"Haaah—! Hah!!!"
Thomson felt as though his breath would give out.
After the territorial war ended, Jack and Mel had left to tour the mines.
Before leaving, Jack had ordered Thomson to run endless laps of the parade ground under the pretext of basic conditioning.
"Your body is far too frail to lift a sword. We will build the vessel first."
Saying that effort never betrays you, Jack laid out a somewhat extreme training method for Thomson.
Keep up that effort, Commander Jack said, and he would eventually draw near his goal.
'A life of working hard and succeeding.'
Honestly, he didn't really know what that was like.
Because Thomson had never once experienced it.
But—.
"Urgh......."
Thomson only pictured Jack's back and drove his body as he had been told.
Jack's instruction had been a single one.
"Run as hard as you can until you collapse from exhaustion. It is fine if your body tears. It is fine if your legs break. Drive yourself to your utmost limit and punish your body until you cannot move it any further."
In truth, wasn't punishment a better word for it than conditioning?
"Urgh......."
Thomson grimaced at the pain that felt like dying.
Even to him, who knew nothing about training, it was a brutish method.
In fact, Thomson's body was in poor condition right now.
"Cough—."
The unfamiliar, mindless high-intensity training had begun to damage his health.
But there was no way Commander Jack had ordered this training for no reason.
THUMP—.
'M-My legs won't move anymore.'
In the end Thomson collapsed to the ground.
Sweat poured from his whole body like rain, and his vision swam.
It really felt as though something would go badly wrong with his body.
He had no strength left to move, and yet, cruelly, the sunlight from the sky was horrifically hot.
"T-Thirsty......."
His consciousness grew dimmer.
If he died like this, wouldn't it be a peaceful death?
While he was thinking that.
SLIDE—.
A shadow fell over Thomson.
It was an enormous shadow, yet strangely, warmth could be felt from it.
Thomson squeezed out the strength to open his eyes.
What he saw was a huge, solid man: Commander Jack.
"Thomson, you truly were running yourself to death."
"Boss! A little later and he really might have died!!!"
Commander Jack, wearing a splendid smile of deep satisfaction, and Margrave Mel, with mischief in her eyes, stood over him.
Then Jack reached out a hand toward Thomson.
The place that hand touched was Thomson's head.
And a moment later.
THUD——!!!
Something heavy struck Thomson's body.
An enormous force that pierced body and soul.
He couldn't tell exactly what it was, but wasn't it the 'monstrous strength' Commander Jack spoke of?
That was what it actually felt like.
'M-My, my body.......'
Surely his breath had been about to stop.
From driving his body without pause, his vision had blurred and his lungs had hurt as if tearing.
Yet before he knew it Thomson's vision had turned clear, and the pain in his body had vanished without a trace.
No, if anything, he felt a vitality he'd never felt before.
As he contemplated his transformed self, a weighty voice came.
"Rise."
A short, concise word.
As though entranced, Thomson raised his fallen body.
Then he asked the huge man before him.
"W-What on earth is this—."
Jack and Mel gave a detailed explanation in a thoroughly cheerful tone.
"I injected my Spirituality and monstrous strength into you."
"It's our mercenary company's secret art, called Hair Culling and Marrow Cleansing!!!"
A method of driving the body to exhaustion to expel its foul energy, then injecting monstrous strength into its foundation.
And so it was called Hair Culling and Marrow Cleansing.
Thomson hesitated over whether he ought to be pleased about this.
And no wonder—.
"Pushing the body to its limit and then injecting monstrous strength to restore it is the best way to enlarge one's vessel."
Because something about Commander Jack's words sounded off.
"Thomson, though this was not even a battlefield, you drove your own body to its limit."
Commander Jack's satisfied face.
"Wow, the kids the Boss picks up all strangely have this kind of talent."
Margrave Mel's mischievous smile.
And the words that followed.
"Later on all your hair will fall out and grow back, you know? Amazing that you endured that!"
"Er......."
Thomson got the feeling something was wrong.
But.......
'I-It feels good, though?'
Being acknowledged for the first time wiped away every one of Thomson's worries.
And so Thomson answered.
"Whatever it takes, I'll work even harder!!! Thank you!!!"
***
Having finished commending Thomson, we set out without delay.
