I Won't Give Up
The atmosphere had been good.
At least, that was what Zick thought.
They had shared warm tea, looked after the children of the slums together, and Noah had even told him he would make a fine hero someday.
By any reasonable measure, recruitment should have been right around the corner.
Zick had believed it with absolute conviction.
"I'm sorry, Hero."
And yet Noah lowered his head with a gentle smile.
"I'm truly grateful for your offer, but I cannot go with you."
Zick froze with his teacup still in hand.
Wait. What did he just say?
"Perhaps I misheard you?"
"You did not."
"You said only a moment ago that I would become a good hero, did you not?"
"Yes. I do believe that."
"Then why refuse?"
Noah smiled with a troubled expression.
"That and joining your party are entirely separate matters."
Zick set down his teacup and sank into thought for a moment.
The conversation had been going so well.
So why had the result veered off in this direction?
Did priests, while healing people with words, somehow collect the other party's comprehension as a side effect?
"There are still many here who need my help."
Noah gazed out the window.
Children darted between the shabby plank houses. Someone huddled before a campfire wrapped in a tattered blanket; another carefully cradled the herb pouch Noah had given them and slipped quietly down the alley.
Zick closed his mouth as he watched the scene.
He had witnessed all day exactly how Noah cared for these people.
Checking a child's fever with a palm to the forehead, changing a wounded refugee's bandages, ladling out gruel for the hungry—never once treating anyone carelessly.
So he could fully understand the weight of those words.
Noah had always been that kind of person.
"I cannot leave them behind."
"That is..."
Zick scratched his chin.
"Certainly difficult."
"Thank you for understanding."
"I understand. However."
Zick nodded.
"I don't accept it."
Noah's smile wavered slightly.
"Pardon?"
"Of course a priest helps people. But if we defeat the Demon King, wouldn't we ultimately be able to help even more?"
"That is also true."
"Then come with us."
"But there are people who need my hand right now."
"Then we can bring those people along as—"
"Hero."
Noah quietly cut him off.
His voice was gentle, yet it left no room for reconsideration.
"I will gratefully accept only the sentiment."
Zick fell silent.
How politely a priest could refuse. The problem was that the rejection was so courteous there was no opening to argue back.
It would have been far easier if he had just snapped "No" like Gerard.
After a moment's thought, Noah rested his hands on the table.
"In exchange, I will introduce you to a priest I know."
"A priest?"
"Yes. Skilled and upright. With a party like yours, I am certain he would join gladly."
An offer to arrange another capable priest. It was certainly an attractive condition.
But that and this were separate issues.
Zick had not given up yet.
No—he considered that he had not even properly begun.
He rose from his seat at once.
"I decline."
Now it was Noah's turn to freeze.
"Pardon?"
"I haven't given up yet."
"Hero."
"I'll withdraw for today."
Zick flipped his cloak with a flourish and strode toward the door.
"But I will come again tomorrow."
"Tomorrow as well?"
"Yes. The day after, too. And the day after that."
Noah stared blankly at Zick, still holding his teacup.
Zick gripped the doorknob and looked back.
"If I am the hero who will one day fell the Demon King, I can hardly retreat over the mere recruitment of a single priest."
"I feel the comparison is a little strange."
"In any case, I'll see you tomorrow."
"Hero, wait a moment—"
"I withdraw today, but next time for certain."
Zick clenched his fist tight.
"I will steal Noah-nim's heart."
Noah's expression locked completely.
"That phrasing is a little dangerous."
"Then I will recruit you."
"That is far better."
"Then I'll see you tomorrow!"
Noah watched Zick's back disappear, then slowly pressed a hand to his forehead.
A deep sigh escaped on its own, yet somehow a faint curve lingered at the corner of his mouth.
An absurdly ridiculous human—yet strangely, there was nothing to dislike about him.
In the end Noah could not hold it in and let out a soft snort of laughter.
"Truly a peculiar person."
Rejected, and still declaring he would return tomorrow.
He behaved as if he firmly believed consent would come someday.
Yet he was by no means the sort of inconsiderate brute who disregarded others.
He was simply a fool who did not know how to give up after a single refusal.
Noah let out a quiet laugh without realizing it.
The man himself was genuinely good.
Which only made things more troublesome.
Noah rose and walked to one side of the room.
Atop a small table sat a palm-sized holy statue, quietly at rest.
It was far from ornate, yet the traces of daily careful polishing were everywhere. Despite its age, a certain dignity clung to it.
Noah knelt devoutly before the statue.
"O God. Today I told a lie."
