Chapter 267: You Aren't the Only Ones Who Can Strike
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 267: You Aren't the Only Ones Who Can Strike
The moment he opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was a stone ceiling slick with mold.
Meelun recalled the moments before he lost consciousness. His resilient Frok mental fortitude allowed him to remember every single detail with agonizing clarity.
And so, he realized that, to put it bluntly, he was in a total shitshow of a situation.
"Give me some water. And if you can, bring me something to eat. I like fruit," Meelun said, pushing himself halfway up.
His arms had regenerated, but heavy iron shackles bound his wrists and ankles, chaining him to a stone pillar. Even for a Frok, breaking free through sheer strength was impossible.
So, what was left?
Nothing but waiting. Perhaps because of the medicine he had taken during his final, desperate struggle, his head felt like it was splitting open, and his heart throbbed with a dull, rhythmic ache.
Can I even get out of here?
Like most Froks, he regretted being derailed from the path of his desires and impulses far more than the prospect of death itself.
What a bizarre bastard.
Naturally, his thoughts drifted to the man who had beaten him down.
He looked like such an easy target.
Why wasn't he? He had definitely seemed manageable—someone weaker than him, at least to his own eyes.
But why?
A Frok's combat instincts allowed them to judge advantage and disadvantage in an instant. He had fought in perfect alignment with the intuition his instincts screamed at him. By all rights, they should have been evenly matched at the very least. Why had he been so utterly, one-sidedly thrashed and broken?
Their combat instincts were an extension of their eyes, which read and analyzed talent. In that regard, Encrid was the type of human a Frok could least comprehend.
A human with pathetic talent, yet one who had crawled his way to the top. A phenomenon born from a refusal to give up, forged through endless repetitions of "today."
Encrid was a human who could not be read by a Frok's combat instincts.
To make matters worse, Meelun wasn't particularly confident in his talent-reading eyes anyway. Naturally, different Froks specialized in different areas. While some were experts at reading talent, others specialized in pure combat.
Among them, Meelun excelled in the art of movement—the art of walking.
He targeted my joints relentlessly.
His regenerated forearms throbbed with a faint ache. His arm had been severed before, and it had been severed again this time. No, this time, even his eyeball had been pierced.
He knows how to fight.
Simply being good with a sword and actually knowing how to fight were two entirely different matters. The idiots who shut themselves away in their family estates to learn swordsmanship usually swung their blades in a pretty, delicate manner. On the continent, people disparaged such styles as "noble swordsmanship."
The opponent who had brought him down was nothing like that. He had perfectly exploited the weakness of a Frok's slippery skin. He had targeted the eyes and joints, stabbing and slashing with lethal precision.
Had he been like this when they met before? Was he always this good at fighting? Honestly, Meelun couldn't remember clearly. The guy had been decent back then, but Meelun had fully expected to overwhelm him when they met again.
What a total buzzkill.
He had no energy, and he was starving to boot.
"Here is your water and dried fruit. It's winter now, so fresh fruit is hard to come by."
The guard brought the food without any fuss. He's surprisingly kind, Meelun thought. He drank the water and chewed on the dried fruit. There was also well-baked bread and marmalade.
"Hey, this is delicious."
"I'm glad," the guard replied without a smile. He showed signs of tension, but his limbs weren't stiff with fear.
Well-trained.
Being a Frok, he could tell just by looking. Of course, his talent-reading eyes weren't exceptionally great, but still.
Even so, that bastard is definitely an anomaly.
It was no different from what countless other talent readers had said upon seeing Encrid.
Two days passed like that.
Realizing that escaping by force was out of the question, Meelun tried to bribe the guard, but that also failed.
"If I let you escape, I'm a dead man."
"I doubt they'd execute a soldier on the spot just for making a mistake."
As Meelun continued to coax him, a self-deprecating, almost lamenting expression crossed the soldier's face. Of course, Meelun didn't fully comprehend the depth of it. He was just left utterly bewildered by the soldier's next words.
"I'd be fired from guard duty and thrown into an eternal training hell. Honestly, dying might be better."
What on earth did that mean?
In any case, while the guard wasn't overly strict, he seemed completely immune to bribery. Even if offered a lump of gold, he would likely shake his head.
"If I get caught, I really will die. Besides, I'm perfectly content with what I make now. I'm not about to get greedy, get myself killed, and leave my adorable children behind."
"Are you married?"
"Not yet."
"......Then what's with the 'adorable children'?"
"My future children, I mean. My future children."
Was every single soldier in this territory this sharp-tongued?
As another day passed with those thoughts, Meelun began to wonder if they had locked him up and forgotten about him entirely. Trapped underground without any way to tell day from night, a faint sense of sorrow began to creep in.
I shouldn't have gotten involved in this fucking mess.
Another two days passed. Meelun grew anxious. If things continued like this, he might be locked up here for the rest of his life.
Should I sever my own limbs to escape?
He could probably break the shackles by tearing off his own limbs, but even for a Frok, bending the iron bars of the cage while limbless and bleeding out like a stuck pig seemed impossible.
Ah, what the hell is this?
