Chapter 59: The Worst Reunion (5)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 59: The Worst Reunion (5)
The encirclement was complete.
With practiced ease, Count Dakuus directed the adventurers, strictly instructing them to maintain the perimeter and refrain from engaging in direct combat.
“Yobeste is famous for his javelins, but that reputation comes from how he fortifies his surroundings with booby traps and snipes anyone trying to break through! This range is wider than his usual territory, so do not, under any circumstances, step further inside!”
“Heh, booby traps are nothing. Diane, what do you think?”
Even after hearing the Count’s warning, Mirei remained nonchalant.
If there was one thing she was certain of, it was that Diane’s detection skills were the best in Lukart.
“It’s difficult. There are traps laid out in plain sight, but they’re only there to bait us into a few specific movements. There’s likely only one correct path through them.”
“Mirei, there’s something else strange about this place. I don’t feel any mana coming from the traps, but our mages are having a hard time manipulating their own mana. It’s not just me; every mage gathered here is saying the same thing.”
“I see. I guess he didn’t become a war veteran for nothing. He picked a hell of a place to make a stand.”
At Diane and Resin’s remarks, Mirei decided to drop her guard.
He was a war veteran. Letting her guard down was not an option.
“Krima, there’s a high chance we’ll have to push through those traps to strike Yobeste. Stay outside the range or in a neutralized safe zone and keep us healed. If necessary, we’ll have to brute-force our way in.”
“Understood.”
Krima also remained tense.
As the one in the most awkward position within Mirei’s party, she needed to secure a significant achievement from this subjugation of Yobeste.
Though it hadn’t been mentioned lately, Krima was being pressured not just by the bank, but by the Church to explain Alto’s departure.
She couldn’t possibly tell them the truth.
While the Church encouraged romance and marriage, they would never tolerate infidelity or affairs.
Keeping a man in a party was practically a declaration that he belonged to them. Even if the relationship wasn’t legally binding, it was obvious how the Church would view Krima if the truth came out.
“Mirei.”
“What is it, Diane?”
“Once this is over, you’re going to apologize to Alto, right?”
“Ugh… please, just stop!”
Since they were in a standoff, Mirei kept her voice low, but her words were spat out with venom.
“How long are you going to keep bringing that up?”
“But we were the ones who did Alto wrong…”
“Fine, I admit we neglected him. But what about the situation he put us in by acting on his own? We’re a Hero-rank party, yet all of Lukart is looking down on us. We haven’t even been given a proper chance to explain ourselves!”
Diane quickly glanced at the other party members, but Resin and Krima didn’t seem to disagree with Mirei.
“An apology? I’ll give him as many as he wants.”
“Really?”
“On one condition: Alto has to apologize to us first for his reckless behavior. If he does that, we’ll apologize too and promise to pay more attention to him. How about that?”
“That’s… but this all happened because we—”
“He went too far! It’s like trying to kill someone as punishment for stealing! There’s no difference!”
Resin was surprised; she hadn’t realized Mirei could be so eloquent.
“If you bring this up one more time, I’m going to call for a majority vote to expel you from the party. Do you understand?”
“Are you serious?”
When Diane asked in a hollow voice, Mirei flinched for a second but didn’t let the intensity in her eyes fade.
“So just do your job.”
It was a shock.
Aside from the realization of her own faults after Alto left, this was the biggest shock Diane had ever felt.
Diane stroked her tattooed arm.
When she looked up again, a heavy resolve had settled in her eyes.
“Fine. If that’s how you feel.”
“Sigh. It’s not like I’ve stopped thinking about Alto entirely. Let’s just finish this job, get some breathing room, and then try again, okay?”
Mirei’s attempt at consolation no longer reached Diane.
When Diane fell into total silence, Mirei shook her head and turned her gaze forward.
Count Dakuus was cautiously stepping forward.
With his hands raised, he advanced slowly with narrow strides. Before he had gone far, a booming voice rang out.