It was none other than this country's king summoning us in person, so there was no room to dawdle.
"Boss, how about it? Aren't you glad we let him live?"
Mel asked me as she pulled out a bundle of gifts.
As we departed at the royal summons, the baron handed over all sorts of expensive gifts, including an imperial-made subspace pouch.
He personally arranged a carriage and driver and adjusted the schedule so we could head for the royal castle without an hour's delay, and he even sent a courier to Kranel Castle to convey word of our journey.
Thomson also headed for the castle along with the courier.
In order to look after my father's coffin.
CLOP, CLOP.
In the carriage rolling toward the royal castle, we planned out our coming schedule.
First, the matter of our comrades.
"Mel, when can we expect word about Veil and Yuria?"
The knights of House Kranel had left for the Empire with the baron's merchant company.
At a glance it seemed an open-ended affair, but our strategist Mel had prepared for everything.
"I told them to contact the Information Guild first. Veil will probably look there first too. Or else....... he might use somewhat drastic means."
Mel had worked out the method in detail using her knowledge from the past life, so I didn't have a single worry.
"If the merchant company doesn't come back within a few weeks, that means Veil or Yuria didn't regress."
"What about the chance something went wrong? Couldn't they be held by an inquisitor like you were?"
"Nah....... I just had filthy rotten luck! They're fine."
Vice-Commander Veil was the third young master of a ducal house of the Great Empire.
And Mage Corps Commander Yuria was.......
"At this point in time she's a slave mage of the White Tower."
The only problem was the slavery; she was under the mage tower's protection, so there was no issue with her safety, she went on.
I nodded and began to consider the battlefield approaching.
'The royal court of a petty kingdom.'
We were in the position of having received the king's summons.
Obviously, we had no justification whatsoever for refusing it.
Even though the previous Margrave—Mel's fake father—had transferred the position himself, this country was a monarchy.
Which meant she'd be recognized as the true Margrave only with the king's consent.
"Judging by how fast they summoned us....... they've probably got something up their sleeve, don't you think?"
So my strategist Mel asked.
As for schemes in a royal court, I had my own guesses.
When you gathered the ministers before the king, wasn't there only one sort of scheme?
"A battlefield where political strife is foreseen."
Political strife is a war old bastards wage with their tongues.
It wasn't a battlefield I much liked.
Especially not a gathering with the top brass mixed in.
Because apart from the Empire's princess, I had never once met royalty or imperial blood I could talk with.
Nobles are already crawling with morons, and it only gets worse with royals and imperials.
They are a petty breed who talk in circles and nitpick at trifles to drag others down.
Especially in their obsession with empty formalities like etiquette, they show habits much like a low-tier man's.
'Couldn't I just overturn the royal court of a petty kingdom like this?'
It was true that such a thought came naturally.
But Mel knew me very well, and in a voice laced with concern she told me I had to hold back.
"Boss! With a Ten Great Knight around, there's no telling what'll happen. Let's save our strength as much as we can, stay quiet as mice at the court, and come back!"
The Ten Great Knights of the Continent.
And the 'Bloody Retribution Mercenary Company.'
"Don't worry. I've got no intention of abandoning the great cause either."
The Bloody Retribution Mercenary Company, who taught me the power of acting.
They were also the bastards who made me feel the horror and cruelty of war down to my bones.
"You're going to kill every last one of them, right?"
Knowing that, Mel had asked such a question.......
Strangely, I had the feeling that the red eye of Mel's heterochromia was glittering unusually.
"In my past life it ended with only the leadership beheaded, but in this life I've got no intention of leaving it at that."
"Then all the more reason to hold back at the court. I'll make the opportunity for you!"
"I trust you."
Every member of the Bloody Retribution Mercenary Company was close to human scum; apart from me, there were none but crazy bastards who reveled in blood and plunder.
Because of those bastards, I'd always lived with guilt hanging in my chest.
'With human scum, cutting off the head doesn't end it.'
Something like a revolutionary corps scatters on its own once the leadership is gone.
But human plunderers are different.
In my past life, after I killed the leadership, the Bloody Retribution Mercenary Company scattered in all directions.