A low monologue settled into the quiet room.
"It is true that I remain because of the people of the slums. But that was not the whole of it."
Noah's fingertips trembled faintly.
"I was afraid. That if I followed him, I would one day have to face my past head-on."
His head slowly bowed.
"I am still running away."
Just then, a faint vibration of the floor registered behind him.
Zick had already left and the entrance was firmly shut, yet Noah instinctively knew someone had closed the distance to his back without a sound.
Noah spun and roughly gathered holy power at his fingertips.
"O Bestower of Light, grant unto Thy young lamb a spear to light the path."
Pure white light condensed at his fingertips.
Lesser Miracle: Spear of Sacred Light.
The prayer required for completion was only a single line.
"Pierce the darkness—"
But a rough hand clamped over Noah's mouth from behind without mercy.
The prayer was shattered; the holy power that had barely begun to gather unraveled like threads and scattered into the air.
Noah tried to strike rearward with his elbow, but his opponent's skill was a step faster.
His wrist was wrenched without mercy and his body shoved toward the table.
The small holy statue rocked precariously.
"Found you. Took some work."
The low, sunken voice struck his ear, and Noah's form went rigid.
A voice he could never forget no matter how hard he tried.
"Never expected the Church's runaway to be hiding in a maggot hole like this."
Noah struggled desperately.
But the opponent blocked every vital point with perfect precision, as if he could see every line of Noah's movement.
Which hand he would raise first, where he would gather holy power, where he would plant his feet before fleeing—everything was perfectly predicted.
"He awaits you."
Noah's pupils trembled violently.
The next blow crashed without mercy into the back of his neck.
Thud.
Strength drained from his entire body.
In his flickering vision Noah saw his holy statue.
The small statue teetered on the edge of the table.
"All according to His will."
With that ominous declaration as the last, Noah's consciousness went dark.
Emerging from Noah's house, Zick rejoined the party members waiting at the mouth of the alley.
Gerard leaned against the wall with his arms folded. Drake perched on a low eaves, fiddling with a dagger. Ainz stood at ease with both hands resting on his staff, while Reno scanned the surroundings with sharp eyes from a short distance away.
"Finished?"
Gerard tossed out.
"Finished."
"Result?"
"Rejected."
"An obvious outcome."
"Would it kill you to offer a little comfort?"
"What a man who charges in without a plan and gets rejected needs is not comfort but reflection."
Drake hopped lightly down from the eaves, snickering.
"Heh heh. Hero-nim, got dumped again."
"I did not get dumped."
"Then how do you phrase it?"
"Tactical retreat."
"Losers always resort to that kind of mental victory."
Zick pointed a finger at Drake.
"I'm going again tomorrow, so it's not a loss yet."
Gerard furrowed his brow.
"Tomorrow as well?"
"Of course."
"Are you in your right mind?"
"Priest recruitment is originally a long campaign that requires patience."
"Coming from your mouth, it sounds exactly like a stalking crime plan."
Ainz let out a gentle, kindly laugh.
"Still, that refusal to give up is not a bad quality."
"Right?"
"So long as the other party does not feel so burdened that he stops breathing, that is."
Zick quietly averted his gaze.
It would probably be fine.
Probably.
"Anyway, Noah-nim is a matter I can persuade again tomorrow."
Zick turned toward Reno.
"Now, shall we have that talk we promised?"
Reno pushed his glasses up with a deliberate motion.
"My story, you mean?"
"Yeah."
Gerard's expression hardened in an instant.
"I am still opposed."
"I know."
"And knowing that, you still intend to proceed?"
"I promised."
Zick drove the point home calmly.
Gerard looked thoroughly displeased, but he did not argue further.
Zick met Reno's gaze head-on.
"Our party is still full of holes. Funds are tight, support is nonexistent, and we have no achievements to our name. I'm not some genius who swings a sword or magic like the other heroes either."
"I am well aware."
"That answer came a little too fast."
"It is simply the plain truth."
"Even you, huh."
Reno let out a faint snort of laughter.
Zick chuckled as well, then returned to the heart of the matter.
"Still—are you really okay with this?"
The lightness vanished from Reno's mouth.
The weight of that question was not something that could be answered lightly.
Reno reflected on the path Zick had walked throughout the day.
The way he had strode without hesitation through the mud mixed with the filth of the slums.
The expression that never once turned sour even when children clung to him and dirtied his clothes.
The tenacity that kept pressing forward even after being turned down again and again by Noah.
And the old mage's advice: if he truly wanted to nest in this party, he should bring out sincerity rather than a calculator.
