Yet Another Ambush
In truth, the greatest reason Rodeban was heading north was the purification of his Magic Eye.
A fundamental cure for his injuries required purifying the Magic Eye, and the materials needed for that process were in the North.
A station attendant’s voice suddenly cut through his thoughts.
“We welcome the young lady.”
Before he knew it, they were standing before the train. Seria boarded the VIP car first with familiar strides, and Rodeban trailed after her a little timidly. It was his first time in a VIP car, after all. He took one look around the interior and his eyes lit up.
Oh.
It seemed they had reserved an entire car. Taking the lighting, the décor, and the overall atmosphere into account…
Nice.
Very nice indeed. He settled into his seat with a satisfied air. A station attendant standing to one side spoke up.
“Please let me know if you need anything.”
Rodeban raised his hand as if he’d been waiting for exactly that.
“In that case, some wine…”
They hadn’t given him any alcohol at the Theresevan estate. Honestly, he had no idea what malnutrition had to do with drinking, but still. Seria, who had just taken her seat a moment later, cut him off.
“Absolutely not. Lord Rodeban, you’re still an injured man. You’re under a ban on alcohol.”
The attendant smiled politely at the young lady’s words. As if the client’s word took absolute priority, he didn’t move an inch. Rodeban turned a pitiful gaze on Seria.
“J-just one glass…”
An appeal to emotion. But she shook her head firmly.
“No. Lord Rodeban. I’ve heard rumors that you’re something of a heavy drinker… Perhaps this is a good chance to cut back a little.”
“…How does the young lady know about that?”
Rodeban protested. Seria pulled a magazine from a rack in the corner of the VIP car. It was The Empire Journal.
“There was an article a few months ago.”
“It’s all blatant lies. You mustn’t believe a word of it.”
“Heh. They tend to mix truth with falsehood. For example…”
She flipped through a few pages, then read aloud.
“Hero of the Battle of Winterfelt, Rodeban, expected to marry Theresevan von Elise after retirement. Now, which part of that do you suppose is the truth mixed in?”
“…”
“Why do you think Lady Theresevan couldn’t return to her family estate right away?”
“…I yield.”
Rodeban nodded hastily. He thought he knew the answer, and he really didn’t want to hear it spoken out loud. If he did, Elise would no longer feel like his former comrade-in-arms.
“I won’t drink.”
“A wise decision.”
A sudden vibration ran through the car. The train was departing.
Chiiiik…
As the scenery outside the windows began to slide past, Seria spoke.
“You’re welcome to sleep. It takes about seven hours to reach Freyagrad Station. I’ll wake you when we arrive.”
Rodeban stared at her without a word. Was it just his imagination that her words sounded an awful lot like forget about drinking and go the hell to sleep? Then Seria smiled gently and repeated herself for emphasis.
“Please sleep.”
“…Yes.”
Apparently he’d read her correctly. Rodeban glared at her for a moment… but since glaring was all he could do, he simply closed his eyes. This was the gulf of status, plain and simple. If she told him to sleep, he slept. He muttered gruffly,
“Please wake me when we arrive.”
She nodded softly.
“Of course. I’ll take care of some work in the meantime.”
Scratch, scratch.
A pleasant sound drifted through the darkness. She seemed to be writing something with a pen. Sleep came over him with startling speed… He was always tired. The Magic Eye was greedily devouring every scrap of mana his heart produced. With great power came great responsibility… no, great fatigue.
Just as drowsiness had claimed about half his body, a faintly incredulous voice drifted over from across the way.
—…He’s already asleep.
He was in a half-sleep state, so he could still roughly make out what was said.
She told me to sleep in the first place…
With that thought, Rodeban sank fully into slumber.
His eyes opened of their own accord. But there was nothing natural about it. He was the sort of man who only woke when someone else shook him awake—just as he had woken to Elise’s voice back in the capital. Which meant that right now… his body, sensing danger, had forcibly dragged his consciousness back to the surface.
What now…
Rodeban first checked his weapons. He ran his fingers over the single sword hanging at his hip. It was a gift from Elise long ago. It had the ability to store a certain amount of mana, which made it extremely useful for him—a weapon that could briefly turn a man who couldn’t use mana into a proper knight.
