Chapter 21
#21화 New Adventurer Bern (19) - Not Even a Duel
There was no hint of any negative emotion in Bern.
His face was calm, and his tone and voice were polite and composed.
That was why it took the others a moment to make sense of the words that spilled from his mouth.
The first to react was the knight named Gudrun, who stood guard at the lord's side rather than the lord himself.
“You bastard! Are you daring to insult my lord right now!!”
A terrifying pressure radiated from Gudrun's body.
He only refrained from drawing his sword because this was the reception room and the lord was watching, but the mana and killing intent leaking from him were enough to make a weak-willed person unconsciously struggle to breathe.
Yet Bern brushed off that pressure as lightly as a breeze.
“The word ‘insult’ comes very easily to you.”
“What?”
“Sending a low-ranked adventurer counts as an insult. Saying you'll leave because the other side says they don't want you counts as an insult too. What comes next—what else counts as an insult? Not being scared of your threats, maybe? If so, your subordinates are truly pitiful. Having to react every single time you throw a fit must be an enormous strain.”
“Y-you filthy cur…!!”
Shing!
Gudrun, his face red with rage, drew his sword.
Bern's eyes turned cold.
No matter how much he'd provoked him with words, drawing a sword here in front of the lord without permission, simply because of his own feelings, was a clear lapse in knightly conduct.
If Bern had drawn first or tried to hurt him physically, they could at least have used protection as an excuse, but that wasn't the case now, was it?
The bespectacled treasurer seemed to realize the same thing and frantically held Gudrun back.
“S-stop. Sir Gudrun! What disgrace is this, in front of the lord!!”
“Disgrace? The true disgrace is standing by after hearing insults aimed at my lord and me! My lord! Please give the order! I'll cut this man down at once, and make that foolish guild answer for it as well!”
“……”
The lord's brow furrowed as if displeased.
He was furious at Bern's insolent words, while his displeasure with Gudrun's behavior was equally obvious.
But in the end, people always favor their own.
“Do as you please. However, blood being spilled here would be unpleasant, so if you're going to execute him, do it outside.”
“As you command, my lord!”
“Hey! Are you seriously trying to pick a fight with the guild…?”
Blanca was about to explode at the way the conversation was going wherever it pleased, but Bern stopped her.
“It's fine.”
The weight of words is determined by who says them.
It was a short, simple line with no further explanation, but just the fact that Bern had said it was enough for Blanca to trust it.
At the very least, she couldn't even imagine Bern losing.
***
The training ground a short distance from the lord's manor.
“What happened? Why is everyone gathered here?”
“I heard Sir Gudrun is going to execute the adventurer sent by the guild.”
“What? Why?”
“How should I know?”
Amid the whispering spectators, Gudrun spoke with a pompous air.
“If you kneel and beg for forgiveness now, I may be merciful enough to spare you by taking only one arm.”
At his tone, as if he were showing off incredible mercy, Bern let out a snort of laughter.
Just moments ago he'd been acting like he would cut his head off on the spot, so now, after a little time had passed, trying to reclaim his dignity looked ridiculous.
“If you offer loyal counsel to your lord even now, you can at least preserve your honor as a knight.”
“You bastard, you're determined to see this punishment through to the very end!”
Gudrun drew his sword and charged at Bern.
This was one-sided violence, with neither a referee to mediate nor even a signal to begin.
It was behavior unthinkable in a duel, but Gudrun didn't care.
In his mind, this was punishment.
Wasn't it more ridiculous to worry about rules while punishing some lowly wretch?
And that settled Bern's course of action.
Whoosh.
Suddenly, Gudrun's body shot into the sky.
The spectators' minds were instantly filled with question marks at the sight.
Very few fully realized that Bern had snatched Gudrun's charging wrist, tripped him, and thrown him straight into the air, so the spectators had to feel like readers looking at a comic with the middle pages torn out.
However, their confusion was nothing compared to Gudrun's own shock.
For a moment, Gudrun floated there blankly, dazed, and only after realizing that the ground was rushing up toward his face did he hurriedly roll his body and take a proper fall.
