Chapter 82. What the hell are you talking about?
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“…This is a base camp?”
The feeling I had when I first laid eyes on the Fourth Base Camp—how should I put it….
It was sheer awe.
Surprise.
Giant trees (巨木) that shot upward without end, and the defensive wall visible between them.
No, at that point, it could no longer be called a defensive wall.
It was closer to an enormous fortress wall.
Its height reached well over ten meters, and a deep moat lay along the outer perimeter.
And the gate—what about that.
‘…Steel.’
Once, I’d asked Fixer.
- The base camps’ defenses are generally shabby—was there a reason for that?
- A reason… there is, if you’d call it that. More like we can’t afford to procure materials. Didn’t you see them on the way in—those monsters?
It’s like the environment itself doesn’t allow building a fortress.
I stared at the overwhelming spectacle, then turned my gaze to Fixer standing beside me.
“The Fourth Base Camp is special—”
I was about to ask, ‘…is it?’ but then I saw Fixer’s expression and realized it wasn’t that.
“…Huh. Hah. Huhhh….”
Even this elderly mercenary seemed overwhelmed by the fortress wall of the Fourth Base Camp.
The others reacted the same.
“What in the world is this….”
“When I came before, it wasn’t like this, was it?”
Even the Aviot mercenaries who’d lived a long time in Hamelin Great Forest seemed to find the scene in front of them unfamiliar.
So I looked at the ones who’d been at the Fourth Base Camp relatively recently.
Oberon and Raileigh.
But….
“Uh, um… this is definitely the Fourth Base Camp, sir. It definitely is, but… what in the world happened here?”
Raileigh, too, babbled as if he had no idea.
And Oberon was the calmest among them.
No—he was just as flustered.
“…Ah. Maybe… it’s my master. I heard that in his youth, he built even a castle by himself…. Did he carry it by hand? Um…. What in the world is going on here.”
In the end, he didn’t know either.
And while everyone was overwhelmed by the spectacle of the Fourth Base Camp, Shine tilted his head as if he didn’t understand.
[Is your civilization backward? To be this primitive.]
The bullshit started right after that.
[Ahh. Listen well. That is called a fortress wall. It is built of stone with a strength different from the wooden fences you built—]
“Silence.”
[Mm, mmmph.]
I covered Shine’s mouth as he spewed nonsense, then nudged Fixer in the side.
“Hey, respected mercenary sir. Are you just going to keep sightseeing? Shouldn’t we go in?”
“…Mm. Ah. Right. Yeah, we should go in.”
“Tell the others to get a grip, too. Did we come here to play?”
At my words, Fixer nodded with a solemn face.
“Right. We didn’t come to play.”
Fixer said that, then immediately turned around.
“You bastards! Are you not going to get a grip!”
As if he’d put Aether into it, his booming voice echoed through the mercenaries.
“Remember what we left behind! Remember what name you bear on your backs! Why did we come here!”
At that resolute voice, the Aviot mercenaries’ eyes, one by one, took on a different light.
But only for a moment.
“Hey, Chief. You already losing it?”
“Why else would we come. Tch. We came because of those half-baked young punks.”
“We came to die, what other reason is there?”
Frivolous voices popped out among the mercenaries.
They looked like back-alley loafers, nothing like men who’d come prepared to die.
But.
[Their eyes are pretty alive. Like mine.]
With the silence lifted, Shine offered his own admiration.
I looked at Shine with eyes gone cold.
“Shine, you….”
[Huh?]
“…Never mind.”
A guy who doesn’t even have eyeballs, talking about eyes being alive.
“Anyway, let’s go.”
“Got it. Let’s go in.”
With that, Fixer took command of the mercenaries.
That was when a voice rang out from the direction of the Fourth Base Camp.
“Huoh! Well, look who it is!”
A face popped up over the fortress wall.
It looked about Fixer’s age, and then he suddenly whooshed and jumped down from the fortress wall, more than ten meters high.
“Fixer! Why are you so late! I thought my neck was going to stretch waiting.”
—That was free fall, right up until he said that.
And when he landed.
Slip.
“…Ghk!”
The old mercenary twisted his ankle and sprawled on the ground.
I watched him quietly, then looked at Fixer.
“Friend?”
“…No.”
Fixer averted his gaze.