“Halt! Halt right there!”
“Yobeste, it’s Dakuus!”
“This land has been claimed as the territory of Yobeste of the Bierma Yakob Tribe…”
“Can you not even recognize an old comrade-in-arms?”
“…You old fox. You’re so busy forcing your own words down people’s throats that you never learned how to listen!”
“Hahaha! That’s just what happens when you get old!”
“You were like that even before you were old.”
“Why, you little…!”
Pretending to be offended, Dakuus naturally lowered his hands and crossed his arms.
“Yobeste. I’ve heard everything that happened after the war. You must have suffered greatly.”
“…”
“What do you think? The Duchy’s treatment of war veterans is pathetic. They neglected and mocked your wounds, they demoted Levantello to the frontier, and they left Donovan to rot in seclusion with his panic attacks. How lamentable is that!”
There was a rhythm to Count Dakuus’s speech.
It was the powerful, measured cadence used by those who love to talk, designed to make people listen.
The adventurers nodded along as they listened to Dakuus.
“How could you men, who saved the world, be treated like this? The people of the Duchy chant your names, but they don’t give a damn about your lives or your pain!”
“Is the Kingdom any different? You talk as if the Kingdom and the Duchy are worlds apart, you old fox.”
It was Yobeste’s turn to retort.
“Aren’t you, the old fox himself, keeping watch over the kin of two of the Four Heroes under the Kingdom’s orders?”
“…What?”
Count Dakuus felt a sting when his two daughters, whom he had raised with love, were referred to as subjects of surveillance.
“I heard Masquerada threw away his bow and arrows to spend his days making expensive clothes and shoes just to curry favor with the Kingdom’s nobles.”
“That kid makes good money.”
“Then what about Alto? What about Alto Bertrand?”
Dakuus had tried to play it off with a sly remark, but he couldn’t find his tongue when Alto was mentioned.
He couldn’t reveal the truth yet.
Everything would begin only after he decided which side that man would fall on.
“Is there anyone more wronged than Alto Bertrand? Everyone knows his name, but no one knows what he looks like or exactly what he achieved. Only we, the veterans, know. No one cares what kind of man the Bloodhound of the Bertrand Unit was—the man who fought on every front—or what sacrifices he made in battle.”
“Don’t speak that name so carelessly. He might actually show up.”
“That is exactly what I hope for!”
A warrior covered in tribal patterns, his upper body bare, revealed himself.
Surprisingly, the whites of his eyes were wide, proportional to his glaring pupils.
“The Bloodhound! He was the one truly driven mad by his thirst for revenge against the Demons! He wasn’t even a soldier until Marquis Dakuren tamed him. He was a vengeful wraith who tore apart every Demon he laid eyes on! And why wouldn’t he be? When Vulcanus of Mad Laughter burned his village and told that young boy to piece together his parents’ butchered corpses like a puzzle! It was at that very moment, he said, that he split into two: that young boy and the Bloodhound! He always said it. That he would find and kill every last Demon!”
The reason Alto Bertrand became the Bloodhound.
It was a story even Dakuus was hearing for the first time.
“I always spoke of family, and he always spoke of avenging his. I miss those days. I truly do. I miss the dance of our war—me throwing my spear to return to my family, and him swinging his daggers to appease the souls of his. I want to go back. To those times.”
“You know full well what that implies!”
“Of course! I know exactly what I’m doing!”
Then say it with your own mouth! What are you trying to do!
Dakuus, fuming with rage, wanted to scream those words.
But if Yobeste actually spelled it out, panic would spread among the adventurers. As a commander, he had to prevent a collapse in morale.
“Yobeste, we all carry scars. I am trying to provide a sanctuary to heal those wounds.”
“A sanctuary?”
“Come to Hus, Yobeste. Lady Airune Dakuren, the only daughter of Marquis Dakuren, will soon ascend to the position of Great Lord. She has promised to look after the wounds of us veterans.”
