In the End (6)
The commission I’d taken this time was a designated request routed through the Adventurers’ Guild. The client was the military; the work itself was reconnaissance support.
Snort.
If I’d known they were bringing horses, I would have brought Frederick from the start. What a waste of travel.
“That’s a fine mount.”
Still, at least they’d given me time to fetch him.
I watched the captain’s brow climb as I mentioned Frederick—she’d looked thoroughly put out before that. Even to her eyes, he must have seemed out of the ordinary. As expected of Frederick, the peerless steed.
“We move out.”
“Yes, ma’am!”
Enough of that. At the captain’s shout the soldiers answered in perfect unison. Watching dozens of scouts mount up and fall into formation was genuinely impressive. Even I, a temporary addition, felt my heart pick up a little.
Not that I had any desire to enlist.
Clop-clop-clop!
I urged Frederick after them as they started moving all at once. He had been sulking about not being allowed to run free, but he fell in with the group readily enough. The bouncing rhythm of a collected trot was pleasantly brisk.
“Clear the people out of the way!”
“To either side—make room!”
At that pace we crossed the city and reached the walls, where the gate ahead had already been cleared. They’d opened the road so the horses could pass through.
“Pick up the pace!”
Thanks to that, we could accelerate the moment we left the gate. Thunder of hooves—thirty soldiers and one adventurer tore down the packed earth road.
“Right wheel!”
But the well-kept highway lasted only a short while. In keeping with the purpose of a reconnaissance, we peeled off to one side.
From the briefing I’d been given, our destination was probably the beach.
Crash of surf!
I glanced at the shoreline of gravel and stone and found myself impressed. Most of the coasts I’d seen in the west had been sand; around Bemyurhen everything was pebble beach. Farther out it even looked like mudflats.
“Spread out! We’re entering the tidal flats!”
Ah—not just looked like mudflats. They really were. Could horses even go into mudflats? Wouldn’t they sink?
I swallowed the question and the surprise behind it and followed the soldiers. If they were going, it must be possible. That was my reasoning.
Splash, splash.
And sure enough, the horses raced across the wet ground without sinking, throwing up water. The soil underfoot wasn’t the sticky ooze I associated with mudflats so much as sand submerged under a thin sheet of water. That must have been what made it work.
Flutter-flutter-flutter.
Birds that had been on the marsh rose in a cloud, fleeing the herd of horses.
“Stay sharp! If you spot mermen or Seiren of any kind, signal at once!”
Was that all there was to it, then—just run and keep an eye on the surroundings?
The vice-captain had explained that we were to signal anything unusual, but I still needed to know what counted as “unusual.”
The more I thought about it, the more I wondered why they’d hired me at all. Matching their pace, I scanned the area out of the corner of my eye.
Suddenly, far out on the horizon, I caught a faint movement.
Waves? It looked a little too unnatural for that… more like something thrashing, water leaping and slapping—
“Three o’clock right! Water thrashing!”
The moment I tried to get a clearer look, someone shouted. Three o’clock right was almost exactly where I’d spotted it.
“All halt—collected walk!”
Oh… so even a little thrashing was enough to call out.
I decided I’d just speak up next time and swung my horse’s head around.
“One legless merman! Straggler, by the look of it!”
“You’re certain it’s only one?!”
“Certain, ma’am!”
Soon enough, something mermaid-like became visible among the shallows. It had spotted us too and was just dragging itself out of a water channel toward open sea.
It had probably missed the ebb and gotten stranded—and being a legless type, it couldn’t even crawl free of the hollow it was trapped in. I’d only learned after coming here that mermen split into legged and legless variants. “Straggler” fit it perfectly.
“Adventurer—show us what you can do! Kill it! Everyone else, slow down!”
But the merman was pressed so flat I couldn’t make out its shape at all…
“Vice-captain, assist!”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Ah—I jumped. I hadn’t expected to be called on.
“Don’t slow—advance to the merman’s position! At a suitable range, throw the harpoon you were issued and pin it!”
Unlike the strict captain, the vice-captain was easygoing in a way that reminded me of Dev, and he called the instructions over to me. From the briefing earlier I already knew he was a fairly kind man.
