Chapter 82: The Tin Knight and The City of Struggle (1)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 82: The Tin Knight and The City of Struggle (1)
Even after holding a funeral for the father and daughter, the party couldn't leave The Garden right away.
The reason was that two of their horses had met their untimely end during the battle with the tree.
Even for these celebrated steeds, which had achieved the feat of using a carriage as a booster, there was no resisting the intense fragrance of the super-fusion warp evolution opium poppy, a plant that casually defied the common sense of its species. The party had no choice but to send them off peacefully.
Naturally, they needed another way to transport the luggage the horses were meant to carry.
Dorothea made a suggestion.
“It doesn’t have to be a proper carriage, but couldn’t we build a simple cart?”
There was plenty of wood to use as material, and some carriage parts had even surfaced when the lake bottom rose.
Cutting things was mostly possible with sword energy, and a smack from the Tin Knight’s palm was as good as a hammer.
The party immediately got to work.
Clang! Clang! Clang! Crack!
And immediately failed.
“Hey! You tin can! Control your strength!”
[The ‘Tin Knight’ says his hand slipped!]
[The ‘Tin Knight’ insists that skill proficiency is naturally gained through repeated failure!]
[The ‘Tin Knight’ boasts that he’s got the hang of it now and that his future self will know no failure!]
“Do you have any idea how many times you’ve said that!? You’ve broken three wheels already! Get out of here!”
The Tin Knight’s crafting ability was nothing short of catastrophic.
His usual destructive touch, last seen when he’d cooked a meal with the meat of bandits he’d beaten to a pulp, was on full display once again.
Along with the few usable carriage parts, Dorothea’s plan was mercilessly shattered.
Adel made a suggestion.
“Um, in a novel I read, the main characters tame the animals of the forest and befriend them. This place is huge, so shouldn’t there be an animal that could replace the horses?”
The question of whether it would be better to just have the undead carry the luggage was meaningless.
The witch had vehemently opposed it, arguing that while it might be fine in some remote forest far from prying eyes, they would be branded an evil organization the moment they tried such a thing on their way to a city.
It was a truly futile resistance, given that the party’s alignment was already leaning toward chaotic, but the witch also had the strongest voice in the group. Adel’s ‘alternative’ was smoothly accepted.
The party immediately began recruiting new companions.
“Oh, excuse me. Would you like a bite of this—”
Screeeech!
Rustle!
This, too, ended in failure.
[The ‘Tin Knight’ is impressed by the water deer’s swift escape!]
[The ‘Tin Knight’ assesses that it must have been well-educated by its parents, seeing as it didn’t follow a stranger offering food!]
“Ha, haha. Ahaha. Novels and reality are different, I see. Yes. …Still, I don’t think they needed to freak out like they were seeing a being from another world…”
Adel’s eyes were as vacant as a doll’s.
Though she was now as limp as waterlogged seaweed, this was, in a way, her own doing.
Even the most vicious dog, one that looks down on people as less than its own claws, will tremble before a dog catcher.
It was impossible to expect wild animals to approach her in a friendly manner when, even if not to the same extent as the Tin Knight, she had spent her time in The Garden hack-and-slashing countless predators.
Worse, the Tin Knight was stuck to her side. To the surviving animals, it was like seeing the Demon Lord standing side-by-side with one of her top generals.
Sophia made a suggestion.
“Miss Adel, could you lend me a hand for a moment? Ah, yes. Sir Tin Knight. You can just supervise from the side. You don’t have to touch anything. It’s okay. Please don’t touch anything.”
The Tin Knight, whose inclusion in any task sent efficiency plummeting into the negatives, was the first to be excluded from the work. She was indeed a woman with a good head on her shoulders.
Sophia had Adel gather two Y-shaped branches of suitable thickness and similar shape, then used a few other branches and some tough vines to bind them together.
[The ‘Tin Knight’ exclaims, It’s an A-frame carrier! We have an A-frame carrier!]
Fortunately, the third plan did not fail. This party certainly made something as simple as moving luggage a difficult affair.
The smaller items gathered from the forest went into Dorothea’s pouch, while the large, heavy ones were stacked neatly on the A-frame carrier shouldered by the Tin Knight.
The most conspicuous among them were the pieces of wood that radiated intense mana.
“Um, is it really okay for us to take this?”
“Of course we have to take it. This tree absorbed mana and life force for over a hundred years, acting as the heart of The Garden. It’s perfect for a staff, and it’ll be useful for making other tools, too.”
The wood, which had been a deep green during their fight, was slowly turning black now that the battle was over.
Its once-pliable texture was also hardening, feeling less like a living thing and more like metal.
It was so tough that it was difficult to process into a manageable size without projecting sword energy.
“Alright, we’ve packed everything we need. Let’s go.”
At Dorothea’s declaration, the party set off.
