5. Those who ride the darkness
5.
“Please, stop.”
It was a tired voice. The owner of that voice, which seemed to be sighing, pressed his fingers against his temples as if he were really tired.
Immediately, the answer flew in.
“No! Still oh! It’s too bad. Once our boss, no, am I the captain now? I wanted to fuck this ex-captain, but I’m going after it like this. Besides, look at this dumbfounded stance! You can’t help but laugh?! Kyahahahaha-! … But this is the former boss, right? I can’t tell because only the bones remain, jeop.”
“…… Were you kicking his head like that, not knowing it was Phil Red? Who else is there besides Philed with that height… Done. Don’t open your mouth any more, Shirvane. My head hurts, not Philed.”
The man finally sighed and shook his head. Seeing this, the woman called Shirva went up in her mouth, and at the same time she stopped kicking Phil Red’s severed skull and gave the man a dignified bow.
The reason I guessed that the man seemed noble was that no matter how one looked at it, he could hardly find any elegance in his actions. The man was convinced in his heart that only Shirvan would find that action noble.
“Yeah! Yay! All right, Mr Lampide. Of course we have to follow the orders of our new captain~ So, did you find anything unusual?”
Rampade threw up what he was holding instead of answering. Upon receiving what he threw, Sirvane did not hesitate to spit out her expletives.
“Gee, fuck. This is Tessien’s head. Why are you giving me this bitch’s head?”
Rampade gave up on pointing out her act of making a happy expression while tossing the former captain’s head into the air unlike her words, and decided to get to the point right away.
“Because it’s the only one that hasn’t been skeletalized.”
Hearing that sound, Shirvane immediately stopped what she was doing. Crashing the corners of her raised mouth, she slowly began to run through the former captain’s head. It was a very cautious move.
“…… Very tidy. It wasn’t that I hit it multiple times. It was cut in one blow. I don’t think you’ve cut your throat once or twice? In addition, the flesh of the cut section is rolled inward. I cut it while I was alive.”
“Is beheading the direct cause of death? … I don’t understand.”
“Where did you find this?”
“About 500 cubits from here. I couldn’t bring the body because the crows were having a party. It’s not even big enough to bring into my body.”
“… Is this the same bastard who made this shit?”
Shirvane took her eyes off her head and looked around her. Hundreds of white bones drifting in the rolling fog reminded me of a shipyard wrecked by a storm. In the present case, it was not a figurative meaning, but a grave actually. In that sense, Rampade, who followed her and looked around her, thought she was quite a minister.
The sight of the flesh being neatly removed from hundreds of corpses was enough to attract the attention of the new head of the assassin group. And, befitting her own role, he answered Syrvane’s questions from an extremely assassinating point of view.
“That means you don’t understand, Shirvane. Realistically, if you want to kill all the chasing party of the General Church and even kill Philed, you need a number that matches that number. I don’t know why, but especially if you’re slicing the flesh out of hundreds of corpses. However… There is no sign of such a melee here.”
“Then, those spellcasters?”
“If Tessien hadn’t remained unharmed, I would have thought it was the mages’ fault. Because you can’t know what’s inside those geeks. But, after making hundreds of bones, didn’t Tessien dare to do that? Why? It’s also very slight, but when you look at the rough cross-section, it’s not magic, it’s physically cut. Why did Tessien have to be physically beheaded?”
Sirvane frowned. No matter how many times she thought about it, neither her nor her complexity was right for her. Easy and simple is always an attractive solution. That’s why Shirvane didn’t like the increasing complexity of the story.
“The saintess might have done something with her divine power.”
“Holy power doesn’t work that way. No matter how much we say we are a group of assassins, we still belong to the General Church, so it would be good to study a bit, Shirvane.”
Before the ravine carved between Sylvane’s eyebrows deepens, Rampade decided it was better to rescue her spirit as she struggled in the valley of anguish. He extended a helping hand to her.
“… What’s this?”
