Lionel the Peddler (2)
Lionel turned out to be more troublesome than Lawrence had expected.
For a man with a bear-like build and a rugged, masculine face, his mouth never seemed to rest for even a second.
“There are always swindlers who try to fleece peddlers for a tidy sum. It’s not just a matter of haggling down the price. No, they’ll flat-out rob you blind. All because they don’t know who I am.”
And then came another tale of some village he’d passed through.
According to him, that whole notion that country folk were simple and honest was a lie from start to finish.
He complained nonstop about how territorial they were, and how they’d still try to do that to some peddler who had only happened to stop by.
“Don’t you think so? An Under Wolf pelt—not even top grade—going for one silver each! Does that sound reasonable to you? Twenty copper would already be very generous.”
“I see.”
“Not ‘I see’—that’s right. Ask any other peddler if you don’t believe me. There’s no merchant more conscientious than I am. I’m buying the stuff at a price that practically leaves me taking the loss.”
He talked so much that the spit flying from his mouth never stopped.
Lionel waved his hand as if to say, I can put up with this much.
The horse, which had been running along obediently, naturally jerked in alarm.
He calmed it down without so much as changing expression, then kept right on talking.
“Now, where was I?”
“You were talking about the Under Wolf pelt.”
“Ah, right. I’m relieved to see you’re listening. Then let’s move on to goblins.”
“……”
It was hot enough already with the robe on, and having this beside him made Lawrence feel like he was going to die of exasperation.
He’d been worn down day and night for several days now, and there were moments when he honestly thought facing monsters would be more pleasant.
There was practical experience to be had, of course, but as Lionel had just said, monsters like Under Wolves could be worth money.
Lawrence shook his head.
That was a thought he shouldn’t be having.
Maybe because his pockets were running light, his heart had no room to breathe.
Once this request was done, at least he’d have some money on hand, so he ought to keep his mind as light as possible until then.
In the end, Lawrence spent the entire day entertaining Lionel’s endless chatter, and even while standing watch at night he dozed off again and again.
He would have practiced magic if the circumstances had been different, but he was too mentally exhausted to concentrate on anything.
Still, wasn’t it said that every cloud had a silver lining?
Thanks to the sleep he’d managed to steal, he’d recovered some of his strength by the next day.
That was when Lawrence sensed a hostile presence approaching the carriage.
“Mr. Lionel, get inside the carriage.”
“Huh? R-right! Got it!”
First, secure the client’s safety.
After Lionel was inside, Lawrence loaded his crossbow.
The monsters that had come for the carriage were goblins.
There were four of them in all.
Their weapons and gear were no different from the goblins he’d seen before.
For a first real fight in a while, the number was just right.
If possible, he wanted to cut them down before they got close.
From atop the carriage, he steadied his aim.
The moment his breath stopped, the quarrel flew.
“Kieeek!”
With that shrill death scream, one goblin fell silent.
There was no time to celebrate.
He reloaded the quarrels he’d prepared and fired again.
The second one.
Now they were too close for comfort.
One goblin raced forward and leaped at the carriage.
“Fire.”
A tongue of flame erupted right before its eyes.
“Kerk!?”
The instant the goblin recoiled, Lawrence didn’t waste a beat.
His spear pierced straight through its chest.
One strike.
He could feel the warmth fading from his fingertips.
When he yanked the spear free, blue blood spurted out.
And the other one?
It should have been here by now.
He spotted it near where one of the quarrels had struck its kin.
There was no need to wonder why it had only gotten that far.
Its back was exposed so blatantly that the meaning was obvious: it was running away.
It must have been frightened by the sight of the other three dying so quickly.
After watching it for a moment, Lawrence lowered his spear.
This was a good chance.
The boy thrust both hands forward and opened his mouth.
“Shadow Spear.”
A spear rose from the darkness.
As if proving the results of a month’s practice, the whole process took only about five seconds. Compared to the nearly thirty seconds it had taken the first time he’d cast it, that was an enormous improvement.
The goblin still hadn’t left the road.
Before it could flee into the woods, he finished taking aim.
As he sustained the spear, a faint pain rose in his chest.
It was fine.
It wasn’t enough to break his concentration.
Lawrence kept his gaze fixed on the goblin to the very end, then released the Shadow Spear.
Whoosh!
