Chapter 73. He Smiled, Rarely
Base Camp No. 2.
“…….”
Hallig, a cigarette stuck in his mouth, climbed up onto the watch post and looked down over the camp’s scenery.
Base Camp No. 2 was quite serious—proper, in a way.
All around it, tall wooden barricades ringed the camp, high enough to stop monster incursions, and here and there among the giant trees, not only were there watch posts, but even platforms where archers could take positions.
Rather than a base camp, it looked like a small fortress.
Hallig was taking in that sight in one sweep when someone climbed up onto the watch post—that was when.
“Chief Hallig.”
“Ah. You’re here.”
The mercenary company that ruled Base Camp No. 2.
It was Plen, vice-captain of Victima.
“The kids are all ready. That aside, what should we do about the facilities? If we leave them alone, goblins and the like could come in and form a village.”
“That’s not bad, either. Still, compared to building anew, leaving it to goblins would make it easier to take back.”
“……Mm. Yes, understood.”
Plen looked like he was about to say something, then closed his mouth.
Were the goblins of the Hamelin Great Forest just ordinary goblins?
They were as clever as goblins outside, yet their physical ability rivaled orcs.
To take a fortress like this back from those kinds of bastards?
‘……It won’t be easy.’
It might even be that a new goblin village would be born centered around this fortress.
A massive ruling village that put the surrounding area under its heel!
But Plen didn’t show what he was thinking.
The reason was simple.
The act of “taking back” was only possible when you could come back at all.
As Plen’s thoughts reached that point—
“Doesn’t it feel empty.”
Hallig’s fleeting voice came.
“……?”
“I climbed up to the Chief’s seat and thought I had everything. Ah— you don’t know yet. Because you’ve never been up there.”
“……Mm.”
“I need to die sooner so you can sit in this seat.”
“……Hah.”
At the nasty joke, Plen let out a low sigh.
Hallig was that kind of man.
With a seriousness you’d never find elsewhere in the world, he’d spit out nasty jokes as if they were heartfelt truths.
“How about it? If it’s now, I could die for you. Even if you’re going anyway, don’t you want to try the Chief’s seat once?”
“What use is a Chief without a camp? Why are you like this when it’s not like you?”
“Not like me, huh…….”
Hallig blew out a deep breath.
It wasn’t a sigh.
It was just the act of exhaling every last bit of smoke he’d drawn deep into his lungs.
As white smoke fluttered and rose, his mouth opened.
“Who knows. Maybe because it’s time to die, I feel like soaking in sentiment.”
“……?”
Plen tilted his head.
“Time to die—what do you mean……?”
That was when something flashed through his mind.
“Chief, don’t tell me……?”
Information delivered from Base Camp No. 4.
When that information had been passed along to the Chiefs of each camp, not long after, word came from Base Camp No. 1.
The key point was simple.
- We will join Base Camp No. 4.
Not a proposal.
Just a statement of position.
There was nothing like, “What will you do,” or “Join us.”
But the intent was easy enough to guess.
‘They’re going to throw away their lives for the next generation.’
To be honest……
It was ridiculous.
Yeah, ridiculous beyond belief.
To cynical, calculating Plen, it was a mindset he couldn’t understand at all.
‘A mercenary nobody—what sacrifice? Just earn today, eat today, and live it up until you die. That’s all.’
And what had Hallig said back then?
- Fixer, that old man’s gone senile. Tell them to do that crazy shit among themselves.
A choice without hesitation.
- When things calm down, we’ll come back. If not, we’ll just wander the continent, I guess.
He hadn’t been that attached to Base Camp No. 2 in the first place.
It was just a workplace that brought in money. No—an absurd amount of money.
Giving it up wasn’t exactly appealing, but what’s more expensive than the price of your life?
Surely, that had been Hallig, and yet……
“Don’t tell me you’re going with Aviot. With those guys who aren’t even like mercenaries?”
“I don’t know if we’ll be together, but it seems we’ll be going to the same place.”
At that calm voice, Plen’s face reddened.
And that was when a shout burst from his mouth.
“Chief!”
“Your voice is too loud. Loud enough to make me want to rip your tongue out.”
“Are you insane? Why would you go there, of all places—there. Don’t you know Destrow? It hasn’t even awakened, and it’s already changing the great forest’s ecosystem. Going to a place like that, what are a bunch of mercenary nobodies going to do—?”