“Hehe… Huhuhahaha! Hahahaha!!!!”
Yobeste laughed hysterically, his voice rasping like grinding metal.
“There is no sanctuary!!! From the moment those bastards—who did nothing but watch while we staked our lives in the Final War—claimed our wives and daughters as their own, we lost our sanctuary!!!”
“Yobeste! Fine, be angry! Let it all out!”
“All I have left is glory! Not honor, but glory! The glory of being a warrior on the battlefield facing the Demons! That is all I have left!”
“A man who claims glory is a warrior’s path is out here killing civilians?”
“They were punished for trespassing on my territory.”
“What on earth is in this territory that makes you act this way?”
“Are you curious? You must be, aren’t you? Since we’re all just soldiers who failed to die that day.”
Becoming jovial, Yobeste flexed his chest muscles, spread his arms wide, and shouted.
“A new evil dwells here! A new evil that was content in this natural sealing ground, but has now half-opened its eyes, longing for the one who left its side! I will desecrate this place, break the seal, and let evil overrun the world! When that happens… our glorious moments will return!”
“Yobeste, you bastard! Do you even realize what you’re saying!”
“I know exactly what I’m saying! I will unleash the Demons upon this world!”
Thud, thud, thud, thud—!
Along with Yobeste’s declaration, the ground began to shake.
Levantello, charging from a distance with his spear leveled, shouted at Dakuus in a fit of extreme agitation.
“What did I tell you, old man! I told you he was out of his mind!”
“Levantello, not now!”
“Yobesteee! Negotiations are overrr!”
Ignoring Dakuus’s attempt to stop him, Levantello’s prized steed galloped into Yobeste’s territory. The moment its hooves struck the soil—
Click.
Squelch!
“Neeeeigh!!!”
The ground collapsed, and from the sides of the pit, jagged, rusted blades and spear fragments flew out.
Then, a long blade like a guillotine swung through the center of the pit, nearly slicing the horse’s belly in half.
Before he could even mourn his horse’s horrific cry, Levantello leaped from the saddle and landed in the reed field—but he happened to land right in a swamp.
“Urgh!”
Instead of solid ground, his feet sank deep, and Levantello’s posture broke.
A javelin, aimed perfectly at that opening, came flying toward him.
Swoooooosh—!!!!
“I knew you’d be the one to come, Levantello!”
“Yobesteeee!!!!!”
If he didn’t block it perfectly, he was dead.
Should he sacrifice a limb?
Levantello was coldly calculating his options.
But then, in the swamp just a short distance in front of him, small bubbles began to rise.
Bubble.
“Hah, good grief.”
Dakuus finally sighed and gave up.
“Didn’t I tell you? If you call that name, he appears.”
Splash!!!
In front of Levantello, a tall, muscular figure covered in mud rose to his full height.
The figure swung two massive daggers, striking the javelin Yobeste had thrown and splitting it clean in half.
Clang—!
“…Who dares block Yobeste’s spear!”
“Who do you think, you brat?”
Wiping the mud from his face, the man spoke gruffly.
“Man, this guy. I told him a bit about my past because he kept talking about family, and he goes and blabs the whole thing?”
He spoke with the same crooked, battlefield slang he had used long ago.
When Yobeste saw the face beneath the mud, his body began to tremble violently before he let out a scream.
“Alto Bertrand…! The Bloodhound!!!!”
“It’s just Alto, you idiot. The only name you need to remember before you die is Alto. Those four letters.”
The Bloodhound, kicking off from the swamp as if it were solid ground, let out a cackle that turned into a roar of laughter.
“Don’t try to pick your hunter when you’re nothing but prey—!!!”
The tragic battle between former comrades had begun.
“That’s… Alto?”
Resin gasped.
“Be-Bertrand?”
Krima staggered, reeling from the shock.
“Wait… what…?”
Mirei stopped breathing, her mind going numb at the unbelievable sight.
“Alto…!”
Diane’s eyes brimmed with tears.