Liars (1)
"The real name is Devil's Egg, but among the merchants who traded it, that egg had been circulating under the name tonic."
"A tonic?"
Raul asked at the bizarrely folksy choice of words, and the knight nodded.
"They say it restores your strength when you eat it. Joints worn down by age are healed, failing eyesight clears up, and even shaky teeth are made good as new just by swallowing it."
"Is that true?"
If that were true, it would be an earth-shaking incident that could turn Exeria upside down. They wouldn't even need a Main Temple.
Of course, there was no way that was true.
"As if. You know that as well as I do, Saint. The only things capable of restoring a withered body or reviving someone made frail by illness are clergy power. Or demonic power."
Raul silently nodded.
"In any case, by order of our lord, we traced the nobles who had been purchasing that 'tonic' and followed them all the way here to Tetra Mountain. Then we infiltrated their stronghold... Well, after that, I'm sure it's exactly as you imagine, Saint."
The knight lowered his voice as if embarrassed, but he never once looked away from Raul's eyes.
He clearly had something he wanted to ask.
"How many were there? The size of the bandit-and-merchant alliance, and the original size of your party."
If he insisted on calling the place where they gathered a "stronghold," then at the very least this wasn't just some neighborhood gang.
At Raul's question, Knight Lergal opened and closed his mouth a few times with a bitter look before speaking.
"There were ten of us, including me. Two Gold Plate adventurers, and seven Silver Plate adventurers, including the three here."
"And the rest?"
"They were all taken. The man they called the teacher said they were useful 'fertilizer.'"
The knight laughed at himself.
Those he had hired with his own hands had ended up like that because of his own judgment.
He was a knight. There was no way he wouldn't feel responsible.
Raul knew this world all too well, a world full of people who waved around the rights that came with their position while refusing to carry out the duties, so he did not dislike someone like Lergal.
"So, how much."
Raul held out his palm to the knight and began the final test.
When Raul had once said just that one thing, asking for money, Knight Rembrant had flown into a rage like an angry monkey.
What reaction would this one show?
The knight, who had been staring blankly at the hand Raul held out, moved more quickly than expected.
"Ah. You mean the reward."
He was the type who showed things through action rather than words.
At his brief cue, the Silver Plate adventurers standing behind him suddenly took off their shoes and flipped over the insoles.
"Huh."
To Raul's surprise, a single gold coin popped out of each one.
"Our emergency fund of two gold coins. And the five gold coins these men just collected from those merchants. I'll give all of it to you, Saint."
Lergal didn't waste time asking why a Saint would want money, or lecturing him about honor. With a crisp motion, he held out the seven gold coins.
Pass.
He passed.
The gold coins he took did smell a little like copper and mold, but gold was gold.
Raul said to them with genuine satisfaction, "Where is it? This stronghold you said they've taken over."
Only then did the knight and the adventurers, their eyes shining with emotion, seem truly moved.
Raul looked at them and thought something else entirely.
Even when the world changes, people who claim to have a cure-all are always the same...
What a ridiculous thing.
By noon, the deep haze of dawn had been driven off and bright sunlight had settled over the earth. A man stood with a pipe clenched between his teeth, puffing away in endless, steady bursts.
In this perpetually cold, barren Mountain Village, what else was there to live for if not a stiff drink of good liquor and a little tobacco?
"P-please, save us! How could ordinary villagers like us possibly kidnap an outsider and drag him all the way to this Mountain Village!"
Then, from inside the building he was guarding, a voice burst out, not quite a scream, not quite a plea for mercy, not quite anger.
"Hah."
With a snort, the corners of the man's mouth, Veto the gatekeeper of the Tetra Merchant Guild, rose of their own accord.
He knew from long experience exactly what would happen after hearing a sound like that.
Soon enough, a rough, gravelly voice thick with phlegm came drifting out.
"Really? You can't? Then I guess it's fine if I sell your wife and son to the customers in your place, isn't it? That's right, isn't it? This is because you couldn't pay your debt, isn't it!?"
"D-do you think it makes sense for it to balloon tenfold in just one year?! I-I'll file an official complaint with the kingdom!"
Whoo—
Veto let out a mocking whistle at the unusually brave resistance. It had been a while since he'd heard anything so spirited.
But as he expected, that bravery soon turned into a scream.
"Aaaaaaaaah!"
Clink.
Veto kept swirling the liquor in his expensive glass.
Then, perfectly timed to the screams, he knocked back a full drink.
Ahh.
What better accompaniment was there in this boring Mountain Village?
Veto knew very well that he himself, and the head of this Tetra Merchant Guild who was beating people senseless in there, were both slowly going insane.
Ever since those men in the bizarre masks had fed him something, the man's tastes had become strangely refined toward other people's screams and suffering.
