Chapter 23
I looked at the remains of the collapsed golem.
A faint black sheen showed between the remains.
I reached out and salvaged a piece of the debris.
A single hard, heavy stone caught on my fingertips.
Adamantium.
It was raw adamantium, the hardest naturally occurring magic metal.
It was a top-grade material used to craft the finest weapons and armor, and the only place to obtain it in the early regions was here.
Having obtained the material I wanted, I handed the lump of ore to Barie.
"What's this?"
Barie was leaning against the wall, breathing heavily.
Though she seemed unaccustomed to pain, she endured it, but her face was pale, and beads of sweat ran down her hair and jawline.
She groaned as she clutched her severed right arm with her left hand.
She berated herself for being so weak that she had allowed her body to be taken over.
"It's adamantium ore."
"What? Why is it here? It should only be found in the Adamant region."
"I don't know that either."
I turned around again and put the ore in my bag.
"I'll take this much for now."
"What about the rest?"
"We'll have no choice but to hire adventurers or laborers in the city to transport the rest."
How could I carry all that by myself?
"Sir Barie, you just need to certify that I discovered it. If you don't officially recognize my rights as the discoverer, I might not see a single penny from this. You will, won't you?"
"Yes. Leave it to me."
Barie smiled bitterly.
Her expression soon hardened into something complicated.
She slowly fiddled with the ore in her hand, then put it into her bag a moment later.
"Eck."
"Yes."
"We need to talk about the contract."
Barie looked down at her severed right hand and wiggled her fingers.
"I failed to uphold the contract."
She continued in an even tone, having stripped all emotion from her voice.
But her tightly clenched fist trembled with frustration.
"I thought things through as best I could without violating the young lady's conditions, but this is how things turned out. I offered you a penalty payment and asked you not to give me orders, but don't worry about that anymore."
"Is that really all right?"
"Yes. I have my pride, too. I don't take back words once I've spoken them."
"Hmm..."
I asked once more.
"Are you really sure?"
"I won't hold it against you that you couldn't stop me. A commoner stopping a noble was impossible from the start, wasn't it?"
Barie braced herself against the wall and rose.
She picked up her sword, which lay among her armor.
"As of today, I am your sword. I will wield my sword for you when necessary."
A knight's sword belonged to a noble,
and a noble's sword meant a knight.
Barie was the knight Lisette had boldly staked to demonstrate her confidence as a noble.
"If I don't become your sword, that would disgrace the young lady's honor. My words and actions directly affect her honor."
On that account, she told me to trust her word.
"Therefore, don't doubt my sword. Use it as you see fit."
"...When you said sword, did you mean Sir Barie herself?"
I already knew, but I pretended not to so I could avoid being blamed later.
"I assumed you proposed it out of ignorance because you're a commoner, but you really didn't know? Absurd."
"How would a commoner know noble etiquette? A sword is a sword. I didn't expect a knight to come with it."
"Nevertheless, this is a contract. It cannot be withdrawn."
Barie tried to honor the contract rigidly.
"Then if you've become my sword, shouldn't you speak respectfully to me?"
"Do not forget our respective stations just because you wield me as a sword. Regardless of my wishes, your head could be separated from your body in an instant."
A commoner wielding a noble as a sword.
It was perfect grounds for other nobles to send assassins.
"Eck, what will you make me do?"
Barie's voice was strained.
She looked like a hedgehog with its spines raised.
"Will you use me the way you used the women you embraced? Or will you throw me to monsters and watch me give birth to their offspring?"
"If I said that, would you do it?"
"How a sword is used is up to its owner. I am a body being punished. To protect the young lady's dignity, I will endure any humiliation."
Barie gritted her teeth.
"But keep this in mind. Though my body may have become your sword, my heart will remain forever in the young lady's embrace."
The stalwart lady knight listened to my request without backing down.
A brief silence passed.
"Hmm."
A bitter smile flickered across my face.
"Let's do this."
I made a proposal.
"Instead of taking the sword called Barie, I'll accept something else."
Barie's eyes wavered.
"What will you take?"
"I want your friendship."
"......Friends?"
Barie narrowed her eyes.
She looked genuinely surprised.
"Why?"
"You just need to accept me as a friend, Sir Barie."
"A friend... I don't understand. That's all it takes?"
Barie asked with an expression that showed she genuinely couldn't understand.
"I may be asking too much, but please bear with me."
For a commoner, friendship with a noble was worth as much as gold and silver.
A noble I could contact freely and whose friendship I could flaunt had countless uses, apart from my knowledge of the game.
"If you think that's not enough, I'd appreciate it if you made up the difference by showing off our friendship to those around you."
"....Heh."
Barie's lips twitched.
It wasn't mockery.
It was something like relief.
I could see some of the hostility she had held toward me fading from her eyes.
"All right."
Barie extended her right hand.
"Eck, I acknowledge your ability. The skill that severed my arm, even though I was controlled—truly magnificent. I shall allow you to call me your friend. No, please allow me to call you my friend."
"That's exactly what I wanted."
The deal was sealed with a handshake.
'That'll do.'
I was satisfied with the result.
'What use would it be to drag a noble around with me in the first place?'
Barie was indeed strong.
But she was only strong at present. Without the protagonist's help, by the middle of the game she was nothing more than Companion Character 1, left behind by the power creep.
The most effective choice was to send her back to Lisette and use her as a contact.
I slung my luggage onto my back while Barie put her armor back on and finished preparing to return.
"Eck."
"Yes."
"I'm sorry for misjudging you based only on rumors. I thought you were a greedy, lecherous, impatient brute who made a habit of assault and slaughter. I was swayed by baseless rumors. I'm sorry."