They raided nearby villages and drove countless commoners to their deaths, and I, pursued at the time by the Continental Mercenary Guild, had to grind my teeth as I heard of the carnage.
"Not a single bastard is to leave this country alive."
Before I regressed, once I'd gained power.
I personally raised an extermination squad and collected the blood price from the Bloody Retribution Mercenary Company.
That guilt cemented my identity as a mercenary who brought no harm to the common people, and so, even amid this continent's wars, I came to earn the title of king.
***
CLOP, CLOP.
Margrave Mel Kranel's carriage rolled leisurely toward the capital of the Kingdom of Alton.
In the ancient tongue, Alton is called Artion.
It is the name of the Kingdom of Alton's capital.
"At last we shall learn the truth of what happened to House Kranel!!!"
The capital was the heart of the Kingdom of Alton.
It was a region dominated by the tradition-minded First Prince's faction, the so-called central nobility.
Most of the central nobles headed for the royal castle to verify the facts about the much-rumored Margrave Mel Kranel.
"Mel Kranel....... Is she a cruel woman of ambition? Or a deeply filial eldest daughter?"
A woman who beheaded her younger brother and displayed his head.
Or a woman who punished the brother who caused her father's death and proved her filial devotion to all the world.
Or else—.
"It may be that all of it was her stratagem."
Into the nobles' commotion appeared a well-built old man.
"H-His Excellency Duke Robert!!!"
One of only two dukes in the Kingdom of Alton.
And of those, Duke Robert, the Second Prince's effective patron, who commanded the military authority of the north.
The prestige of this so-called 'powerful old noble,' to whom even central nobles of a different faction conceded a step, was formidable.
"Your Excellency seems to grow ever more robust."
"Ha ha—. Training is my only hobby."
Suitable pleasantries and well-wishing.
And then the real subject.
"I hear the Margrave has an unusual knight."
It was talk of a being as interesting as the much-rumored Mel Kranel herself.
"Might Your Excellency, the sharpest ear in this kingdom, have heard anything......."
Tales of Jack's exploits had spread here and there across the small kingdom, carried by the unprecedented margravial succession.
That he tore soldiers apart?
That he tore knights apart too?
There was even a bizarre rumor that he ripped every knight who followed House Kranel's eldest son clean in half.
As expected of Duke Robert!!!
"Do you speak of that monstrously strong knight?"
Central nobles supporting the First Prince.
Military-faction nobles supporting the Second Prince.
Every last one of them listened closely.
"Know only this: a dark shadow has fallen over that rumor."
The duke narrowed his eyes as he spoke.
It felt as though some terrible conspiracy lurked in House Kranel.
"A-A shadow, you say......."
"The eldest daughter who was under investigation by an inquisitor suddenly wiped out her own clan and took the seat."
Duke Robert spoke exactly as the red-haired strategist's stratagem prescribed.
"A monstrously strong mercenary who appeared abruptly at that very moment, and an inquisitor whose whereabouts no one knows. Do you not all find something strange?"
As a rule, political strife begins with a plausible conspiracy theory.
Put simply, he was saying there was a possibility that Jack and Mel were worshippers of an evil god.
And just then Mel's carriage entered the royal castle.
"W-Why would such a dangerous person be brought into the royal castle......."
The nobles at the window trailed off with horrified faces.
And Duke Robert offered words of reassurance with a most delighted smile.
"It is to prevent that very thing that I have come here myself. The royal household knows of it as well."
And before anyone noticed, a knight larger than the duke stood at his side.
A height of a good two meters.
And full plate armor of a type none had seen.
"He is a man who does not fall short of me. Set aside your worries and watch the ceremony."
Before long the unease was gone.
And with the duke's smile, a genial mood drifted among the nobles.
And.......
.
.
.
"Boss, what are the nobles yapping about?"
Seated in the carriage, Jack had concentrated monstrous strength into his hearing and eavesdropped on every conversation.
And he let out a snort at the absurdity.
"Duke What's-His-Name, that crazy bastard, has made you and me out to be evil god worshippers."
Jack laughed heartily, and Mel cackled.
In truth, the Monstrous Strength Mercenary Company hated political strife enough to be sick of it, but—.
"Guess I'll have to show them what real political strife is."
They were a breed just as practiced at smashing political strife apart.