It was a misty dawn in the forest. The laborers' job was to carry the timber to the far edge of the logging camp, where the carts were waiting.
"We've got a long way to go! Move it, quick!"
"Don't think you get to rest just because you moved one!"
The overseers raised their voices more than usual.
The work was done in teams of 4, 2 at the front and 2 at the back. But short Berak had trouble shouldering the load. He couldn't match the height of the man beside him.
"I'll carry the back by myself."
"Kiddo, you sure you'll be okay?"
"I'll be fi......"
Despite his words of concern, the laborer beside him didn't even wait for an answer. He just breezily headed off to another team.
"Hmph."
Judging by the reactions of the laborers he'd worked with, or by the Forest Warden's test, no one here would be surprised by him taking the back end alone. He bent over and shoved his arms under the butt end of the log.
"One, two!"
At the lead man's call, Berak drew a breath. The next moment, he rose together with the two men in front.
This time too, he first thought about how to use his strength up to an exact point.
The end of the log settled onto his shoulder. From shoulder to arms, back to waist, waist to legs. The weight flowed down through his body. After only a few steps, he realized.
'This is harder than chopping...!'
When he held an axe, the strength went mostly into his arms and shoulders. But now it was different. His whole body moved as one mass. Shoulders, waist, legs, even the tips of his toes. There wasn't a muscle he didn't use.
Aiming for precise strength, his muscles each twitched as they pleased. One pushed, one braced, one tried to keep balance.
There was another problem too.
"Careful!"
The front was moving a bit fast. The log tilted, and the weight shifted toward Berak. The impact shoved at his shoulder.
"Hngh."
Berak quickly shifted his stance and caught his balance.
This was work three people did together. If anyone was even a little fast or slow, the load shifted through that tiny gap. Then he had to correct it as fast as possible.
Walking pace. Breathing. Posture. All together, a single 'rhythm.' Not practice in handling his strength alone, but fitting his body to that rhythm.
Using more muscles. Unable to set the pace on his own. It was definitely grueling work. This was only the first log, and sweat was already beading on his forehead.
The site was chaotic in many ways. He probably didn't need to put out such 'exact' strength.
But it wasn't only out of compulsion. Berak knew what came at the end of this effort.
「Body Proficiency + 1」
That was the good thing about the new letters. Unlike before, they didn't only come after finishing the whole day's work. They'd pop up whenever they pleased, even in the middle of work like this. So over the past few days, the shapes had changed often.
[Body Proficiency: 16/100]
[Axe Proficiency: 14/100]
"All right, setting it down. One, two!"
They set the log down on the front man's count.
"Ugh. Looking at the pile over here, there's still a long way to go."
"Don't say such disheartening stuff. We've only just moved one."
The laborers beside him grumbled, but to Berak it wasn't disheartening at all.
So after several more round trips. After handling his whole body under tension. After sweat poured down him.
「Body Proficiency +1」
The letters came out once more.
***
After a short rest, the real hauling began. There were fewer than twenty people. Not counting the overseer, the Forest Warden, and two soldiers, there were about ten laborers.
Berak's eyes went to the sharp spearhead a soldier carried.
His gaze lingered only a moment. There was no time to stay tense or think about other things.
The logs on the carts were pulled by horses. No, to be precise, by horses and people.
Someone steered with the reins up front, and the laborers in the middle had to haul on the tow ropes together for the cart to move.
There were two such carts. When the front cart moved, the rear one followed.
CLUNK.
"Push!"
"The ground's sunk under there! Lay down a block!"
Every so often, the road turned soft. Whenever a wheel sank into mud, the laborers, Berak included, rushed in.
「Body Proficiency +1」
'I'm really raking in the letters today.'
Twice more on the way to the city. The shapes changed.
[Body Proficiency: 19/100]
He felt good, but it was also a forced march hard to endure on a sense of achievement alone. They'd started work at the crack of dawn, and already the sun was setting.
"Halt! We've arrived!"
"Phew."
"Man, I thought I was going to croak."
Groans burst out here and there. Berak, too, wiped his sweat-drenched forehead.
"Wow......"
A huge city wall blocked the way ahead. In front of it stretched a wide yard. People drove carts in, one after another.
The side against the wall was paved with stone, and lights lit every passage. There were many brick warehouses and loading platforms too.
"All right, unloading from this side first!"
"Careful, you'll catch your fingers!"
Voices poured in from all sides. Berak, still gripping a rope, stepped onto a stone road for the first time.
