Enter, Pursued by a Memory
Enter, Pursued by a Memory
If I'd had my way, I would've drilled a hole in each of those laughing, chattering bastards' legs, but that would've screwed up the mission, so I had no choice but to let it go.
But if I went easy on them, the deep rage blooming inside me would've found no outlet and definitely given me an ulcer, so I compromised by beating the living dust out of them until they were black and blue, in the middle of a damn blizzard.
Meanwhile, Asilie, who'd calmly taken a seat behind me, had the nerve to ask the cook who rushed out at the commotion for a meal, and was now eating while watching to see when it would all end. Excluded from that meal, I had to make sense of the situation while picking through the adventurers' leftovers for anything edible, and feeling like a stray cat scavenging scraps did nothing for my mood.
"Your stance is wavering. Ram your head straight into the floor."
So to make things even a little more pleasant, I turned every last one of those motherfuckers from the Folded Gold Coin into folded people.
Amid the shattered wreckage of broken tables and chairs, they were all groaning from the angle I'd forced them into, their heads tilted so steeply they were practically planted crown-first into the floor, but considering the damage to my tender feelings, that shit was irrelevant. I sat down in front of Bardena, who had his head rammed into the floor, and asked again about what I'd just heard.
"You were seriously having a pissing contest?"
"Y-yes! We were, and the others had brought yellow-rank adventurers along too! To grab the upper hand and make things a little easier for ourselves..."
"You goddamn uneducated piece of shit."
At the worthless excuse not even worth hearing to the end, I kicked the bastard's tailbone, which was sticking straight up as if it had no idea how high the sky was. Thanks to that, Bardena toppled right over, but he scrambled back to his position immediately, rammed his head down, and resumed his groveling posture as if nothing had happened.
"What the hell were you going to do if you got ambushed pulling that crap, fucked up the mission, and the village got hit with the damage? What, do you drag a priest around who can bring the dead back to life?"
"W-we kept to certain unspoken rules to make sure that wouldn't happen..."
"Rules my ass. You were begging for a beating, fucking begging for it, goddamn."
According to them, it's some kind of customary practice, but in my past life too, once that shit called 'customary practice' gets involved, nothing ever goes right. I tapped the bastard's nape with an empty bowl I'd finished eating from and continued.
"So you getting dog-beaten by me and ramming your heads into the floor, is that customary practice too? Didn't you learn that mocking an adventurer's reputation gets you stabbed?"
"W-we seriously thought you weren't the real deal..."
"Did I bullshit you? Did I spin some sophistry? I fucking told you straight up that I'm the Guillotine, and what? You couldn't think of the real one? They say the bastards with no imagination are the first to die in dungeons, so did you earn your red-rank playing cards?"
Truthfully, I couldn't care less about them not believing me. If it had ended there, I would've let it slide. But openly mocking me while knowing I was a red-rank adventurer sent from the capital on a mission—that was crossing the line.
If they'd thrown their weight around just because of their numbers, they should damn well accept the consequences and ram their heads down, as many as their numbers were.
"Ha, I was planning to just get the work done quietly..."
And they also had to accept the consequence that the mercenaries on the other side, who hadn't gotten involved in the adventurers' shit-show in the slightest, were now shoveling down appetizers and watching the whole thing like it was fascinating entertainment. After today, most of them probably wouldn't be able to say a single word back even if those guys treated them like morons.
Having stirred things up once, my anger had cooled a bit, so I decided to move on to the main topic.
"Alright, let's put that aside for now. If you're managing the work, you'd have a plan, wouldn't you? How did you decide to carry out the mission? I hear orcs are showing up now."
"It's not that large-scale of an attack, and it's not at a level we can't stop, so we were going to just leave it be..."
"What kind of bullshit is that? Orcs show up and you just leave them be?"
The monsters that appear in the regions near the capital are, at worst, things like kobolds or goblins. Even the common slime is rarely seen because they were completely rooted out on the grounds that even that is hard for civilians to deal with. Naturally, it's no small expense, but the kingdom is nothing if not thorough on that front.
The gate cities serve as a border indirectly marking the safe zone managed by the capital. Which means there's a good reason there are more bandits than monsters around here.
Unless a dungeon had spawned, monsters stronger than that were at most one or two that had wandered in by accident, and yet orcs had suddenly appeared in this area.
I don't have the specific distribution of monsters memorized by heart, so I couldn't be certain, but even the nearest orc habitat should be quite far from here, and yet they'd shown up here.
"Do you even understand the meaning of orcs appearing near a gate city right now, and you made that decision?"
Monsters were leaving their territories and on the move in this winter season. Whether it was coincidence that it was toward the capital, I couldn't know, but either way it was an abnormal situation. It could mean a powerful monster that was destroying the existing ecosystem had appeared somewhere, or, on the truly off chance, it could be the aftermath of a Demonfolk strike force rampaging through the kingdom's territory.
