The Measure of Power
The next morning, Elbridge and Marcus headed for the Mercenary Guild.
Three mercenaries had arrived before them, along with the three clients they had seen the previous day.
“Only five people today…”
When the mage grumbled, the knight standing beside her answered.
“We’ve been turned down for days in a row. What did you expect?”
“Who doesn’t know that? I’m just frustrated.”
The same black hair, similar sharp eyes, and that bickering tone. Anyone could tell the knight and the mage were siblings.
The brown-haired knight standing nearby spoke up.
“Numbers aren’t what matter. We only need one capable person. Everyone, please come this way.”
The trio of employers led the five mercenaries into the Mercenary Guild.
The guild building consisted of three rooms. In the smallest one tucked in the far corner sat a table and a metal box.
The metal box looked almost identical to the Magic Battery they had seen the day before, differing only in size. A needle that pointed to numbers was attached to the top of the square metal container.
The moment one of the mercenaries saw the box, he began slowly backing away.
“I… I don’t have any accumulated mana, so…”
The first mercenary left.
The second mercenary placed his hand on the box. The needle twitched and moved. The mage and two knights carefully checked the number.
“Twenty-eight… Twenty-nine?”
The mercenary declared confidently, “Look closely. It just brushed thirty, didn’t it?”
“Whether it’s twenty-nine or thirty, you’re still disqualified. Rejected.”
The second mercenary muttered curses under his breath and left.
The third mercenary placed his hand on the box. This time the needle shot past sixty and jumped well above seventy.
“Seventy-two, perhaps seventy-three.”
The third mercenary looked quite proud, confident in his own ability.
But the employers’ reaction remained cold.
“We acknowledge that you’re quite skilled among mercenaries, but you fall short of our standards. A shame.”
“Tsk, there aren’t many mercenaries better than me… Ugh. Fine.”
Now only Elbridge and Marcus remained.
Unfortunately, neither of them knew exactly what the box was for. They could only make a vague guess.
“This thing… Is it that Magic Battery you mentioned?”
At Marcus’s question, the mage let out a deep sigh.
“Looks like today’s a bust too. Are you two from out of town?”
“We just arrived in the Holy City of Soleneon the day before yesterday. Both me and my friend here.”
“Ugh.”
The mage was about to walk away, but she sighed again and explained.
“This is a mana measuring device. It works on a similar principle to the Magic Battery you mentioned, but it’s not meant to store mana. You could say it measures the total amount of mana using pressure.”
“How do you use it? Just put your hand on it? No need to apply force or anything?”
“Yes. Just relax. If you plan to take requests in Middlemarch from now on, you’ll almost always have to tell clients what your reading is. Consider this practice.”
Even while grumbling, the mage seemed to be looking out for Marcus. Whether she was nosy or simply kind, it was hard to tell.
Marcus, however, looked extremely reluctant. Having never accumulated even a speck of mana in his life, that was only natural.
“Can’t you just lie about the number?”
“You could, I suppose. But if we insist on measuring it ourselves, that would be embarrassing for you.”
“Ugh…”
Marcus clenched and unclenched his fist a few times, then placed his sweat-soaked palm on the black metal plate atop the device.
Just by looking at Marcus’s face, Elbridge could tell exactly what he was thinking.
He looked like he wanted to leave before suffering any humiliation, just like the first mercenary who had walked out without even touching the device.
But the moment Marcus placed his hand on the measuring device, something unexpected happened. The needle shot upward. Far higher than when the third mercenary had tried.
“…Huh?”
Marcus himself was shocked, but the clients were just as surprised.
“Wait, did I see that wrong?”
“It looked like it went over a hundred and twenty.”
“Could you remove your hand and try again? We need a more accurate reading.”
When Marcus placed his hand on it once more, the needle leaped up vigorously again.
“…One hundred and sixty?”
The knight who looked like the mage’s older brother became visibly excited.
“One hundred and sixty-three. Wow, we’ve got a rare guest from the East. I heard mercenaries there don’t accumulate mana, so I wasn’t expecting much. A valuable find, truly valuable…”
The siblings, who had been rather curt, suddenly became warm and friendly. It seemed they weren’t arrogant by nature.
The brown-haired knight, who had been watching silently, added a remark.
“It’s all good, but… the reading isn’t mana. It’s divine power.”
“Divine power?”
The siblings’ gazes shifted to the small hole beside the needle.
Where a faint blue light had glowed when the others touched it, a faint white light was now leaking out.
“…It really is. Mister mercenary. Are you a Holy Knight?”
