Chapter 37

Chapter 37. Return

"So it really was the right call to keep an eye on that bitch in the cloak."

Just as the Firebird Hunter had said, it seemed Noah had tracked her down quickly enough.

I tilted my head as I looked at the psychotic female mercenary.

"You didn’t run away?"

She had looked half-crazed, but she also seemed extraordinarily talented at finding a place to survive, so the fact that she was still in the territory surprised me.

"It was you, brat. You were the one who ruined everything."

She raised her sword at me.

At some point, the alley had become completely empty.

Had everyone fled because they knew a fight was about to break out, or had the other mercenaries cleared the people away?

A pointless thought crossed my mind, but the words that came out of my mouth sounded plausible enough.

"It wasn’t me who ruined everything. It was your mouth."

This time too, and even in my previous life, I had only managed as much as I did because she had told me what I needed to know.

Creak.

I heard the sound of her grinding her teeth.

"Because of you, the whole operation failed, and Benjamin died too. If I hadn’t been wandering around trying to catch you, I could have gone with him.... It’s all your fault."

Unfortunately, Simon had not managed to get a single word out of Captain Benjamin.

Thanks to the Knight Commander stepping in, the fight itself had not been difficult to win, but Benjamin had killed himself before they could even torture him.

I had wondered why this woman had not been there. Had it really been because she was hunting me down?

She truly was not in her right mind. Her sense of what mattered and what did not was completely her own.

Now that the mercenary captain was dead, this woman was the only remaining source of information.

I looked her over.

Eyes gleaming with madness, a red tongue darting out repeatedly to lick her lips, a face twisted in rage.

At a glance, she did not look like the sort of woman from whom I could extract useful information.

"I’ll kill you, give your soul to Benjamin, and peel off your skin nicely so I can hang it over my bed."

To think I was facing off in broad daylight against a woman who sounded as though she had walked straight out of a horror film.

In my previous life, I would have called the police immediately, but now I had to deal with it myself.

She raised her sword and mimed licking the blade with her tongue.

The blade gleamed green. It would have been better if she had just gone ahead and licked it.

"Luckily for you, you’re exactly my type. You look absolutely delicious."

I had no idea what kind of taste she meant. No, I did not want to know.

Since she had been searching for me all this time, there was no chance she would spare me just because I was young, and I had no desire to run either.

Rrrrk.

When I tightened my grip on the hilt again, the sword wrapped in cloth dragged across the ground with a harsh scraping sound.

'If I’d known it would come to this, maybe I should have left this sword in my room and brought a mass-produced one instead.'

Carrying this good sword around had only made things more troublesome.

Fwoooosh.

I drew in a deep breath.

"Come on, then. Draw the sword you’ve been hiding beneath that cloak. Entertain me."

But there was no sword hidden beneath the cloak.

As the breath filled my lungs, I spread mana throughout my entire body.

I could feel strength in every last cell.

I tightened my grip. The sword that had been dragging along the ground lifted free.

Mana gathered into my arms once more. Then it flowed outward through my hands.

Pop-pop-pop-pop!

Behind me came the sound of cloth bursting apart.

It was the cloth wrapped around the sword.

The torn white fabric scattered in every direction.

"What the hell? That was a sword?"

From between the flying scraps of cloth came a startled voice.

The voice rushed closer, and I raised the sword high with all my might.

Boom!

A heavy shock struck the hand holding the sword.

If I had not anchored my body to the ground with mana, it would have been enough to shove me backward.

"Ugh!"

But I did not retreat even a single step, and as the cloth fragments were blown away by the impact, clearing my view completely, I saw the female mercenary being flung backward.

Crash!

She only stopped when she slammed into the wall, and then she glared at me through clenched teeth.

"That’s impossible! With that body, you sent me flying?"

Ah, that made sense.

She had first seen me while I was eavesdropping and getting launched around by the male mercenary, and then the next time we met, my sword had broken, I was injured, and I had run.

Come to think of it, in this life I had never actually fought her properly.

