Chapter 55

Translator: Willia

The way the world looked depended on the state of one’s heart. Just as even a single blade of grass by the roadside looked different to a soldier leaving home for some distant battlefield.

As the open door began to swing shut again, someone pushed through it from inside. The man who had just gone in.

In his hand was a sword gleaming beneath the midday sun. It looked as though he had snapped off a ray of sunlight like a branch and was holding it in his hand.

The girl felt as though her ears had gone muffled. At the same time, she had a feeling that she would never forget what she was seeing for as long as she lived.

Filthy desire, merciless violence, and the loss of her parents had all descended upon her without warning one day.

Ever since then, the world had lost its light and looked like nothing but a bleak gray. Now, color was returning to it.

The crimson blood splashed across the ground, a sigh of wind, the golden afternoon sunlight, and the man who seemed more extraordinary than anyone else in the world.

Perhaps the difference between Hell and Heaven was just like this. Nothing had changed; it was simply a matter of the heart.

Valery walked slowly, like a lion or tiger on a leisurely stroll, without making a fuss or acting rashly. He merely swept his gaze around him.

When his eyes settled on one spot, Knut caught the look and drove his dagger into the neck of a Crossbowman who had been watching the view outside with him from atop the palisade.

The instant he pulled the dagger free, he threw it at another Crossbowman standing some distance away. The dagger flew soundlessly and buried itself squarely in the man’s temple. He toppled over and fell from the palisade.

Knut immediately picked up the mercenary’s crossbow beside him, braced it against the ground, and cranked it back. Then he loaded a bolt.

It was around then that the mercenaries occupying the village realized something was happening.

With corpses already strewn haphazardly throughout the village, one more body hardly stood out. Under normal circumstances they would have noticed the incongruity at once, but what they themselves had done to the village kept them from doing so.

“Your leader is dead for deliberately stalling the job. From now on, I’m in command. Anyone with a complaint, step forward.”

Valery spoke. He had not raised his voice, yet everyone in the village heard him clearly.

There were nearly twenty mercenaries, while Valery’s party numbered only three, but the sudden turn of events and Valery’s self-assured bearing left the mercenaries themselves cowed.

Part of it was their guilty consciences. They were also accustomed to doing nothing but following orders, and the sudden loss of their leader had robbed them of their judgment.

They were in no state even to think about objecting. Their minds simply went blank as fear crept over them.

“I’m taking a head count. Form up. Wake anyone who’s asleep and call back anyone who isn’t here.”

Valery pointed to the ground in front of him with the tip of his sword.

The mercenaries had no idea what was suddenly happening, so they shuffled about sluggishly, neither properly obeying nor refusing.

“Why are you dragging your feet! Move!”

Valery barked so sharply that the mercenaries flinched. Only then did they hurriedly begin moving with military discipline.

They gathered in front of Valery and formed ranks. Valery counted them by eye and spoke.

“Line up as closely by height as you can. You, move back. You, come forward. Two abreast. Shoulders touching the man beside you. Pack in tightly front to back too. Good.”

As he spoke, Valery raised his sword sideways and held it around the mercenaries’ necks as though measuring them with a ruler. Then he moved to the side of the formation.

“Eyes straight ahead. Look around and you die.”

The mercenaries were bewildered, but they did as they were told.

Valery drew in one deep breath and called upon his Rune Power, focusing on speed and accuracy rather than raw strength.

Then, in an instant, he unleashed the power gathered around his heart like a spring that had been forced down and suddenly released.

Twisting his waist as far as he could, he made two broad swings, first from left to right, then from right to left. His body, his arm, and even his sword were barely more than blurs, too fast for the eye to follow.

There was no sound. He had swung exactly twice, but the movements were so fast they were practically one. All eighteen men jerked once, and a hair-thin line appeared across each of their necks.

Valery settled the power he had unleashed, then let out a long breath and drew it back under control.

“Haa......”

At that moment, all eighteen heads tumbled off at once. The headless bodies tangled together as they collapsed, and an unbelievable amount of blood sprayed out, forming a pool of blood in moments.

Valery stepped back and sheathed his sword at an even pace, neither hurried nor slow.

