Prologue: Listening to Tales of the Unruined

Prologue:
Listening to Tales of the Unruined

 

THE RUMOR that a certain school had gone under was not, in fact, spreading.

Not too long ago, that school had suffered considerable damage to both its student body and its property, but it seemed even that wasn’t enough to shake its foundations.

Or maybe that muscles-for-brains headmaster’s just surprisingly competent, Loren thought as he allowed the red-haired Claes to treat him to drinks at a bar in Kaffa.

Loren had been running into Claes quite often since he started this adventurer business. Now that Claes had been personally saved by Loren’s efforts, it seemed he felt rather grateful. Probably out of some sense of debt, he’d proposed picking up Loren’s tab of his own volition.

At first, Loren hadn’t been so enthusiastic about it. After receiving the same proposal numerous times, though, he realized Claes would only be satisfied if Loren tagged along at least once.

“But I don’t know what to think about drinking in the middle of the day,” he muttered to himself.

Of course, Loren did a little day drinking now and again, but it was a different story when someone else was putting him up to it. The liquor swishing around his mug was quite a bit more expensive than his usual swill, so much so that he felt a little apologetic about drinking it for free.

Across the table, Claes picked at the sausage platter he’d ordered as a snack, drinking the same exact expensive liquor. He seemed quite surprised when he caught Loren’s murmur of doubt.

“What’s with that face?” Loren asked.

“Nothing. I just didn’t think you were the sort of person who got hung up about that.”

Do I really look that loose? Loren tilted his head. At the very least, he couldn’t remember many mercenaries who drank before work. Parading drunk onto the battlefield was a quick way to get dead, so most learned to show a bit of moderation.

That being said, there were always exceptions, drunkards who indulged regardless of whether it was before, during, or after a job. Loren was, however, best off not using those folks as reference.

Loren spoke a little of his mercenary days to say as much.

“Adventurers have plenty of time to kill between quests. I guess that’s different from mercenaries,” Claes said with a smile.

That smile on his pretty face made Loren think, I see, if I were a lady, I might have fallen for him just like that. However, he was a man; while he was a little impressed, those feelings stopped at a disinterested snort.

Claes continued, “It’s not a bad deal to let loose now and then, sipping on expensive liquor while the sun is high.”

Loren’s eyes dropped to the purple liquid filling his cup to the brim. The cheap ale he usually drank was mainly made from fermented grain, but this brew was processed from grapes. The swill offered at most pubs was simply stuffed into barrels, then went straight from the barrel to the mug. In contrast, this liquor was carefully packaged bottle by bottle. Maybe that was what made it even more expensive than its base fruits.

“Waargenberg wine,” Claes said. “Word on the street is that this year’s batch is exceptional.”

“Waargenberg? Where’s that?” Loren asked, which made Claes freeze for a moment.

Claes sat there, unmoving, looking at Loren as if he couldn’t believe what he had just heard. Loren glared back, not quite in the mood to be stared at and finding something a tad irritating about Claes’s eyes.

Panicked at the thought of upsetting Loren, Claes waved his hands and said, “No, um, err. You know where we are, right?”

“Kaffa?”

“And Kaffa belongs to the Kingdom of Waargenberg, located in the southwest of the continent. Does that ring any bells?”

Oh really, was all Loren thought about that. Even he realized he was being a bit too apathetic, but after living so long without roots, how else could he be? The name of the country he was in or the battlefield he was headed to only mattered to the company captain and the higher-ups. To a mercenary who lived without ties to any nation, it was far more important to think about defeating the enemy before his eyes rather than memorizing the name of this or that place name. That attitude hadn’t changed much when Loren became an adventurer.

“If your fame as an adventurer rises, you can get called on for quests from the government or the nobles,” said Claes. “I think you should look into these things a bit.”

“When I don’t even have the money to feed myself, you honestly think that day’s gonna come?” Loren wasn’t going to say it was impossible. However, even if that day ever did arrive, it was far, far away.

“I don’t think it’s too far off! Not with your sword skills.”

“My brute strength’s all I’ve got going for me. I’m sure anyone could do the same as long as they could swing this thing.” Loren tapped the black sword beside him.

Claes replied with an ambiguous smile and a powerless laugh. Loren’s main weapon was just as ridiculously heavy as it looked, and Claes had to wonder if anyone in the world apart from Loren could do much more than lift it, if that.

At the very least, if anyone ever asked Claes if he could swing it around as freely as Loren could, Claes would immediately answer “never.” He knew that just from looking at the thing.

“I learned normal swordplay, once upon a time… Just wasn’t for me,” Loren confessed.

“I’d like to see that.”

“It ain’t a show. Our captain just said, ‘This is just hopeless,’ and gave up on me.”

A peculiar sensation came over Loren the moment he mentioned the captain. He’d fought under that very captain not so long ago. Back then, he couldn’t ever have imagined that the company would fall to ruin, that he would be separated from his comrades, and that he would be working as an adventurer in who knew where. That was all an undeniable reality to him now: he didn’t know if anyone from the company was still alive, and he had escaped alone to what was apparently Kaffa-in-the-Kingdom-of-Waargenberg, where he was barely making a living.

