A Junior Visits the Master
The emotion called love inevitably chains into another: expectation. That is why anyone who loves ends up expecting something. Whether it is expectations of one’s parents, of a lover, or of one’s own child—all of it stems from that same root. Especially the kind of parents who, facing a babbling infant, insist, “Look! He just said it! He said ‘Daddy’!” For that very reason, those who love must never forget to constantly guard themselves against being swept away by the expectations that love so readily spawns.
No matter how pure and free of malice the intention might have been, if the other person feels it as malice, then malice is exactly what it becomes. More than anything, delusions and misunderstandings always end up looking ugly, so one has to stay mindful of them simply for the sake of one’s own dignity.
In short, caution is required.
Yes, caution is definitely required… but…
“You understand what I’m saying, right?”
Shake!
“It moved! It just moved!”
The dragon egg was reacting to my words. The motion was so faint that at first I wondered if I was imagining it—like those new parents who hear a baby’s babble and immediately crow, “Look! He said Daddy!” But no. The egg was clearly moving in time with my voice. This was nothing like mistaking infant babble. Objectively, the difference was obvious. Therefore this dragon egg was…!
“A genius?! It hasn’t even hatched yet and it already understands speech!”
I could not help but think so with complete sincerity.
(A dragon egg is a perfect existence; even in its unhatched state it already possesses a self and a level of intellect far beyond any human infant, so of course it could do something this simple. Unfortunately, the only person in this world who actually knew that was Sera, which made Jade’s misunderstanding an entirely natural result!)
Shake! Shake!
“Hahaha! You’re really something, aren’t you! Hahaha!”
“…….”
“Hahaha….”
“…….”
The bright smile on my face froze into something awkward.
When I turned my head, a face I had not seen in a long time was standing there.
The junior I had once taught all sorts of things.
The man who was now called the Mercenary King.
Mercenary King Balik.
I had expected that stubborn streak of his would keep him away for quite a while longer. Instead he had broken every prediction, come looking for me, and arrived at my hermitage at the most unexpected moment imaginable… and so a witness I never thought would see me like this had appeared after all.
In short…
I want to die….
Mercenary King Balik was a man who held the personal philosophy that a real man ought to cling to a little pointless stubbornness. Once he decided something, he did not bend no matter what anyone said. Even so, he knew the difference between stubbornness and obsession.
Stubbornness meant pushing a choice you would never regret even if it killed you. Obsession meant foolishly refusing to let go of something you already knew you would regret after you died.
His head was not sharp enough to draw clean lines and sort the two with perfect clarity… but his instincts were good enough that if what he was doing was only obsession, he could still realize it.
So when Sera had beaten him half to death and, right before he learned her true identity, the thought Ah. I might actually die here crossed his mind… he understood. Refusing to go see Jade had not been stubbornness; it had been obsession. If it had been stubbornness he would have held out to the end, but obsession was a different story. He discarded the obsession and therefore came to see Jade.
…Good thing I got permission first.
He was genuinely glad he had contacted Sera’s side beforehand and received clearance. Looking at the endless traps and magic layered over the mountain, the place rivaled any ancient-civilization dungeon for sheer lethality. Even for Mercenary King Balik—who stood on equal footing with Transcendents who had stepped into the realm of superhumans—the defenses were enough to make him tense.
If he had tried to pull a surprise visit without a word to Sera’s people… just imagining it was terrifying. With defenses this sophisticated, signal magic would have been standard. In other words, after punching through the traps he would have faced Sera with one-hundred-percent certainty. And the Sera he knew was the kind of lunatic who half-killed any intruder first and only then bothered listening to explanations—surprise or no surprise. …No, she might not even listen. That crazy girl was fully capable of just killing him.
Fortunately Balik had given advance notice, so that tragedy never happened. Once again his sharp instincts had saved his life.
…How did my life end up as fragile as a candle in a typhoon?
It was not as if he did not know the reason.
All because of that crazy girl….
And they call someone like her a Hero….
Mercenary King Balik acknowledged Sera as a Hero. No—he had no choice. Strength of that magnitude meant either Hero or Demon King… and she was not the Demon King, so she had to be the He—
Wait. Why had he decided she was not the Demon King? Strength and madness on that level were exactly what a Demon King looked like, weren’t they?