"....."
No, that had actually been true.
Agreeing with her felt somehow insufficient.
"You're not wrong. I really was like that. I've just had a lot on my mind lately. I started raising a certain little girl, and wanting to raise her changed me naturally."
On top of that, I grumbled, "Thanks to her, I'm dying from all the trouble," etching Elena's existence into Barie's mind.
"Come to think of it, there was a girl you'd known for about a month, wasn't there? To seduce a man like you, she must be quite a girl. Is she pretty?"
"She looks decent enough."
I talked about Elena, while Barie talked about her own lady.
We exchanged stories about the people important to us as we returned to the city.
***
The Red Moon set.
As the blood-red hue covering the sky receded, the sunset colored the city's rooftops.
Elena left the house immediately.
Today was the day she would hunt a troll.
Before the rest of the party gathered at the meeting place, she headed to the guild to meet Uncle.
When she opened the guild door, Jeina was leisurely wiping down the dining tables.
"Elena, you're here? You came looking for Eck, right?"
"Yes. Where did he go?"
"He probably went to the smithy."
"Why would he go to the smithy?"
"Who knows? He didn't stop by the guild, but I heard he went into the forest when the Red Moon was up. If he's back, he should be at the smithy by now, right?"
He went to the forest under the Red Moon?
Uncle had said that the forest under the Red Moon required an adventurer to be at least A-rank.
'Ah. Uncle was A-rank, wasn't he?'
She was reminded anew of Uncle's rank.
One of only three A-rank adventurers in the city.
It made her happy all over again that someone so impressive was looking after her.
Uncle had said he was raising her so that she could look after him after he retired, but considering all the help she had received from him, she didn't feel as though she had lost out at all.
After repeatedly seeing the envious reactions of people around her whenever she mentioned things like this, Elena began to doubt Uncle's true intentions.
The smithy wasn't far away.
She had been to Bordeaux's smithy once before.
Just as she reached for the thick iron door.
...Well, this fellow...
An unfamiliar woman's voice.
'Who is it?'
She gently pushed the iron door open and entered the smithy, and the first person to catch her eye was Eck.
Eck stood in front of the workbench where Bordeaux was sitting, and a silver-haired woman stood beside him.
The woman was wearing full plate armor.
Dirt and blood had dried in patches all over the armor. Combined with the news that Eck had visited the Red Forest, it made her realize at once that the woman had accompanied him.
The woman continued speaking to Bordeaux.
"I may have told him I'd handle them, but he left every monster to me. You'd think he'd have the conscience to deal with one or two monsters coming at him, but he got so bold against a knight."
Bordeaux let out an awkward laugh and played along with the woman's words.
"That's just like him. We need to give him a thorough scolding. How could he treat a knight like that? Tsk, tsk. Eck, how do you plan to make a knight work for you?"
"Don't be so hard on him. Those monsters wouldn't have been a match for me no matter how many came. If he'd joined in, he would only have gotten in the way."
The woman crossed her arms and clicked her tongue.
"But when things were truly dangerous, he didn't run and helped me. He knows loyalty. Bordeaux, you've got a good friend."
"Heh... heh-heh. Well, this is..."
Bordeaux answered awkwardly.
"It was touch-and-go when even an A-rank monster went berserk and rampaged. I wouldn't have returned with all four limbs intact if Eck hadn't helped me."
The woman patted Eck on the shoulder.
"Looking back, I may have gone too deep. But it was worth taking the risk. Thank you, Eck."
"It was nothing, Sir."
"Why address me so formally? Call me Barie."
Bordeaux's eyes widened.
The woman approached Bordeaux, pointed out the bag beside the workbench, and asked him to refine the materials. The bag contained black minerals and materials tinged with red.
She placed the order while explaining to Bordeaux in detail how they should be processed and what they would be used for.
"...."
Elena secretly watched Eck from the entrance of the smithy.
His gaze was fixed on the woman.
Something pricked sharply somewhere in her chest.
Elena herself didn't know why she felt that way.
Then Eck's gaze turned toward Elena.
Elena flinched and approached Eck.
"U-Uncle."
"What brings you here at this hour?"
"Well..."
Her eyes flicked toward the woman.
"What kind of... relationship do you have with that lady?"
"Hmm? With Sir Barie..."
"Didn't I tell you to call me Barie?"
The woman called Barie noticed Elena and looked her up and down, practically licking her with her eyes.
"So you're the little brat Eck mentioned? Hmm. Heh. Eck, how is she merely 'decent-looking'? You actually picked her based on her face, didn't you?"
"Not particularly."
"Don't be shy."
Barie's gaze swept over Elena from head to toe.
Her lips stretched into a long smile.
Her hand touched Elena's hair.
"I've heard about you. Take good care of Eck, Elena."
"Even if you didn't say it... I would..."
Elena dodged her hand and hid behind Uncle.
The teasing gleam in her eyes shifted from Elena to Uncle.
"Jealous?"
"It's troublesome when you tease me."
Uncle gave a bitter smile at a single offhand tease from Barie.
Seeing this, Elena tugged on Uncle's sleeve and pouted.
"Uncle, today I'm going to hunt a troll."
"I know. I haven't forgotten."
"Please tell me one more time if there's anything I should watch out for when hunting the troll."
"Have you forgotten already?"
"Th-that..."
Elena stammered.
"It would be bad if I'd misunderstood something."
"Hmm..."
Uncle met Barie's eyes and said, "May I leave first?" Then he took Elena out of the smithy.
Elena stuck out her lower lip.
The sight of Uncle looking into Barie's eyes kept lingering in her mind.
Each time, irritation welled up.
At that time, she did not know why she felt this way.