Misunderstanding
Misunderstanding
"An utterly unbelievable savage. I can hardly believe the Empire was backing that bastard."
The agent Ozweol wiped at his nosebleed, which showed no sign of stopping, and ground his teeth. It infuriated him that his carefully dressed clothes were now soaked in blood down to his chest, and it infuriated him just as much that the crowds were eyeing him and the Ear Hunter following behind with wary glances. With every step his horse took, his nose throbbed, making even breathing painful.
He had already known the Ear Hunter wouldn't intervene. That had been the contract from the start, and the goal this time was to confirm the target while instilling helplessness and fear in the enemy.
But actually getting hit himself made it feel different.
It was Eldmia's fault for acting so senselessly, true, but it was just as hard to look favorably upon the Ear Hunter who'd been snickering at the sight. Worse, whether Eldmia was acting, truly believed his words were lies, or was genuinely insane, he was utterly unshaken, showing not a trace of fear.
In the end, he'd achieved nothing and only gotten beaten for it. He had every right to feel aggrieved.
Still, the bastard would be dead soon. Ozweol took a few deep breaths, then asked the Ear Hunter.
"...What's your assessment?"
"Of what?"
The insolent casual speech that came back grated on him, but since this was the same arrogant bastard who used casual speech even toward his own master, he decided to ignore it. More than anything, behind that arrogance lay skill sufficient to back it up.
This was the man who had leisurely clashed with three knights sworn to his master and held his own. Gazing at a man who, were he not an elf hunter, would surely have become a renowned knight somewhere, Ozweol continued.
"A man of your caliber ought to know just by looking. What was his skill like?"
"He was fucking pathetic."
The Ear Hunter shrugged as he answered, then, with a mirthless face, added an explanation as he recollected.
"He's definitely put in solid work on his body. Honestly, if that were all you looked at, calling him pathetic might be a bit harsh. But he's got fuck-all for aura. So he can't assess the skills of other aura users, and he can't grasp his own level. They said he split a knight clean in half with an axe swing in Kelbast? Probably an exaggerated rumor, or his weapon's something special."
Or the knight was a fucking moron. The Ear Hunter concluded with a small laugh, brimming with certainty.
"...Come to think of it, word was the mercenaries said an axe suddenly embedded itself in the observer's chest too."
"Heh, I'd only heard it was the weapon of a knight named Duberk. Must've been one hell of an artifact. Find something like that, and you're bound to get cocky."
The Ear Hunter shook his head and sneered. Part of him wondered if the man was nursing the insult he'd suffered back there, but if Eldmia was really that insignificant, he'd have died instantly when struck, so he decided to take the assessment at face value.
"So you're saying you felt almost no aura from him?"
"Yeah. Barely at the level of just opening his eyes to it?"
"...There were rumors floating around that he defeated a Hero in a sparring match in the Empire."
"A Hero? That brat? Even if five of that bastard came at me, I could win. No big deal."
"Have you seen a Hero?"
"I have."
He answered so utterly flatly that Ozweol stared at him in surprise, and the Ear Hunter laughed merrily.
"That little shit's got some elf bitch stuck to his side. Got tangled up with 'em for a bit because of her. Been about two years, I guess? The Empire's troops were attached to them, so I let it go. If it'd just been them without those nursemaids, by now the gods would be in a real pickle. They'd have had to pick a new Hero."
Watching the Ear Hunter spout deeply blasphemous talk without the slightest care as he passed through the gate, Ozweol let out a deep sigh. The kind of sigh carrying the heartfelt wish that his master wouldn't end up in trouble because of this loose tongue.
The campsite the Ear Hunter had set up wasn't very far from the city. Originally an Ear Hunter band outfitted with exceptional equipment for hunting elves, they had now received their master's backing as well, and the men, sporting gear that rivaled any proper army, greeted the Ear Hunter warmly the moment they saw him.
"You've returned, boss. How was it?"
"A fucking retard. Thanks to that, we're netting seven elves for free."
"Any women?"
Usually such a question would be the foul product of lust, but among the Ear Hunter's subordinates, the meaning was different.
"Three of them."
"Khuu, we're about to rake in some serious coin."
Female elves were at least twice as expensive as males. Rather than sating a worthless sense of satisfaction by bedding an elf just once, they preferred to charter an entire brothel with the money from selling elves and live like kings.
"The bastard's lost all sense of fear, so I doubt he'll run, but just in case, we should send out some scouts. Grab signal flares and form two pursuit squads, three men each."
"Eeegh... those expensive things?"
"We just bill it to our rich client. Better than letting them slip away. Move fast."
These were men who had chosen danger because they loved money in the first place, so the Ear Hunter's subordinates moved with perfect coordination the moment the order fell. In an instant, they sorted into squads and sprinted off along the path Ozweol and the Ear Hunter had taken. Even though it clearly hadn't been prepared in advance, the sight of them grabbing camping gear and moving out in the blink of an eye was anything but ordinary.
"I'd never seen it firsthand, so I didn't know... your men operate like a regular army."
