Frederica
Crunch!
"Ren!!"
"What do you think you're doing?!"
Huey and Luciella shouted toward Ren as they watched the horrific sound of a skull being crushed erupt into a spray of red blood and white brain matter.
But Ren simply ignored the two of them, lifting her leg once more—as if she fully intended to smash the woman's corpse into pieces.
"Reeen!!"
Clang!
"Ugh!? Huey, you...!!"
"Please calm down for a moment, Ren."
"Let—let go of me!!"
Huey drew his sword and blocked Ren's leg, while Luciella rushed the flustered Ren and tackled her to the ground.
"Damn it, it's not over yet!"
"What do you mean it's not over?! She's dead!"
"That's what I'm saying—she doesn't die!! That thing!!"
"What?"
"...Huh?"
It was the moment Huey and Luciella felt puzzled by how surprisingly composed Ren seemed for someone who had supposedly lost her reason.
"U-fufu..."
Accompanied by a sudden laugh, the corpse staggered to its feet.
"Aaah—how cruel. To treat me like this when we haven't seen each other in so long."
"...Run. If you don't want to die."
At Ren's tense voice, Huey and Luciella slowly turned, warily watching their backs.
"You always just do whatever you feel like and mess up other people's commissions, which is why the captain gets mad at you every single time, you know?"
Standing there was no smashed-headed corpse.
The woman rose as if the blood and brain matter soaking the ground moments earlier had been nothing but a lie.
"Honestly, what's the big deal about a few people dying?"
The woman stood well over 170 centimeters tall, pink hair cascading all the way to her waist. Her eyes—the same color as her hair—were filled with irritation and murderous intent.
"Didn't we agree not to touch civilians?"
"Hmm... I think we did. Well, more importantly..."
She fluttered a shamefully revealing purple dress that left not only her armpits and shoulders but even her face-sized breasts mostly exposed, and her navel on full display—leaving nowhere safe for the eyes to rest.
"I'd like you to understand that if you keep acting on your whims like before while you're this weakened, you could really get badly hurt."
The woman draped an elegant robe she had pulled from empty air over herself.
"If you die, I'm the one who ends up in trouble, you know? Ren."
"Shut up. It's my business, isn't it?"
"Hiiing."
"What commission? Looking at it, you probably seduced the lord and were just extorting money under the pretext of extending the job."
She locked eyes with Ren, who glared at her as she got back to her feet.
"Am I wrong? Frederica."
"Oh my, how harsh. When you put it like that, I sound like a bad person. Though you're not exactly wrong."
Frederica shrugged her shoulders as if saying it would be a waste to just throw away a rare chance to make money.
"If you have a problem with my policy... you know the rules well, don't you?"
"...Kh."
"What's wrong? I thought you'd charge at me full of spirit like just a moment ago."
After watching Ren flinch at the mention of the rules for a moment,
"Heh heh. Still, I'm relieved. If you'd really tried to fight me looking like that... I was planning to wipe this city off the map."
Frederica fastened the front of her robe and turned her back.
"I'll send someone later, so come see me at my workshop. I'll tell the lord not to worry about it."
Ren could only watch powerlessly as Frederica disappeared from view.
"...Phew, what kind of monster is that?"
"That talk about wiping out the city... it wasn't a bluff."
Huey muttered as he finally exhaled the breath he'd been holding, his face pale from the dense murderous aura that had been crushing the air until moments ago. Luciella stared in shock at the spot where Frederica had vanished.
"...I told you to run."
Hearing their muttering, Ren slumped down onto the ground as if deflated. Then, taking in the people running toward them from afar, she opened her mouth.
"Haa, so. Where should I start explaining?"
At Ren's question, Huey and Luciella briefly met each other's eyes.
"Well, of course..."
"From the beginning."
"Thank you so much... thank you...!"
"Thanks to you, my husband is alive!"
"Just thinking about what might have happened if it weren't for the young lady is terrifying."
Huey and Luciella blankly watched the people who had come running from afar, surrounding Ren and endlessly repeating their thanks.
"Ah—enough already!! I'm exhausted, so go back to whatever you were doing!!"
The endless parade of gratitude finally dispersed when Ren's patience ran out and she exploded.
"...Hm?"
Huey made a puzzled sound, as if he had spotted something among the scattering crowd.
