Every war has a purpose.
For a mercenary, identifying that purpose is extremely important.
'I can't remember a thing.'
In truth, my memories of this first battlefield were fairly vivid.
Everything up to the moment I first encountered a knight wielding aura and took one step backward came back as clearly as a painting, but.......
I couldn't remember the purpose of this war at all.
While I was thinking that, the royal herald stepped forward and bellowed.
"By the decree of the just and impartial King Wihar Alton, rightful sovereign of the Kingdom of Alton, the territorial war between House Hatia and House Panier shall commence!!!"
A territorial war.
A war to seize territory.
But that was the outcome, not the purpose a mercenary needed to know.
Do you need to take the baron's head to end the war?
Do you need to win this battle decisively to end the war?
Must you then push further and storm the enemy's stronghold to end it?
Or do you drag things out in a stalemate, pin the enemy's main force, and wait for the main army to annihilate them?
That's roughly how the rules of war apply to mercenaries.
You set a limit from among those options and act accordingly.
Of course, in a battle of barely a hundred or so, you didn't exactly need to worry about all that, but.......
"All forces, advance!!!"
The thought came to me naturally as I looked at the peach-fuzzed brats beside me.
Come to think of it, there was plenty strange about this war.
'The enemy territory has house soldiers and even a knight, while our side has nothing but hastily gathered mercenaries.'
And they weren't even real mercenaries.
The genuine article who roamed the continent's heartland came at a premium.
The ones here were nothing more than brats from poor families who'd sold themselves to the mercenary guilds found in every major city.
'Hmm.'
The battlefield was a broad plain prepared for the territorial war.
A royal herald was compiling the proceedings into documents as if he were some kind of official overseer.
Was it because the world was still at peace that a battle this toy-like could exist?
BWOOOOO——.
A war horn sounded.
From behind, older soldiers urged the young mercenaries ahead.
Memories came trickling back.
We were soldiers shuffling forward, prodded by our own side's spear line, while the enemy consisted of heavily armed territorial soldiers and even a knight.
I gazed deep into the enemy ranks.
'That bastard knight.'
The knot in my heart that had made me take a whole step back.
Looking at him now that I'd returned, he was nothing special.
Judging by that spotless armor and the white horse he rode, he was some rich boy from a noble house who'd been drilling swordsmanship and then declared himself a knight when he managed to awaken his aura.
The kind of opponent even the lowest-ranked soldier in my company could handily kill.
Swish—.
I widened my view.
The enemy forces arrayed roughly a hundred meters away came into sharp focus.
'Father was right.'
By this point, I had no choice but to realize it.
It seemed I really had regressed.
If the afterlife were this vivid, everyone in the world would kill themselves to repeat the life they wanted.
Whoooosh—.
The air felt heavy; the battle was about to begin any moment.
My first battlefield since returning.
My body burned hot.
'I've gotten younger, so losing strength can't be helped, but.......'
The monstrous strength I possessed at this age was still more than enough to rip apart a knight from this minor kingdom.
And on top of that, I had my Spirituality.
'This truly defies all reason.'
According to Mel, our company's strategist, my Spirituality was something akin to infinitely growing spiritual and physical monstrous strength.
It felt as if a mage's circles had settled into the concept of monstrous strength.
That's right.
I could now build my Spirituality faster than before my death.
'Indomitable Body.'
My Indomitable Body, which neither aura nor magic nor divine power could breach.
'Infinite Monstrous Strength.'
The Infinite Monstrous Strength that ripped even dragons in half with bare hands.
I could achieve all of it faster this time.
A difference of several years meant the world to me.
I'd be able to rip apart even the Emperor of the Empire, the one who'd hunted down and killed my company in the end.
Clench—.
I stomped the ground with everything I had.
Before I knew it, the enemy had closed to arm's reach.
—Ep. 02 Rip-Anything Jack
"Boss, you can't stop ripping!"
That's what Mel, the Monstrous Strength Mercenary Company's strategist, once said.
Something about how every time I ripped an enemy apart, our side's survival rate shot up exponentially?
In a battlefield where you could barely see a step ahead, the spectacle of a man tearing another human apart drew everyone's attention.
I have a lot to say about the act of ripping.
