Leo and Dex.
Representing Ronmar's vigilante group, the two of them set off toward Korun Village.
They had a few other members on paper, but every last one of them had bailed, claiming they were busy with work.
"Those punks, acting all busy and feeding me bullshit."
"Wasn't it you who Strong-armed them into joining when they said they didn't want to?"
"Even so, once you're in, you're supposed to pull your weight. They've got zero sense of responsibility. None at all. Don't you think?"
Leo casually spat out a lecture worthy of a crusty old veteran.
The habits and temperament of a mercenary captain were clearly still ingrained in his bones.
"...That's why I'm telling you, they don't even think of themselves as vigilantes."
Dex mumbled, trailing off.
Honestly, it was questionable whether Ronmar even needed a vigilante group in the first place—the village was so peaceful it was practically comatose.
Which was why Leo had spent every waking day complaining about how badly he wanted to get out of this dump.
"This won't do. After we beat the shit out of those bastards, let's round up our guys too."
"Round them up?"
"Yeah, you assemble them. Give those punks some mental discipline."
"...Me, assemble them? And drill them?"
"Of course the vice-captain handles discipline. What, am I supposed to do it myself?"
Leo looked back at him as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
What are you talking about? You're Dex, the Demon Instructor of the Red Wolf Mercenary Corps.
Leo's eyes practically shouted the words, while Dex just blinked his round eyes in utter confusion.
'Ah, right. This guy was a total softie before he became a mercenary.'
It hit him belatedly.
Now that he thought about it, Dex had only hardened after getting rolled through the mud of the mercenary world for a few rough years.
Right now, he was every bit as timid and gentle as his baby-faced looks suggested.
...How the hell did a soft kid like this turn into such a sadistic lunatic later on?
Back in the corps, every single mercenary had called Vice-Captain Dex a demon or a ghost.
Leo had never really understood the nickname himself, since Dex was always normal around him, so he had just shrugged it off as long as the corps ran smoothly.
Hmm, getting used to this version of Dex was going to take some time.
Trading idle banter along the dirt road, they soon reached Korun.
As they neared the village entrance, six or seven punks from the other side were already loitering around waiting for them.
Hah, look at those bastards with nothing better to do.
"Just the two of you? Forget a fight, looks like you walked all this way just to get the shit kicked out of you, huh?"
Oz, the self-proclaimed captain of Korun's vigilantes, sneered at them.
With a cigarette dangling crookedly from his lip, he was trying hard to look tough, but to Leo's eyes, he was nothing more than a snot-nosed brat.
Oz had moved into Korun earlier that year. Come to think of it, the local vigilantes had started turning into thugs right around the time this bastard showed up.
Grinning, Leo looked up at Oz, who stood about a head taller than him, and shot back.
"Wouldn't you rather have as small an audience as possible when you get your ass beat?"
"What did you say? Listen to this little bastard run his mouth!"
"Man, must be nice being so grown-up. All those extra years under your belt, and you spend your time shaking down little kids for pocket change? If I were you, I'd be too embarrassed to show my face."
"Wh-What?!"
Having started the trash talk, Oz was already choking on his own rage.
Leo didn't let up.
"You're getting a proper beating today. And you're paying back every copper you took from those kids, so don't forget to bring out your piggy bank."
"Sh-Shut up! This is a duel!"
"Duel, my ass. Today's just the day you get beaten like a dog."
"Why, you...!"
Watching Oz stammer with his ears burning bright red was almost cute.
Leo had spent fifteen years brawling and swearing with mercenaries. Verbally tearing apart a neighborhood punk was as easy as gulping down morning soup.
'How hard should I rough him up?'
Harassing village girls, extorting pocket money from kids, and throwing his weight around.
Standard neighborhood punk behavior.
A solid thrashing to knock the arrogance out of him ought to do the trick.
'I've never seen Leo act like this before....'
Beside him, Dex tilted his head.
He had never seen Leo dismantle someone with words like this before. Usually, Leo preferred letting his fists do the talking right from the start.
In that sense, this was a pretty fresh and entertaining sight.
"I'll beat you into a bloody pulp!"
Oz yanked the wooden sword from his belt.
Playing the big-shot vigilante captain, he had custom-ordered the thing to be thicker and heavier than a standard wooden sword.
Leo pulled out a stick of his own.