Anxiety consumed Meelun. Every passing day was agonizing. When did a Frok—a creature entirely devoted to desire and impulse—actually die?
When their head was cut off? When they contracted an incurable disease? When an arrow pierced their heart? While a ruptured heart was a guaranteed death sentence, there was a far more cruel way to kill them.
Froks were a species that could not endure being withered to death. They were a race that lived entirely swept up in their own curiosity and desires.
"Hey, did you guys forget about me or something?"
Waking up from either a daytime nap or a night's sleep, Meelun asked the guard outside the iron bars. As he spoke, his gaze drifted toward the small table and two chairs, only to find someone other than the guard standing there.
To be precise, there were four of them.
The bastard who had beaten him down, a weak-looking human with large eyes, and a figure standing half-shrouded in the darkness, only half of their face illuminated by the torchlight.
The guard was nowhere to be seen. They had finally come. They hadn't forgotten him. Even if he was going to die, he needed a change of pace, so Meelun was secretly thrilled.
"Where did you get the powder?"
He had nearly died from his organs throbbing in pain after taking that stuff. Since they weren't immediately asking for his identity, Meelun answered cooperatively. He had waited too long to drive them away with useless banter.
"Found it on my way."
"Where?"
"In a small village."
The one who asked was the elf. Her expression was blank, and she exuded a cold aura. It was obvious at a glance that she was not below him in strength.
Is this place crawling with nothing but monsters?
Why were there so many of these freaks in a backwater territory? Meelun continued speaking. He had absolutely no intention of hiding anything from the start.
"Just head west from here. It would take me two days on foot, or a little over a day and a half on horseback. There's a fenced village on a small plateau. I don't know the name, but the chief was a young, pretty woman. Her name is Kaisella."
A Frok's aesthetic sense naturally favored beautiful humans.
"Did the Black Sword send you?"
"Bandits? The Black Sword? No, why would they?"
Meelun had been locked up for days, and for a Frok, that was more agonizing than having their fingernails ripped out or their eyeballs gouged. If he remained locked up forever, he would wither away, suppressing his desires until his dying breath.
Ah, there was truly nothing more torturous for a Frok.
"Well, look at that. It actually worked," Encrid muttered.
As Encrid spoke, Krais chattered from behind him. "It worked even better than I expected."
Encrid nodded while remaining seated in his chair. He had spent enough time around Luagarne to have a rough grasp of what kind of race the Froks were, but Krais was on another level.
What a fascinating brain he has.
Krais's earlier words came back to him: "Froks follow their desires. What would a wandering Frok like him desire most? If we lock him up, he might spill everything much easier than you'd think."
Krais had only been half-sure when he suggested it, but the very fact that he could come up with such an idea set him apart. He had said that letting the Frok stew for a few days might eliminate the need for interrogation entirely, so Encrid had followed his advice.
That judgment had been spot on. However...
"Do you know a merchant named Promshell? That fellow has been planting ears all over the continent. I was hired by him. To put it simply, he's a guy who runs an information guild."
Encrid hadn't expected him to reveal absolutely everything like this. Though he couldn't read the Frok's expression, it was obvious the creature wasn't lying. His opponent was a Frok; they were a race that would rather keep their mouths shut than bother lying about such matters.
Therefore, this had nothing to do with the Black Sword. The powder had been obtained purely by chance, and the one who had commissioned him for this job was some merchant—a man who ran an information guild.
It made sense. And that made the name stick in his mind even more.
Promshell, Promshell.
Encrid repeated the name a couple of times to commit it to memory.
"Is he a noble?"
"Not as far as I know."
"Is that all?"
"If there is any lie in what I just said, may the God of Impulse and Waves strike me down."
"Can you make a vow on it?"
"Of course."
To a Frok, a vow was a promise and an oath—something that must be kept at all costs.
"I was tricked too. By that horse-bastard, Promshell," Meelun snorted.
Encrid decided he had heard enough. In fact, he had heard more than enough. For starters, he now knew the location of the village where the powder had been obtained.
"We went through so much trouble trying to find it, and they had it hidden inside a village all along," the elf muttered.
"What is their combat-capable force?" the elf asked.
Having already spilled everything, Meelun had no hesitation. "From what I saw, most of the village."
"All of them?"
"Probably over fifty of them."
The Frok spoke, and Encrid nodded.
"Are you letting me go now?"
Encrid nodded again, then rose from his chair and approached the iron bars. "We'll see."
"What?"
"I'll see about letting you go."
"You bastard, what about your promise?!"
He had never made such a promise. Of course, Encrid intended to release him eventually, but Krais had made an earnest request before they came down here.
"Could you leave him to me?"
Seeing his desperation, Encrid had agreed.
"Wait, wait. Why don't you and I have a little chat?"
Just as the Frok was about to stick out his long tongue and hurl curses at Encrid, Krais slipped in between them. His large eyes and appearance were enough to win a Frok's favor. However, since Meelun was male, he had no romantic interest. Still, those large eyes didn't look bad to him; Meelun tended to consider larger eyes a sign of a handsome face.
"Now, Meelun?" Krais smiled, his face radiating pure innocence.
