Chapter 128: Rest (3)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 128: Rest (3)
There’s something that people who have just started a business, or those whose businesses have found some success, all say in unison.
That raising people is incredibly difficult.
And that managing them is even harder.
I wholeheartedly agree with that sentiment.
After all, I went through hell trying to make the three basket cases I first met into proper party members.
After all that trouble, I’d finally managed to make them pull their own weight, but…
“Where the hell did you sell off your levels?!”
Ah, fu~ck, I forgot about the management part, didn’t I?
Hey, you bitch, what the hell did you do to lose your skills?!
As I trembled, unable to contain my rage, Ophelia became flustered and tried to make an excuse.
“I-I didn’t sell them off. I-It’s just that I can’t use them for a little while.”
“Like that’s something to be proud of, you bitch!”
I raised my hand, and she flinched, ducking her head.
“...”
“...”
I could feel the indescribable gazes of the Archbishop and Marietta on me.
Ah, damn it. This makes me look like the bad guy.
But on second thought, I am the bad guy.
I put Ophelia in a headlock and squeezed tight.
“Kyaaaaaaah! S-Sir Hero, it hurts!!!”
“Could it hurt more than my heart does?”
“I-I’m serious. It feels like my head is going to split open..!!”
“Good for you. At least you still have something left to split. My heart was already crushed to dust…”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry!”
“You did wrong, so you must be punished.”
“Kyaaaaaaah!!!”
Ophelia flailed around like a freshly caught fish.
It seemed she was genuinely afraid her head might split open. Don’t worry. With all my experience, do you really think I’d actually pop your head?
“It seems I’ve been too lenient with you lately. That’s why you’re regressing instead of growing. Look forward to it. I’ll make sure to bring back all those fond old memories.”
“Heek..?! I-I can’t use [Goddess’s Blessing], but I can use [All Bless]. And [Goddess’s Blessing]... not right now, but someday I’ll be able to again— Kyaaaaaaah!!!”
“Since when did our dear Saint Candidate become so chatty?”
“A-All Bless!!!”
“Hey. Don’t be embarrassing and shout out the skill name— Huh?”
Seeing a pure white radiance gather in Ophelia’s hand, I narrowed my eyes. I loosened my headlock and asked.
“What’s this? Why is your divine power that color? Wasn’t it originally golden?”
“Well…”
“Heresy! This is heresy!!”
Before Ophelia, whose eyes were darting about, could make an excuse, Vedic shot up from his seat and shouted.
“...What did you say?”
“Since ancient times, the divine power of the followers of Goddess Iries has been golden! From the very first Pope to the Saintess, there have been no exceptions! But the light Ophelia just showed was not gold, but white. This is proof that she believes in some other false god, not Goddess Iries!”
“Oh?”
“Sir Hero, why are you making such an optimistic face! This is a very serious situation!!”
“...What are you trying to say?”
“Excommunication! She must be excommunicated! We must strip her of her qualifications as a Saint Candidate and find out which false god has corrupted her!”
“And how do you plan on finding that out?”
At my question, Archbishop Vedic grinned and replied.
“Do not worry. For all our appearances, the Church has skilled torturers—”
I smashed Vedic’s head with the chair Ophelia had been sitting on.
CRASH—
The old geezer collapsed to the floor.
“Let’s stop with the crazy talk. Torture? What the fuck is that bullshit?”
“Urk… S-Sir Hero, what I meant was…”
“Hey, hey. I’m not done talking yet!”
CRACK!
I brought the chair down on the Archbishop’s back. I wondered if it was okay to do this to a withered old man, but figured it’d be fine. There were two Saint Candidates right here, after all.
“I appreciate you taking my side before, but you’ve been crossing the line ever since.”
“Crossing the line, you say…?”
“I’m asking why you’re trying to make decisions about my affairs without consulting me, Archbishop. I know the Hero is an honorary title and not an official position within the Church, but this is just wrong. It’s not the Pope, not the Emperor, but a mere archbishop acting like this. This is really not right. You get me?”
CRACK!
“Keoheuk..!”
“I trust you’ll know how to stay in your lane from now on.”
Looking down at the squirming Archbishop on the floor, I tossed the chair behind me.
“Gak.”
“Hm? Ah.”
Wondering what that sound was, I turned around to see Ophelia collapsed on the floor, having been hit by the chair.
“Didn’t see that one coming.”
I guess I’ll have to ask Marietta to heal the Archbishop. I turned my head toward her.
