Chapter 13
#13 New Adventurer Bern (11) - Punishing Misdeeds
Blanca had always regarded Bern as an extremely gentlemanly man.
He didn't flirt with female adventurers.
He never looked down on others or acted arrogantly.
He never used vulgar language or lowbrow jokes.
He never let himself get disheveled or stink because he hadn't washed properly.
You might think that's obvious, but in the adventurer business there were barely any people who could actually manage those obvious things.
So much so that when the guild office hired receptionists, one of the things it valued highly was whether they "didn't have a filthy mouth."
In his own mind, Bern might have thought he was simply speaking and acting like a proper adventurer, but to Blanca, every move of the young man carried the unmistakable air of someone raised in privilege.
“You can't even tell the difference between a conversation and a threat, you idiot bastard.”
So when unfiltered profanity spilled from Bern's mouth, Blanca was more shocked than anyone else there.
Bern's whole presence was fierce, and naked anger showed in his eyes.
It was nothing like the half-joking air he usually gave off, even when he himself was the one being provoked.
“…Idiot bastard? Are you talking to me right now? You better be ready to take responsibility for that.”
But Karina and her companions were just as aggressive in return.
Karina, as an adventurer, generally preferred to avoid fighting opponents whose real skill she didn't know, but that was merely an adventurer's instinct for caution when faced with uncertain risk; it didn't mean she was scared of losing to Bern.
More than anything, if she backed down after being insulted in front of so many people, then Karina's group would become the laughingstock of the adventurers instead.
“You'd better choose your words carefully. I'll only let it slide once because you're a rookie.”
Whatever her character, Karina's ability as a mage was the real thing.
Once she began to draw up her mana in earnest, the area around them turned chilly, as though they'd been dropped into an ice cellar despite the mild spring weather.
The spectators who had been looking forward to the show with casual amusement felt their bodies beginning to stiffen as well.
They couldn't even open their mouths, and even the slightest movement of their fingertips demanded several times more effort than usual.
Blanca's face went pale.
She had realized that Karina wasn't using a spell at all, but was causing this effect with pure mana alone.
The Adventurers' Guild divided adventurers into seven grades, but the highest adventurer within the guild itself was only grade 5.
That was because the entire continent had a culture of rating individual skill in seven stages.
Among them, the number four carried especially strong symbolism.
Some gossip-loving busybodies even said it was the boundary separating humans from superhumans.
For warriors, it meant they could release sword aura, and for priests, it meant they could borrow the power of the gods they worshipped.
And for mages, mana itself became imbued with a unique property, greatly increasing the power and efficiency of their spells.
Blanca didn't doubt Bern's strength, but taking on a grade-4 mage—especially an ice mage, known to be the most troublesome in direct combat—and several companions who, though a notch weaker, still had upper-tier grade-3 skill, was impossible.
Blanca hurriedly tried to stop Bern, but unfortunately her body, numbed by the cold, wouldn't move as she wished.
All she could do was weakly clutch the collar of Bern's clothes.
Bern turned his eyes and looked at Blanca.
“I'm fine.”
It was a short answer.
But it was also a statement filled with certainty.
Leaving the frozen Blanca behind, Bern strode toward Karina.
Karina narrowed her eyes and summoned an ice spike, firing it at Bern.
Whoosh!
The strike that should have merely grazed Bern's cheek and made him flinch was blocked by Bern's own hand.
He had caught the flying spike barehanded.
“…How….”
Karina flinched at Bern's astonishing reflexes even amid that freezing cold, but quickly judged his action to be a mistake.
In a subzero environment, if bare skin touched ice or metal, the flesh would stick and tear away in an instant.
If he'd deflected it with a sword or the back of his hand, maybe; but he had grabbed it barehanded, so his hand itself would have become one with the spike.
Karina summoned three new spikes and fired them.
Even if he caught one with his remaining left hand, he wouldn't be able to block the others.
She hadn't intended to kill him, but he would be laid up groaning for days from the bone-deep chill.
But Karina's prediction was wrong again.
Bern casually spread open his right hand—the hand that should have been unusable—and with a light flick, caught all three spikes.
Four ice spikes in total were wedged between the fingers of Bern's right hand like darts.
Bern raised his hand as if to show off, then clenched his fist and shattered the spikes in one go.
Karina stepped back to widen the distance, and two warriors took her place.
“You piece of shit, you really wanna do this, huh?”
“Haa, tsk.”
One of them was a flippant-looking man who readily echoed Karina's words and had been insulting Blanca, while the other was a shaggy-bearded man who seemed unwilling to be here, sighing as he took up his stance as though he had no choice.
Unlike most adventurers, who wore only cloth or leather armor and used it solely to protect their torso and other vital areas, the two warriors wore proper metal armor made of chain and plate.
On top of that, they didn't seem to be showing the slightest sign of cold even amid Karina's chill, so they also appeared to have some separate means of resisting it.
At that point, they were at a level that wouldn't fall short even of the regular soldiers of most territories. It wasn't unreasonable for them to be confident.
But Bern didn't care in the slightest and moved forward again.
“You fucking bastard!”
