From Serf to Swordmaster, Chapter 21
From Serf to Swordmaster, Chapter 21
「Insight + 1」
Before Berak's eyes, Dora's face seemed to waver faintly. Beyond her harsh features, something of an entirely different quality appeared to overlap them.
Her face was clearly ugly, yet the impression seared into his mind was beautiful enough to send a chill through him.
'......My sight is working separately from my other senses.'
Even Berak found his own statement absurd. But it was not a lie.
It was not that she looked pretty; rather, he had the "feeling that she was pretty." He could not put it more precisely than that.
'My Insight rose last time when I observed the Anima battle. If it's related to seeing things more accurately.......'
Dora's true appearance was probably different from how she looked now. Berak cautiously drew that conclusion.
"Hmph!"
She glared at Berak as if he were pathetic.
"Where did you learn such an obvious trick? You thought a little flattery would change my mind? Dream on. Even if you spout that nonsense a hundred times, I'm never bringing a brat like you into the graveyard."
Dora tossed the iron badge to Berak and turned her head toward the children.
"If you've washed your hands, get over here instead of standing around blankly, you lot!"
As if she had nothing more to say, she lowered her gaze to the pot. But Berak noticed Dora's fingertips trembling slightly around the ladle.
She was not angry. She looked more like someone bristling after something she wanted hidden had been exposed.
Berak took a step closer.
"Is it a disguise?"
The hand stirring the ladle stopped at once.
"......What?"
Prying carelessly into what others hide could invite hostility. But he had to confirm it.
'If what I see and what I feel are this different, it could trip me up at a decisive moment later. The client is suspicious, and I can't just take on a mission blindly.'
Dora's gaze turned cold.
"......What exactly are you?"
"Should I show you the emblem again? Or the commission document?"
After a tense staring contest, Dora was the first to snort and look away.
"The brat is quite shrewd."
She pointed to a corner of the yard.
"I don't know what you saw or what you're guessing, but if your aim was to avoid being thrown out, you've succeeded. Wait over there. I have to feed the children."
Berak nodded and withdrew. The children glanced at Berak repeatedly as they crowded toward the pot.
Berak watched Dora ladle out soup and hand it over.
She had been called "grandmother," but seeing her up close, she was nothing of the sort. She merely had an exceptionally harsh face. She was probably still fairly young.
Her straight-backed frame beneath the nun's habit and springy movements were full of vitality. The children did not seem to genuinely think of her as an old woman either. It was probably just a teasing nickname for the fierce-looking older woman.
Before long, the last child received a bowl. As if she had been waiting, Dora immediately went inside the building.
"She said to wait......."
Berak was about to follow right away, but decided to stay a little longer. Fortunately, the door opened before too long. She was with someone else.
'This one's a real grandmother.'
As the old woman began tending to the children, Dora pointed inside the building with a jerk of her chin.
"Follow me."
* * *
Dora walked silently toward the far end of the corridor. Then she stopped in front of a room that looked like a small supply closet. She opened the heavy wooden door and went in, and Berak followed without much hesitation.
The next moment.
Dora reached for the doorknob at almost the same moment Berak's hand went to his waist.
Crunch.
Berak was faster. The axe handle he had drawn from his waist was wedged between the door and the frame.
"Don't close it. I hate being locked in."
Berak spoke calmly. It was a stance from which he could kick the door open at any moment, or charge straight through and aim for Dora's throat.
Dora stared into Berak's eyes for a moment, then slowly took her hand off the door.
"Hmph. You're overly cautious. Or are you just a coward?"
"Think whatever you like."
Berak stepped into the room while keeping his escape route open behind him. She turned toward him as he maintained a razor-sharp guard, then suddenly uttered a strange sound.
"**. **** *** **?"
Berak tried not to let his surprise show on his face.
It was fundamentally different from any language Berak knew. It was smooth as a newly honed blade, yet the weight carried in each word pressed heavily against his eardrums.
'......What is she saying?'
A string of syllables he could not understand at all. Yet strangely, it made his skin crawl. The resonance felt too perfectly tuned. It was beautiful, but oppressive.
The word "Western Language" written on the Record Sheet suddenly came to mind. If Branvalt and Valken were grouped as western, then somewhere on this continent there must exist entirely different languages that didn't belong to that classification.
"It sounds like some kind of song."
Dora let out a hollow laugh.
"If that's an act, it's excellent. Pretending not to know without so much as a change of expression."
"Or maybe I'm genuinely hearing it for the first time."
"You really are a brat with no charm whatsoever."
Dora crossed her arms and asked.
"Fine. I'll let it slide for now. If you're not from there...... why did you bring up the disguise?"
"Because the documents I received didn't say anything about the client hiding her identity."
