“Then, I’ll see you again.”
After casually entrusting them with the ‘commission,’ the mysterious boy disappeared together with the knight accompanying him.
Only Raul and the mercenaries remained.
Even after the boy left, Raul remained frozen like stone for quite some time.
“Hey, you all right?”
James poked Raul, who was sitting blankly in his chair.
When Raul still didn’t move, James reached toward his large and magnificent beard.
“Don’t touch it.”
“Tch.”
James casually withdrew his hand and looked at Raul.
“Wasn’t it a mistake to just let him leave? If that brat really knows something about the Commander’s daughter…….”
“What, were we supposed to hold him down by force and make him spit out her location?”
“No, well, that’s…….”
James didn’t bother finishing.
Truthfully, that was exactly what he had been thinking.
“It’s suspicious. First he sends us a forged commission request, then he spouts something that ridiculous to drag us into this.”
“Then let me ask you the opposite.”
Raul glared at James.
“If we tried to capture him, are you confident we could?”
“…….”
“He isn’t even a ‘brat’ in the first place. There’s no way he’s actually ten years old. He probably used some unusual potion to disguise his physique.”
“……Do potions like that even exist?”
“Does a ten-year-old acting like that against us make any more sense?”
James closed his mouth.
Raul had a point.
A Special-Grade Mercenary Company was practically legendary within the mercenary world.
And Raul was the Vice Commander who effectively led that Special-Grade Mercenary Company.
Yet that brat…… that client had not only refused to shrink back before Raul, he had even pressured him.
“Even if we could deal with the boy, what would you do about the knight?”
“……Hmm.”
“You’ve got eyes. You must have realized it too. If that knight had wanted to, none of us would still be here.”
They would probably be having a meeting in the afterlife by now.
“He certainly wasn’t ordinary…… but even so, we’ve got the reputation of our mercenary company to consider. Being dragged around by the nose like this doesn’t sit right with me.”
“Dragged around…….”
Raul smirked.
He was the Vice Commander of <Red Serpent>.
Before that, he was a veteran among veterans who had spent his entire life as a mercenary and completed numerous major commissions.
“James, do you really think the Platinum Seal that man sent was nothing more than a forgery?”
“……No?”
“He deliberately brought up the Commander, and he acted like he’d already seen right through us…… That man is connected somehow.”
Raul’s mind raced.
He carefully went over the conversation he had shared with the boy earlier.
Between the contents of the commission request and the subtle clues the boy had dropped, Raul could not shake the feeling that he had been deliberately given hints.
Moreover.
‘That knight’s reaction earlier.’
It had been slight, but Raul had sensed him being shaken.
How should he interpret that reaction?
One possibility immediately came to mind.
But it was nowhere near enough to be certain.
“Anyway, we accepted the commission. James, what’s our creed?”
“Once we accept a commission, we complete it no matter what.”
“That’s right. So we complete it.”
Raul’s eyes gleamed.
- Let’s look into the ‘business’ being run by the First Young Master of Messiah.
Raul recalled the boy’s advice.
When it concerned ‘Flora,’ he could never afford to take the matter lightly.
- A-Aaaagh…… AAAAAAGH!
He once again remembered the agonized screams he had buried deep within his memories.
Even if he could not make everything right, perhaps this was a chance to rectify at least a little of what had gone wrong back then.
If so.
“We’ve been taking things too easy with our commissions lately.”
“They haven’t exactly been eas…….”
“Let’s make some trouble for the first time in a while.”
“Good grief…….”
James immediately understood what Raul meant.
Whenever the man serving as Vice Commander gave off this sort of atmosphere, something enormous always happened.
But what could he do?
“Yes, yes. We’ll do it. What other choice do we have?”
For this particular commission, James felt the same way…….
***
My objective had been successfully accomplished.
On the way back to the mansion, Deckard and I walked in silence.
When we were almost there, Deckard, who had said nothing throughout the entire journey home, finally opened his mouth.
“What is going on, young master?”
There was no inflection whatsoever in Deckard’s voice.
But I knew it wasn’t because he had maintained his composure.
“What do you mean?”
“The daughter of <Red Serpent>’s Commander.”
Deckard stopped walking as he spoke.
He quietly raised his head and looked up at the night sky.
“Why did you tell such a reckless lie?”
“A lie?”
“It is…… a lie.”
Deckard slowly turned his head after answering in a restrained voice.
His face, revealed beneath the moonlight, was twisted almost beyond recognition.
“Because that child is dead.”
“How can you be so certain?”
“That is obviously because……!”
Deckard started to answer, then stopped.
He forcibly swallowed the words that had nearly escaped his mouth.
Standing beneath the moonlight, he looked several years older than usual.
“……Because there is no possibility that the daughter of <Red Serpent>’s Commander could still be alive.”
“Because she was in the territory Kravalt burned that day?”
“……!”
Deckard’s eyes flew open.
I stopped walking and faced him directly.
“You know better than anyone that I wouldn’t lie about something like this, don’t you?”
“That…….”
Deckard had been beside me for a long time.
Just as I knew him well, he knew me well too.
“Well, you brought it up at a good time. Since we’re already here, let’s settle everything before we go inside. We still have some time.”
“I…….”
Deckard grimaced.
A tremor that began at his fingertips gradually spread through his entire body.
He leaned against a tree and sank down.
“How…… How in the world?”
“Who knows?”
“No, since when? Even for you, young master…… no one besides His Highness should know about my past…….”
He muttered to himself, then fell silent.
Now that we had come this far, I supposed it was time to tell him.
“The Mercenary of the Frost Wind.”
“……!”
