The Cradle of Heroes (4)
The throwing dagger lodged in its shoulder had slowed the beast down considerably. I charged straight at the creature, channeling aura into my body for explosive speed. My target was its left side—I intended to make sure that injured left leg would never be usable again.
Grrrrraaa!
The monster twisted its entire body in a desperate attempt to dodge, howling like a terrified cat. But a four-legged beast with a ruined shoulder had no realistic chance of evading an opponent faster than itself.
Schwaaack!
In the end, the creature that could barely move had its shoulder—roughly the size of a human head—split wide open by my arming sword. Its skin was so weak that even a plain throwing dagger had pierced it; a single strike infused with sword energy completely severed the shoulder, revealing the white bone beneath.
With its foreleg in that state, the rest was easy.
I lightly sidestepped the Giant Dog’s desperate, tooth-baring struggle as it abandoned escape and tried to bite me instead, then drove my sword straight into its throat.
Shunk!
Yelp!
With almost no resistance, my blade pierced through its thick neck. Only then did the beast let out a genuinely dog-like cry and collapse.
I ignored the already-dead creature and turned around to assess the situation.
“Die!”
“Uwaaaaah! Fuck!”
The battle was tighter than I’d expected, though we were still being pushed back slightly. Everyone was shouting hoarsely as they fought the pack of wild dogs, but the sheer difference in numbers meant we were gradually accumulating injuries and being forced backward.
At this rate, someone was going to get seriously hurt. I immediately jumped into the fray.
Squelch!
“Senior!”
“Focus. Stay focused.”
I helped the female junior who had been handling three dogs alone. She flashed me a bright smile, but her hands stopped moving, so I sharply told her to concentrate before moving on to the next fight.
I think her name was Kim Gain. She was one of those quiet, plain-looking kids I didn’t remember very well from school.
Starting with helping Kim Gain, I quickly cleaned up the wild dogs. After slaughtering roughly twenty of them, the area finally grew quiet. I stopped moving and flicked the blood off my sword.
I quietly looked up at the sky. If this had been a tutorial, some kind of timer would have appeared by now. Instead, there was only the night sky.
Still… there are a lot of stars, damn it.
“Hah… You took down that Giant Dog so easily.”
“Is it that strong?”
The guide, who had climbed a tree at some point, jumped down and stared at the Giant Dog’s corpse in amazement.
“Overall, I wouldn’t call it overwhelmingly strong, but among the monsters you’d find in these parts, it’s definitely one of the dangerous ones. Most mercenaries can’t handle one alone.”
“Senior is the strongest among us Hero Candidates, so of course it’s easy for him.”
Why the hell are you the one acting proud?
I gave Kim Gain a dumbfounded look as she suddenly chimed in with random trivia after I’d been complimented. From what I remembered of school, she hadn’t been this type of person… or had she? Maybe I was misremembering.
Come to think of it, I’d probably only seen the surface-level version of kids I wasn’t close with. This might be her real personality.
And there was one more thing I’d been wrong about.
She’s bigger than I thought.
I hadn’t noticed because she always wore baggy clothes, but now that she was thrusting her chest out like this, her bust was surprisingly impressive.
I revised my evaluation of Kim Gain while ordering the others to clean up the area.
“Do you know what parts of the Giant Dog and these mutts are worth money?”
“The small Mini Dogs aren’t worth much, so you can ignore them. But the Giant Dog’s claws and fangs are quite expensive. You should collect all of them.”
“How expensive are we talking?”
When I asked for a specific price, the guide thought for a moment before answering slowly.
“Probably… around 500 Brin on average if you sell everything. Since you killed it so cleanly, you might get even more.”
“Oho, 500 Brin.”
That was enough to buy ten whole meals! I quickly ripped out every fang and claw from the corpse. It was my first time doing it, so it wasn’t easy, but I extracted them as neatly as possible and stuffed them into my bag.
Meanwhile, I glanced over at the guide, who was chatting with the others.
I thought he was useless since we kept running into bandits and monsters on the way…
I hadn’t trusted him much because things kept happening despite his bold claims. But it seemed his long career as a guide hadn’t been for nothing. His random knowledge was surprisingly helpful.
That aside.
“Can we sleep here?”
We’d roughly dragged the corpses to one side, but the entire area was soaked in blood. Sleeping here was out of the question. The smell of blood might also attract other animals or monsters, so we needed to find another spot.
“Guide.”
He had definitely told me his name when we first met. But I’d started calling him “Guide” and now the word had stuck.
“What is it, Hero Candidate Captain?”
“Is there any other decent place to rest nearby? The area’s in no condition to stay here any longer.”
“Indeed… Then let’s move. It’s a bit worrying since it’s nighttime, but with a captain as strong as you, what could possibly go wrong? Hahaha.”
I simply nodded at the guide’s flattery and told the juniors to get ready.
While they prepared, I leaned against a tree to rest a little and kept watch on our surroundings.
“Are you okay? Any injuries?”
“Just some scrapes. It’ll heal quickly once I apply the medicine I brought.”
“Doesn’t that stuff hurt like hell when you put it on…?”
“Can’t be helped. Better than having nothing.”
“It won’t leave a scar, right?”
Kim Yun-hwan and Park Hyun-jung were wasting the preparation time on pointless flirting. I wanted to chew them out but held back.
Instead, I casually asked the junior named Park Chan-young, who had already finished preparing and was standing at attention beside me.
“Are those two dating?”
“Uh… I don’t think they’re officially together yet.”