The unbelievable swordsmanship was one thing, but he had been far too practiced at the whole process, from lining them up to killing them.

As with anything else, experience mattered. Someone who had carried out massacres before knew how to make them quick and clean.

He had gently coaxed them together as though herding sheep, only to kill them without warning. Sheep never knew they were about to die until the moment came.

Valery looked around. When his gaze reached the women in the barn, several of them rolled their eyes back and fainted.

They had seen plenty of violence, but what Valery had just done was something else. It was the sort of thing that dealt a severe shock to their most basic assumptions and values.

Still, he had finished the job without much of a commotion, so wasn’t that enough?

“I came here on a commission from the farm village, so there is no need to fear me. Get dressed and put the bodies outside. What happened to you was unfortunate, but the farm village will help you. Once you have recovered in body and mind, go and speak with them.”

Valery gestured to Yorik to bring the horses.

Yorik came leading two horses. When he saw more than twenty corpses piled together and half-submerged in a pool of blood, his expression twisted.

“Whoa, what the hell happened here......”

“You of all people shouldn’t be shocked.”

“Still, this is a bit...... I thought there’d at least be a proper brawl.”

“Men who get a taste for pillaging lose their judgment. They stop even considering that they might be the ones who die. Take advantage of that, and there’s no need for a brawl.”

Before regression, Valery had never permitted pillaging. He would sooner kill everyone outright if necessary, then distribute the spoils generously afterward.

It was not out of any benevolent intention. His reasons were entirely practical, such as keeping the army moving quickly and preventing the soldiers from becoming corrupted.

They were expected to risk their lives in battle. If soldiers became steeped in pleasure and corruption, their willingness to fight weakened. At least, that was what Valery had observed.

“You’re not wrong......”

Valery mounted his horse.

Knut went over to the fallen Crossbowman to look for the dagger he had thrown earlier and had some trouble finding it. The dagger had come loose while the corpse was falling and disappeared somewhere into the brush.

Yorik went over to help him search. Fortunately, they managed to recover the Dwarven Steel dagger that Knut had nearly lost on its very first outing.

“That gave me a scare. I’m never throwing it again.”

Knut and Yorik mounted their horses as well, and the group left the village after taking only the mercenary leader’s head. They had left Benholm that morning, and it was only just past noon.

Billowing clouds drifted across the blue sky and the sunlight was clear and bright, yet the things happening among men seemed completely at odds with such fine weather.

In any case, they returned to the farm village with the cool breeze against their faces.

At first, the villagers assumed Valery’s party had merely gone to scout the place.

But Valery’s words took them by surprise.

“They’re all dead. Go and see for yourselves.”

Valery cut the mercenary leader’s head free from where its hair had been tied to the saddle and held it up. The villagers stared wide-eyed, utterly dumbfounded.

They examined the head closely. Its eyes were rolled upward, its mouth hung stupidly open, and its tongue lolled out. There was no mistaking it. This was the leader of the mercenaries who had pillaged the village and tried to seize this farm village as well.

“Th-this is......”

The lingering suspicion in the villagers’ hearts vanished, only to be replaced by bewilderment. The three of them looked as though they had merely gone out for a quick visit, yet they had come back carrying the mercenary leader’s head. Even with the evidence before their eyes, it was difficult to believe.

They themselves had fought desperate battles with their lives on the line, so they could not help feeling hollow at the thought that if it had really been this easy, what had all their suffering been for? On the other hand, perhaps this was exactly why people hired fixers.

“F-for now, I’ll send someone to make absolutely sure. Please, come inside first.”

His tone had become much more respectful. Manners, it seemed, were learned much faster from a single demonstration than from a hundred words.

The farm village was packed with people. Even the residents who had evacuated from the shepherd village were there. Those who had suffered terrible things at the mercenaries’ hands were the ones who had failed to escape in time.

Valery’s party handed over their horses and sat together at the base of a tree at the edge of the village. There still was not an empty house available that could accommodate all three of them.

People gathered almost immediately, whispering as they stared at Valery’s party as though looking at some strange and frightening animal.

