Chapter 427
As far as Encrid knew, Krys was not the kind of person to cling to what was impossible.
“You’re not needed.”
At the words of the Mercenary King of the East, Krys quickly gave up on the attempt to stick to him.
“Yes, I understand!”
In truth, he probably had no real intention of following him in the first place.
Otherwise, there was no way his attitude would have changed that quickly.
“Since you’ve come as a guest, don’t you have any gifts or something?”
Rather than giving up on currying favor with the king, Krys set his sights squarely on his gold.
Encrid had also heard rumors while traveling the continent that there was a warehouse in the East filled with gold.
There was also the famous rumor that after several thief guilds formed an alliance and went in after hearing about that gold, not a single one came back out alive.
Encrid had dismissed it.
‘Gold.’
There was probably a lot of it.
That was about as far as his thoughts went.
Since he did not need that much gold, there was no reason to look into it any further.
Rem, Ragna, Audin, and Jaxson were the same.
The Madman Company was full of people with no lingering attachment to Krong.
But Krys was different.
A strange light gleamed in Krys’s eyes.
It was as if a vengeful spirit with nothing left but obsession had possessed him, a man who had been betrayed by the one he had sworn love to, then trapped for a hundred years inside a ruined home.
Whenever he talked about gold, heat flickered in Krys’s eyes. There was even a hint of madness.
Still, Encrid felt the other party was simply too much of a bad match for him. Far too much.
“A gift? What, you want the gold of the East or something?”
“I would appreciate it if you gave me some.”
“No.”
“They say the King of the East has a heart as vast as the sea, so why are you like this?”
“I’m not that generous.”
“You are the King of the East. Are you saying a meeting like this means nothing to you?”
“I don’t hear it.”
Encrid thought the King of the East was not particularly eloquent, but he clearly had an exceptional talent for dragging others into his own pace.
Krys did not get angry. He did not grit his teeth either. He simply kept speaking with the same smile and the same tone as before.
“Is that so? Then I shall ask again tomorrow.”
From afar, it might even have looked like a friendly conversation. The king nodded with a smile.
For a moment, Encrid was worried.
If Krys kept that up and got hit even once, it seemed likely he would never see him again in this lifetime.
“Will you be alright?”
So Encrid asked Krys after they left the king.
With his back turned to the king, Krys mouthed the words.
‘What a petty bastard. Aren’t you going to chase that bastard away?’
Even if he drove him off, it was not as though he would leave, and Encrid himself still felt he had plenty to learn. So he was a useful teacher.
“You know who you’re dealing with, right?”
When Encrid asked again, Krys frowned, nodded, and answered.
“Yes.”
“And you still want to demand gold?”
“Yes.”
When Encrid looked at him as if asking why, Krys hooked a thumb over his shoulder and said,
“He is none other than the King of the East. Would a person like that kill someone recklessly? More importantly, he came here desperate to recruit talent, didn’t he? He’s the type who would want to leave a good impression, not a bad one, so of course he won’t act rashly. Most importantly, it’s the gold of the East. I don’t know whether you realize this, but Lewis Mountain Steel also comes from the East, and so does the Mountain Dark Gold. Should we really miss an opportunity like this?”
The first thing he said was his reason for not worrying.
He had noticed the concern in Encrid’s eyes and addressed that first.
Then the conclusion that came from Krys’s blazing gaze was only one thing.
Gold.
Was he so blinded by gold that he would ignore even an immediate threat?
No, Krys was not that stupid.
A king would not kill someone for making a reasonable request. And since he was the King of the East, he would not act recklessly.
Moreover, the fact that he had come with only two people and no grand escort hinted at how unpretentious he was, and on top of that, he had repeatedly sparred with Encrid and offered him advice.
After putting all of that together and judging the character of the King of the East, that was the sort of man Krys was.
“But, Captain.”
The golden light filling Krys’s eyes dimmed slightly as he called out to Encrid.
“What?”
Encrid finished his hundred downward strikes, wiped the sweat dripping from his chin with the back of his hand, and answered.
“You’re not going, right?”
The King of the East did not bother hiding his intentions. Even so, the fact that he did not come across as unpleasant showed that he was a man overflowing with natural charm.
He wanted to take Encrid and everyone else to the East.
In fact, Encrid himself had not yet received such an offer directly from the king.
Rem, Ragna, Dunbakel, Audin, and Teresa had all heard it, but not Encrid.
More accurately, although he had said something similar when they first met, he had never brought it up again after that.