“Ah.”
My eyes met with Marietta, who was trying to sneak out of the room on all fours. She swallowed hard and spoke.
“I-I’ll just be going now.”
“You will? Wait just a moment.”
I rummaged through the Archbishop’s desk and found a piece of paper and a pen. I drew a simple map on the paper and handed it to Marietta. She looked at the map and tilted her head.
“What’s this?”
“It’s the inn where my companions and I are staying.”
“What? Why are you giving this to me…”
“You said you wanted to go back, didn’t you?”
“Pardon?”
“You don’t get it? Marietta, you passed. You’ve earned the right to come with us.”
“Pardon?? N-No. I’m fine. I’ll go back.”
“What did you think I said? I told you to go back, didn’t I? To our inn.”
“I-I’m really fine. Besides, Sir Cloud, your party already has Ophelia… I don’t think there’s a place for me.”
Marietta said, shaking her head back and forth.
Jeez, this girl doesn’t get it.
I slung an arm around her shoulder and explained in a friendly voice.
“Marietta. Whatever it is, two is better than one.”
“...”
“Got it?”
Her pupils trembled uncontrollably.
*
“You really are crazy, bro.”
After hearing my story, Mars was horrified and shook his head.
“I wouldn’t go so far as to call myself crazy.”
“A man who beats up an archbishop and threatens a saint candidate isn’t crazy?”
“Mars. Sometimes, a man has to do things he doesn’t want to do.”
“...”
“I’ll give you three seconds to open your eyes properly. Three. Two…”
“They’re open. They’re open!”
“Tsk.”
I was about to instill some discipline for old times’ sake. What a shame.
“Enough about me. Tell me your story. What have you been up to since then?”
What the hell were you doing to end up with those bastards?!
“Me? Well, I…”
Mars leaned back in his chair and recounted the events that had happened since he left on his journey. It was a long story with many meaningful events, but one thing, in particular, left the biggest impression on me.
“You reached the end of the dungeon?”
The dungeon where I had obtained the Giant Root Herb.
The dungeon that Mars, the protagonist of ‘The Heretic Knight’s Tale,’ had to clear to see the true ending.
Mars said he had already cleared it and received the reward, the ‘Essence of Ruin Crasio.’
“Yeah. I met the angel, too. By the way, did you know Lady Rahmiel? She asked how you were doing.”
“Rahmiel…? Ah, so that was the angel’s name. We’re not that close.”
“Really? For someone you’re not close to, the look on her face was…”
“Let’s drop it. More importantly, it looks like you’ve grown more than I thought. To think you’ve already cleared the dungeon.”
“That might be part of it, but it’s mostly thanks to Christina and my other companions. I could never have done it alone.”
Mars gave a small smile.
In contrast, I grimaced as three unpleasant faces came to mind.
“So those three did that, huh…”
Come to think of it, I wonder how skilled they are.
Did they get stronger earlier than in the game, like Mars did?
I don’t have high hopes.
They couldn’t even put up a proper fight while getting their asses kicked.
Still, I’m curious to see how much Mars has changed.
After some thought, I spoke to Mars.
“Are those three sleeping now? If not, bring them here. If they are, wake them up and bring them down.”
“What for?”
“You said you cleared the dungeon, right? Let’s see what you’ve got.”
*
“Is that all? This is why you woke us up and dragged us all the way out here?”
“...Sorry.”
At Christina’s sullen voice, Mars scratched his head and apologized.
“By the way, did you have a nightmare or something? You were covered in a cold sweat.”
“H-Huh? W-Was I?”
“Yeah. Hyou and Bomuro weren’t in their rooms either. Christina brought them back later, right? I forgot to ask, but where were you two?”
“L-Let’s just get on with the sparring! I want to get this over with and go back to rest.”
“...Really? Alright.”
Mars smiled bitterly and turned to Hyou and Bomuro.
“Sorry for calling you out so late at night.”
Hyou waved his hand dismissively.
“It’s fine, it’s fine. I wasn’t sleeping anyway. More importantly, you’re saying we can beat the shit out of that damn Hero, right?”
“If you can.”
“...You’re sure he won’t hold a grudge, right?”
Bomuro asked cautiously.
For him, who had felt the power of authority more than anyone that day, this was his biggest concern.
At his worry, Mars nodded reassuringly.
“It’s just a sparring match. If things get out of hand, I’ll step in, so don’t worry.”