That kept him from sustaining a fatal injury, but it couldn't stop the armor gleaming in the sunlight from getting smeared with dirt.
“W-what was that just now?”
“No idea. Sir Gudrun suddenly shot up into the air and came crashing down.”
“Did that red-haired adventurer do something?”
At the slightly delayed whispers from around them, Gudrun's face twisted with humiliation once he grasped what had happened.
He let killing intent pour off him and once again leveled his sword at Bern.
Seeing the faint shimmer of sword aura gathering at the tip of that blade, several knight apprentices widened their eyes.
“Sword aura!”
“Looks like Sir Gudrun intends to fight seriously.”
If the boundary that separated third- and fourth-rank mages was whether mana itself gained an attribute, then the boundary between third- and fourth-rank swordsmen was whether sword aura manifested.
Just as a body imbued with mana could display physical ability beyond the imagination of ordinary people, a weapon imbued with mana and one that wasn't couldn't even be compared in terms of lethality.
Even a crude sword made of cheap scrap iron would, the moment it was wrapped in sword aura, turn into an elite weapon that could slice through a knight's sturdy armor like tofu.
Just as a third-rank mage could never beat a fourth-rank mage in a pure magic duel, a third-rank swordsman could never defeat a fourth-rank swordsman.
How could a proper fight even exist when the moment the weapons crossed, you'd be cut down along with your weapon?
“I was careless once, but there won't be a second time.”
Bern gave no reply.
He only stared blankly at Gudrun, with no sign of drawing his sword.
At the sound of someone grinding their teeth somewhere, Gudrun pressed Bern with dazzling swordplay.
Orthodox swordsmanship, earned through systematic education and training—something adventurers who built their skills through real combat could hardly ever reach.
Just when the wisp-like sword aura seemed about to cleave straight through Bern's body.
Whoosh!
Once again, Gudrun's body flew through the air.
This time, though, at a low arc that left him no chance to even break his fall.
Crash!
The spectators' eyes widened at the sight of the hulking man in fine armor rolling around noisily like an empty can thrown onto the floor.
“Th-this, this… this kind of…!”
Twisting his face as though he couldn't contain the rage surging up inside him, Gudrun kept throwing himself at Bern.
He kept his distance so Bern couldn't casually attempt any grappling techniques, and he also swung his sword while mixing in sword forms between slashes to try to draw out an opening.
But no matter how, or in what way, he attacked, the result was the same.
Gudrun's body would rise into the air, then fall and roll mercilessly across the ground.
As the pattern repeated, anger turned to disbelief, disbelief to shock, and shock finally to fear.
Even Gudrun, for all his boar-like stubbornness, had no choice but to realize it by now.
The hopeless gulf between Bern and himself.
“……”
In just over ten minutes, Gudrun had turned into a shabby wreck, and he looked at Bern with a face stripped of all confidence.
At the sight of Gudrun standing there awkwardly, unable to rush Bern any longer yet unable to lower his sword, the lord of Prensia shouted.
“Sir Gudrun! What in the world is this disgrace!!”
To be honest, Gudrun wasn't a particularly ideal knight.
He was short-sighted, couldn't rein in his emotions, and it wasn't uncommon for him to run wild in the name of loyalty.
And yet he could stand beside the lord as Prensia's representative knight because his loyalty was genuine and his skill was exceptional.
And yet, what was this?
He'd rolled pathetically on the ground several times against a mere adventurer who hadn't even drawn a weapon, and now he was just watching Bern nervously like a frightened dog.
Considering that the representative knight symbolized the territory's military power, this was humiliation upon humiliation, dragging the lord's own dignity face-first into the dirt.
Gudrun squeezed his eyes shut.
Unable to bear his lord's pressure, he charged at Bern recklessly even though he knew he had no chance of winning.
Hoping he'd just black out.
“...You're not even worth a failing grade.”
If one of the members of the Golden Cloud Knight Order under his command had been like this, he'd have broken him himself and kicked him out.
For a very brief moment, Bern forcibly brushed aside the stray thoughts that had flashed through his mind as the Crown Prince, and moved his hands and feet once more.