After all, the only difference between a hero and a villain was whether their power benefited you or harmed you. Both possessed the same capacity for merciless violence.

Charisma was born from fear. Whether it was gentle charisma or the kind that overwhelmed an entire room, both sprang from the unconscious fear that acting carelessly would come at a price.

Like a lion or a tiger, getting too close felt as though it might get you torn to pieces, yet it was too captivating to look away.

Charisma reached its height in that eternal space between fear pushing people away and fascination drawing them closer.

That was what people felt from Valery now: his striking looks, his immaculate appearance that made it hard to believe he had just returned from a fight, and the mercenary leader’s severed head.

The villagers tried to force those incongruous things to fit together in their minds. All the while, they could not take their eyes off Valery.

“Want me to tell ’em to fuck off?”

Yorik asked. Valery and Knut gave small nods almost simultaneously.

Yorik immediately sprang up, gesturing threateningly at the crowd as he shouted.

“Hey! What is this, a fucking show!? You think we’re fucking pushovers because we’re sitting here!? Fuck off! You hear me!? I’ll fucking......!”

His choice of words might not have been appropriate, but it was certainly effective. The frightened villagers scattered in a rush. In truth, it was Valery they were afraid of, but thanks to Yorik, at least the three of them could have some peace.

“Where are we going once we get the wagon?”

Knut asked as he tipped back his waterskin for a drink.

“Like it or not, we’ll have to pass through the Provincial Capital of Westlanding. For now, we should head to Nearcaster.”

They had to replenish their supplies along the way, so their route would naturally be punctuated by stops wherever supplies could be found.

Each county had a Provincial Capital, as did each duchy. Torvik, for example, was the Provincial Capital of Eldeira.

The Provincial Capital of the Duchy of Nearcaster was Nearcaster, while the Provincial Capital of Westlanding was Helsenborg. Valery meant that they would pass through Helsenborg on their way to Nearcaster.

“But Oder lied to us. On top of that, we blew off his job and killed his mercenaries. If we just leave, I feel like we’ll be looking over our shoulders the whole way.”

Knut spoke while eating peanuts Yorik was shelling for him. What he meant was that since they had already gotten involved, they might as well finish things properly.

“Like the villagers said, that bastard is only a front man. The real power behind him is somewhere else. Killing him means dealing with whoever’s behind him too. Even if leaving it unfinished feels uncomfortable, it might be better not to meddle any further.”

Valery had always known where to draw the line. There was always a boundary between what he could safely get away with and what would become dangerous or difficult if he went any further.

“What do you think, Yorik?”

Valery asked.

“Hmm...... Seems to me all these problems are because of the Tax Collection Rights. What happens if we just take those Tax Collection Rights ourselves?”

“We’d collect the money in their place and have to hand a certain amount over to the Count.”

“What if we don’t collect anything and don’t pay him anything? Or what if we just give the Tax Collection Rights to the people here? Would the Count have to buy them back?”

“That would be pretty funny. How did you even think of that?”

Knut said with a laugh.

Valery smiled faintly as well, then fell into thought. At last, he reached a conclusion.

“Then first, let’s make him pay for lying to us. We can rip out his tongue, or kill him if he resists. And if it comes to that, we’ll cut down whoever’s behind him too and take the Tax Collection Rights.”

He rattled off horrifying things as casually as could be. What made it even more frightening was that he genuinely had the ability to do them.

Knut and Yorik seemed used to it by now, because neither looked particularly surprised or frightened. If they were going to talk about impossible things, the siege of Grinnen had made even less sense in the first place.

By this point, though, it was getting difficult to tell what counted as common sense and what did not. Was selling Tax Collection Rights common sense, while taking them by force and handing them to the people somehow absurd?

Valery and his companions passed the time talking about their plans and various other trivial matters.

About three hours later, the man who seemed to lead the village’s able-bodied men, the same man who had been speaking to Valery on everyone’s behalf, came over.

“The man we sent to check has just returned. He says all the Thugs really are dead. We’re sending the people who originally lived there back with their household belongings now. I failed to recognize such distinguished swordsmen. My apologies.”