“Anyway, our clever saintess doesn’t know what and how she cooked it, but thanks to meeting her helper, she seems to have loosened her guard quite a bit, unlike before.”
Only then could Shirvane take a closer look at what he was holding in her outstretched hand. It was a few strands of pale gold hair.
Her Seeing that she held the hand of her outstretched rescuer, Rampade realized that now he had to pull her back to where she belonged. He moved his body, covered the ground with his hand, and raised it high in one direction. Again, a few strands of light blond hair were smeared on his hands. And as he expected, he was able to pull Shirvane’s gaze toward his hand.
The direction he pointed out was the summit of Mount Ethelbeyer.
“If you ask the saintess directly, you will be able to find out what and how. Who the facilitator is. So call the kids, Sirvane. In case you don’t know, tell them to bring all the magic-only armor. I need to see what kind of bastard took our saintess.”
With Rampaid’s voice getting lower and lower, the saintess’s hair in his hand was crushed.
Shirvane burst into laughter as she was overjoyed at the ease and simplicity of the situation at last. And to commemorate that fact, she kicked Phil Red in the skull violently one last time. Responding to the rough teasing, dust flew up like an explosion.
–
Dust flew up like an explosion. The dust thrown by the wind had to taste the disaster of being cut off by the ultramarine armor immediately after their adventurous actions were overshadowed.
In that place, there was nothing to mark the boundary, let alone pavement. Even so, it was thanks to the Race That the road could be distinguished. With their backs to the setting sun, they sat at either end of the large earthen floor and lined up in a line at regular intervals. Appearances varied.
A one-eyed dwarf showing yellow teeth and tying his beard that was not properly trimmed. A young female elf combing her frizzy hair, which was devoid of luster and presumed to have once shone. Back of a male orc scratching her shoulder while limping on her leg with one of her molars broken.
But there was one common feature.
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Everybody was looking at the two of them.
The gaze that was close to staring was filled with wariness. Most just stared at it for a few seconds, but a few stared at the two blatantly as they disappeared from sight as if they had no intention of doing so. The Death Knight and the saintess showed conflicting reactions to such a gaze.
The saintess did not try to meet their gaze. As if they couldn’t be seen, he silently looked ahead and walked. In the midst of these many wary gazes seeing for the first time, she wanted to get out of this embarrassing position as soon as possible. The town she had only heard of, Charcot, had a completely different atmosphere from what she knew.
Zerpied turned his head slightly and put the races in his field of vision. He was not interested in the vigilant gaze. Crossing the border, the gaze he received the most was intent on killing. Boundaries were the most basic. There is no murderous intent without boundaries.
For this reason, what he was interested in was the fact that various races gathered in one place. Rarely, he remembered, had the races come together in one place, not even in the most recent contract, nor before, nor before. They were busy leading their own lives in their respective fields. Because each race has its own uniqueness, conflicts have often occurred due to that. To his eyes, this scene seemed quite strange.
“… Don’t look around too much.”
Esilia quietly pointed out his actions. Jer Pied gave her a slight nod of her head in her agreement, then looked straight ahead of her like she did. It was an act of no use. Aside from the petite woman dressed as if she had just jumped out of a very luxurious life, Zerpiede, wearing ultramarine Maximilian armor all over her body, stood out. Looking forward was just an act for mental satisfaction.
“I’m here.”
Her saintess pointed at a building in front of her. Zerfied slowly looked around the building.
The mountain inn where the fog stays
It was a naming that did not seem very sincere even to him. Expecting the cool naming sense of 950 years later, he had to swallow a bit of embarrassment. He opened the door with his right hand and entered the inn first. There was a squeaking sound and a musty smell coming from the rather old wooden door.
When I entered, what I saw was absurd silence. Silence without a welcome greeting greeted them.
Zerpied could confirm that wary gaze glaring at him this time as well. Unlike other gazes, it disappeared right away.
“A large room? Lodgment?”
He was a middle-aged human male who asked while sitting in a chair smoking a pipe. His hair slightly bald, he set a full beer glass on his table and focused on the cards in front of him. A cracked voice leaked from his mouth again.
