128 - A Certain Former Mercenary’s Perspective

“When did things go this wrong?”

Maybe things had just been going too smoothly up until now, but my life was currently in the middle of a very clear downward spiral.

I remembered a fellow mercenary once telling me, “Rock bottom’s got two, three floors under what you think it is. As long as you can still say ‘I’m at rock bottom right now’, you’re not there yet.” Imagining that I could still fall further from here made a long sigh escape me on its own.

“Quit looking so damned gloomy, prisoner.”

Yeah. Right now, I was not a mercenary, but a prisoner locked in a cage.

I had disbanded my mercenary company, divvied up the money (left that part to someone else), and thought I had made a clean getaway—only to come to my senses shackled and rattling along in the back of a wagon.

When I ignored the order to report in and tried to run for it with everything I had, they had already cut me off ahead of time. Funny how they were only competent at things like that.

I tugged at the chains on my arms, but all I got for my trouble was the sound of metal scraping metal. I could not break them, and even the cheap-looking brackets that held them in place did not so much as twitch.

My main charges were obstruction of duty and destruction of property.

They were the end result of me thrashing around trying to escape.

(If any of the others were here, they’d be saying “What are you doing, boss?” right about now.)

Barely three days after parting ways with my comrades, I was already in this sorry state.

I did not even have my prized magic sword, bought with money I had saved up bit by bit, in my hands anymore; no wonder my face looked so grim.

“Hey, where are we headed, anyway?”

I tried asking one of the soldiers riding alongside on horseback, but he did not answer.

We had been heading straight north from Lecole, so I figured the destination had to be either Aquia or Tore… I doubted it was the royal capital.

(No way they’d haul me all the way to the capital. And there’s no reason to… right?)

I knew I was not educated, and I knew full well I was not that smart either.

In the end, I decided thinking about it would not change anything and gave up on it.

I settled in to try and get some rest in the rattling, uncomfortable wagon until we reached wherever we were going.

The next day—we arrived at a port town called Eilke.

While my anxiety about “what on earth was waiting for me” simmered in the background, they took me out of the caged wagon with only my hands still in shackles and marched me through the gate into town.

Following my escorts, I reached a needlessly huge mansion—the sort of place people would call a “guesthouse.”

Which meant whoever had business with me was some big shot.

“A noble, huh… just my luck,” I muttered, and a soldier behind me snapped, “Watch your tongue.”

(Chances are… no, almost without a doubt, I was about to be roped into something unpleasant.)

With a feeling that was more like near-certainty than a hunch, I let out a loud, theatrical sigh, which they completely ignored.

Saying anything was not going to improve my situation anyway.

As the iron gates opened and we stepped into the grounds, I felt eyes on me.

Probably from inside the building—most likely someone sizing me up from a safe distance.

At the very least, I could say for sure they were not going to kill me on the spot.

(The real question is “what are they going to make me do?”… and I can pretty much guess.)

With nobles involved, that meant their authority and ability to force people’s hands got added to the mix.

The men on either side of me were swapped out—from the soldiers who had brought me here to the mansion’s own guards—and as soon as we went inside I could feel the chill of the building materials on my skin.

Stripped of my gear, wearing only a shirt and trousers, the cold floor bit more than a little.

I went out of my way to slap my bare feet against the stone with loud, wet smacks as I walked, but nobody reacted.

The guy next to me was stomping along even louder, so it was only natural no one cared about my little bit of attitude.

After walking barefoot over that cold floor for a while, we stopped in front of a door.

One of the men flanking me jerked his chin toward it and ordered, “In.”

There was no point in resisting now, so I quietly obeyed, opened the door with my shackled hands, and strode in like a proper mercenary—head held high.

Inside were a well-fed, well-dressed man who was clearly the master of the house—and one other man who matched him as a “guard” about as well as a silk glove on a butcher’s hand.

The second man had blond hair and blue eyes, a handsome face, and a build that was downright delicate for someone expected to fight. He barely looked older than a young man.

To call him a “bodyguard” felt… generous, to put it mildly.

(But the very fact that someone like him was here, out of place as he was, said everything about what he really was…)

He looked nothing like the master of the house, which made it unlikely they were blood relatives.

Which meant he had to be someone directly related to why I was here.

Once we finished sizing each other up, the first to speak was the plump, middle-aged man in the very noble-looking outfit.

“Well, I imagine you have some idea why we went to the trouble of bringing you all the way here,” he began, scratching his slicked-back, greying hair with one hand and making no effort to hide the disdain on his face, as if “I don’t want to bother with some mercenary scum” were printed across his forehead.

