“70 Gold.”
The village chief looked stern. He looked perfectly unabashed and utterly confident.
He looked so resolute that, if I had been a green mercenary, I might have thought, ‘So 70 Gold is the proper rate for a request like this!’
“No, how does that make any sense?”
“Then do not take it. I will find another mercenary.”
“Do you think I do not know there are no other mercenaries nearby?”
“Then I will wait. Do you think no other mercenary will ever come to this village?”
“Of course they will not. With a bandit gang sitting there and waiting, who would enter this territory?”
“Someone will come eventually.”
“You are going to wait? Forever?”
“Do you think this village is going to starve to death just because its merchant caravans are being blocked for a while? You money-grubbing bastard…….”
“No, I am not a money grub…… This simply makes no sense.”
I pounded the wooden desk in frustration.
“It is not as though all I have to do is locate the bandits and return, or deliver an item to another village. I have to cross blades with those bastards.”
“What is so difficult about that? There are only six or seven of them at most. Are they not the sort who would be swept away with one swing of your sword?”
“Do those bandits not have swords?”
“With your armor…….”
“Damage to my armor is a problem too, and armor has gaps.”
“Then you should simply fight well.”
“Do not shift the responsibility onto me. Admit that this is dangerous work. You said you would not even provide any men.”
I protested, my lips pushed out in a pout.
“That is…….”
“Let us ask why. Should not at least a few villagers come out and fight beside me?”
It was a small village. A very small village, one that could probably muster only ten to fifteen able-bodied men. They could not help but be sensitive to any loss of labor.
Still, even if only three of them joined me, the danger I had to face would drop sharply.
“Is that not why one hires a mercenary?”
“Ha…….”
I could roughly read the situation. They were frightened.
The village was full of cowards too afraid even to face bandits carrying swords.
“It is not as though there are that many enemies!”
I let out a long sigh.
‘No, even if there are not many bandits, they are offering less than 100 Gold for a bandit-subjugation request? That will not do.’
“120 Gold. I will not accept the request for anything less.”
“Haa…….”
The village chief sighed repeatedly.
“100 Gold.”
“No.”
“The village has no funds. Did you think this little village could simply hand that much Gold to a mercenary?”
I calmly studied the village chief’s expression.
‘It is not completely impossible, but even this could be a bluff…….’
“I need food. Pay 100 Gold in cash, and the remaining 20 Gold in food of equivalent value.”
“That would make the children of this village go hungry…… I ask you to show mercy, so that we can at least endure until the harvest.”
‘Then you should have named an honest price from the beginning instead of trying to pull a trick…….’
“I will take 80 Gold, so give me food worth 20 Gold.”
“Did I not say that food is scarce? Even if I gave you the entire 100 Gold, I could not give you food worth 20 Gold.”
I had tested him in case the food shortage was a lie, but it seemed to be true.
“100 Gold and food worth 10 Gold.”
“Good. We have a deal.”
My first request negotiation had been exceedingly arduous. I let out a deep sigh.
“Before I leave, I will inspect that ‘food worth 10 Gold’ in advance.”
“Do so. I have no intention of deceiving you. Just make certain you do the job.”
The negotiation was over. Now it was time to fight.
As one of this world’s mercenaries.
***
I had transmigrated into a game about running a mercenary company.
‘Of all worlds, this one…….’
It was a little better than a horror game where merely living was agony, but this world would still rank near the top of the list of worlds I never wanted to find myself in.
Mercenaries died very easily in this world. Even a veteran in sturdy armor could be sent to the afterlife in an instant if he was unlucky enough to take a few blows from a hammer.
‘My starting luck is not bad, though…….’
The Lonely Knight start. It was a start in which I built a mercenary company as a knight equipped with the finest armor and a greatsword.
It was far better than the Beggar start, which began with absolutely nothing, or the Bandit Gang start, where I became one among countless bandits and had no idea when I might die.
Mercenaries in this game fell very easily. In a major battle, it was only natural for several men to die.
In a game like that, people inevitably served as weapon racks or armor stands.
No matter how outstanding a warrior was, if he was sent onto the battlefield without equipment, he died as easily as an insect.
Even an ordinary person could perform passably with powerful armor and weapons.
I believed in that too. In my armor and my weapon.
“……Come at me!”
“What? You are alone?”
The bandits, armed with clubs and daggers, slowly closed in around me.
‘I did not want to fight this soon, but…….’
I had precious armor and a precious weapon. In an ordinary playthrough, I would have had to build my mercenary company up and pay an enormous sum to buy armor and a weapon like these.
Yet the more expensive armor and weapons became, the more exponentially the cost of maintaining and repairing them rose as well.
“Fine. Do not run around and make this troublesome. Come at me all at once!”
That was why I could not take the odd jobs and errands that other one-man mercenary companies routinely accepted. Such work earned only a few Gold at best.
Once I considered armor repairs, food, lodging, and everything else, it would be a loss no matter how I looked at it.
I had to make the most of the armor and weapon I possessed at the beginning and somehow take lucrative requests to keep myself afloat.
‘First, I need to grow the mercenary company.’
I could not continue to act alone, whether for survival or for the future. A lone mercenary who worked alone might sound cool, but it was horribly weak and inconvenient.
I had to gamble. Even if they were somewhat dangerous, I had to take requests that could earn at least a little more money.
‘No crossbows, bows, or thrown weapons…….’
I could endure bows well enough. Archery was a fairly rare skill, and a bandit gang like this was unlikely to have a proper archer.
Even if they fired arrows from crude, makeshift bows, the arrows would be stopped by the solid armor I wore and bounce away.
‘Ordinarily, the client should tell me about even this beforehand…….’