He hadn't brought it from home; he had just picked it up off the side of the road on the way here.
"What's that supposed to be?"
"For a punk like you, this stick is plenty."
Oz cracked his neck left and right, flashing a nasty grin.
The kid thought he could take him on with a twig that looked ready to snap in half? His own custom wooden sword even had an iron core driven into the center.
Leo was completely relaxed.
Rousing his Aura, he felt a surge of vitality course through his limbs. It was only a tiny trickle accumulated over a few hours, but his control was honed by years of combat.
He fed a thin thread of Aura into the stick as well.
Against a neighborhood brat, this was more than enough.
"I'll teach you your place!"
Swinging his heavy wooden sword wide, Oz charged.
To Leo, the swing was so telegraphed and sluggish it nearly made him yawn.
Throat, chest, armpits, ribs....
Every single vital spot was wide open, practically begging to be hit.
CRACK—!
Like a whip, Leo's stick snapped across Oz's exposed wrist.
With a sharp "Ack!", Oz dropped his wooden sword, clutching a wrist that felt like it had just been shattered.
What followed was a one-sided beatdown.
THWACK! THUD! WHACK! CRACK—!
Crack him in the head; when his hands go up, lash his ribs; when his arms drop to guard his ribs, crack his head again.
With such a big frame, Oz made a generous target. He had plenty of meat on him too, giving every hit a satisfying thud.
"Aaaagh! Ack! Please! Ack! Stop!"
"Not even close to done. Gotta tenderize the meat properly if you want it soft."
"Ack! I was wrong! Ack!"
"Speak up, then. What did you do wrong?"
Only after beating him non-stop for a solid ten minutes did Leo break a light sweat and lower the stick.
"Looks like this piece of meat is tenderized enough.... Which means you bastards are up next, huh?"
"W-We're sorry!"
"We only did what Oz told us to do!"
Leo plucked the cigarette from Oz's pocket and stuck it between his lips.
Taking a deep drag, he immediately broke into a coughing fit—hack, hack.
'Damn it, ruining my cool....'
His young lungs weren't broken in yet. While he coughed and savored the familiar burn of tobacco, the remaining gang members, pale as sheets, dropped to their knees in a neat row before him.
"What are you waiting for? Plant your foreheads in the dirt."
A fresh lineup formed in an instant.
Leo planted himself down on the back of Oz, who was groaning face-down in the dirt. Now this felt more like it.
"Up."
"Heads down."
"Up."
"Roll left."
"Roll right."
It was the tried-and-true disciplinary drill used to break in unruly new recruits back in the Red Wolf Mercenary Corps.
"You watching this?"
After rolling the punks through the dirt for a good while, Leo glanced back at Dex.
"Watching what?"
"Come on, your turn. Take over."
Thinking about awakening the Demon Instructor of the Red Wolf Mercenary Corps ahead of schedule,
Leo couldn't keep the grin off his face.
That evening.
After finishing dinner, Leo went into his room, shut the door, and slid the latch into place.
'It's all still here.'
Beating Oz had confirmed one crucial thing: every combat instinct he had honed as a veteran mercenary remained intact in his mind.
His young body lacked the physical stats to fully keep up with what his head wanted to do right now, but consistent training would fix that soon enough.
And there was one more thing to test.
Sitting alone in his closed room, Leo drew up a faint wisp of Aura and focused it into his eyes. A pale blue glint surfaced within his dark brown irises. Turning his gaze out the window, he watched countless red lines trace themselves across the grass and trees outside.
It was a technique he had awakened in his late twenties and named the 'Aura Eye.'
'This works too.'
Because his Aura reserves were still tiny, his eyes quickly began to ache, but the fact that he could activate it at all was what mattered.
When Leo was little, his mother had once told him a story about 'special eyes.'
According to her, her family hadn't always been commoners—they came from noble blood. Since the family had fallen into ruin back in her great-great-grandfather's time, well over a century ago, and fallen noble lineages weren't particularly rare, Leo had never paid the story much mind.
[Mom's grandfather's grandfather—so to you, Leo, he would be your maternal great-great-great-grandfather. They say he was an incredible knight. In particular, he was famous for his 'special eyes' that could spot the weakness in anything after seeing it just once.]