Most importantly, unluckily for us and luckily for the monsters, if they settled down safely nearby and made it to spring, it meant a total shitshow party for the village—so how could this bastard spout this laissez-faire attitude so nonchalantly?
"W-we were hired for the protection of the village..."
"Right. Protection. So when monsters come crawling out bit by bit, shouldn't you figure out where they're coming from and what the problem is and root them out?"
It's the fundamental principle of monster subjugation. To backtrack to a monster's lair and smash it to pieces. There's no way someone who doesn't know that could be red-rank, so this bastard knew it and still pulled this shit—meaning he was just going to deal with the monsters that approached as a probing gesture, and try to stay willfully ignorant of the rest.
This was obvious even without looking. They'd clearly had the idea to conserve the monsters for future work. There's no reason to act like this unless they'd arrived at the cockroach-inspired logic of leaving roaches alive so the extermination work doesn't dry up.
It was the kind of thinking only a truly uneducated piece of shit would have.
"Forget all that. The orcs showing up, did you report it to Raviel?"
No way they had. The reply coming back from the guild would obviously be to subjugate an orc settlement. Bardena just hemmed and hawed, unable to answer, and since that was an answer in itself, I kicked his tailbone once more.
It was far too meager a price for the bastard who'd blown up my winter vacation plans, but it couldn't be helped. I had to make use of even these bastards right now.
"If you fought among yourselves over this issue, there's no way you'd still be the one in charge of the work. Any other objection to my deduction that you were having a pissing contest to make yourselves more comfortable here? If there is, speak up. If it's valid, I'll hear it out. If not, I'll fucking open up a wind-hole in your skull and use you as bait to lure the starving little orc bastards."
With a heart full of hoping at least one would bite, I even brought out a needle, but no one raised their head or hand. Guess they did value their lives after all. I sent Bardena, who was trying to ram his head down again, toppling over once more as I spoke.
"Even if all of you rush me, you can't beat me, so your piss-poor little dominance game is now completely useless. You've got two choices: follow my lead, earn some money, and get a chance to keep what you bastards tried to pull on this village a secret—or pretend to listen here and bolt at the crack of dawn tomorrow, leaving you with nothing but a life on the run forever. Those here to earn money, get up. Those planning to run, keep your heads rammed in the floor."
The Folded Gold Coin adventurers who'd had their heads rammed in scrambled to their feet, none wanting to be last. I really didn't like the look of it, but what I did like was that the five bastards who'd bolted outside earlier came panting back in and stood beside them. Glad they had the sense to understand.
"Tomorrow's task is orc subjugation. Village defense will be covered by the mercenaries, residents, and whichever of the injured are in better shape, so don't even think about staying behind."
"B-but I'm yellow-rank."
Should I call that admirable courage? I never expected the bastard to get beaten like that and still try to use being a pathetic scrap as his excuse. What was more surprising was that even the others I pegged as yellow-rank adventurers sent looks as if they agreed with the one who spoke up.
Of course, my answer was set.
"Coming on a red-rank mission was your choice, so why should I care about that?"
At the ironclad logic that brooked no argument, the yellow-ranks' faces went pale. It was a mission you chose. Grit your teeth and endure it.
"And the mercenary company members? Sorry for causing a ruckus during your meal, but let's call it even with the entertainment. I'd like to make a request to Captain Kal Guls."
There was no further reason to pay attention to these petty bastards, so I turned my body and faced the mercenaries. Their gazes, which had been watching with fascination, were tinged with curiosity.
"What kind of request?"
"I need a friend to go to Raviel through the blizzard. I have to report that orcs have appeared. I can't trust these bastards."
At my answer, the mercenaries' gazes focused on one person. The man receiving all the stares was the middle-aged man who'd been eating his meal with remarkable composure since earlier, sporting a splendid mustache reminiscent of an English gentleman. I'd seen him piling up and eating quite a lot of meat, but at some point, he'd cleaned his plate neatly and looked at me as he spoke.
"Could you come over for a brief chat?"
"I'd rather be the one asking, actually."
There was no reason to be rude to someone polite. But at my reaction, the actual mercenaries started looking at me like I was some kind of split-personality lunatic. Unlike the adventurers, who were nothing but a disorganized rabble, the mercenaries had considerable discipline. I passed through them and took a seat in front of the mustached gentleman. He stroked his mustache and slowly opened his mouth.
The question that came out of his mouth was something beyond my expectations.
"Ever heard of Balakia?"
Was there some kind of magical energy at work this winter or something? These unexpected meetings just never ended. Were Englem and Raviel that close?
"That blabbermouth from the Blue Owl Mercenary Band?"
I answered in a bit of a daze, and the man let out a light laugh, nodding his head.
"I'm the 4th Squad Leader of the Blue Owl Mercenary Band, Kal Guls. It's an honor to see the famous Guillotine of Levien in person."