Chapter 24
“A temporary member… Are you serious, Captain?”
Ten traps disarmed.
They had cleared every trap in their assigned sector and were now on their way back to the temple. Van, carrying Cadel on his back, asked the question sullenly. Cadel just gave a vague nod, his limbs dangling lifelessly over Van’s shoulders.
“Right now, our biggest priority is expanding the mercenary group. It’s not like we’ll take a massive loss just by testing the waters with him.”
“But that bastard…”
“I know you don’t like Lumen. I’m sorry, but just bear with it for a bit.”
When Cadel apologized like that, it was impossible to press the issue any further. Van fell silent, pouting slightly.
No matter how much he thought about it, he couldn’t understand why his great Captain was giving a second chance to a piece of trash like that.
If it’s about strength, I just need to get stronger.
If the Captain needed it, Van was confident he could become a warrior worth a hundred men. But even if he made that appeal, it would just go in one of Cadel’s ears and out the other. Van silently adjusted his posture so Cadel could ride more comfortably.
Lumen’s very existence was making his skin crawl, but the man hadn’t actually agreed to join yet. Beneath a sunset blazing as brightly as Van’s hopes, the two safely returned to the temple.
“Phew, my body feels like lead.”
As he slid off Van’s back and his feet touched the ground, a dull ache rang through his entire body. The mana poured into disarming the traps was draining enough, but he had also racked his brain over how to handle Lumen. His mental and physical fatigue was at its absolute limit.
Even so, he couldn’t present himself to the Bishop looking like a limp noodle. Cadel swept back his sweat-tousled hair and brushed the dirt off his robes to tidy himself up.
I wonder if the knights are back yet.
Whether they arrived first or last, a battle of nerves was guaranteed, but getting here first would definitely look better. With that thought, he stepped inside the temple, only to see the Bishop standing alone in the empty chapel, his back turned.
* * *
“We’re withdrawing!”
Johan led the exhausted knights back toward the temple. A swift search utilizing multiple Holy Knights, coupled with efficient mana distribution to minimize stamina consumption during trap disarming—he was highly satisfied with the clean execution.
From the start, the outcome was never going to be swayed by the absence of one pale mage. Sure, lacking an extra hand might have slowed them down slightly, but the blow would be far more severe for the mercenaries.
Hmph, storming off to make a point just to stroke his own pride. It’s obvious they haven’t even finished searching their assigned area yet. I’ll report to the Bishop first, then handle the rest. Tsk, making us do the work twice for nothing.
He didn’t know what trick the two of them had used to subdue a demon. But in life, there were occasionally battles favored by luck. Equating luck with actual skill and acting arrogant about it was exactly where disaster began. Johan sneered as he recalled Cadel’s confident gaze.
God is fair. Both in extending the hand of fortune and in withdrawing it. It was foolish to mistakenly believe that sweet luck would stay by one’s side forever.
Right. So surely.
Surely, they had to be struggling right now…
“Ah, you’re here. I’ve been waiting.”
Johan unconsciously furrowed his brows. His gaze landed on the brazen face looking back at him from an empty pew in the chapel. Had they given up early and returned first?
He suppressed an inexplicable surge of apprehension and opened his mouth, but Cadel spoke before he could.
“I thought we took longer than expected, but when we got back, the knights hadn’t returned yet. I figured it would be best to know exactly how much progress your side made, so I waited.”
“…What about the traps in the mercenaries’ sector?”
“Haha, we handled them all. We wouldn’t have come back if there were any left, would we?”
Impossible. Johan found it increasingly difficult to control his facial expression. No, perhaps there were simply fewer traps in the direction Cadel had gone. He tried to rationalize it that way, but once again, Cadel beat him to the punch.
“Man, can you believe there were ten traps? We struggled a bit because it was more than expected… but I’m sure it’s still fewer than what the knights handled, right?”
At some point, he had gripped his scabbard, and now strange grinding sound came from his knuckles. Johan forced himself to ignore his subordinates lined up behind him, who were anxiously reading the room, and spoke with feigned calm.
“There were six traps on our side.”
“I see… Haha, as expected of the Holy Knights. It seems God’s protection is with you.”
Even with a smile on his face, his true intentions were transparent. Cadel’s eyes were practically saying, See, what did I tell you? If you had stopped acting so high and mighty early on, you wouldn’t have had to waste time, thoroughly mocking the knights.
Calm down. Just calm down.
He was a noble knight who followed God’s will. Provocations that fueled anger in the heart were no different from the whispers of a demon. Taking a small breath, Johan offered a crooked smile he couldn’t quite hide.
