From Serf to Swordmaster, Chapter 11
From Serf to Swordmaster, Chapter 11
The three of them took seats around the table. Berak spoke first.
"I'm planning to leave here."
Renabel's eyes went wide.
"What? All of a sudden?"
Berak nodded.
"It's not exactly sudden...... I just thought now was the right time."
"The right time?"
Renabel frowned.
"Berak, you didn't get here the easy way. You just washed up and rested, and we haven't even properly treated you yet......."
Roban looked at Berak with his arms crossed.
"You shouldn't have been uncomfortable here."
"There wasn't."
Berak answered immediately.
"That's why I don't think I should stay any longer."
Renabel's mouth fell slightly open.
"What does that even mean? If you're comfortable, you can stay a little longer."
Berak was silent for a moment, as if choosing his words. Then he put it simply.
"I'm not good at staying still."
Berak's voice didn't waver.
Roban, who had been listening, asked.
"Do you have somewhere to go? No, have you decided what you'll do to get by?"
Berak was quiet for a moment. But an answer was rising in his mind. It had been hazy before he came to Valken, but it was growing clearer.
The sensation of cutting down monsters.
The feeling of his body being renewed.
The praise that had brushed past him.
And...... for the Record Sheet to grow, he had to constantly experience real combat anyway.
"...I'm thinking of becoming a mercenary."
Renabel immediately raised her voice.
"A mercenary? No way!"
"Why not?"
"I know you fight well, but... Berak, you're still too young! Being a mercenary is a rough and dangerous profession. With your skill, becoming a knight's squire would be much better. Much more stable, much more..."
Berak tilted his head.
"Squire......?"
Renabel stopped talking and blinked.
"Um... there's something called a knight's 'squire.' Usually you enter service under a single knight, travel with him, and help him. You prepare his equipment, tend his horse, and train together. Then if you're recognized, you might eventually become a full knight... well, something like that?"
"So you have to keep staying under a knight?"
"Yes. Basically. For a while, you'd have to stay at his side almost constantly."
Berak said calmly.
"I don't want that. Moving under someone else's orders. At least not right now."
Renabel started to say something, then hesitated. Before she could continue, Roban let out a low laugh and spoke.
"So you think being a mercenary is any different?"
Berak raised his head.
"Mercenaries live bound by discipline too. Guild rules, contract obligations, assigned missions, team assignments... There will be work you have to accept whether you want to or not. Sometimes you'll have to kill people you don't want to kill. Are you prepared for that?"
Berak lowered his head for a moment. He might have looked frightened. But the next moment, he raised his head.
"Then, if I refuse an order, will I be cut down on the spot?"
Renabel caught her breath at the blunt question.
Roban didn't answer right away. A very brief pause.
"......No."
It was a low, dry voice.
"Normally, that doesn't happen. But afterward, you just won't have a place there anymore."
Berak quietly chewed over those words. The price of disobeying an order wasn't his life. It simply meant they would never want to see him again.
When he had been a serf, that would have been unimaginable. If he refused an order, a whip would immediately lash his back. If he ran away, chains would close around his ankles. Back then, refusal meant death or a beating.
But here it was different. If he refused an order, no one beat him. Instead, the "work" dried up. He didn't die; he only lost the chance to work with them again.
Berak felt he understood the difference. It wasn't fear of the whip. Here, he had to worry about whether others found him useful.
That wasn't as unpleasant as he'd expected.
If anything, he welcomed it.
If he became someone far more useful than others. If he made it so they couldn't discard him. Then even if he did as he pleased, they would hold on to him.
He couldn't have everything from the start. He just had to fight more and grow stronger. Later, he could choose for himself whether to do something or not.
Even if he had to bend a little for now, he just had to build a position where he could eventually do as he pleased.
With that resolve, Berak looked at Roban with unwavering eyes.
"Then I'm ready to become a mercenary."
"Did you actually understand what I said? I'll say it again: mercenaries live bound by discipline."
"I can't have everything my way right now...... but if I show how useful I am, then you'll listen to what I have to say too, won't you?"
Roban let out a disbelieving laugh.
"Don't get the wrong idea, Berak. A mercenary company isn't a market stall. It's not a place where the owner caters to you just because you bring in a lot of meat. Discipline is discipline because there are no exceptions."
Roban scrutinized every inch of Berak's face. A heavy silence followed, as if he were trying to crush Berak's spirit. But Berak did not look away.
Berak understood Roban's warning that there were no such "exceptions" in the mercenary world. But understanding and giving up were separate matters. He simply waited calmly for Roban's next words.
Roban stared at Berak for a long while, then pressed his brow as if fed up and let out a sigh.
"......Seems there's no breaking that ironclad stubbornness of yours."
Roban scratched the back of his head as if annoyed, then pulled a sheet of paper from inside his coat. He picked up a pen and began writing without hesitation.
"In an ordinary mercenary company, that insolent thinking of yours wouldn't get you anywhere. But there's exactly one place I know where people as thick-headed and skill-obsessed as you gather. It's called the 'Silver Hawk.'"
Roban roughly folded the finished letter and tossed it to Berak.