Reno clicked his tongue bitterly in his heart.
The world was not a warm fairy tale, and humans were thoroughly calculating creatures.
They never gave more than they received, and if loss was foreseeable they turned their backs without mercy.
Without profit, even the closest of bonds could be severed in an instant.
Most of the people he had faced while enduring a hellish life had been like that.
So he too had survived like a monster, adapting to those laws of survival.
Yet today alone had been strangely peculiar.
Perhaps—just once, for the last time—it might be all right to believe in the creature called a human being.
That childish thought had raised its head for the first time in his life.
Reno slowly parted his lips.
"I am a survivor of the Erhardt Kingdom."
Gerard's eyes sharpened like a blade in an instant.
Ainz regarded Reno in silence. Drake, too, had completely wiped the playfulness from his face as he waited for the next words.
Only Zick tilted his head.
"Erhardt?"
"A nation crushed by the Demon King's army until not even a trace remained."
"Ah."
Zick's expression grew heavy at once.
Reno secretly put force into the fingertips gripping his trousers.
"There is something in that place that I must recover no matter what."
"Something?"
"Yes. An inheritance left behind in the land of my homeland."
"And what state is that homeland in now?"
"Deep inside Demon King army-occupied territory."
The moment Reno finished speaking, the air around them sank as heavy as stone.
Occupied territory beyond the front lines.
It was forbidden land that could not be dressed up with the mere label of "danger zone"—a place where those who returned as corpses rotting in the earth vastly outnumbered those who returned alive.
Gerard muttered low.
"So that is why you sought to enter a hero's party."
"Yes."
Reno did not avert his gaze; he received it head-on.
"Ordinary merchant caravans or ragtag mercenary bands cannot even dream of entering that demonic realm. And an established Active Hero party would never heed a private request of mine. So my plan was to join a newly formed Rookie Hero party, build trust from the ground up, and someday reveal my purpose."
"Thoroughly calculating."
"Correct."
Reno did not bow his head or feign humility.
"I approached all of you in a ruthlessly calculating manner."
Gerard clicked his tongue and folded his arms tightly.
"Fine. I will acknowledge that your schemes were meticulous. But of all the many rookies, why our party?"
Reno's gaze fixed on Zick.
"Because of Zick-nim's authority."
"My authority?"
"I witnessed it at the examination grounds. I judged that Zick-nim's authority is essentially a power that 'exposes what is hidden.' I thought it might be indispensable for determining exactly where the object I am tracking is buried."
Zick organized the threads of thought for a moment, then nodded in his easygoing way.
"So, to summarize."
He folded his fingers one by one.
"There's something precious in your homeland, it's stuck deep in Demon King army territory, you need a hero party's strength to get there, and my authority seems useful for finding the thing—so you wanted to board our ship."
Reno quietly lowered his chin.
"Yes."
"A surprisingly normal and understandable reason."
Reno's expression froze blankly.
Gerard likewise.
Drake stared at Zick in disbelief, as if doubting his own ears.
"Hey, Hero-nim. After hearing that horrifying story, that's the only impression you managed to produce?"
"Why? He wants to find something precious he left in his homeland. Isn't that a perfectly natural feeling?"
"That homeland is the dead center of Demon King army territory."
"It'll be hard, sure."
"That's not a scale you can brush off with 'it'll be hard, sure.'"
Gerard swallowed a deep sigh.
"Zick. The moment you accept this man as a party member, we may one day have to walk into a death trap with our own two feet."
"If we're going to smash the Demon King's skull, isn't that a road we have to pass through anyway?"
Gerard pressed his fingers hard against his brow.
Certainly, for a hero who boasted he would destroy the Demon King to fear Demon King army-occupied territory was a contradiction that did not add up.
The problem was that such a crystal-clear and obvious statement had come from the mouth of that greenhorn Zick.
And what he disliked most of all was that he himself was quietly being persuaded by the brat's sophistry.
Drake scratched his rough chin.
"Any guarantee that the thing is still intact? With Demon King army vermin swarming the place, the odds are high it was already smashed or looted long ago."
Reno shook his head without a single second of hesitation.
"No. That object has absolutely not disappeared."
A tone of absolute conviction without the slightest waver.
Gerard searched Reno's eyes intently, then asked,
"Evidence?"
"I have it."
"Then prove it."
"I cannot speak of it in this place."
"Suspicious as hell."
"I am aware it is suspicious."
"Far too many things wrapped in veils as well."
"That is also true."