“If my eye for talent had been just a bit better, we could have proceeded with the work much more smoothly. Unfortunately.”
“Well… since you’re going so far as to say it, I won’t exactly deny it.”
Facing Cadel’s cheeky eye smile, rage surged through Johan as if his heart had been thrown into hellfire. But what could he do? Ignoring the mage, trying to exclude him from the work, and then failing to achieve even half as much. It was all his own blunder.
In the end, Johan had to swallow his anger and acknowledge his complete defeat.
“Regardless, we’ve disarmed all the traps left by the witch. Let’s leave no hard feelings between us.”
It seemed the hand of fortune hadn’t abandoned that mercenary just yet.
* * *
During the two days they spent waiting for Lumen’s answer, Cadel reaped quite a harvest.
First, he used the reward money from the Bishop to buy Van his first artifact. It was the Bracelet of Repose, an item that stabilized the wearer’s mentality.
As a berserker, Van’s destructive power grew stronger the longer a battle lasted, but the downside was that if his awakened state persisted for too long, his mental stability would sharply decline. Simply put, he would lose his reason. Because of that, an artifact capable of preventing him from going berserk was practically essential.
“This precious gift from the Captain, I will take it to my grave! I swear it!”
Well, it wasn’t bad seeing him so happy.
Second was the Witch’s Bone Dust acquired upon completing the second quest. This item was part of the Demon’s Bone Dust series, a type of exchange item he had desperately farmed in the game.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t for raising a knight, but an item for Cadel’s own growth. If he could just find the specific person who needed it, Cadel’s magical proficiency was guaranteed to rise significantly.
Finally, third. While waiting for Lumen, Cadel took on several miscellaneous requests around the temple, and in exchange, he obtained an old grimoire. It was given to him by a young man he met during one of the tasks.
“I don’t even know if this is genuine or a fake, and since no one takes care of it, it’s just gathering dust… I’d like you to have it, Cadel. You’re the benefactor of our believers, aren’t you?”
Naturally, Cadel could neither decipher the grimoire nor determine its authenticity, but that would naturally be resolved once he met the specific person for the Witch’s Bone Dust. If this grimoire turned out to be genuine, it would be an absolute jackpot.
The quests are brutally tough, but aside from that, the flow is surprisingly smooth.
The rewards were definitely hefty. Clearing them was satisfying.
Cadel nodded in satisfaction and tied his travel bag shut. He planned to catch a carriage before sunset today. His destination was Drakium, the capital of the Mainyu Kingdom. It wasn’t because there was a special main quest there, but because he remembered his first encounter with the person who would exchange the Witch’s Bone Dust taking place around that area.
After double-checking to make sure he hadn’t missed anything, Cadel opened his door, only to find Van already prepared and leaning against the wall outside.
“If you were here, you should have come in. Why stand out here making your legs hurt?”
“It’s fine. How could I just carelessly enter the Captain’s room?”
“…Always so formal.”
Was it really that big of a deal? Feeling a strange sense of awkwardness, Cadel looked away and headed down the inn’s stairs, with Van following right behind him.
“Captain, give the bag to me.”
“It’s fine. I’m just going to load it onto the carriage anyway.”
“I’ll load it!”
Van smoothly slipped the bag out of Cadel’s grasp. When Cadel looked back in disbelief, Van offered an innocent smile. Cadel scanned that bright face and narrowed his eyes.
“You… seem to be in a particularly good mood today.”
“Hmm, do I?”
“You’re smiling more than usual.”
Van was someone who smiled often anyway, but today he looked exceptionally happy. A lighthearted smile spread across his entire face, as if a heavy burden had been lifted from his chest. Was he that excited about leaving for Drakium?
As Cadel stepped out of the inn, trying to guess the reason for this sudden spike in happiness, a cheerful voice came from behind.
“Well… maybe it’s because I’m looking forward to a happy journey without a single person I hate.”
Ah.
Only then did Cadel realize why Van seemed so overjoyed. Lumen Dominic. Even now, after two days had passed, he hadn’t come to find Cadel. He hadn’t shown so much as a hair, which had honestly pissed Cadel off at first. Moreover, this meant that Lumen had rejected the temporary spot in the Red Scale Mercenaries. For Van, who hadn’t liked Lumen from the start, it was the best possible outcome.
Was he really that happy that their chance to reinforce the mercenary group had gone down the drain? Feeling a mix of exasperation and pity, Cadel slowly shook his head.
“Someday we’re really going to have to bring in new recruits, and it’ll be a problem if you openly hate them every time. You understand that, right?”
“Of course!”
He didn’t seem to understand at all. Cadel looked away from Van’s beaming face and searched for the carriage waiting outside.
