Chapter 19
To summarize the outcome of the negotiations between Wise, the superior knight, and Rex, the loner party leader, with the guildmaster between them, it was as follows.
- Liberate the city occupied by the fourth-tier fiend.
- Liberation would include defeating the fiend and rescuing the citizens held hostage.
Surprisingly, Rex was the one who added the provision about rescuing the citizens.
‘There’s no reason not to use my strength when I have it.’
Rex did not consider himself a hero.
But he was not the sort of person who would turn his back on people in trouble when he had the strength and time to help them.
If defeating the fiend occupying the city could also lead to rescuing the citizens, there was no reason not to do it.
And to make that possible, Rex decided to reduce the reward he was supposed to receive.
“Would it be possible to reduce my reward and let other adventurers participate as well? I think that would increase the chances of successfully rescuing the citizens.”
If the objective was killing the fiend, Ari alone would be enough.
But if the objective was rescuing people, having as many people as possible would dramatically increase the chances of success.
The superior knight could not help but admire Rex’s proposal.
‘What a noble person.’
The typical high-ranking adventurers the knight knew did not even care about rescuing citizens in the first place.
They might be putting themselves in danger, or they might simply find it bothersome even if they had the time to help.
But Rex was different.
He prioritized rescuing the citizens even at the cost of giving up part of his own reward.
And they were complete strangers to him, at that.
‘He’s just like Lady Sneria.’
The superior knight wore a faint smile as he thought of the lady he served.
‘So that’s why Sir Urwick serves him.’
Wise accepted the proposal out of respect for Rex.
“Understood. In that case, I’ll arrange for the reward to be divided among the other adventurers.”
With a satisfied smile, the superior knight Wise signed the contract.
If Hana had been present, she would have screamed, ‘No!!!’
If she had been there, she would have signed it by adding a reward for the adventurers while keeping the reward for Duke··· no, Rex’s party intact.
However, Wise, who was present, was unquestionably Yuhana’s representative.
His authority extended only to dividing the reward; he had no authority to add to it.
As a result, the ‘natural ten-year plan with Duke’ Hana had devised collapsed.
“Then, I understand that the reward Rex was originally entitled to will be converted into monetary compensation and then divided among the adventurers.”
The superior knight finished signing the contract with a proud smile.
If she had been there, Hana would have driven a spinning kick into the superior knight’s side to stop him, but unfortunately, she was not there.
Thus, Hana’s plan was only partially successful, and the mission to subjugate the fourth-tier fiend and rescue the citizens was finalized.
***
Recruiting adventurers for the citizen-rescue mission proceeded quickly.
And under Rex’s name, currently famous in the Adventurer’s Guild, countless adventurers volunteered.
Of course, they had not volunteered for any noble purpose.
‘A city occupied by a fourth-tier fiend and his army?’
‘A chance to kill without accumulating karma!’
That, too, was a fortuitous opportunity of the kind adventurers sought so desperately.
The fortuitous opportunities adventurers sought did not refer only to things like elixirs, ancient grimoires, or secret manuals.
Fiends with sufficiently high tiers that could be killed without accumulating karma were also fortuitous opportunities.
Of course, they might die in the process, but that was of little concern to people whose eyes were fixed on advancing to a higher realm.
“Hey, boss! We can kill the fiends assigned to us, right?”
Rex calmly nodded at the rowdy adventurer’s question.
More precisely, he nodded with his facial muscles frozen from fear, but to a third party, it looked like a cool acceptance.
As they recruited adventurers, knights the guild had not been expecting burst in.
The knights appeared by kicking down the guild’s door.
Crack!
“Oh, no! I haven’t finished paying off the installments yet!!”
Ignoring the guildmaster’s scream, the knights unfurled a scroll and shouted in booming voices.
“By order of the lord! Immediately cease the large-scale commission currently being recruited at this guild!”
At the knights’ abrupt declaration, everyone in the guild sprouted question marks above their heads.
Rex’s party was no exception.
‘What are they thinking?’
Rex and Ari had heard nothing about Count Karognar’s scheme from the superior knight, so they had no idea why the knights had suddenly barged in like this.
‘This scene wasn’t in the original story.’
