A Noble Never Takes a Loss
The destination itself wasn't the problem, not really. A Woodsman's Fortress, some ancient ruins—none of that registered as particularly dangerous to a band of mercenaries.
The formation, however, was another matter entirely. It was the battle line they would have to hold the entire way through the forest, and where you were placed in it was a question of life and death.
"The formation will be as follows. All knights in the center. Mercenaries split between the vanguard and the rear. One guide assigned to each unit. That is all."
It was a declaration of intent, plain and simple: the mercenaries would be used as human shields. The easygoing expressions on the mercenaries' faces went hard.
Mercenaries sold their lives for coin, and they knew this was a dangerous contract—but to be this blatant about it was another thing entirely. It was insulting.
"So what you're saying is, we paid, so you die. That about right?"
Someone among the mercenaries said it. And they weren't wrong.
"Sir Ramang! Even so, throwing only the mercenaries into danger—isn't that a bit cruel?"
"That's what you're here for."
Ayla had stepped forward as the mercenaries' representative, but these weren't the kind of knights who would so much as snort at her protest. A sneer hung at the corner of Ereb's mouth.
"Captain wench. Last night you seemed to know your place well enough, down around my crotch... so what's with the sudden backbone?"
Hahahaha!
Every knight burst out laughing at Ereb's crude remark. Even the usually fastidious Ramang was no exception.
Ayla's face flushed with rage, but she couldn't draw her sword. She had survived in a world where power and violence decided everything since she was a teenager. She knew perfectly well that if she drew steel, she would be the one to die.
"Heh... please, show a little mercy, young lord. If not for anything else, then for last night's affection."
Ayla bowed her head before Ereb, pleading. Behind her, every mercenary bit down on their lips, barely holding their fury in check. Their captain was swallowing her pride and bowing her head for all of them. They couldn't very well step forward now.
"Hmm. Is that so? Well, if you're going to put it like that, I suppose I have no choice. I'll detach five knights each to the vanguard and rear units."
"...Thank you, young lord."
Even five knights of help would be something. Ayla thought she had at least salvaged that much—until Ramang stepped in.
"You must not, young lord! The knights are the force we must conserve until the very end. We cannot jeopardize a matter of this importance over a single night's dalliance!"
"Oh, is that how it is? Sorry, Captain. As you can see, I don't actually hold the real authority here! Sir Ramang is the one who commands the knights. You should've gone to his bedchamber last night instead of mine... what a shame."
Hahaha!
It had been deliberate. He had known Ramang would block it, and he had offered the concession anyway, just to look generous.
Ayla's hands trembled with rage, but by some miracle she held herself together. The pain of her own nails digging into her palms was the only thing keeping her sane.
If anything, she decided, this was for the best. She had been wavering even after hearing Messi's warning. Now her mind was made up. She would walk away from the contract.
"If that's how it is... then we will void the contract. We'll pay the penalty as stipulated—ten times the fee. From this moment, the Red Fox Mercenary Group withdraws from this operation."
"...Huh. Has that bitch lost her mind?"
"Captain Ayla. You say you'll pay ten times the penalty—are you aware that comes to a hundred gold?"
"Yes. Even if it bankrupts the company... even if I lose everything, I will pay it."
A hundred gold was an enormous sum. If a single silver coin covered a common family's food for a month, and a hundred silver made one gold, then a hundred gold could feed ten thousand commoners for a month.
"Haha. Fine. Captain wench. The penalty fee is one thing—but how do you intend to cover the damages from our entire plan falling apart because of your change of heart?"
"What... that wasn't in the contract!"
It didn't matter how loudly she cried injustice. The man standing across from her was something far worse than she had imagined.
At that single shout, every mercenary whose face had been flushed with anger forgot how to speak.
Only then did Messi understand where he had landed. This world was a rigidly vertical class society, and he finally saw firsthand why Ayla had given him that warning.
"A noble's word is truth. A noble's word is law!! You can shove a contract in my face and try to turn the world upside down all you like—there are things that do not change!!"
Ereb spat the words out one by one, driving each of them home.
Ereb raised a hand, and the knights behind him drew their swords as one.
Shhhk!
"You want to void it? Go ahead and try. I'll collect the penalty by looting your company's headquarters down to the last brick and selling every stone. And the damages from our ruined plan? I'll take those out of your lives."
Nearly fifty elite knights drawing steel at once produced a pressure so immense it seemed to make the surrounding forest itself tremble. That was the wellspring of their confidence—the reason they could commit this kind of outrage without a flicker of hesitation.
"...Was this the plan from the start?"
Faced with genuine peril, Ayla had gone strangely calm. Perhaps it was because she had clawed her way through countless crises with nothing but a sword in her hand. Now that things had come this far, a hypothesis took shape in her mind with startling clarity.
"What's your relationship with Noas, my vice-captain?"
"Noas?"
"Why is the vice-captain's name coming up here?"
It was the mercenaries, not Ereb, who looked bewildered by the question.
"Something felt off from the beginning. The terms were too generous. Eighty Bronze Plate Mercenaries for a full ten gold... and according to the intelligence Noas brought us, the Forest of Resentment was only B-rank. What mercenary company wouldn't swallow bait that sweet? Isn't that right, young lord?"