He bowed as he spoke. Earlier he had merely called Valery a handsome knight, but now even the way he treated them had completely changed.

The man looked at least twenty years older than Valery’s party, yet his face had gone nearly deathly pale.

It was fear born from the fact that the three of them had killed twenty mercenaries, and had done so in less than an hour.

Once the travel time there and back was taken out, didn’t that mean they had practically killed them all in an instant? Just how strong did a human being have to be to accomplish something like that? Were they really knights? They looked so young.

Though the farm village’s Village Head was deeply confused, his heart pounded and his fingertips trembled faintly. It meant that if the young men before him chose to, they could kill everyone here as well.

Even so, he forced himself to remain calm and spoke as courteously as possible.

“The wagon needs some repairs, and I believe it will take time to prepare the camping equipment. Before then, I would like to take you to a house and offer what little hospitality we can.”

“Very well.”

Valery nodded. The three were led to an ordinary family home. It seemed the people who lived there had been sent elsewhere for a while so the house could be used to accommodate them.

There was a faint musty odor and the usual lived-in smell, but nothing unbearable. Valery deliberately left the door open.

A fresh meal was served. Oat bread, cheese, stew made from freshly slaughtered lamb, beer, and the like.

While dipping his bread into the stew, Valery asked the man who was the village’s actual Village Head, rather than someone who had simply tacked the title onto himself like Oder had.

“Do you know who that man Oder is affiliated with?”

“......I’ve heard he’s with the Lokir Merchant Company......”

If the Silverreach Mercenary Company was the most famous mercenary company in the North, then Lokir was the most famous Merchant Company. It ranked among the five greatest in the entire kingdom, with wealth and influence comparable to that of a great lord such as a Duke.

And a Merchant Company differed from a mercenary company only in its line of business. That did not mean it lacked military force. The warriors within the company alone were enough to overwhelm most ordinary lords.

“Hmm...... When did the Count sell the Tax Collection Rights?”

“Probably around this time two years ago. After that, those rotten bastards started coming around every change of season. Don’t even get me started. Trampling or burning the oat fields was commonplace. They took hostages, beat villagers, and stole livestock whenever they pleased, all to make us hand over money. We somehow managed to endure all of that, but after the Lokir Merchant Company acquired the Tax Collection Rights, their methods became even more brutal. That part was recent.”

Summer was just giving way to autumn. Valery had happened to arrive just as the ‘collection’ was reaching its peak.

“Why did the Count sell the Tax Collection Rights? Did he need a large sum of money? Or did he simply sell them because collecting taxes himself was too much trouble?”

Knut asked as he drank water instead of beer.

“He must have needed the money. It’s only a rumor, but I’m sure it’s true. The Valkyrie said she had no interest in anything less than a treasure without equal in the entire world. The Count has been courting the Valkyrie for a long time, so he must have needed money to obtain such a treasure somehow. Everyone around here knows it.”

“A Valkyrie?”

“You didn’t know? Ah, I suppose you wouldn’t, coming from Eldeira. Valkyrie Brynhildr has been staying in Nearcaster for the past few years, supposedly looking for a husband. Whether highborn or lowborn, the bravest man who knows no fear, a wise man who has mastered all the knowledge in the world, a man who can offer her a treasure without equal in the world, she keeps setting conditions like those while searching for a husband. Does that make any sense? Innocent men just keep dying over it. There must be enough dead by now to cover that entire hill and then some. The Count is one of the men courting her. But would she even glance at a coward like him? If that witch of a woman had any sense at all...... My apologies. I did not mean to insult the King.”

Perhaps his resentment had been building for quite some time, because the Village Head grew increasingly worked up as he spoke. Then he realized that even by his own standards he had gone a little too far and hurriedly apologized.

There was no particular reason to apologize to Valery’s party, but insulting the King was the sort of thing that could bring bad luck even upon those who merely happened to hear it.

Knut and Yorik, however, knew Valery’s true identity and glanced toward him. He did not seem particularly offended. Then again, this was the same boy who joked about what would happen when the King died.

“But can a Valkyrie really marry like that? I thought all nobility had arranged marriages.”

Yorik asked Valery rather than the Village Head.