Duke was no different.
Even he was somewhat flustered by a scene that had not existed in the original work.
In the original story, this incident had not begun as an official guild mission.
Rex had happened to discover it, and Ari had happened to kill the fiend, leaving the lord unable to respond in time.
But in this world, it was proceeding in the form of a large-scale commission, so the lord had noticed it and attempted to stop it.
However, there was one thing the lord had failed to predict.
‘Has that bald man lost his mind?’
A sublime(?) charismatic knight who would not listen to the words of anyone weaker than himself was present here.
‘I feel like the original story got tangled up because of me, so I suppose I’ll have to straighten it out.’
He did not know why, but if things were different from the original story, it was obviously his fault.
Thinking that, Duke walked toward the knights with Rex’s permission.
Creak. Thud, thud.
Duke approached the knights, his footsteps echoing across the guild’s old wooden floor.
“You bastard, hands off!”
Even then, the knights were pointing spears and swords at the adventurers near the commission board and threatening them.
Duke pushed through the group of adventurers surrounding the knights, all of them unable to decide what to do, and approached the commission board.
Normally, he could have touched their throats or hearts from a distance with telekinesis.
But if he did that amid all these people···
‘They wouldn’t know it was me.’
Thus, unlike usual, he decided to move his body directly this time.
When Duke appeared among the adventurers, all the knights’ gazes turned toward him as well.
“Hm? You’re···”
The knight could not finish his sentence.
Duke’s tier was strangely high for someone who had appeared among the adventurers.
‘···Why is someone like this adventuring?’
The knights were shocked to see a fifth-tier being among low-level adventurers, where he had no business being.
While their bodies froze at Duke’s entirely unexpected appearance, he grabbed the highest-level-looking knight by the back of the neck.
“?!”
Before the knight had time to regain his senses, he went flying through the air···
Boom!
He was thrown onto the guild floor with a heavy impact.
- “Whoosh!”
- “Woohoo!”
- “Hey, big guy, you’ve got some moves!”
Normally, the adventurers would have been startled by Duke’s tier and fled, but the exhilaration made them forget their fear, and they cheered.
“What are you doing···?!”
When their superior was attacked, the subordinate knights instinctively drew their swords.
But they knew Duke’s tier, so they could not bring themselves to swing them.
As though to make sure those knights saw it, Duke revealed his right hand from beneath his cloak.
“I trust that any knight understands the meaning of drawing his sword.”
As Duke gradually clenched his right hand, the knights’ helmets also began to crumple with a grinding sound.
- Ugh···
The pain of their helmets tightening around their heads like iron headbands made the knights drop their weapons and clutch their heads.
They hurriedly tried to tear off their helmets, but Duke did not allow them to.
- Aaargh!
Even the adventurers who had been cheering seemed to grasp the situation, and their faces turned deathly pale.
No matter how satisfying it was, no idiot could continue cheering while tomatoes were about to be juiced in real time right before their eyes.
While the knights slowly died and the adventurers could do nothing but nervously watch one another,
“Cough··· please forgive my rudeness, sir!”
the superior knight who had been thrown to the floor bowed his head.
The superior knight coughed through the searing pain in his lungs and begged Duke for mercy.
“I’ll··· explain everything to the lord. Please, have mercy. Cough. Please show mercy!”
Duke’s featureless helmet turned toward the crown of the superior knight’s head.
Then, when Duke returned his right hand beneath his cloak, the helmets that had been making unpleasant noises fell silent as well.
Clang.
The knights hurriedly threw off their helmets.
Duke lost interest in them and spoke to the superior knight.
“I trust you will handle it properly.”
“I apologize··· sir.”
Barely swallowing his resentment, the knight obediently withdrew.
There were no cheers from the adventurers as the knights retreated.
Turning his back on the knights leaving the guild in a pitiful state, Duke returned to Rex.
Rex asked Duke when he returned.
[Did you do that on purpose?]
“Adventurers are a barbaric lot. In a large-scale operation, if you do not cow them like that, they inevitably ruin everything by acting on their own.”
Rex sympathized with Duke.
He was an ordinary man, but he was also an extremely cold-blooded realist.