Gudrun's body soared higher than at any previous point—so high the spectators would have had to crane their necks nearly straight up—before being slammed into the ground.
Thud!
Seeing Gudrun's body right at his feet, so close that if the trajectory had been off by even a little it would have crushed him, the lord's complexion took on a bizarre shade.
Step, step.
Bern approached the lord and said.
“Prensia's public order doesn't seem all that good. Armed assailants keep charging at me, so I had no choice but to use some simple self-defense to protect myself. Please be careful as well, my lord.”
─There was no referee, no mutual consent, no introduction, so this wasn't a duel, and Gudrun wasn't a knight. I merely defended myself from a thug who charged at me. By the way, this is your territory—aren't you going to manage it properly?
Among the spectators, those who didn't understand Bern's meaning tilted their heads, while those who did went pale.
And the lord of Prensia was one of those who understood.
“……”
After glancing at the lord, who remained silent, Bern turned around.
One step, two steps, three steps.
Watching Bern walk away without the slightest hint of regret, the lord soon swallowed his pride and forced the words out.
“I would like to entrust you with the request. I apologize for my rudeness thus far, so please, would you be willing to speak with me again?”
Bern thought.
He may have acted disgracefully, but he didn't seem completely beyond redemption yet,
***
After that, negotiations with the lord went fairly smoothly.
That was possible because, apart from the humiliation Bern had inflicted on him, Bern's skill had been proven flawless beyond all doubt.
The treasurer, whose face had looked ready to collapse when the argument was at its worst, now had some color back in his cheeks as he continued speaking politely.
“The first disappearance happened two months ago. To be exact, we didn't realize at the time that it was such a serious problem and left it alone; only after the damage mounted did we investigate in earnest and discover that that had been the first incident.”
The first victim was Mary, the girl from the herb shop.
She usually went into the forest near Prensia to gather the herbs she needed and then came back, but one day she simply vanished without a word or a trace.
“After that, young women who went near the forest—whether to pick fruit or gather firewood—disappeared one after another. In response to repeated pleas from the residents, the guard squad was dispatched into the forest, but they couldn't find the missing people. In the end, it seemed the matter would simply be settled by telling women not to go near the forest.”
However, that was not how it ended.
That was because even women who never even went near the forest—the bakery girl, the inn attendant, and a village maiden spinning thread—began disappearing one after another.
Even the treasured daughter of a certain merchant caravan that had only stopped in Prensia briefly for business was added to the list of missing people, and the incident transformed from a mere commoners' problem into a major affair that shook the entire territory.
“Households with young women can't even sleep properly at night these days. If even one family member is awake, it's fine, but if no one is awake, they say the women are abducted no matter how thoroughly the doors are locked. Thanks to that, the entire territory is extremely on edge and exhausted.”
There was even talk of a household where only a father and daughter lived together, and the father, after staying awake for about a week, nodded off for just an instant and lost his daughter, then screamed in anguish. The stress and anxiety the residents were under must have been beyond words.
“Please, I beg you. Please solve this case!”
Leaving behind the treasurer, who kept bowing his head again and again, the group gathered at the small manor provided by the territory and began their discussion.
“Hah, what an eerie and frightening incident. If I were in a similar position, I'd be too worried about my younger sister to sleep.”
“Before we even talk about whether we can bring the enemy down, the first problem is finding them. What do you think, Bern?”
“Well. First, I think we should go see the victims and hear about the situation at the time… hmm?”
A few seconds after Bern turned his head toward the manor's front door.
Knock, knock. Someone rapped on the door.
Renya quickly moved to open it, and a man with plain gray hair and a beard, along with eyes that somehow carried a mischievous glint, turned his gaze to the group.
“Hmm, I’m torn between saying, ‘Pardon the intrusion into your manor,’ and ‘Welcome to the city,’ but let’s start with introductions.”
The man grinned and declared in a voice full of warmth.
“Alses Burtrea. Your senior, and, pathetically enough, the loser who failed to complete the request and had to raise the white flag. I’d like to have a quick talk—got a minute?”