Chapter 28
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 28
Rickert, Ice, and Palen headed south, following the senior adventurers.
While Beringen was a border region to the northeast, Torvail lay on the eastern frontier, meaning its roads were not particularly well-maintained. To the east, a majestic mountain range ran north to south across the continent, its peaks towering high as if looking down upon the earth.
A wind originating from those high peaks, where perpetual snow lay, blew toward Rickert's group. It was incredibly refreshing—so cool that one might wonder if summer would ever arrive.
"By the way, which one of you is Ricky?" asked one of the four senior adventurers walking ahead. He was a man with a prominent, hawkish nose.
"That's me," Rickert said, raising a hand from beneath the hood of his red cloak.
"Huh… You're totally different from what I expected. When I heard you killed that Jackal bastard, I figured you'd be some big, arrogant guy."
"You must be pretty handy with a blade, huh?"
"I suppose."
"No, I mean, go easy on us, alright? We're fucking weak. Even if we did go to the same academy."
Although the concept of seniors and juniors existed, the hierarchy between them wasn't particularly strict. Besides, in this line of work, there was a common saying: The one who fights better is the senior.
Rickert merely offered a faint smile as he listened to the veteran adventurer play humble. He could sense that these men were actually quite strong.
"Anyway, it's a relief. I was worried you'd be a handful. We wouldn't be able to manage someone who killed the Jackal if they were out of control."
"By the way, how old are you?"
"Eleven."
At the word "eleven," the four adventurers whipped around, their eyes wide with shock.
Though Rickert looked young, his physical development was somewhat advanced for his age, so they had never imagined he would be a mere eleven years old.
"...Is that even possible?"
"What is?"
"No, I mean… what the hell was I doing at eleven?"
"You were fucking around in the chicken coop."
"That was before I even got into the coop. Oh, right, I was getting the shit beaten out of me by my dad. Then beaten by my brother, and then beaten again when I went out into the neighborhood."
"By the way, that kid over there is seriously handsome. What's your name?"
"Ice."
Perhaps because they were strangers, Ice's reply was frosty. The adventurers, quick to read the room, immediately realized, Ah, we shouldn't talk to this one. He was the real handful.
But they didn't take offense, smoothly changing the subject instead.
"If you're eleven, Ricky, let's see… by the time you reach adulthood at fifteen, you might just become one of the Nine Swords of the Empire."
"Come on, no way."
"You took the Jackal's head at eleven, didn't you?"
"…Is that so?"
"What is that, anyway?" Rickert chimed in, curious.
"If you're going to be an adventurer, you need to know the basics. The Nine Swords of the Empire refers to the nine best swordsmen in the empire. It's not an official title, but that's what people call them. The four Emperor's Champions, Steiner—the leader of the Ehrenberg Quintet—'Nameless' X, 'Steel-Arm' Randel… let's see, how many is that… one, two…"
"Anyway, two of them live in the west, so you don't need to know. You'll probably never go there in your life."
"Ah, shit, who were they again…"
"Are those people Swordmasters?" Palen asked, his curiosity piqued, even though Rickert himself couldn't care less.
"It's just a title. Some of the nine don't even use swords. The Emperor's Champions are definitely Swordmasters, but two of them are so old they have one foot in the grave. As for the rest, we don't know. We've never seen them. The areas where the Nine Swords operate aren't places for ordinary adventurers to loiter. It's their domain."
Domain. The word made them sound like wild beasts. Of course, the human world was not much different from the wild in many ways.
In the wild, any potential competitor for survival was simply eliminated. Just as a lion kills hyenas or other predators, if an adventurer loitered in their territory, things would likely end in more than just a stern warning.
Perhaps the core of any justification for fighting was simply the elimination of competitors—whether in power struggles, wars, or minor street brawls.
"Anyway, that's how it is. Hey, Ricky, if you're born a man, shouldn't you aim for the top at least once? Don't you have that kind of ambition? 'Ricky the Golden Broccoli, one of the Nine Swords of the Empire!'"
Rickert let out a dry chuckle. To him, such titles were nothing but empty vanity.
Honestly, having been called all sorts of things in his past life, he felt little excitement. The Killer of Killers, the Demon of Demons, the Steel Reaper…
Come to think of it, those were all nicknames meant to strike terror into others, whether they were barbarians or imperials. In contrast, the Nine Swords of the Empire was a title of envy and admiration. Perhaps that made it slightly better.