“As I said before, you have to finish it with the long spear. And watch your approach if you don’t want a horse with a severed fetlock!”
He wasn’t especially fond of me any more than the captain was, but his nature was thick-skinned enough that he came off as friendly. I was grateful for the help in more ways than one.
“So—are you confident? Want me to handle the confirmation kill?”
“I just have to kill it, right.”
“Yes. They’re not the sort you can capture and interrogate.”
Meaning there was no point in taking it alive. Then why bother riding all the way over? I could just kill it from here.
Shing!
Instead of the issued harpoon, I drew my longsword and launched a blade of sword aura.
I’d debated between a mana lance and sword aura, and settled on the latter for one simple reason.
The captain wasn’t well-disposed toward me. A mana lance was hard to see—if I killed it that way she might miss it and grow suspicious.
“Oh….”
“…What?”
Sword aura, on the other hand, was dark but large enough to be obvious.
“Halt—halt!”
Whinny!
At least the gambit had worked on the vice-captain. He reined in hard, face startled. Splash-splash. I gave Frederick the same signal.
“S-sword aura… can fly that far…?”
The vice-captain blinked, looking faintly queasy, then scratched his head and glanced around. Shall I check? His gaze found the captain.
“…Check it for now.”
“Well, if something’s still alive with its body cut in half, it isn’t a merman—but understood.”
He cocked his head left and right, then walked his horse forward slowly.
“If you want to see a merman, come along. If you’ve already seen one, no need.”
Ah. Then I wanted to see.
I followed him at a bouncing trot. Before we set out I’d checked illustrations of mermen—and I’d seen them in the game—but never in the flesh.
“…Crazy. It dies that easily?”
And the merman we confirmed was, quite literally, shaped like a mermaid.
Though unlike the mermaids of ordinary media, it was uncomfortably close to a deep-sea creature—the kind that, even in the original Legend of Heroes, had people going, “Whoa, Cthulhu kin!”
Poke, poke.
I watched the vice-captain prod the merman with his long spear, then shifted my attention to the distance he kept from it.
No wonder they’d issued three-meter spears—they could be uncoupled into two 1.5-meter halves for riding. That much standoff was apparently necessary.
“Confirmed dead… let’s head back. Not bad, adventurer.”
“Just leave it?”
“We don’t have the capacity to recover it.”
Fair enough…
I accepted that and rejoined the group. When I looked at the captain again, her expression had eased somewhat.
“So the recommendation wasn’t a waste after all.”
She must have rather liked my sword aura.
“We move out again! And adventurer—from now on I won’t wait for you. Once you’ve finished, catch up on your own!”
The treatment itself didn’t improve overnight. That seemed to be her nature, so I didn’t feel particularly wronged.
The reconnaissance—and the merman cleanup—resumed.
“We make camp here!”
The reconnaissance would continue through tomorrow. In other words, we were spending the night under the open sky.
“Squad Three, with me—local patrol. Squads Four and Five, tend the horses. Squad Six takes watch.”
“Yes, ma’am!”
“Vice-captain, do what needs doing while I’m gone.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Meals were another matter. Lunch had been bread on the go, but dinner couldn’t be the same.
“You heard her! Squads Four and Five, get the horses settled. Squad Six, take positions at a proper distance and start the perimeter watch. Squads One and Two—meals and camp setup!”
So the squads of six—one of them seven, thanks to me—each set to their assigned work.
Somehow Squad One, which I belonged to, had drawn meal prep and cooking. Squad Two had camp setup.
“Uh, adventurer.”
The vice-captain, who had volunteered for fire-starting—both captain and vice-captain were in Squad One—dragged me into it. He probably just wanted to talk.
“Are you… by any chance a former knight?”
But I was in no state to socialize…
I hadn’t needed to start a fire myself more than a handful of times, and I was still clumsy at it.
I envied Squad Two, who were picking stones and digging a ditch to draw water from a nearby stream, and worked the flint diligently.
Luckily, the fire caught on the third try.
“Is that information you need for the reconnaissance.”