Apparently angered by that calm expression, the flippant man swung his longsword.
Unlike Karina, who had at least tried to avoid vital spots, this was an attack that clearly intended to kill.
Bern extended his hand again.
People expected a horrific scene of blood spurting up, but the sword couldn't cut into Bern's hand.
No, it couldn't even leave a single scratch on his skin.
“Y-you bastard!!”
The flippant man panicked and tried desperately to pull the sword free, but Bern's hand didn't budge.
Bern flicked his wrist upward, and the longsword in his hand popped right out.
Bern gripped it as though the blade itself were the hilt.
The flippant man was dazed, as if he couldn't believe the situation, but his companions didn't just stand there blankly.
“Hup!”
The bearded warrior aimed a hexagonal mace at Bern's side, and a rogue who had somehow gotten behind Bern swung a dagger at his back.
Even above Bern's head, an icicle far larger than any before was descending.
It was indeed a coordinated sequence worthy of veterans.
But it wasn't enough to work on Bern.
WHAM!
“Guhk!!”
The first to go flying was the flippant man.
The hilt and guard of his own sword, not the blade, smashed down on the man's shoulder and drove deep into him.
The horrific pain of having his collarbone crushed made him spit bloody froth and pass out.
Bern used the rebound from the blow to vault upward as if doing a handstand, and the bearded warrior's and rogue's attacks sliced through empty air.
The second target was the rogue.
Bern kicked the icicle that had been descending to smash him, shattering it, then dropped straight down onto the rogue, seized the back of his head, and slammed him into the ground.
CRACK!
With a chilling sound, the rogue's body convulsed violently, then went limp as if all strength had drained away.
The third was the bearded warrior.
Bern once again dodged the ice spike that came flying at him with a sharp twist of his head, then kicked the bearded warrior in the torso and sent him flying.
The warrior was slammed into a wall and still seemed conscious, but the shock was so severe that he could only tremble his limbs and couldn't move his body.
The fourth was the healing mage who had been standing there blankly in the back.
It seemed he might have been weaker than the others to begin with, because even as his companions were being beaten down, he still hadn't managed to grasp the situation and was only now hurriedly preparing healing magic.
It was a far cry from Karina, who had already fired off several probing attack spells in between and was even now creating an ice wall to block Bern's path.
Bern kicked and smashed the ice wall blocking his way, then hurled the fragments at the healing mage.
The healing mage gave a frog-like croak and was slammed to the floor without being able to put up any real resistance.
Last.
Realizing the gap in skill after seeing every spell he had used be effortlessly broken, Bern approached the trembling Karina, who had lost all will to fight, and said to her,
“Still think it's just baseless gossip? Still think we fabricated achievements out of thin air and forced our way into credit for them? Unless your head is stuffed with cotton instead of a brain, you should understand by now. We don't need to do that at all. If we need results, we get them through skill.”
Bern's mouth and eyes were on Karina, but the spectators around them felt a chill different from the one they'd felt a moment ago.
There were plenty of adventurers who had doubted the feats Bern and Blanca had accomplished; they just couldn't say it openly because the guild had acknowledged them.
To the adventurers gossiping behind others' backs, Bern's words sounded like a warning aimed straight at them.
But the pressure they felt was nothing compared to Karina, who was meeting Bern's eyes from point-blank range.
Karina saw something enormous in Bern's gaze that she didn't even dare to resist.
Karina had even met a member of the only grade-5 party in the entire Adventurers' Guild, but even that person hadn't made her feel this way with just a look.
In the end, she said in a trembling voice,
“I, I was wrong.”
“You did?”
“I was wrong...!”
Only then did a smile return to Bern's face, which had been frozen cold until then.
Karina, too, lit up with the joy of having survived.
Then Bern returned to his usual calm, polite tone and said,
“Then you'll have to be punished for it.”
“Pardon?”
Karina's reply never made it out of her mouth.
SMACK!
The sharp pain in her cheek sent her body spinning through the air and crashing into a nearby restaurant's food-waste bin.
Bern looked around for a moment.
Though it looked as if he had beat all five party members equally into the ground, in truth he had only treated the warrior and the rogue who had meant to kill him especially harshly, while the other three had been handled with some degree of restraint.
At least by Bern's own standards, there was nothing that qualified as overpunishment or a slap on the wrist.
However, Bern knew his conclusion might not necessarily be right.
So Bern approached Blanca and asked,
“Is there anyone among them I should beat harder? It'd be even better if you could tell me, in specific numbers, how many times harder you'd like me to wreck them.”
“What kind of crazy talk is that...”
The sensible Blanca almost blurted out her true feelings on instinct, but then remembered again that the creature in front of her was, at least categorically, her benefactor and lifeline, and carefully changed her words.
“I think this is enough.”
“Is that so? As expected, my judgment was correct. Hmm-hmm.”
Bern nodded with satisfaction.
His eyes were so clear that Blanca, as well as everyone else around them, couldn't say a word.
[How in the world is this being treated like the perfect crown prince...? Ah, so that's why it spills out here when it can't be let out over there.]
That demonic realization never reached any of them.