32. The Wolf from the West (7)
32. The Wolf from the West (7)
- 1 -
- Jjaek-jjaek.
After Libertas left the dungeon, the dungeon sank into a silence even deeper than the peace it had known before.
Occasionally, adventurers still came, but without active 'advertising,' the ones who found it were drifters and wanderers—the kind that Mire and the remaining forces could handle without trouble.
Thus, the 'unusual event' that someone—or some people—wanted was certain never to happen.
"Goddamn it..."
For Maria, this was unbearably frustrating.
She had been forced to accept the contract because of Daniel, who took on the binding for his god's sake, but, fatefully, that did not lead her to develop any favorable feelings toward Libertas.
From the beginning, the conditions Libertas had placed upon her were only two.
['Live your life striving to live your best,' and 'do nothing that interferes with the dungeon's affairs.' As long as you keep those two, I won't care what else you do.]
In other words, if trouble broke out in the dungeon and she fled outside for her own survival, Libertas would not object, and in some cases might even permit an escape.
'As long as I don't interfere, or if my feelings for Daniel—or his for me—fade into nothing... I doubt it. How could I ever be certain of that monster's thoughts.'
Fatefully, however, an escape during ordinary times was not permitted.
As long as her promise with Daniel stood, any escape would force the dungeon to send personnel outside to retrieve her.
Because of this, she was now in a situation where she could do nothing. Not that she was truly doing nothing, however.
The first thing was the daily discipline she performed to keep her body from rusting, and then...
"What the hell am I even doing..."
Cleaning the dungeon.
Libertas had assigned her this task. She hadn't intended to make Maria into an idler who did nothing at all.
'Why am I wearing these clothes, why am I doing this kind of work...'
Wearing a maid outfit that had been procured from god-knows-where, she found herself doing work she had practically never done in her entire life.
Of course, the places inside the dungeon that required cleaning weren't the trap rooms or corridors the adventurers mainly visited, but rather the rooms where the summoned creatures usually waited or Libertas's living quarters.
Even so, she couldn't touch the dungeon lord's private spaces—the core room or the material warehouse—on the grounds of a lack of trust, so in reality the space Maria was responsible for was nothing more than the summoned creatures' rooms...
"It's just too damn big...!"
Even so, for one person to manage alone, it was a sufficiently vast space.
This was because the dungeon provided private rooms to summoned creatures the moment they displayed intelligence, or even a hint of it.
Even if they couldn't get singles, they were given four-person rooms at minimum, and two-person rooms at best.
"What meaning does a room have for a skeleton, anyway? And why does this place get dirty every single day?"
Currently, the number of entities in this dungeon that had received rooms in this manner reached a total of around thirty.
Moreover, most of the skeletons had been thieves in their past lives, and in many cases, even after gaining intelligence, they had no concept of tidiness or organization—so no matter how much she cleaned every day, somehow filth kept appearing.
It was indeed a tough workload for one person to manage daily.
Not that those who had assigned the task realized it.
Now that Libertas was away, the area requiring cleaning had admittedly shrunk a little, but for Maria, who invested all her spare time in personal discipline, it was still a waste of precious time.
Yet she couldn't choose the option of simply abandoning this work and concentrating solely on her training.
It was because of the proposal Libertas had made to her.
[I will give martial compensation to Daniel proportionate to what you do. You must not forget that the only way for him to grow stronger now depends entirely on me and the dungeon. Maria.]
Words she had impressed upon her during a private audience, lifting her chin as she knelt.
Maria was not unaware that Daniel, who would be active outside for the sake of Libertas's dungeon, could fall into danger at any moment, and as a mercenary, she knew all too well that strength was directly linked to survival.
Thus, she absolutely had to carry out the work entrusted to her by that woman.
Even knowing the other party's intentions all too well, she had to do her best, perfectly.
'She obviously intends to keep me from thinking of anything else.'
Maria's guess was not wrong. In truth, Libertas's intention in making her labor was exactly that.
