Back in the Red Wolf Mercenary Corps, Dex had been their only mage.
Truth be told, calling him a mage had been a bit of a stretch. His repertoire had topped out at making the dirt under an enemy's boots slick or conjuring a small flame for a torch.
He had taught himself out of a tattered magic primer he'd picked up during their mercenary days—which, looking back on it now, was an absurd feat of raw talent in itself.
If a guy who had managed to teach himself magic out of a book in the middle of the wilderness got proper instruction starting at fifteen?
He would more than earn his keep.
"I'm bringing Dex with me."
Just like that, Leo settled on his first companion.
The Imperial Academy prided itself on strict meritocracy.
Its founding purpose was to gather anyone with genuine talent—regardless of birth or status—and forge them into pillars of the Empire. Once admitted, tuition, room, and board were completely free, so money wouldn't be an issue either.
"Dex, you're coming somewhere with me later on."
"Uh, sure."
Blinking, Dex agreed without a second thought.
Leo dragged him along on random outings all the time anyway. At most, Dex figured he meant a hunting trip or a quick visit to the next town over.
"Good. No backing out—you promised."
Dex didn't have the faintest clue he had just agreed to go take the Imperial Academy entrance exam.
"I'm going hunting every day starting tomorrow. Need to pack on muscle, and that means eating plenty of meat. You're eating meat and training with me, too."
"Huh? Training? Out of nowhere?"
"Be out front at dawn every day starting tomorrow."
Nothing built a strong body faster than heavy exercise and red meat.
While he was at it, he intended to whip this future mage's stamina into shape early.
From that day on, Leo went hunting nearly every day.
Because the woods around Ronmar weren't particularly deep, the game mostly consisted of small animals like rabbits and pheasants—just enough meat to feed them for the day.
Once their bellies were full of meat, the grueling workouts began.
Naturally, Dex was dragged along for every session. At first, Dex puked his guts out several times just trying to keep up with the running, but little by little, he adjusted. The bastard's grit had always been top-notch.
After finishing their basic conditioning, Leo practiced his swings using the heavy wooden sword he had confiscated from Oz.
And every night before bed, he cultivated his Aura without fail.
Two months passed like that, and both Leo's and Dex's frames grew noticeably leaner and more muscular.
"Hey, let's head into town for a few days."
Leo baited the hook for Dex once again.
Backwaters like Ronmar and Korun rarely even saw traveling peddlers.
Half a day's journey away, however, lay a decently sized town where merchants and mercenaries regularly passed through.
"To Shur? Is there even any work for us there?"
"Leave that to me. We might be gone for a few weeks if things go well, so let your folks know ahead of time."
"A few weeks?"
"If we land a decent job, we ought to stick around long enough to make it worth the trip, right?"
"Guess that makes sense. Alright."
Leave it to me, Dex.
As if a former mercenary captain couldn't rustle up a single paycheck.
Setting out early the next morning, they lucked out and spotted a freight wagon headed toward Shur resting by the roadside.
"Whoa, mister, this wheel looks a little loose, doesn't it? Look right here—the pin's coming right out."
"Huh? Well I'll be. Do you boys know how to fix it?"
"Sure, it's an easy fix. Say, if I tighten this up for you, could you give us a lift to Shur...?"
"That's no trouble at all. Just get it fixed up so we can hit the road."
Leo had strolled right up to the parked wagon, palmed a perfectly fine linchpin out of the axle, and slid it right back in—securing them a free ride with a bit of sleight of hand.
"Whoa, when did you learn how to fix wagons?"
...Wait, you fell for it too?
Clearly, he needed to educate this pure-hearted idiot on how the real world worked, and fast.
"Thanks for the ride, mister!"
"Anytime! Rare to see such helpful young lads these days."
The driver even sent them off with a warm smile.
They got a free ride, and the driver drove off feeling great. Nobody lost a thing—a textbook win-win deal.
"Where to now?"
"Right there."
Leo jerked his chin toward the only three-story building standing in the center of Shur.
The local mercenary guild office.
"What are we going in there for? That's where mercenaries take jobs."
"Quit worrying and follow me."
Leo strode inside with practiced confidence, while Dex trailed nervously behind him.
He had led a famous mercenary corps for years; walking into a tiny branch office in the sticks wasn't enough to make him blink.
"How may I help you?"
The receptionist greeted them at the counter.
Her lips curved upward while her eyes remained completely flat—a textbook customer-service smile.
