Sheryl Tusin Ogatorf
Sheryl Tusin Ogatorf
The information the private soldier had was actually pretty useful.
Pabaera had bought the wine farm only about half a year ago. This bizarre bullshit had started barely a month ago. He wasn't an old-line noble at all, but someone who'd bought a title with money. His private force numbered about forty men, and on top of that he was currently using another forty hired specifically for this job.
"What kind of baron bastard keeps 40 private soldiers and hires mercenaries on top of that?"
"There are about thirty who've been with him since before he even got the title. He keeps them under the nominal guise of deploying troops for public order, but they're no different from private soldiers. And since his residence is considered to be on the outskirts of the capital, even though there are limits on private soldiers, there's absolutely no issue with hiring mercenaries."
"What about the additional 40?"
"Th-that, I'm not certain of either, but from what I've picked up, the talk is that he secretly hired some low-quality mercenaries..."
The soldier answered almost instantly, as if desperately proving he didn't even have time to invent a lie. From what he said, Pabaera seemed clever in all the worst ways. The fact that he'd already kept about thirty men around before gaining his title made it obvious he'd been involved in something shady before this too, but apparently even my captive didn't know what.
Of all people, the one I'd let live wasn't one of the 30 who'd been with Pabaera from the start, but a private soldier hired later.
"What are the fucking odds of that?"
The full picture of the situation was this: Pabaera and 10 close associates were at the encampment, while the remaining 20 were holed up in the ruins in the forest, commanding operations. The 40 additional hired mercenaries were deployed in the forest, systematically slaughtering adventurers.
"Did that son of a bitch lose his parents to adventurers or something? Why the hell is he doing this shit?"
"I'm just a grunt, so I wouldn't know about that..."
"Hmm. That's iffy."
Secret or not, deceiving adventurers and killing them this way was unbelievably dangerous. That was probably why they planned everything in the forest so carefully, but if they were caught, they'd still face confiscation of their property and execution. There had to be some benefit large enough to justify taking that risk, and I couldn't figure out what it was.
"S-sir! I don't know about that, but there's one strange thing!"
He must have taken my muttered 'that's iffy' to mean his information wasn't worth enough to buy his life. His eyes darted desperately and he blurted out another answer almost in a panic. He'd been cooperating so enthusiastically from the start—even lowering his voice—that I'd already planned to spare him, and now I was starting to feel a little bad watching him panic this hard.
"On Baron Pabaera's orders, we've been collecting the bodies of the adventurers we've killed so far somewhere in the ruins!"
"What?! What the fuck, is he some kind of necromancer? Why do that disgusting shit?"
"I-I don't know either! But I heard the order saying not to worry about their condition and just roughly pile them up, since they'd be burned later anyway!"
"Burned later...?"
I couldn't make sense of it.
Collecting the bodies of the adventurers who'd come to subjugate them, deliberately pushing it to a secondary request to gather even more adventurers... and they didn't even finish off the ones immobilized outside the forest, yet had no qualms about those who wound up dead incidentally.
Why? According to this guy, they'd used tactics of definitely luring the adventurers who came for the first subjugation request into the forest and killing them with pincer attacks. Why would guys who'd moved so carefully that they'd only selected certain skilled individuals to execute the operation resort to such a messy method?
"Th-this is really all I know. Please, spare my life...!"
"Relax. Eldmia Ega doesn't make a habit of killing helpful people. Unless they're complete evil bastards, anyway."
At those words, color began to return to the guy's face as he repeatedly thanked me. But I couldn't just leave him like this, not knowing what he'd do, so I'd have to knock him out.
"Look. I'm not going to kill you, but we're not close enough for me to trust you completely and walk away. So let's have you take a little nap."
"O-of course! A wise decision, Eldmia!"
"I really like how cooperative you are. And when you wake up, every bastard around here is going to be dead. If my hunch about this whole mess is right, today's going to be Pabaera-whatever's funeral."
"H-hiik..."
"It's going to become a big incident. Once word gets around, they'll probably ask you—one of the only survivors—what happened. When they do, consider this the price of your life and pass on one message for me."
"Wh-what is it?"
"When you're moving forward with some fucked-up job and a bastard named Eldmia Ega is involved, just throw everything away and run like hell. Not that hard, is it?"
