s sword was not yet developed enough to cut through the hobgoblin’s tough hide and break its hard bones.

BOOM!

A chilling wind swept over the ground where Vlad had just rolled away.

[You idiot. You can’t do it even when I tell you how?]

Hearing someone’s voice ring inside his head, Vlad clenched his teeth.

‘If I could do everything just because you told me, that would make me a genius.’

Apart from the scolding thrown out by the voice, the strike Vlad had just swung was far too excellent to have been made after only a month of seriously holding a sword.

It simply had not ended its life in one blow.

“I’m just taking the long way around.”

Watching the hobgoblin desperately clutch its side while swinging its club all over the place, Vlad’s eyes shone.

“If it doesn’t work once, I just have to strike twice.”

[The very fact that you think a second chance will come in real combat is proof that you are a brat.]

Forcing himself to ignore the voice ringing inside his head, Vlad put strength into his leg muscles.

Using the outstanding physical ability even the voice acknowledged, he once again threw himself into the curtain of snow.

GRAAAAH!

The hobgoblin swung its club at the silver flash approaching fiercely from somewhere it could not see, but that was nothing more than a futile struggle.

“Praying Rhimann...”

The sight after the white curtain lifted.

Everyone here was watching the unbelievable scene unfolding before their eyes.

The ruler of this area, retreating in fear.

And the Sword Path that split it in half without hesitation.

Bright red bloodstains spread over the white snowfield.

* * *

A winter forest just after the subjugation had ended.

The mercenaries, who knew well the goblins’ habit of collecting shiny things, were searching through the goblin tents set up here and there around the settlement without exception.

To be precise, only a few mercenaries were.

The other mercenaries looked as if they wanted to approach the scene of looting as well, but they could not recklessly step forward.

They had not received permission from the owner.

The owner of this place had been the hobgoblin now lying there in a mangled state, and the person who had laid it low was the blond man now gathering snow and rubbing his bloodstained hands clean.

From now on, this place was his land.

Taking what belonged to the defeated was a right unique to victors that applied in any world.

“Boss. You were amazing again this time!”

There was a man approaching Vlad, who was wiping away the blood, with a hearty laugh.

“Go gather up the things I cut down.”

“That’s already done. There probably isn’t anyone with the guts to touch your stuff in the first place, Boss.”

“There’s one right next to me.”

Praying Rhimann.

A man who stood out even among the mercenaries of a subjugation force gathered from all sorts of nobodies.

“After this job ends, do you have any thoughts about doing another job with me?”

“My creed is never even to meet eyes with a swindler.”

“Don’t be like that.”

The brown-haired man merely smiled in circles even at Vlad’s cold words.

“Mercenary badge.”

At the quietly heard words, Vlad stopped what he was doing.

“You can’t keep using that forever. I know someone, and he forges them like you wouldn’t believe.”

“... A loose tongue makes for a loose head, Gote.”

“That hurts. When have I ever caused you harm, Boss?”

Was it a threat, or an offer?

Watching the long-jawed man speak in a whisper as if wary of being seen, Vlad thought.

If it was a threat, he would kill him.

If it was an offer, he would warn him.

Anyone who touched his weakness, no matter the intent, would have to pay the price.

Noticing that Vlad’s gaze had sunk heavily, Gote whistled lightly and avoided his eyes.

“Think it over slowly. I’m only saying it because I’m thinking of you, Boss...”

Gote naturally stepped backward at the warning Vlad gave him with his eyes.

Gote, who had stuck by Vlad until now, knew better than anyone what had happened to the few who had ignored that warning.

After all, the position Vlad currently held in the subjugation force was captain of ten, but the mercenaries he led numbered only seven.

“Did everyone take what they needed!”

As if he did not want to hear any more of Gote’s words, Vlad shouted loudly to his squad members.

“There isn’t much, Boss!”

“Since there was a hobgoblin, I thought there might be something useful. Damn it!”

Even as they said that, the men’s hands were holding all sorts of junk.

“Don’t make useless comments, just gather those things and take them all to Sir Knight.”

“Take all of it? We should skim off a reasonable amount.”

At Gote’s reply, Vlad looked at him as if he were pathetic.

“There has to be something worth skimming before you skim it, you idiot.”

“Still...”

“And if we’re going to skim something anyway, shouldn’t we do it with something big? Is there any need to waste our strength fighting over worthless crap like this?”

What the man called Gote said was not particularly wrong.

The knight receiving the spoils probably knew mercenaries would pocket this and that anyway.

That was how ordinary mercenaries behaved, and it was something like a natural custom.

“I’m saying we should look a little farther ahead.”

But Vlad had a perspective different from ordinary mercenaries.

Though he had been born and raised in the back alleys, there had been adults around him worth learning from.

Haven had been that way, Jorge had been that way, and Marcella was also a woman with much to learn from.

“The clever ones really are different. I’m telling you, do a job with me. With your sword and my plan, Boss...”

“Run along, unless you want your head lopped clean off.”

People who could not take a hint were exhausting.

“Right now.”

And Vlad hated exhausting things.

“O-Okay. I’m going now.”

Overwhelmed by the force Vlad had been giving off for a while now, Gote hurriedly gathered the junk and began running toward the knight with the thick cheeks.

“Stand guard around me for a moment.”

“Going to pray?”

“Yeah.”

“You sure are consistent.”

Vlad grabbed one of the mercenaries belonging to his squad and moved away from the battlefield where the mercenaries were gathered, heading to a sunny spot nearby.

“Don’t come too close.”

The afternoon sun was seeping in through the straight-growing conifers.

“Phew.”

Vlad planted his sword, knelt on one knee, and lowered his head.

“Lord... thank you for watching over me again today.”

Golden sunlight rested over his disheveled blond hair.

Though they were far away, all the mercenaries nearby were watching that sight.

“That’s one hell of a picture.”

“Isn’t he really a noble?”

“At the very least, he wasn’t born like us, right?”

Vlad’s figure accompanied by golden light looked like the prayer of a devout believer, and when seen together with the sword in his hand, he looked no less than a holy knight.

Some whispered that Vlad was a young lord who had run away from his family, and others said he might be some noble’s illegitimate child.

The praying man had a strange air about him, difficult to approach carelessly, enough for such words to be said.

But if anyone drew just a little closer to the man surrounded by mystery, they would be able to know his true nature.

“Ah. Fuck. But I can’t get it to work.”

[You idiot. Did I not say the secret to killing in a single blow always comes from the unexpected?]

They would know that the man called Rhimann was not someone who prayed.

Inside the prayer he had disguised as piety, there was nothing but an utterly suspicious conversation.