I Can Make Them Too? (1)
Utterly oblivious to Roy's inner thoughts, the prince kept bellowing at the top of his lungs.
"I'm asking you why the magic circle activated on its own! That thing only responds to royal blood! What the hell is that spirit of yours?!"
"Please just kill me."
Roy pressed his face flat against the floor, desperate to hide his expression.
Even if I got what I came for, that little bastard still needs a proper thrashing.
In an instant, Noah had drained every scrap of mana that filled the space.
Whether from the aftermath of that feast or not, the single tail he had always possessed had somehow become two.
The one mercy was that neither the king nor the prince could use the Gold Eyes, and so they noticed nothing.
If they had realized the mana saturating the chamber had been emptied dry, Roy might well have gone straight to the guillotine.
"Phew. I'm stuffed."
"Noah..."
"Hmm. My belly is full, so I shall withdraw and rest."
"……"
Noah licked the back of his hand like a cat grown lazy in spring sunlight, then slipped from sight with a soft shimmer.
Watching him go, Roy thought,
Enjoy it while you can, you insolent damned cat.
With most of the ambient mana gone, the magic circle that had been glowing faintly lost its light as if someone had snuffed out a lamp.
Darkness flooded in.
Roy hastily cast a Lighting spell.
"Roy."
A heavy voice rolled out of the dark.
The king.
"I will hear whatever excuse you intend to offer. Speak."
"……"
Roy would have to pour out every scrap of explanation he could invent if he meant to walk away from this alive.
Putting that damned spirit in his place would have to wait.
Chapter 26. I Can Make Them Too?
Even here, in the heart of the Steel Kingdom — Crown City itself — there was a branch of the Karl Mercenary Group.
It was, of course, the largest of its kind in the kingdom, and it also handled the deployment of every mercenary currently stationed within the realm's borders.
Which was why Padec, only recently appointed as its new branch leader, had been living through days of relentless, grinding busyness.
If I'd known it would be this bad, I should've just stayed put.
Lately that thought kept circling back to him.
Life had been better in Greenhilt territory.
Granted, until four years ago they had been drowning in a desperate shortage of manpower. But everything had changed the moment those weapons began to sell.
The monsters had thinned out at a startling pace, and even then Baron Greenhilt had honored every term of their contract without flinching.
In other words, he never used the long-term scale of the territory's arrangement with the branch as an excuse to cut back the hire.
Relations between the two sides could only improve after that, and Padec — then still the local branch leader — had enjoyed a stretch of peace unlike anything he had known before.
I still can't tell if this was a promotion or a demotion.
But here?
The work of Crown City alone was a mountain, and on top of that he was expected to audit every other regional office. As the man in charge, Padec no longer knew what a quiet day felt like.
That bastard Galbert's living the good life. I'm dying of envy. Who the hell got promoted here…
Not that everything was miserable.
As branch leader, flattering letters and gifts arrived at his desk almost daily. Tear-stained petitions from other territory branches begging for more mercenaries invariably came with bribes attached, and that was simply how the world worked.
The more expensive gifts usually came from the lords themselves.
Monsters were running wild in their lands — please show a little mercy. They would throw more gold on the table if he would just send them the skilled ones.
The petitions never stopped, and listing them all would have taken forever.
Naturally, the more dangerous and urgent the request, the heavier the purse that came with it.
Bribes?
What else was a mercenary supposed to take if not money like that?
Coin earned hunting monsters, coin earned killing men in war, coin slipped into a palm behind closed doors — it was all the same. In the mercenary world, you were not scorned for accepting it. You were scorned for pretending to be clean.
If he had kept every copper for himself the grumbling would have been fierce, but money that came in that way was shared among the mercenaries under the branch. The branch leader's cut was simply the largest, as was only right.
In the middle of all that crushing routine, those side earnings were what still let him crack a smile.
Damn it. Just as I was starting to settle in, a war…
He had been adjusting, little by little, to life in the capital when the news of war slammed into him.
Not some petty skirmish over succession. Not even a larger war between territories.
A border dispute.
Nation against nation. The scale was beyond anything ordinary imagination could hold.