"O-of course! If anyone asks me, I'll make sure they hear it exactly!"
"Good. You're acting smart, so I trust you. Relax. I absolutely won't kill you. That's it... huh?"
After choking him unconscious and carefully lowering him to the ground while he'd been thanking me right up to the end, a sudden realization flashed through my mind.
"Leaving a survivor?"
Anyone who entered the forest died. Anyone who couldn't even make it into the forest survived. The fact that they weren't finishing off the fallen outside made that much certain.
Most of the rest would die, though. So what rumor would spread? How would people react when they heard a second bandit-subjugation attempt had scraped together roughly sixty adventurers and still failed? Sheryl had said that if even this attempt failed, the noble's private soldiers would be deployed next.
But that noble was the very mastermind who had created this incident.
The surviving adventurers would say they were insane bandit bastards who even used bows and fought systematically. The rumor would spread fast. How could a rumor not spread when nearly 60 adventurers had been massacred? Being near the capital, even the royal palace would start paying attention. Then, if Baron Pabaera led his private soldiers out, conducted the subjugation, and succeeded?
"He said once he made money, he wanted fame? This son of a bitch?"
Burned bodies would be enough to serve as proof of the subjugation. If he collected the adventurer tags from the people killed this time and submitted them to the guild separately, there'd be no need to inspect the corpses closely.
If he burned the adventurers his own men had killed and erased the evidence properly, Pabaera could become famous almost overnight.
"Wow. Fuck. Even Satan would stand up and applaud this one. Could I actually be right?"
Once I'd thought that far, there was no way I could leave without finding out the truth. I couldn't stop itching to see whether my god-tier theory was just imagination or the real thing. I searched the fallen soldiers, found a usable short sword, picked it up, and ran through the forest as fast as I could in search of the ruins and Sheryl.
◈
As I went deeper inside, taking out the occasional patrol with thrown short swords, bits of gray that were unmistakably parts of a structure began to catch my eye between the dense trees.
"Eldmia. Over here."
At the same time, Sheryl's voice reached me. I stopped my steps and looked around to see Sheryl, who'd been up in a tree, silently dropping down like a cat and approaching me.
"You're late."
"I met a cooperative friend and dug up some info. Turns out, these bastards might be real sons of bitches."
"They were cooperative?"
I'd shared what the nameless cooperative soldier told me. Sheryl's eyes widened in obvious surprise.
"What on earth did you do, and how?"
"Just happened that way?"
"They didn't seem like the type of guys who'd just roll over easily enough for it to 'just happen'..."
It was a conversation that gave me a feeling of déjà vu, but that wasn't what was important right now, so I told Sheryl my theory.
"Hey. I think Baron Pabaera is probably the mastermind, and for some reason I think what he wants is fame."
"Fame? You sure you didn't mis-speak and mean infamy?"
"I heard they'd been collecting the bodies of the adventurers they'd killed. But the guy said they'd be burned later anyway. You said if this subjugation fails, the noble who owns the farm would bring his private soldiers and personally lead the subjugation, right?"
I laid out the theory I'd worked so hard to piece together and watched Sheryl's face. She'd processed it almost instantly, and her blocky eyebrows twisted with barely contained fury.
"What kind of demonic idea is this? Even tearing him apart wouldn't be enough..."
"It's only my theory, but doesn't everything fit together?"
"So he doesn't just deceive and murder adventurers—he frames the dead as the very 'bandits' he supposedly defeated and uses them for his own reputation? Is that really an idea a human being came up with?"
There wasn't any forensic science in this world. Between natural disasters, monsters, and human-made catastrophes, people died in staggering numbers. There was no denying that individually confirming every single death only happened in exceptional circumstances.
The guild would be the same. They'd be bitter about sixty Green-rank and Blue-rank adventurers being slaughtered, but they wouldn't truly mobilize until even a noble's private soldiers took serious losses and failed to eliminate the bandits. Naturally, that failure wouldn't happen. Baron Pabaera could dress the collected adventurer corpses as bandits—or pull any similar trick—then burn them beyond recognition. If he wanted a more dramatic performance, he'd remove the adventurer tags first and return them to the guild.
That would become a landmark feat announcing Baron Pabaera as a heroic new noble.
If Sheryl and I hadn't been here, the plan would've probably worked.