The one who added an explanation from the side was Plen.
“He’s Chief Kallion of the Third Base Camp. The one leading the Plima mercenary corps. Ah, and for reference….”
Plen stopped there and glanced at Fixer.
“He’s Chief Fixer’s closest confidant.”
[Hmm….]
Shine looked back and forth between Fixer and Kallion, then nodded.
[As expected, old sayings aren’t wrong.]
“Old saying?”
[Birds of a feather flock together.]
“…Sure.”
He was a Death Knight who mostly just said whatever came to mind.
Chief Kallion of the Third Base Camp personally guided us.
Even though he’d fallen from a height of over ten meters, the fact that he was mostly fine aside from limping a bit meant there was no toughness like this toughness….
“But that big guy next to you is…?”
Kallion’s gaze lingered on Shine.
“Um, ah….”
Had he noticed Shine’s nature?
Fixer parted his lips as if unsure how to explain his existence.
After all, something like a “Death Knight” wasn’t easy to accept.
‘Especially… on the front lines fighting undead.’
I jerked my chin slightly at Shine.
A sign to conceal his aura.
Over the days we traveled, Shine had more or less adapted to his body, and he’d also learned how to hide his presence.
But then.
- Signal him.
A message exchanged through the bracelet’s function.
- …?
- I’ll take his head in one stroke.
Shine’s hand reached beneath his robe to the sword hilt. And he twisted his waist slightly like he was really going to cut his head off!
But thankfully, Kallion’s head didn’t come off.
“Big fellow.”
[…]
“Kind of reminds me of myself in my younger days.”
Kallion briefly compared Shine’s bulk to his own, then limped forward.
- I like him.
I didn’t reply.
“…Hmph.”
And so, we entered the Fourth Base Camp.
Unlike the base camps we’d passed so far, the inside of the fortress wall was bustling with quite a crowd.
The most eye-catching among them was—
“…There are mages too?”
Mages.
Plen added from the side.
“Study abroad… I suppose that’s what you’d call it. Originally, they’re the Great Forest’s mages who gathered to receive even a single line of teaching from Lord Oberon’s master. I hear he doesn’t spare his instruction.”
“They came looking for a place to die.”
“Haha… in the end, yes.”
Come to think of it, it had been pretty strange.
‘Even if it’s a mercenary corps….’
Not proper mages, but still, there should be people who could cast one or two spells.
‘I wondered why I wasn’t seeing any—so that’s why.’
Then, as we were moving along—
“Listen, client.”
At one point, Fixer stopped.
“Speak, respected sir.”
Fixer turned his back to Kallion and faced me, and his gaze was quite grave.
The moment I met the old mercenary’s eyes, I could sense that our long journey together had ended.
It had only been about two weeks, but we’d spent an intense time. The time I felt was inevitably longer.
Anyway.
“The job is complete. Right?”
“Yeah. We arrived safely at the Fourth Base Camp.”
“Then we split here. In the meantime….”
Perhaps he’d grown attached; Fixer chose his words.
I ended the farewell by tapping his shoulder.
“Let’s see each other alive.”
“…Yeah.”
“They say there’s no order to who dies first, but still, you should die at least two years after me, shouldn’t you?”
“Hah! Yeah, right. Of course.”
There was no handshake.
We’d be seeing each other’s faces plenty during the battle with Destrow anyway.
“Then I’ll be going as well….”
Plen, too, started walking, following behind Fixer.
And the ones left there were only four.
Me and Oberon, Raileigh and Shine.
“You are…. Ah, are you the disciple’s group the Archmage mentioned? You kind of look like what I heard….”
With half-lidded eyes, Kallion slowly scanned Oberon from head to toe, and Oberon nodded calmly even under that burdensome gaze.
“Yes. Where is my master….”
“He’s over that way. Let’s see…. Hey! You, layabout!”
At Kallion’s shout, someone who’d been fooling around with other mercenaries hurriedly ran over.
“Yes, Chief. You called?”
“It’s the mage’s disciple group. Guide them.”
After entrusting a mercenary with the guidance, Kallion offered a greeting.
“Then I should get going. We’ll run into each other now and then, so let’s skip greetings. Ah! If we’re alive, that is. Heh heh.”
Saying that, Kallion joined Fixer’s group.
