Chapter 3. The Catalyst (2)
The distance between House Clayton’s territory and the Academy was considerable.
Ordinarily, it would have made sense to travel to the Academy using a teleportation magic circle, but there were several places in this world where teleportation was prohibited.
The Imperial Palace of the Empire was one such place, as was the Allied Nations, which had been established through an alliance of five countries, including the Empire.
The Academy that Shane and Klein attended stood at the very center of the Allied Nations, making teleportation impossible.
And so, inside the carriage bound for the Academy—
As they traveled under the escort of House Clayton’s Knight Order, Shane quietly sank into thought.
‘Five years from now. That is when they will emerge into the open.’
The Organization ‘Nameless,’ the group that had led Shane into Corruption, would reveal itself to the world.
Whether Shane became corrupted or not, their plans would not change.
If he wanted to prepare for the upheaval that would come, he first had to become stronger.
At the same time, Shane turned his gaze toward his younger brother, Klein.
The Hero who had once been called humanity’s last hope.
Klein had overcome one hardship after another and had even defeated Shane when he stood as the First Legion Commander.
Perhaps even if Shane did nothing, Klein would once again defeat every enemy that stood in his way, just as he had in their previous lives.
But how much despair had Klein endured before reaching that point?
The Organization had made countless attempts to kill or corrupt him. Klein had overcome every one of them, but he had suffered just as many wounds along the way.
Like the heroes of legend, he had walked the path of a hero while losing one precious thing after another.
Shane did not want Klein to endure the same fate in this life.
‘For that, I need to become stronger first.’
Even now, countless ways to oppose the Organization came to mind, but Shane’s current abilities were insufficient to carry out any of them.
Fortunately—
‘There are plenty of ways to become stronger.’
Even without relying on the power of Corruption, the knowledge Shane had accumulated during his time with the Organization gave him countless avenues through which he could grow stronger.
Among them, the method that came to mind was—
‘Runic Script.’
A form of magical writing unknown to modern humanity, said to have been used only by chosen members of the ancient races.
Dragons were among the most famous beings known to have wielded Runic Script.
If it was a script used by the creators of magic themselves, beings revered as the progenitors of magic, then the absolute quantity of one’s mana would cease to matter.
Shane had heard that those who truly mastered Runic Script could use any magic regardless of the amount of mana they possessed……
But Shane was nowhere near that level.
More importantly, even with his analytical ability, fully comprehending Runic Script was still a distant prospect.
‘Applying it, however, is a different matter.’
Shane briefly thought of someone who possessed the answer he needed regarding Runic Script, then closed his eyes.
‘Before that, there is something I need to deal with first.’
Watching the sun slowly descend toward the horizon, Shane realized that the carriage carrying him and Klein had already begun entering a small village on the outskirts of the mountains.
—
Alex, a member of the village militia, stared beyond the guard post with a bored expression.
The scenery was always the same.
The air always smelled the same.
Even the men who arrived to relieve him came at the same time every day.
But today was different.
The people of the renowned House Clayton had arrived in their normally quiet village.
Of course, as always, they demanded nothing in particular from the villagers.
They simply unpacked their belongings at the inn, stayed quietly for a single night, and departed at dawn.
A young militiaman like Alex was not even the village chief. Forget meeting a direct descendant of House Clayton—he would be lucky merely to glimpse one of their knights from afar.
“Hey, Alex. I’m here to relieve you, you lucky bastard.”
“You’re here.”
When his fellow militiaman arrived for the shift change, Alex greeted him with a broad grin.
“The Habok Merchant Company arrived earlier too, didn’t they? You’ll be drinking yourself senseless tonight.”
“Drinking myself senseless, my ass. I have guard duty again tomorrow. It’s not like I can drink until I pass out.”
Despite answering his envious colleague that way, the smile never left Alex’s face.
His colleague knew why.
Alex might not be able to drink much, but he would have the chance to enjoy something even rarer than alcohol.
“Still, don’t listen too closely to everything those people tell you. Life outside is damn hard.”
“I’d have to know something about the outside world before I could even think about leaving. Stop worrying about nothing.”
With that, Alex completed the shift change and headed straight for the village’s only tavern.