"Well, if we make it the Ten Swords of the Empire, the number would round out nicely."
"Ooh!"
"As expected of the kid who killed the Jackal. His mindset is on another level."
"Holy shit. Are we traveling with the future tenth sword of the empire? If you're that good, you'd easily become a Guild Master, right? Hook me up with a position later, will ya?"
"No way, I'm the one who brought up the Nine Swords, so I get first dibs."
"Finders keepers, mate."
"This bastard is always so fucking annoying."
"Fuck off."
"What did you say?"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Cut it out, you two! Here we go again. We've got kids with us."
For some unknown reason, the two were about to throw blows, forcing the other two adventurers to hastily intervene. It was a ridiculous sight, but these men weren't particularly old themselves, so they still had a childish streak.
They were all in their early twenties, adventurers who had only recently completed their mandatory three-year active service after graduating from the academy. Fortunately, they weren't bad people. Still, Rickert wondered if there was actually anything to learn from them.
Fortunately, there was. The guild's request for support from academy students wasn't due to some grave crisis, but simply because they had a vast area to search. They just needed more boots on the ground, meaning the task itself wasn't inherently dangerous.
Still, because there was no telling what desperate, cornered deserters might do, it wasn't entirely safe either.
Regardless, what Rickert learned from the active adventurers was how to conduct inquiries, perform searches, and establish communication networks. Aside from his military service in his past life, he had always operated alone, so he was unfamiliar with these organizational and administrative aspects.
Conducting inquiries wasn't particularly difficult. Unlike city dwellers, most rural folk were born in their villages and never left, meaning they found any stranger unusual and remembered them vividly. If asked whether they had seen anyone suspicious recently, they could provide remarkably accurate details.
After three days of tracking, they finally caught up with one of the deserters. However, there was a problem.
"Hey, you motherfuckers! Don't come any closer!"
At the entrance of a dilapidated shack, a man clad in rags was holding a young girl hostage. He held a crude knife against her slender neck. That was the problem.
The villagers had swarmed around to watch, and the girl's mother sat collapsed on the ground, weeping hysterically.
"Oh, heavens! Oh, heavens! Take me instead!"
Yet, the young girl held hostage seemed entirely oblivious to her peril, merely staring blankly at the crowd.
"Ah, fuck…"
The adventurer leading Rickert's group muttered a curse. Usually playful and cheerful, his face was now twisted in sheer frustration. After muttering "fuck, fuck" to himself for a while, he suddenly bellowed.
"Hey! Put the knife down! What the hell are you going to do with a kid? You're dead anyway, you bastard!"
"Yeah! If I'm going to die, taking a brat with me sounds just fine! Come on! Come on, try me!"
"Ha! What the actual fuck… Ha…"
The adventurer kept spitting out curses, looking as if his blood pressure might kill him on the spot. There was no easy way out. They were faced with a choice: sacrifice the girl, or let the deserter go for now.
In truth, even if the girl were sacrificed, it wouldn't cause much of a stir. In this era, few would care about the death of a peasant girl in some backwater village. Letting the deserter escape, on the other hand, was far more likely to cause trouble for them.
Yet, the adventurers knew that letting her die was inhumane, which was why they were so conflicted.
"What do we do?"
"I don't fucking know…"
Rickert, Ice, and Palen could only watch from a distance. If a fight broke out, they could help, but right now, there seemed to be absolutely nothing they could do.
"Can't we shoot him with an arrow or something…?" Palen muttered.
But they lacked both a bow and a marksman capable of making such a shot from this distance. Above all, the risk of hitting the girl was too high.
Rickert watched the scene intently, then approached the senior adventurer.
"Should I try talking to him?"
"Sure… go ahead, do whatever you want."
The man didn't tell Rickert to stay back. He seemed to have simply given up out of sheer frustration. All that remained was whether or not to make a hard decision.
With permission granted, Rickert pulled back his hood and strode toward the deserter.
"What! Fuck! Don't come any closer! That sword on your shoulder! Put it down! Put it down, I said!"
Once he was close enough, Rickert calmly unstrapped the sword from his shoulder and tossed it aside. He threw his dagger away as well. To prove he was unarmed, he pulled open his cloak.
"What, you're just a brat? What's with your hair? Are you mocking me? Huh?!"
