No Need to Drag This Out
Leaving Hera behind, Leon and Aria climbed the stairs to the inn's second floor.
At the top of the landing, a set of double doors stood wide open along one wall, as if inviting them inside. Even at a glance, the room beyond had been furnished like a proper reception parlor.
Looking closer, this place was no ordinary inn — it seemed more like a branch office of the Mukwol Squad.
Stepping into the parlor, they found a man and a woman seated on a leather sofa.
A middle-aged man sat with his mouth hanging slack, eyes glazed and unfocused.
And beside him—
…An elf?
A sharp-featured elven woman with a long scar carved across her cheek.
The unusual pairing of an elf and a mercenary lit a spark of interest in Leon's eyes.
The elven woman rose at once and offered the first greeting.
"A pleasure to meet you. I am Riel, vice-commander of the Mukwol Squad."
"Right. Nice to meet you. I'm Leon Crusif. This is Aria."
Having exchanged the bare minimum of introductions, Leon dropped heavily onto the sofa opposite them. Aria gave a small nod and settled in beside him.
When Riel made to leave without sitting, Leon called her back.
"Don't bother bringing tea or anything."
"Understood."
He had no desire to drink tea in a dump like this anyway. What would it even taste like — dishwater, most likely.
"And him?"
Leon jerked his chin toward the middle-aged man.
Riel let out a quiet sigh.
Smack!
She cracked him hard across the back of the head.
"Wh—whuh?!"
The man, who had been staring blankly into space, jolted upright from his sprawled posture. A string of drool snapped free from the corner of his mouth and dropped away.
"V-Vice-commander, wh-what…?"
He whipped his head around with round, startled eyes.
"We have guests. Introduce yourself."
Riel's voice was cold and flat.
"Y-Yes…? Ah!"
Only then did the man fix his gaze properly.
"Pleasure. Fenril, leader of the Mukwol Squad's Sixth Division."
"Leon. Aria."
Leon's reply was even shorter than before, and he thought to himself:
This guy is a division leader?
He didn't even seem capable of managing his own subordinates. His skill, at least, looked decent enough. Unlike the rabble downstairs, he seemed to be Expert-rank at minimum.
It was easy to forget, spending all his time at Elprime among nothing but geniuses — but Expert-rank warriors were genuinely rare. In the mercenary trade, rarer still.
Riel was another matter entirely.
Mid-Expert at the least.
Possibly higher. The fact that he couldn't easily gauge her strength at a glance suggested as much.
Well, as vice-commander of the Mukwol Squad, she'd have to be at least that strong.
And with a commander and a division leader like those two, the vice-commander must have been suffering no small amount holding things together in the middle. Feeling a flicker of sympathy, Leon asked her:
"By the way — is it all right for the vice-commander to be here?"
From what he could tell, this was nothing more than a branch office of the Mukwol Squad. If the commander was already here, shouldn't the vice-commander at least be holding down headquarters?
Riel answered in the same even tone.
"I remain on standby near the Commander at all times."
"Then who's running headquarters?"
"A few days' absence poses no issue. And assisting the Commander takes priority."
"Hmm. That so?"
Leon accepted it without much fuss. He hadn't been especially curious — just tossing out questions to pass the time. Still, it told him that Riel and Hera were quite closely bound.
"Anyway, first time I've seen an elf mercenary."
"I am a half-elf."
"Ah."
Not a full elf, then — a half-elf. That made the mercenary work more plausible. Leon nodded.
"So can you use spirit arts at all? You know, wrapping wind around your weapon and all that—"
"Yes, I do command spirits, though…"
As Leon lobbed casual questions and Riel answered them with mechanical efficiency—
"Have you finished the introductions?"
"Huuuuh! C-Commander!"
Fenril lurched to his feet in a panic.
Thud.
Hera stepped through the doorway with a twisted little smile and shut it behind her. Specks of red blood were spattered across her face, pale as a blank sheet of paper.
Leon clicked his tongue theatrically.
"Tsk, tsk. So that's what you were off doing — roughing up the kids?"
"Just giving them a little talk so they'd get their heads on straight~. Hup!"
Answering like that with blood still on her face, Hera flopped sprawling onto an empty sofa. There was nothing remotely noble about the posture — nothing that suggested she bore the Crusif name. She looked for all the world like any common mercenary rolling around from job to job.
She licked a smear of blood from her lip and spoke.
"Little brother, you surprised me. I didn't think you'd go straight for the blade just from one little comment."
Leon let out a quiet laugh.
"What, wasn't that what you wanted to see?"
He was saying this after cutting down her own men and speaking to their commander — and not a single person in the room found it strange.
"That's why you called me here in the first place."
Leon added. Hera had clearly known he would walk into a situation like that. She must have arrived early and watched from the sidelines, just to see how he would handle it.
Simply for her own amusement.
"Hmm. Unexpected, I guess? I clapped, and it felt like a brain exploded."
A bizarre metaphor — but it meant Leon had acted far more mercilessly than she had anticipated.
At her words, Leon thought for a moment.
Did I get a little worked up?
Maybe he had. He'd skipped the fists and gone straight to the sword, after all.