“Really?”
So it was just a fling. A fling, huh. Not bad.
If this weren’t such a shitty world.
This was a place where you could be alive today and dead tomorrow. In a world like this, taking things slow and testing the waters felt like an unbelievable luxury. The thought crossed my mind for a second, but I shook it off and pushed away from the tree.
“Let’s go. I’m tired.”
We still had a long way to go.
“Everyone, look over there! Our destination is in sight!”
The guide at the front pointed ahead. Under the setting sun, a village came into view.
After walking all day and finally seeing our goal, the tension drained out of me instantly—and the first thing that came out was a curse.
Aw, fuck.
Walking for just three days was this exhausting. How the hell did people travel longer distances? Seeing this made me understand why so many people in the Middle Ages were born, raised, and died without ever leaving their region.
Walking alone was hard enough. Add monsters, bandits, wild animals, and countless other threats, and it made perfect sense not to leave the house. The saying “outside the blanket is dangerous” wasn’t a joke.
Even in modern times it was like that. In a medieval dark fantasy world, it had to be ten times worse.
All the things we’d encountered on the way here flashed through my mind, and I let out a deep sigh.
According to the guide, aside from the first day, the journey had been relatively smooth. But even those “smooth” days had involved snakes and all kinds of wild animals while crossing mountains, so I didn’t exactly feel like it had been smooth at all.
Anyway.
After all that suffering, the village was finally right in front of us.
We all quickened our pace, practically jogging toward the village. Even though it had looked far away, it didn’t take long to reach it.
“Hmm… The place looks pretty bad.”
At first glance, the wooden fence surrounding the village seemed intact, but the gate was completely shattered and left in pieces. The houses visible beyond it were heavily damaged. The overall condition was far from good.
I’d been worried the village might already be destroyed, but fortunately that wasn’t the case. There were people standing guard at the entrance.
“Who goes there!”
The gatekeepers, who looked almost too young to be called men, leveled their spears at us as we approached and demanded our identities.
I quickly opened my bag, pulled out the token we’d received from the Cradle of Heroes, and showed it to them.
“H-Hero Candidates!”
“Please come in! We’ve been waiting for you!”
“Please wait here for a moment! I’ll go fetch the village chief right away!”
They seemed to have been waiting for us quite desperately. The moment I showed the token, they got excited and made a huge fuss before one of them ran off to bring the chief. Watching that, I realized the village was in even worse shape than I’d thought.
If they still had some strength left, they wouldn’t have reacted this extremely even if we showed up. Their joy was far too excessive.
Well… they’re only skeletons, after all.
I’d received a brief explanation before coming here. Skeletons weren’t particularly tricky monsters. They were fragile creatures that relied purely on numbers. You could smash them to pieces with a regular sword without even needing sword energy.
Of course, if there was a dark mage involved, the story would change.
But the chances that a dark mage had been caught up in the distortion phenomenon were extremely low.
I’d have to look around and figure out the exact situation, but I doubted it would be anything serious.
“Aigo! Hero Candidate sirs! You must be exhausted after such a long journey. I am Hans, the chief of this village. Please come inside quickly. I’ll take you to my house. Max, you stay here and guard the gate properly.”
“Yes! Don’t worry, Chief!”
“This way, please.”
So the young gatekeeper’s name was Max. Leaving behind Max’s energetic reply, we followed Chief Hans to his house.
As expected of the village chief’s residence, it was noticeably larger than the other houses. Even so, the village wasn’t wealthy. Once all eleven of us were inside, the house felt cramped.
“I’m sorry. Before assigning you places to rest, I’d like to give you a simple explanation of the current situation in my home first.”
“It’s fine. We didn’t come here to play around. We’re here to work.”
“Thank you for understanding. As for the situation…”
The chief must have been under a lot of stress. He poured out everything that had happened so far like he was venting to us.
The story was exactly what I’d expected. One day, skeletons suddenly appeared. They quickly sent for help. While they were waiting for us to be assigned to the request, an enormous number of skeletons attacked the village. Many people were injured or killed while trying to defend it.
But there was one thing that didn’t make sense.
“Where did the skeletons that attacked the village go?”
“They stop attacking when the sun rises and hide in the surrounding forest. I suppose skeletons can’t move properly under sunlight.”
It was understandable that the chief, who didn’t know much about skeletons, would think that way.
But I had received detailed explanations directly from the priests of the Goddess Church, who knew more about skeletons than anyone.
Skeletons were the lowest rank among undead monsters. They had no sense of self and only knew how to search for humans and attack them. For such creatures to run away because they were afraid of the sun?
It meant someone was controlling them from behind the scenes.
Though it seemed like a pathetic bastard.
Using only skeletons from the start meant he wasn’t a proper dark mage. Dark mages usually killed humans and turned them into materials as a daily routine. Would one really pull back skeletons just because he was scared of sunlight?
Either he was so pathetic that even skeletons were disposable, or he had some other scheme in mind.
Anyway, the request has gotten ambiguous.
Our request was only to exterminate the skeletons, not to kill a dark mage. Of course, the existence of a dark mage wasn’t confirmed yet.
But I was almost certain.
The question was whether the chief would believe me.
I subtly lifted my head and observed the chief’s face. He looked extremely anxious and restless. If I told him I couldn’t take the request, it seemed like he might do something drastic.
And while I was briefly wondering what to do, the sun must have set.
“They’re here! The bastards have appeared!”
The gatekeeper’s shout that the skeletons had appeared echoed throughout the village.