“It’s not just mercenary nobodies. There’s the former war mage, too, and you know it. Every mage in this great forest is gathered at Base Camp No. 4.”
“That’s…… true, but!”
It was.
The former war mage had entered the Hamelin Great Forest a year ago.
Back then, rumors had spread.
- A former war mage is staying at Base Camp No. 4, and if you ask for instruction, he doesn’t refuse.
Mages who wanted to “study abroad” at Base Camp No. 4.
They went crazy.
Eyes rolling back, begging to be allowed to go to Base Camp No. 4.
Naturally, it wasn’t something you could just allow.
Mages defecting was a serious leak of force for a camp. But what could you do—if you left them alone, they’d probably run off in the dead of night. It was better to send them.
“Haha! Now that I look at it, those bastards went to find a place to die. Still, I guess… for now it’s a good thing? Since forces are concentrated there.”
Hallig, recalling that time, laughed as if it were funny—but Plen didn’t laugh. No, he couldn’t.
“Please, look at how it’s going to end. What are they going to do, huh? It’s Destrow.”
He was right.
No matter how many half-assed mages who’d fallen into being mercenaries gathered, what would it matter.
Some did have realms that weren’t low, but most of them were half-baked bastards.
Enough to play mercenary, but nowhere near enough to be treated like proper mages… lacking not only firepower but knowledge, too.
Destrow’s coming.
In that enormous tide, it was far too paltry a force to change the trend.
“Please. Think again.”
“Again?”
“Yes. They’re the kind of guys who’ll bolt at any moment. In that situation, Base Camp No. 4? You’ll be lucky if you don’t get stabbed.”
“For example?”
“Bexen, for instance…….”
“Mm, Bexen. True, even normally I never liked the look in his eyes. This time, I should make him close them.”
Hallig calmly tossed out a murderous joke.
And that was when Plen’s face crumpled and he grabbed Hallig by the shoulder.
“Chief, this isn’t a joke. Don’t dodge the point. This time, you really can’t. And…….”
“Looks like you’re afraid of dying, too.”
“…….”
Hallig blew out a thin stream of smoke.
Smoke that hit Plen’s face head-on.
Plen closed his eyes for a moment in the acrid smoke, then let his shoulders sag.
“……Yes. I don’t want to die.”
“Even though insubordination is death?”
“……Damn it.”
Plen clenched his teeth.
Hallig was a man who spoke nasty jokes like they were truths, but in fact, usually they weren’t jokes at all.
If you listened carefully, he said things he could actually do at any time.
Even he, the vice-captain, could be killed for real—he was that kind of bastard.
So Plen was giving up, when—
“It’s a joke.”
“……?”
Hallig, rarely, curled the corner of his lips.
“Only a few guys who feel the same way are going. A little over twenty.”
Considering Victima’s scale, twenty wasn’t a large number.
Victima was a mercenary company with close to a hundred members.
In fact, Victima’s size wasn’t that big.
It was just that Aviot’s size was exceptionally small.
Anyway.
Plen stared at Hallig with a somewhat blank face.
“……Then?”
“You get out.”
“What are you saying…….”
“You should sit in the Chief’s seat too, shouldn’t you? Ah—and for the record, there’s no need to inherit the name ‘Victima.’ You decide on your own—do whatever you want, at your discretion, and do it however the hell you please.”
Each word, each word was a string of incomprehensible sounds.
No—the words themselves were understandable, but the sentence they formed was absurdly difficult.
“What kind of bullshit is this…….”
“Who knows. Maybe I caught it from Fixer, that old man.”
“What the hell…….”
Plen couldn’t get his head around the sudden declaration.
He’d entered the Hamelin Great Forest and been with Hallig for over ten years now.
It didn’t fit him.
Slap!
As if it might be a dream, Plen slapped his own cheeks, but the vivid burning pain that flashed through his head—
It wasn’t.
“Think that’s enough? I could give you a knife in the gut, too.”
“Are you really insane? No, I knew you were a crazy bastard, but…….”
Hallig looked at Plen as he babbled.
Ssssss—
A bleak wind swept between them just then.
Among Victima’s mercenaries, it was called the ghost wind—an eerie wind.
A wind that blew only near Base Camp No. 2, not strong, yet unpleasant, as if it combed over your entire body like a ghost’s hair.
