Wandering Mercenary in an Open World
chapter-99

As he left the inn that used to be a resting place for the old mercenaries, Ruon thought of the men he had briefly accompanied.

They had volunteered to join the northern expedition, and before they parted, they had taken a bottle of blood from the troll he had killed.

That reminded him of the blue-eyed mage who had made a potion with that blood.

“You said you would skewer their heads with a spear?”

A faint smile appeared on the face of the man, Colin, at Ruon’s words. It was hard to tell because his face was so swollen.

“…Yeah, I did say that…”

He’ll die if I leave him alone.

Ruon realized that Colin’s breathing was getting weaker, and he quickly lifted him over his shoulder.

When he went up to the first floor, he saw Igor and Tarwen. They had come down because of the commotion, and they frowned when they saw the corpse with a torn abdomen.

“Mother of mercy.”

“Ruon? What happened here? Why did you beat him up so badly?”

Ruon pushed two tables together to make some space, and laid Colin down on them.

Then the woman who had been sitting down jumped up and ran over.

“Oh my, Mr. Colin! Are you, are you dead?”

“He will be if we leave him like this.”

Ruon answered and looked at Igor. The priest, who had vaguely guessed the situation, nodded and came closer.

“Merciful mother-”

Ruon then spoke to Tarwen.

“Stay by their side until the treatment is over.”

He pointed at the dead man.

“He was a deserter.”

It was a brief explanation, but it seemed to be enough for Tarwen to understand, as he nodded.

“I get what you mean.”

Ruon left the inn right away.

If the woman was right, there were dozens of deserters who had occupied this place, and they must have been scattered all over.

Clang-!

Sure enough, he heard a sharp noise of metal clashing in the distance. As he moved towards it, he heard coarse curses and shouts in his ears.

“Don’t panic and surround him slowly!”

“Damn it! Stab him when you block him! Are you not focused?”

“Those who are injured, back off!”

In front of a building that looked like a blacksmith’s shop.

About a dozen men were attacking one person in a wheel-like formation. It was Kyle who was fending off their well-organized and threatening attacks with his sword. He had sold his shield and hammer somewhere, and he was holding an arming sword firmly in both hands, calmly blocking the onslaught. He also delivered sharp counterattacks that drove his opponents out of the battle.

I don’t recognize him.

Ruon watched him for a moment, and their eyes met. Kyle shouted.

“Hey, aren’t you going to help me?”

At his words, the men who had backed off to catch their breath gasped.

“What the hell is that?”

“Does anyone have a crossbow? Shoot him!”

Meanwhile, Ruon approached them quickly and drew his ego sword from his waist.

Then a bulky man with a large shield that covered his legs and a mace in his other hand blocked his way.

“This bastard, I’ll stop him-”

He had no chance.

The man’s upper body slid obliquely with his shield, and fell to the ground. The sight was unbelievable, and the line that the men had firmly held collapsed in an instant.

“Mo, monster! It’s him! They came all the way here!”

Ruon cut the throat of the man who was babbling something he couldn’t understand, and advanced.

At the same time, Kyle, who had some leeway, abandoned his defensive posture and went on an aggressive offensive. A ridiculous situation unfolded, where two people were surrounded by more than ten men.

“Sh, shit!”

One of the men threw his weapon and ran away, seeing his comrades falling to the ground one by one. It was hard to find any hesitation in his fleeing back, as he was a deserter who had lost his heart once.

Ruon didn’t bother to chase him.

Instead, he looked down at the man who was waiting for death with a deep wound in his chest, and asked him.

He was the soldier who had greeted them at the gate.

“How many of you are there?”

The man, who was gasping for air, slowly lifted his head. Then he said.

“Don’t act so smart… Do you think you’re a hero? You bastards… You don’t even know you’re going to die…”

His eyes, which had been flickering anxiously, gradually lost their light, and then lost their focus and became blurry.

“What the hell is this lightning strike.”

Kyle let out a heavy sigh with his lips tightly closed, and Ruon said.

They were deserters who had occupied the city without permission.

“So that’s why the checkpoint was so sloppy.”

As the door of the blacksmith’s shop opened with a shriek and a scream of a hinge, an old man with a wrinkled face peeked out.

He sighed with relief when he saw the men lying on the ground and opened his mouth.

“I’m sorry. I had no choice. They threatened me. I kept the goods safe, so please don’t be angry.”

Even though Ruon didn’t say anything, Kyle, who was stabbed by the sword, quickly added an explanation.

“They asked me if they could take a look at the hammer and shield. They said they wouldn’t charge me for repairing the armor, so I handed them over for a moment. Honestly, it’s not like they wear out by touching them…”

Ruon chuckled.

“Thanks to that, I almost had to fight bare-handed.”

“It was a lucky thing that I had a sword from Garan. I have to be more careful from now on.”

After appeasing the old man who begged for forgiveness as if his life depended on it, Kyle walked over to Ruon with the hammer and shield.

“The blacksmith said he remembered they were a little short of forty. There aren’t many left.”

Fortunately, the two of them didn’t have to scour the village like a comb to catch the remaining scum.

The ones who realized something was wrong tried to escape on horseback, but they ran into a dwarf who was chatting in the stable.

“They just swung their swords as if they were going to kill them… What the hell are these bastards?”

Ruon, who was tired of repeating the same story over and over, tapped Strabo’s shoulder and said.

“You did well.”

“Huh?”

***

That night, the deserters who had occupied the village were wiped out. All but one, Colin.

He was the only one who had tried to stop his comrades’ cruel actions, but he was left in a state of extreme violence that he could die at any time.

Luckily, there was a high priest of the goddess among the party, and thanks to him, Colin was able to recover miraculously.