Was his pride hurt? Did he simply not want to repeat something he had already said once?
No. The king was the sort of person who repeated the same thing tirelessly.
Only with Encrid did he not do that. Instead, he sparred with him and offered simple advice.
What if he were asked to go with him? Encrid already knew the answer.
“I’m not going.”
He said it because the answer had already been decided.
Krys inwardly let out a sigh of relief, but at the same time, he felt a faint unease.
‘If the Captain leaves now, will these five walls in the border region still hold together?’
Krys had pushed the wall expansion projects in every city under General Encrid’s authority, while subtly broadening the city districts as well.
After that, he had also subtly spread rumors through traveling merchants.
Naturally, he had done it all for several different effects.
By making the five cities seem like one, everyone clearly recognized the new ruler and lord, and he also induced the lords and mayors of each city to get involved in expanding the trade routes.
‘The scale of Krong’s movement is different from before.’
All of it was only possible because there was a central figure like Encrid.
Krys was one of the people who understood best what his captain wanted.
A man who wanted to become a knight, a knight worthy of appearing in an epic poem.
What he desired was chivalry.
Honor and loyalty.
He was a man who moved forward while upholding those things.
‘Then would the East appeal to him?’
In Krys’s eyes, the King of the East was a man whose charm overflowed like a fountain.
Even though his interest remained confined to this company, just watching him from afar was enough to stir interest in several people.
Among them were mercenaries attached to the Border Guards who had once made names for themselves.
A few swordsmen who had served under nobles had also shown interest in the king.
Krys had also seen the king’s urgent personal letter that had arrived the day before yesterday.
What could it have said?
The letter had been sealed for Encrid’s eyes only. Krys had not even bothered to ask what was inside.
If Krang knew the current situation, then naturally a letter full of promises would have arrived.
Because of his habit of imagining the worst, Krys kept thinking about one thing after another as he left the training ground.
===
Rem spun the axe in his hand as he looked at the table he had carved.
The characteristically light axe flipped over his fingers and drew a strange arc through the air.
“Do you do that for fun?”
The King of the East approached from the side and asked. His guard followed closely behind.
“It’s part of getting used to the axe in my hand.”
Spinning the axe and making a table were both for the same reason.
Even with some monster over a hundred years old asking, Rem answered without even turning his head.
Whether the other party was the King of the East or whatever else, it meant nothing to him. That was simply how Rem was.
“You are not a very greedy person.”
“What do you mean?”
“You look that way.”
“I’m very greedy.”
Rem answered honestly.
The King of the East shook his head.
“Then why aren’t you following me?”
If he needed gold, then gold.
If he needed beauties, then he could take them with his own hands.
If he needed an opponent, then he would give him an opponent worthy of him.
But Rem wanted none of it. At least, that was how it looked to the King of the East.
“Do you want to go hunting with me?”
That was what the king said to Rem.
It was a proposal whose intention was hard to guess, but—
“Well, sure.”
Rem nodded without assigning much meaning to it.
His body had been itching to move anyway. While Encrid spent his time sparring with the crazy old man in front of him, Rem was also reviewing several techniques.
It all stemmed from a small realization.
Rem had used the sorcery of others through several tools obtained by killing the Immortal Madman.
‘I thought I would suffer backlash or some tremendous curse or something.’
That had not happened. Only a very small portion of the expected damage had appeared as side effects. It was not something that should have happened from a simple difference in capacity alone.
‘Has my body changed?’
Going west was one matter, but properly checking what he had was the obvious thing to do.
He had been carving chairs and tables with an axe for the sake of that confirmation, and now it was time to meet fiends or Magical Beasts and swing his axe to his heart’s content.
Up until now, he had been fine-tuning his senses.
Now, he felt the need to unleash what he had.
“Good, let’s go!”
At the king’s hearty shout, Dunbakel, who had been watching from one side, lifted her head. In her eyes was the mad axeman who had somehow gotten along with the king.
‘Is that bastard going to follow him?’
Watching him get along with the man called the King of the East, it seemed possible.
Then the person who beat her up would disappear.
‘And then it would become even harder to improve my skills.’
She did not welcome Rem tormenting her, but there was one thing she had to admit.
The more he tormented her, the more her skill improved.
Dunbakel’s gaze turned toward Encrid. Encrid, however, looked the same as always, as if he were not worried in the slightest.
===
An ordinary noble’s hunt and the King of the East’s hunt could never be the same.
Above all, his hunting companion this time was Rem.