“Sand Calamity, Desert Fixer, Walker of the Red Lands…… You completed countless commissions and were known by many aliases. But the most famous of them all was…….”
Deckard stared at me with wide eyes.
I slowly spoke the next words.
“Master of <Red Serpent>.”
Deckard’s eyes trembled.
But he did not deny it.
He merely reached toward his chest out of habit and took out ‘something.’
It was a mask.
A pure-white mask that had once symbolized a legendary mercenary whose name had resounded far and wide.
“Shall we talk about commissions? It has been a while since you returned to your old profession.”
“…….”
At those words, the Commander of <Red Serpent> looked at me with weary eyes.
***
As soon as we returned to my room, I placed the bottle I had prepared on the table.
Deckard looked at it with a complicated expression before sitting across from me.
“A twenty-year-old Valed…… Hah, haha. You truly leave me no avenue of escape, young master.”
“You know what it means.”
“Twenty years ago, Valed was a land that burned and perished at the hands of the Berserk Dragon. It was a city famous for its breweries. And…….”
Deckard looked at the bottle with complicated eyes.
“It was also the last place…… where my wife and daughter stayed.”
“…….”
“You already know everything, don’t you? You even knew that I was the Commander of <Red Serpent>.”
“Yes, I do.”
……The Berserk Dragon Kravalt.
It had been a famous incident.
After all, a dragon had gone berserk and turned the Empire into a sea of fire.
Over the course of several years, numerous cities had burned and countless people had died.
“Where should I begin?”
Deckard thought for a moment, then opened his mouth.
“Twenty years ago, the city where my wife and daughter were staying burned to the ground. We even found their charred remains.”
“It was the Berserk Dragon’s doing.”
“Yes. I examined the remains myself…… and I lost all reason. I couldn’t bear my hatred for the Berserk Dragon Kravalt.”
For a moment, I imagined it.
A city reduced to ashes.
Deckard rushing back and frantically digging through the ground where his home had once stood until he found his wife’s remains.
He would have screamed.
Clutching the remains in his arms, he would have struck the ground and screamed until his throat went hoarse and blood came out.
And when he finally accepted reality, he must have sworn vengeance with bloodshot eyes.
He would bring the dragon down, no matter what means or methods it required.
“Well, that is how I ended up like this. I struggled for several years, but I couldn’t kill the Berserk Dragon. So the final method I turned to was…….”
“Father.”
“Yes. That is correct. As it happened, His Highness was searching for ‘exceptional talent’ to protect the Second Wife.”
Their interests aligned.
And so a contract was formed between the ‘Commander of <Red Serpent>’ and the ‘Grand Duke of Messiah.’
I smirked.
“You said you became Mother’s knight because of friendship.”
“Friendship makes for a fine justification. From my friend’s perspective, there was no reason to refuse the offer either.”
As Deckard spoke, he reached toward his glass.
The glass on the table was naturally drawn into his hand.
“But do not misunderstand me and think I am doing all this merely out of obligation. The Second Wife is also the daughter of a dear friend of mine.”
“I know.”
“Hoho. Of course you do.”
Deckard said that and took another drink.
“Ah, damn it. This is when having too high a level of Aura becomes a nuisance. I can’t even get drunk…….”
Deckard grumbled and downed several more glasses.
Only then did he finally seem to feel the alcohol, and he continued in a slightly hoarse voice.
“I wanted to finish that bastard somehow. Even if it meant accepting an onerous contract.”
“…….”
“I tortured Kravalt after he had been reduced to a wreck. I carefully controlled my strength so he would not die too easily.”
Venom practically dripped from Deckard’s eyes as he spoke.
“I pulled out his scales one by one and sliced away his flesh. I gouged out both his eyes and severed his nerves. Even when he thrashed and begged me to kill him, I refused.”
“Were you satisfied?”
“Satisfied? Hah…… hahaha! Yes, I was! Anyone who says revenge is meaningless is full of shit! Even that emptiness after revenge people always talk about is a privilege that only those who have taken revenge are entitled to!”
Deckard laughed.
Yet somehow, he also looked as though he were crying.
“Ah, of course, the emptiness that comes afterward is real. What you have lost does not return, and nothing can ever bring it back.”
“…….”
It was an emotion I had never experienced.
I had never lost someone precious to me.
If anything, my only experience was severing such bonds with my own hands.
After saying that much, Deckard placed his glass on the table and looked at me.
“I have lived with that emptiness for a very long time. That unfillable hole became part of me.”
“I see.”
“But do you know what I felt when my daughter’s name came out of your mouth?”
Deckard’s shoulders trembled.
“I felt hope. Perhaps the remains I found had not actually belonged to my daughter. Perhaps…… I could get that child back.”
He squeezed his eyes shut as he spoke.
After some time passed, his trembling shoulders grew still.
When he opened his eyes again, what filled them was no longer venom.
It was desperate longing.
A father could not let go of his daughter.
He was a father.
“That child…… Is Flora truly alive?”
“I never set anything in motion without solid evidence.”
With those words, I quietly held out a small booklet.
“You’ll understand once you read this. It won’t be too late to decide after that.”
“What…… is this?”
“Ralke’s classified documents.”
“Ralke?! Wait, how did these end up in your hands, young master?!”
“Read them first.”
How they had come into my possession was simple.
I had obtained them while eliminating Number Eight and Number Nine.
Of course, I had replaced them with a copy, so there was no chance Schubert would notice.
“What in the world could possibly be written in here……?”
Deckard took the booklet and carefully began to read.
By the time he had made it about halfway through.
“What……?!”
His eyes flew open, and he shot to his feet.