*
Hindler, a mercenary operating in the northern Lydia Empire, let out a grumble.
“Shit. I’m starving to death. Hey, you got anything to eat?”
“Sure. See that grass on the ground? Go chew on it.”
“Want me to shove it in your mouth for you?”
Hindler sighed heavily.
Dammit. How did my life end up like this?
It had been three years since he’d left his hometown, sick of the endless days of farming.
His ambition to become a famous adventurer had ended the moment he was defeated by a plump, well-fed city mouse. It was physically finished for good after he was caught stealing from the luggage he was hired to carry for another adventurer party.
After being kicked out of the guild, he drifted around until he was hired by a mercenary group about a year ago.
His dream of making a name for himself as a veteran mercenary on the battlefield, if he couldn’t succeed as an adventurer, was shattered during his very first ‘mercenary job.’
Burglarizing empty houses. Extorting money from traveling merchants. Mooching off villages under the pretext of dealing with monsters.
That’s right. The group Hindler had joined was a mercenary group in name only; in reality, they were no different from a band of thieves.
The mercenary captain who had recruited him claimed these were just side jobs they were forced to do to survive, since opportunities for their main line of work were rare. But as far as Hindler could see, this was their main line of work.
The reason was obvious.
It was less likely to get on the Empire’s bad side if they maintained this flimsy deception rather than operating openly as bandits.
The Empire was a military powerhouse.
Out in the lawless eastern part of the continent, where the state’s power and influence were weak, bandits might seize cities and plunder perfectly good domains. But trying that in the Empire would get your belly slit and your head stuck on a pike the very next day.
However, since the Empire’s human and material resources didn’t just spring from the ground, it dealt decisively with matters that made it think, ‘Who does this bastard think he is?’ but showed a lukewarm response to issues that were more along the lines of, ‘Good grief, no matter how many of these we deal with, more just keep popping up. Tsk, tsk.’
It was a kind of survival strategy to get beaten less by their terrifying big brother and to stay out of sight as much as possible.
“Hey, hey, everyone look sharp! We’ve got ‘customers’ coming!”
At the captain’s words, the bandits—no, the mercenaries—who had been sprawled about like carelessly discarded socks, slowly began to stir.
The place where they were waiting was called Lampe Gorge No. 4.
It wasn’t exactly a strategic point one had to pass through to get from the north to the west of the Empire.
Places like that had proper checkpoints and were not locations where people of their fluid profession could dare to set up camp.
But this route did have a road wide enough for a carriage, and once in a blue moon, travelers would pass by.
And those travelers were the mercenary group’s primary customers.
Watching the approaching figures from afar, the members began to mutter.
“Three women and one man?”
“Isn’t he a porter, not a knight? Why is he carrying so much stuff?”
“He’s wearing armor, isn’t he?”
“Holy shit. Look at that woman in black in the middle. What a body.”
Hindler squinted, observing the travelers carefully.
Each member of the group was uniquely individualistic. The most striking, and the one who best fit the description of ‘beautiful,’ was the woman in black, but the other two were not far behind in looks. It was a matter of personal preference, really.
They were all so well-dressed that it was a wonder why they were walking without a single carriage.
But what truly caught Hindler’s eye wasn’t the women, but the knight.
It wasn’t that Hindler had any special preferences.
What he was focused on was the luggage the knight was carrying.
…That’s not a weight an ordinary person can handle.
It was hard to tell his exact height because of the armor, but the knight was a big man, at least 180 centimeters tall.
And the pile of luggage on his back was twice his height. What’s more, it was stacked high with what looked like logs, so it couldn’t be light.
“Hmph.”
The mercenary captain also seemed to have noticed that their targets were not ordinary, letting out a low grunt.
Feeling a sense of foreboding, Hindler hoped the captain would call off the ‘business,’ but the others seemed to think differently.
“Captain.”
The members stared at the captain with intense eyes.
They were all grimy and gaunt from not eating properly.
The idea of skillfully running a side business without angering the Empire sounded plausible, but such ‘exquisite jobs’ didn’t come by easily.
The day before yesterday, they had to let a merchant caravan surrounded by a guard unit pass. The day before that, they had to pretend not to see a group of knights and mages in what were clearly high-quality clothes. And yesterday, they’d tried to do business with a crazy-eyed lunatic, but he moved so fast they failed before they could even speak to him.
The only reason the group hadn’t imploded was because it was small enough to get by with hunting and gathering. But if they didn’t show some ‘results’ soon, discontent was bound to explode.
In the end, the captain made the decision Hindler had dreaded.
“Hey there, young ladies!”
“Hm?”
Their band of mercenary-thieves blocked the party’s path.
Though they numbered just under ten, surrounding a group of only four was no problem at all.
The mercenary captain spoke with a sly expression.
“This road ahead is dangerous, full of bandits and monsters. If it’s all the same to you, how about we provide an escort?”