Neither of them had any intention of catching swift-footed deer.
“The Pen-Hanil Mountains are behind this place. Have you ever been there?”
“When I was active on this continent before, this place was my playground.”
“I bet it was.”
“Yeah, you bet it was.”
The two traded banter back and forth. Asaluhi thought the king truly liked this man.
And conversely, the man called Rem was not pushing the king away either.
Watching them chatter and joke, they almost looked like old friends.
The three of them headed into the Pen-Hanil Mountains.
At the entrance to the mountain range stood an outpost that Krys had intentionally established.
It was three times larger than the other outposts, almost like a small city.
It existed solely to block fiends and Magical Beasts descending from the mountains.
Originally, in order to secure a safe route through here, there had been the issue of having to deal with whatever emerged from the Pen-Hanil Mountains as it appeared.
If left alone, things like the Gray Ghouls, Vampire Flies, and Troll O Brothers that Encrid and his company had once wiped out would have appeared.
However, there were also problems caused by establishing the outpost.
After examining the overall shape of the mountain range, Rem thought that blocking the fiends from coming out this way would only cause trouble later.
Inside the mountains were countless places to hide, gather, and dig in.
In that case, the creatures scattered throughout the area would see the outpost, grow wary, and if they gathered together, they would naturally form a colony.
In the future, the fiends swarming out could easily number over a hundred.
“See that? Just setting up an outpost won’t solve anything, will it? A large-scale massacre could happen later.”
The King of the East noticed that too.
He certainly was not some mediocre man or just someone who happened to be good at fighting.
He understood how to assess terrain and circumstances just as well as Rem did.
“What are you staring at? Didn’t I tell you? This place used to be my playground.”
Half of that was bluff.
Rem knew that too. Even if it was not as bad as the East, the Pen-Hanil Mountains were also a place full of undiscovered secrets.
Wasn’t this one of the first places ruin explorers looking to strike it rich always targeted?
A place like that could not possibly be a playground.
But—
“Hey, you’re pretty good.”
It was ability worth acknowledging.
“Of course.”
For a king, he was absurdly unassuming. Rem found that likable too.
Before long, the two entered the mountains.
Would controlling the fiends’ movements through an outpost make the fiends inside more wary and cause them to gather into colonies more easily?
It was not as though Krys had left it that way without realizing it.
He had judged that it was better to do this, then have the members of the Madman Company sweep them away, and he had prioritized establishing a safe zone.
Saying, “Fiends or Magical Beasts might come out at any time, but you won’t get hurt!”
and saying, “You won’t see fiends or Magical Beasts, but soldiers are always standing guard in case anything unexpected happens!”
would be received very differently by those passing through.
A route passing in front of the Pen-Hanil Mountains could create a shortcut faster than any other trade route.
In any case, for reasons like that, the king and Rem spotted a group of fiends almost as soon as they entered.
It was a nest of more than thirty trolls.
Its entrance was hidden beneath tangled tree trunks, leaves, and other debris.
The scent of crude sorcery lingered in the air.
Occasionally, some fiends were born with sorcery, magic, or supernatural abilities.
It seemed there was one such creature among this group of trolls.
“There.”
“There it is.”
They spoke and looked at each other.
Their timing matched.
Grrrr.
One troll caught the scent of humans and poked its head out.
“Hello?”
Rem rushed forward without warning and swung his axe as he spoke.
The axe came down vertically. Its blade split the troll’s head open as if it were slicing through something soft.
Even as its skull split down the middle, the troll swung its left arm wide.
Rem cut off that wrist with the axe in his other hand.
Right then, another troll thrust its head out as well. The dark green monster, lumpy and far larger than any human, opened its mouth.
Its crooked, sharp teeth came into view.
Seeing that, King Anu said,
“This is going to be a fun hunt.”
Thirty trolls would be a force even a Junior Knight could not ignore, and with a monster among them that could use something like sorcery, it might even be dangerous.
But not to these two.
The king drew his weapon. Not the zambiya, but the long spear carried by his adjutant Asaluhi.
Catching the spear thrown to him by his adjutant, the king unwound the cloth wrapped around it and took his stance.
Flap—
As the cloth wrapped around the spear fluttered back in the wind, Asaluhi reached out and caught it.
The king had no intention of moving carelessly before him.
There was something he wanted to show the warrior from the West standing beside him.
Something beyond the martial prowess his friend Encrid had shown.
The King of the East put a bit of sincerity into it.
For the trolls, it was a miserable story.