Ereb said nothing. His silence was answer enough.
"And just then, the Red Fox Mercenary Group needed results, reputation, and capital to make the leap to a major company... so of course you knew we'd snap it up."
Only then did the mercenaries grasp the shape of the trap. The faces of all eighty of them went pale at once.
"Noas... that bastard was in on this whole rotten scheme? He sent us to our deaths!"
"This is why I opposed the merger! What the hell were we thinking, taking those people in and making him vice-captain?!"
"Watch your mouth—some of us originally came from the Noas company!"
The Red Fox Mercenary Group had absorbed several smaller companies as it grew, and the largest of them had been the Noas Mercenaries. A stable merger had required a concession, and the vice-captain's seat had been the price. There had been internal controversy at the time, but years of the captain and vice-captain working together in apparent harmony had buried the old grievance. Until now. Until the knife went into their backs.
The Village Chief and Leto could only click their tongues at the spectacle.
"There's chaos, and then there's this circus."
"I understand the mercenaries, honestly. If you suddenly found yourself standing at the gates of hell, who wouldn't react like that?"
"Strangely enough, I think I understand how Captain Ayla feels, getting stabbed in the back by her own vice-captain."
"What kind of nonsense is that coming from—why are you looking at me like that? When have I ever stabbed you in the back?"
"Think about it! Before we took that Messi kid in, things between us weren't that bad!"
"They were bad."
"...Were they?"
Leto's bluntness left the Village Chief with nothing to say.
"We're in serious trouble too. The knights brought everyone else along intending to sacrifice them from the start... being guides won't make us an exception."
"And here I thought our luck was turning..."
"I was considering running if it came to it, but after what Sir Ramang said about the formation, even that won't be easy. Splitting the three of us up, one to each unit—that's so they can keep an eye on us."
"...I should've written a will before we left. Aigoo! All that fortune I scraped together like a damn dog, and I never even got to spend it!"
"Hah. How much further do I have to be disappointed in you before you hit rock bottom? Please, just try to maintain some dignity."
"We're all gonna die anyway, what's dignity got to do with it! Leto, you wouldn't happen to have some kind of plan, would you?"
"I don't, but..."
Leto glanced sideways at Messi.
The young man was watching the scene unfold in silence, turning something over in his mind. In Leto's experience, Messi usually came up with a solution after thinking like that.
Three years ago, Barcelo's disciple had appeared out of nowhere and become family. He didn't possess any overwhelming power, but whenever trouble came, he always seemed to have one more card hidden up his sleeve. Just last night, Leto had urged him to run. Messi had thought it over the same way he was thinking now—and then he had said he would take these people into the Forest of Resentment and bring them back out again.
He had to have something in mind.
From the moment the knights' destination had been revealed, Messi's thoughts had been racing. He had expected something like this, to a degree—but having it confirmed was still a shock.
These people... they really were chasing the same thing as Master.
Barcelo had been a former Woodcutter.
Men who cleared the forest, who fought its bizarre natural environment, who faced the endless monsters and ancient magical beasts that came boiling out of it—Woodcutters. Living weapons of the Lumberjack Alliance, an organization the nations had founded together, setting aside their own self-interest for a single purpose: to expand the territory of humankind.
Decades ago, Barcelo had been dispatched here with his comrades, wholly absorbed in the work of pushing the frontier outward.
Until they found the ruins.
It happened, sometimes. In the course of clearing the forest, you would stumble across traces of a civilization that had been there before. Barcelo and his comrades had assumed it was just one of those things, and they had gone in to explore.
The result?
A full withdrawal of every Woodcutter was ordered, and only the people of Benuda Village were forcibly left behind—under the pretext of holding the land.
From what his master had told him, it had left nothing but horrific regret. Many of his fellow Woodcutters had died, and in the midst of it all, Barcelo's own younger sister had been among the dead. Consumed by that grudge, his master had faked his own death, slipped out of the Lumberjack Alliance, and spent decades wandering the forest.
And now these people were saying they would go there.
What are they so confident about?
Messi turned it over carefully. Were these knights actually strong?
Well... they're strong, I'll give them that.
Watching them run roughshod over the Red Fox Mercenary Group made that much obvious. In particular, the moment fifty elite knights had drawn their swords and let their aura surge, it had almost seemed as though the forest itself were crying out. That was no small thing.
But in this situation, there was a far more appropriate yardstick for measuring strength.
Are the knights stronger than Woodcutters?
If they aren't—then how exactly do they plan to explore ruins that even the Woodcutters abandoned?
The only Woodcutter Messi actually knew was his master, Barcelo. So he made the comparison. Were these men stronger than his master?
Messi was no scouter, no living combat-power meter with the eye or the skill to measure such things precisely. But one thing was certain.
Master was strong enough to walk the Forest of Resentment alone...
These knights didn't even have the confidence to pass through it. They were men who intended to throw away the lives of eighty mercenaries just to get across.
They weren't even in the same league.
So what were they all snarling and snapping at each other for?
Even if they sacrificed all eighty mercenaries, the elite knights would all die anyway.
Pffft—!
The laugh surged up before he could stop it, and Messi laughed out loud.
"....."
"....."
"...Is he laughing?"
Every gaze in the clearing swung toward Messi, who had just burst out laughing.