To top it all off, he had a demon following him around. Fate was a fickle mistress.

“Any word about your comrades from that company of yours?” Claes asked.

“I don’t know, and I don’t feel like looking into it. Unlike farmers and townsfolk, mercenaries like me have no way of identifying themselves. Couldn’t find them even if I tried.”

Maybe the term “carefree wanderer” had a nice ring to it, but a mercenary’s status and identity were never guaranteed. Their company was the only authority that would vouch for them, and if the company dissolved, that safety net disappeared.

“Well,” Loren continued, “with all the strange folk I’ve been coming across lately, I might just run into them one of these days.”

“I hope so.”

“Even if that happens, I don’t plan to go back to being a mercenary. Don’t feel up to using human lives as a meal ticket anymore, and I’ve got a promise to keep.”

“All right, enough gloomy stories!” A girl with long black hair abruptly intruded on the conversation, claiming the seat beside Loren. “Who exactly benefits from two men getting depressed in the corner of a bar at noon?”

She was dressed in priestly vestments and her orderly features had assembled themselves into an exasperated expression. She sat down, motioned a passing waitress toward Loren’s cup, and handed over a silver coin to order the same.

“Find any good quests, Lapis?” Loren asked.

The girl, or rather Lapis, shrugged. She had readily tagged along when she heard Loren would be drinking on Claes’s tab. While the two men drank, she busied herself at the bar’s counter, hunting for their next quest. Given her reaction, the results were not to her satisfaction.

“I’m not feeling any of them,” she said. “But that’s just how it is, sometimes.”

When the waitress returned, Lapis took the cup from her tray, thanked her, and downed half of it in one gulp. Sure, the Waargenberg wine was smooth and went down easy, and neither was it particularly strong, but Loren had to wonder if Lapis would knock herself out drinking like that. Not that Lapis was a normal girl—as a demon, she innately possessed superior abilities. Maybe she’d be just fine. He decided to hold his tongue.

“I wouldn’t mind treating you too,” Claes said, seeing that Lapis had paid for herself.

Lapis wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, put her cup on the table, and scoffed. “I wouldn’t mind Loren treating me, but if it’s you, I must decline.”

“You know I can’t…” Loren muttered.

His last quest hadn’t put him in the red, shockingly. Just barely, though, and he’d hardly made a profit. Loren’s wallet was as desolate as ever.

“It’s the principle of things. I don’t want to be treated by someone leading around a harem—a man who wishes to surround himself with mistresses even after taking a wife.”

“Looks like she hates you,” Loren told Claes.

“I have a seething distaste for snakes, but compared to Claes, I would prefer them.”

Lapis’s evaluation of Claes was low. Understandably so. Loren let her berate the man without a word in his defense. Claes had mellowed out a bit compared to when they first met, but his womanizing and slovenliness persisted. Perhaps he didn’t intend to take himself in hand on those matters at all.

That was a problem for Claes and those around him, not anything an outsider could weigh in on. Loren decided he wouldn’t think anything of it, if it didn’t bring him any harm. Of course, it was clear to see why any woman would recognize Claes as a natural enemy, so he didn’t plan on stopping Lapis either.

“I’m just here to accompany Mr. Loren,” Lapis concluded. “You can ignore me.”

“Oh… Well, all right.”

“Oh, but I do have a high opinion of your Boost, if nothing else,” Lapis assured him. “I will gladly use it again should anything happen.”

Claes laughed nervously.

During a past job, while they were fleeing from an enemy, she had tossed Claes onto a horse and made him use his Boost ability to draw out its equine potential. Armed with a whip, Lapis had ensured he kept at it for an entire night.

Taking her eyes off Claes—who was still laughing stiffly—Lapis turned to Loren.

“There weren’t any promising requests, but unless we work, Mr. Loren, you’ll have no means of supporting yourself.”

“I don’t want to get any further in the hole either.”

This was the promise between Loren and Lapis: they would work together until Loren had paid his debt to her. Her terms were generous, and she wasn’t urgently demanding any money, but the sum had reached over thirty gold coins. Loren didn’t want to heap anything else on that pile.

“I don’t really mind, but it might get awkward between us if I keep lending you money, so I do see the value in labor.”

“But there weren’t any good quests, right?” Loren asked.

Nothing good awaited them if they took the wrong request. Every quest Loren took—or rather, every quest Lapis brought him—seemed far more difficult than anything suited for copper-rank adventurers like him. He couldn’t begin to imagine how bad these quests must be if even Lapis was avoiding them.

“There weren’t any quests, but something nice just occurred to me,” Lapis said, her face simply sparkling. The more she glowed, the longer the shadows stretched across Loren’s face.

He had a vague inkling that this would once again lead to something outrageous. Unfortunately, he had another inkling that he wouldn’t be able to avoid the trouble. Loren gave up and downed his cup of wine, resolving to hear out her idea.