The Man's Growth Was Astonishing (7)
The Monks were a peculiar lot.
Everyone knew they existed, and everyone knew they were formidable. And yet, strangely enough, no one seemed to know what it was they actually did.
Did they guard the temples? Holy Knights and battle priests already saw to that. Did they uphold discipline? There was no tale of them sitting in judgment over anyone. Even when the Grand Temple burned the day before, and countless corrupt priests were sent to the pyre, the Monks never showed their faces.
Did they fight monsters? Perhaps. Now and then a story surfaced of some Monk putting down a mighty beast. But that did not mean they made war on every monster, and more often than not, even when a powerful one appeared, they simply did not appear with it.
So while people knew of the order called the Monks, it was hardly an exaggeration to say that not a soul among them knew what the order did.
And yet.
"The Monks are looking for me?"
"More precisely, the head of the Monks is looking for you. The one they call the Great Senior Brother."
"...And why would a man like that want me?"
"That, I don't know either."
??
...Had the old man gone senile?
Lee Han could not help the irreverent look he threw him. Caesar, watching his own standing slip by the moment, hurried on.
"Wait. Don't misunderstand. I only came to pass along the Great Senior Brother's words. He asked me to tell you this. 'If it isn't too much trouble, would you meet with me? And if you don't wish to, that is fine as well.' That's what he said to convey."
"What the..."
The more Lee Han heard, the farther his head tilted.
He wanted to meet, and yet it was also fine if they didn't. It sounded like nothing so much as being toyed with.
But Caesar was quick to speak for them again.
"Don't misunderstand. The Great Senior Brother and the Monk brothers are not in a position to move as they please. He wishes to see you, but he cannot come himself, so he sends word instead. That means you would have to go to the brothers, which is an inconvenience, and the Great Senior Brother feels badly enough about it to say you may refuse. So please, do not take our brothers for discourteous men."
"...Something's been bothering me since a while ago. Why do you keep calling the Monks your brothers?"
There was a desperation in that frantic tone no Mercenary King ought to wear, and Lee Han, baffled by it, put the question to him.
"...Because I came from the Monks myself. Of course I have to speak for my brothers!"
"......"
"Ahem. I did desert the order, mind you."
"...And what exactly is a deserter Monk?"
Mercenary King, and an apostate—no, a deserter Monk. In a certain sense, it was a dazzling career.
He made his excuse as if he had been wronged.
"I—I didn't leave the Monks because I committed some wrong or some sin. I merely made a choice."
"A choice?"
"Aye. When the time comes, a Monk is given a choice. Remain in the Monastery and be remade as a formal Monk, or cast off that status and go out into the world."
"......"
"And I simply chose the world. Even so, I have never forgotten my respect for my brothers, nor their teachings. In all my years of mercenary work, I have never once committed an unrighteous act."
"...That's fair."
Lee Han could not recall ever hearing that the Mercenary King had been mixed up in some incident or wicked deed. If anything, once the man had bound the mercenary companies together, those brutes—more barbaric than street thugs and gangsters—had grown a little more conscientious. That much was hard to deny.
What was strange was this.
"You left, and they didn't take the power back?"
Put in the terms of the murim, it was a Shaolin monk rejecting the sect's rules and walking away. From Shaolin's side, their teachings might leak beyond the walls, so there would be cause to crush the departing monk's dantian and ruin the meridians of his limbs. And yet Caesar's limbs were more than intact. He was thriving enough to have become the Mercenary King. Lee Han simply could not make sense of it.
"Of course they didn't. The brothers are not stingy with their teachings. No—more precisely, they are not stingy toward those whose character is upright, those who possess a true soul."
"Gilding your own face. The shamelessness is impressive, I'll give you that."
"That isn't what I mean. The brothers truly have an eye that can discern a person's character. Thanks to that, I—nothing more than a beggar halfway to the grave—was saved by them, and received the Monastery's teachings. But I had a dream I wanted to see through more than I wanted to remain, and though I was ashamed before my brothers, I had to go out."
If he thought of it as a peculiarity of the order called the Monks, he could almost understand.
"...Then it isn't desertion at all. Shouldn't you call it leaving the order? You're going to mix people up."
"Heh heh. There's a reason for that, too. On the night the choice is given, if you remain in the Monastery, you become a formal Monk. If you slip out without a word, that means you have chosen the outside."
"......"
"You're wondering why they go so far, aren't you? But it's the better way. Imagine telling your brothers your choice to their faces. How heavy a burden would that be? So you meet no one, leave your intent unspoken, and simply go. In a way, that is the clearest statement of where each of you stands."
"...When you put it like that, maybe."
No. Looked at another way, it was remarkable.
How confident must that eye of theirs be, that they neither hunted nor seized the ones they had taught, even when those students walked away? And in practice...
I've never heard of the Monks causing trouble. And the one who taught our Little Bear was definitely a Monk, too...