“The Royal Family is different. Whether they’re different because they’re Royal Family or Royal Family because they’re different, I couldn’t say, but Valkyries can choose their own spouses. The tradeoff is that once they marry, they lose the King’s favor.”

Being born a Princess came with a harsh fate of its own. House Vǫlsungr utterly excluded the maternal bloodline from power. Even marrying a Princess did not make a man part of the King’s family.

As long as she remained the King’s daughter, she received the finest things in the world, from an excellent education to every delicacy imaginable. The moment she married, however, she ceased to belong to the Royal Family and became a complete outsider.

So anyone born a Princess, a Valkyrie, had to choose. She could remain under her father the King, or marry early.

Even if she lived safely under the King’s protection, serious problems arose once the King died. If her mother’s family possessed some power, she might fare better, but if not, her circumstances could become endlessly miserable. Just like Knut’s mother.

That was what a Valkyrie amounted to: all show and no substance, with neither real power nor practical benefit.

And yet, perhaps because of what they symbolized, some people went mad for them. This was the Divine Bloodline, after all, not just any ordinary lineage.

Merely attracting the attention of the world also had a certain value of its own.

Of course, being born a Prince did not mean one’s circumstances were any better. If anything, they were worse.

Being born into the Royal Family was little different from being born holding misfortune in one’s hand.

“This is ridiculous. All this tragedy just because some man wanted to give a woman a present......”

Yorik muttered with a disgusted expression. Understandably so. Those corpses, and those wretched figures.

“If possible, I would appreciate some water for a bath. I’m tired after all that swordplay.”

“Of course. I’ll have it heated immediately.”

The Village Head rose from his seat and went outside.

A while later, the village women informed them that the bathwater was ready. They had fetched the water all the way from the river, then heated it over a wood fire until it reached a suitable temperature.

By the time Valery finished bathing, the sun was beginning to sink. Fresh from the bath and dressed in new clothes, he left the village. He decided to go alone, thinking it would be better to deal with Oder quietly than kill him openly.

“I’ll be back.”

“Are you sure you don’t need a horse?”

“If I walk, the timing should work out about right.”

And just as always, he walked off calmly with a sword at his waist as though he were merely going out for a stroll.

He had only just left the village when he noticed a young girl standing barefoot nearby. On looking closer, he recognized her as the child who had been clutching her mother’s head in the village where they had dealt with the mercenaries.

It was a thirty-minute ride from there, yet a child so young had come all this way barefoot. Her hands were caked in dirt, with dried blood crusted over them as well. It seemed she had been burying her parents.

“What is it?”

Valery asked. There was not the slightest trace of pity in his voice. It sounded rather detached and dry.

“I was going to try to keep living...... but I don’t have anywhere to go......”

Valery considered what to do, then shouted toward the village.

“Yorik! Yorik!”

Yorik, who had just finished washing and was showing off his gleaming gold tooth as he flirted with the village women, came running over in a hurry.

“What is it?”

“She says she has nowhere to go.”

Yorik studied the girl in silence, then lowered himself to her eye level.

“What’s your name?”

“Ivy.”

“Typical little hick name. Do you even know who this gentleman is? What, you thought just because you have nowhere to go, we’d take in anybody?”

“What are you doing?”

Valery asked, looking baffled.

“Huh? Weren’t you telling me to chase her off?”

“No. I meant take her with us and use her as a Kindling-child or something. Did you think I only called you over whenever I couldn’t be bothered to chase someone away myself?”

Kindling-children were children who followed mercenaries or armies and ran small errands for them. Some were orphans, while others were soldiers’ children. They were called Kindling-children because they usually gathered twigs and firewood.

“Wasn’t that what I was for?”

“......What do you take me for? Never mind. Just take her in and get her washed or something.”

“It’s not like she’s had any training as a maid...... Good grief. Come here.”

Yorik did not look particularly pleased, but he took Ivy by the hand and led her into the village anyway. The girl kept looking back at Valery all the way, as though reluctant to leave him.

Valery resumed walking down the road alone. In the distance, he could see people taking back down the poles beside the road on which corpses had been impaled.

It was around sunset.