The Shadow Spear sliced through the air and grazed the goblin’s side as it fled.
Disappointment flickered in Lawrence’s eyes.
He’d missed.
Even after carefully lining up the shot, he hadn’t hit.
Should he cast again?
No. The distance was too great.
By the time the next Shadow Spear was ready, the goblin would already be gone into the forest.
But something was strange.
The goblin, whose side had been grazed by the Shadow Spear, came to a halt.
A moment later, its side burst open.
The contents that should have stayed inside its body spilled out like water.
Collapsed in its own pool of blood, the goblin could no longer move.
“……”
Lawrence examined the goblin that had been hit by the Shadow Spear.
An awful stench rose into the air.
If an Under Wolf’s blood smelled like that of a wild beast, a goblin’s blood was closer to the reek of sewage and rot.
Something filthy was visible among the blood and organs.
That wasn’t the important part.
He focused on the wound where the Shadow Spear had passed.
The crude iron plate that had protected the goblin’s body was completely shattered.
Just like the goblin itself, it was almost impossible to tell what shape it had once held.
He picked up one of the iron scraps, now no larger than the span of a finger.
The part the Shadow Spear had grazed looked as if it had been cut apart by a saw blade, the layers torn into sharp, jagged edges.
But the body beneath the plate, the part that had taken the blow directly…
Lawrence frowned.
Even stirring through the blood, he couldn’t make out the wound clearly.
It wasn’t so much cut by a saw as blown apart.
It had only been a graze, and yet it had that much destructive force.
If the Shadow Spear had struck dead on, wouldn’t the goblin’s body have burst apart on the spot?
He hadn’t seen anything like this when practicing against trees.
Why was that?
Had Lawrence himself been suppressing the spell’s power?
Or was this simply the true strength of the Shadow Spear?
Had his magic suddenly improved in the heat of real combat?
Or perhaps… ridiculous as it sounded, maybe the stress Lionel had given him had taken on a violent shape.
Joking aside, the stress that had built up from listening to that man talk nonstop really was considerable.
He didn’t know.
For now, there was no answer.
He even considered casting Shadow Spear one more time, but just then Lionel emerged from the carriage, so he gave up on the idea.
“My word. That was impressive. Goblins or not, I didn’t expect you to bring them down so cleanly.”
“They were only goblins.”
He’d been lucky.
It had been the perfect number for him to regain some real combat experience.
Above all else, spotting their ambush in advance had made the biggest difference.
“Hmm. Hmm. You might actually be a pretty decent mercenary after all. And you’re still young, too, so you’ve got plenty of room to grow.”
“I’m not young.”
“Wahaha! That’s exactly what a young person would say. You shouldn’t get too worked up over an older man’s joke. That’s how people end up looking down on you. I’m telling you this in all sincerity.”
“……”
He had nothing to say to that.
Somehow, Lionel’s figure overlapped with someone else’s in his mind.
* * *
As the road drew closer to its destination, monster attacks became more frequent.
Most of them were goblins.
And because goblins traveled in packs, the numbers ranged from as few as three to as many as nearly ten when they charged the carriage.
When there were only a few, Lawrence handled them alone. But when the number approached ten, it was difficult to deal with them, no matter how generously one put it.
At best, he could shoot down two before they got close.
And once the goblins were already in range, he couldn’t use Shadow Spear at all.
That left him no choice but to fight with spear and Fire in tandem.
Oddly enough, though, this problem turned out to be easier to manage than he’d expected.
“Will you be all right?”
“What a question. I may look like this, but I’m Lionel of the freight carriage. Do you think I’ve traveled with tens, hundreds of peddling routes and never run into trouble like this? Every time, I slipped away with skill that would put royal coachmen to shame. How about it? Want to hear about one of them? This was back when I went to the Ulbazar Swamp, and I escaped a stampede of Bugbears…”
“All right. Then I’ll leave the carriage to you, Mr. Lionel.”
After that, Lionel no longer went back inside the carriage.
He had come to believe in the skill Lawrence had shown with his own eyes.
That alone made it possible to slip out of an otherwise difficult situation.
However you looked at it, Lionel was the one driving the carriage.
Once the horses started running, it took goblins twice as long to catch up, and in that gap it became possible to intercept them one by one.
For the moment, Lawrence didn’t use Shadow Spear.
