What is family?
I have no family bound to me by blood.
Instead, I had a father who gave me everything without holding back, though we shared no blood at all.
That's why I can define the word family.
To me, family is this.
'Someone to whom I can give without conditions.'
My father met me at the tail end of his life.
He burned what was left of a dying ember in order to raise the person I am.
'Even I wouldn't be confident raising someone like me.......'
Taking on the childhood and adolescence of me, Jack the Mercenary King, was no ordinary matter.
Looking after a small child who had been ripping boulders apart since the age of three was, even to my mind, plainly a grueling task.
On top of that, I grew extremely fast.
At ten I stood two meters tall and possessed enough monstrous strength to tear apart an ogre, a large monster.......
'If he hadn't raised me, Father might've lived a little longer.'
The father who bore with me must have quite literally ground his entire body down to nothing.
I know this well, because I've raised a mercenary company myself.
Commanding ten thousand middling mercenaries is headache enough, so how hard must it have been to look after a being like me, who could wreck furniture and people alike at the slightest provocation?
A thought struck me out of nowhere.......
'Was the reason my father owned nothing that I kept smashing the household goods?'
Even so, my father gave me infinite love without a single word of complaint.
The man who forged and forged me until I could go out into the world is my father.
Truly.......
I learned far too much from him.
How to control my monstrous strength.
How to use that monstrous strength rightly.
He passed down the supreme swordsmanship he had honed his whole life, and he even left me guidelines for pioneering a swordsmanship of my own.
He bequeathed to me, in short, everything his life had been.
All of it piled up, and so I could become the Mercenary King.
That is my father.
And yet.......
'Mel's father seems to be a different sort.'
Even in the midst of fighting the knights who followed Mel's younger brother, my senses were fixed entirely on Mel and her father.
A small, faint voice came from behind my back.
It was the voice of Mel's father.
"You are—."
Two syllables that were never finished.
Still, from his tone, his manner of speech, the look in his eyes, I understood everything. (The sense granted by my monstrous strength can grasp everything about a subject standing behind me.)
The gaze he turned on Mel was the same as a gaze turned on an object, and the timbre of his voice carried the feeling of a man facing something unpleasant and repulsive.
Was that the gaze of a father looking at his daughter?
And yet.......
"I've already—."
Hearing Mel's voice continue, I could only come to a realization.
She was Mel, my comrade and my family.
She wore an expression I had never once seen in my whole life as she declared it to her father.
"—in the middle of succeeding to the Margrave's title, Father."
A father who looks at his daughter like an object.
A daughter who treats her father with hatred.
I hate to admit it.......
But the phrase like father, like child came to mind quite naturally.
'Well, I can hear the details in due time.'
Slash—.
I cut down the last remaining enemy in a single stroke and brought the situation to order.
"Enough!!!"
The domain's loyal knights immediately fell back.
"It seems a reunion between father and daughter is in order. Is there anyone here who intends to remain?"
At my question, every man sheathed his sword.
Unlike when I had entered this room, no one resisted.
Because I'd killed every last bastard who defied me.
The knights left the house head's chamber in a frantic rush.
Only then did I turn around.
Mel and her father came into view.
And Thomson, hiding blankly in the corner, entered my field of vision.
I had plenty of questions, yet Thomson, tucked away in a blind spot with uncanny skill, kept drawing my eye.
'This guy's going to live a long life.'
Come to think of it, he had a fair bit of nerve, and he seemed to have a talent for instinctively finding an escape route.
To my eye, the spot where Thomson stood was the safest position in the room.
If I raised him well and took him to the battlefield, might he not prove useful?
The battlefield seemed to suit him better than a cook's post or a mount handler's.
Letting stray thoughts like these drift past, I approached Mel's father.
Ahem.
I cleared my throat and straightened my posture properly.
Whatever the relations between the two of them, from where I stood, wasn't he the father of my family?
The father of my family, treated as I would treat my own father.
Just as my mercenaries in my past life paid their respects to my father, I was observing the courtesies too.
"I am Jack, Commander of the Monstrous Strength Mercenary Company. I greet the father of my strategist, Mel."
I intended to bow to him just as Mel had.
Bowing twice is for the dead; bowing once is to show respect to the living.
Even I know this much.
And just as I was about to lower my head—.
"Boss!!!"
Mel stopped me.
I had meant to hold my tongue and let it pass, since it was a private family matter.
But enduring any more than this was impossible, comrade or not.
'.......'
There are three bonds I must never betray.
Parent and child.
Brothers who share blood.