Whenever he saw blood dripping down someone's face, or watched a person burst into tears from sheer grief, the corners of his mouth would lift without him even trying.
It had been unpleasant at first, when those bizarre masked men suddenly took control of his life... but then Veto would call over the villagers from this Mountain Village one by one and threaten and torture them, and before long, none of that mattered.
Then something flew toward Veto's head.
Thunk.
But Veto had been a mercenary before he was a merchant, and he wasn't stupid enough to let a lazily thrown rock hit him.
"Y-you damn bastards! Just how much do you have to torment the people of this village before you're satisfied!"
When he opened the eyes that had been glazed with liquor, there stood before him the village chief and several women and old men with their hair gone white.
They were the residents of this Mountain Village.
But Veto, who was from this same village himself, only put on a shameless face and said,
"What? Tormenting you? Us? Who, you? Say that properly, you senile old fool! You were the ones who borrowed our money, and the ones who couldn't pay it back! Right or not!?"
Crash!
Veins bulging in his forehead, Veto hurled the glass.
As expected, the shattered fragments flew toward the people standing in front of him.
When they flinched and huddled protectively around one another, Veto said with not the slightest trace of guilt,
"Pathetic trash! That's what you get for not joining us, then? I told you. I told you you'd regret it! Do you even know how many guilds and bandits have joined hands with us?"
"Are you still trying to push that absurd idea that the villagers should take the initiative, kidnap visitors, and sell them off to bandits!?"
The village chief glared, his eyes blazing with fury.
But the gatekeeper of the guild only scratched at his ear with practiced indifference.
"Absurd, my ass. Hey, old man. Look at reality. We've been doing this for four years now, and have any nobles come rushing in to warn us? No. The opposite, actually. They went out of their way to become our customers. Hell, you saw it too, old man."
As Veto spat, the village chief's face flushed red with rage.
"You cursed bastard! Even if nobles abandon honor, heaven never abandons justice! How can you know one thing and not the other!"
Then Veto burst out laughing right in his face.
"Pfft! Still? You're still talking about those great clergy bastards? They aren't coming, I tell you. They don't give a damn about little people like us. Look! Four years and not a single one has even shown their face!"
Mountain Village had been like this for some time now.
Nothing worked as it should. Adult men and young women were dragged off to the bandits' stronghold and made to do forced labor, leaving behind only children and the elderly.
Meanwhile, the bastards of the Tetra Merchant Guild, rooted in Mountain Village, were a daily plague, their eyes rolling with madness as they tormented their fellow villagers one day after another.
"Tch. Useless fool! The warriors of Motala will come! The knights of Mimir, too, and the priests of Ella! There is no way they would turn a blind eye to this!"
At this point, the only one still putting up a fight was the old village chief.
But it seemed Veto had finally decided even the chief was no longer worth sparing.
"Shit. Listen to yourself, old man. That's enough." Veto's veins bulged as he strode forward. "Huh!?"
The villagers all took a stiff step back, but the stubborn chief did not yield.
"Should I make you half-paralyzed like the bastard in there? Is that the only way you'll shut up about that goddamn clergy?"
Veto reached out to strike the old man indiscriminately.
Thunk.
But a hand that had appeared from nowhere caught the wrist of the arm reaching for the old man's skin-and-bones throat.
Frowning, Veto turned his head, and there stood an unfamiliar man.
"Who the hell are you!"
Crack!
With a surge of force, Veto tried to wrench the other man's arm the opposite way and break it at the joint.
But...
"Wh-what the hell? Who are you!?"
No matter how much strength he put in, the wrist he had been seized by did not budge even a little.
"What the fuck do you think you're doing, you son of a—!"
Soon Veto sent a practiced, restrained kick at the stranger, but the man caught that leg just as easily.
"Gaaaaah!"
Dangling in the air, Veto shook with humiliation and yanked a dagger from his belt with his free hand, slashing wildly. The man twisted his body faster than that, drove Veto into the dirt, and slammed him down hard.
Crk!
Something broke with a heavy sound.
As everyone stared in shock at the stranger, the black-haired man, Raul, said in a casual tone, "That goddamn clergy bastard you were talking about is me. Asshole."
Raul was privately furious at the desolate state of Mountain Village.
Even if the Mountain Village he remembered had only been computer graphics in a game, this had been a place full of good people, just like Latina Village.
And now it's...
One house out of every two stood empty.
The fields bore obvious signs of being trampled by someone.
And by broad daylight, the village had turned into something grotesque, with prostitutes and drunkards wandering its streets.
Looking at the gatekeeper he had thrown to the ground, Raul briefly considered whether he should finish him off for good.
"S-Saint! If you rush off like that all of a sudden..."
At that moment, Knight Lergal, who had been hiding among the crowd, came up beside him.
He had suggested they ambush the Tetra Merchant Guild.
