The Master's Younger Brother Is Strong
"…What the hell happened last night?"
"Nothing happened…!"
"……."
Balik looked anything but normal, but since he was so determined to hide it, there was no need to force the issue.
He had probably gotten so excited about becoming a Transcendent that he'd stayed up all night testing out his new powers. (The real problem was that he'd been so elated he'd let his guard down and slipped up with his words.) Jade had a rough idea of what had gone on, and if that was the case, it was only natural that Balik would want to keep it secret. So as his older brother, Jade decided to play dumb.
"You heading back?"
"I came without even putting in for leave, so yeah, I gotta get back quick."
"…Hey. Mercenary King."
"Hahahahaha, Mercenary King, you say. Being able to decide my own leave whenever I damn well please is what makes me worthy of the title, ain't it? Hahahahaha!"
"……."
This guy's hopeless…. I've got to do something about him!
But what could a hermit like him do about it now? Worldly affairs should be left to the young people living in the world, right? Saying that made him feel like a doddering old man. Strictly by age he was still very much in his prime, but once you'd retired and gone into seclusion, what did it matter whether you were still "active" or not? He was just a retired hermit now.
Suffer well, young ones. That's how, one step at a time, you become a rotten old veteran.
Jade offered his silent condolences to the young mercenaries who were suffering under a boss like that—and who would continue to suffer.
"Don't bully the kids under you too much. You know as well as I do that there's no such thing as a soft mercenary."
"Yeah, yeah~ I'm more of a veteran than you now, big brother, so don't you worry."
…Hearing him say that only made Jade less able to relax. Making someone this anxious was a talent in its own right, wasn't it?
"Next time I'll bring some good liquor."
"What kind of twisted mind brings liquor as a gift to someone who doesn't drink?"
"In your case it's not that you can't drink, it's that you don't, right? So no problem."
"…There's nothing but problems."
"Heh heh heh! Ah. I received precious teachings, so shouldn't I at least pay for them?"
"I don't take that kind of thing from my little brother."
"Really. It's a good thing you went into seclusion, big brother. If you hadn't… just imagining it…. Ugh."
"…Are you crying?"
"No! Nothing!"
…Had he had a nightmare in his sleep? He was acting really weird.
Far from Jade's hermitage, Balik let out a heavy sigh and muttered to himself.
"Ugh. It's really a good thing big brother went into seclusion."
Given his personality, if he hadn't retired he would still be working himself to the bone for someone else's sake. The problem was that "that girl" would never just sit back and watch. People other than big brother would have had to shed blood in his place, and Balik himself would have been one of the most likely sacrifices. So Balik was genuinely grateful that his big brother had gone into seclusion.
"Ow ow ow. That hurts."
How the hell… could she thrash someone so thoroughly without leaving a single visible mark? This wasn't some cute "I've beaten up a few people" skill—this was the genuine craft of someone who had thoroughly tortured people. And she'd done it with the power of a Transcendent poured into it. There was no way Balik's body could be fine.
The price for letting his guard down had been far too high, so Balik resolved never to let his guard down again and engraved that lesson deep in his heart.
Was that why?
"Is 'this' some kind of divine will telling me to engrave the lesson of never letting my guard down even deeper?"
The entrance to the mountain where the hermitage stood was littered with corpses. They looked like people who had wandered in without knowing better and met a bad end. These weren't herb gatherers who'd come to dig up medicinal plants. A kind of mental barrier magic was set up on the mountain that made ordinary people not even want to enter. In other words, the mere fact that they had set foot on this mountain proved they weren't ordinary people.
"Assassins?"
Targeting big brother?
No, no.
Big brother had long since retired and gone into seclusion.
Rather than someone like that—
"Is it my neck they're after?"
He hadn't gone around committing every kind of vicious crime just because he was strong, but mercenary work was what it was. It was a profession that involved bloodshed, after all. Of course grudges came with the territory. On top of that he was the top dog among those mercenaries—the Mercenary King. Plenty of people wanted his head purely for profit.
"Right. You thought it was a golden opportunity when I left the mercenary guild on my own and came out to a place with no people…. But who knew there'd be traps like this. Thanks to that, all the much younger juniors who followed me saying they wanted to learn a thing or two from this old man are dead. Tsk tsk."
A figure clad entirely in black, practically screaming "I am an assassin," was sitting on a rock. From his posture and aura, Balik could easily tell he was an old man.
Even if assassins didn't value their subordinates highly, to speak of them being smashed like toys with zero emotion, and calling himself "this old man"…. Balik recognized the man's identity at once.
"The Transcendent Assassin? I heard you died ages ago."
"Heh heh heh. As if this old man would die."
The Transcendent Assassin.
It meant exactly what it said.
An assassin who had reached the realm of the Transcendent, and thus the only assassin currently rated capable of assassinating a Transcendent. That was why the moniker "Transcendent Assassin" had stuck to him. He was one of the big shots who wielded immense power in the underworld. But a considerable amount of time had passed since the Transcendent Assassin's activities had ceased, and given how long ago his active period had been, everyone had assumed he was dead.