“This way, please.”
We followed the mercenary called “Nompangi” and moved on.
As we walked, we could take in the Fourth Base Camp’s atmosphere at a glance, and it was quite busy.
“Arrows! Tch! Hey! I’m telling you we need more arrows!”
“Damn it, anyone got spare leather? My armor’s all torn up, I’m telling you.”
The mercenaries checked their equipment.
“So, if the magic circle goes like this here….”
“Ggh, we need mana stones. Is there any left from what we brought from Plima last time?”
The mages held magic circle schematics and hurried around while discussing something.
That was when Shine’s voice came.
- Somehow, the atmosphere’s kind of strange.
- You can say that again.
It was absolutely like a battlefield, but how should I put it.
It was a different temperature from what I’d imagined.
‘…And I don’t see any undead, either.’
Undead forces should have been rampant enough to shake Hamelin Great Forest’s entire ecosystem.
But near the Fourth Base Camp, there were no undead—no, we didn’t even hear their characteristic eerie wailing.
- I’ve got a bad feeling.
- A bad feeling?
- Yeah. Well… if he’s that stiff fellow’s master, he’s someone we can trust, but more than that….
Shine glanced up at the sky.
- It’s the same sky I saw on the day I became Emperor.
- What the hell are you talking about?
- I mean something big feels like it’s about to happen. Just in case, I should stockpile my strength.
With that, Shine vanished.
The place he dissolved into as black smoke was the “Bracelet of Subjugation.”
The Subspace inside it—a place where you could store a subjugated undead.
- Allow me to draw on the core’s magic power. In here, it won’t cost upkeep magic power, so it won’t be too much of a burden.
- …Fine.
I readily allowed a portion of the core’s magic power.
Ssssss—
At the same time as the permission, the core’s magic power began decreasing quite quickly.
But maybe thanks to Hamelin Great Forest’s abundant mana,
the natural recovery rate was also quite fast, so it wasn’t a major burden.
But was even that not enough?
- Half. Allow me up to half. Your magic power is efficient, but… I think it’ll only be okay if it’s about that much.
With that, Shine’s presence went “pop” and winked out.
‘…Tch.’
I feel like I’m raising a leech.
Still, I readily allowed half of my magic power.
“Ghn.”
As if he’d been waiting, Shine swallowed half of it in an instant.
For a moment, dizziness hit, but the weakness quickly faded.
And he siphoned it off so neatly that he took the naturally recovering magic power as it came, too.
So the core’s magic power stayed maintained at about half.
‘I’ll have to put some effort into the breathing technique for a while.’
Though even if I put effort into the breathing technique, Shine would still take it and leave only half.
The more strength Shine stockpiled, the more help it would surely be.
Anyway, like that—
“We’ve arrived.”
The mercenary pointed at a place and stepped back.
“So this is it.”
Where the mercenary guided us was in front of a stone building.
One story.
A simple exterior with no particular decoration, and the unusual thing was that there wasn’t a single window.
But.
“…Huh, this is something.”
I stood there blankly, staring at the building.
I hadn’t felt any flow of magic power at all.
Yet now that I was right in front of it, taking the building in with my eyes, I could feel the pulsing flow of enormous magic power.
It was truly….
Tingling.
So much that my skin tingled.
Was this what it would feel like to stand before a legendary dragon heart?
It was like… magic power had become solid, compressed and compressed.
“Senior? What’s wrong?”
“You can’t feel it?”
“…?”
Oberon looked confused.
“Never mind. Let’s go in.”
“…Then.”
Oberon opened the door and stepped into the building.
“Master, I’ve come.”
At Oberon’s call, an old mage opened his eyes gently.
The instant our eyes met, an 압박감 I’d never felt in my life tightened around my throat and stole my breath.
“…You’ve come. And that one is….”
The old mage looked at me.
“Hmm. So Schwartz that fellow finally found a disciple to pass down the Sakwol Token to?”
I couldn’t really hear what he was saying.
Only….
‘Why?’
A single question filled my mind.
I searched through my memories of my past life, but I’d never heard of an old mage like that.
I could say it with certainty.
If Paharen, the Head of House of Deculan, was the mage who would rise to become the strongest of all time, then this old man was….
‘The strongest of the era.’
A mage standing at the very vertex.
