The Disciple Is Working Off Her Bad Mood
Master Lars left, taking the elf Riel with him.
That girl looked like she had a lot she wanted to say, though.
She had seemed bursting with things she wanted to tell him, yet in the end Riel departed without a word. Her face had looked almost as if someone had threatened her into silence… Who could possibly intimidate an elf of all people? No one short of the Demon King, maybe. But no being capable of threatening an elf like that could exist right now, so it was pure imagination on his part. She had probably just had too much to say and no idea how to say any of it. Next time she came by, he ought to treat her a little better, Jade thought, and returned to his ordinary routine.
According to Master Lars, the World Tree had not only granted him her protection but a blessing as well. The effect was tremendous — every discomfort in his body had vanished completely. On top of that, the amount of Natural Mana he could hold within himself had increased. At this level, he felt he could handle a fair amount of combat.
This should be more than enough to take on a B-class mercenary.
Part of him wanted nothing more than to follow after Master Lars and Riel.
…But he decided against it.
Honestly, ever since he had gained Natural Mana as a means of attack, a quiet longing had kept flickering at the edge of his heart. Couldn't he fight at Sera's side too? That desire kept trying to take root inside him. But he knew it was greed, so he always brushed it away — and by now, he had fully abandoned that wish.
His role was to wait here for his disciple to return. That was the part he had to play.
Leaving everything to the kid and sitting back here like some old man in the rear was not what he wanted either…
But as he was now, he was of little help to his disciple. If anything, he might become a hostage, or his death might deal her some terrible blow — there was no way of knowing. Staying put was clearly the better way to help her. Knowing when to step up and when to stay out of the way was basic sense for any mercenary.
"Still, she could have at least shown her face when she came with Master Lars… I'm sure she had her reasons."
He reflected for a moment on how childish he had been.
It was no exaggeration to call this age of chaos by another name: the Age of Bandits. No matter how many you wiped out, they kept springing up like weeds or vermin, throwing the world into disorder. The knight orders stationed in the Imperial Capital — the strongest force in the Empire — had no interest in what happened out on the frontiers, and the local lords, afraid that depleting their troops on bandit-hunting would leave them open to a stab in the back, refused to move aggressively either.
And that was the cute version of the problem.
Plenty of lords simply looked the other way, seduced by the tribute the bandits offered. The shrewder bandits paid their dues to the local lord, left anything connected to him alone, and plundered merchants and commoners to their hearts' content. From a lord's perspective, what came back outweighed the damage done to him, so he pretended not to notice. Of course, the merchants and commoners had to live in misery — but any lord who cared about that would never have taken bribes from bandits in the first place. Expecting anything more from garbage lower than filth was a waste of mental energy.
The Belk Bandit Guild, which had claimed Yorka Mountain as its base of operations, was one such case. Belk himself looked like a brute built for nothing but raw strength contests, a man whose head didn't seem to turn at all — but appearances were deceiving. He had the cunning of a fox. With a bear's power and a fox's mind, he was perfectly suited to succeed as a bandit, and that was how he had risen from nothing, bare-handed, all the way to the head of a bandit guild that bore his own name.
He diligently paid bribes to the surrounding lords, carefully avoided anything connected to them, and thoroughly fleeced merchants and commoners. But the Belk Bandit Guild's fate was never meant to last long. Before long, Hero candidates who had finished their training under countless superhumans and masters would start hunting down every bandit they could find, seeking fame so they might be recognized as true Heroes. The Belk Bandit Guild was simply one of those that would fall.
And so —
The Belk Bandit Guild should not have ended yet.
Not unless they had the misfortune of running into a certain Hero candidate who was in a foul mood and desperately needed something to take it out on.
"There's only one of them! One! Don't be afraid!"
Boss Belk, shouting at his men not to be afraid, looked like the most terrified of them all. And with good reason — a small girl had appeared swinging an Aura Blade, smashing through their stronghold and turning the place into a slaughterhouse. Anyone who didn't feel fear at that would have been the sort of talent who should have gone to the Imperial Capital to take the knight exams instead of playing bandit in the sticks. No such great vessel existed here, so everyone was busy panicking and preparing to flee. But even if they tried to run, they couldn't —
"Gyaaaaah!"
"S-Spare me…! Gueeeek!"
The Hero candidate's advance was so fast they didn't even have time to beg for their lives.
In the end, every bandit except Boss Belk had become a corpse.