"Ha! You speak as if you can see right through everything. Then let me ask. How do I look to your eyes right now?"
"Probably the same as what others see. It's just...... I get the feeling that it's fake."
Instead of answering, Dora stared at Berak with a serious expression. Berak was the first to break the prolonged silence.
"I'm not curious about your circumstances. I'm a mercenary who'll be leaving in a week anyway. All you need to do is let me focus solely on hunting undead during that time."
The bewilderment on Dora's face gradually gave way to a hollow laugh.
"Heh...... Just listening to you talk, you're every bit a seasoned mercenary."
Then her gaze drifted to the axe handle wedged in the door gap.
"No...... your actions too."
Dora nodded briefly.
"Fine. Since you've shown me, treating you as nothing but a child would be unfair. I still have my suspicions...... but if you keep the secret as you said, I'll treat you as a legitimate dispatched mercenary. Naturally, I won't interfere. Is that enough?"
"Yes."
Dora brushed past Berak and stood at the door.
"Then I'll show you where to rest until nightfall."
"Ah, I'd also like a meal. The document says room and board are provided."
A soft smile touched Dora's lips for the first time. The sense that she was "pretty" struck Berak far more strongly than before.
"If you wanted to eat that badly, why didn't you just ask earlier?"
* * *
After finishing a simple meal. Berak forced himself to sleep in the assigned room. It was rest for the battle in the dead of night.
When he opened his eyes again, the surroundings were completely dark. Just as he was shaking off the drowsiness, Dora came by.
He followed Dora, who carried a lantern, up the slope behind the monastery. Dora, who had been walking in silence, spoke in a low voice.
"......I already said this, but I never intended to bring you into the graveyard in the first place."
"Why?"
"Because you're a child. Whatever the circumstances, a child your age holding a weapon is the fault of adults."
Dora's gaze fixed on the darkness beyond the lantern's reach.
"Shamelessly enough, now that I've confirmed you're no ordinary brat, I'm finally letting myself hope. The situation is bad. The barrier is keeping the unclean energy from leaking out, but it can't do anything about the growing numbers. It's already saturated."
"I see."
"Anyway, thank you. For taking on this commission that no one else would."
"No need to thank me. It was my choice, and I'll be paid according to the contract."
Dora chuckled.
"Pay that's less than one silver coin a week? Even if you act like a sly old fox, I know there's another reason. Well, it doesn't matter. Whatever your intentions, gratitude is gratitude."
Dora cleared her throat and strode ahead.
"Ahem. Enough of the embarrassing talk. Let's discuss the work now."
She explained in a low voice.
"Undead don't die easily from thrusts. You have to pierce the head completely, or cut them apart in large sections, focusing on the torso rather than the extremities."
"How strong are they?"
"Most are weaker than humans."
"Then I'm confident."
"Don't get careless. The graveyard entrance will be a rabble, but occasionally there are ones that have crawled out from the depths mixed in."
Dora took a small bottle from her pocket and handed it over.
"It's oil mixed with holy water. Apply it under your nose. It will block the corpse miasma to some extent."
Berak applied the oil as he walked, following behind her.
"Here."
The place where Dora stopped was an abandoned graveyard blocked off by a massive iron gate and fence. The texture of the air changed distinctly across the boundary.
Through the gaps in the fence, he could see corpses densely filling the graveyard. From ones with flesh sloughing off to reveal tendons, to ones with nothing but bone remaining.
At the bizarre sight he had never seen in his life, Berak subtly adjusted his stance.
Screech, screeeeech—.
The chilling sound of something scraping against the iron gate pierced his eardrums. It was a signal that the creatures were swarming right up to the gate.
"It'll be combat the moment the gate opens."
Berak drew the greatsword from his back and shifted it to one hand.
"Give me the key. I'll reduce their numbers as much as possible and return."
"What are you talking about? I'm going in too."
Berak's gaze lingered on Dora. Since she was someone who used a strange disguise technique, she might have her own means of combat. But outwardly, she was just an ordinary woman.
"Do I need to escort you as well?"
"Don't worry. Just look after yourself. Even if I wanted to die, I couldn't die whenever I pleased."
Berak adjusted his grip on the greatsword and moved behind Dora. When the gate opened with the key, the corpses poured out as if they had been waiting.
Whooong—.
Berak, who had already taken his stance, didn't hesitate. The greatsword's horizontal slash swept through the enemies.
Thud-thud-thud.
The jumbled remains of human bodies crashed to the ground. Heads, torsos, and various limbs scattered, each separated from the others.
One strike.
With that alone, every corpse that had filled the gate stopped moving.
"You......!"
Dora's narrowed eyes widened as far as they could go.
