Four Months After the Disciple Left
Four months had passed since Sera left.
By diligently practicing the Elf's Breathing Method and carefully taking every potion her mage companion had left behind, I hardly coughed anymore. Even so, reclaiming my former strength still felt impossibly distant. Not that I had been sitting idle.
If I had no Aura Heart, I would simply make a new one.
I had thought it that simply—and nearly died for it.
It seemed the gods' blessing of an Aura Heart was granted only one to a person.
That much confirmed, beyond any doubt, that I was useless as help to my disciple. I had thought that if I could remake my Aura Heart, that young girl might not have to fight alone on that hellish battlefield… but that had been far too greedy a wish.
If I already used the grace the gods gave me for my disciple's sake, wanting anything more is pure greed, isn't it…
That was when I heard it.
…She's here.
A sound came through the underbrush.
Something sleek and light, moving while concealing its presence as much as possible—I heard that sound.
I specialized in the sword. But that did not mean I used only the sword. For a mercenary, the more skills the better—that much was obvious. More than anything, weapons breaking on the battlefield was a given. So picking up whatever weapons lay around and fighting with them was the most basic and necessary skill for survival. That was why, starting from the sword, skills with spears, axes, and other weapons common on the battlefield had to be learned as basics.
And if you wanted to expand your range of activity further, you had to learn the bow. I was a diligent mercenary who never considered that kind of investment a waste of time. In other words, I…
Creeeak!
…was pretty damn good at archery too.
Thud!
A red-furred fox was struck cleanly by my arrow and collapsed on the spot.
"I shot it myself, but it's still amazing."
This fox's red fur was extremely special. That was because mana flowed through it. Just as humans absorbed natural mana and turned it into aura or magical power, animals living in nature could also produce certain results through that natural mana. In this fox's case, it was this red fur. As fur with mana flowing through it, it was no ordinary fur. When attacked, it had the property of hardening like metal.
That was why ordinary hunters' arrows could not put a scratch on it. If you touched it without knowing better, you could end up as the fox's daily meal instead. So unless it was an arrow imbued with aura, catching this fox was something you should simply give up on. The problem was that an arrow with enough aura to damage this fox was so destructive that it ruined the pelt too badly. In other words, even if you managed to catch it with difficulty, the damage was so severe that it was hard to get a proper price. It was money, sure, but somehow it always felt like you lost more than you gained—that was the northern specialty that was not quite a specialty: the red-furred fox.
…But I seemed to be the exception. Because my arrows killed the red-furred fox cleanly without damaging its pelt at all, snuffing out its life in one shot.
"…I never thought the Elf's Breathing Method would make even this possible."
By continuously using the Elf's Breathing Method, at some point a strange power had formed inside me. It was so faint and vanished in an instant that at first I did not even know it was there… until I tried to create a new Aura Heart, failed, and tasted tremendous pain—that was when I realized something was inside me.
After various experiments, I learned it was natural mana. The Elf's Breathing Method was a skill that absorbed natural mana as-is to activate the body. But my body was not an elf's. Meaning I could not use the Elf's Breathing Method at one hundred percent. And as a result, I could not perfectly absorb one hundred percent of the natural mana taken in through the Elf's Breathing Method, so the unabsorbed natural mana stayed in my body before returning to nature.
Anyway, that meant natural mana was inside me.
So I could not help but gamble on it.
And the result was being able to cleanly kill a red-furred fox with a single arrow like this.
"Looks like my wallet will be nice and fat again today."
Thanks to selling the red-furred foxes at high prices, my empty wallet situation had started to become solid again.
"I need to save up a lot."
I believed my disciple was a true hero, but that was exactly why I worried. A hero! A hero! Was there any profession that left you as broke as being a hero? It seemed like you would earn a lot, but in the end you probably could not put any of it properly into your own wallet, right? Plus, in my disciple's case, she did not seem like she would care about money problems at all.
"Filling what the disciple lacks is the master's role."
So that even if my disciple returned with a light wallet, there would be no problem, I was diligently filling my own wallet solidly.
"She's not getting scammed somewhere, is she?"
There really was no end to the things to worry about with my disciple.
Still, I was relieved thinking she would at least be eating well…
"It tastes terrible."
"Heh heh, that can't be. This is the skill of a chef who used to work in the imperial palace."
"Bad taste is just bad taste."
Meanwhile, Sera was lightly betraying the faith of her master who had believed she would be eating well. The Archmage William shook his head, thinking she was truly an impossible lord, and opened the fruit lunch box he had prepared. William could not help but seriously wonder more and more whether there had been an elf among Sera's ancestors.
"I can hardly believe it even seeing it with my own eyes. For someone of the Archmage's caliber to be waiting on a girl so much younger than himself…"
"Did you ever think this place would end up looking like this?"
"…When you put it that way, I have nothing to say."
The master of the empire's top information guild Dark Moon, and one of the three people counted as rulers of the underworld—
Madam Rain.