He was merely a loner who hated taking responsibility, not an idiot who knew nothing about reality.
Following that line of thought, Rex gave Duke a new order.
[Good work. You can walk around at fifth tier from now on.]
Rex had originally told him to conceal his abilities at first tier because he did not want to attract attention, but there was no point anymore now that he had even antagonized the lord’s knights.
If he had already been exposed, it would be more convenient to raise his apparent tier to a level at which the lord would hesitate to provoke him.
“Understood.”
Duke did not lower his tier again. He left himself at fifth tier and chose a suitable chair.
‘Hmm··· So the old man is making his move after all.’
Inside his helmet, he gazed at the mansion with sunken eyes.
‘I’ll have a few more things to worry about during this mission.’
***
The superior knight who had been humiliated by Duke at the guild immediately returned to the lord.
Count Karognar.
The head of the elderly man, whose life was running out, gleamed beneath the lights.
The knight knew the merciless old man’s personality well, so rather than report the mission’s failure, he brought up another matter first.
“My lord. A fifth-tier being has appeared at the guild.”
“···What did you say? Say that again!”
At first, the count could not easily believe the knight’s words, but after the knight repeatedly confirmed them, he accepted them as true.
“Father. I saw him too. That knight is unmistakably the same one.”
The count’s son, Kubel, who happened to be in the office, also confirmed the knight’s words.
Seeing his son’s certainty that the knight was the same one they had met at the forge, the count’s lips curled upward as well.
“Fifth tier···!”
The count had been raising the fiend as a gamble to advance his realm, but the fiend had suddenly become irrelevant in his mind.
‘At last, I can become sixth tier!’
The old man rose from his seat in delight, bursting with excitement.
However, the pain in his lower back brought him back to reality.
“Ugh··· Did you happen to confirm the knight’s age?”
Kubel, who had seen Duke’s bare face before he put on his helmet, answered.
“Judging by his age alone, he appeared to be a young man.”
“Impossible···!”
The count lamented.
When there was a difference in tiers, physical age was merely a matter of appearance, but at the same tier, physical age was also an important factor.
There was no question as to who held the advantage between the count, whose aging had caught up with him after being blocked at level 59, and the nameless knight, who had not yet been overtaken by age.
‘How can this be···’
The count lamented sincerely.
In the count’s eyes, it seemed far easier to catch and eat a fiend that had just reached level 50.
At that moment, his silent son opened his mouth.
“Father. Why don’t you do it this way instead?”
Whisper, whisper.
After hearing Kubel’s plan, the count cheered, calling it a brilliant idea.
“Yes. That should work.”
Count Karognar and his son looked at each other and curled their lips upward.
***
The next day.
An alliance of adventurer parties led by Rex and Ari was formed.
The plan was simple.
“Do you know the term feint in the east and attack in the west?”
Ari, acting as Rex’s speaker, explained the plan to the group of adventurers.
Naturally, in this medieval world boasting a ninety-percent illiteracy rate,
and especially among adventurers, most of whom had chosen this profession because they lacked the intelligence to become mages,
there was not a single adventurer who understood the four-character idiom.
“···A diversionary operation.”
““Aha””
Ari sighed among the ignorant adventurers.
Rex sent her the lines in writing with a wry smile.
The plan was simple enough for even the ignorant adventurers to understand.
“We’ll divide the teams into three groups for this operation.”
The breakthrough team, the rescue team, and the assassination team.
The breakthrough team would attack from the front,
the rescue team would rescue the citizens,
and the assassination team would assassinate the leader.
It was an extremely simple and straightforward operation.
Of course, Rex had a better plan in mind, but he did not think a group of adventurers who had not even signed a temporary contract could carry it out properly.
“We’ll divide the teams like this.”
The members of the all-female party led by Ari, along with several adventurers she was close to, would form one group.
Duke and the two parties assigned as his support would form one group.
And everyone else would be lumped together as one group.
When the groups were complete, the adventurers who belonged to ‘everyone else’ naturally assumed they would be the breakthrough team.
Therefore···
“We just hit them a little and pull back, right?”
An adventurer from the group made up of ‘everyone else’ raised his hand and spoke.
At his words, Ari looked at him as though he were an idiot.
