Return
Return
"As expected, keeping an eye on the bitch in the cloak was the right move."
It seemed they'd found her quickly, just as the Firebird Hunter had said.
I tilted my head as I looked at the psychotic female mercenary.
"You didn't run away?"
Though she looked half-insane, she seemed remarkably good at finding ways to survive, so I was surprised she was still in the territory.
"So it really was you, brat, who ruined everything."
She raised her sword toward me.
Before I knew it, the alley was completely empty.
Had they fled because they knew a fight was about to break out, or had the other mercenaries cleared the area?
An absurd thought crossed my mind, but the words that came out sounded quite plausible.
"The one who ruined things wasn't me. It was your big mouth."
After all, both this time and in my past life, I'd only been able to do this much because you'd let it slip.
Grind.
She ground her teeth, the sound echoing from her mouth.
"Because of you, the job failed, and Benjamin died too. If I hadn't been wandering around trying to catch you, we could've left together... It's all because of you!"
Unfortunately, Simon hadn't managed to get a single word out of Benjamin, the mercenary commander.
Thanks to the Knight Commander stepping in, they won the battle without much difficulty, but Benjamin had committed suicide before they could even torture him.
I'd wondered why this woman hadn't been there at the time. It turned out she'd been trying to catch me?
She really was out of her mind. Her priorities were completely warped.
With the mercenary commander dead, this woman was now their only remaining source of information.
I scrutinized her.
Her eyes gleamed with madness, her red tongue darted out constantly to lick her lips, and her face was twisted with rage.
Just looking at her, she didn't seem like the sort of woman I could get any useful information from.
"I'll kill you, give your soul to Benjamin, and skin you nice and clean to hang over my bed."
I was facing off against a woman who looked like she belonged in a horror movie, in broad daylight.
If this had happened in my past life, I would have called the police immediately. Now, though, I had to handle it myself.
She raised her sword and made as if to lick the blade with her tongue.
A blade glowing green. It would have been better if she had actually licked it.
"Fortunately, you're just my type. You look absolutely delicious."
I had no idea what kind of "type" she meant. No, I didn't even want to know.
She'd been searching for me all this time, so she wasn't going to let me go just because I was young. And I had no intention of running away, either.
Scrape.
As I gripped the hilt of my sword again, the cloth-wrapped weapon dragged across the ground with a harsh sound.
'If I'd known it would come to this, I should've left this sword in my room and brought a mass-produced one.'
Carrying it around just because it was a good sword had only caused trouble.
Hoo.
I took a deep breath,
"Now, draw that sword you're hiding under your cloak. Entertain me."
But I wasn't hiding a sword under my cloak.
Along with the breath I'd drawn in, I circulated mana throughout my entire body.
I could feel power surging into every cell.
I tightened my grip. The sword that had been dragging along the ground lifted into the air.
Mana rushed into my arm once more, then flowed out through my hand.
Rrrip!
The sound of cloth bursting apart rang out behind me.
It was the cloth that had been wrapped around the sword.
Shreds of white cloth fluttered in every direction.
"What! That was a sword?"
A startled voice rang out through the fluttering cloth.
The voice rushed toward me, and I raised my sword with all my might.
Bang!
A heavy impact reverberated through the hand gripping the sword.
The blow was so powerful that I would have been shoved backward if I hadn't anchored myself to the ground with mana.
"Ugh!"
But I didn't budge at all. Through my clear field of vision, no longer obscured by the blown-away cloth, I saw the female mercenary bounce backward from the impact.
Boom!
She didn't stop until she crashed into the wall. Gritting her teeth, she glared at me.
"Unbelievable! You blew me back with that tiny frame of yours?"
Ah, is that so? Back when I was eavesdropping, a male mercenary had blown me away. Then, when we met again, my sword had broken, and I'd fled after getting injured.
Come to think of it, I'd never properly fought her in this life.
Was that why she was acting so cocky, trying to catch me without any fear?
Whoosh, whoosh.
I gripped the sword with both hands and swung it back and forth through the air as I walked toward her.
It really felt less like swinging a sword and more like wielding a giant oar. With my current build, it was difficult to swing this massive sword properly.
But there was no rule saying I had to use proper swordsmanship just because I was holding a sword.
I kicked off the ground.
Bang!
My mana-infused foot drove against the ground, launching me forward.
The woman's startled face rapidly drew closer.
She swung her sword at me with all her might, but I simply held my massive sword upright in front of me.
Clang!
The swords clashed.
My opponent was a knight-class mercenary who wielded a nimble sword. In my past life, when I used a sword suited to my body, we hadn't been able to settle the score. This time, though, things were different.
A faint light gathered around the massive sword, and the female mercenary's eyes widened.
Her sword couldn't withstand my new blade.
The edge of her sword, which had been emitting a faint green glow, crumpled and was knocked to the side.
Her arm was flung wide open along with her sword, leaving nothing to block what lay ahead of her.
With my sword still held upright, I took another step forward.
Thud.
The massive sword sank deep into the wall.
"Ugh!"
The female mercenary coughed up blood.
She grabbed the sword that had pierced through both her abdomen and the wall, glaring at me.
"I knew you weren't some fucking brat. Do you have the ability to disguise yourself as a kid? Where the hell did you come from?"
She reached toward me with a trembling hand. Her weak hand moved closer to my face.
Without hesitation, I let go of the sword and stepped back.
"How did you know?"
"There's no way I wouldn't suspect a sword-wielding mercenary who'd grown out her fingernails."
At my words, she looked down at her hands with a bitter expression.
Beneath her drooping fingernails, a faint green light flickered.
Even to the very end, she hadn't given up on trying to kill me.
"You looked so delicious. What a shame..."
After leaving me with those chilling words, her head slumped forward.
