Chapter 16
White Eagle Fortress and the Aezk Mercenary Company
The mercenaries arrived at White Eagle Fortress around evening that day.
The fortress stood out clearly even in the darkness.
A stone statue of a white eagle glared toward the Eternal Forest with both eyes, glowing pale beneath the moonlight. Torches lined the wing-like walls, illuminating the night and creating a striking sight against the ink-black darkness.
A man who appeared to be in charge came out with the guards to welcome the mercenaries.
“You must have had a difficult journey.”
He was a middle-aged man whose eyes were half-closed.
An official from the Mercenary Bureau bowed on behalf of the mercenaries.
“We apologize for troubling you so late at night, Lord Castellan.”
“It’s quite all right. I was already awake organizing the mercenaries who arrived ahead of you. It seems my overtime will simply last a little longer.”
The castellan accepted the list of the second contingent and rubbed his tired eyes with a smile.
“Hoho. They all seem like dependable mercenaries. Hmm?”
As he read through the list, his eyebrow twitched.
“Did I misread this...? Or was it recorded incorrectly? It says the Aezk Mercenary Company has four members. I assume someone mistakenly wrote four instead of fourteen.”
Allen stepped forward and smiled brightly.
“Four is correct, Lord Castellan.”
The castellan’s expression stiffened.
The surrounding mercenaries began whispering among themselves.
Kaspar asked Zrek,
“Our company’s name is rather unusual, isn’t it?”
“We took it from the first letters of our names: Allen’s A, Ellasen’s E, Zrek’s J, and Kaspar’s K.”
Seeing Kaspar’s peculiar expression, Zrek chuckled.
“What, were you expecting something like the Frostmane Mercenary Company or the Flames of the Firmament Mercenary Company?”
Apparently believing he had hit the mark, Zrek continued.
“It’s better to avoid overly grandiose names. They attract unnecessary attention. Especially for a tiny mercenary company like ours, that attention can easily turn into people picking fights with us. Nothing good would come of it.”
Kaspar agreed. He had no desire to attract unnecessary trouble.
That was also one reason he had accepted Allen’s invitation.
They had developed mutual trust during the Jerpet request, but more importantly, Kaspar believed these people would not question him regardless of what kind of magic he used.
There was only one point on which Kaspar disagreed.
Isn’t “Aezk” just as bad?
After a simple meal in the barracks dining hall, the mercenaries headed toward their assigned quarters.
“This is pretty damn awful.”
Ellasen grumbled when they reached their lodging.
The Aezk Mercenary Company had not even been assigned proper quarters. Instead, they had been sent to an inn.
All the other mercenaries had been placed in the barracks inside the fortress, where it was warmer and safer.
The treatment was practically discrimination, and neither Allen nor Zrek looked particularly pleased.
Kaspar, meanwhile, entered his room early, unpacked his belongings, and threw open every window.
Whoosh.
The cool night breeze filled the room. Perhaps because an enormous forest stretched nearby, the wind carried the rich scent of trees.
Kaspar perched on the windowsill and looked outside. In the distance, the fortress walls basked in the cold moonlight, creating a lyrical scene.
A bard might have drawn splendid poetic inspiration from the view, but the boy’s interest lay elsewhere.
Rustle.
Kaspar gripped the skull staff with both hands and held it out like a longsword.
[A magical tool belonging to a Beast Walker.]
The Fallen Throne recognized the skull staff at a glance.
“Yes. I’m going to try activating it.”
Among the magical theories Kaspar had studied over the past several days were the principles behind activating magical tools.
He had obtained this staff after killing Rathead on the snowy mountain, but without knowing how to use it, he had effectively left it untouched.
Now it was time to apply those theories.
“Would you mind allowing me to concentrate alone for a while?”
Kaspar slowly took a deep breath.
The Fallen Throne, who had been watching him with interest, nodded.
[Very well. I shall look around the area for a while.]
Her youthful voice mingled strangely with the night wind.
The moment she finished speaking, the young girl’s figure blurred and disappeared.
“...I only meant that I wanted you to remain quiet.”
Still, it did not matter. In fact, this was even better.
He now had the perfect environment in which to focus on Rathead’s staff.