The building had originally been used as the inn’s storage house, but a few years ago, after members of House Clayton began stopping by the village, it had been converted into a tavern.
Officially, it had been built because the village had grown large enough to warrant one.
Alex’s father, however, claimed that the village chief had simply separated the inn and tavern so no one would disturb the people of House Clayton while they stayed there.
Alex thought that explanation was far more convincing.
The moment he entered the old tavern, boisterous voices were already echoing throughout the building.
“Come on, drink! Drink!”
“Captain! Let’s forget about what happened with this!”
“Damn right! Since when have we ever lived worrying about tomorrow?! Drink!”
About fifteen rough-looking men had occupied nearly every seat in the small tavern.
They spotted Alex as he entered and immediately grinned, raising their mugs of beer.
“Hey, hey! Isn’t that Alex, our country bumpkin?!”
“Bwahaha! Look at that face! You’re tanned as hell!”
“You finally look like a man now! Hahahahaha!”
They were a mercenary company hired to escort the Habok Merchant Company.
The Habok Merchant Company was a merchant group affiliated with the Clayton Trading Company, which was operated by House Clayton.
Knowing that members of House Clayton passed through this village around the same time every year, they deliberately arrived on the same day at roughly the same hour.
And the men who had just greeted Alex were the mercenaries who protected that merchant group.
“Commander Wayton. Have you been well?”
“Bwahahahaha! ‘Commander,’ he says! Damn, did you hear that? Look at my arm! I’ve got goosebumps!”
“Hey, you bastards. Where do you find a young man this polite nowadays? Stop making fun of him, you uneducated assholes! You lot should call me Captain too!”
“Not a chance, Captain! Hehehe!”
Like brothers who had known one another for years, they laughed and traded jokes, while Alex awkwardly took a seat among them.
“So, you came again this year. Been doing well?”
At the words of Wayton, the mercenary captain, Alex gave a stiff smile.
“What could possibly change in this village? I’ve been living the same as always.”
“Heh. Yeah. That’s how life usually goes.”
“But did you come again because of that matter?”
“Probably. The people on our side have practically perfected the art of watching House Clayton’s every move.”
“Does that actually change anything?”
“Who knows? Life is a gamble anyway, isn’t it? Which young master has the advantage? How heavily do the odds favor one side? That’s what they’re trying to figure out. Then they go all in on whichever side looks better.”
As Wayton said, what the Habok Merchant Company wanted was information about the two brothers of House Clayton.
More precisely, they wanted to know which of the two—Shane or Klein—was closer to becoming the next Head of the House.
“Then which one has the advantage? Doesn’t the eldest son normally inherit?”
“Farming, running a tavern, managing an inn—those are things anyone can learn with enough experience. What those noble lords do is different. That takes talent. It’s simple. If the second son is more talented than the eldest, the second son gets it. And that noble family is exactly the kind of case I’m talking about. That’s all there is to it.”
“…….”
Come to think of it—
Alex remembered overhearing the village chief talking with some of the elders once, and they had mentioned unpleasant rumors about the eldest son.
Hadn’t they said that when the Academy’s vacation began this year, the eldest son had suffered a humiliating defeat there and disgraced his family’s name?
“Still, that’s the kind of problem only a rich man could complain about. Even if the eldest son of a family that powerful loses his place as heir, do you really think they’ll throw him out without a single coin?”
Wayton snorted, saying that even if Shane were cast aside, he would probably receive more money than someone like Alex could earn in an entire lifetime.
“Phew…… Anyway, I’d like to suffer from a fate like that myself. At least then I wouldn’t nearly get myself killed like last time.”
In a village where nothing ever happened, stories about the outside world were fascinating.
Alex found tales like these far more interesting than the absurd stories about Heroes his grandfather had told him when he was a child.
For Alex, whose dream was to leave the village and see the world someday, information about the outside was not something he could easily obtain.
“Kid, that look on your face reminds me exactly of our Mallon.”
“Come to think of it, where is he?”
At Wayton’s remark, Alex looked over the faces of the mercenaries as he asked the question.
Mallon.
Like Alex, he had once been a resident of some remote village.
After making a favorable impression on Wayton, however, he had been accepted into the mercenary company.
Alex could still vividly remember how envious he had felt when he saw Mallon during the mercenaries’ previous visit.
