Little Bird
Some of the flies the shameless client had unleashed had fallen into a bottomless pit like a venus flytrap’s maw, and the rest had had their wings torn off and died.
What the snake had said was half right and half wrong.
It was true that he’d been young and full of vigor, but he wasn’t nearly as sharp as the snake had warned.
Objectively speaking, he was a pretty formidable bastard.
At his age, there probably hadn’t been many who could stand against him. That was why he’d grown so arrogant and come charging all the way here.
But even if he had been a promising talent who might one day have reached Master, for now he was still just a green pup who didn’t know how terrifying the sky could be.
…It feels strange saying that when I’m much younger than they are.
No, wait. Isn’t that exactly what my memories from my past life are for?
I couldn’t remember it precisely, but I was probably over twenty, so let’s say my mental age was higher than theirs.
My mental age was higher, and my achieved realm was higher too, so I had every right to say things like this.
Anyway, I’d completely finished the shameless client’s commission, and I’d also shut the big-sword chick’s beak.
Journey and the man were having a rather serious conversation, and the Apostles who had survived by not siding with the Empire kept sneaking glances at me.
What exactly were they so curious about, poking their heads out again and again like baby birds begging for food?
I tilted my head at the incomprehensible sight, then quickly stopped paying attention.
Hmm….
Still, what was I supposed to do with all these corpses?
Letting wild beasts or monsters tear into them was one option, but there were so many of them that the bodies would probably rot before they could all be eaten.
Thinking about the stink of decay and the risk of disease, I’d still need to dispose of them properly.
What a pain….
If I’d been a mage, I could have just burned them all at once, and every now and then I did regret choosing the sword.
It wasn’t as though I had no way to start a fire, but using it for something like this would be far too excessive, and once I considered the aftermath, it would only create more trouble.
So what choice did I have? I’d have to deal with it the hard way.
This is why swordsmen are all like this.
…Suddenly I had the distinct feeling the senile snake was laughing at me, which was deeply irritating.
With no other choice, I dragged the corpses along and dumped them into the cracks in the earth.
The flies had become flies, after all, so it didn’t take much strength.
Our land, clean and green.
As I worked hard to protect the environment and preserve nature, the Apostles watching me one by one decided to join in on this meaningful endeavor.
“Oh, look at this sword. Its stats are insane.”
“Can’t use the armor. Got any money on them?”
They did seem more interested in the rice cake than the ritual, given how diligently they were rummaging through the flies’ corpses, but still, they were helping, so I supposed that counted.
Now they were finally acting like the Liberi mercenaries I knew.
So they might be Apostles and all, but in the end, a mercenary’s instincts couldn’t be denied.
After tossing in the king-sized fly at last, I dusted off my hands.
Filling the place back in with dirt would be a pain, so I’d have to bring some oil later and pour it on top.
Since the worthwhile work was done, it was time to clock out.
“Right.”
There was still one thing left to do.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
I may hate that snake bastard, but I also acknowledge that his skill is exceptional.
No, that’s too mild. “Hate” is far too gentle a phrase, so let’s revise that to “want to tear him apart and kill him,” while still acknowledging his skill.
If his ability had been even a little worse, then when he fought Garid he’d already have stopped being a person in this world, or I would have torn him to pieces long ago.
That was why the Master tag was such a pain.
If one side made a move, the other side had to move too. Once a fight started, both sides had to be ready to die, which meant neither could act carelessly.
And if they ever did clash, leveling everything around them was practically guaranteed, so they ended up trading wary looks instead, each one watching the other as if this were mutual assured destruction.
Of course, my beloved homeland of Grasis, which had become proud right up until the point it was destroyed, was an exception.
Master or not, if we didn’t go out there and fight, there was no helping it.
So I hadn’t failed to kill the snake bastard for that reason.
I had every confidence that if we fought one-on-one, I could kill him for sure, but he knew that too, which was why he’d deliberately run away and avoided me.
Fights only count when the other person stands still long enough to face you. Trying to catch a bastard who kept running while throwing all sorts of magic and schemes in my face was impossible.
It was frustrating, but his ability to dominate a battlefield was superior, and back then I still had things to protect.
The introduction had been long, but the gist was the same as what I’d said at the start.
That the snake bastard was unusually skilled.
“W-What the hell is this?! There wasn’t anything like this before…?!”
There was no way the barrier erected by a so-called Master Mage would be broken by a few petty thieves.
I watched the Apostles pounding on the barrier and reached for my sword….
Ah, right. It was broken.
Tap.
Instead of drawing my sword, I deliberately made a sound as I stepped forward, and a few of the bastards hammering at the barrier turned their heads.
The color drained from their faces so fast they looked as though they’d seen a ghost, which was rather entertaining.
If they reacted like that at the sight of the homeowner, then as I suspected, they really weren’t innocent souls.
“…We’re screwed.”
I guessed that meant something like, “We’re doomed.”
Taking the meaning from the words that slipped out of one bastard’s mouth, I launched myself forward.
I grabbed the front man by the collar and slammed him straight into the ground.
He still didn’t understand what had happened even up to the moment his collar was seized, and only after he’d had a sticky embrace with the earth did he let out a ragged breath.
Next came a peculiar bastard charging at me with a staff in hand.
A staff wasn’t without killing power, but compared to other weapons, it was certainly less lethal.
Someone charging at me with a weapon suited more to self-defense than blood-soaked combat could only be called unusual.
This didn’t even need to be avoided.
Thud.
“A-Ah?!”
When I knocked aside the side of the staff flying straight at me with the back of my hand, the bastard’s balance collapsed instantly.