…Why is it so quiet?
Rodeban looked around.
“…”
Silence. Aside from the rattle of the train, everything was still. Everyone had fallen asleep.
Snooore—
The young lady was slumped over the table, breathing softly in her sleep, while the guards had collapsed right where they stood, sprawled across the floor as if their postures had simply given out. Rodeban instinctively sniffed the air.
They released a sleeping agent. Smells like mushrooms.
At that moment, the door to the VIP car opened.
Creeeak—
A large man stepped in from the rear car. He wore a black mask over his face, but the moment Rodeban saw the thick axe strapped to his back, he knew exactly who the man was.
Red Axe Veraoke.
A named threat. Veraoke was a notorious underworld mercenary—a wanted man with a hefty bounty on his head. Famous for his meticulous planning; the sleeping powder filling the train car was almost certainly his handiwork.
Aigoo…
Rodeban sighed inwardly. He had no idea what the man was after, but he was already feeling exhausted. What kind of lunatic assaulted a train carrying a northern noble young lady?
Veraoke, who had been walking slowly forward, suddenly spotted Rodeban. His eyes went wide with admiration.
“What the—? How are you still awake? That powder knocks out even an elephant-class magic beast in one hit.”
Rodeban answered through half-lidded eyes.
“Is that so… Honestly, my eyes are still trying to close even now.”
His mind was actually clearer than usual, but he pretended to be drowsy anyway. Ever since he’d gained the Magic Eye, poisons barely affected him, so it wasn’t particularly surprising. Veraoke clicked his tongue.
“Listen here, half-demon brother. I only came for your Magic Eye… How about we make this clean and simple? Hand over the eye and I’ll walk away right now.”
“Half-demon” was the nasty nickname he’d earned because of the Magic Eye’s grotesque appearance. Not a moniker he particularly liked, which was why Rodeban always wore an eyepatch.
This bastard. Poking at someone’s complex.
Rodeban spoke with a face that looked ready to drift off at any second.
“Ah… all right. Then just a moment…”
“Good. Glad we can talk sense.”
He slowly rose from his seat. He swayed and shuffled as if still thick with sleep. Since this was more or less how he looked every morning, the act came easily.
First, put some distance between us.
Veraoke watched him with a sudden note of suspicion.
“What are you doing?”
Rodeban, still creating distance, slowly turned around and said,
“Ah… well… on second thought… I don’t think I can. Digging out an eyeball… that’s just too terrifying, you know?”
His tone dragged with exaggerated seriousness. Even he was starting to think the acting was terrible when Veraoke’s face twisted in disbelief and he seized the axe from his back.
“What? Who the hell do you think you’re trying to outsmart?”
The axe was nearly the size of a man’s torso; one solid hit would tear a body clean apart.
“Cocky little shit. I’ll start by chopping off your arms and legs one by one. That ought to wake you up.”
Veraoke cocked the axe back over his shoulder, then brought it down in a massive vertical chop. Rodeban could have drawn his sword to meet it, but instead he simply stepped back and dodged.
No reason to give him a straightforward contest of strength.
BOOM—!
The red axe slammed into the floor with a hair’s breadth to spare. Staring at the axe buried in the steel plating, Rodeban gauged Veraoke’s level.
Two ranks slower than me.
Which meant that at the critical moment, a single surprise attack would be enough to overwhelm him.
“You bastard…”
The eyes behind the mask narrowed, and a series of wide horizontal sweeps came crashing down one after another—attacks that used the full rotation of his body to generate power. Rodeban darted this way and that inside the narrow train car, fleeing.
Whoosh, whoosh—
The sound of the axe carving through empty air was thoroughly vicious. He intended to dodge by the barest margins so Veraoke couldn’t properly gauge the difference in speed. As a result, goosebumps prickled along Rodeban’s own spine as he weaved. Veraoke spoke.
“Even retired, a hero’s still a hero, is that it? You’re pretty damn fast for someone who just sucked down sleeping powder.”
