Chapter 127 - A New Nest (2)

"Will he be able to do well?"

Two people walked down a corridor filled with sunlight.

"Wouldn't it still be too early for Sir Vlad? Perhaps he should watch and learn a little more beside the other knights..."

"He will be good enough."

Unlike Alicia, whose face was full of worry, Joseph's expression was calm.

"From the moment I first met Sir Vlad, he was already the leader of a squad."

"Ah."

Alicia quietly nodded at Joseph's words.

Though his affiliation was with Heinal, Vlad was still Bayezid's knight through and through.

Expressing an opinion about him in front of Joseph was something she could not help but treat with caution.

"When you first met him, then?"

"He was a mercenary I had hired."

"I met him during the monster subjugation force that began in Varna."

Joseph looked out beyond the corridor as he thought back to last winter.

A seventeen-year-old brat who had come carrying a thirty-one-year-old identity plaque.

Even now, thinking about that utterly audacious behavior only made him laugh.

"Even so, aren't they all rough men?"

"Barbarians, mercenaries, all of them seem rather much for his first subordinates..."

"Lady Alicia."

At Alicia's worried opinion, Joseph stopped walking and turned to look back at her.

With a faint smile, he nodded as if to reassure her.

"I know very well why you are worried about him."

"..."

She had heard that this would be his first war.

And yet he would become the leader of a unit and carry out a mission on his own.

Alicia wished that, since he was still young, he would stay somewhere safe beside the other knights, but Vlad had already proven far too much to be the object of anyone's concern.

"Ferocious barbarians, hardened mercenaries..."

"They are certainly people too difficult for a knight who is not even twenty to handle."

With those words, Joseph looked at the scenery beyond the corridor.

The temporary garrison where the soldiers of Heinal and Bayezid had gathered.

Among the clustered tents standing there, he could see a place where a great many people had gathered.

"Still, please do not worry too much."

The noisy clamor reached all the way to the manor.

Along with that sound, men of different affiliations and origins began to mix together.

"If it is only a matter of roughness, that fellow is no easy opponent either."

"Pardon?"

Joseph stepped away from the window as if telling her to take a look, with words she could almost understand but not quite.

"See for yourself."

Following Joseph's guidance, Alicia naturally began to take in the sight beyond the window.

"Hm?"

The temporary garrison where the soldiers were gathered.

For some unknown reason, a large circle had formed among the soldiers, who were brimming with excitement.

And inside it stood two men.

"..."

Alicia shaded her eyes from the sunlight with her palm and tried to make out the scene in the distance.

Blond hair glittered in the sunlight.

Around it, fireflies were playing.

Even though it was broad daylight now, not night.

* * *

Smack him good!

Come on! Knight of Deirmar!

Show those barbarian bastards who we are!

"Hoo..."

The shouts bursting out endlessly from every direction seemed to make even his heart sway.

Even so, Vlad slowly took deep breaths and steadied his mind.

Before him stood Age, shirtless and wearing a fierce expression.

The tattoos carved without a single gap over his bulging muscles looked brutal.

"Come at me!"

Age began provoking Vlad with the peculiar gesture of a barbarian.

In response, the cheers of the soldiers surrounding the circle only grew louder.

"These bastards are damn loud."

Vlad spat roughly, as if he did not like the current situation at all.

With his rank insignia removed, standing now as nothing but Vlad, he slowly began to recall old memories of Soara.

With each breath he drew in, the madness of the past swelled inside him.

Inside the knight's blue eyes, a back-alley thug of incomparable roughness began to settle before long.

"... Hm."

Watching Vlad approach, Age unconsciously corrected his stance.

His guard was strangely well-formed.

The close-combat technique he had learned directly from Lamund was certainly covering Vlad's openings.

'What the hell is with his eyes?'

Vlad approached while carrying both a knight's technique and the force of the back alleys.

Watching him, Age unconsciously swallowed.

'He's coming!'

The technique of the one-strike sure-kill was a technique that ruled distance.

Even without holding a sword, Vlad's body already had his own space engraved into it.

'Left!'

The fist shooting out nimbly was sharp.

But when it came to hand-to-hand fighting, Age was already an experienced warrior.

He quickly raised his right arm to cover his jaw and immediately looked for a chance to counterattack, but...

"Ugh!"

A sudden pain began from his right ankle.

Along with it, Age's balance slowly began to crumble.

"That is why you should have kept your eyes open."

"...!"

The left had been a feint.

No, perhaps it had not been a feint, but simply fast.

Changing his striking point through Age's reaction, Vlad succeeded in smashing Age's right ankle with a low kick.

'Damn it!'

Looking at Vlad's broad grin, Age was able to remember once more.

Who the man before him was.

The Dragon Slayer who had driven the Lindworm, caught up to it, and in the end slain it.

Vlad was the hunter who had taken down the largest thing Age had ever seen.

"Do not ever bark in front of me again."

The pressure that began from those blue eyes formed a single line and started rushing at Age.

"Urgh!"

Age hurriedly lunged as if to embrace Vlad in order to overturn that pressure, but the series of blows that began immediately made his vision start to go white.

Vlad's attacks pressed in with persistence, as if he would absolutely not end it in a single blow.

BAM! BAM-BAM!

His fierce fists battered Age's side and abdomen without pause, to the point that Age could not even draw breath.

Each fist he thrust out was a heavy blow, as if a log were charging into him.

'...!'

From the outside, it looked as if he was simply moving by instinct, but Age, who was facing him directly, could feel it.