A person should be the one handling the staff, not the other way around, but every time the staff swayed limply, its owner’s body swayed with it.
So the main trick wasn’t staff fighting at all, but a dance meant to dazzle the eyes?
I watched the ridiculous spectacle of a man dancing in the middle of a fight for a moment, then kicked him in the head just as it dipped to the perfect height.
Leaving behind the sound of a watermelon bursting, I grabbed the fleeing bastard by the nape of the neck and hurled him into another one.
What did it matter, one way or the other?
The thief who’d flown from my hand met the other bastard and enjoyed a joyful reunion, twisting around each other like vines on Mt. Mansu.
The posture they’d managed to keep until then had fallen apart completely.
It took less than a minute to clean up the rest.
From the start, there was no way men who’d spent the whole fight sneaking into someone else’s house like cowards could be all that strong, so what I was doing was closer to cleaning than fighting.
Before long, even the last Apostle was wrapped in a cocoon of light and vanished.
That was the nice thing about Apostles. There was no need to worry about corpse disposal.
“Woooow….”
…So how long did these guys plan to keep following me?
I turned my head and gave the boys trailing after me like baby birds after their mother a blank stare.
Even if I were willing to be generous, I could understand Journey, but why were the big-sword chick and that dagger bastard following me too?
“They’re looking at us… They are looking at us, right?… We followed them for the mission, but damn, this is terrifying. Hey, are you okay?”
“If you challenge me one more time, should I fight you? I kind of want to fight again.”
“Who exactly am I talking to right now?”
After silently watching the two of them talk, Journey said, “If they really hated it, they would’ve done something from the moment you started following them. So it should be fine. …Probably.”
“…Why are you so relaxed about this, Journey?”
“Me? Well… we’ve eaten together a few times, so I doubt he’d kill us.”
“…Please say he did kill you.”
“Pardon?”
“Huh?”
“What?”
It didn’t feel like a conversation with much meaning behind it.
Anyway… I had been thinking of driving away the uninvited guests right then and there, but after using up a bit of strength for the first time in a while, even that started to feel like a hassle, so I left them alone.
Let’s call it repayment for the courage they’d shown.
I stood before the barrier.
Its shape wasn’t visibly outlined, but I could feel the strange flow of mana enveloping the area.
Hmm… how am I supposed to get through this?
It suddenly occurred to me that the snake bastard might have anticipated this.
Otherwise, there’d be no reason to set things up so that no one could enter without my permission—in other words, so that they could enter if I allowed it.
For a snake, he sure had a human warmth to him, thoughtfully considering the mourners who might come all this way to visit.
The more I thought about it, the more it felt like I’d been dragged around by a snake.
He smelled sly, but he really was doing a proper job protecting Garid’s grave, so I’d let that slide for now.
And yet the reason I still hadn’t gone inside was simple.
…How do I pass through this?
I tilted my head in thought.
It felt exactly like being a child who’d forgotten their key and couldn’t get into the house.
Really, getting in wasn’t hard.
If the door wouldn’t open, all you had to do was rip the door off its hinges.
Still, it wasn’t as though I was raiding someone else’s home to arrest a criminal, and I couldn’t exactly rip off my own front door just because it wouldn’t open.
If I’d gone to the trouble of installing a security door despite the filth it came with, what was the point if I tore it off the moment it was in place?
Fortunately, my worry didn’t last long.
When I extended the hand that wasn’t wearing a ring—the hand bearing the token of my oath—the barrier shuddered in response.
As the snake bastard’s crest faintly emerged on the bluish surface of the barrier, a hole large enough for a carriage to pass through opened up.
As I’d already felt, this was definitely one of the places where magic was more useful than swords.
Of course, swords were superior.
With the three little chicks following behind me, I stepped inside the barrier.
Journey and the dagger bastard had already been here many times, so they showed little interest, but the big-sword chick, who had come for the first time, kept turning his head this way and that.
I’d given them tacit permission to enter, but they weren’t invited guests, so I didn’t bother giving them a tour of the house.
Instead, I walked toward the cliff, glanced down at Garid, and then frowned.
A blue flower I had never seen before stood quietly guard before the gravestone where I had left him.
“Hmph.”
What a stupid thing to do.
I picked up the blue flower and clenched and unclenched my fist, and just like that, as though it had never been there at all, the flower vanished without a trace.
Maybe what the snake bastard had said about respecting Garid wasn’t a lie after all.
And if Garid had felt relieved after fighting the snake, then perhaps he would have been glad that the snake bastard had come to see him.
But what could I do?
The dead have no words, and thinking of those who have gone is the task of those who remain.
Before I knew it, the three Apostles had lined up behind me in a row.
With them standing there, it looked as though I were the one leading them.
If the people who had followed me back then had seen it, they might have clicked their tongues and said I couldn’t break the habit, that I was pretending to be a commander again.
If they had, then I would have made them feel the authority of the commander to their heart’s content.
It had been four years and six months since Garid had passed.
It had been one year and six months since I’d settled here.
Even if it wasn’t immediate, the thought that I’d soon be leaving this familiar place left me feeling oddly unsettled.
It was as though a massive boulder had suddenly been placed on my chest, stealing my breath.
Waving my arms around like someone drowning, I finally managed to squeeze out the name I missed.
“Garid.”
I rolled the name I’d called for almost my entire life over my tongue, then suddenly spat out the word that came to mind.
“Dad.”
If this had been back then, I would’ve been too embarrassed to ever say it, but strangely enough, it didn’t feel awkward at all.
Once you actually said it, it was so simple—so why had I kept turning away from it as if it were such a burden?
As always, regret was the sort of bastard that arrived too late and tormented me after the fact.