'The contract is evidence of fraud?'
In all his life, he'd never heard such utter bullshit.
Mikhail, heir to House Panier, felt like he was losing his mind.
'The nerve of this man.'
A brutishly oversized mercenary with monstrous strength.
A lowly commoner like him might not grasp the importance of contracts.
The problem was that this lowly commoner had ripped an aura-wielding knight to pieces.
Mikhail was dying to tear into him.
But even that wasn't in the cards.
Nudge, nudge—.
The escort knight assigned by the house head brushed his elbow.......
Cross him and we die.
The message was crystal clear.
This was a knight personally assigned by his father, Baron Panier.
His skill as a knight aside, his loyalty was beyond question.
In other words, that towering commoner mercenary was genuinely dangerous.
'A brainless commoner with raw strength on top of it?'
Come to think of it, that was a terrifying combination.
"Ha ha, let's not sour things between us with talk like that!"
Mikhail spread his pudgy face into a wide grin.
Classic noble diplomacy.
"I'll grant two gold coins for the knight's kill and recognize your ownership of the spoils."
Two gold coins.
A sum that far exceeded a year's living expenses for the average commoner.
When Young Baron Mikhail produced the two gold coins from his person, Thomson received them on Jack's behalf.
"Two gold coins confirmed."
For Thomson, it was more money than he'd ever touched in his life.
Taking the coins in hand stirred complicated feelings.
'Am I even needed?'
Thomson realized he was useless.
The reason was simple: the giant man before him possessed overwhelming strength.
A situation where sheer force smoothed every negotiation.
Still, he had to prove his worth.
That was how he'd change his life.
'I'm sick of life in the slums.'
The catalyst for change was courage.
Thomson mustered his and spoke to the young baron.
"Commander Jack would like one additional form of compensation."
"......What is it?"
Jack had three demands.
First: payment for the knight's kill.
Second: ownership of the spoils taken from the dead knight.
And the third—.
"We'd like a letter of introduction to a count's house."
"There are six count families in this kingdom alone. Which one?"
Thomson organized what he'd heard from Jack and conveyed the request in short, clear terms.
"I don't know the exact family name, but I've heard that one of their heirs was arrested and is being investigated by an inquisitor."
"Hah......."
Young Baron Mikhail slowly closed his eyes.
A mere commoner boldly relaying his master's demands, and the position he himself was in having to accept them.
It was rather absurd.
'It's like looking at some famous wandering knight and his squire.'
Yet he also understood why this situation had come about.
There was one family so well-known it could be identified in an instant even without hearing the name.
'The count's house under inquisitorial investigation.'
The head of the southern warlords.
Originally called the kingdom's guardian, the Margrave who'd once defended the southern reaches from monsters.
'Margrave Kranel.'
But at some point the monsters vanished from the south, and the Margrave became an ambitious figure pouring his surplus military force inward.
What this monstrous mercenary was getting at was clear.
'He's saying the military faction is watching our barony?'
Planting a monster mercenary who could rip knights apart must've been a warning.
'Two gold coins, I was far too stingy. To think he'd only reveal this now....... I should put in a bit more to show some good faith.'
House Panier possessed wealth disproportionate to their title.
As the owners of a mine, they ran a merchant company that traded as far as the distant Empire.
In a peaceful kingdom they could live as wealthy barons, but.......
"I shall personally pen a letter of introduction to His Excellency the Margrave."
Was this not a time when territorial wars broke out every other day and regional warlords were consolidating their military strength?
Mikhail intended to return home and discuss the currents of war engulfing the kingdom with his father.
'After I get this terrifying mercenary bastard out of my sight first.'
And so, with a single bold stroke he wrote a letter of introduction on the spot and handed it over.
Along with a few extra gold coins.
***
The kid called Thomson was more capable than I'd expected.
I, Mercenary King Jack, can attest to that.
'The boy has plenty of skills and a decent character to boot.'
On the road toward Margrave What's-His-Name's territory, letter of introduction in hand.
Thomson informed me that the letter contained eight additional gold coins, then handed every last one of them over.
'Enough for initial operating funds.'
Ten gold coins was sufficient for a small unit's war chest.
It also told me something about Thomson's trustworthiness.
'Thomson handed over this money without a moment's hesitation.'
Honesty was the finest virtue you could possess in this era.
I'd seen more than my share of slum-born folk who went cross-eyed at the sight of gold.
'There are plenty of guys who'd steal even the Emperor's grandpa's money and bolt.'
But Thomson's competence didn't end there.
The kid really could do a lot.
Snort—.
"He's a northern white horse, so it seems he won't eat anything but dry hay."
Just as I was debating whether to butcher the horse for meat since it refused to eat, Thomson started feeding the animal.
'He wouldn't touch anything I gave him.......'