'It was the excessive violence born from the humiliation of that one-step retreat.'
The experience of retreating one step in my first battle was my very first defeat and my very last.
Determined to overcome that humiliation, I vowed to perform at maximum capacity in every battle, but in reality, a grunt mercenary's exploits were nearly impossible for anyone to notice.
In my youth, I solved that problem, absurdly enough, with a flashy performance.
"Die!!!"
Starting with someone's war cry, the smell of blood spread across the battlefield.
Beside me, the whimpering of green recruits filled the air.
Huh?
Uh, uh?
Th-that thing!!
The young soldiers who'd been pushed forward by our spear line blinked stupidly, then panicked when the enemy was suddenly right in front of them.
Regardless of scale, scenes like this were a dime a dozen on any battlefield.
An enemy had reached me as well.
A soldier wearing a nasty smirk.
'So this is the difference between regulars and hastily assembled mercenaries?'
He wasn't the least bit intimidated by my build.
Unlike my Mercenary King days, I was currently clad in worn leather armor with a cheap iron sword, so fair enough.
My height had shrunk to about 2 meters 20 as well.
Whoosh—.
A blade came straight for my face.
I casually raised the garbage iron sword I'd been issued.
SPLURCH!!
A careless swing of my blade sent the enemy's arm flying.
Strength is speed.
Even at this age, my monstrous strength was beyond all reason.
To the soldier before me, it must've felt like an afterimage flickered past and then his arm was suddenly gone.
Gape—.
Unable to even scream, he stared at his own arm sailing through the air.
A soldier of Baron What's-His-Name's house.
I was still growing, so I was a bit short (even so, I was the tallest on this battlefield.), but I hoisted the one-armed soldier into the air with every ounce of strength I had.
High enough for the entire battlefield to see.
Clench—.
I gripped his ribs with both hands.
Naturally, I focused on my Spirituality and my body as I sized up the enemy.
Would you believe that the act of ripping a person apart by hand actually requires quite delicate and refined technique?
'Force Point.'
Locating where I apply force, calibrating the intensity, and adjusting so I can split the enemy vertically at exactly the right moment.
That's my secret to ripping people apart.
For the record, fewer than ten members in my entire company ever mastered this technique.
That's how much fine control it demands.
"Ngh!!!"
The soldier in front of me twisted his body, so I squeezed my fingers and snapped his ribs.
I made the enemy scream.
"GAAAAHHHH!!!!"
A sixteen-year-old body wasn't as precise as before.
At my Spirituality's peak, I could find the 'Force Point' the instant I grabbed anything in the world.
But in this younger body, I couldn't.
While the enemy screamed, I swiftly identified the Force Point.
'That'll do.'
Found it.
And all eyes turned to me.
The gruesome screaming from the front line, the sight of me hoisting an enemy aloft.
It was more than enough to seize everyone's attention.
Now was the moment.
I ripped the enemy apart.
RIIIP——!!!
Blood and chunks of flesh rained forward, toward the enemy.
I could feel the soldiers, who'd been cocky about facing mere young mercenaries, falter.
"Boss, generally speaking, ripping any opponent apart is the most efficient move you can make!!!"
My strategist Mel always said things I couldn't make sense of.
But when it came to ripping, and only ripping, I understood her perfectly.
"Hk—."
"Wh-what on earth is that......."
A spectacular performance on the front line.
A torn-apart ally's corpse and the blood and flesh raining down upon them.
With all eyes on me, the enemy had no choice but to hesitate.
I tossed the corpse aside and stepped forward.
Whoooosh——.
A metallic tang of blood spread across the wide plain.
At its center, I stood alone.
The enemy shrank back from me, and even my own allies kept their distance out of fear.
"I-I want to fight alongside you!!!"
Then, from our side, some kid came running up behind me and shouted.
This sort of thing happened often enough that I nodded impassively and pressed forward.
Because something was approaching from the distance that made it impossible to care about some green recruit.
'The reason I came to this battlefield.'
The one responsible for my humiliating one-step retreat.
A knight in gleaming armor atop a white horse, riding toward me.
My body burned fiercely.
But I masked it with an even tone, feigning composure.
"You're next?"
***
Thomson, seventeen years old, had lived a hard-knock life.