So that was why she had come after me so fearlessly?

Whoom. Whoom.

Holding the sword in both hands, I swung it back and forth through the air as I walked toward her.

Really, it felt less like wielding a sword and more like swinging around a giant oar. With my build, it was hard to handle such a large blade properly.

Still, there was no rule saying that just because one had a sword, one had to use swordsmanship.

I kicked off the ground.

Boom!

My mana-filled foot drove the ground backward, and I shot forward.

Her startled face rushed toward me.

She swung her sword at me with all her strength, but all I did was plant the great sword in front of myself.

Clang!

The blades collided.

She was a knight-level mercenary who used a swift blade. In my previous life, when I had used a sword suited to my body, we had failed to settle the matter. But this time was different.

Light shimmered along the great blade, and the female mercenary’s eyes widened.

Her sword could not withstand my new blade.

The weapon that had been giving off a faint green sheen crumpled along the edge and flew off to the side.

Her arm was thrown wide along with it, and nothing remained to block the front of her body.

Keeping the sword upright, I took one more step forward.

Thunk.

The massive sword buried itself deep into the wall.

"Urk!"

Blood spilled from the female mercenary’s mouth.

Gripping the sword that had pierced through her abdomen and into the wall behind her, she glared at me.

"So you really weren’t just some brat after all. Did you have an ability that let you disguise yourself as a child too? Where the hell did you come from?"

With trembling fingers, she reached toward me. Her powerless hand drifted toward my face.

Without hesitation, I released the sword and stepped back.

"How did you know?"

"No one would fail to grow suspicious of a sword-wielding mercenary who kept her nails long."

At my words, she looked bitterly at her own hand.

A faint green glimmer flickered beneath the slowly lowering nails.

Even at the end, she had not given up on trying to kill me.

"What a pity.... You really do look delicious...."

Leaving behind one final spine-chilling remark, she let her head fall.

For a moment, I stared at her where she hung there.

She did not move again.

'So it’s over.'

At last, the grudge from my previous life had been settled.

From far away, I began to hear voices.

It was time to go home.

I pulled out the sword, then quickly left the scene.

The road back home was uneventful.

Simon, having gone through actual combat with the mercenary captain, seemed to have realized something as well, and remained quiet.

The knights and soldiers, too, were more relaxed than before.

Now and then monsters appeared as we crossed through the territories, but this time they were only weak mutants that even the soldiers alone could handle.

After finishing that rather chaotic journey, I returned home.

Several months had passed, but the territory and the estate looked little different from before.

After the duke’s brief words of welcome, the people who had been waiting all flocked to Simon, while the knights and soldiers headed for the taverns with the comrades who had been waiting for them.

Still, unlike before, there were people who greeted me as well.

The soldier Juan clutched his money pouch and thanked me, and Sir Ugo also bowed his head to me before going off to drink with Miguel.

The Head Steward exchanged a glance of greeting with me before following the duke, but the Knight Commander turned away as though he had not seen me at all.

Perhaps because things had changed since our departure, even the looks people cast at me from the corners of their eyes had changed in an odd way.

But more important than any of those looks was my mother, who was standing before me and letting out a sigh of relief.

"I’m back."

"Good. Nothing happened, right?"

A great many things had happened, but I smiled and answered,

"Yes."

---

The day after Simon’s group returned, three people gathered in the duke’s study.

The duke, the Knight Commander, and the Head Steward.

It had been some time since the three of them had sat together like this.

"...And that is how the rebellion was brought to an end. After hearing that the marquess’s house would deal with the remaining remnants, we left the lord’s castle."

When the Knight Commander finished his explanation, the duke nodded.

"According to the written dispatch that came afterward, it seems they’ve finished cleaning up the remaining remnants as well. Unfortunately, it appears they failed to uncover who was behind it."

"It seemed the marquess’s house also suffered greatly."