Yet the dried grass Thomson had scrounged up was gobbled down happily.
"Commander Jack, it's nothing fancy, but I've prepared a meal."
I'd watched him cooking something while he fed hay to the horse.
Turns out it was dinner for me.
All we had for provisions was dried jerky and the like, yet he'd foraged something from the hills and turned it into a passable porridge.
'Hm.'
It tasted decent.
Naturally, I started pondering which post to assign Thomson to.
In time, my mercenary company's combat roster would swell to ten thousand.......
'I've got fighters to spare.'
My strategist Mel had made the company's operations tremendously efficient.
She'd introduced the concept of cooks to vastly improve the mercenaries' meals, and she'd made mounts such as horses, earth dragons, and wyverns company property rather than personal property, with a department dedicated to managing them.
'Cook? Mount handler?'
From dinner until we set out again, I mulled over Thomson's assignment.
He was good at too many things, making it hard to decide.
'I'll have to discuss it with Mel.'
Right about now, Mel should be in the inquisitor's custody.
There was time before Mel lost her eye, but it was probably best to hurry.
Something felt off.
"Get on behind me."
"A-are you sure I can ride behind you?"
I was picking up Father's coffin from where I'd stashed it in the forest near the battlefield, and the sight of it seemed to weigh heavily on Thomson.
"There's plenty of room."
My spoils, the white horse, stood two meters at the withers, with a body length considerably longer.
Even with Father's coffin strapped to my back, there was room left over after seating Thomson and myself.
"Someone like me, sitting behind Commander Jack's father......."
"If you can move faster than the horse, you're welcome to walk."
What exactly did this kid think I was?
He treated me with the kind of deference you'd show a noble, and I couldn't make sense of it.
'At least he's handling Father's coffin with care. I'll give him that.'
Thomson's attitude, careful to the point of being solemn, struck me as rather interesting.
With Thomson mounted behind me, I rode straight for Margrave What's-His-Name's territory, where Mel would be.
Winding through mountain trails, memories of the past surfaced naturally.
Things about my homeland.
'It was a chicken rib of a kingdom.'
The Kingdom of Alton sat in rugged terrain on the continent's outskirts.
For powerful nations, there was nothing worth taking even if they invaded; for weaker nations, the terrain was too harsh to bother. An awkward country caught in between.
As a result, traveling from one barony in the south to the Margraviate in the same region took a full two days.
I could go about thirty days without sleep, but Thomson was a regular human and collapsed after one.
"......I-I'm sorry."
"I'll teach you how to sleep on horseback later."
When Thomson nearly fell off for the fifth time, I suggested we rest for the night.
'I have about two months of leeway after my first battle.'
Mel was still safe.
Being imprisoned was the only problem.
"I've laid down leaves and soft earth, so the bedding shouldn't be too uncomfortable."
During the rest stop, I once again witnessed Thomson's competence.
I'd slept on corpses in the middle of battlefields before.
I wasn't particular about sleeping arrangements, but the makeshift bed Thomson prepared was rather comfortable.
"What's this?"
"Um....... that is where your father will rest, Commander."
This kid was incredibly considerate.
Father had already passed and lay within a golden coffin, yet Thomson had even fretted over his resting place and made a soft spot for him.
Not a bad feeling.
I set Father's coffin there.
Only then did Thomson begin making his own bed.
"Why did you want to follow me?"
Our Monstrous Strength Mercenary Company had a simple method of recruitment.
I brought in whoever I liked.
My companions vetted them.
Vetting was normally the companions' job, but idle curiosity got the better of me.
"Actually......."
Thomson recounted his life story with a slightly nervous face.
It was the kind of ordinary, unremarkable life you'd hear from any random member of my company.
'A boy abandoned by his parents, drifting between back-alley gangs, who eventually sold himself to a battlefield to escape slum life.'
If I had to name one interesting detail, it was the group Thomson had belonged to, the so-called Family.
'An organization that doesn't commit crimes?'
Instead of crime, they'd made 'a life of half-assed work and idle living' their goal, which looked no different from the lives of the imperial youth I'd seen in the Empire during my previous life.
The more I listened, something else nagged at me.
"You said you gathered and sold monster carcasses before signing up for the territorial war?"
"Um....... On the outskirts of the barony, at the edge of the demon realm, some old holy knight had monster carcasses piled up. They were all gruesomely mangled, so we couldn't get full price."
"An old holy knight?"
Something about that felt familiar.
Gruesomely mangled monsters, and an old holy knight who'd gathered them in one spot.
Could that have been Father, cleaning up after my training?
"So it was Father who cleared all those away."
"U-uh....... Th-that is! I had no idea it was Commander Jack's father—."
Thomson panicked at my words.
"It's fine. If Father had wanted to sell them for money, he would've done it himself long ago."