"And still you ask to be accepted?"
In the end Reno could not continue his answer.
Even reflecting on it himself, it was a truly shameless demand.
He had vowed to bare his sincerity, yet cleverly concealed the most critical core.
He had stated the purpose but hidden the identity; he had given a reason but withheld the evidence.
Asking them to believe all of that as-is was nothing short of the demand of a conscienceless highwayman.
Reno bit down hard on his lower lip.
"I am sorry. But the cards I can open right now go only this far."
Zick simply watched Reno like that for a long while.
Then, all of a sudden, he thrust out his hand as if it were nothing.
"Fine. Let's get along well from now on."
Reno blinked hard.
"Are you truly all right with this?"
"Yeah."
"Even I think there are too many unexplained blanks. I am still suspicious and hiding shady corners."
"Who in the world lives without secrets?"
Zick shrugged lightly.
"And wouldn't it be more of a burden—creepy, even—if someone spilled their guts completely on the first day of joining a party?"
Reno could find no rebuttal.
A completely unexpected development.
"Of course."
Zick narrowed his eyes playfully.
"It'd be a problem if you were plotting to stab our party in the back and destroy us. Say, if you were a spy sent by the Demon King's army?"
"That is absolutely not the case!"
Reno raised his voice without meaning to.
At that fierce reaction Zick burst into hearty laughter.
"Then that's fine, isn't it."
Only then did Reno grasp that Zick had deliberately taken a teasing tone.
Even while fully aware that hidden insides existed, he chose not to dig into the wound and tear it open—a shrewd yet warm consideration.
Because of it, something surging from deep in his chest blocked his throat tight.
"Will you truly not regret this?"
"I said it's fine. How many times do I have to say it."
Zick lightly waved the hand he had extended in the air.
"Looking forward to working with you. Reno."
Reno stretched out a trembling hand and slowly grasped that hand.
The palm of a rookie hero who still lacked both the power and the accumulated achievements to warrant the grand title of "hero."
Yet that grip held a strangely thick trust.
"Looking forward to working with you, Zick-nim."
Gerard watched that heartwarming scene and openly clicked his tongue.
"I am different from that hopeless fool."
"Hey."
"If you show even the slightest suspicious movement, my sword will sever your neck on the spot."
Reno nodded obediently.
"That degree of chill is actually more comforting."
"Hmph."
Gerard turned his head away.
With that, it was tacit acceptance.
Drake bared his white teeth in a grin.
"Heh heh. With a man who can handle the ledgers like a knife joining the party, at least the odds of starving to death will drop dramatically."
"Ledger management and the procurement and administration of military supplies are second to none."
"Satisfactory."
"In exchange, from now on you will all have to move a little more tightly and according to plan regarding supply usage."
Zick tilted his head.
"We haven't even gotten near supplies yet, have we?"
"Advice of a preventive nature."
"Ah."
"And in my experience, such advice is usually most effective when given before it is too late."
Drake clutched his stomach and cackled.
"Kahaha! We haven't even spent half a day together and you've already perfectly grasped Hero-nim's essence!"
"It was not a particularly difficult task."
"I like this guy more than I expected."
"Agreed."
Zick looked back and forth between the two with a baffled face.
"Why did you two suddenly unite and get all buddy-buddy?"
Ainz, who had been watching the whole commotion with satisfaction, chuckled and adjusted his grip on his staff.
"Moving in a thoroughly calculating manner in order to survive is nothing to be ashamed of."
Ainz peered deep into Reno's eyes for a moment, then slowly nodded.
As if he were finally confirming an answer that had been foreseen long ago.
"You must have learned it down to the marrow of your bones—that if you do not calculate you fall behind, and if you show your cards first you are used. When you live that barren life long enough, the very word 'sincerity' comes to feel like the most dangerous gamble of all, one that stakes your entire life."
A faint smile spread across the old mage's lips.
"Yet just now you threw your chips onto that dangerous gambling table. Even while going against the survival method you have upheld your whole life. That in itself is remarkable courage."
Reno lightly pressed his dry lips together.
"It is nothing so remarkable."
"No. It is a realm ordinary people can never easily reach."
Ainz lightly patted Reno's rigid shoulder a couple of times in encouragement.
"Our party has gained a very reliable household manager."
Reno bowed his head quietly.
Then he took in each of the party members' faces one by one.
The upright knight who, while never releasing the string of vigilance, still clearly recognized him as a member.
The goblin who had accepted him behind a sly poker face.
The seasoned old mage who seemed to see straight through to his insides.