“Heh… If you say so…”
His worries assuaged, Bomuro grinned. A wooden sword came flying through the air and smacked him on the head.
“What are you all whispering about? Are you going to fight or not?”
Cloud said, standing some distance away from Mars’s party.
“...That son of a bitch. I’m gonna kill him.”
Following Bomuro’s harsh words, Mars’s party began to get into formation. Mars also drew his sword with an awkward smile.
“Are you sure it’s okay for us to use real swords?”
Before coming to the training ground, Cloud had said that he would use a wooden sword, but that Mars’s party should use their usual equipment.
Knowing Cloud’s skill, Mars had accepted, but he asked again just in case.
“It makes no difference to me whether you use real swords or wooden ones.”
The expected answer came back, his voice tinged with a slight edge.
Why is he so prickly today?
While Mars was wondering, Bomuro made the first move.
Muttering something under his breath, he stretched out his hand. Black mana gathered at his fingertips, forming a bullet.
BANG!
With a sound like gunpowder exploding, the black bullet was fired.
Cloud swung his sword at the incoming bullet. However, instead of being deflected, the bullet passed right through the sword and entered his body.
He checked the area where the bullet had entered.
There was no pain, not even a wound.
While his attention was on his body, Mars and Hyou charged at him almost simultaneously.
Hyou’s spear thrust toward his waist, and Mars’s sword swung to cut down his torso. Cloud knocked the spearhead aside with the back of his hand, then leaned back to dodge the sword.
—BANG!
A second black bullet passed through Mars’s body and entered Cloud’s.
Seeing the black bullet pass through Mars, he immediately tried to leap back and create distance. But he was blocked by something hard. Looking behind him, he saw that the earth had risen to form a solid wall.
Christina’s magic.
In that brief opening, Mars and Hyou rushed in, and another black bullet entered Cloud’s body.
After blocking the two’s attacks, Cloud leaped up and landed on top of the earthen wall.
—RUMBLE!
From his position, the ground rose up from all four sides in the shape of giant palms.
“An elemental mage, huh.”
Cloud muttered as he watched the four rock palms extending toward him.
Elemental mages.
Mages who possessed outstanding talent in magic related to a single element, like fire, water, or lightning, but had abysmal talent in other elements.
Because of that, they were often raised as battle mages by their families or nations, rather than becoming ordinary mages at the Magic Tower.
That’s what Eri had told him.
Cloud leaped up to avoid the rock palms trying to crush him, and since he was in mid-air, he had to allow one more black bullet to hit him.
Seeing the black bullet hit its mark, Bomuro grinned.
Two shots left.
The black bullets Bomuro had been firing were something he had obtained from a contract with a witch in the past.
His memory of the contract was faint.
He didn’t know the witch’s name, or even her face, and he couldn’t even remember the price he had paid.
But he understood the power he had gained from the contract perfectly.
Death Sentence.
The black bullets, which Bomuro had named himself, didn’t inflict direct harm on the enemy. However, if six shots accumulated in a single entity consecutively, something terrifying would happen.
The entity would die, or fall unconscious, or lose its sense of balance, or lose its sight, and so on.
Bomuro didn’t know the conditions, but one of those terrifying things would happen at random!
I was worried there might be problems later if I used this on the Hero, but…
Mars said it was fine, so it was fine.
If anything happened to that damn Hero, he could just blame it all on Mars!
With that thought, Bomuro landed one more black bullet.
One last shot!
He took careful aim and hit his mark with the final black bullet. The moment the bullet sank into his body, Cloud’s movements twitched and stopped.
Soon, Cloud began to stagger.
But he didn’t fall.
Tsk, a dud, huh.
It couldn’t be helped. Sometimes you just get unlucky.
“Mars! Hyou! Finish him off!”
Those two were there to prepare for situations like this. Bomuro shouted triumphantly.
“No, wait—”
“Alright~!”
Unlike the hesitant Mars, Hyou charged forward with vigor and thrust his spear.
“This is going to hurt quite a bit, Sir Hero! You might not be able to meet women anymore!”
The spearhead was aimed at Cloud’s crotch. From the beginning, Hyou had found his princely looks irritating. That bastard must have a lot of women. It’d be fun to see a guy like that become a eunuch. Hyou smirked.
That smirk vanished when the spearhead aimed at his crotch was caught.
“What the…”
“Hey.”
Hyou looked up. Cloud, with black blood trickling from his mouth, was glaring at him with a vicious expression.
“Didn’t I tell you not to smile like a fucking asshole?”