And the Monstrous Strength Mercenary Company, sworn to eternity.
"Family matter or not, the bonds of blood—."
Just as I was about to say my piece.
Mel said something shocking.
"That man and I don't share a single drop of blood!!!"
"How is it that a father and a daughter share no blood?"
Mel knew me well.
So she summarized everything in one easy, convenient line.
"I'm a cuckoo's chick."
No wonder Mel's father was giving me such a pitiful look as the knights filed out.......
There was a reason for all of it.
—Ep. 05 Family.
Mel's father wasn't her father.
No, he was a complete stranger who was her father only on the family register.
Having heard the rough explanation, I looked at the piece-of-shit bastard lying in the bed.
"Blood or no blood, a bastard who has climbed and prospered by leeching off the knowledge of the daughter registered as his household's eldest......."
The sickly man who looked ready to die at any moment stared at me with wavering eyes.
Mel's father had realized his daughter possessed marvelous knowledge, and used it to acquire the Mysteries near the Kingdom of Alton, becoming the strongest power in the south.
In exchange he had hidden the fact that Mel was a cuckoo's chick and let her live as a noble house's daughter, apparently.......
"The price falls endlessly short of what you gained."
Mel received very little.
Living as the daughter of a margrave's house in a paltry minor kingdom?
As compensation for becoming the overlord of the kingdom's south, it was endlessly shabby.
"Was this how the young you used your schemes?"
I was close to getting angry even at Mel.
She said her younger self had had a plan of sorts and simply let it be, but.......
"No, I really didn't think he'd throw me away over the succession. Anyway, by the time I got out from under the Inquisition, this country had already been destroyed, so I never even had a chance to look into it......."
The mindset of true nobles is different.
There are plenty who cast aside even their trueborn children, let alone a cuckoo's chick, for the sake of power.
The young Mel didn't know that.
I took this opportunity to put several questions to the piece-of-shit bastard.
Something I'd only just learned.
"I never imagined it was the father who came up with the idea of selling his daughter to an inquisitor."
The plan Mel's younger brother carried out had come out of his father's head.
It was the result of questioning him with Spirituality, so it was a hundred percent true.
I came to understand that my strategist had lived in a household that was noble in name only and utterly wrecked in substance.
"You forcibly took in a commoner woman who already had a husband, and raised the daughter she bore as a card to be discarded. Is that truly the disposition of a father?"
What's more, Mel's mother had already passed away.
Her true father likewise met his end.
Long ago, in the Margrave's monster subjugation campaign, Mel's true father was posted to the very front line and died a wretched death, apparently.......
Mel's family history was more complicated than I had imagined.
It was completely unlike the concept of family I had known.
And so, I decided.
"Mel, do as you will."
The plan to sweet-talk the house head into proclaiming Mel his heir and swallow this margraviate whole.
She was about to carry it out.
Mel perched herself on the edge of the bed in her usual slouching way and asked.
"Father, let's do this nicely. If you're going to go, you should go comfortably, right?"
Whispering all manner of vicious things, she delivered dreadful threats to the thing that had once been her father.
There was no option on the table that involved sparing his life.
"Father, shall I have it recorded that you died here of heartsickness after my little brother's rebellion? No, actually, I could just throw this whole house away and erase the Kranel name for you."
The gist of the threat was: you are fated to die soon anyway, so do you want to vanish after death without even a name left behind?
It was a threat that worked extremely well on a noble obsessed with his house and its line.
"So what will it be? Will you be forgotten in disgrace? Or shall we send you off honorably and cleanly?"
When Mel finished speaking, the house head's gaze wavered.
He understood his own position perfectly well.
That without my Spirituality, he wouldn't have had even a chance to wake.
And so, I spoke.
"I'll let you walk around in good health for today."
If I used up all my Spirituality, it was entirely possible.
From complete depletion, it took roughly twenty-four hours for my Spirituality to recover.
It would refill either way, so there was no particular need to hoard it.
Still, one question remained.
'It'd be easier to just break the curse.......'
When I first infused him with Spirituality, I grasped the nature of the curse Margrave Kranel had suffered.
His mental world had been polluted, and he was wandering in an eternal void.
Because my Spirituality originates from monstrous strength, it could perfectly resolve curses such as mental pollution.
Mel knew this too.
—Curses and the like submit to my monstrous strength.
—My monstrous strength tears even curses embedded in the mind.
The method for undoing a curse is simple.
Pour in Spirituality without restraint and load that monstrous strength with will. That's all.
But I wasn't going to do it.
"If Father cooperates properly, I might even spare my younger brother."