"…I'd like to surrender…"
"……"
A moment later, Boss Belk got to watch his own torso topple over.
Originally, this bandit guild was supposed to put an inexperienced Hero candidate through every kind of hardship, giving her real combat experience — and, from Belk's perspective, he would have died a regrettable death. In this life, it had ended far too hollowly.
Having rewritten yet another future, Hero candidate Sera called for William, who was busy cleaning up behind her.
"Any more around here?"
"…No, my lord. There are none."
The lack of strength in William's voice was only natural. Even a Grand Mage was still a mage, and stamina problems were inevitable. More than that, Sera had been rounding up every villain in the region as a way of working off her mood, and ferrying her around with teleportation magic while trailing after her had become extreme hard labor.
"Hey! No! I don't want to work! No rest since dawn! I'm tired! I'm tired, I said!"
Riel, who had somehow ended up joining as a companion, shrieked. But when Sera quietly looked at her…
"……"
She shut her mouth.
Riel found Sera unsettling. She had stuck close because she couldn't stand the idea of a young human girl carrying the burden of a Hero candidate and fighting alone — but even so, whenever she looked at Sera…
The master is special in his own way, and the disciple is special in hers.
They were completely different, though. Where the master had shown her something precious as a treasure, the disciple had shown her things from the very bottom of the bottom — things so terrible she would have preferred to erase them from memory if she could. But she had already seen them, and the fact that a little human girl carried such things bothered her so much she couldn't help but stay by her side. For all that her speech and manner seemed endlessly childlike, Riel was a kindhearted elf.
"But if he's your master, why are you hiding it so hard?"
She had stayed by Jade's side while he slept, fretting over whether something was wrong with him, and the moment it seemed he would soon regain consciousness she had slipped away, forcing Riel to keep her existence an absolute secret. So Riel had had no choice but to tell Jade that she and William had been the ones looking after him… but she still couldn't understand it at all.
"……"
Sera, faced with Riel — who was female but had lived her whole life with no connection to love or anything of the sort — had no confidence she could explain it in a way that would properly convince her. So she simply kept her mouth shut.
In the end, William stepped in with a strategy of vague deflection.
"Ahem! Do not question your lord's will, elf."
"Just call me Riel, Grand Mage. Or I might just go tell her master that you're a Grand Mage who's been lying to him!"
"This, too, is my lord's will."
"……"
Told it was on Sera's orders, Riel clamped her mouth shut. Pushing further would mean challenging Sera's will, wouldn't it? That was too frightening. She had stayed because Sera concerned her… but hard was hard, and scary was scary.
"So there's nowhere left around here to clean out, right?"
At Riel's pointed remark, William nodded.
"…Hah."
Sera let out a breath.
She still had a lot of bad mood left to work off…
But putting William and Riel through any more strain on her account didn't feel right, so she decided to stop.
"I'll stop."
"Yesss!!!!!!"
Riel threw her arms up in celebration.
"Are you all right, my lord?"
"It's a bit short of enough, but it can't be helped."
"……"
The fact that she still had stress left after unloading it on that many villains sent a chill down William's spine. Thank goodness he had lived a decent life. Thank goodness his lord was on his side. William couldn't help thinking so with pure, sincere gratitude.
"It's about time the other Hero candidates start making their rounds."
"Already, my lord?"
"I'm already out and about, aren't I?"
"……"
Do you have any conscience? Putting yourself on the same level as those kids — what did they ever do to deserve that?
He nearly blurted it out, but as a man who served Lord Sera and had reached the pinnacle of social survival skills, he did not commit that mistake.
"Hey! Are those kids anything like you?!"
That, of course, did not apply to the elf Riel, who lived with zero concept of social tact.
"Anyway, I think it's time to start rolling out what we've prepared."
"Already, my lord?"
"Momentum matters in battle, and the simplest way to seize it is to move first."
This was the part of his lord that William admired most. His lord was not merely strong. She was wise and overwhelmingly powerful at once. Grasping both wisdom and strength was never easy — something that took a truly long time to cultivate. Yet his lord handled both as if she had possessed them from the moment she was born.
As expected, my lord is…
From the conversation between his lord and the World Tree, William had glimpsed a certain possibility — but he did not make the mistake of putting it into words. If it was something he needed to know, his lord would tell him first. If it was something he should not know, then not knowing to the very end was his role.
He would simply give his all to the part he had to play.