“The new species, I take it?”

“Correct. This new monster they have named ‘Argos’… it seems the southern part of our kingdom lies within its hunting grounds. We intend to slay it.”

“With all due respect…”

“I have no interest in your opinion. Just do as you are told.”

I swallowed the sigh that nearly escaped and looked up at the ceiling.

By the third time, I really did not feel like I had any chance of coming back alive.

“…Understood. So… will that gentleman over there be the commander?”

I shifted my gaze to the refined-looking man, and our eyes met.

He smiled softly and just watched me in silence, saying nothing.

“Allow me to introduce him. If you’re a mercenary, I’m sure you’ve at least heard the name. This is Alberto von Raguel.”

At those words, the refined man took a step toward me and bowed with practiced grace.

“As introduced, my name is Alberto. People in the streets insist on calling me a ‘hero’, but if you must address me, I would be delighted if you would use this instead—”

“Dragonbuster,” he added, the corners of his mouth curling up into a grin.

“Dragonbuster”—not a title meaning “one who slew a dragon,” but “one who drove a dragon off.”

Three years ago, during the attacks in the north, mercenary bands famous and unknown alike had gathered on that battlefield, and even within our own ranks there had been a bitter struggle over who would claim that title.

They had dangled money and glory in front of us—bait about as simple as it got—and drawn people in from far and wide, only for the end result to be a battlefield so horrific that a casualty rate of over thirty percent was considered “fitting.”

My own company, Dawn’s Battlefield, had taken part as well, but because of a job we were already on at the time, we arrived late—whether that was good luck or bad luck, who could say.

Thanks to that, we did not suffer much damage, but it had still hit me a little hard to find out that two mercenary companies we knew well had been wiped out.

We only had the chance to join in the fighting twice.

Even so, based on the information we gathered, we were able to predict the dragon’s movements and ram Giant-Killer into it over and over, so our contribution had to be higher than many of the lesser mercenary bands.

As the wounds on the dragon’s body multiplied and its movements started to lose their sharpness, the army and the mercenaries together succeeded in forcing the fight into a stalemate.

Everyone believed that if they just kept up the pressure, the dragon would eventually retreat—we all fully expected victory.

And that was when the long-awaited moment finally arrived.

The dragon spread its wings, lowered its body, and braced its legs.

The instant it went into the preparatory motion for takeoff, right before the cheers of victory could erupt—this man smashed a blow into the side of its head.

You could praise it as a magnificent surprise attack—so clean that even the dragon, which had already been cut more than once, had not sensed his approach.

But on that field, it had been an incredibly foolish act, one that could have led to the fighting continuing.

It was a reckless strike that could easily have reignited the dragon’s will to fight; in the end, the fact that its massive body rose into the air and flew northward allowed everyone to let it go without comment.

We celebrated being alive and praised the victory with everyone else who had survived.

But what came next was betrayal, enacted in the middle of those celebrations.

The army announced Alberto, who had delivered that one last dangerous blow, as the greatest hero of the battle—and then cheated the mercenaries out of their pay.

Naturally, the backlash had been enormous.

Things had gotten so tense that the bigwigs present at the time had fled for their lives; that was how ready to kill we had been.

Then, one young noble died, and one already half-destroyed mercenary band was erased as the supposed culprit.

Whether that story had been true or not did not matter.

What mattered was that they had used it as an excuse to force through their own demands—that was undeniable fact.

In other words, for the mercenaries who had been on that battlefield, this Alberto was “the man who used us as bait and only landed the final blow as the dragon tried to pull out,” and at the same time, “the man who cooperated with the nobles’ schemes and helped wipe out multiple mercenary companies.”

He was nothing more than a Dragonbuster manufactured for political convenience—the one who stole the honor and rewards of an entire battlefield.

The mercenaries and their guild did not recognize Alberto’s achievements.

If anything, they openly treated him as an enemy.

‘And now I was going to be used to give that man a new feather in his cap.’

“Man… Lloyd’s prediction hit the nail on the head.”

I remembered the words my longest-serving comrade had said to me on the day I disbanded the company.

“Captain, they are definitely going to use you up. If you don’t want to die, you have to run and keep running, no matter what.”

Letting out one long sigh, I swung the beloved sword that had been returned to my hand.

The armor they had prepared for me was better quality than what I usually wore as well.

“How much longer are you going to take…? We’re going,” said the man every mercenary had been taught to despise, hurrying me along.

I left the room.

“Can’t believe I ended up with a collar on…”

I ran a finger over the magic device locked around my neck.

This time, I really might be done for.