Watching that expression, Encrid had a premonition that Meelun was about to get thoroughly fleeced. After all, the only time Krais ever smiled like that was when he was about to swindle a sucker.
*
They left the dungeon and headed toward Marcus's office. Wanting to handle everything at once, Encrid had waited until the Frok's interrogation was finished before going to report.
Battalion Commander Marcus was just that busy. Looking at how the territory was running, it seemed even three or four bodies wouldn't be enough for him. On top of that, some cultist had apparently sneaked in and been captured recently. He had heard that all sorts of things had happened in the territory while he was away.
The dungeon was located in a corner of the barracks, and the moment they stepped outside, Encrid spoke up.
"I'd like an explanation."
The Elf Company Commander was clearly involved in this. Hadn't she dropped enough hints for him to deduce that by now? She had even mentioned searching for a village. He had let it slide back in the cell, but now there was no Frok around to overhear them.
When he asked, the elf replied, turning her head. "It was a classified mission." Her green eyes stared straight at Encrid.
I guess I'll have to hear it from Marcus, then.
Just as he thought that, the elf spoke again. "But then, what meaning do secrets have between us?"
"They have plenty of meaning. Let's keep it a secret," Encrid said quickly.
"No, it's fine. It's about the demonic beasts that those Black Sword bastards have rooted within the kingdom."
"Let's keep it a secret."
Encrid said it again, but the elf didn't even pretend to listen.
"They kidnapped alchemists to manufacture a drug."
"I don't think you can hear me."
"Naturally, it's no ordinary drug. It's banned by the kingdom, and even the Alchemy Guild officially opposes it. Though, of course, they might just be putting up a front while secretly reaping the research results behind the scenes."
Encrid gave up.
Hearing the explanation, it was indeed no ordinary drug. It had driven a Frok completely wild. If an ordinary person took it, they could fight like a berserker for a brief moment, but once the drug wore off, the backlash would kill them.
The elf explained that she had been on many external missions to locate their base. Taking Finn with her recently had been for a similar reason; he had heard there was a task well-suited for Finn.
Encrid listened in silence, then turned to Sachsen. Sachsen also seemed to know something.
"And you?"
"I was searching for something I needed, and it seemed to be connected to the Black Sword. While investigating here and there, I found traces of alchemy in the medicine used by a Black Sword messenger I encountered in Martai."
Sachsen's answer perfectly aligned with Encrid's expectations. Therefore...
He's hiding something.
Sachsen had only said what Encrid wanted to hear. It was just a hunch, but Encrid was certain of it. Still, he didn't press the issue. He just let it go. Sachsen wasn't the type to answer even if asked.
If Sachsen intended to stab him in the back with this, Encrid was willing to take the hit just this once. Even if their trust hadn't reached that level yet, he owed Sachsen that much—especially since he had acquired the foundation of his newly mastered Soft Sword style through Sachsen's sensory techniques.
"Sure, let's go with that."
"You don't seem to believe me," Sachsen asked, his face expressionless.
"I believe you," Encrid replied, thinking of Audin. He answered with genuine trust.
"Is that so?" Sachsen asked again.
"Yes."
By then, they had arrived at Marcus's office, and the three of them stepped inside. The guard standing outside saluted them. One was an elf, and the other was the commander of the independent platoon. Marcus's guard stood stiffly at attention and stepped aside.
As they entered, Marcus looked up from a mountain of documents and parchment.
"How does it feel to be targeted by assassins right in the middle of the territory?"
Encrid replied with absolute sincerity. "It feels like shit."
"My thoughts exactly."
Somehow, even without many words, there was a deep understanding shared between the two.
Ever since he had dealt with the assassins, searched their bodies for loot, and left the Frok to stew before interrogating him, Encrid had been thinking about one thing.
Why do we always have to be the ones taking the hits?
That was why he had asked Krais earlier: "If you were the leader of the Black Sword, where would it hurt the most to get hit?"
"I think it would hurt the most if someone snatched my coin purse."
When Encrid pointed out that such a loss might only affect someone greedy like him, Krais had replied: "No matter the group, an empty purse always cuts to the bone."
It made sense. In that case, wasn't there a way to make that happen? Half of his purpose was to report, and the other half was to discuss this very matter with Battalion Commander Marcus.
"This is neither a request nor a mere act of retaliation. This is an official mission issued by the ruler of this territory."
After a brief report, Marcus's eyes gleamed. Then, the command of their superior and ruler of the territory fell upon them.
"Crush them."
Encrid decided to carry out that order to the letter. Yes, let's crush the Black Sword. Why should they be the only ones taking the hits? That single thought kept echoing in his mind.
"I am granting you independent operational authority for the time being. You too, Sinar."
"Understood," the Elf Company Commander replied in a tone that was incomparably colder than the one she used with Encrid.
That side of her felt incredibly foreign to Encrid. Then, a sudden thought crossed his mind.
Why is she only like that with me?
It was a mystery. Perhaps he just had a face that was easy to tease. He had occasionally heard similar things back when he was running with mercenaries.
In any case, Encrid intended to show the Black Sword.
They weren't the only ones who could strike.