“Why are you talking about pulling back when you’re the rescue team?”
“Huh?”
The adventurer looked over the group of adventurers he belonged to.
Normally, in a feint operation, the group responsible for drawing aggro—in other words, the entry team—was supposed to be the larger one.
But they were being told to handle the rescue despite having the most members.
Puzzled by this plan that differed from common sense, the adventurer cautiously asked her a question.
“Then which group are you in, Arabella··· ma’am?”
“The group I’m in is the assassination team.”
“Uh··· then···”
All the adventurers’ gazes turned toward Duke.
Instead of answering, Duke silently let the shadow fall over his helmet and drove his massive greatsword into the floor.
Boom!
The adventurers living in this region recognized the greatsword immediately.
The very greatsword used in the festival’s strength competition was being wielded effortlessly in Duke’s hand.
In addition to that, they had witnessed his skill in making the superior knight retreat without a word the day before.
Even adventurers too barbaric to learn emotion magic had developed a keen instinct for survival.
“Yes, sir. We’ll rescue the citizens properly.”
There was no idiot who complained about where their share of the fighting was.
Any adventurer lacking enough sense to voice such a question had naturally disappeared in this harsh world.
However, Duke, considerate enough to think of them, added one more thing.
“You may kill any fiends I miss, or any fiends who block your way while you are carrying out the rescue. In fact, that would probably be safer for you.”
The fiend army occupying the city included many fiends who were dangerous even by adventurer standards.
Duke was guaranteeing that the fiends he missed or the ones they encountered during the rescue would be more than enough for them.
His solemn voice had already supplied half the authority, so the adventurers immediately accepted it.
“Okay. Got it, big guy.”
Above all, the adventurers had seen what happened to those unpleasant knights, so they had no choice but to believe Duke’s words.
At that moment, Duke spoke as though giving them a warning.
“However, keep two things in mind.”
“Hm?”
“First. Prioritize rescuing the citizens. Do not put the citizens in danger through unnecessary combat.
Second. I will not lecture you on chivalry. However, I trust that you will at least treat the citizens with the basic decency owed to fellow human beings.”
Strictly speaking, the rules Duke had laid out were vague.
They were full of holes, with plenty of loopholes to exploit.
However, Duke knew how to awaken the goodness that the barbaric adventurers of this world had forgotten.
Creeeak-
Without saying a word, Duke folded a fork with telekinesis.
The adventurers realized that the fork represented their spines and nodded at a frequency of 100 Hz.
Duke nodded in satisfaction as well.
“Allow me to thank you in advance for your dedication.”
***
A quiet city where the heads of its citizens were displayed in the marketplace.
The fiends patrolled the city as usual, gripping spears and swords stained with blood and rust.
The mayor who had once ruled the city had been hanged in the square, and his mansion had been claimed by a giant baring thick fangs.
“Hmm···”
The giant carefully examined his fang ornaments in a cracked hand mirror.
The giant, a half-breed between a troll and an ogre, sincerely believed that these fangs inherited from his parents were his greatest charm.
‘Kya. This is why women go crazy for me.’
While the giant was grooming his fangs with a tooth file, a cyclops entered the office and spoke to him.
“Great Chieftain. I’m hungry. Can I eat just one woman?”
The giant lowered the mirror and looked at the cyclops’s single eye.
The giant responded in a slightly irritating, somewhat frivolous voice.
“Eek—!? I already gave you the knights.”
“But I’m hungry.”
“At your tier, what’s the point of eating them now!?”
“Hmm··· I want to eat a woman···”
“Just so I’m clear, do you mean it in the sexual sense, or as food?”
“Food.”
“Hold it in, you pig. We’re already short on prisoners. What will your son, who’ll soon be old enough to hold a sword, eat?”
The giant and the cyclops were fourth and third tier, respectively.
“We should get my son to first tier quickly, then head to another human city in a year.”
“You want me to hold out until then?”
“Then what should I do?”
“I’ll go hunting. The scouts happened to find a village to the east.”
“Hmm···”
The giant, called the Great Chieftain, stroked his fangs before shaking his head.
“A grown man ought to know how to restrain himself, shouldn’t he? Have you already forgotten how we obtained this city?”