“I’m a mercenary. I just happened to accumulate a bit of divine power along the way.”
“A bit? One hundred and sixty? That’s ridiculous! I heard divine power is far harder to accumulate than mana.”
Marcus’s current situation was rather unusual.
Until he met Elbridge, Marcus had possessed almost no divine power.
Of course, he hadn’t accumulated any mana at the Magic Tower either. At the time, his physical abilities had been decent for an ordinary person.
But after following Elbridge and Rombel, Marcus had been half-forced to hunt demonic beasts.
In the process, he had absorbed a considerable amount of divine power from the fragments of evil gods that the beasts carried, far surpassing the level of an ordinary person.
Marcus had taken another leap in the mountain city of Varkuntol, when he received an oracle from the God of the Sunshower.
That day, he had felt the limits he had vaguely sensed being pushed far higher.
The mage asked, clearly excited.
“Anyway, this is great. We were looking for someone with over a hundred and twenty in either mana or divine power. You’ll take the request, right?”
Marcus, now in a much better mood, nodded.
“Of course. If the pay is good, what job can’t a mercenary do?”
“Perfect! What’s your name?”
“Marcus.”
The siblings seemed to have half-forgotten about Elbridge.
Fortunately, the brown-haired knight was different.
“Millia. There’s still one more.”
“Oh, right. Since he’s with Marcus, we should have high hopes for him too.”
Elbridge took a step toward the measuring device.
At that moment, a sudden oracle from his Goddess descended.
Elbridge. Shall your Goddess lend you a hand?
“…That won’t be necessary, Goddess.”
Elbridge whispered softly, firmly declining the Goddess’s offer.
Just then, the mage’s bewildered voice rang out.
“What? No one touched it, but the needle on the measuring device just shot all the way to the end by itself.”
“Did you see it wrong? You spend all day cooped up in a room, so you’ve developed presbyopia at such a young age…”
“What are you talking about? That’s not it, so stop saying weird things.”
“But the reading is coming out normally right now.”
“It must be the old machine, not my eyes. If it acts up again, we’ll remeasure then.”
While the knight and mage whispered to each other, Elbridge placed his hand on the device.
Once again, the needle shot upward. Much more forcefully than it had for Marcus.
The mage gasped in shock.
“…Three hundred and fifty? Is this thing broken? That’s almost on the same level as my brother Mitchell.”
“Almost…? There’s a considerable gap.”
It seemed they could somehow believe Marcus’s reading, but Elbridge’s was simply too unbelievable. The brown-haired knight politely asked Elbridge,
“The machine seems a bit off… Could you remove your hand for a moment?”
When Elbridge withdrew his hand, the brown-haired knight placed his own on the device.
The needle didn’t quite reach three hundred and sixty before slowly sliding back down. Yet the brown-haired knight shouted triumphantly,
“See! Three hundred and sixty! I’m higher!”
“It looked a little lower than that… Anyway, it means the machine isn’t broken, right? You there, mercenary. What’s your name?”
“I’m El.”
“Mister El. Could you measure one more time, please?”
Elbridge placed his hand on the device again. The needle once more pointed to three hundred and fifty.
“Wow.”
The mage didn’t hide her admiration.
But that wasn’t the end of it. The quiet knight added one more comment.
“Millia. The important thing isn’t the number. This person is also using divine power, not mana.”
“What?”
The gazes of the mage and two knights turned to the side of the device. Just like with Marcus, white light was leaking from the measuring device.
“This is the first time I’ve seen this… No, I heard that once divine power exceeds a certain level, it barely accumulates anymore. To have more divine power than the mana of a decent knight… Does that even make sense?”
“How should I know…”
Knights strengthen their bodies with mana, while Holy Knights strengthen theirs with divine power.
Both mana and divine power enhance physical ability, but the methods of accumulating them are vastly different.
Knights receive mana to boost their physical capabilities. In other words, as long as they have enough money, they can fill themselves up to their limit at the Magic Tower.
Of course, overcoming one’s limits to accept even more mana requires separate training. Still, a knight can obtain physical abilities surpassing most Holy Knights without ever fighting a single battle.
On the other hand, there are only two ways for a Holy Knight to accumulate divine power.
Devout prayer, and combat against demonic beasts and demons.
There are no shortcuts. Moreover, accumulating divine power becomes increasingly difficult.
In other words, a wealthy knight can grow stronger far faster than a Holy Knight.
However, simply having more mana does not make a knight superior to a Holy Knight.
Because a Holy Knight can be granted far more powerful authorities.