How had a knight strong enough to earn a noble title seen his house fall into ruin? Nine times out of ten, it came down to dirty politics.
Regardless, when the family collapsed, their Aura cultivation method was lost, and the secret to awakening those 'eyes' naturally vanished along with it.
The Aura Eye allowed its user to perceive the flow of energy.
In practice, it had countless applications.
When looking at a person or beast, he could see the lines of vitality radiating outward from the heart. That made it dead simple to pinpoint the vital spots of any unfamiliar creature at a glance.
Moreover, those flows of energy weren't seamless. Looking closely revealed nodes and junctions where lines met; striking those exact points severed the flow cleanly, crippling the target just like hitting a vital organ.
Leo had gotten plenty of mileage out of this trick when dismantling magic traps.
Severing the core node of a fixed mana circuit caused the entire spell to collapse on the spot.
Of course, that didn't mean he could cut apart every spell thrown at him. Trying to pinpoint and sever the node of a live spell being cast in real time? That bordered on a circus trick.
Unless the caster was a complete idiot of a mage, pulling that off mid-combat was practically impossible—and if the mage really was that much of an idiot, it was faster to just walk up and gut him with a sword.
'Learning proper swordsmanship wouldn't hurt, either.'
Leo's blade work was pure battlefield survival—rough, practical, and self-taught.
Honed through countless life-or-death brawls though it was, it lacked the depth and refinement of the centuries-old sword arts passed down by prestigious knightly houses.
His mind drifted to memories of Klein Vandite, the genius revered as the Empire's Sword Saint.
An Aura Blade wreathed in living flame.
Leo had only witnessed it from afar on the battlefield, yet that overwhelming sight had left no doubt as to why the man was called the Sword Saint.
'And even a monster like him died in battle.'
Looking back, that had been the first domino to fall.
The death in action of Count Klein Vandite, Commander of the Imperial Army's 1st Corps.
With his death, the Imperial Faction nobles lost their greatest pillar, and the rival Marquis Faction rapidly seized control of the court.
Count Kelsion—the noble who had hired Leo's mercenary corps and left them to die—belonged to the Marquis Faction.
"Wait... did Kelsion pull his troops back because...?"
Now that he had the breathing room to piece things together, a chilling picture began to form.
The power base of the Marquis Faction, led by Marquis York, lay mostly in the southern continent. Consequently, the nobles desperate to hold the northern defensive line were primarily from the Imperial Faction, whose territories lay right in the central continent.
To the Marquis Faction, the monster invasion must have looked like the perfect opportunity to bleed their political enemies dry.
Count Kelsion's own lands were in the central continent, true, but if Marquis York had promised him enough compensation to outweigh the loss of his territory, abandoning the defensive line suddenly made twisted sense.
"Fucking noble bastards...."
Disgust rose in his throat. Knowing those parasites had been playing political tug-of-war over scraps of power while tens of thousands of soldiers and mercenaries were being slaughtered made his blood boil.
Come to think of it, even the Sword Saint's death stank of foul play.
How did a man who had reached the realm of Sword Master fall so easily to the black monsters? Thinking back on it now, the whole thing was suspicious from start to finish.
Back in his youth at the Imperial Academy, hadn't Klein Vandite been hailed as a once-in-a-generation prodigy?
"...And most of the other corps commanders were Imperial Academy graduates, too."
Could Leo stop the coming calamity all by himself?
He shook his head.
The black monster horde wasn't something a single warrior could hold back, no matter how strong.
The best solution would be to stop the black monsters from appearing in the first place, but right now he knew next to nothing about where they came from.
"The Imperial Academy, huh...."
Once the thought took root, he couldn't shake it.
Fighting alongside strong allies beat fighting alone, and the more capable comrades he had, the better.
Furthermore, if the Marquis Faction really was pulling strings behind the scenes, he needed connections to major players in central politics to get his hands on high-level intelligence.
A nameless mercenary could never get near those circles—but what about a cadet at the Imperial Academy?
The premier institution where the greatest talents across the Empire gathered.
A place where even highborn noble scions couldn't buy their way in without skill.
The connections, intelligence networks, and sheer talent concentrated there would be invaluable.
All things considered, entering the Imperial Academy was the strongest move he could make right now.
"It's decided."
He would enroll in the Imperial Academy and prepare for the coming calamity.
His path forward was set.