These were not mysterious bandits who had only just arrived at the village. They had been tormenting it for quite some time. Common sense said that the villagers should have informed me of the bandits’ armament in advance.
I had asked, but there had been no answer. I had not expected one. A village that had called in a mercenary because it could not deal with six bandits was unlikely to have carefully checked their equipment.
“You fool! I do not know what noble house you serve as a knight, but there are six of us! Do you think we would lose to the likes of you?”
“Yes. I think you will lose.”
Crossbows and thrown weapons were frightening. Armor could not completely absorb the destructive force of a crossbow or the impact of a thrown axe.
Even if those weapons had terribly poor accuracy, my journey could end if I were unlucky enough to be struck in a vital spot even once.
But they did not have weapons capable of creating that kind of variable.
‘No hammers, and the daggers will be a little troublesome…… Still, I think I can handle them if I am careful.’
Daggers, which could reliably target the gaps in armor, were more dangerous than crude longswords, sickles, or sabers—weapons that had no choice but to strike the armor.
When the bandits believed they had surrounded me completely, I tightened my grip.
This was the moment I had been waiting for.
“Hyaaaah!”
“Y-you bastard!”
I immediately spun around and charged the bandit guarding my back.
‘This is what I was waiting for!’
If they had formed a line and approached me, I could not have advanced carelessly.
Even if I cut one of them down, another bandit standing behind him would have tried to kill me.
But the fact that they were surrounding me meant that, instead of coming together in a tight group to kill me, they had spread out in every direction.
“Aaaaargh!”
As I ran, I swung the greatsword in my hand savagely.
The bandit’s body split in half. I felt the sticky, sinewy sensation of tearing through flesh in my hand.
‘It really is…… good.’
My sword was a proper greatsword.
It was a precious item that I could not obtain early on with a standard start, one that could fetch thousands of Gold if sold to someone who knew its value.
It could easily cut down even an armored soldier. There was no reason it could not cut through bandits wearing cloth.
“He killed my brother!”
“Kill him!”
The bandits rushed at me, venting their fury.
“Hup!”
There had originally been six men in the encirclement. With one dead, a gap had inevitably opened.
“Ha!”
I ran several steps through that gap and took my stance.
‘Two nearby, three farther away!’
No matter how sturdy my armor was, being surrounded was dangerous.
Even if I felled the bandits one by one with a single sword strike, every remaining bandit would get a chance to attack me.
A blow from a club would jolt my body or my head, and if I was unlucky enough to be stabbed through a gap in my armor, blood would flow.
Therefore, it was better to minimize the number of bandits I faced at once.
“Hya!”
An upward slash. One of the bandits rushing at me was split by the greatsword.
From his groin to the crown of his head, the bandit’s body was divided in two. It was a gruesome sight, but I had no time to dwell on the grotesqueness of the severed body.
“Aaaah!”
One of the bandits I had not yet cut down stabbed at me with a dagger.
“Where do you think you are aiming?”
A dagger could pierce the gaps in armor, but it was no easy task.
Unless one was a well-trained assassin or extraordinarily lucky, all one could do was nick the edge of the armor.
That bandit was not so lucky. His dagger met my armor with the sound of steel striking steel.
“Hup!”
The bandit had no choice but to pay the price for his failure. After taking the dagger-wielding bandit’s head, I immediately charged the next enemy.
“Hyaaaah!”
I cut down a bandit charging at me with a club. I tried to cut down another immediately after, but my swinging sword struck nothing but empty air.
‘……I missed!’
My body was strong, and both my armor and sword were of the highest quality. But that did not make me a master swordsman.
In a desperate situation like this, it was only natural for my sword to miss once or twice.
“R-revenge!”
The bandit with the club smashed it into my head.
“Urgh!”
I felt the impact in my head. I barely managed to regain my stance.
The helmet I wore was also of the finest quality. It could absorb some of the impact.
In contrast, the wooden club he wielded was a half-rotted piece of junk. It was nowhere near enough to rattle my head with a single blow.
‘The remaining men—’
I prepared for the next attack, but the attack I had braced for never came.
‘Panic!’
One of the three bandits following behind stood trembling with a small sword in his hand.
I had easily cut down the first four bandits, and fear that he might suffer the same fate had overwhelmed him.
‘It is only natural to be afraid!’
They were neither knights who staked their lives on honor nor regular soldiers trained under strict discipline.
When the people beside them were brutally killed, it was natural for them to panic.
“Insolent bastard!”
After making certain to stab the bandit who had struck my head to death, I charged toward the trembling bandit.
“Aaaah!”
“Do not run!”
I wore armor while he was unarmored, but a panicked opponent whose feet kept tangling was not difficult to catch.
After a short chase, I succeeded in cutting the bandit’s throat.
“Whew…… It is over.”
My first battle. It ended more easily than I had feared, but it had not been simple.
If I had been only a little less lucky, if that last bandit had not panicked.
And if the club that struck my head had been steel instead of wood, the situation could have become dangerous.
Even if I did not die, I was alone. If I became unable to fight, there would be no one to treat me. A deep wound in my arm or neck would end my life.
“Still, I survived…….”
I began searching the corpses for anything useful.
As was usual for a poor bandit gang, there was not much worth taking. At most, there was food, the wooden clubs and daggers they carried, and the shabby clothes they wore.
But even such things were valuable at the beginning. As I diligently stripped them of their belongings, I found a suspicious scrap of paper.
“A map……? Could it be a treasure map?”
A dubious map caught my eye.
The areas that had already been searched were even marked.
“……Should I look into it?”
The exhaustion from battle vanished in an instant.
If the map was genuine, I could earn a fairly worthwhile bit of extra income.