“Not exactly….”
“Then I won’t answer.”
Perhaps I’d cut him off a little too sharply out of a general sour mood. The vice-captain looked faintly awkward.
“Fine. Let’s hang the pot, then.”
Cooking required a pot on the fire. I glanced at the other soldiers prepping ingredients, then helped the vice-captain.
Of course, I hadn’t done it more than a few times either, so before long he took over in exasperation. Watching me must have been too painful.
“Hey, are you sure you’re an adventurer?”
“…….”
Sorry an adventurer can’t do this sort of thing…
I was out of things to say.
“…Can you cook at all?”
“…I know how.”
Same problem on that front.
It wasn’t that I was catastrophically bad—I wasn’t manga-character, alchemist-level hopeless—but… well. I undercooked things, or burned them, or both.
“…….”
“…….”
“…Well. That happens. There are things in this world you just can’t manage no matter how hard you try.”
Thank you for putting it that way…
I accepted the vice-captain’s consideration with a complicated expression. For everyone else’s sake, it was the right call.
Sure, it was a bit of a character break, but not an extreme one—and better than making them eat something terrible…. It wasn’t as if I was with my party….
“Help with the tents over there instead. I can handle the cooking alone. When you’re done, go assist Squad Two.”
That much I could do.
I helped the soldier who had been left pitching tents alone because our squad included the captain. It was a one-person tent for her exclusive use, so it didn’t take much strength.
Squad Two’s ditch-digging was the same. The stream was a fair distance off, but there was an old prepared channel, and with seven grown men on it the work went quickly.
“Meal status?”
“Ready, ma’am.”
Before long the captain returned from checking the camp’s surroundings for threats with a few soldiers.
“Squads One through Three eat first. The rest stand watch.”
Meals were staggered against the chance of an emergency.
Those in Squads One, Two, and Three hurried to gather around the food.
“Where are you from?”
Right as I was being handed a portion, the captain asked me. It felt rather abrupt.
“Which knight academy did you graduate from.”
Ah. That was what she meant. I hadn’t expected her to ask as well.
“Munmunt? Chechebator? Harson? Hadenelu? Osla? Or Zaidard in the south?”
I closed my eyes slowly and opened them again. Names I’d seen among the world’s knight academies were dropping out one after another.
“Do I have a reason I must say.”
“If you don’t want to, fine. It was personal curiosity.”
Fortunately the captain didn’t press for an answer. Her cut-and-dried nature was useful for once.
“Anyone finished, wash your dishes so the next squad can eat. Always move in pairs or more.”
Dietrich, captain of the reconnaissance unit, noticed the adventurer’s empty bowl and offered the instruction in a casual tone.
They’d been briefed in the city on how a reconnaissance ran, but there was no way every petty detail had been covered.
“If you’re done, this way.”
As expected, only after that prompt—and after a soldier took the initiative to step up—did the adventurer start moving. The fact that he’d read the situation and acted, unlike the moment he’d first joined them, rather pleased her.
So the lord’s personal recommendation hadn’t been empty after all.
“Captain.”
If anything, he might already be better than the vice-captain. She shot a look at the man, who talked far too much.
“Ah, don’t be so stiff.”
But the vice-captain had joined the unit before her, and he was someone she was grateful to—he had helped her often when she wasn’t good with words.
“What the adventurer did earlier—could you do that, Captain?”
“…No.”
Instead of pressing him further, she answered frankly.
“Then what about the people from that academy of yours—could they?”
“No. Not that I know of.”
She didn’t care that the answer might diminish her standing.
Like the vice-captain, the soldiers here had been with her for twenty years. An answer like that wouldn’t break her authority.
“It wouldn’t be much different elsewhere.”
Besides, what the adventurer had done earlier wasn’t something that wounded her pride just because she couldn’t do it.
Anyone who could do that was the strange one.
“If you’ve got enough mana to shape it and then fire it, you’d become a mage, not a knight.”
“Is that how it is?”
“Hmm… maybe he’s just an eccentric who wanted to be a knight?”