Since sitting in such a high position that she was called a ruler of the underworld, she had lived without knowing hardship. The other two mentioned as underworld rulers were busy fighting madly to become the king of the underworld, but she had no particular interest in the throne of the underworld. More precisely, it was because she was confident she could sit on that throne whenever she wanted. Even if one of the two lost or won and became a strong candidate for king, she was confident she could reverse it anytime, cut off that person's head, and sit on the underworld throne dirtied with that blood. It was not mere confidence. The fact that she had the ability to do so was true.
Information as a weapon was that powerful.
So she had been certain her domain would never be sullied.
She could never have imagined a day would come when it would be proven how fleeting and trivial that thought was. But that was her reality at this very moment.
"Cough! Cough!"
"Guh!"
The top bodyguards she had trusted were all collapsed on the floor unable to get up, and everything she had beautifully decorated was a complete mess. And to the girl who had ruined her daily life, she could do nothing but treat her as a guest.
There was only one law that existed in the underworld.
The strong eat the weak.
Just because she used information as a weapon did not mean she was not a person of the underworld. If it was clear the other party was the strong one, even if it was a girl younger than herself, she had to bow her head.
Because that was the one and only law of the underworld.
More than anything—
Without even the Archmage's help, with her own power alone…
In the first place, someone of the Archmage's level would not act like a subordinate for no reason. A strong one who could make even the Archmage offer such loyalty… someone who, if she felt like it, could cut off her neck anytime…
Where on earth did such an absurdly strong person come from…
Moreover, she was young. And silver hair… With such a special appearance and such strong power, even if she wanted to hide it, she should not be able to…
At that moment, Madam could recall a certain piece of information.
"Don't tell me… the Hero candidate…"
"So you already had all the information on the Hero candidates, huh?"
"……"
Those words were as good as confirmation that what she had said was true.
She had heard the information that there was a silver-haired girl Hero candidate who had talent but showed no motivation herself, so she had been sent to an A-rank mercenary… but she had not paid much attention. A Hero candidate who learned under an A-rank mercenary did not seem like she would amount to much. But that seemed to have been a tremendous misconception.
These were not people she had chosen as bodyguards for no reason. It was a guard unit composed of the absolute best experts who could easily win even against Hero candidates who had entered the realm of superhumans. Yet she had taken them all down alone so easily. And without killing a single one… Even non-warriors could understand. Killing was easier than subduing without killing. Especially subduing a strong one of expert level without killing them, keeping them alive… was impossible unless one was in the "realm of transcendents."
The girl in front of me is in the "realm of transcendents"?
She could not believe it.
But it was reality.
In the information business, there were countless cases like this. Moments of "Is this for real?" that you ran into. But in the end, what you saw with your own two eyes never changed.
She could not believe it, but
Having confirmed it with her own eyes,
This was reality.
"It seems I've learned who the true Hero is even before the imperial family."
"I don't particularly want to become a Hero, but if the one who kills the Demon King is the Hero, then I am the Hero."
"If not you, who else could become the true Hero? Then, may I ask what business such a person has with me?"
"I came to get a promise."
"A promise, you say?"
"Yes."
"What kind of promise?"
"You can sell as much information about me as you want. But never sell any information about my master."
"…I've been in this business for quite a while, but this is a first."
There were people who came asking not to sell their own information, but it was the first time someone said it was fine to sell their own information but not to sell information about a person related to them.
"I know that asking not to sell information about me is an impossible request. But not selling information about my master is something perfectly possible, isn't it?"
"But just because I don't sell it doesn't mean other information guilds won't…"
"I know that all the information guilds are in your hands."
"……!"
Madam could not help but be shocked. The fact that she had secretly taken control of all the underworld's information guilds without even the imperial family's shadows knowing was a secret among secrets known only to her closest confidants. Information that had never been leaked to anyone. As someone who dealt in information, she also knew perfectly how to hide information most completely. So even at this moment she could be certain. The information had not been exposed. But the girl before her eyes had found it out. As if she were seeing the future.
It was an absurd thought, but…
If she had such an ability, reaching the realm of transcendents at that age was also a story that made sense.
"I don't bring up things I can't do in the first place. I'm bringing this up because you can do it."
"…First, I'd like to apologize for speaking falsehoods."
"It's fine. For people of the underworld, lying is more natural than speaking the truth, right?"
It might sound like a tremendously discriminatory remark, but that was the truth. Among people living in the underworld, it was no exaggeration to say there was no one who felt more familiar with truth than lies and cherished the truth. It was full of people who would extract drinking money by saying their parents who had raised them for a long time had died without them being able to properly repay their filial piety, then the next day extract drinking money by saying it was the day their parents had abandoned them long ago—that was the people of the underworld.
"You speak as if you've lived in the underworld before?"
"Who knows."
Sera had lived many lives.
Among them, of course, there had been experiences living as a resident of the underworld.
And once,
she had even served the woman before her eyes
as a master,
and called her older sister, having a closer relationship than anyone else.
It was a reality and future that no longer existed for Madam, though.
There had been times when that felt sad to Sera,
but to her now, it no longer felt like sadness.