Only after Rickert discarded his weapons did the deserter seem to see him clearly. The man was on a knife-edge of tension. Any sudden movement could trigger a fatal accident, and one wrong step would mean the girl's death.
"I'm not mocking you. I just want to talk."
"Talk about what? I have nothing to say! Just let me go! Let me go! I want to go home! I don't even care about my three months of back pay! Just let me go! I want to see my mother!"
The deserter shrieked, his voice cracking with tears. Rickert stood quietly, listening until the man had poured out all his anguish.
Only when the deserter had exhausted himself and was panting for breath did Rickert speak.
"Where was your garrison?"
"What?"
"Where was the battlefield?"
"…Laeldorf. Why?"
"Was the winter cold?"
"Huh?"
"No matter how thick your fur boots were, didn't moisture build up inside, leaving your feet swollen and raw?"
"…H-how do you know that?"
"You get a good day once in a while, but most days are pure misery. A comrade you joked with last night is dead by morning. Moldy bread, rotten fruit. You try to drink yourself to sleep, but the nightmares never really go away. Right?"
"..."
The deserter's eyes went wide. He blinked, utterly stunned.
Everyone else here regarded the deserter as nothing more than a madman, but not Rickert. Rickert understood. He knew the pain and sorrow the man had endured.
Losing limbs or suffering physical wounds was the easy part. The truly unbearable thing on the battlefield was the destruction of one's mind. Rickert knew that agony better than anyone. He had lived it.
And so, Rickert felt a profound sense of kinship with the deserter.
"The most fucking infuriating thing is the brainless orders handed down by superiors who don't know a damn thing about the front lines. You go out there knowing it's a mistake, and people die. Alcohol, gambling, women… there's a limit to how much those can numb the pain. It's not because you're weak, mister. It's because you're a good person. You just didn't belong on a battlefield."
The deserter fell into a trance, as if listening to a hypnotist. He blinked, shook his head, and lapsed back into a daze, like a man dreaming with his eyes wide open.
"So, you don't need to do this. Let the girl go. Her mother is crying over there. Her heart must be breaking. The girl is innocent. Isn't that right?"
The deserter stared straight ahead, his eyes unfocused. He wasn't looking at Rickert, but seemed to be gazing at something far beyond him.
He wasn't looking at the crowd, either. His gaze reached beyond the distant horizon, traversing time to look back at his past. Yet, he could not escape the horrors of what he had lived through—even though he, too, must have once known a time of innocence.
The strength finally drained from the deserter's body, and the arm pinning the girl dropped to his side. He stood in a daze for a brief moment, then suddenly snapped to attention and bellowed:
"Raise spears! Hut! Spears forward! Hut! Seventh Infantrrrry! Maaaarch! Keep tiiiime! Hut! One! Two! One! Two! Thrust! Hup! Thrust! Hup!"
He was no longer human. He was a broken machine.
And that broken machine, without a single shred of hesitation, plunged the crude knife deep into his own neck. As if executing a final command.
"For God and the Empire! Glory to the Crown Mercenaries!"
Squelch!
He collapsed in a rigid posture, his head striking the ground with a heavy thud. Wide-open eyes, a gaping mouth, blood soaking the earth. He shuddered violently before going completely limp.
A chilling silence descended upon the scene. The howling wind felt exceptionally cold. Rickert walked over to him, closed his eyes, and shut his jaw.
As he walked back holding the girl's hand, the onlookers—children and adults alike—stared at Rickert as if they had seen a ghost. Magic? Is it magic? Mind magic?
He returned the girl to her mother. The mother had stopped weeping, her eyes wide as she stared blankly at Rickert. She had just witnessed a scene so shocking that it drove all thoughts of her daughter's near-death experience from her mind.
Rickert walked away, passing through the crowd.
"Ricky," Ice called out.
But Rickert kept walking unsteadily, his eyes unfocused, as if he hadn't heard a thing. He looked like a marionette with its strings cut.
Perhaps deterred by the eerie atmosphere, even the senior adventurers did not dare call out to him or stop him. Palen could only scramble to gather Rickert's sword and dagger from the ground.
Rickert was completely numb, a high-pitched ringing filling his ears. This was mentally far more exhausting than being ambushed and fighting in the forest. Incomparably so.
Right now, he just wanted to be alone. So he walked, aimlessly, far and away.
And just like that, the eventful deserter mission came to an end.