It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Lionel. He simply had a bad feeling that if Lionel found out he was a mage, things would become even noisier than they already were.
Besides, it was difficult to use in the first place.
There was an enormous difference between using magic on a stationary carriage and on a moving one.
If it had been something easy and fast to cast like Fire or Shadow, that would have been one thing.
But Shadow Spear required him to shape the shadow into a spear, and his concentration kept slipping every time.
To be blunt about it, he wanted to use it but couldn’t.
Fortunately, he had plenty of quarrels, and the spear he’d bought from the smithy had excellent killing power.
If the enemy was goblins, there was nothing to fear.
And the Fire he used in bursts also proved invaluable.
No one could remain calm when flames suddenly burst into view before their eyes.
The same was true for monsters.
What’s more, Fire didn’t end at intimidation; when it made contact with a body, it showed even greater power.
Come to think of it, he remembered hearing that burning to death was the most agonizing way to die.
Of course, to bring out that kind of power with Fire in practice would require tremendous concentration, but that wasn’t the point.
Fear of fire was instinctive.
Even leaving a burn was enough to make an enemy flinch and lose momentum.
Thanks to that, Fire had grown noticeably stronger during this request.
It was different from the times he’d merely practiced in the forest.
Maybe it was because of the urgency of knowing he could actually die if he made a mistake?
When he used magic in real combat, its growth was obvious enough for even him to feel.
Since they usually fought from the rear of the carriage, there was no need to mind Lionel’s opinion either.
Once Lawrence started venting all the stress he’d built up onto the monsters, the journey finally began to feel a little fun.
On the tenth day after leaving Redantus Village, he could feel the familiar scenery changing little by little.
The forest grew denser. Along some stretches, ancient trees blocked the sky and let almost no sunlight through.
At times he even felt eyes watching him from within the woods, and the number of insects kept increasing as well.
Lionel crushed an ant that had climbed onto the driver’s seat with one finger.
“We should arrive in about five more days.”
“We’re nearly there, then.”
“Under normal circumstances, we’d have gotten there sooner. This expedition must be cursed or something, the way we keep running into monsters.”
“If we’re going to meet monsters anyway, isn’t it better to meet them early? Better to deal with trouble before it grows into a real problem.”
As the journey dragged on, Lawrence found himself wishing his robe had a hood.
He’d lost count of how many times insects had dropped onto his head.
Once they reached Horos Village, he ought to ask whether it was possible to have just the hood repaired.
“You don’t mind the bugs?”
“I’m used to them. I’ve seen enough of them since I was little to last a lifetime.”
“You’ve got a strong constitution, I’ll give you that. I hate bugs. Spiders in particular… Do you know? In these parts, they’ve got something called Forest Spiders. You’d be sick of them after seeing them just once.”
As if even thinking about it gave him chills, Lionel shuddered.
“Forest Spiders?”
Lawrence asked quickly.
There was no harm in hearing more.
More importantly, it was a monster they would be dealing with soon enough.
He did have information from the mercenary guild, but nothing was as valuable as hearing it from the mouth of someone with real experience.
Any small detail would do.
If he could hear something useful, that would be enough.
“Just think about it. They’re ugly spiders to begin with, and they’re bigger than a person. Honestly, I’ve got nothing to say. Really, nothing. Unless a man’s lost his mind, how could he possibly fight a monster like that?”
It was the kind of thing that inspired a visceral disgust just from hearing it described.
That was what he’d already heard from the guild receptionist.
“Are they really that repulsive?”
“My throat’s already tired from talking about it. Whatever you’re imagining, they’re worse. Far worse. I’d wager that after seeing one for the first time, you wouldn’t be able to get food down your throat. It’s no wonder the guild staff in Horos Village are mostly men.”
“Pardon?”
“They’re monsters so dreadful that even a man would have nightmares about them. So just imagine how women would react. Normal work wouldn’t get done, so they’ve filled the place with rough-looking old men.”
“……”
“That said, for peddlers like me who want to make a killing, it’s a land of opportunity. Still, I can’t say I’m eager to go there.”
Lionel shook his head as if the very thought were horrific.
If that was true, then it might be a little frightening after all.
At Lionel’s vivid explanation, Lawrence’s expression darkened.
Had he taken this request too lightly?
Was going to Horos Village really the right choice?