"It looks like quite a few knights died. The matter of cleaning up the mercenaries also caused turmoil throughout the territory. But the biggest issue must be that the marquess’s heir died. They treated it as a soldier’s death, but nobles who catch the scent of it will surely appear, and one way or another the standing of the marquess’s house is bound to be shaken badly."

At the duke’s words, both the Knight Commander and the Head Steward nodded.

Vicious rumors among nobles inflicted great damage upon people who valued honor above all else. The Marquess of Hierro was sure to suffer from baseless(?) rumors for quite some time.

"Even so, I do not intend to delay the engagement. At a time like this, we cannot show weakness."

At the duke’s words, the Knight Commander fell briefly into thought.

"It would have been difficult for mere mercenaries and an illegitimate son to swallow up the marquess’s house. I wonder who the instigator really was...."

"Who knows? There are many people who oppose the alliance between us and the marquess’s house. Naturally the noble faction does, and there are some in both the First Prince faction and the Second Prince faction as well...."

The duke furrowed his brows as he thought of the kingdom’s political situation, hopelessly tangled into a mess.

"Even so, there cannot be many who would actually step forward themselves."

"We are still investigating, but seeing how neatly they cut off their own tail, I doubt it will be easy to find them."

At the duke’s words, the Knight Commander tilted his head.

"Is that so? And yet, for something like that, it was a somewhat clumsy rebellion. The timing of the uprising was impulsive, and so too was the way it was discovered...."

Historically, many rebellions had indeed broken out impulsively, but there were not many cases where such rebellions had succeeded.

In the end, perhaps this rebellion too had simply been one of those common failed uprisings.

At the Knight Commander’s words, the Head Steward offered a counterpoint.

"Could it be that it only feels that way because they were discovered by a child? Had it not been for Lord Alex, the rebellion might very well have succeeded."

At the Head Steward’s words, the duke’s eyes lit up.

"Surely not to that extent? He merely happened to overhear the conversation, did he not?"

At the duke’s words, the Knight Commander looked troubled.

"Well, he did say with his own mouth that he overheard it by chance.... But there are a few things that do not sit quite right if we view it as mere coincidence."

The Head Steward continued where the Knight Commander hesitated.

"It was strange enough that he became close to the marquess’s illegitimate son during the journey, and then insisted strongly on surveying the city, only to meet that illegitimate son again during the inspection. It is also difficult to understand how Lady Adria ended up telling him about the secret passage and going out together with him."

"On top of that, she told that secret passage to the illegitimate son as well."

The duke recalled what had been written in the dispatch concerning Adria.

'Did it say she’s been kept almost half-confined in her room?'

Since she was being watched everywhere, even while sleeping, under the pretext of protection, that child’s life did not seem an easy one either.

Still, after what she had done, that punishment and surveillance were only natural.

To be honest, even from the duke’s perspective, she was not exactly an ideal daughter-in-law.

But Simon liked her, and politically he could not simply cast aside the marquess’s house, so it seemed it might be better to bring her in sooner rather than later.

Once he settled on that thought, his mind returned to the original topic.

"So either his luck is absurdly good, or he did all of it according to a plan."

"He is called a genius, but he is still a child. If one considers his age, coincidence may still be the likelier possibility."

"He is clever, yes, but he is still too young for something like playing the role of a double agent. It is probably just a great many coincidences overlapping."

Both the Knight Commander and the Head Steward had just said it might not have been coincidence at all, but the moment the duke voiced suspicion, they immediately began arguing the opposite.

At their words, the duke gave a bitter smile.

"So it seems you have both taken a liking to the boy."

At the duke’s words, the Knight Commander looked as though he were about to say something, but the duke continued first.

"If it truly is coincidence, then it matters little. But if it is not coincidence, then what exactly ought I to do with this boy?"

The ducal house already had Simon, the heir, and Manuel, his younger brother.

To have two sons beyond reproach, and then an even more exceptional illegitimate son besides....

The Knight Commander and the Head Steward, who had just been discussing what had happened at the marquess’s house, found themselves unable to answer the duke’s words at all.