Following the overseer's directions, the laborers lifted the ends of the logs and rolled them off the side of the carts. The ground shook with a 'THUD.' It was the last task of a long day.
Martin came over first and spoke to him. On the road, there had been hardly any chance to exchange words.
"Finally done. Good work, Berak."
"You too, Mister Martin."
"Yeah. So how's your first visit to Delmore?"
Berak breathed in. A smell mixing oil, charcoal, and the rank odor of horses. Crowds of people. Noise and lights. Bricks and stone pavement......
"Is there usually a city outside the walls too? This place..."
"This is the unloading yard. The real city's inside, of course."
"I see..."
To Berak, this place alone already felt like another world. Meanwhile, the Forest Warden spoke up.
"That's all the work for today. We stay here tonight. See that nobody causes any trouble before we leave tomorrow."
The moment he finished, he walked toward the wall. The two soldiers followed.
The overseer waited a moment, then looked over the rest.
"Well, you heard him, right? Dismissed. Those who want to drink, drink, and those who want to hole up, hole up. But if I don't see your face tomorrow, that's on you."
"Beer, beer!"
"I'm going to drop by a brothel."
"Huh, tonight? Are you out of your mind? My back's about to snap."
"That guy's legs gave out on him earlier. Even if he goes, he won't be able to get it up."
"Shut up."
The laborers headed for the city gate, chattering noisily. Berak, about to follow without thinking, stopped. The other serfs on the hauling job. The two of them stood rooted in place. The overseer turned his head as if he'd only just realized.
"Ah, right, three serfs came along too. You lot stay at the quarters near the unloading yard."
Before coming here, he'd heard serfs wouldn't be free to look around. That was right. They couldn't even enter the city in the first place.
"Hm, I thought it might be different this time since there were so few serfs......"
Martin scratched his head.
"Berak. Looks like you can't go in after all. Well, this is......"
"I'm fine."
"Don't just keep saying you're fine. You said that last time when you were sick, too."
He hadn't been sick in the first place. And he really was fine now, too.
It would be a lie to say he wasn't disappointed at all...... but Berak wasn't looking forward to visiting the city itself, the way Martin thought. He'd been hoping for experiences that would bring new letters.
Everyone seemed to just be resting even if they went in, so wasn't this fine as it was? He decided to think that way.
But Martin seemed bothered.
"Hey. Isn't there anything you want from the city?"
"Nothing in partic......"
Berak, about to decline, paused. Something had suddenly come to mind.
"Got something? Tell me. If it's not expensive, I'll get you one."
"Letters."
"Letters?"
"You know, the things people write on paper. I think it'd be nice to look at them."
When there was no answer, Berak hastily added.
"Like, the shapes are cool. Cooler than wood grain."
Martin was still for a moment, then spoke as usual.
"All right. Then I'll try to find something with letters on it. Maybe I can find something at the edge of the market."
"Really?"
"Yeah. Whatever it is, as long as the shapes are cool, that's good enough, right?"
Martin shrugged, waved, and walked off. Berak watched him go, then turned around. It was time to go to the place assigned to the serfs.
***
At the end of the road running from the wall to the unloading yard, there was a side gate for foot traffic. Two keepers at the entrance. Anyone going in had to say which overseer they'd come under.
A little after Berak went in, there was a clank. He looked back to see a soldier fastening the latch. They said that gate didn't open again at night.
The quarters were barracks made of shacks joined together. The roof was low, and the walls were stained with damp. Through the small window, he could barely see outside.
Beyond that narrow window, faint lights barely shone through. According to those who'd come with him, porters, day laborers, and drifters slept around there. Now and then, singing or laughter drifted over from that way.
The barracks where Berak and the serfs stayed was a spot sectioned off so they wouldn't mix with them.
The day after that first night's observations. For the first time in a long while, no, perhaps for the first time ever. Berak was given no work.
That didn't mean he was free. The overseer had ordered them to stay in the quarters. The other serfs couldn't have been happier, but Berak sorely regretted not being able to use his body.
'Stamina, Strength, Refinement, Education, Proficiency, Axe......'
Berak lay down, closed his eyes, and pictured the letters. Not looking at them directly, but in his head.
He didn't know their meanings, but he'd long since memorized their forms whole. He passed the time combining them and taking them apart.
The next day again. The overseer came. They were supposed to have gone back yesterday, but for some reason it had been delayed a day.
