Misunderstanding
Misunderstanding
The self-proclaimed envoy's name was Ozweol.
From what I heard, the lord of the place where I first had that run-in with the gatekeeper was a baron. The count whom that baron served considered it a great disgrace and personally got involved.
Ragnis and Envelde were counts, and even the Margrave of Kelbast was a count by rank, so counts felt disgustingly common, but they were never common. Even in Itisel, since I mostly operated in Ogwen and the capital, old count families went around the provinces with a baron or two under them, strutting with their necks stiff.
The count Ozweol served was the same. An old, deeply powerful house, where in this region I was currently setting foot, people crawled just at the mention of its name.
"So this Count Mekelin here—... shit, what was the kingdom called again?"
"...The Kingdom of Kaldar."
For a moment, the expression on his face seemed to say, 'He really doesn't even know where he's standing?' I raised my hand, fully ready to smack him, and that look vanished instantly.
"Watch it."
"Yes, yes!"
"Anyway, this Count Mekelin is a well-known power player in the Kingdom of Kaldar, so he even takes pointing out his subordinates' mistakes as a challenge and an insult to himself, right?"
"W-well, to be more specific, there were ways to express the matter more amicably, but you directly..."
This time, I didn't give him a chance to read the room and lower his gaze; I swung my hand and smacked the back of his head.
"You bastards started the shit first, so why should I accommodate you? If you don't like it, you should've managed your gatekeeper better. The moment you wrongly assumed the Empire was behind me, you little shit couldn't do a damn thing and just stamped your feet. What? Amicably?"
He clutched the back of his head and made a tearful face, but soon resumed loading the elf hunters' corpses onto what had been their own wagon.
No matter that the count had commissioned them, as the Ear Hunter had said, it was an unofficial commission. Capturing elves was strictly a crime, though it was hard to pin down if you branded them as slaves and laundered their origins. Even if the city I was staying in fell under the count's domain, after seeing these corpses, it'd be difficult for him to disavow them or hold me responsible.
Thinking about how my purse would swell from their gear, supplies, and bounties started to cheer me up, even with the count problem still lingering.
"Move faster. At this rate, when the hell are we getting back to the city?"
"S-sorry. I'm not good at physical labor..."
Ah, right. This guy was a civilian.
Since the bastards I'd just fought weren't exactly pushovers, I'd completely forgotten.
"Tch, no helping it."
It wasn't that I had no intention of getting used to the axe, but because I was wielding an unfamiliar weapon, I was using more Magic Power than usual to boost my physical abilities, and their coordinated attacks were still fierce. Honestly, there were more than a few times I contemplated throwing the axe aside and drawing my sword.
Regardless of their swordsmanship, I had to acknowledge their skill and teamwork in ganging up to kill a person, and it was all the worse because every one of them was an aura user. Personally, I thought the honor-addicted knights, whose concept of coordinated attacks was sorely lacking, could stand to watch and learn.
After killing all the bastards who seemed to be underlings, I went so far as to use one of Shadow Foot's precious potions only because I couldn't gauge how much fight the Ear Hunter still had left, wanting to be absolutely certain. Fortunately, once alone, his technical shortcomings were laid bare and I took him down easier than expected, but he was definitely stronger than most aura-using knights, so I had no regrets.
This was the kind of thing where if you scrimp for nothing, you end up like Envelde.
I had no intention of spending the night outside, so I left the corpses, which had become a means to fatten my purse, to Ozweol and focused on gathering any resellable supplies from the surroundings. Maybe because they'd received the count's backing, there was a lot more useful stuff than I'd thought. In what I guessed was the Ear Hunter's tent, I managed to find not only the contract documents related to the assassination commission against me, but also evidentiary records of elf trading and other leftover documents.
"Right, if you're gonna do illegal work, you gotta keep this kind of stuff for your own protection. There's a reason he'd been in business so long."
Thanks to that, I'd have a nice setup for picking a fight with the count.
After rummaging for a long while, the goods turned out to be more than expected, so in the end I had to load one wagon with corpses, the other with supplies, leave one wagon to Ozweol, and lead the way back to the city.
"I'll say it now: I ran all the way here on my own two feet. Chasing down a bastard who bolts in a wagon is nothing to me."
"I-I absolutely won't run away!"
If I used a needle, the wagon would definitely get smashed, the horse would die, or Ozweol, whom I needed as a driver, would die, so I gave him that warning in advance. He drove the wagon straight and entered the city properly. Of course, I didn't forget to load the six detached force corpses I'd killed separately along the way.