But from what Raul had seen, this wasn't a place dangerous enough to require an ambush.
"It's fine. At most, there are just this bastard here and about ten people inside the guild building that need to be watched. And at this level, that's not a problem."
"If that's what you say, Saint..."
While Raul and Lergal exchanged a quiet conversation in the center of the crowd, someone stepped out of the guild building.
"Veto! Veto!! Why the hell aren't you answering... Huh? What are you people."
He had the face of a bear more than a man.
A huge scar cut across the bridge of his nose, his body was massive and brutish, and his muscles had developed in a grotesquely unnatural way.
Raul could sense a form of miasma from him similar to the merchants of the earlier Golden Screw.
Raul gathered holy power into his eyes, scanned the inside of the man's body, and said, "A human raising a demon inside his body..."
This one's condition was far worse than the earlier merchants.
"What? Raising a demon? What the hell are you talking about? More importantly, who the hell are you? And why is Veto lying there!?"
"So you still haven't noticed it yourself."
Raul let out a small sigh as he looked at the man who had appeared.
At that, the man immediately bristled, but then he caught sight of the person standing next to Raul and curled his mouth into a sneer.
"Ah. What? So it's that hopeless idiot knight who was asking us about the stronghold with a stupid look on his face, huh!?"
Then the rear door opened again, and the people inside the Tetra Merchant Guild spilled out.
Every single one of them looked as if something in their eyes had gone wrong, and they all chimed in the moment they emerged.
"Guildmaster! If that knight is here, doesn't that mean he ran away and abandoned his companions?"
"Puhahahahaha! Pathetic bastard!"
"So what is it? A coward who finally ran away dragged himself back by hanging onto the trouser leg of some prettyboy loser like that?"
There were more than twenty of them, by rough count.
What's more, aside from the man called the guildmaster, several others were also raising sizable Desecration Bugs inside their bodies.
Their eyes gleamed with a violet light that was not human as they said,
"So what is it? What business do you have with us, brat?"
Each and every one of them had an appearance that made people want to avert their eyes.
Staggering drunkenness was a given.
Their eyes were all red and bloodshot.
They wore untrimmed beards and tattered rags as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
And even their muscles, grotesquely swollen and uneven from side to side...
If Raul's eyes were right, these things had already gone beyond the category of human beings.
The anger Raul had been suppressing cooled the moment he saw them.
In a calm voice, Raul asked, "Do you need anything else from these guys, Lergal?"
The knight, unmoved despite all the mockery, replied, "No. We came here only because we thought these were the first ones that needed to be dealt with. These bastards could take the villagers hostage at any time."
"I see. Then I'll make the judgment myself. I'll eliminate all of them here."
The guild's people burst into laughter, as if Raul's words were the funniest thing in the world.
However, their taunting sneers came to a stop when a halberd was handed from the knight's hands to Raul's.
Fwoosh!
Holy light, brighter even than the noonday sun, blazed forth.
The instant that pure white radiance swallowed the long halberd whole, Raul's figure vanished in a blur.
"W-what was that?"
As someone muttered in confusion, Raul appeared behind them.
"Here."
Whoooosh!
The enormous blade swung down with terrifying force.
At once, the bodies of the two men standing at the back were split wide open.
But...
"Aaaaaaah! Wh-what is this!!"
From between the severed upper and lower halves, something huge and vile like the larva of a monstrous insect spilled out.
A Desecration Bug, grown even further than before.
"Ugh!"
"What the hell!"
"Y-you! A monster is inside your body!"
Not a single drop of blood fell.
Even after their upper and lower halves were torn apart, they simply screamed into the air as if nothing had happened.
At a glance, it seemed they didn't understand anything at all.
Raul addressed the guild bastards, who had gone deathly pale in an instant, in an even tone. "You aren't human anymore."
"Wh-what did you say?"
"You had your body's control taken from you by parasite-type demons... So if you want to be precise, you're the demon parasites."
At Raul's certainty, they all looked shocked, but it seemed the demons themselves did not want this situation.
Kyaaaaaaaaaaaah-!!
At last, the Desecration Bug that had dragged its mouth out through the torn waistline let out a monstrous shriek.
Then every one of the guild members standing in the area began shaking as if electrocuted by a current.
"M-my body!"
"I-it won't listen!"
Against their will, their bodies moved.
In Raul's direction, where his pure white divinity flashed.
Slash-!
But for Raul, who was already prepared, such a disordered ambush was no different from a morning stroll.
"Slow. Sloppy."
Shick-! Chaaash!
With the hideous sound of flesh being carved apart, the bodies of the fallen were split open.
"W-what are you? Just what the hell are you!"
Only then did the guildmaster howl that out in panic, but Raul merely let his pure white eyes flare and said, "Raul. Saint of Motala."
Cracks spread across every face of the corrupted.