And the peculiar hero who had casually extended a hand of salvation without any price.
Reno slowly drew a deep breath into his lungs.
In the end, humans must live by trusting people and colliding with them.
The nagging his father had repeated like a habit while he was alive.
Reno had long since thrown that outdated maxim into the gutter.
But just this once.
Truly just this one time, he wanted to embrace that foolish saying again.
"By the way, Reno."
Before he knew it Zick had sidled up like a snake over a wall and thrown an arm around his shoulder.
"Now that you've officially boarded the ship, we can drop the formal speech a bit, right?"
Reno hurriedly adjusted his glasses frames.
It felt as if the sentimental emotional line he had been immersed in just now had been caught, and he was somehow embarrassed.
"As you prefer. Due to the nature of my profession, speaking with honorifics is smoother for me, so I will maintain the current state."
"Works for me."
Zick nodded with satisfaction.
"Reno."
"Yes, Zick-nim."
"To commemorate joining our party, how about you and I do one job together?"
Reno's eyes narrowed slightly.
"What is this about all of a sudden?"
"A matter of vital importance upon which the fate of the world hangs."
Zick pretended to put on a thoroughly serious face.
"A strategy meeting for Operation 'Ironclad Recruitment of Noah-nim,' to be executed tomorrow."
From behind came the sound of Gerard growling low.
"Have you still not abandoned that obsession."
"Of course not. Reno is a man who's mastered ledger work. That means he'll craft recruitment strategy plans brilliantly too."
"I am in charge of accounting and supply procurement, not of rationalizing incomprehensible fixations."
"See? He's already perfectly adapted to the party."
That was when it happened.
From deep in the alley's heavy shadows came the sound of urgent footsteps pounding the ground and closing in.
Before long a small girl rounded the corner in a rush and burst into the party's field of vision.
"Hero-nim!"
Zick's expression changed at once upon seeing the child gasping for breath.
It was the child whose face he had grown familiar with while helping Noah during the day.
Gerard and Drake, meeting her for the first time, crossed their gazes between the child and Zick with puzzled looks.
"Someone you know?"
"Yeah. The kid I saw in the square earlier."
The child staggered to a halt right in front of Zick's nose, lungs heaving as if they would burst.
Her face was drained of color, deathly pale, and in her small fist she clutched the herb pouch Noah had been distributing until it seemed ready to tear.
"What's wrong?"
Zick bent one knee and brought his eye level even with the child's.
The child desperately tried to say something, but hyperventilation kept proper syllables from falling.
"Slowly. Deep breaths."
Zick gently stroked the child's back.
"What happened that made you run all the way here in the middle of the night?"
The child heaved her chest a few more times, calming her rough breathing, then finally opened her mouth in a voice thick with tears.
"Noah-nim..."
In an instant Zick's brow knitted tightly.
"What about Noah-nim?"
Tears finally welled and fell from the child's large eyes.
"Noah-nim vanished without a trace!"
The child pointed with a trembling finger toward the deep alley where Noah's dwelling lay.
"The inside of the house is a complete mess. Teacups are shattered and rolling around, and the holy statue he treasured is thrown on the floor—but Noah-nim is nowhere!"
The air that had been exchanging light banter until moments ago froze solid all at once.
Reno immediately seized the child's shoulders firmly.
"Were there any injured people or corpses at the scene?"
The child shook her head hard.
"No, but I saw it clearly from outside. Noah-nim being forcibly dragged away by a strange person in black clothes."
"In which direction did the trail break off?"
When Zick asked, the child pointed toward the pitch-black road beyond the alley where not a single streetlamp stood.
"Th-that way, that zone."
Zick went through a brief moment of thought, then firmly nodded.
"First we head straight to Noah-nim's dwelling."
"Not forming a pursuit team and chasing right away?"
To Drake's question mixed with doubt, Zick answered heavily.
"Noah-nim has already been taken. But traces should still remain at the dwelling."
No one raised an objection.
A seamless silence.
Reno quietly watched Zick in that brief instant.
Until a moment ago he had dismissed him as nothing more than a loose, good-natured hero.
Yet the atmosphere now was completely different.
Even right after receiving an urgent report, Zick's eyes shone with dazzling rationality.
Far from panicking, he was more terrifyingly composed than anyone else present.
As expected, not an easy opponent.
"Let's go."
Zick was the first to spin around and put on speed.
Reno chased after that broad back.
The same person as a moment ago, yet somehow he looked different.
Without even time for deeper contemplation, the entire party began to race furiously through the darkness toward Noah's house.