Kaspar drew one deep breath and slowly began concentrating.
He focused every nerve on the sensations within his body.
A high-pitched ringing in his ears.
The movements of his internal organs.
The pulsing of blood vessels throughout his body.
He realized anew that the human body was a space filled with countless sounds.
His awareness naturally shifted toward his body temperature.
He began to feel the heat filling his body—more distinctly and more intensely.
...This is magical power.
The moment he recognized it, one realization followed another.
He finally understood why he had been able to use magic without drawing in any external mana.
The heat saturating his body was actually mana compressed to an extreme degree.
No—the heat itself was produced during that compression.
His entire body had always burned with heat because every cell within it was filled with densely compressed mana.
“...So that was it.”
The Fallen Throne, the Bride of the Black Rose, had brought Jerpet’s life to an end.
Yet to Kaspar, she had become an adviser and helper.
In this way, nothing in the world was flat or possessed only a single form. Everything had numerous shapes and three-dimensional facets.
Its appearance changed depending on the angle from which it was viewed.
Mages of the Magic Towers would have been horrified by Kaspar’s constitution, but Kaspar himself remained calm.
If anything, his feelings were complicated.
The body heat that had tormented him since childhood was now connected to the new meaning he had discovered in life at the monastery.
His sense of irony lasted only a moment before one realization led into another.
“...Nothing consists of only a single side.”
Kaspar’s gaze grew distant as he immersed himself in the realization.
His mind turned toward the past.
His body heat was not the only example.
To the monastery, he had been a cursed child.
To the cultists, he had been “one beloved by the Lord” and “a pure beast to be offered as a burnt sacrifice.”
Kaspar shook his head.
Realizations were valuable.
But he could immerse himself in their lingering implications after he discovered how to activate Rathead’s staff.
Kaspar calmly studied his fingertips with a confident gaze.
It was strange.
According to the book, recognizing mana was only the first step. Next came unifying oneself with mana and learning to control it.
Yet unification and control came incredibly easily to him.
The method surfaced in his consciousness as though he had known it from the very beginning.
Carefully and gradually, Kaspar began channeling mana into Rathead’s magical tool.
At that moment—
Flash!
He found himself standing in the middle of a dark field.
Whoooosh.
A dark field beneath the pouring rain.
“Where am I?”
The empty eye sockets of the skull seemed to flash, and darkness engulfed him.
Rustle.
Kaspar tightly shut his eyes against the sudden burst of darkness. A faint sound tickled his ears.
Rustle.
This is strange. I was inside my assigned room at White Eagle Fortress just moments ago.
Yet he had suddenly been dropped into this unfamiliar place.
Kaspar soon realized that this was no ordinary space.
The body heat he could faintly sense even amid the northern winds had completely vanished.
Shhhhh.
And he could not feel the slightest chill from the rain pelting his entire body.
An illusion?
No other explanation came to mind.
Then what was this illusion trying to show him?
Kaspar surveyed his surroundings until his gaze stopped in one direction.
“...A mountain?”
He instinctively understood.
This illusion was recreating a place from the distant past.
At that moment, Kaspar’s body stiffened.
He had felt someone watching him from the mountain.
“Who’s there?”
An enormous mountain towered behind him.
It was truly colossal, rising high enough to touch the heavens. Yet the entire mountain was shrouded in darkness, revealing nothing more than an ominous silhouette.
An unknown being was observing him from within it.
A tremendous presence emanated from the mountain.
It belonged to something gigantic.
Even though he could not see it, he could feel it unmistakably.
The sensation was peculiar, as though he might be drawn into it.
It was astonishing that he could feel such an overwhelming presence even within an illusion.
Kaspar stared directly toward the point from which the gaze originated.
He, too, wanted to know what kind of being lurked inside the mountain.
For a long time, the two watched each other through the rain-soaked darkness.
A vague shape undulated within the shadows.
After a while, Kaspar slightly furrowed his brow.
“...A snake?”
Hmm? What is that sound?
“...Ma!”
Ma?
“...Ah!”
Ah?
Rumble—crash!
Lightning struck, shattering the darkness.
The entire world fragmented and scattered in every direction.
***
“...Hey!”