Sometimes, a suitable amount of labor was a way to weaken the intensity of emotion.
Hatred and resentment were like cancer cells that could grow infinitely given the right fuel. Usually, labor provided an immune response to kill those cancer cells.
'Something like this will never break me...'
Of course, only to a certain degree.
Maria's hatred was not so small that a workload like this could kill it.
The only times Maria, who focused on the task before her every day, could recall her grudge were when she woke up to wash in the morning, before she fell asleep, and during the brief self-discipline time she forcibly carved out each day.
Yet, even that was enough.
'Absolutely.'
Her hatred grew with time. Slowly, so as not to destroy her.
- Dalkak.
"It's fine. You can't do anything right now anyway."
And what Libertas wanted, in truth, was exactly that.
- Tak.
"At this moment, the only thing driving her to live, apart from Daniel, is hatred. Even if that hatred eventually destroys her heart..."
What supported Maria's life now was Daniel's will and emotions, and the hatred and resentment born from her younger sibling's death.
The emotions of another and the negative emotions she herself held.
"I made a promise, so I have to properly adjust things to keep her from breaking, don't I?"
"A promise is important..."
"Indeed. Xue."
These were utterly insufficient to support a person, but having both was far more stable than breaking one of them.
Even if, unfortunately, her feelings for Daniel cooled, as the saying goes—'out of sight, out of mind'—that hatred would keep Maria breathing until she found another support.
Of course, when that time came, Libertas would also have to reconsider Maria's usefulness.
- Dalkak.
"As you say, she will try to stab me someday. ...Then shouldn't I face her properly at least once?"
- Tak!
"When that happens... I won't leave it alone..."
Evangeline and Lin Xue, gritting their teeth and expressing their fury.
Watching the two, Libertas wore a smile that, at a glance, seemed harmless. A face that, with her delicate features, appeared to hold no danger at all.
"Obviously, I'm not saying I'll just let her strike me down, or that I'll die willingly. Evangeline. Xue. There's no way I would do that with you two here."
Just as she said, she was not someone who would ever make a choice that lost her precious ones and lost everything else. Having already forcibly cast away 'everything' once with her own hands.
But precisely because she was that kind of person, she keenly felt a sense of responsibility as a sapient being who had stolen someone else's 'everything.'
"That's something like courtesy. No one stakes their life on courtesy. Don't worry."
Thus, Libertas looked forward to Maria properly standing up on her own two feet.
Whether the result was Maria completely submitting to her, or simply walking a new life.
'People steeped in resentment are easy to control. Though to a far lesser degree... just like my 'former' mother.'
Of course, every situation had to unfold under her control.
Because she had absolutely no intention of allowing any immeasurable threat to arise the moment things slipped out of control.
'Whatever it is, continuous experiences of feeling positive emotions are good for diluting unconditional hatred. ...Just as it was for me. How long will you be able to maintain that feeling toward me, I wonder.'
The hatred of loss can be covered by a sense of achievement for what one currently holds in hand.
What was currently shaving down Maria's 'maximum' hatred was the small sense of accomplishment from helping Daniel. And Libertas planned to gradually increase the tasks Maria could perform, in just such a manner.
However, what Libertas could not know was that, as Maria gradually learned more about her, she was beginning to define her as 'something' different from the known monsters.
'Do all other dungeon lords do this? Giving rooms to their summoned creatures? No way. Not those monsters.'
What kind of situation that would bring about, no one knew.
Not even Maria herself.
- 2 -
Three days were enough to leave the dungeon and reach the destination: the camp of the Copherin subjugation force.
Below the mountain where the dungeon was located, an army that had departed from Copherin had already formed an encampment, and the subjugation force inside it was in quite a hectic state.
"Hmph... low-grade rabble."
"Pardon me, but where might the camp I belong to be...?"
"You mercenaries, stop boozing there and return to your assigned tents! We need to organize the units!"