"An army? That's harsh. Those bastards at least get to rest when they're in camp, but once they step into the forest, it's hell until they walk back out on their own two feet."
The ambushes of elves, who fundamentally received the aid of spirits, were so horrific that words alone couldn't fully capture it. Of course, it ultimately came down to a difference in skill, but a seasoned elf could slit a throat right before your eyes, then instantly dart back out of the camp and line up another shot, repeating the process.
"That's why, you know, it wasn't for nothing that one elf bitch cut the throats of three sworn brothers."
They hadn't been actual brothers, but well, thanks to that, the competition had thinned out and money got easier to make. Laughing off the earlier unpleasantness, the Ear Hunter passed the conversation to a subordinate, then washed his body lightly with water from melted snow. It was a habit ingrained in all of them from facing elves in the forest.
"So... what's the skill level of your men like? Their movements aren't ordinary."
"They all use aura, to the last man. Whether they're just stuck at User level or could count as Experts, I'm not sure myself. They're weaker than me. Still, about five of 'em pull their weight properly when we're hunting in the forest."
"D-didn't you say you had twenty subordinates?"
That many men, and all of them used aura? Ozweol stared in alarm at the common-sense-shattering answer, and the Ear Hunter flashed him a sardonic smile.
"That's right. A lot, huh?"
He knew full well the caliber of the forces he led. These were talents that any half-decent lord would drool over and covet. But no one could offer a price that beat selling elves.
"I live every day grateful for how wide the world is. Plenty of rich fucks who want elves, and plenty of elves to go around. Makes earning money real easy."
The Ear Hunter dried himself off, stretched pleasantly, then patted the trembling Ozweol on the shoulder a few times before excusing himself and heading toward his tent.
'I ought to turn in early. Just one glass of wine before bed.' Thinking such thoughts, the Ear Hunter glanced up at the sky and found his brow furrowing oddly.
"...Why the hell is that already flying?"
It was a signal flare. They'd only just set out—they shouldn't even have caught the city's scent yet.
Wondering if something was wrong, he stared up at the sky with a grave expression, but that single shot was the end of the signal. The tension draining from him, the Ear Hunter let out a sigh.
"Tch, another misfire, looks like."
Signal flares, classified as magic tools, were outrageously expensive. The reason the Ear Hunter could use them as expendable supplies was that he had a contact who acquired manufacturing defects from the signal flare production process at a relatively cheap price. But as the term 'defect' implied, they often launched on their own from minor shocks that should never have triggered them.
That was why the Ear Hunter had drilled into his men that any signal must always be fired twice in succession. Even if they were defective, the odds of two rounds misfiring back to back were slim. And thanks to that judgment, he had survived to this day, capturing elves without incident.
"Boss! That was probably a misfire, but should we check it out just in case?"
"Forget it. With the target's level of skill, he couldn't take them out before they got a second shot off. There's no forest, no horses, so there's no way elves could've already made it here. Get back to work."
"Got i—"
Just as the diligent subordinate was about to firmly acknowledge the order and turn back, his left eye exploded.
'An arrow?!'
With no time to even identify the projectile hurtling toward him at terrifying speed, the Ear Hunter twisted his body and narrowly dodged. His mouth opened on instinct and shouted.
"We're under attack!!"
How? Who? Countless questions flashed through his mind, but what mattered more was the projectile that had just blown through his subordinate's head a moment ago.
The projectile didn't simply fly out the other side and vanish. As if alive, it executed a sharp turn and flew back in the direction it had come from. The Ear Hunter felt a chill of dread creep over him.
And then.
"In a little cafe just the other side of the border."
Darkness hadn't yet fully settled, and with the city at his back, a figure that had no business being at the edge of their campsite appeared.
He showed no sign of haste, even singing some incomprehensible song as he strolled leisurely. The projectile had returned, circling back around him.
"And I knew, yes I knew I should leave When I heard her say, yeah."
"What the..."
He had no idea what the song was, but the fact that the bastard sang it oddly well pissed him off.
Unlike him, who had just witnessed the ambush firsthand, his subordinates, who hadn't properly grasped the situation, charged at the figure without hesitation.
These men were hardened to the bone by elf hunts, and they moved well on their own without needing separate orders. Normally it would have been a sight he'd watch with pride, but this time was different.
"Don't! That bastard's surrou—!"
"Come a little bit closer You're my kind of man."
Before the Ear Hunter, who had witnessed the power of that projectile, could even stop them, three of his subordinates collapsed like puppets with their strings cut. Only the five capable men he'd mentioned to Ozweol moments ago managed to deflect the unidentified attack and withdraw.
The man who'd watched it all happen wore a look of mild surprise as he adjusted his grip on the axe slung over his shoulder. He stopped singing, and with a thin smile, he spoke.
"Surprise, Motherfucker."
It wasn't particularly loud, but in the campsite where a dead silence had fallen in an instant, that single, incomprehensible utterance rang out as clear as a signal. The bodies of the Ear Hunter and his five subordinates shot toward Eldmia.
At that same instant, a projectile resembling a needle materialized right before the Ear Hunter's eyes.