Mallon had clearly enjoyed Alex’s admiration as well, strutting around with his nose in the air.
Yet now he was nowhere to be seen.
“Why do you think?”
“……?”
“Tch. We buried him. Happens all the time in a mercenary company.”
“Ah, damn it! Now this country bumpkin has gone and ruined the Captain’s mood again!”
“Captain, since when have we ever lived thinking about tomorrow? Mallon knew that! We know it! Hell, you’re the one who always tells us that!”
“Exactly, exactly!”
Alex understood what the mercenaries meant.
For mercenaries, death was like a plague that lived forever at their side.
“Phew. Yeah. That’s what happened. So listen, kid. Don’t get stupid ideas about becoming a mercenary. Just protect your village. Around here, you could kill a few goblins and they’d call you a hero. Got it?”
“Come to think of it…… I don’t see some of the others who were here before either…….”
“Well, look at that, Captain. Seems this bastard wants to know what happened to us. This is why no matter how many mercenaries get themselves killed, there’s always another idiot lining up to replace them! Damn fools. None of them know how precious their lives are.”
“Aren’t we those same damn fools?”
“That’s exactly right. Painfully right!”
As though trying to keep the mood from sinking, the mercenaries became even louder and more animated.
Eventually, Alex managed to hear what had happened to them.
“It wasn’t anything special. A Dungeon Wave broke out, and we just had the rotten luck to be nearby. Fortunately, a knight order from a nearby city happened to be training in the area. Otherwise, every last one of us would’ve died.”
“……That must have been difficult.”
“Difficult, my ass. It was fucking hell. And we didn’t even get paid. Tch. That’s what you call dying like a dog. A worthless death.”
Wayton lifted his mug and drained the alcohol inside.
“It was fucking awful. We were walking along a road near the edge of the forest when we suddenly heard a tremendous roar in the distance. You know what Monster Fear is? Most monsters around the level of a troll can unleash it. Ordinary people who can’t manipulate mana often freeze up the moment they hear it.”
ROOOAAAR-!!
“Yeah, exactly like that, loud enough to shake the whole damn world…… Wait.”
Wayton abruptly stopped speaking.
Silence descended over the tavern at the same moment.
And then—
ROOOOOAAAAAR–!
Once again, a monstrous roar sounded from the distance.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
At the sound that should never have been heard in reality, Wayton’s expression twisted violently.
—
ROOOOOAAAAAR–!
A roar echoed from far away.
To some, it would have been a sound of terror.
To others, it would have announced the presence of something strange and unknown.
But to yet another person, it was both painfully familiar and utterly detestable.
“It has begun.”
Muttering those words, Shane rose and turned toward the direction from which the roar had come.
A Dungeon Wave.
It was a phenomenon in which monsters poured out of a dungeon that had been neglected for too long.
Before long, they would begin advancing toward the village.
Shane briefly recalled his memories of his previous life.
Back then, he had forcibly seized command of the Knight Order and taken the field himself.
To put it simply, Shane had failed to protect the village.
He had earned the resentment of the villagers, and when word of his incompetence spread through the mercenaries stationed here, people began branding him as an arrogant, useless nobleman.
At the time, he had forced his way into command because he had not wanted to lose to Klein.
That did not mean, however, that he had lacked any sense of duty to protect the village.
And yet, all that had awaited him afterward were villagers clutching the corpses of their dead family members and staring at him with eyes filled with hatred—
Along with the disgusted gazes of the knights, who had watched him forcefully seize command only to fail.
After that day, Shane had resolved never again to live for the sake of others.
It had become yet another catalyst that made him increasingly selfish.
“I will not make the same mistake again.”
It was not as though Shane suddenly wanted the admiration or respect of others.
Even back then, he had done everything within his ability, and the disaster had not occurred solely because his command had been lacking.
It was not an incident for which he could reasonably bear all the blame.
Even so, there was a simple reason he intended to step forward again.
Doing something was still a better choice than doing nothing.
And more importantly, if he intended to oppose ‘Nameless’ in the future, a certain degree of reputation would be indispensable.
As the village, now bathed in the light of sunset, began to erupt into commotion, Shane rose from his seat and stepped out of the room.
