‘I see. People have no aversion to this name yet because Kazar has not made a name for himself through infamy.’
If so, the Kazar beside him might not be Tyrant King Kazar.
‘I misunderstood because I did not know it was a common name in this era.’
Even so, judging by the way he behaved, Ernolf could not be certain that Kazar was not a tyrant in the making. In that case, there was only one solution.
“Once again, I earnestly demand it, Kazar. Let us change your name while we are at it.”
Ernolf told him to change his name whenever an opportunity arose, and Kazar was getting irritated. He raised his chin and sent Ernolf a look that said he would kill him if he uttered one more word, making Ernolf quietly avert his gaze.
“May I ask why you summoned us?”
The lord replied that he had summoned them to ask them to hunt a monster.
Although the lord was speaking with Ernolf, the Lord and Lady kept glancing toward Kazar.
“Where is your Guide?”
“Why do you seek the Guide?”
“It seems to be a somewhat dangerous mission, so I believe we will need the Guide’s permission.”
“Permission? Just......”
The moment Kazar began to answer, Ernolf hurriedly cut him off.
It was said that the Self-Awakened Ones changed history. Such beings, capable of shaking the established order and balance of power, inevitably became targets of envy and restraint.
Ernolf wanted no part in that kind of turmoil. His only goal was to live quietly before returning to his original body without anyone knowing. Therefore, he had to hide the fact that they had no Guide.
“We are on our way back to the Guide after visiting our parents. The Guide is not traveling with us.”
“Ah, so they did not accompany you.”
“We hunt monsters from time to time for training, so please tell us what you need.”
“Is that all right?”
“Let us hear it first, then we will decide whether the opponent is beyond our ability.”
After hearing Ernolf, the lord looked at Kazar again. That was because Kazar, not Ernolf, was the actual person in charge of the commission. However, Kazar took a step back, as though to say that if his brother said it was all right, then it was all right.
The lord asked whether they could capture a Goblin cub alive.
“A single Goblin is not dangerous, but their habits are the problem. They live in groups and raise their cubs together, so to capture one cub, you must deal with the entire group. Is it too difficult for your soldiers?”
The Lord and Lady could not hide their surprise when a child who looked no more than fifteen spoke so fluently about monster ecology.
In fact, they had sent prisoners who had once belonged to the Kasion Mercenary Company out to hunt the day before, only for them all to be wiped out.
“This is a small city, so we do not have many soldiers. The Barbarians have been rampant, and merely defending the territory is already more than we can handle. That is why we intend to use mercenaries.”
“I see.”
The Lord and Lady thought that the brothers seemed unlikely to accept the commission. However, that was not why Ernolf had not readily accepted it.
“Since it comes with danger, you will need to pay us a generous reward.”
Kazar, who had been listening with his arms folded as he leaned against the wall, nodded as well. What mattered most to the twins right now was money first, money second, and money third.
“Does that mean you will accept the commission?”
“Yes. But what do you intend to use a Goblin cub for?”
“That is none of your concern. If you simply bring it back alive, I will pay you handsomely. It must be completed within this week. Can you do it?”
“If we leave at once, we can bring it to you by tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? Did you say tomorrow?”
“Yes. Should we bring it to the manor? Or here......”
“Just capture it. I will take care of the rest.”
“Understood. If you give us an advance payment, we will depart immediately.”
Because the commission was difficult, Ernolf demanded half the reward as an advance payment.
Unless it was a highly trustworthy mercenary company, no one received such a large advance payment. They might take the money and run away.
“I will remain here until my younger brother completes the commission.”
As soon as Ernolf said that, Kazar, who had only listened quietly until then, suddenly kicked him in the calf.
-Why?!
-What?
-Why did you kick me?!
Kazar did not say a word to his brother, who demanded an answer with his eyes.
Other than the few days when they had been forcibly separated after their attempt to escape the mines had failed, Kazar had never spent time apart from his brother throughout the years his brother had been alive. They had been together from birth, and they had been together even when they were sold to the mines as slaves.