For a mercenary, times like these were usually the best chance to make a killing. This time, though, there was a problem.
The Karl Mercenary Group was no longer some local pack of street thugs. It had become a continental power that cast its shadow across the entire land.
Those Isco bastards. If you were going to start something, you could at least have given us a heads-up.
Naturally, the neighboring Isco Kingdom — the one now locked in conflict with the Steel Kingdom — also housed a branch of the Karl Mercenary Group.
The men posted there were strangers he would almost never meet face-to-face, but once you had sworn before the name of the Mercenary King, you did not raise a blade against your own.
And so the contracts the group currently held with each nation had quietly omitted any clause about participation in border wars.
War… when was the last border war, anyway?
That did not mean they refused to fight altogether. Participation simply was not written into the base agreement. Pay the extra fee, and they would join.
Of course, any mercenary worth the name would negotiate with both sides and sell his sword to whoever offered more. The kingdoms might look at them like common thugs for it, but moving for gold was the iron law of their trade.
So what the hell do I do with this?
Not long ago, word had come from the Isco Kingdom branch.
Their king, they said, was prepared to guarantee an enormous sum — paid in advance, no less.
Padec was under no obligation to take part. With the outcome of the war impossible to predict, sitting still was a strategy in its own right.
But if the Steel Kingdom loses…
He and every man under him would be left with nothing overnight.
Hmm…
The letter from the Isco branch had put it like this:
If you cooperate with us on this matter, we will yield to you half of the gold we stand to receive.
That "cooperation" was not an invitation to fight beside them.
What they wanted was weapons.
They wanted him to secure large quantities of the magic-enchanted arms currently setting the world on fire and send them over. The price of the weapons themselves, the cost of transport, every additional expense — they would cover it all.
Which left Padec turning the problem over and over in his mind.
It's true those weapons are the reason I'm sitting in this chair…
But he could hardly walk up to Baron Greenhilt and openly ask him to sell arms so they could aid a neighboring kingdom currently at war with the Steel Kingdom. One wrong word and his head might leave his shoulders on the spot.
The letter had also made it clear: if the weapons could not be secured, then by all means bribe — or abduct — their maker, Geren, and bring him back.
Secure the weapons in bulk, or secure the craftsman himself… all for a mere ten thousand gold coins…
Padec shook his head.
There was nothing "mere" about it.
No one had felt the true worth of those weapons more keenly than he had.
Kidnapping a man named Geren would not even be difficult, not if he sent a few of the truly skilled. The world was full of poisons that even a king brimming with magic could do nothing about. Quietly putting one or two grown men to sleep was child's play.
So why is this kingdom's royal family so damn quiet? They should be hammering on our door to negotiate. Do they not care about winning the war?
Strangely, the king here had said nothing at all.
Padec found it deeply irritating.
He himself was a man of the brain rather than the blade, but among the mercenaries under this branch were monsters whose magic power surpassed that of some count bloodlines. If the lot of them defected to Isco, defeat would be all but certain — and still, not a word from the palace.
"Branch Leader. You've got a guest."
"Who?"
He was still grinding his teeth over the problem when a visitor arrived at the branch.
"Says he's the son of some Green-something baronial house? The territory you used to be posted at, sir."
Padec blinked at the unexpected name.
"Bring him up."
"Yes, sir!"
Roy had walked away from the royal palace with a great deal more than he had arrived with.
The very next day, he went straight to the mercenary branch.
"It's been a long time, Master Padec."
"Young Master Roy. You've grown so much I barely recognize you. Back when you were hunting that ogre you were still just a little scrap of a boy."
"Didn't we meet a few times after that as well?"
"We did. Whenever I visited the manor you were always swinging a sword. Watching you throw yourself into sword training on top of that outstanding magic talent left quite an impression. Did you come to the capital for the Knight Academy?"
"Yes. I'm attending it now."
"Then what brings you to a noisy place like this?"
Roy did not answer. He only smiled.
It was the bright, easy smile of a handsome boy — and if Padec had known what lay behind it, he would have gone pale on the spot.
"I thought we might cut a deal."