“Now you’re the Chief.”
“……Me?”
“Yeah. You’re Victima… mm, a name like that, you’ll handle it however you want. Anyway, Base Camp No. 2’s—”
Hallig spoke with an indifferent face.
But then.
“……Mm.”
That was when a thread of dissonance came to Hallig.
Something sticky, unpleasant, nauseating.
The rupture came right after.
Kwa-deuk!
“……?”
Should he say the sound entered his ears, or that it echoed inside his body?
No—both.
“……Huh.”
Hallig looked down at his chest without thinking.
The rupture had sounded from the center of his own chest.
“C-Ch-Chief……?”
Plen, pale-faced, couldn’t continue speaking.
A low rupture sound. Then a pale hand that jutted out through Hallig’s solar plexus.
None of it felt real.
The voice came right after.
“What a touching farewell, and yet… what should I do…….”
The owner of the hand was a man in a black robe.
“It’s too early to part. Because from now on, I’m planning to send all of you to the same place.”
His face couldn’t be seen under the hood, but Plen was certain.
That bastard is smiling.
With his hand piercing Hallig’s heart, he was smiling, curling his lips.
“You…!”
And that was when a wildfire-like rage rose in Plen’s chest.
“You fucking bastard…!”
Plen tried to draw his sword and rush him at once.
But Hallig moved faster.
“I’ll kill— kuhk!”
Hallig drove his foot into Plen’s abdomen.
So hard that Plen’s vision flashed white for an instant, and his body shot through the great forest like an arrow.
‘Why… me?’
Even as he flew, a single question stabbed through his mind.
But his vision was pulling away.
As Hallig grew distant, Plen kept his eyes on him, empty and helpless. And when their eyes met, he could understand.
‘Live.’
That was what the eyes said.
And those lips chewed out each word, each word.
‘You’re the Chief.’
Hallig was smiling, rarely.
And he was smiling brightly.
That was the last Hallig Plen ever saw.
After Plen’s body, shot like an arrow, vanished completely.
Thud.
A corpse that had lost all strength collapsed.
Belloc looked down at the corpse with a hole blown through its chest, then wiped his bloodstained hand over the clothing, smear after smear.
“Hah, honestly.”
His face was full of disbelief.
“This makes me want to cry, you know? In the middle of it all, he sends his subordinate off alive?”
It was an action Belloc couldn’t understand. It was surprising, too.
He probably hadn’t even finished grasping the situation, and yet he used a move that fast.
“Hm, what should I do. Should I chase him? I flung him pretty far, you know?”
Had he learned some special secret art?
With mere impact, you couldn’t send someone flying that far.
The body he’d shot out had flown so far that even Belloc couldn’t sense his presence.
So he hesitated for a moment—
“Well, it doesn’t matter.”
Still.
“Hey, you.”
“……Yes, O Precursor.”
A man surfaced from Belloc’s shadow, revealing himself.
With utmost courtesy, he kept his gaze fixed on Belloc’s feet.
“Chase that one.”
“How should I handle him?”
“Just chase him for now.”
“Understood.”
With that, the black mage seeped back beneath the shadow.
Belloc watched the direction Plen had flown for a moment, then withdrew his gaze.
‘This should be enough sacrifices… but you never know.’
It was a precaution, just in case.
If you let a rat bastard go, it’ll naturally head to where other rat bastards are.
Anyway.
“C-Chief!”
“The Chief’s been hit!”
As if they’d crawled out of nowhere, mercenaries shouting.
Their number was close to a hundred.
Belloc looked down at them calmly, and another black mage approached and whispered.
“O Precursor, all preparations are complete.”
“Ah, good. Then let’s begin.”
Base Camp No. 2.
That was when shadows surged up from the chaotic space.
No—not shadows.
Black mages, all wearing black robes.
“Wh-what is…!”
“Kahk!”
Victima’s mercenaries fell helplessly to the suddenly appearing black mages.
No—they didn’t fall.
“You vermin. Make it more painful, more miserable—play with them.”
Because Belloc had ordered it, they left them breathing, only letting them taste horrific pain.
It didn’t take long at all for screams to fill Base Camp No. 2.
“Heh heh.”
Belloc smiled as he looked down at a round orb.
An orb where ominous black fog rippled.
An ancient curse.
The darkness inside it grew thicker and thicker the more the mercenaries’ screams echoed.