“Hey, you idiot! Wake up, Kaspaaaar! Huff, huff.”
When Kaspar opened his eyes, he found a panting man before him.
It was Allen.
“Kaspar, you’ll freeze to death if you sleep out here!”
“Mr. Allen?”
“Forget ‘Mr. Allen’! Why are you lying out here?”
I was lying here?
His forehead suddenly began to sting. When he touched it, his fingers came away stained with dirt and blood.
“Blood?”
Kaspar looked around and discovered that he was outside the inn.
What happened? I was definitely sitting by the window.
When he looked up, he saw the window where he had been sitting.
Ah. I must have lost consciousness and fallen.
He appeared to have fallen forward, but Kaspar had been fortunate. People frequently died from falling out of windows.
He searched the area, but the skull staff was nowhere to be seen. It must have fallen into the room.
“I’m sorry. I must have dozed off while sitting by the window.”
“Good grief. If I’d returned a little later, we might’ve had a corpse to clean up.”
Kaspar then noticed that Allen’s clothes had changed.
All the other mercenaries had changed into casual clothes and were resting, but Allen was still wearing his armor.
“The castellan called only the leaders of the second contingent in for a separate meeting.”
Allen was nominally the leader of the Aezk Mercenary Company.
In truth, he had been more or less forced into the role because Ellasen and Zrek hated troublesome responsibilities.
“What did you discuss?”
“Beginning tomorrow, the second contingent will be responsible for protecting the villages within the fortress’s jurisdiction and searching for the missing mercenary companies. We’ll also handle requests from the locals and any additional assignments from the castellan.”
“We’re going to be busy.”
“Yeah. The Aezk Mercenary Company will be even busier.”
A small group was bound to be summoned here and there precisely because it was small.
With only four members, Aezk was the smallest mercenary company in either the first or second contingent.
They would undoubtedly be deployed for all kinds of missions and requests.
Allen welcomed it.
He saw it as an opportunity.
If they wanted to remain comfortably inside a fortress, they could have stayed in the city. There would have been no reason to come all this way.
“The castellan has already received requests from five villages. We’ll probably be assigned one of them. So take better care of yourself. How can a mage not understand how valuable his own body is?”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
***
Allen stretched.
His breath faded into the cold northern wind.
Suddenly, it seemed a shame to go straight inside and sleep.
“Want to have a drink before bed?”
“No, thank you.”
“Kaspar, I like almost everything about you, but it’s a shame you don’t drink. My father used to say that if you want to understand someone, you should drink with them.”
“I don’t drink, but I can keep you company.”
“Forget it. What fun would that be? I’ll wake Ellasen and Zrek and drink with them instead.”
“Do you wish to understand Ellasen and Zrek better?”
“...Good night, Kaspar.”
***
Somewhere near the depths of the Eternal Forest, a hunter named Burke felt that the forest was unusually strange tonight.
Invisible gazes surrounded him on every side.
It felt as though the entire forest had grown countless eyes.
He had worked as a hunter in this forest for fifteen years, but he had never experienced anything like it.
His fellow hunters had recently worn uneasy expressions while saying that strange things were appearing more frequently in the forest.
Their words kept echoing through his mind.
“Damn it...”
He cursed for no particular reason, but the oppressive silence only made him more uneasy.
Is it because I’m alone?
After roughly preparing the game he had caught, Burke hurried along the path back to his village.
Then it happened.
“Damn it! You scared me!”
Something moved in the undergrowth, making Burke jump.
Upon closer inspection, it was only a deer.
It appeared to be grazing.
Its mouth was covered in red blood.
Grin.
When its eyes met Burke’s, the corners of the deer’s mouth curled upward.
Its jaws were packed with rows of sharp, predatory teeth.
“Damn deer, scaring the life out of me.”
Burke cursed at the innocent-looking animal and was about to sigh in relief when his entire body froze.
He had seen it.
He had seen what the deer was eating.
Realizing where Burke was looking, the deer raised its head.
Its eyes were as placid as lakes.
The forest held an ancient legend.
A faded legend, worn down and crumbling beneath the passage of time.
“Aaaaaaargh!”
And now, an ancient malice was beginning to seethe once more.