"We're looking for porter work. Both of us together."
He would have preferred jumping straight into monster hunting, but that required an official mercenary tag.
Unfortunately, mercenary tags had a strict age requirement, and both of them were still a year shy of qualifying.
Porter work, however, had no such restriction.
"As it happens, a few parties just put in requests for two porters."
"Mind if I take a look?"
The receptionist slid a few request sheets across the counter.
Most of them were low-rank parties heading out to hunt goblins.
'Hmm?'
One listing immediately caught his eye.
Melv, Cory, Shine, Louise.
A four-person adventurer party.
Leo's eyes glinted coldly.
Back in his previous life, when he had first run away from home to become a mercenary, Shur had been his very first stop as well.
Too young for a mercenary tag, he had started out hauling gear as a porter here—and back then, those three names had become infamous across the region.
Infamous as human hunters who butchered and robbed their own fellow adventurers and porters out in the wilds.
"We'll take this one."
"They depart tomorrow morning. That works out nicely—that party marked their request for porters as urgent."
"Great. We'll swing by later this afternoon once they confirm."
Jotting down their names and a brief summary of their backgrounds wrapped up the application.
"Dex, you brought your dagger, right?"
"Yeah, I've got it. Why, do you think we'll actually need to use it?"
Before leaving the village, Leo had told Dex to pack his hunting dagger.
Leo had his own familiar hunting knife strapped to his belt as well.
"Nobody looks out for our hides but us. You never know what'll happen out there."
"Fighting monsters sounds pretty scary, though."
"Give it a few years and the monsters'll be the ones running scared from your face."
"...Seriously, why do you keep saying stuff like that?"
Dex's shoulders slumped.
Man, teasing this kid never got old.
After killing time wandering around town, they stopped back by the guild in the afternoon.
The party had approved their application, locking them in to depart as porters the next morning.
It was a four-day expedition paying 6 silvers a day per person—meaning the two of them stood to make 48 silvers total over four days.
Melv, Cory, Shine.
Leo rolled the names of the three bastards around in his head.
'Filthy scum.'
If his memory served him right, turning them in would net him a nice bounty on top of their pay.
Night falls fast in the woods.
Like a heavy black curtain dropping over the canopy, darkness swallowed the forest.
The goblin-hunting party hurried back to their campsite before pitch darkness set in.
It was the third night since Leo and Dex had joined the expedition.
"Hah, made it back right on time."
"Your name was Leo, right? Man, you sure this is your first time working as a porter? You're worth every copper! Kahahaha!"
Melv, the party leader, and Cory plopped down beside the campfire Leo had built, laughing loudly.
Having hired two young kids in a rush, they hadn't expected much out of them at first.
Yet this Leo kid knew how to pitch camp like an old hand and navigated unfamiliar forest trails without a single misstep. His stamina was freakishly good for his age, too, so he never slowed the party down during a hunt.
Even the quieter kid pulled his weight well enough, leaving the veterans thoroughly pleased.
"Meanwhile, our one and only mage is dead weight... Tsk."
Melv clicked his tongue, glaring across the fire at Louise, the party's sole woman and mage.
Louise knew a couple of fire-type offensive spells and a few basic support spells. Her aim in live combat wasn't great, true, but considering this was her very first field expedition, she didn't deserve the verbal abuse they were heaping on her.
Over the past three days, the men's snide remarks had grown nastier and nastier, until today they were openly humiliating her to her face.
"I'm sorry...."
Louise murmured, shrinking into herself.
Long locks of purple hair spilled limply over her hunched shoulders, her glasses sitting crookedly on the bridge of her nose.
Starting that afternoon, they hadn't even let her cast a single spell.
Melv had barked at her to stay in the back and do nothing since she was only getting in their way.
Her confidence was completely shattered.
"Alright, we hunt until tomorrow afternoon and head back to town. Let's finish strong."
"Better turn in early tonight."
"I'll take first watch."
Once dinner was cleared away, everyone got ready to turn in for the night.
Shine, a lean man with a long knife scar cutting across his cheek, took the first watch.
Melv and Cory crawled straight into their sleeping bags.
'Tonight's the night, then.'
Their MO was always the same: recruit a naive rookie adventurer, use them as free labor for the hunt, and murder them on the last night to strip their gear and loot.
They moved from town to town pulling the exact same routine, leaving a trail of missing rookies behind them. No doubt they planned to pull this two or three times around Shur before moving on to fresh hunting grounds.