He was so terrified that I offered reassurance, then asked what Father looked like when he disposed of the monsters.
"When the Family and I saw him, he'd sigh deeply and mutter to himself, 'Strength in abundance, but, ahem'......."
Thomson trailed off.
I could guess the rest.
'He was lamenting how stupid I was.'
That put me in a rather good mood.
I'd never heard this side of Father in my past life.
"Commander Jack....... did you train in that forest the whole time?"
Thomson, telling me things about Father I'd never known.
It made him feel like a welcome addition.
Was that why?
"The original me did."
"Original?"
I'd made up my mind to bring Thomson into the Monstrous Strength Mercenary Company.
So it was better for him to hear the truth.
"I came from about twenty years in the future."
"Huh?"
"The technical term is regression."
In my opinion, no explanation was more accurate than saying I came from the future.
"I was a mercenary who spent until age forty on battlefields. Well, I did earn the rather grandiose epithet of Mercenary King."
"Come on, I may be green, but teasing me like that......."
I fixed Thomson with a dead-serious stare.
"F-for real?"
"Yes. The reason we're heading to Margrave What's-His-Name's house is to find my future companion."
"A-a companion?"
He'd tagged along without any explanation, just on blind trust.......
Was it the truth that shook him?
Thomson gaped at me in shock.
"Don't tell me it's the person who was captured by the inquisitor?"
Sharp kid.
I hadn't even explained who among the Margrave's household was my companion, yet he'd nailed it.
"That's right. My companion is being held by followers of an evil god as we speak. I intend to rescue her."
"F-followers of an evil god? You said something about an inquisitor—."
"The evil god's followers run inquisitors among their ranks. An absolutely wretched lot."
Mel.
Her name at this point in time was Mel What's-Her-Name.
She held the position of the Margrave's second child.
"Her older brother sold her out to the evil god."
***
Mel Kranel.
The Margrave's first child.
She opened her eyes in darkness.
'Darkness. Am I dead? My body's restrained, so maybe I've been taken prisoner by the Empire.......'
When she first opened her eyes, she had no idea where she was.
Bound from head to toe, her face covered, she'd been locked away in some pitch-black underground cell.
The company being annihilated by the Empire's schemes, and in the end, the Boss falling into danger.
That was the last thing she remembered.
'I thought my head was cut off.......'
Yet here she was, imprisoned like a captive.
That confusion didn't last long. Before she knew it, the truth revealed itself.
When the hood was pulled away, vivid light flooded both eyes.
'I have two eyes?'
And there stood a man she absolutely despised.
"Mel Kranel, that red heterochromatic eye of yours is proof that you are an evil god worshipper. Confess the truth, now."
An inquisitor in pristine white vestments thrust a red-hot iron skewer toward her.
"Silent again? Tomorrow, this skewer will make you talk."
With those words, the inquisitor left the underground cell.
For now, it was only threats.
But tomorrow would be different.
'Is this...... really?'
Tomorrow, the inquisitor would plunge that skewer into her on her younger brother's orders.
All to steal the house head's seat.
Only then did Mel realize what had happened to her.
'I died and came back, and of all places, it's here?'
Afterlife, whatever.
She didn't bother agonizing over that.
This brutal sense of reality and of time passing was unmistakably real.
Above all.
Flash!
[You have become an Apostle of the War God.]
The bizarre message that appeared before her eyes was the proof.
'The War God is that piece-of-shit god the Boss always talked about.'
Mel arrived at the truth instantly.
'The Boss did something, and I've been sent back to the past.'
But she wasn't happy.
Not even after dying and coming back to life.
'Of all the times, it had to be when I'm at my most helpless.......'
Bound from head to toe and locked in an underground cell.
Zero combat ability.
Over twenty-four hours had already passed since her regression.
'Twenty-four hours and twelve and a half more.'
In two months, she'd be hauled off to the Holy State.
There, she'd endure a full year of horrific torture while being pressed to confess 'herself an evil god worshipper.'
She'd never uttered those words, and in the end, the extraction of her heterochromatic eye—the red one, deemed proof of the evil god—was the price of her acquittal.
With a massive brand seared into her forehead.
'What happened to the Boss?'
She put her brilliant mind to work.
Knowing the Boss's personality, if he'd regressed, he would've tracked down this territory immediately and rescued her.
'He definitely came back too.'
It was intuition, but bordering on certainty.
The Boss was the only connection to the War God.
'He must've been weakened like me.'
Mel recognized that every Mystery she'd once possessed was gone.
So the Boss would be in a similar state.
Even so.......
'No matter how weakened he is, if the Boss sprinted here alone, shouldn't he have arrived long ago?'
Something was off.
A sudden thought occurred to her.
Could it be?
'He didn't abandon me to go fight a battle just to settle the humiliation of his first battlefield, did he?'