“A large room? Lodgment?”
Zer Pied cast his gaze weakly at the saintess. His role was to escort the saintess, not to decide these things. Receiving his gaze, Ecilia spoke in a determined voice.
“Accommodation.”
“Then… big… Please tell me your name. I have to put it on the list.”
He stood up from his chair, gripping his waist as if he was stiff. A screeching shriek scraped the wooden floor. Tapping his knee, he headed towards the reception desk and pulled out a thick notebook from under him. The distinctive smell of old paper hit me.
Zerpied opened his mouth to his request.
“My… ….”
“Gemini!”
Before he could say her name, Ecelia shouted. When Zer Pied saw her, the saintess threw her frightened eyes at him once and quickly poured out her words before Zer Pied could say anything.
“I am a Gemini, and this is… It’s a hook. I’ll take the room on this floor. For two people.”
“Okay. Are you going to eat?”
Celia snapped something from her finger instead of answering her. She let out a jaunty sound and the bounce cut through the air. The middle-aged man frowned as he looked at it, which landed swiftly in the palm of his hand. As he lifted it with his finger, Zerfied could see it too. It was a small, shiny silver coin.
The middle-aged man wrapped a silver coin with both hands and put it inside the reception desk. Then he giggled and put a smile on his lips. A lot of it, revealing several missing teeth.
“I’ll prepare the best for you. I only have dark beer, but can I bring you a drink?”
“It’s okay.”
“I want to eat.”
Eccilia had a hard time hiding her embarrassment at her sudden outburst of words. After looking at the middle-aged man and Zerfied a few times, she sighed and said to the middle-aged man.
“…… Okay then, bring me a pint of dark beer.”
Something pierced the air again with a cheerful sound. This time it landed in Esilia’s palm. It was a small, rusty key.
“Go upstairs and go to the far right room.”
“… Is there another room for this person besides that one?”
“The best room.”
With a chuckle, he turned his back. It was the voice of the saintess that caught the middle-aged man who turned his back.
“I’d like to buy a map.”
“A map? What map? A town map?”
“No, the world map.”
But no answer came from the middle-aged man.
“This inn doesn’t sell anything like that. Miss. Because it’s so cheap.”
“I have to go to a general store to sell things like maps.”
Esilia’s gaze returned to where the answer came from. The answer came from across the table where a middle-aged man was flipping through cards. A skinny male elf with tanned skin as if tanned by the sun, and a male orc who was similar in height to him but could see muscles pulled from his rolled up arms.
They were both biting their pipes. Unlike middle-aged men, they didn’t even look at each other when they came in. While shuffling a few cards, the orc turned over his hand on the table and brushed his black hair.
“I apologize on behalf of the owner, Ichi is lazy and doesn’t prepare the basics.”
“This is why we always come and there are no customers!”
The elf took the orc’s words and giggled. At their words, the middle-aged man frowned and shouted at the two.
“If you come over to play and talk nonsense to the customers, just turn it off!”
“Mister Zenyard, why are you so angry? But since we’re here, aren’t we making some money? Are we the only ones drinking and eating here?”
But the orcs and elves didn’t pay much attention to the host’s bluff. The elf was giggling, and the orc just kept his expressionless.
“I… ….”
The eyes of humans, elves, and orcs turned to one place. At her words, Celia looked at her landlady and asked him a question.
“Then where is the General Store?”
This time, the answer came from them, not from the owner. The elf looked at her and took a sip from her pipe.
“The door is closed now, lady. Wait until the sun rises.”
To them, Jen Yard clicked his tongue once and approached Jerpy Ed and Esily. The scent of cinnamon lingered at the tip of his nose, probably coming from the tobacco leaves added to the pipe. It was a very strong scent. The tangy scent of cinnamon in her made Eccilia cough slightly.
“Never mind those chimes. Are you bastards playing around with me? However… ….”
Zenyard glanced Zerpied up and down once.