"Dex," Leo whispered, "stay awake tonight. Keep your hand on your dagger."
"Why? What's going on?"
"Those three are adventurer hunters."
Dex's eyes went twice as wide as usual.
Adventurer hunters.
Now that Leo mentioned it, something about those three had rubbed him the wrong way for the past three days.
"What do we do?"
"Just play dead and watch for now. Be ready to move the second I jump."
Dex swallowed hard and gave a tight nod.
Lately, Leo had changed. Dex had felt it back when Leo dismantled Oz's gang in Korun.
He cracked weird jokes sometimes, sure, but there was a cold, steady maturity to him that hadn't been there before.
Besides, everyone knew the mercenary world was full of cutthroats; staying sharp was the only way to stay alive.
Leo quietly shifted his sleeping bag a little closer to Louise's.
With one rookie mage and two young porters to dispose of, who would those bastards go after first?
Almost certainly Louise.
Crackle, crackle—!
Dry firewood snapped softly in the quiet forest as a sea of stars glittered across the clear night sky.
It would have been a peaceful night—if not for the three murderers waiting to slit their throats.
Inside his sleeping bag, Leo kept his fingers wrapped tight around the hilt of his dagger, watching through half-lidded eyes.
Judging by the slow, even rise and fall of Louise's sleeping bag, she had already drifted off to sleep.
Nothing moved from the other two bags yet.
Crunch, crunch.
Then, Shine rose from his spot by the fire and crept over toward Louise's sleeping bag.
After fiddling with his dagger for a second, he slid it into the sheath on his chest harness—and unbuckled his belt, shoving his pants down.
'This piece of shit....'
Unless the bastard was planning to take a piss right on someone's bedding, his disgusting intentions were obvious.
With his lower half bare, Shine ripped Louise's sleeping bag open and dropped his weight onto her, pinning her down. The dagger was already back in his hand.
"Mmph... Hnngh!"
Crushed beneath his weight, Louise bolted awake.
She tried to scream, but a calloused, filthy hand clamped tight over her mouth.
When she saw the glint of steel hovering inches from her face, her pupils dilated in terror.
At that exact moment, Melv and Cory threw off their sleeping bags and got to their feet, grinning.
Just as Leo thought—neither of them had been asleep.
"Look at that bastard go again."
"Sigh, couldn't he at least wait until we've gutted the porters before getting his rocks off?"
Right then.
Tearing out of his sleeping bag like a gust of wind, Leo materialized directly behind Shine.
His left hand yanked Shine's hair back, wrenching his chin up as his right pressed the cold edge of his hunting knife flat against the man's throat.
He had moved like a shadow—so fast none of them even saw him coming.
"Drop the knife, unless you want your throat opened."
Beneath his low, icy voice, the campfire crackled in the sudden dead silence.
The chirping of grass insects rang out particularly loudly across the clearing.
"Y-You...!"
Shine croaked, breaking the silence.
Feeling sharp steel biting into the skin over his windpipe, he could barely force air out of his lungs.
Leo's grip tightened in Shine's hair, pulling his neck taut.
"I'm counting to three. One, two...."
Leo counted down in a flat, emotionless voice.
Beside him, Dex scrambled out of his bedding and took up position at Leo's flank.
The dagger in Dex's hand shook like a leaf.
He had gutted plenty of rabbits and deer, but he had never pointed a blade at a living person.
Facing cold-blooded killers who murdered people for a living, his heart was hammering against his ribs.
'L-Leo definitely has a plan...!'
Leo could be reckless, sure, but he never picked a fight without knowing how to win it.
Plus, he had clearly pegged these three as murderers right from the start.
He had to have a way out of this.
"So the little rats were awake. Quit fucking around and let him go, brat. Before I carve all three of you into pieces."
Built like a wild boar, Melv let out a low growl.
Cutting a man's throat wasn't easy for a green kid.
Figuring the young porter would hesitate when push came to shove, Melv planned to stall him with threats until he found an opening to strike.
SLICE—!
There was zero hesitation in Leo's hand.
Razor-sharp steel parted skin and artery in a single smooth draw.
Hot blood erupted from Shine's severed carotid.
Shine clapped both hands over his throat, but it was useless. Thick, dark blood poured out between his fingers.
Crackle— Crackle—!
The campfire snapped quietly in the dark.
"Three."
Leo's low voice finished the count.