Tap.
Berak silently kicked off the ground lightly and brushed past Dora. His gaze was already fixed deeper into the graveyard.
Thwack.
A severed head soared high.
Crash.
He split a skeleton vertically. The shattered bone fragments collapsed.
Every swing brought destruction in its wake. It was efficient slaughter, but Berak's expression hardened.
At some point while immersed in the fight, he realized he had started applying the axe's stop-and-strike use of force.
Familiar methods were comfortable. But comfort meant stagnation.
Berak consciously raised his focus and twisted the flow of the sword.
Rather than a chopping strike, he linked the unbroken momentum into the next attack.
Whooong—.
A great circle of steel was drawn with Berak at its center. The spinning blade tore through the graveyard air like a top. This time it wasn't just one. Three or four corpses charging from left and right were caught in the trajectory and crushed in an instant.
BOOM!
Beings with human-like forms were literally ground away.
Every time the sword danced, debris flew in all directions.
Destructive power that dominated not a point but a plane. It was a result that could never have been produced without the greatsword's characteristic wide rotational force.
「Swordsmanship Proficiency + 1」
And as Berak twisted his body with the sword's rotation....
He saw it.
One creature charging toward Dora, its sagging jaw muscles clacking.
Contrary to the expectation that she would do something, Dora simply stood still with both hands hanging at her sides.
It was too late to run over directly. Berak reflexively drew the axe from his waist.
The angle was bad. If he threw it as it was, the axe that pierced the undead risked hitting Dora as well.
A brief moment. His thoughts accelerated, and the sequence of actions assembled itself.
Whoosh.
Berak kicked off the ground and leaped powerfully, using a nearby undead as a stepping stone. Suspended in the air, he raised the axe high. Not toward Dora's front, but to her side. He hurled it with force.
Whoosh—thwack!
The spinning axe flew and burst through the upper shoulder of the approaching corpse.
「Throwing Proficiency + 1」
Berak landed lightly and immediately raised his voice.
"Are you insane? Why are you just standing......!"
He stopped speaking at the strange sight unfolding before his eyes.
The remains of the undead burst apart by the axe showered over Dora. But just before the filthy blood and flesh touched her habit, they bounced off in midair as if blocked by an invisible wall. Not a speck of dust touched her clothes.
As he stared blankly at the phenomenon and turned his head, he met Dora's peculiar gaze. She spoke in a low voice.
"......I thought you were merely shrewd, but you have a naive side, worrying about others in a life-or-death situation."
Berak's eyes narrowed. It was a phenomenon he couldn't understand, but at the very least, she wasn't someone to protect. He reached a conclusion quickly.
"Then I was being overly considerate."
Berak spat the words out briefly and turned his back.
Dora shrugged.
"Well, you've shown results beyond expectations from the first day. Let's head back now. Any longer and the corpse poison could spread to you."
Berak felt it too. Beyond the terrible stench, an indescribably sinister, chilling energy was closing in from all around. It felt as though it were gnawing at his mind independently of his stamina.......
「Magic Resistance + 1」
Berak's eyes lit up as the Record Sheet changed to reflect his adaptation to the situation.
Clink.
Berak retrieved the axe embedded in the ground and adjusted his grip on the sword again.
"No. I'm thinking of shortening my stay here a bit."
* * *
'This doesn't make sense.'
Dora forcibly held back a gasp. The trembling in her chest would not settle.
An attitude could be precocious. One could learn faster than others. The density of experience could be exceptional. Those called "geniuses" often produced results rivaling adults even at a young age. Dora had seen no small number of such shining talents until now.
But.
Boom!
Once again, it was a single trajectory. The forms caught in it turned into chaotic fragments. They scattered in all directions.
'Is that...... a capability that can be contained in the single word "talent"?'
Saying he rivaled adults was a clear understatement. Martial prowess that far surpassed even most veteran mercenaries. He occupied the terrain, responded instantly to enemy movements, and seemed technically flawless. An overwhelming presence dominating the battlefield was radiating from that small body.
And what was that unchanging composure?
Corpse miasma was a tangible negative energy containing the grudges of the dead. Unless one's mental fortitude was exceptional, the longer one was exposed, the more natural it was to fall into terror or confusion.
But the boy.
'He's not affected. No, is he adapting?'
Her spiritual senses swept over the boy. The instant the force pressing down on him touched his body, it was violently repelled.
A fierce struggle was taking place there: the force pressed in while he pushed it back and endured.
That alone made Dora's skin crawl.
It was the way of a holy knight, possessing not only outstanding mental fortitude but practical resistance as well.
Leaving behind a gaze he couldn't understand, the boy kept moving deeper into the graveyard.