“Wha..?”
“Are you going to pretend you didn’t hear me?”
Cloud shattered the spear’s shaft with his knee. With the spearhead still in his hand, he stabbed Hyou’s thigh. Before Hyou could even scream, he struck his face with the wooden sword.
CRUNCH. Hyou’s already low nose bridge collapsed.
“Keo…”
Hyou sank to his knees. Just as he was about to fall forward, Cloud kicked off the ground. He reached Bomuro before Hyou even hit the floor.
“Huh..?”
Bomuro rubbed his eyes.
He wondered if he was seeing things.
And for good reason. To his eyes, it looked as if Cloud had vanished for an instant and then reappeared.
That’s not logically possible.
He hadn’t even seen such movement from the Minotaur in the dungeon.
And no matter how much of a Hero Cloud was, there was no way he could move properly after being hit by his ‘death bullets’!
That was how much pride Bomuro had in his technique.
But no matter how many times he rubbed his eyes, the image of Cloud right in front of him did not disappear.
“Using cheap tricks, are we?”
When he finally heard his voice, Bomuro had no choice but to accept that this was reality.
“You son of a b—”
Before he could finish his sentence, an earthen wall shot up from the ground, separating Cloud and Bomuro.
Christina’s magic…!
Bomuro turned his gaze toward Christina. She nodded. He was about to grin and nod back when—
“Cheap tricks to the very end.”
Cloud’s hand pierced through the earthen wall and grabbed Bomuro’s throat.
“Kehek..!”
Cloud yanked his outstretched arm back with all his might. RUMBLE. Along with his arm, Bomuro’s body came bursting through the wall.
Unlike Cloud’s perfectly fine arm, Bomuro was a wreck. It wasn’t enough that he had collided with the hard wall; he had been dragged right through it.
“Uh… ughhh… save me…”
Cloud let go of Bomuro, who had started to babble incoherently. He turned his gaze to Christina and began to walk toward her.
“H-Heek..!”
I-It’s my turn? Not Mars?!
Terrified, she hastily tried to subdue Cloud with earthen palms.
The moment the giant earthen palms were about to crush Cloud, she saw his arm move in a blur.
Simultaneously, the massive earthen palms shattered into pieces and scattered across the floor.
“Huh?”
What was that just now?
Why did my magic shatter?
His arm was a blur… Don’t tell me it was so fast I couldn’t see it properly?
He shattered my magic with a wooden sword?
Thud, thud.
While she moved past bewilderment and into a state of daze, Cloud arrived in front of her.
“Hm?”
When Christina looked up, she saw Cloud raising his wooden sword high.
“W-Wait!”
SWOOSH! CRACK!
That was her last memory.
Leaving the unconscious Christina behind, Cloud turned his back.
“When you were staggering, I was worried something was wrong… I worried for nothing.”
“You haven’t just been picking up cheap tricks like them, have you?”
“When have you ever seen me use cheap tricks on you, bro?”
“You just did.”
“...That was as a team.”
Mars drew upon his magic power. Mana slowly began to envelop his body, subsequently changing the surrounding atmosphere.
A savage and violent aura.
It was the aura of Ruin Crasio, the legendary knight who fought the Dragon King and survived.
Mars’s hair began to turn black from the roots. When he blinked, his once-blue eyes had turned black.
“It’ll be different from now on. This is a new power I gained thanks to you, so I’ll show you what it can do.”
Mars took his stance. His posture and his presence were fundamentally different from before. He unleashed his suppressed mana and shouted.
“Here I come!”
*
“Here I come.”
“Get home safe. Make sure to use a potion.”
“I know. See you later.”
Mars said his goodbyes with a swollen face. He limped away, carrying the three unconscious people on his back.
…I got a little too excited.
Mars’s progress was better than I expected, so I got carried away like a kid.
That’s why I couldn’t hold back.
That kid, too. Being so needlessly stubborn.
When I offered him a potion, he said he had his own now, unlike before, and refused to take it.
It seemed like a matter of pride, so I just let him go, but seeing him limp made me regret not forcing him to drink it.
I sighed.
“Shedia.”
“What?”
I made a request to Shedia, who popped out of my shadow as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
“See that pink-haired woman over there? I need you to tail her for a while.”
I needed to find out if she was a pink-haired slut or just a woman with pink hair.
.
.
.
.
Several days later, I realized it once again.
At least on this continent, there’s no such thing as a good pink-haired slut.