…Of course he was joking.
…Half joking.
As befitting the Mercenary King, he had cleared every kind of high-risk commission imaginable, including plenty that involved demons. Demons carried demonic energy by nature, and tracking that energy was something Mercenary King Balik himself excelled at more than anyone. One look was enough; crossing blades made it even more certain. And from what he had seen, not a single drop of demonic energy flowed through Sera’s body.
Demonic energy cannot be hidden simply because one wishes it. Just as red blood flowing through a human body is natural, demonic energy flowing through a demon is natural. A human cannot change the color of his blood, and a demon cannot alter the very life energy that is demonic energy.
Only after reviewing every one of those basic truths could Balik finally, truly accept that Sera was a Hero rather than the Demon King. Escaping a conspiracy theory turned out to be this difficult. Getting so thoroughly tangled in a theory of his own making that he had to struggle free was no easy feat either—and that alone said a great deal about the image of Sera that lived inside Mercenary King Balik. At the very least she was far closer to Demon King than to Hero.
Anyway… I finally get to see Brother Jade’s face.
He had already heard from Sera that Jade was not in a normal condition. The news had not surprised him. Giving away his own Aura Heart because he did not want his disciple to die—such an absurd act should never happen, yet if Jade had done it, Balik could only nod and say of course he would.
If the world had allowed him an ordinary family and ordinary happiness, Jade possessed the caliber to have become a renowned noble or knight, even a hero whose name rang across the land. Instead the world had thrown him into a living hell, forced him to live as a mercenary, and finally left him to retire alone into quiet seclusion. It was no exaggeration to say the world had stolen a great vessel named Jade away from humanity.
And that man’s disciple was the Hero.
Had everything—the torment the world heaped on Jade—been for the sake of that single outcome?
The thought flashed through Balik’s mind; he immediately shook his head and banished it completely. Even entertaining the idea felt too cruel toward the Jade who had survived that living hell. Such a thought must never be held, and it must never be true. It could not be true. Balik decided to leave it at that.
A dumb guy thinking too hard never ends well.
Still, nothing made time pass faster than overthinking.
Thanks to that, the journey flew by, and—
There it is at last.
—he finally reached Jade’s hermitage.
With his exceptional eyesight he spotted Jade at once.
The ash-gray hair was gone; pure white, drained of every color, stood in its place. One glance told him it was the aftereffect of the body’s balance collapsing after the loss of the Aura Heart. Yet the presence he felt from Jade suggested there was no need to worry about his health.
He had been told that Natural Mana had replaced the Aura Heart and restored the body’s equilibrium… but honestly, no matter how many times the explanation was repeated, his thick skull could not grasp it. That was why he had wanted to see with his own two eyes that Jade was all right. Looking at him now, he could confirm it with certainty.
But what the hell is he doing?
Even if losing the Aura Heart had dulled a master’s senses, the complete failure to notice Balik’s presence was strange. Then he realized Jade was pouring an enormous amount of concentration into something.
A moment later he was forced to watch Jade cradle a large object and practically cheer with both arms raised. It was a sight Mercenary King Balik knew well.
A mercenary buddy of his had retired, opened a shop, and raised a kid; every other day the man would wrap those thick arms around his child and bellow, “This kid’s a genius!” Balik had seen the routine more times than he could count.
That was the exact look.
And the man he truly respected was doing the exact same thing right now.
“Hahaha! You’re really something, aren’t you! Hahaha!”
“…….”
“Hahaha….”
“…….”
An awkward, heavy silence settled over them.
It felt exactly like the atmosphere between a man who had shown something that should never have been seen and a man who had seen something he should never have seen.
As he had said many times before—
Mercenary King Balik might be thick-headed, but his instincts were sharp.
Yes! His instincts were excellent!
His instincts were excellent… yet…!
“…Glad to see you’re healthy, Brother Jade.”
But!
Because his head was empty, there was no way a man like him could have come up with some clever line to break the awkwardness!
“…….”
“…….”
The awkward atmosphere only grew colder, as if the northern wind itself had decided to join in.