More precisely, the Little Bear of the original, as Taechang had told it, received her teachings from a Monk who lived in a monastery. Considering that those teachings carried her all the way to Mercenary Queen, it was no exaggeration to say the Monks' instruction—and their eye for people—was the real thing.
"They're an incredible order. Truly."
"Haha, of course they are. They raised me, didn't they!"
"...Your pride is really something."
"Any man who came out of the Monastery would feel the same. I may have deserted, but I have never once forgotten my brothers there. Their teachings didn't only give me martial strength. They gave me a teaching of the spirit. So I still revere them. Enough that if they asked for my help, I could give them my life. ...Well. Even if a crisis came for them, our brothers would never ask me for help."
The words were thick with sincerity. Listening, Lee Han felt his curiosity stir.
What he could not understand was this.
"Then why would people that great want to see a man like me?"
Not even a knight anymore. Nothing but an unaffiliated nobody, a layabout. That was the question.
"I don't know that either. But if the Great Senior Brother said he wishes to see you, it isn't mere curiosity. There must be some deep reason. He is that sort of man."
"...What sort of man is he? This Great Senior Brother."
"What sort? Hard to say. He isn't someone I would dare to appraise."
"......"
"Hm. One thing is certain."
His voice went low and sure.
"Speaking with the Great Senior Brother is never time thrown away. If anything, it becomes a more meaningful hour than any other."
"......"
At the certainty in Caesar's voice, Lee Han fell silent. A positive silence, as if something in him were being drawn.
Caesar went back into the forest.
He had been told he might come inside the house.
"I'm not so tactless as to walk into a newlyweds' home."
"......"
"Heh heh."
Wearing a pleased smile, he clapped Lee Han's shoulder as if to say hang in there, then vanished with a word that they would see each other tomorrow.
"...He doesn't have to come."
If his business was finished, he could just go—or so Lee Han thought. The words were only words. Inwardly, he was glad. There was something he had wanted to ask, after all.
This is a mess.
Domain. The new sense Lee Han had reached was tormenting him in real time. It had been bearable in a fight. Now it handed him an endless, wretched headache.
One might say he ought to switch the sense off, the way a man flips a toggle.
"So this thing was a passive."
A sense, once opened, could not be shut. Beyond regulation. He had taken hold of something tremendous, and if he could not control it, ordinary life itself would be impossible.
"Sir Knight, are you all right?"
"I'll be fine in a little while... is what I'd like to declare. Right now it's rough."
"Mmm. Then will you sleep for now? You might feel better if you do."
"...I don't think I'll fall asleep easily. The situation's a bit..."
The sensation of countless scraps of information boring into his head in real time was vast, and dizzying. His mind was so clear it made him reel, and it did not seem inclined to permit sleep. Lee Han was wearing a thoroughly fed-up look—one more troublesome weapon, just what he needed—when she gathered him in.
"What about like this?"
"......"
"Well? Getting sleepy now?"
"...Maid."
"Yes?"
"In, uh, another sense, I don't think I'll be sleeping at all. Though..."
Held tight in Layla's arms, Lee Han snapped awake in an entirely different way. The lilac was sweet enough on its own, but the warmth of her skin was enough to drive a man out of his mind...
"No. Sir Knight is going to sleep just fine."
"......"
Blink. Blink.
"See? Your eyes are already closing."
"......"
"Hehe. Rest."
A mysterious thing.
A moment ago his head had been a wreck, as if a typhoon were tearing through it. Then, all at once, the storm went still, until his mind was as quiet as a horizon gone calm. In that state Lee Han could not muster even the smallest resistance.
Thump.
He slept without a fight, in the softest, warmest embrace in the world.
Stroke. Stroke.
The woman quietly smoothed her knight's hair and kept a happy silence, so he would not wake. Even so.
"...Our Sir Knight is far too popular."
She would have been content for the two of them to live forever in this forest, just the two of them, and the soft murmur Layla Winter let fall carried a small complaint. Too many people came looking for him.
Hoo.
"...The Great Senior Brother might have given me a hint. He must have known."
Once he had put some distance between himself and Lee Han's house, Caesar let out the breath he had been holding, as if to settle a startled heart. One might ask what in the world could draw the Mercenary King himself this tight, but it could not be helped. Because he had come from the Monks, because he possessed an eye that pierced to the essence, there were things only he could see. And Caesar had no choice but to be aghast.
To think that upon the earth, even now—!
She could be nothing other than the most exalted woman in all the earth and heaven. One whom no one dared look upon more squarely than any other.
And so Caesar clicked his tongue before he knew it.
"Of all people, he's loved by a troublesome existence."
Caesar knew. As the books recorded in the Monks' Monastery had it, the life of a hero loved by an exalted being could not help but be storm-tossed. Better to be loved by a fairy. That one was a bit much.
"Aigoo. Poor young man."
And no wonder. Even if that young man ended his life and fell into the Underworld—
"...No. That's an oversensitive thought."
Caesar did not presume to judge the man's life before it was lived. Yes. Wasn't fate something a man carved for himself?
......Well. In this case, even the carving looked as if it would be hard.