"Did you find something?"
"No, uh, over there—a doll was walking alone..."
Huey pointed down an alley with a face as if he had seen a ghost, but when they looked, there was no doll—not even a human footprint.
"There's nothing there?"
"...Did I imagine it? I'm sure a doll was wandering around holding some kind of potion bottle."
It had looked exactly like the anti-membrane artifact Ren had pulled out not long ago. Huey was muttering dejectedly when Ren spoke up.
"Let's go somewhere quiet for now."
With a tired face and a sigh, Ren suggested they move. After returning to the inn where they were staying,
"Augh, I thought I was going to die."
Huey and Luciella both spoke at once toward Ren, who had flopped onto the bed looking exhausted.
"Now explain. What on earth happened..."
"If it's Frederica, then surely..."
Ren looked at the two of them as if they were ridiculous for starting completely different conversations at the same time, then opened her mouth.
"I'll explain one thing at a time, so just sit quietly and listen. Both of you."
"...Fine."
"...Very well."
"I'll start from after I stormed out of the inn earlier."
And so Ren's story began.
"I came outside, but nothing in particular came to mind as a place to go."
So she had been wandering around sightseeing to cool her head, she said.
"I heard the lord was passing by, so I went to take a look, thinking maybe that Frederica bastard might be there."
"...That person from earlier?"
"Yeah. The one prancing around half-naked. She's my comrade. She'd taken a commission to guard the lord, and they were strolling around all buddy-buddy, laughing and chatting."
Anyway, Ren had gone to get a look at the lord's face and succeeded in finding Frederica as planned. The moment she was about to call out to her, she said,
"The lord and Frederica exchanged a few words, and then suddenly she tried to fire magic at the fruit stall next to them."
She had felt the mana gathering in front of Frederica's suddenly outstretched hand.
"So I ran straight over and..."
Knowing Frederica's skill, she had decided to catch her off guard.
"I kicked that lord bastard right in the face."
"What?"
"...Oh."
"Frederica thought I was going to charge her, so she never even considered I'd go for the lord."
Taking advantage of Frederica's fluster, she had launched a surprise attack and the fight had begun.
"That girl doesn't die, so she just takes most attacks head-on. I was counting on that."
"Is that even possible?"
"It's absurd, but Master saw it with his own eyes just now, didn't he?"
"I'll explain that later."
Cutting off Huey and Luciella's questions in one stroke,
"Haa."
Ren let out a long sigh while still lying on the bed.
"I'd finally gotten an opening and was planning to throw her as far as possible and run for it, but..."
"...Ah."
"Oh dear."
As Ren trailed off while looking up at them, the two finally understood the situation and scratched their heads.
"Ahem. Come to think of it, from what the people running away earlier were saying, this kind of thing wasn't a one- or two-time occurrence."
"Is this Frederica person normally that violent?"
Huey and Luciella quickly changed the subject with questions.
"...Do you know the biggest difference between mercenaries and adventurers?"
In response to their questions, Ren asked one of her own.
Mercenaries and adventurers. People who handled commissions for others and received payment. What was the greatest difference between them?
"Scale?"
"Adventurers have a far more systematic structure."
"Most people think that, but..."
There was a more fundamental difference, she said, rising from her seat.
"The biggest difference between mercenaries and adventurers is this: whether they accept commissions to kill people or not."
Of course adventurers also fought people under the pretext of escort commissions, and there were times they inevitably clashed with others during a job... but they did not accept commissions whose purpose was to harm others.
"The kinds of escorts the Adventurers' Guild won't take, assassinations, and pretty much anything else that pays—mercenaries take most of it."
Of course, the degree varied depending on individual temperament, she added.
"Our mercenary company is a bit of a special case, but... well, set that aside. At the very least, our policy is not to touch civilians."
But the Frederica they had seen today had shown no intention of keeping that, she said.
"...She's not the type."
She wasn't kind by nature, but Frederica was someone who kept her promises without fail. Ren couldn't understand why she would attack civilians without hesitation, and she pressed a wing to her head.
"Anyway, that's the end of my story."
Right after Ren finished speaking,
Knock. Knock.
"I've come to escort you on Lady Frederica's orders. Please come with me."
A man's voice came through the door along with the knock, as if he had been waiting for exactly this moment.
"Well... let's talk about what happened when we meet."