He had finally reunited with his brother after fifty years, yet Ernolf wanted to spend a whole day apart from him without even discussing it first. It made Kazar furious.
That bastard of a brother who had lost all of his memories might be fine with it, but Kazar was not.
***
After finishing their conversation with the Lord and Lady, the two went to the room the temple had given them. While Kazar packed his hunting gear, Ernolf healed the leg Kazar had bruised by kicking it with magic.
“You ignorant bastard, all you have is strength! You nearly broke it!”
“If it breaks, ask them to mend it. This is the place that specializes in that.”
Kazar said this as he wrapped the chains for binding the Goblin cub around his body.
“That is true.”
Now that he thought about it, if it had broken, he could have used that as an excuse to experience a healer’s skill firsthand. Ernolf was a little disappointed that he could not.
‘No. If that happened, they would discover that I am a wizard.’
The priests knew Kazar was an Aura User because they had treated him.
“You’re going to have to clear out the Goblin cave alone. Are you all right with that?”
“If I didn’t think I could handle it, I wouldn’t have accepted the commission.”
“That is true.”
Ernolf immediately agreed.
Before coming here, the two had hunted a wide variety of monsters. They wanted to adapt to the bodies they had possessed as soon as possible and develop their battle instincts and magical abilities. During that time, Ernolf had been left speechless by the speed of Kazar’s growth.
‘I have grown much stronger too, but Kazar......’
Every time Kazar defeated a monster, his reaction speed and combat skills evolved at a monstrous pace. He looked as though a god of war had possessed him.
He had merely played up the danger of the commission to receive more compensation. If Ernolf had judged it an impossible task, he would never have accepted it in the first place.
Kazar would probably return from the Goblin cave stronger than he had ever been before.
“Don’t do anything stupid. Just read some books until I get back.”
When Kazar had finished preparing, he thoroughly mussed up Ernolf’s hair.
“What stupid thing would I do......?”
“If you’ve got any conscience, put your hand on your heart and think about it. You’re deliberately staying behind to do something stupid.”
Ernolf put a hand on his chest and sank into thought.
‘Hmm, I feel a little guilty.’
As Kazar said, the reason he had chosen to remain at the temple was that he wanted to investigate its secret without having to watch Kazar’s reactions.
“What did you see at the farm earlier?”
When they had visited the farm, Ernolf had been silent for a long time as he watched the slaves. Kazar had not been able to stop thinking about it.
“I saw the slaves.”
Ernolf recalled the serfs who had worked like people bereft of their souls.
They mainly performed repetitive, strenuous labor. Tethered to enormous millstones like donkeys, they went around and around to grind grain; they scooped up filth to spread over the fields, or turned a waterwheel to send water into an irrigation channel.
Their backs were bent and their bodies gaunt, but their limbs were thick with firm muscles, making them look heavy and solid.
“Their eyes were unfocused, and they were drooling. Thick chains were fastened to their limbs. Is that not too much? They would not even treat livestock that way.”
“It’s nice that you’ve forgotten everything. You can say such carefree things.”
“......?”
“We were tied up and sold off like that too. Like livestock.”
That day, the overseer had mercilessly whipped their mother and father as they screamed for their children to be returned.
His brother had covered Kazar’s ears with both hands to keep him from hearing their parents’ screams, but he could not cover Kazar’s wide-open eyes.
From the slave merchant’s wagon, Kazar watched his bleeding father and his sobbing mother.
That was when Kazar learned the lesson that if you were powerless and had nothing, you would end up like that.
“What is so special about a slave’s lot? Wherever you live, it is all the same.”
In this era, slaves were their owners’ assets, not people. No one would hold anyone accountable whether they treated slaves like livestock or even worse.
“They did give them water, at least.”
There was a separate slave who ladled water to the chained serfs as they worked. That was what Kazar was referring to.
‘That is right. I want to find out about the strange color of that water.’
The water had been a cloudy white, as though a little milk had been poured into it.
It might have been limewater, but he could not be certain.
All the serfs bore the marks of Living-Tissue Transplantation.