Who would have thought that Transcendent Assassin would show himself right in front of Balik.
"So why has someone I thought had either retired or died and would never assassinate again suddenly appeared?"
"Is there any special reason? Just as a swordsman cannot discard his sword, just as a mage cannot discard his magic, it is only natural that an assassin cannot discard assassination."
"Just say you went crazy for blood and came back because you missed the taste of it. Why dress it up so grandly? 'A crazy bastard doing crazy shit is only natural.' Just say it like that instead of putting on airs. Aren't you embarrassed?"
"…Insolent. No matter what trick you used to reach the Transcendent realm you could never climb before, do you think you're something special now? At best you're a brand-new entrant to the Transcendent ranks…."
"Haaaaawn. Old fogey, I didn't sleep well last night. If you're gonna boast that a guy like me is nothing special, then prove how fast you can finish me off. Or wait—you're gonna kill me anyway, right? Why blabber on at someone you're about to kill? Is being a psycho your hobby too?"
"YOU LITTLE BASTARD!!!!!!!!!!"
Completely outmaneuvered by Balik's mouth and unable to take it any longer, the Transcendent Assassin lost his reason and decided to kill Balik on the spot. The two crescent-shaped daggers that symbolized him appeared in both hands, revealing their form.
"Hmph! Even if you've become a Transcendent, a swordsman without a sword has his power halved! The price for flapping that trash mouth of yours! I'll take it with your death!"
As if teleporting, he closed in on Balik at literally the speed of light.
The Transcendent Assassin was certain of his victory. It was only natural that a swordsman without a sword couldn't properly display his power. More than anything, without a sword he wouldn't be able to use an Aura Blade properly either. In contrast, his twin daggers were fully coated in Aura Blade.
He reached Balik in an instant and swung both daggers without hesitation.
It's over.
He truly thought so.
And so—
KWA-AAAAANG!!!!
"Gueeeek!!!"
When he let out a bizarre scream and rolled across the ground, even though clear, tremendous pain was radiating from his gut, he couldn't for a moment believe that this was something that had happened to him.
It had already become reality, but his mind couldn't catch up. But that wasn't a problem. The living-hell pain of his guts being completely shredded slammed into his brain and forced him to recognize reality whether he wanted to or not.
"Gueeeeeek! Wh-what! What the hell!!!!!"
Why had he ended up like this?
Why did he have to roll on the ground in this insane pain after attacking a swordsman who wasn't even holding a sword? He felt like he was going crazy from the pain, yet because of that same insane pain he couldn't go crazy—trapped in a horrific living-hell cycle, the Transcendent Assassin couldn't collect his wits at all.
"I heard that by the time you see the Transcendent Assassin's twin daggers, your head's already been cut off…. Total bullshit. You're nothing special."
Looking at the shattered remains of the twin daggers that had been so infamous as symbols of terror, Balik offered that assessment. The process and result were simple. The Transcendent Assassin had charged at him of his own accord, so Balik had simply put an Aura Blade into his fist and finished it in one blow… that was the whole story.
From Balik's perspective it was an utterly hollow conclusion.
To think that his first fight against a Transcendent—excluding the heaven-defying Sera—would end so anticlimactically.
Did I get too strong?
Had he become so strong that he couldn't even feel the joy of battle, left with nothing but a crushing sense of emptiness? That couldn't be how it ended, right? For a moment he felt that fear, but….
Nah. The Demon King's army can't be weak, right? They'll be strong, for sure. Probably….
He decided to place his hopes(?) on the Demon King's army.
"Gueeeek!"
He had taken Balik's fist, loaded with Aura Blade, head-on. Rotten as he was, he was still a Transcendent, so he had protected his body with considerable aura and no hole had opened in his stomach—but Balik's Aura Blade had penetrated straight into his guts, and as a result his insides were an absolute mess. After all, what was on Balik's fist was an Aura Blade, so the basic property of cutting and destroying hadn't changed at all.
"Any last words?"
"W-wait… cough!"
"Yeah, none. Got it."
The Transcendent Assassin had plenty of last words he wanted to leave behind…. Whether Balik had simply decided it was over and chosen not to use his usually excellent situational awareness, or whether his awareness was so good he'd noticed but deliberately pretended not to…. The truth was known only to Mercenary King Balik.
In the end, a being who had once made an entire era tremble in fear and dread with his notoriety met an end so unceremonious that one could hardly believe he had lived such a grand life—an end little different from the nameless Soldier 1 or Soldier 2 that mercenaries commonly encountered on the battlefield.
And the one who had clearly achieved a feat paid it no mind, as if it were nothing special. Instead, he….
"Haa…. I'm gonna have to clean all this up myself, aren't I? …If I don't, that girl will definitely say something…. Ugh."
He was too busy fretting over the cleanup to care about anything else.