“Are you a knight?”
Zer Pied nodded his head.
I was getting used to the reaction coming from both elves and orcs instead of Zenyard. The gruff laughter of the orcs shook the empty inn.
“Am I right! The knight will be fine! Foolish bastard, knight or who else covers the whole body in armor like that?”
“Cypal… I thought she was a mercenary from there….”
The elf roughly rummaged through his pockets and handed the orc a few coins. The expression of the elf spitting saliva into the barrel on the floor did not look very pleasant. Seeing this, Zenyard clicked his tongue again.
“You two should go up to your room first. When dinner is finished, I will bring it into your room.”
“Oh yes, please. Let’s go, knight.”
At Celia’s words, Zer Pied slowly moved her steps towards the stairs. There was no difference between her on this floor and on the first floor. It was still full of the musty smell of old wood. I went to the room the owner told me to and put the key in. The key didn’t open properly with a rattling sound, probably because it was rusty.
“Come and see.”
Zerpied grabbed the handle of the door and slowly applied strength and pulled it. The door opened perfectly with a crackling sound.
“…… Isn’t it broken?”
Celia blinked her two-colored eyes at the slightly rattling door. She didn’t know if she should be thankful that the door was still attached and the lock worked.
The inside of the room was as cold as the entrance to the inn. Basic furnishings and musty smell of wood. Still, the bed was as good as the owner said. The problem was that there was only one big bed.
“Is there anything strange?”
Shortly after she entered the entrance, she stopped and asked Celia as she entered the room. Unlike the entrance to the inn, which was sufficient for his height, the entrance to the room was lower than that, so he had to bend down slightly to enter.
When he entered, he could also see the only bed. He frowned slightly and seemed to understand why Ecilia was standing still in the room. After thinking about how to speak for a while, he decided to just be honest. Because that was reasonable.
“Lady, please sleep in that bed.”
“Yes? No, it can’t be… !”
“It’s okay, I don’t sleep anyway.”
As she turned her head, Celia’s face was slightly flushed with embarrassment. She moved her lips as if she was trying to say something, but that was all. After keeping her gaze on her for a moment, she moved toward the window on one side of her wall. Outside the window, I could see the setting sun burning my body and dying.
Shortly now, the black smoke left from burning my body will cover the world. The tribes sitting on the dirt floor bathed in the last light of the dying sun seemed to have left before they knew it, and there were empty places in places.
“What are you looking at?”
Esilia approached Zerpied before he knew it and asked a question. The last rays of the sun shimmer on her face. Now, the embarrassment on her face had faded a lot.
“What a quaint town.”
“…… Do you think so, too? I’ve heard that it’s definitely not such a shady town… It’s been a few years since I heard about Charcot, but I’m still energetic….”
“Hmm? Ah, did you mean that? I was talking about races.”
“Clan?”
“Is this how you live together? Didn’t each race mainly live in its own territory?”
“What?”
Zer Pied turned her head and looked at Esilia. She couldn’t take her eyes off the Death Knight with her mouth open. Her red and blue eyes were wide open. In a word, she was surprised.
“Knight… You really don’t know anything?”
“What do you mean? There’s no way I know How do I know what happened in 950 years?”
“… All of this is because of a life-and-death war!”
Zerpied wondered if there had ever been a day when he had to think a lot about the reaction. After the 950-year gap, is it that the great change in which the tribes get along with each other casually is also related to them?
“You were the main character in the life-and-death battle!”
Seeing that he didn’t say anything with bloody eyes shining, Celia raised her voice even more. She is her, she said, making her want to think about how to respond. A person standing on the forefront of the life-and-death war, not anyone else, said such a thing, but what and how did he say it?
“… Knight, what the hell did you do while you were in a life-and-death battle?”
“What is there to do? I just got rid of enemies. It was a contract.”
“…… You really don’t care much about contracts and looking around the world.”
“Aside from those things, what else is important?”