‘It may not be ordinary water. It might be a medicine intended to raise the success rate of Living-Tissue Transplantation.’
Kazar called it “doing something stupid,” but to Ernolf, it was a wizard’s intellectual curiosity.
“When are you leaving?”
Kazar narrowed his eyes as he looked at Ernolf, who could barely keep himself still because he wanted to hurry to the farm.
“If you don’t behave yourself, you won’t get the remaining payment. Just breathe. Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Now, now. What do you take this older brother for, to say that? What could I possibly get up to with such a frail body?”
It was absurd, but looking at Ernolf, as thin as a dry branch, Kazar found himself believing it. Even so, he felt a little uneasy as he left Ernolf behind at the temple.
***
According to the priest, a lake lay to the right of the mountain whose peaks resembled fangs, and a Goblin cave lay a little farther up from the lake.
Home to a group of around forty Goblins, it was the perfect training ground for Kazar’s current level.
After letting his horse loose in a relatively safe place, Kazar set out on foot to find the Goblins’ habitat.
He had often hunted Goblins during his time in the Kasion Mercenary Company, so he knew their habits well.
What Kazar found strange was that Ernolf had confidently said he could finish them off in a single night, as though he had hunted Goblins before.
‘He has not regressed like I have, so how does he know so much about Goblins?’
He possessed magical knowledge he had never learned, knew the proper etiquette for dealing with nobles, and although he was somewhat eccentric, he behaved exactly like a young master raised and educated by a good family.
Had his personality changed because of his memory loss? Or had becoming a Self-Awakened One granted him insight that ordinary humans could not understand?
Kazar did not know, but the brother with whom he had reunited was so different from the brother in his memories that doubts kept arising.
‘What am I thinking? He has the same face, and we even share Resonance. There is no way he is not my brother.’
There were countless suspicious points, but the fact that they shared Resonance was undeniable proof that he was Ernolf.
Just as the priest had said, there was a small lake at the foot of Fang Mountain. Nearby, Kazar found the footprints of male Goblins and signs that they had hunted and eaten fish.
Not long afterward, he found more than ten Goblin corpses whose insides had been eaten away and whose limbs had been torn apart.
‘A monster higher-ranking than Goblins is nearby.’
Goblins possessed a little intelligence. Though not as intelligent as humans, they were cleverer and more agile than other monsters.
The fact that several of them had been hunted at once was a dangerous sign.
RUSTLE. RUSTLE.
RUSTLE.
He heard the sound of someone carefully stepping across the ground covered with fallen leaves.
Kazar quickly climbed the cliff and pressed his body tightly against a rock.
The moment he had hidden himself, an enormous man pushed through the bushes, appeared, and began digging through the ground with both hands.
Before long, the creature pulled a human forearm from the soil and began ravenously tearing it apart and eating it.
Then two more creatures burst out from between the trees and entered a tense standoff over the forearm.
“SKREEE!”
“SKREE!”
Kazar’s eyes sharpened. Goblin and human corpses were scattered near the creatures as they grappled and fought. He could see the corpse of a member of the Kasion Mercenary Company he had seen at the temple before.
‘The Barbarians are not the real problem.’
When his brother had asked why the Lord did not use soldiers to hunt Goblins, the Lord of Talisa had said that even defending against the Barbarians was more than he could manage. Since raids were frequent during the harvest season, the Lord’s words had been convincing.
However, Kazar was now seeing a far more convincing reason with his own eyes.
Monsters that fed on human flesh were wearing guards’ uniforms.
That showed that they had once lived in the city and had been soldiers who obeyed the Lord’s orders.
“SKREE! This is mine!”
“We caught it together, so we should share it!”
The creatures snarled at one another like beasts, and at times even cursed in human speech.
They were closer to being half-human, half-beast than complete monsters.
‘This hunt will take longer than I thought.’
Kazar quietly drew his blade and clenched it between his teeth.
If he wanted to kill all of these creatures and then capture a Goblin cub, it seemed unlikely that he would be able to return by the time his brother had promised the Lord.