At those words, the cyclops gave up and nodded.
“I’m sorry. I was being rash.”
“Honestly, I’m barely holding myself back too, so don’t say that again.”
They had been dragged into an underground arena as slaves and had barely survived for several years.
Then, by coincidence, the locks on the fiends’ cages came undone, and they used that night to regain their freedom.
When they escaped, the knights who should have stopped them were already dead, and the fiends ate their corpses and used that power to conquer the city.
Perhaps it was thanks to the fickle whim of the heavens, which had never before shown the fiends any favor.
But the fiends had no intention of thanking the heavens for that whim or relying on it.
They calmly gathered their forces and waited for the time to leave for the next city.
“Speaking of which, that orc chieftain sure is taking a long time to get back.”
Once he finished raising his army and returned from the forest, they would be able to move on to the next city.
The Great Chieftain was puzzled by how long he was taking.
Hearing the Great Chieftain mutter to himself, the cyclops opened his mouth again.
“Can I go take a look?”
“Is that your warrior’s intuition talking?”
“Yes. It feels like glory is calling me from there.”
“What glory? If you go out there and die, you’ll just die away from home.”
“Ha ha. Wouldn’t that also be a form of glory?”
The two fiends continued their conversation without a pause.
But their peaceful daily life was shattered without warning.
“Huh···? What’s that now?”
Hearing the guards’ murmurs, the two fiends in the mayor’s mansion also looked out the window.
And, like the other fiends, their gazes turned toward the ship.
A ship floating higher than the walls surrounding the city.
“Huh? A ship?”
As if answering the Great Chieftain’s dumbfounded voice, the ship’s bow turned toward the city gate.
It was the first time either fiend had realized that a ram’s-head ornament could look this terrifying.
The Great Chieftain had been entranced by the ram’s head, but when the ship moved backward as though gathering momentum, he came to his senses and grabbed the communication crystal orb.
“Fall back—!”
Unfortunately, the ship charged faster than the message could reach anyone.
Kraaash!
The ship with the ram’s head smashed into the gate and shattered along with it.
It hurts···
Uuugh···
Mom···
It had been only one collision, but the fiends nearby were half annihilated.
Some fiends were separated into upper and lower halves, some had their stomachs pierced by fragments, and some were blinded by chunks of stone.
- I’m hungry···
- I’m cold···
- Cough, cough!
The fiends who had survived in the dust cloud desperately made a show of their survival by coughing.
But···
- Thunk.
- Aaargh!
- S-save me··· gurgle···
Along with the unceasing death cries from within the dust cloud where nothing could be seen even a step ahead, the coughing finally stopped.
After a brief silence, another sound began to emerge from the dust cloud.
Creak, creak.
Someone approached, stepping on the broken wall and the ship’s planks.
It was obvious even without anyone saying so that he was the protagonist who had caused this entire disaster.
As the fiends swallowed nervously and waited for the figure to emerge, those who could not overcome their fear dropped their weapons and began to flee.
Most of those fleeing were goblin-like creatures acting on instinct.
However, they had taken only a few steps before they began clutching their throats and rolling on the ground.
Hack, hack··· gurgle···
The escapees clutching their throats soon collapsed into silent corpses.
Before long, a helmeted knight emerged from the dust cloud, standing atop a red carpet decorated with the blood and corpses of fiends.
“A-attack···”
The centurion fiend who was supposed to give the order to attack could barely squeeze out his voice from the rear, his lower jaw trembling.
“Att—”
Slash.
But before the fiend could finish speaking, his body split in half.
A greatsword glowing with a chill gleam stood between the fiend’s two halves.
The fiends trembled and turned around at the unmistakable sound of meat being split apart, whether they wanted to hear it or not.
Beyond the centurion’s body, which had been cleaved in two, they saw Duke’s helmet, which should have been at the entrance.
The knight held a sword in his right hand, while magic swirled around his left.
He took his gaze off the dead fiend and spoke to those who were still alive.
“At least I will guarantee you the honor of dying with a sword in your hands, unlike these men.”
Standing atop the corpses of the escapees and their commander, the knight finished speaking.
“Take up your swords, soldiers.”