To overcome a difference in build, one had to break the opponent down from below.

Vlad, who had fought opponents bigger than himself since childhood, knew that fact well, and was now mercilessly unleashing the experience he had built up against Age.

"Urgh!"

Rougher than a barbarian.

More tenacious than a hardened mercenary.

Like that, a beast that had burst out of the back alleys was charging at Age while wearing a knight's technique over itself.

"... I lost."

At last, Vlad pushed over the great tree of the North.

Feeling the cold earth against his back, Age looked up at the hunter pinning him down beneath the blue sky.

With the sun at his back, Vlad's face was entirely black.

"Speak politely."

"... I have lost."

Vlad pulled away from Age, rolled his shoulders, and looked at the barbarians ahead.

"If any of you are still pissed off, come at me."

"Instead, this time I will face you with a sword, not my fists."

At Vlad's murderous gaze, the barbarians merely kept their mouths shut.

They were barbarians who had come along according to the contract, but had said they would not bow their heads to imperial citizens.

However, even they could do nothing before a rule that applied in any world.

Vlad had succeeded in making them understand through strength.

"Wait!"

"... What now?"

Age, who had been sprawled out until just a moment ago, raised himself with a single shout and called Vlad to a stop in a loud voice.

"You can be the leader..."

"No, the leader can be you, but!"

"But?"

Age's eyes began searching for a reddish color hidden in the crowd.

Age, warrior of the Budaat Tribe.

He had not yet backed down completely.

"Not the deputy's seat!"

"... Ha."

I lost, so I will follow your words, but that does not mean I can obediently hand over even the second-in-command's place.

At the very least, Age had no intention of bowing his head to Stefan.

"Ah, this is driving me crazy."

"You two settle that yourselves."

Realizing that Age was aiming for him, Stefan ruffled his bangs as if his head hurt.

In the end, Stefan was pushed forward by his subordinates as if shoved out.

Watching him, the soldiers' cheers began to rise again.

"If I step down from the deputy position, my pay gets cut too."

"... You did wear him down a lot, right?"

Watching Age spit out bloody saliva, Stefan also slowly began loosening his neck.

The fight between barbarian and mercenary began again.

The cheers of the soldiers, excited by another spectacle, began to ring out loudly.

"Move."

Pushing away the men approaching from here and there, Vlad came out of the circle.

"..."

Vlad, who had thus stepped out into the quiet edge, ended up meeting eyes with a noble lady standing frozen in surprise by the corridor railing far away.

Vlad bowed his head to her with an awkward smile, but Alicia merely stared at Vlad with dazed eyes, as if shocked by the duel just now.

"What do you think?"

"Does it seem he will continue to do well?"

"... Yes."

Watching Vlad subdue the barbarians in an instant, Alicia could not easily open her mouth.

The young knight Vlad had always shown her only honorable appearances.

But the sight he had shown today was rough, like a starving beast.

"He is doing well."

"And it seems he will continue to do well."

And Alicia did not feel that this different side of Vlad was entirely bad.

Vlad departed toward the hill with a bow.

Through the sight of his back, Alicia's eyes, having discovered a new Vlad, were slowly wavering.

* * *

The West had to stretch out without end.

Though they ruled vast lands, the land they possessed was only a barren plain where not even a single blade of grass grew properly.

That was why the West had always lived by taking and plundering what others had.

Until the fallen dragon turned their heads outward.

"Baron! Baron!"

The city of Nassau.

A port city ruled by Baron Iznik.

Baron Iznik was responsible for one axis of the West's maritime trade, but the report he was hearing now was enough to make him doubt his ears.

"... You are saying it was all raided?"

"That is..."

"All of it?"

"... Yes."

At the Captain's report, growing smaller and smaller, the baron's splendidly groomed mustache began to tremble.

"What kind of bullshit is this!"

Baron Iznik struck the desk with a bang.

As if unable to bear the rising anger any longer, he spat out the roar that surged from within him without restraint.

"Who the hell crawled all the way here and plundered us!"

Bandits?

Or had the nearby lords done it?

If it had been when Ravnoma and Gaidar were in the middle of fighting, perhaps, but a certain order had already settled over this region, so the report that supplies had been plundered was difficult for the baron to believe.

"Who was it!"

"Do you not even know who raided us!"

Seeing his two bloodshot eyes along with his rage, the knight captain merely bowed his head.

"That is..."

"They say it was Heinal's troops."

"What?"

"Heinal's..."

"A man who calls himself Lady Alicia's knight..."

At the knight captain's report, the baron's eyes widened in disbelief.

"Heinal?"

"Deirmar?"

"No, just how far is this place from there?"

And rightly so, for Deirmar and Nassau were more than a week apart even if one rode without rest.

No one could easily imagine that Heinal's soldiers, who should have been hunkering down in preparation for the coming battle, would come all the way here.

"How in the world did those bastards crawl all the way here!"

From far away, without anyone knowing.

And then raiders who vanished like the wind, leaving not even a trace behind.

But the incident had already happened, and the supplies the baron had sent had been burned without a single thing left.

The only clue they left behind was the single name of Lady Alicia.

"Find those bastards at once!"

"Find them and drag them before me!"

The West, where being taken from was no different from death.

But a vicious group that plundered even plunderers had now slipped into the night sky of the West.

A knight of the back alleys, barbarians of the North, and hardened mercenaries.

It was a malicious strike force that a man with dark shadows beneath his eyes had stitched together, one careful stitch at a time.

The war between the West and the North.