A sigh escaped her mouth. She had expected it, but hearing it directly from the Death Knight’s mouth felt different. Well, what could be wrong with him? After all, she herself found out that the Death Knights were working on her contract, and she came to Mount Ethel Bayer.
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“Do you know how the battle between life and death went?”
“I know. All enemies have been eliminated by me.”
“… Did the driver remove all of them?”
Zer Pied nodded his head.
Necromancer Blitod declared a life-and-death war from the Western Continent. Because it was in the Western Continent that Blitod found Zerphied and signed a contract with him. The war was divided into two sides. Blitod headed east through the south of the world, while Zerfied headed east through the north.
“… But Blitod never went to war. I heard from him that the southern part of the world he originally planned to go to is almost dead due to a plague. So the war was mainly fought in the northern part where I was. Blitodd was mostly watching the war I was fighting.”
“… Did you believe that?”
“Contracts are essentially built on mutual trust.”
At the Death Knight’s obvious words, her saintess sighed again. Her escort knights were so well guarded by her chivalry.
“…… It’s not entirely a lie. Just as he said, the southern part of the world was engulfed in a plague. But it was because of Blitodd. First, let me ask you a question. Knight, have you seen any priests in the north?”
Zer Pied shook his head. It was all because of the absence of the priests that he was able to charge into the enemy army alone and walk out alone. Even if there were, there were only a few low-level priests who emitted weak divine power. That much posed no danger to him. The magic bounced off the armor, and the weapon shattered on the shield. With the deadliest danger gone, nothing could stop him on the northern front. The blood and flesh of all enemies were transformed into a handful of Meals.
Coming to think of it, it’s a strange thing. Until now, the greatest threat to him has always been the clergy. When he was trapped alone inside a camp made up of holy relics during a battle with the Archdemon, the experience of his armor, or even Zer Pied himself, starting to melt, was quite a shock to him as well. Are you saying that such priests did not come to the northern front?
At the time, most of the priests were located in the central and southern regions, so it was not a big deal, but there was no reason why they couldn’t move their forces. No matter how much the plague turns around, the fact that the greatest enemy of the undead is the clergy doesn’t change.
“I will. Only one knight appeared on the northern front in the Great War of Life and Death, while a large army of undead under Blitod appeared in the south. Of course, the knight is also really strong, but… Still, there was only one enemy in the north, and there were many enemies in the south. The priests, of course, had no choice but to move south.
… The problem started from there. Clerics weren’t all powers of the allies, so it was inevitable that there would be a gap. In places where there are few or no priests, the plague that flows from the undead has begun to circulate. The clergy who were in charge of removing the undead or healing the traumatized began to focus on healing the wounded from the plague… There were more people who died from the plague and turned into undead than the speed at which they healed.
The undead army still boasted a large number, and even the traumatized ones were defeated one after another when they could not receive proper treatment due to the plague.”
The saintess’ expression gradually hardened. The record written in the history books was truly disastrous. During the day, the priests had to use all their divine power to heal the injured and the plagued, and at night, the undead army started attacking. Once there was a gap, the gap was not filled, but rather widened.
“I wonder if there are people who escaped to the north saying they wanted to die gracefully?”
For them, the North was a place where they could die comfortably with just one attack. Like yesterday’s comrades, the fear of becoming a moving corpse and facing a terrible annihilation slowly crept into every ally.
“In the end, as the defeat gradually grew, they, who had been fighting separately, formed a tribal unit union as a final struggle.”
The Great Devil wanted to rule over all races, starting with the Asmodians, the Dragon to recreate the world in its own rare form, and the Witch to sacrifice a continent. Violence was necessary for all these purposes, but at least not that they all wanted to die.
However, a necromancer named Blitod wanted – on the surface – to exterminate all living things in the world, and a race that had never been done before, with a seriousness that was incomparable to the crisis of extinction that had existed so far. Union was born.
“You mean there is a union of tribes?”
Zerpied was intrigued by the word he had never heard before.
That never happened to Dragon either.
“Of course, even with the establishment of a tribal union, nothing changed. However… He suddenly disappeared.”