A great famine struck when he was six, and Thomson's parents abandoned him.
He was kidnapped by a back-alley gang and forced into their ranks.
Pickpocketing, panhandling, every crime imaginable; he was treated like vermin eating away at the city, and Thomson, sick of that shit, left.
He settled in a small barony and joined a group called a Family.
"Yo, the morning server gig at the inn is seriously cushy."
The Family only did legitimate work.
Like how a certain innkeeper was too soft-hearted to fire you no matter how sloppily you worked.
Or how the old holy knight living on the outskirts of the city left expensive monster carcasses lying around to rot.
"Dude, why are you working at that inn for so long?"
"That place is past its prime. Got to find something new!"
That was around the time Thomson had earned the innkeeper's trust and started doubling as kitchen help.
His Family looked at him like he was a moron and asked why he bothered working so hard.
"We could work ourselves to death and we'd still be slum beggars."
"Just coast on cushy gigs and take it one day at a time."
"Come grab some monster corpses with us and sell them."
Thomson followed the Family to the forest on the outskirts of the barony.
There, they found gruesome, mangled monster carcasses that some old holy knight had supposedly killed. Thomson stole them and sold them off.
"Isn't that stealing?"
"Nah, we saw it ourselves. He just leaves them there till they rot."
"Picking up trash and selling it is just recycling!"
He settled into easy money.
But recently, the monster carcasses had stopped appearing.
The old holy knight had vanished without a trace as well.
His Family had already moved on to the next gig.
"Territorial wars are the real gravy train these days!"
Territorial wars were essentially wars for show, so there was no need to fight for your life.
Thomson's Family had joined several territorial wars and come back with free silver coins.
"If you end up in the third or fourth row from the front, the war's over before you even draw your blade."
"But it's a war?"
"In territorial wars, one side surrenders after a few dozen get killed or injured."
"What if you end up in the very front row?"
"Then you go 'ugh!' and crouch down right before they crash into you. The guys behind will push forward and fill your spot. That's when you stand back up. Just don't lie flat, or you'll get trampled to death. That's the only thing to watch out for!"
Easy, cushy work.
His Family was uncannily good at sniffing out these sorts of gigs.
And so Thomson had come to this battlefield.
Where he learned the truth.
'Those dogs of bastards in the Family.'
Those bastards were no good at all.
He should've stayed at the inn where they'd recognized his cooking and hired him full-time.
Thomson flinched as he looked at the giant man right beside him.
SPLURCH!!!
A person was torn in half.
The fact that it was an enemy soldier was a godsend.
And the fact that a monster like that had signed up as a mercenary for a territorial war was something he'd never heard of.
'Territorial wars for a baron's domain are the real gravy train?'
Thomson followed his survival instincts, same as when he'd been running with the Family.
If he stuck behind that enormous man, it felt like he at least wouldn't die on this battlefield.
"I-I want to fight alongside you!!!"
Everyone feared the man.
Thomson was no different, but he steeled his nerves and moved up behind the towering figure.
Then immediately regretted it.
'Wh-why is there a knight?!!!'
Because a knight on a white horse was approaching from the distance.
The knight, blade drawn atop his mount, scattered blue sword energy and bore down on the huge man, threatening him.
That was real aura.
***
"Clack, clack—."
The kid behind me was shaking like a leaf.
Scared stiff by the aura the knight was flinging around, it seemed.
I wasn't fazed in the slightest.
'Without my Indomitable Body, the tingling stings a little, I suppose.'
At sixteen, my young body could be wounded by aura.
But even then, my monstrous strength could rip aura apart.
So I strode forward, bold as ever.
"Some country bumpkin who doesn't know what a knight is?"
The knight, perched atop his pristine white horse, asked with a swagger.
I guess my question about who was next struck him as pretty absurd?
From where I stood, he was just a greenhorn who could do nothing but channel aura.
Real knights tamed earth dragons, wyverns, and the like to ride; they didn't ride horses that dropped dead at the first hit.
"Big talk."
I picked up a sword from the ground and approached the knight.
For the record, my epithet was 'Rip-Anything Jack.'
No matter who the enemy was, I'd always come out on top and rip them apart, hence the name.
Aren't you curious?
What happens when you rip apart an aura-wielding knight?