"You lot, follow me. We're going back to the logging camp."
When Berak fell in behind, the overseer stopped him.
"Wait. Not you."
The overseer looked Berak up and down again.
"I was told you're to keep waiting here."
Who had said so? The question rose in him, but Berak soon answered it. It had to be the Forest Warden, of course.
After the overseer left, the front of the quarters soon fell quiet. A gust of dusty wind passed by.
Berak stood there for a while.
"Stay behind?"
The words slipped out. No one had explained why.
The Forest Warden had kept only him behind. To test something like last time? Or to give him new work?
Or had he finally been caught hiding his strength?
'Was being that careful not enough?'
No, no point in borrowing trouble.
It might turn out to be no special reason. Maybe they just wanted fewer workers on the way back.
But somehow, he had a bad feeling. He couldn't help the unexplainable unease welling up.
Berak turned his eyes toward the door of the quarters.
It was then.
"Berak."
A low voice called.
When he turned his head, a familiar face showed through the gap in the door.
"Mister Martin?"
"So you did get left behind alone. This isn't good......"
His voice was laced with worry. Berak quickly leaned closer.
"Mister. Do you know why I was left behind alone?"
"I'll tell you later. Let's get inside first."
Inside the quarters. Martin pulled a thin book from inside his coat.
"Got it. What you asked for."
Forgetting his unease for a moment, Berak held his breath.
In his hand was a well-thumbed picture book. Strange letters were packed densely between pages worn at the corners.
"This was the only children's book at the edge of the market. It's a story about a hero."
Martin handed over the book. Berak touched the cover with his fingertips.
"Thank you! Really!"
"Too early for thanks. I haven't even shown you anything yet, have I?"
Martin smiled and opened the book. The first page, a mix of letters and pictures, was revealed.
"Now, I'll teach you."
"What?"
Berak's eyes went round. As if that reaction was nothing new to him, Martin raised his eyebrows slightly.
"You're not saying you don't trust me, are you?"
"N-no. That's not it......"
Martin pointed at the page with his finger.
"Of course, I can't read all of it either. But I can roughly make it out. This shape is 'hero,' and this one's 'sword.' What was this one again?"
He added with a smile.
"Back in the day, I handled the accounts at another logging camp. Watching the scribes write every time, I got used to it. Since then, copying down this and that other letter......"
Berak looked dazed. Martin's hand came to rest on his head.
"Reading. You wanted to learn, didn't you?"
Berak's lips trembled slightly. Only then did he realize his clumsy excuse back then hadn't worked. All that about the letters' shapes being cool.
"...Please teach me."
"Good. Sit down next to me."
Martin's low voice filled the cramped quarters.
"Once upon a time, in an age when divine light fell more brightly upon the world, a child was born. In later days, he came to be called the 'Hero.'"
In the air hanging over the pages, Berak's eyes moved from letter to letter. Following the forms with his eyes, he tried to etch them in whole, just as he had memorized the shapes in his head.
"...And so the Hero set off on a journey of training to a faraway land."
In that instant, something flashed in his head.
'Training.'
It definitely looked exactly like what he'd been seeing.
The shapes only he could see were by no means figments of his imagination or tricks of a demon.
The letters were this world's language.
And the things he'd been seeing were written in that language.
「Insight + 1」
"...The Hero gathered strength into both arms and held up the collapsing pillar."
Berak focused. This time, a different word caught his eye.
'Power.'
It felt somehow familiar.
It looked similar to [Strength]. The picture book showed a man holding up a pillar with bursting muscles.
'Is this... the same thing too?'
The meanings might not be exactly the same. But the shapes were alike. And the meanings were somehow alike, too.
He couldn't grasp everything from hearing it once.
But the hero's gestures, sword, and expressions in the pictures began, little by little, to take on meaning.
「Intelligence + 1」
"...That's it for now."
When Martin finished, Berak checked his changes.
◎ Education
- Kingdom Tongue (Branwald): Beginner
* Stats
[Intelligence: 6]
[Insight: 1/100]
That he'd learned at least a little of how reading felt. That he now had a foundation for learning letters. That it showed up expressed like that.
......That moved him far more than he'd expected.
Stroking the closed picture book, Berak slowly raised his head.
"Thank you. Mister. Really......"
Berak's words broke off. Martin's face had at some point gone hard and stiff. Almost a little frightening.
"Berak."
His voice was as firm as his expression.
"Tonight, you have to run."