I stared at her slumped form for a moment.
She wasn't moving anymore.
'Is it finally over?'
The grudges from my past life had finally been settled.
The voices of people began to echo from afar.
It was time to go home.
I pulled out my sword and quickly left the scene.
The road home was peaceful.
Simon, having experienced real combat against the mercenary commander, was quiet, as if he'd realized something.
The knights and soldiers were also much more relaxed than they had been when we first set out.
Though monsters occasionally appeared as we crossed the territories, this time they were only weak mutants, which the soldiers could handle on their own.
And so, after a rather chaotic journey, I returned home.
Though several months had passed, the territory and the mansion had changed very little.
After the Duke's brief welcome, the waiting crowd all rushed toward Simon, while the knights and soldiers headed to the taverns to join their waiting comrades.
Even so, unlike before, some people greeted me.
The soldier Juan clutched his pouch of money and thanked me, while Sir Hugo also bowed his head to me before heading off to drink with Miguel.
The Chief Butler also gave me a nod of acknowledgment before following the Duke, but the Knight Commander turned away and left without sparing me a glance.
Perhaps because things had changed since we left, the glances people stole at me had also become subtly different.
More important than those glances, though, was my mother, who let out a sigh of relief in front of me.
"I'm back, Mother."
"Yes. Nothing bad happened, did it?"
Though a great deal had happened, I replied with a smile.
"Yes."
The day after Simon's group returned, three people gathered in the Duke's office.
The Duke, the Knight Commander, and the Chief Butler. It had been a long time since the three of them had gathered like this.
"...And so, the rebellion was brought to an end. After hearing that the remaining remnants would be dealt with by the Marquisate, we departed from the Lord's castle."
As the Knight Commander finished his explanation, the Duke nodded.
"According to the message that arrived later, the remaining remnants have also been dealt with. Unfortunately, it seems they couldn't find out who instigated the rebellion."
"The Marquisate also seems to have suffered heavy losses."
"It seems quite a few knights were killed. The territory has also been thrown into turmoil by the cleanup of the mercenaries. But the biggest issue is probably the death of the Marquis's heir. Although it was officially ruled a death from illness, some nobles are bound to catch wind of the truth, and one way or another, the Marquisate's standing will be significantly shaken."
At the Duke's words, the Knight Commander and the Chief Butler nodded.
Vicious rumors among the nobility inflict great damage on those who value their honor above all else. Marquis Hierro was bound to suffer from groundless rumors for quite some time.
"Still, I don't intend to postpone the engagement. At a time like this, we can't afford to show weakness."
The Knight Commander fell silent in thought for a moment at the Duke's words.
"It would have been difficult to swallow the Marquisate with just mercenaries and a bastard son, so I wonder who the instigator was..."
"Well, many people oppose our alliance with the Marquisate. The Noble Faction, of course, and it's not as if there aren't any within the First Prince Faction or the Second Prince Faction..."
The Duke furrowed his brow as he considered the Kingdom's tangled political situation.
"Still, there can't be many factions that would actually take action."
"We're continuing to investigate, but given how cleanly they cut off their tail, it won't be easy to find them."
The Knight Commander tilted his head at the Duke's words.
"Is that so? Even so, the rebellion was a bit clumsy. The date of the uprising was decided on the spur of the moment, and the way it was discovered was just as..."
Historically, many rebellions had broken out spontaneously, but few of them had succeeded.
In the end, this rebellion might have been just another common occurrence.
At the Knight Commander's words, the Chief Butler raised an objection.
"Could it be that it only seemed that way because they were caught by a young child? If it weren't for Alex, the rebellion might have succeeded."
At the Chief Butler's words, the Duke's eyes gleamed.
"Could it really be to that extent? Surely he just happened to overhear the conversation by chance?"
The Knight Commander wore a troubled expression at the Duke's words.
"Well, although he said himself that he overheard it by chance... there are some suspicious points that make it difficult to see it as a mere coincidence."
The Chief Butler picked up where the troubled Knight Commander left off.
"Becoming close to the Marquisate's bastard son during the journey was one thing, but he also insisted strongly on surveying the city and met the bastard son again during that survey. It's also difficult to understand how Adria ended up revealing the secret passage and leaving with him."
"And on top of that, she revealed the secret passage to the bastard son."
The Duke recalled the account of Adria in the message.
'Did they say she was practically confined to her room?'
Since they'd said a guard was assigned to her at all times, even while she slept, supposedly for her protection, that child's life didn't seem easy either.
Still, considering what she'd done, the punishment and surveillance were only natural.
To be honest, even the Duke didn't consider her a particularly desirable daughter-in-law.
But Simon liked her, and they couldn't politically abandon the Marquisate either, so it seemed better to bring her over quickly.
Having made that decision, he returned to the matter at hand.
"So either his luck is ridiculously good, or everything was carried out according to a meticulous plan."
"Though he's called a genius, he's still a young child. Given his age, coincidence might be more likely."
"He's highly intelligent, but still too young to pull off something like acting as a double agent. It must have been a series of coincidences."
Even though both the Knight Commander and the Chief Butler had suggested it might not be a coincidence, the moment the Duke expressed suspicion, they immediately argued the opposite.
When they said that, the Duke gave a bitter smile.
"It seems you've both taken a liking to that fellow."
The Knight Commander tried to respond to the Duke's words, but the Duke continued speaking.
"If it's a coincidence, it doesn't matter. But if it isn't... what should I do with this fellow?"
In the Duke's estate, there was Simon, the heir, and Manuel, his younger brother.
With two flawless sons already, to have an even more outstanding bastard son...
The Knight Commander and the Chief Butler, who had been discussing the events at the Marquisate just moments earlier, could not offer any reply to the Duke's words.