At the saintess’s words, Zerpied remembered the time he had annihilated Blitod. It was probably at that point when the tribal union was formed. As expected, Blitod was a madman. Seeing as how he had been hiding important information from the beginning, he must have been thinking about betrayal from the time he woke him up.
“After the crisis of extinction on an unprecedented scale passed, the tribes did not want to cause any more conflict. If a crisis like this comes again, then there was no guarantee that the same luck as now would follow. Hundreds of years later, this is now, you know?
How can you not know even a single bit of information about the wars you participated in? Besides, when I entered the inn earlier, I thought I was really insane! Did you try to tell me your true name then?”
“Didn’t the owner say he would write it in the roster?”
“I am Zerpied Lim Sedvaigal! If you do, aha! You see! There is no one in this world who will do it! It’s a Death Knight who tried to destroy nothing but the world many times! Is there anyone who doesn’t know the driver’s name?! We’re on the run now! There’s nothing good about attracting attention!”
“…… But, there is no reason to lie unnecessarily.”
Esilia was in the middle of thinking about what she could do to inform the escort knights who were not interested in anything other than chivalry, contracts, and looking around the world in detail about their current situation.
Smart – .
“Oh, yes. Come on in.”
With a creaking scrape, Zenyard appeared.
“I waited a long time. The dinner you ordered.”
Jen Yard smiled again and set her two trays on the bed. Sausages that looked like they were just grilled, some pasta, and a glass of dark beer were placed on a steaming tray. At his words, Zerfied cast his gaze toward the window. It was after black smoke covered the world before I knew it. It was just that after the pale sun had burned, the remains of the corpses indicated that the sun had been shining during the day.
Zenyard laughed and ran out of the room. He seemed to be in a good mood, thought Jer Peed, as if he had met customers using a single silver coin.
“Then I will eat well… ah… !”
Esilia, who had been smiling at the savory smell of eating for the first time in a while, looked at Zerpied with a surprised expression.
“How do you eat, driver? In order not to be suspicious, she deliberately ordered Lee In… Oh, and the next time you want to eat something, please discuss it… ! They’re acting to disrupt the tracking party, but they don’t know what will happen if they suddenly do that… !”
Esilia said, filled with her embarrassment, recalling the time he suddenly ordered a beer just before her.
“It doesn’t matter. There is nothing wrong with tasting it. Ingesting it doesn’t help or move, but it does. Hmm… don’t do that next time I had never been an escort knight before, so I hadn’t thought about it.”
After putting the lady’s request well into his head, he slowly reached out in front of the tray.
Zer Pied immediately picked up the tray and poured his food into his shadow. Food sank into the shadows as if dropped on the surface of the water. Eating food has been a long time coming. All he needed was blood and flesh, and there was no need to consume them. It tasted normal. The taste of plain sausage and pasta. There wasn’t much excitement. He didn’t expect much from the food itself.
So Jer Pied poured his much-anticipated dark beer into the shadows. What will beer taste like 950 years later?
Damn it, it was just plain dark beer. Zerfied swallowed swear words and moved toward the window. It seemed to him that he would need at least some fresh air to change his mood.
Looking at the moon, the corpse of the dead sun, he captured the scenery of the village. It was a small town. A town with nothing special. Rather, looking at the location, it was just a wonder why the village was built in such a place. The Death Knight, who was about to ask why, stopped his slightly moving mouth.
Celia hadn’t even scooped a few spoonfuls before she fell asleep. Come to think of it, she had spent several days in the mountains and had just descended. It was natural for her to be tired. Zer Pied put the tray of her food on the table, covered the saintess with a blanket, and moved her steps toward the window again.
The moon, shining alone in the black smoke, was rather illuminating many things. Zerfied tried to slowly put the world 950 years later into his sight. The shadow of Mount Ethelbeyer in the distance, the old wooden buildings erected all over the town, and the black outlines of presumably forests.
And even the shadows climbing the walls of the inn.