It is, so to speak, a matter of trade-offs.
Knights and Holy Knights each possessed their own strengths—large amounts of mana and powerful authorities—so even two hundred years ago, knights had been able to stand beside Holy Knights and fulfill their roles admirably.
However, there were exceptions.
If a Holy Knight survived countless battles, their divine power could catch up to or occasionally surpass a knight’s mana reserves.
People like Leonhardt or Elbridge from two hundred years ago were prime examples.
“Millia. It’s not that I’m lacking. This person is simply special. Don’t misunderstand.”
“Who said anything? Anyway, this is even better. The fact that these two have accumulated divine power means they have no connection to the Magic Tower, right? In a way, they’re the perfect mercenaries.”
“That’s true… Oh, right. I suppose we should introduce ourselves now. I am Mitchell, a knight affiliated with the Magic Tower. This is my younger sister, the mage Millia. And over there is my sister’s friend, Patrick, also a knight of the Magic Tower.”
Unlike the arrogant attitude he had shown at the tavern the day before, Mitchell readily extended his right hand to Elbridge for a handshake.
Elbridge took the hand and replied,
“As I said, my name is El. By the way, you told us yesterday at the tavern that this was a request from the Magic Tower. Why is it an advantage that we have no connection to the Magic Tower?”
Millia answered,
“Actually, it’s not a request from the Magic Tower. We just said that because it makes it easier to find people willing to help.”
“…”
“If it were a real request from the Magic Tower, we wouldn’t have come to the Mercenary Guild. We would have asked the knights affiliated with the tower for help.”
Listening to the story, Marcus began to feel uneasy.
Hiding the identity of their client? It looked suspicious no matter how you looked at it.
But Elbridge grew even more interested.
The fact that a mage would take on a request she couldn’t ask the Magic Tower’s people for most likely meant it involved the tower’s secrets or internal affairs.
This doesn’t seem like a simple chore… It might be connected to the Central Magic Tower’s master. Good thing I didn’t ignore my intuition.
Even if things got complicated, it didn’t matter. Both Elbridge and Marcus had the skills to take care of themselves.
Marcus, however, couldn’t shake off his anxiety.
“You said it was a search mission. If it’s some shady request, I’m out.”
“Don’t worry about that. It really is a search mission. The location is the underground sewers, just like I told you yesterday.”
“Well, in that case…”
“So you’ll accept the request?”
Marcus glanced at Elbridge, then nodded.
“We will. What exactly are we looking for?”
The mage Millia lowered her voice to a whisper.
“My colleague from the Magic Tower went missing while conducting important research.”
“In the sewers?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then why are we going to the sewers?”
“The mages who were conducting research with my colleague keep dying. And they aren’t even reporting the deaths to the outside. Late at night, they quietly transport only the corpses through the Magic Tower’s sewers. I’ve confirmed more than ten deaths already.”
Marcus made a face as if he had bitten into a bug.
“…Wait. I don’t want this request anymore.”
“Mister Marcus. Let me tell you in advance—our family is very wealthy. Wealthy enough to make someone like my brother a knight. And knights who have accumulated as much mana as my brother are few and far between even in the Magic Tower, you know?”
This time, Mitchell made the same bug-bitten face.
But the mercenary instinct to want a rich person by their side was undeniable. That materialistic remark moved Marcus’s heart.
“…Let’s hear a bit more.”
“Mages dying or getting injured during research happens from time to time, but it’s rare for this many people to die in succession. Something tremendous is definitely happening underground in the Magic Tower.”
“What kind of research would cause that?”
“Before my colleague left for the research, she gave me a small hint. She said it was research concerning an incredibly powerful demonic beast. Not the early or mid-stage ones we occasionally see, but a truly powerful one. We want you to go with us, find out what that research is, and check whether my colleague is still alive. How about it?”
“Hmm.”
Marcus looked somewhat tempted.
But Elbridge’s thoughts differed from the mage Millia’s.
There are many dangerous beasts among the late-stage demonic creatures, but the Central Magic Tower’s capabilities are no joke either.
If even that tower had lost numerous mages during their research. And if they were continuing the research while concealing the casualties…
This smells like research related to demons rather than demonic beasts. No, is it even actual research to begin with?
However, it seemed neither Marcus nor the clients had reached that conclusion yet.
After finishing his thoughts, Elbridge spoke.
“Brother Marcus.”
“Yeah?”
“Go to the tavern right now and collect our winnings.”
Elbridge hated demons more than anyone else.
Yet at this moment, his chest was filled with a strange sense of anticipation.