After dodging the axe several more times, Rodeban found himself backed up against the opposite entrance. His face still looked ready to tumble straight into dreamland. Veraoke approached with a low chuckle.
“End of the line, half-demon hero. How do you plan on dodging now?”
As he spoke, the man once again cocked the axe back in a big, telegraphed motion—as if his axe were a guillotine.
“Let’s start by taking one arm and talk after that. I’m not particularly fond of killing people, so…”
Another overhead smash coming straight down. At the very moment he swung with complete confidence—
…Now.
The light in the cornered Rodeban’s eyes changed, and in an instant his form vanished from Veraoke’s field of vision.
“Huh?”
Before the word “Huh?” could even fully leave his mouth… Rodeban was already above Veraoke. His hand had been resting on the scabbard at his hip; he unleashed a blade of sword energy in a draw-cut. A blue arc of sword light bloomed in a flash and struck Veraoke’s right arm.
Slash—!
“AAAAAARGH—!”
Blood sprayed across the VIP car. Veraoke’s axe clattered to the floor, followed by a heavy thud.
Thud—!
Veraoke sank to his knees, clutching the empty space where his right shoulder had been. The sword energy had severed the arm clean through. He immediately raised his remaining hand.
“I-I surrender! I surrender!”
A thoroughly mercenary sense of self-preservation. There was no need to stake one’s life on a job.
Thud—!
Rodeban landed and asked in a perfectly clear, sharp tone,
“Veraoke. Who’s the client?”
Veraoke made a sound that might have been laughter or sobbing. Realizing Rodeban had been acting from the very start left him utterly flabbergasted.
“Heh heh heh… So poison never worked on you from the beginning? Goddamn it…”
He wore the expression of a man who had been thoroughly played, then finally said,
“I don’t know either. It was an anonymous job. Even if I wanted to tell you, I couldn’t…”
“You don’t know? Fine.”
Rodeban nodded, cutting him off, and the moment he decided Veraoke still looked too composed, he drove his sword into the man’s other shoulder.
Stab—!
“AAAAAARGH—! You son of a bitch—!”
Veraoke thrashed on the floor like a worm in agony. Rodeban pulled the sword free and crouched down, staring at him.
Why do bastards like this keep crawling out of the woodwork?
He’d retired so he could finally get some rest, yet he was getting ambushed everywhere he went—his house, someone else’s mansion, a train… A thought suddenly struck him. The world had grown peaceful. But his own life didn’t seem peaceful in the slightest.
The moment that thought settled in, heat surged through him. Rodeban roughly seized Veraoke by the scruff of the neck and began slamming the man’s head into the floor.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
“Ugh, ghk, kuh…”
Every time the forehead struck, a fresh variety of screams burst out. Blood pooled thickly across the floor. By the time Veraoke’s breathing turned into the wet rattle of a man about to die, Rodeban lifted the head and asked,
“Going to talk? Or not. If you don’t, I’ll do exactly what you said and chop off your arms and legs one by one.”
“…”
No answer. When he flipped the face up to check, the pupils had lost focus. He was barely clinging to life.
“Passed out.”
Only then did Rodeban stand. Apparently he had no particular talent for interrogation. Looking around, the place was an absolute disaster. And when was he supposed to clean all this up? As he surveyed the interior of the train car with that thought…
Snooore—
Even through all that chaos, everyone was still asleep. So the claim about knocking out elephant-class magic beasts had been true after all.
Yank—
Rodeban flung open every window in the car. They needed ventilation if the others were going to wake up.
Whoooosh—
A fierce wind rushed into the train. They must have entered the North to some degree; the air was quite chilly. Rodeban shivered once as he looked out at the distant snowfields.
“Ugh, cold.”
It would take a little while for his companions to come around. He glanced once more around the blood-soaked VIP car, then began opening the storage compartments one by one.
“Ah, found it.”
Several bottles of wine sat inside one of the cabinets. His eyes sparkled as he pulled one free. With a pop, he yanked the cork out by hand. A smile spread across Rodeban’s face…
“Ban on alcohol, my ass…”
And he started drinking straight from the bottle. The crimson liquid poured into his mouth in a steady stream.