If he had to pin down why…
The stench of alcohol had soured his mood from the start. And that freckled bastard running his mouth about Aria had grated on him more than usual. The greasy hand gestures, the slimy voice, the cheap lust swimming in his eyes — all of it stacked together until it crossed the threshold of what he was willing to tolerate.
So he killed him.
That was all there was to it.
Did he regret taking a life so casually? Feel a twinge of conscience?
Not a chance.
If he hit someone, he hit them. If he killed someone, he killed them. Frankly, he didn't care in the slightest how a piece of trash like that got dealt with. Dealt with was enough.
Pulling free of the thought, Leon shrugged.
"Doesn't really matter, does it?"
"Of course not~! I like it even better this way."
Still lying down, Hera thrashed her limbs with cheerful energy.
"Well then."
Leon and Aria crossed their legs at the same moment and leaned back against the sofa — Leon at his ease, Aria with quiet elegance. The timing and the motion were so perfectly matched it might have been rehearsed.
"Let's get to the commission."
The moment he brought up the real business, Riel straightened her back.
"What sort of commission did you have in mind?"
"A subjugation."
Leon reached into his coat, drew out several folded sheets of paper, and spread them across the table.
Shocking Serial Murders in Pribil… Who Are They?
Entire 'Owls of the Forest' Mercenary Band Missing…
Local newspapers. The publishers' names were thoroughly unfamiliar, the dates were a jumble, and the articles themselves ran only a few sparse lines. You could tell he'd scraped together whatever scraps of information he could find.
Leon tapped the table with the tip of his index finger.
"I want these people cleaned out. Completely. Do you happen to… know who they are?"
Riel's eyes lit up as she scanned the articles in a rapid sweep, then answered with confidence.
"Yes. This is the work of the Gonghyeol Group."
"Oh-ho."
Leon murmured a small note of admiration.
The Gonghyeol Group.
At this point in time, they weren't particularly active — and even less so anywhere near the eastern regions. This confirmed that the Mukwol Squad's intelligence network reached across the entire Empire.
"The brutal methods of killing, the consistent phrases, the ghostlike way they operate… it is unmistakably the Gonghyeol Group."
An cryptic phrase meaning Be Afraid. Vicious murders carried out on a fixed cycle. And an underground organization that sowed terror among the citizenry with bottomless martial power and vanishing trails.
The world had named them the Gonghyeol Group.
They had been operating quietly in the Empire's northern reaches, targeting small villages and minor cities. The reason Leon had taken an interest in them was simple.
They came up constantly in the original story.
He hadn't read as far as any direct attack on Billy, but foreshadowing that they were plotting something had surfaced again and again throughout the original narrative.
Mentioned that often, they must be a fairly large and dangerous force.
And in truth, they had already set certain things in motion from the very earliest stages of the story.
"…"
Leon glanced sideways at Aria with an odd look in his eyes.
"…Master?"
"It's nothing."
But that future was gone forever now. There was no point dwelling on what was already finished.
Fenril, who had been quietly stroking his chin, spoke up.
"Pribil… yeah, a commission request did come in from that way. But the pay was so pitiful we didn't even glance at it. And this kind of work isn't really our specialty anyway."
"They already threw a pile of money at those Owls of the Forest or whoever. Of course they're short on funds."
On top of that, the Mukwol Squad ranked among the top names in the mercenary trade — their fees were nothing to sneeze at.
Fenril let out a low hum, mouth hanging open stupidly.
"The Owls of the Forest. Bunch that had been making a name for themselves around here lately. And now the whole lot of them's gone missing…"
Leon's brow tilted slightly.
"Don't tell me you're scared."
"Hell no. I just wanted to say they were a pack of idiots. Still, we oughta be careful. They weren't so stupid that not a single one of 'em should've made it out."
Riel added her own explanation.
"The Owls of the Forest numbered roughly twenty. The fact that not a single one managed to flee is worth noting. Disposing of that many people cleanly is no simple task."
"Hmm. Fair point. I'll keep it in mind."
Leon nodded. He already knew the Gonghyeol Group was no pushover.
"Anyway. I need these people dealt with."
A group that had been operating up north had suddenly appeared in a city right next to Elprime. It was all but certain they were about to pull something against the Academy — or perhaps already were.
Leon found it a little strange. The first semester hadn't even ended yet. He hadn't expected the Gonghyeol Group to already be lurking this close.
Or—
The future has shifted again.
That possibility couldn't be dismissed either. Honestly, Leon's gut leaned more toward that explanation.
And even without the preventive reasoning, plain curiosity and the thrill of it would have been reason enough.
"Sounds good~! I've been wanting a look at them myself."
Hera sat up from the waist and burst out. Reasons didn't matter to her. Those were trivial details. All she needed was for her interest, her amusement, her attention to be caught.
"Riel, we're doing it!"
A glossy light slid across her dark crimson eyes.
"Yes. I'll make the preparations. …Fenril."
"Ah, got it."
The decision and the acceptance were sealed in an instant. When the commander said they were doing something, the vice-commander and a mere division leader had no choice but to follow.
Leon asked,
"How long will prep take?"
"Won't take long. Just grab what we need and go. Everything's stocked here already. When were you thinking of heading out?"
"Well, no need to drag this out. Let's leave first thing tomorrow morning."
"…"
Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
Three days of holiday remaining.
Leon intended to settle the matter within that window.