The party willingly worked for the people who had been harmed until he regained consciousness.

They buried the dead bodies, repaired the damaged buildings, and treated some women who had gone through horrible things.

It was not because they were too kind (there were some people like that, though), but because they couldn’t stand the situation.

“They killed all the young men for fear that they might pose a threat. How can this palm-sized city survive?”

Tarwen muttered, and Ruon shrugged his shoulders slightly.

“I don’t know.”

That was a problem for the nameless nobleman who owned the city.

Oh, was he the first one to be killed?

Ruon silently expressed a small condolence for the nobleman who had ruled over a tiny territory.

Then Igor came up.

“Colin has come to his senses.”

As soon as he finished speaking, the party members who were sitting around the table jumped up.

That was because they all had their own questions in their heads.

“Uh, uh…”

Colin, who was leaning against the head of the bed, swallowed his saliva nervously as the unfamiliar people rushed into the room.

Kyle pointed to his face with his index finger.

“Do you remember me?”

“Uh, that…”

“You were vomiting all the time because of the liquor bottle.”

Then Colin opened his eyes slightly.

“You’re that guy? What’s with that flashy armor?”

“Well, it’s a long story…”

“Let’s talk about it later.”

Ruon cut off Kyle’s words and said.

“Where do you belong?”

Colin coughed dryly at the sudden question and opened his mouth.

“That’s confidential… Damn it, I deserted.”

He sighed deeply and said.

“…I belonged to one of the hundreds of units under the Steel Infantry Corps of the Second Army of the Kingdom. But in fact, we were a special unit that received separate orders. We had nothing to do with the main unit.”

Too much detail.

Ruon snorted at the question he had thrown to get a rough idea of the information, not expecting to know the composition of the unit.

“You’re not ordinary people by the look of the special unit. Why did you desert?”

Colin licked his dry lips with his tongue and Tarwen handed him a cup of water. He thanked him with a bow and took a sip of water.

“Every time I turned my head, the heads of my comrades who were next to me flew away and disappeared… I repeated that kind of fight countless times. But I didn’t run away. I had to fight for my brothers’ sake and kill more of those dirty barbarians.”

He muttered with a bitter expression.

“My brothers left early. Din’s head was smashed by an iron ball, and Ban’s body was split in half. Potions didn’t work for those wounds.”

Kyle’s face darkened.

He had lost someone precious to him, so he could relate to what Colin said about leaving his blood behind.

On the other hand, Tarwen looked calm.

“Anyway, we killed and killed like Akbari, and naturally caught the eye of a high-ranking person. That’s where we went, the Star Brigade. It was a place where everyone was like me, with nothing to lose.”

Colin bit his lip again and said.

“Our role was simple. We cut off the head of the barbarian shaman. That was all. Their magic was a thorn in the side of the kingdom army.”

Then Tarwen asked abruptly.

“Aren’t there warriors protecting the shaman, from ten to a hundred depending on the shaman’s skill? You broke through them?”

It was a question that only the witch of the cradle who had collected corpses from the northern battlefield could ask, but Coleman, who had no idea of that fact, blinked.

“···Yes. You know well.”

He looked at the fairy with a suspicious look, and then sighed, thinking that it was useless now.

He continued to say.

The Star Brigade did kill the shaman.

To be precise, the owner of the relic spear, the captain of the hundred, Rogi, took care of the shaman, while the rest of the people killed the warriors blocking the front, opened the retreat, and escaped with Rogi who killed the shaman.

That was the reason for the existence of the Star Brigade.

To be the meat shield for the man named Rogi.

The Star Brigade lost dozens of people every time there was a battle, and their place was filled with new ones.

At some point, there was an unwritten rule among them not to ask each other’s names.

Why? What’s the point of knowing the name of someone who might die tomorrow?

Coleman had lived in such a battlefield until now, with only vengeance for the barbarians.

The man who had the goal of receiving a small medal for his merit no longer existed.

When everyone became solemn, Ruon spoke.

“So why did you desert?”

Colin hit his forehead with a surprised face.

“Ha ha, fuck···I never had a chance to tell anyone about this shitty life, so the story went astray. Embarrassing.”

He soon composed his face.

“Monsters.”

The party, who had heard the story from Minerva, waited quietly for the rest of the story.

“Think about it. The barbarians, who were already terrifying, became like Mongols who crawled out of hell and swept the battlefield.”

Coleman laughed weakly.

“Rogi died that day. You know that, right? He was one of the strongest warriors I’ve ever seen in my life. But he died. Now there’s only one left.”

He looked at Ruon for a while and said.

“We were already rolling with Rogi’s charisma, but when he died, it was chaos. We didn’t even know we had deserted. We just ran like hell as usual. When we came to our senses, it was too late. We didn’t know what would happen if we stopped by a big city, so we kept running and ended up here.”

Ruon seemed to understand now.

The desire that had been suppressed by the heat of the battlefield, the relief of escaping from fear, the anger at the people who looked peaceful unlike them.

All of that exploded in the massacre of Malmo.

“···As soon as I came to my senses and talked for a long time, my head hurts. I’ll leave the seat for a while.”

At that, the party left one by one, but Coleman opened his mouth.

“I have one last thing to say to you guys.”

You guys, Ruon and Kyle, stopped walking.

The three men remained in the room and Coleman said.

“I was wondering, but she’s not here.”

The two men, who knew well that there was only one person he could call her, answered.

“Amela?”

“Amela?”

Coleman nodded slowly and said.

“I’d appreciate it if you’d listen to me, considering that I was half out of my mind because of the monsters at the time···.”

When the two men answered with silence, he exhaled and said.

“That day, I saw her standing tall beyond the wave of death that swept in. Yes, Amela.”