“That’s hard too. As I was taught, the more mana you have, the less your body does what you tell it.”
Daily life was fine—but only up to a point. Mana users with enough power to become mages were mostly clumsy—by a working knight’s standards, that is. To an ordinary person they were average.
Not a matter of reflexes or talent, but of a body that simply wouldn’t move as its owner intended.
“I’ve heard of people who nearly catch up through bone-grinding effort… but even they didn’t reach that level. That adventurer is probably a special case.”
Saying so, she thought of her teacher, who had passed a few years ago.
He and his child had been exactly that type—people who overcame mana’s interference through sheer effort. The fact that she would never hear from them again cast a brief shadow over her.
“…Then why is he working as an adventurer?”
But only for a moment. The vice-captain’s question snapped her back.
“That’s his choice. Respect it.”
“Well, yes, but… it’s a waste. Our city only has ten knights.”
Ordinarily even ten was a lot. And given the nature of the fighting around their city—killing mermen required more harpoon work than refined swordsmanship—ten knights was already a heavy investment.
She swallowed the urge to say so. Even she, who tended to admit what needed admitting, didn’t care to cut down her own usefulness without cause.
“Right, right. Even at the checkpoint, the way he just walked through the curse like it was nothing—he’d be better off doing something other than adventuring.”
“……? Ah—the one who saved Margarita…?”
“Yeah. Same guy, I’m pretty sure. He also helped catch a demon worshiper a few days back.”
“Then it’s a real waste. Adventurers don’t hunt demons much. Letting that talent rot like that.”
“Depends on the adventurer. And I looked into him—apparently he’s got a name for demon hunting…?”
“Huh, really?”
“Vice-captain’s weirdly out of the loop on this kind of news…. That adventurer’s epithet is Demon Knight. Killer of demons and criminals.”
She left the soldiers alone for a while as they started chattering once the vice-captain opened the floodgates.
It didn’t suit her temperament, but she had learned that this was how a heavy topic drifted past on its own.
“But why ‘Demon Knight’? Because he kills a lot of demons? What if people think he’s a knight who’s a demon?”
“There’s probably some of that too…? I heard they stuck it on him because he’s merciless and cold, and he fights like a literal fiend…. Also that he’s strong enough to not even seem human.”
“Even so. Comparing a person to a demon. And he doesn’t look that pitiless to me?”
“Who knows—maybe he really is a dem—”
But once idle talk crossed into insulting someone, she could no longer let it stand.
“Refrain from rude speculation. Knowing how vile and filthy a demon is, you dare use that for a comparison.”
“…Sorry, ma’am.”
“Don’t be swayed by rumor—look at the essence. Rumor is a clue, not a finished puzzle with every piece in place.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Living with your ears completely shut to rumor and remaining ignorant of the world wasn’t good either. But leaving them open wide enough to be ruled by it wasn’t good either.
“And he is a companion of the Hero.”
She told the soldiers that, then dropped the final clue that would end their doubts.
It was also why she had swallowed her resistance and agreed to take the adventurer on the reconnaissance.
“What?”
The lord had judged that merman activity was growing suspicious, and in fact the previous recon unit had lost one soldier dead and another with a leg severed.
In that situation, adding a stronger fighter to the recon unit was in no way foolish. It had stung her pride a little, feeling as if it meant she alone wasn’t enough—but after witnessing the adventurer’s power, she didn’t feel that way anymore.
“So spare the idle talk.”
“Whoa….”
“The Hero was in our city?”
“I said spare it.”
Maybe she shouldn’t have mentioned it. The lord had said they would gradually make the Hero’s visit public, given how likely they were to fight together, so she had given them a head start—
“But if it’s the Hero, didn’t they say he was put up to it by a demon and killed Lady Biryuho….”
“…….”
“Yes, ma’am. Of course that can’t be true.”
She swallowed the sigh that rose as the soldiers murmured among themselves.
Fssss—crack!
That was the moment a signal flare, issued to everyone against just such a contingency, lit the night.
“Captain!”
At the same time the people who had gone to wash dishes came rushing back in a group.
“Mermen are coming!”
Something had gone wrong.