To be more precise, it betrayed every sign of a hastily cobbled-together force.
Soldiers with soldiers, adventurers with adventurers, mercenaries with mercenaries.
An unintegrated army was spread out before my eyes.
'Even the army's soldiers aren't unified at all.'
Even the knights and soldiers who seemed certain to be regular army forces were each gathered in their own groups, hoisting banners bearing the symbols of their respective territories; it was a wonder how this army had managed to assemble at all.
Though I had guessed, of course, that the armies of this continent and era would inevitably look like this.
'It can't be helped, since in this era even the regular army is just the king's private soldiers.'
There were many dungeons in this world, and there still are. You could never be sure where a new one might emerge.
So the armies of all lords and kings were inevitably private soldiers, not forces belonging to the state.
'Because self-defense is essential to protect your territory.'
Even the members of the military were far more often those from adventurer or mercenary backgrounds, rather than people trained as professional career soldiers or conscripts—an army far more reliant on individual capability than those of the Middle Ages...
In other words, an army with practically nothing unified but its standard equipment and insignia.
In the end, a nation in this world was merely a federation of lords aligned in the same direction; a king was merely the representative of lords; and an army was nothing more than a federation of private soldiers.
Perhaps that was why the value of loyalty, as demonstrated by knights and retainers, was held up as an even greater virtue—but that alone couldn't stitch these fragmented armies together into one.
"Where are you arriving from... Ah, have you come from Solemio?"
As I observed the army and pondered the military system of this era, after quite some time a man finally approached from the central tent.
Though he had a muscular, solid physique, the bearing of a knight, and a sword at his waist, he also held documents and a pen in his hands—a man who should have looked mismatched but instead appeared oddly natural in it.
He also looked intensely exhausted.
"Are you the administrator?"
"Yes, I am. I am called Sir Elias. Young lady."
"But your armor..."
"Ah, I am a knight and the administrator. We're short-handed for administrative personnel."
I thought that might be the case.
It was already unusual to dispatch an army like this; there was no way they had the capacity to send additional administrators to a hastily assembled force.
Perhaps because of that, when Talhan handed over the documents he carried, a light shone in the knight's eyes.
It was the paperwork I had organized regarding the supply materials.
"This... it's incredibly well organized. Might this be the young lady's work?"
"No. My mistress was the one..."
"Ah, so she's not a merchant guild leader after all."
"No, I am her escort."
"Indeed. I wondered why you were dressed as a warrior."
"Did you have business with me?"
The attire of an assassin was, at a glance, not so different from that of a simple warrior, so his question was quite natural.
When I removed my hood at that moment and revealed my face, the administrative knight's gaze shifted from Talhan to me.
"Then, this lady is...?"
"Yes. This is the lady I serve, Miss Angelita."
"An incredibly... beautiful lady. I am honored to meet you. Miss."
"Pleased to meet you."
The knight scratched his cheek with his fingertip and looked awkward for a moment. Soon, with a resolved look, he took a step toward me and spoke.
"Forgive the rudeness upon our first meeting, but may I make a proposal? Or rather, please regard this as a request for help."
"Very well. I shall hear it at least."
When I nodded favorably, the knight, whose expression brightened even more, finally delivered his proposal to me.
"I would like you to help with the administrative duties of the Copherin army. As you can see, we are currently extremely busy with processing. Ah, of course, you would have to be controlled to ensure you cannot access any confidential matters..."
"Hmm... I don't mind, as long as the compensation is appropriate."
"Truly? Thank you very much."
When I gave my answer after pretending to think it over briefly, the knight bowed his head with a face that had brightened radiantly. When I also bowed in return, the knight hurriedly took his leave, saying he would fetch a contract.
'Right according to plan.'
And just like that, I became affiliated with the subjugation army's supply unit.
Now there were two paths before my eyes. Paths I simply had to choose between depending on the situation.
Whichever one, it wouldn't be too difficult.