Whether the stories about me had spread even to the low-ranking gatekeepers or not, the gatekeepers let us pass without a word. After leaving the supply-laden wagon at the inn, I headed to the Adventurer's Guild first to deal with the corpses.
If it were Itisel, I would've had to inquire with the Guard Force headquarters, but here, they'd entrusted the handling and payment of bounty-related matters to the Adventurer's Guild. Fortunately, there were substantial bounties on their heads. They were so notorious that even adventurer elves had added from their own pockets, but even so, it was a rather anticlimactic end in many ways.
In the end, since they were hunters rather than warriors, it was a natural outcome. If we'd fought in the forest without an ambush, it would've been incredibly tricky.
The Adventurer's Guild employee recognized their faces and handed me the bounty with an awkward expression. I passed it straight to Cellevian, who was staying at the inn. He looked back and forth between me, Ozweol, and the coin purse for a long while before speaking with difficulty.
"You don't mean... you really killed them?"
"Yes."
What more was there to say? Cellevian and the elves wore expressions that said they had a lot they wanted to say, but tired was tired, even after drinking a potion, so we agreed to sort things out after sleeping and waking up.
Maybe because I'd moved my body for the first time in a while, it wasn't hard to sleep deeply. Ozweol, who was nothing but a civilian, had no way to untie the knots I'd diligently fastened and escape, so I didn't need to worry about him either.
I greeted the morning feeling refreshed, kicked awake the bastard I'd tied up in the bathroom, telling him if he felt like shitting while I was asleep he could deal with it himself, then asked the elves, who from early morning still stared at me with expressions that said they had plenty to say, for their understanding one more time, and moved to dispose of the supply-laden wagon.
The supplies of twenty elf hunters were worth a considerable amount. It went past my purse just being fat; the gold coins became heavy and cumbersome, to the point I had to stop at a jeweler and buy several small, expensive gems.
After selling off all the intact armor and weapons, along with the signal flares that seemed to be magic tools and the potions that looked like field medicine, I couldn't help feeling positively wealthy.
"With this much, the gate fee won't be a worry."
The problem was that there was no gate in sight.
Soothing the wounds inflicted by this unfortunate reality with my gem pouch, I returned to the inn to explain the situation to Cellevian's group. He cut straight to the chase, handed me back the coin purse I'd given him, and spoke first.
"I cannot accept this money."
"If you're going to give me the obvious spiel that you're grateful I killed your people's sworn enemy but you can't take the bounty on their heads, just keep it and use it for something good. My own purse is already fat from selling off all their gear."
As if that really was the obvious speech he'd been about to give, Cellevian made a pained face and pocketed the coin purse again.
"...There'd be no point asking how you killed them now, would there? Seeing as you brought that man, I take it you still have more business to attend to?"
"Yes. I need to go find the one who commissioned them."
"...Isn't the one who commissioned them a noble?"
"They said he's a count."
At my calm answer, the frown lines on the faces of Cellevian's group deepened one by one. Even with those creases, they were all beautiful and handsome—elves were elves. The sight automatically raised my annoyance index, but since the overall mood was one of consideration and worry for me, I added a word to set their minds at ease.
"Don't worry too much. I've already killed a count once. It was surprisingly doable."
At that, three deep furrows appeared between the elves' brows. Only Ozweol beside me trembled and reacted with shock.
"Th-that rumor that you single-handedly stormed Count Envelde's mansion in the capital of Itisel and massacred everyone... was that true?"
"Fuck, you heard that rumor and still pulled this shit?"
"Wh-who in the world would take such a rumor seriously? Everyone thought it was exaggerated."
Just look at this bastard. Now that he was cowed, saying exactly the right thing made him twice as infuriating. As a hint for him to get a clue, I gave him the death glare, and only then did he shut his mouth and lower his head.
Then Cellevian, with visible effort, relaxed his expression and spoke to me.
"...It seems pointless to try to gauge your abilities any further, so I don't really want to say anything, but are you truly okay? Even if you return to Itisel, it feels like there'll be lingering trouble?"
"Lingering trouble?"
"You'd be attacking another kingdom's count. I don't think that's something that can pass without issue."
It was an extremely valid point. Even if I could cut off that count bastard's head, from that point on it'd be easy to frame it all as a crime. But thanks to the gift left behind by the now-dead, well-behaved Ear Hunter, I no longer needed to rack my brain and tread carefully around legal issues.
"Originally, that would've been the case..."
With a cheerful heart, I pulled the contract between the Ear Hunter and the count from my chest and showed it, saying,
"Not anymore."