"It's a letter of introduction. Go and prove that 'usefulness' you talked about. If you can show that your skill outweighs their rules... then maybe that absurd contract you want might actually get written."
Berak quickly snatched the flying paper out of the air. He tucked it away carefully and gave a small nod.
"You're telling me to try, right? I'll go there."
Clunk.
"Roban, what are you doing? You can't seriously write him a letter of introduction!"
Renabel shot up from her seat and shouted. Berak flinched and looked up at her. Renabel's face was full of dismay. Roban nodded with the same impassive expression as always.
"I apologize, Miss Renabel. But I believe this is the best course."
Renabel urgently leaned toward Berak. The tips of her fingers trembled as she gripped his shoulders.
"Berak, does it really have to be right now? You can decide after staying a little longer. Rest a bit more in Ebra, think it over slowly......."
Renabel couldn't finish and bit her lip. She seemed about to hold on to Berak, but then glanced at Roban standing beside her with a complicated expression.
Berak saw the hesitation in her eyes. They seemed to say that something she had always known would come had arrived far too soon.
Roban, who had been watching the situation with his arms crossed, spoke in a subdued voice.
"Miss Renabel. This child has already made up his mind. Even if you force him to lie on a silk blanket now, he's the kind who will eventually walk out on his own two feet to find a thorny path."
"Still, Roban......."
"Rather than holding him back now, sending him somewhere he can properly learn to swing a sword is the right path for this child."
Renabel's gaze turned back to Berak. Berak didn't avoid it and met her eyes directly.
At last, the tension in Renabel's eyes drained away. She looked as though she had realized something, or accepted that there was nothing more she could do. Her grip on Berak's shoulder slowly loosened, and a long sigh slipped from her lips.
"......You really are stubborn, you know. Both of you."
Renabel turned her head, pretending to be hurt, then pulled out a leather pouch and pressed it into Berak's hand. Its considerable weight pressed into his palm.
"But take this. It's part of what I was paid for this trading trip and some of my emergency money. Whether you become a mercenary or whatever, you still have to eat properly. Got it?"
Berak quietly felt the warmth of the pouch against his palm.
"...Thank you."
"Have dinner with us before you go. I'll prepare things so you can leave tomorrow, so make sure to stop by before you depart."
A faint tickle stirred in one corner of Berak's heart. It was a tiny pang of regret.
It was also a sign that he had begun to think of Renabel and Roban as "good people."
But he had already made up his mind to leave.
If anything, that only made him more certain he could not stay any longer.
* * *
Dawn.
Berak set out with a driver sent by the merchant company. A small wagon was loaded with the supplies needed for the journey.
The money he had was several Valken silver coins that Renabel had given him and a few Branvalt silver coins. The Branvalt silver coins were money he had taken from the forest warden and the slave trader.
From Roban, in addition to the letter of introduction, he received one more thing. It was an iron badge infused with silver. On its surface was engraved a hawk with its wings spread wide.
When he saw Renabel at dawn, she was calmer than he had expected, though the hug lasted a little longer than expected.
Roban just placed a hand on his shoulder and said he would do well.
"First, I'll take you as far as Northfell. It's half a day away, so it won't take long. But to Hellvern, where the mercenary company is... no matter how much we hurry, you'll need a week."
Berak nodded at the driver's words and climbed into the wagon. After that, a long journey followed.
He couldn't do physical training inside the wagon. Instead, he focused on his senses. Since it was a newly acquired ability, he wanted to test and develop it.
Berak began feeling out, one by one, what his body could sense.
At first it was vague.
It seemed like he could feel things a little better than before... and then again, maybe not.
Still, since there was nothing else to do, he kept listening, feeling his breathing, and gauging the swaying.
Then, at some point, he realized something subtle.
When he tried to feel everything at once, it was blurry. Only when he focused on one thing did the sensation become clear.
After that, he concentrated on a single sense at a time.
He would keep his eyes still and open his ears, focusing only on the sounds of hooves and wind.
Or, thinking of closing off his hearing, he would open his eyes and look at the distant scenery.
「Senses + 1」
Sometimes, because of that, he didn't hear the driver's voice.
"Goodness, I called and called, but you wouldn't come down......."
The driver had come all the way into the wagon.
"Sorry."
"Let's eat here before we go on. The horses need to rest too, after all."
Berak felt bad for the driver, but he maintained that state throughout the journey.
「Senses + 1」
「Senses + 1」
"In twenty years of driving a wagon, you're the first person I've ever escorted who sleeps with their eyes open."
That led to misunderstandings like this.
Still, he had no regrets. During training, he focused on one sense at a time, but once the ability actually increased, it was clear that even when he stayed still, several senses registered at once, more sharply than before.
"This has been a journey full of good fortune. Not a single bandit in sight, and only a few measly monsters skulking about."
Along the way, he encountered monsters twice. A field mouse with spines on its back and a red-eyed wild dog. Berak dealt with both of them easily.
And so the week the driver had first mentioned passed.
Then an overwhelming sight unlike anything Berak had ever seen came into view.
A wall rose like a mountain. The ramparts stretched into the distance with no end in sight, and great banners rippled in the strong wind.
It was early morning, but a long line stretched before the enormous gate that split the cliff as if cleaving it open.
It was Hellvern.