Mel offered a lie that would never be fulfilled.
"......I will follow."
Yet upon that false word, Mel's father made his decision.
Perhaps this was the last mercy Mel would grant her father.
One day of life without pain.
The false hope that his true child would still be alive after he died.
'A happy death?'
Given Mel's temperament, courtesies like this were rare enough to count on one hand.
'Has coming back softened her somehow?'
***
Swift and decisive.
Everything proceeded without a single snag.
The Margrave, who had been sickly and dying, recovered his vigor overnight and stood before them all.
"Barun Kranel raised a rebellion while I was afflicted by a curse."
The restored head of the house set the whole situation in order.
"I stand before you now by means of an elixir....... but because of the poison Barun used, I will likely not last beyond a day."
The Margrave declared that he would die tomorrow due to Barun's attempt to poison him.
It was the figure of a merciless father cutting down his own blood.
Or perhaps he felt like the cold-blooded overlord of the south.
The restored Margrave handed down punishments to the knights who had cooperated with his son, and to silence any objection he raised his own sword and personally beheaded several of the ringleaders.
"I, Kasian von Kranel, master of this domain, do from this hour lay down the name of von and pass the Margrave's title to my eldest daughter, Mel Kranel."
The Margrave completed the succession to Mel without a moment's delay.
Was he truly so pleased to have been granted a single day of health?
Or did he genuinely believe the words that his son might live?
My guess was a little different.
'Is he more afraid of being forgotten after death than of dying?'
Though I'd died once myself, understanding the Margrave's state of mind was impossible.
Still, I rather liked how briskly he handled the business.
"I sent a herald to the royal court, informing them that I would transfer the standing of von to my eldest daughter, Mel Kranel."
The Margrave spoke to me once everything was finished.
In this kingdom, a middle name of 'von' is bestowed upon the holder of a title.
Naming customs like this differ from country to country, so the matter held no particular interest for me.
His next words, however, were rather interesting.
"To Lord Jack, I have transferred the post of knight commander of this domain."
A position overseeing the knight order of a minor kingdom's margrave.
Compared to my Monstrous Strength Mercenary Company, these bastards were nothing.
Still, wasn't the important thing that this was a starting point?
I felt somewhat dissatisfied, but I magnanimously offered the Margrave my final farewell.
"After you die, you'll be recorded as an honorable noble. Even in death, be grateful to Mel forever."
I withdrew my gaze from the Margrave and left the room.
Behind my back, the Margrave muttered.
"Please, as promised, my son......."
I had heard the answer I wanted.
The reason the Margrave had cooperated so perfectly, one might say.
It was deeply disappointing.
I didn't answer and closed the door.
Honestly, right up until I left the room, I was debating whether to rip that piece-of-shit bastard's head off.
'The root cause of Mel losing her eye.'
It was the younger brother who sold Mel to an inquisitor.
The one who planned it in the first place was Mel's father.
Which is to say, the reason Mel became one-eyed and was marked with a brand was those bastards.
Even if it was a matter of a past life, I knew well how much Mel had suffered over it, and rage rose in me of its own accord.
"Whew, I was honestly a little worried you'd rip Father's head off......."
As I stepped out of the room, Mel, waiting by the door, greeted me.
"Boss, you held back well!"
I looked at Mel in silence.
'A strange judgment.'
We were mercenaries wandering battlefields.
When necessary, we had to possess the cruelty to slaughter enemies down to the last man, even when they were conscripted peasants.
In a place as brutal as a battlefield, 'mercy' was nothing but a poison that made me weak.
And yet Mel granted her father the mercy of an honorable, happy death.
Truly, wasn't that a response unlike us?
And so, I asked.
"Why?"
Mel gave a bitter smile.
"Who knows. When I was very young, the young me of my past life was glad to have a father, even one like that."
In the incomprehensible world I didn't know, Mel had been an orphan.
"So maybe that's why?"
It didn't quite convince me.
But I understood.
"I see."
We were mercenaries.
We had the cold-bloodedness to massacre ignorant peasant conscripts, yes.
But at times we also possessed the mercy to release an enemy who had been killing and dying against us moments before.
'She acted as her heart commanded.'
I simply understood Mel's act according to the iron rule that had governed my whole life.
The judgment of a burning heart is at times beyond the head's understanding.
Hadn't my resolve to set this doomed kingdom right also come from following that same stirring of the heart?
"So do you intend to spare your younger brother?"
The question came to me suddenly, and I asked it.
At that, Mel shrugged with a mischievous face.
"Who knows?"