No, What Is This?

There are so many reasons why the Rebound Legion is remarkable that it’s hard to list them all, but the fact that under eighty people completed the ‘Land of Death’ expedition in their fifth year alone was an achievement worthy of history.

The accomplishments Rebound achieved then brought into the light things previously only known in legend… Ah, the bell’s rung. We’ll continue next time.

—From a lecture by Exorsus Academy historian Me Kookno.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before, but the Monster Belt is definitely nice enough that, if it weren’t for the monsters, I’d want to build a villa and live there.

The dense waves of trees almost give the illusion that they are Healing my body.

The first expedition included 74 members of the Rebound Legion and, if I call them suspects, that’s because even Suho’s Valkyrie Nana Margo—who was practically a legionnaire—brought the total to 75.

The members preparing camp on the first day were as excited as kids going on a school trip for the first time.

This mood was largely because of the Black Oak packs we ran into a couple of times that day.

When we first headed out the north gate, everyone was tense about the expedition. Even members who had been on an expedition before kept their guard up and maintained formation.

And then we met the first Black Oak pack.

There were fewer than fifty of them, so we didn’t think much of it and said nothing.

Here’s the first misunderstanding. Later I heard that the members had taken the situation to be far more serious than it actually was.

The second misunderstanding was that everyone there had gone through intense Monster Waves. They did not underestimate the Black Oaks.

The battle the new recruits fought with all their might ended in an instant. It felt empty and futile.

“Huh?”

“What?”

“Did the commander help out?”

The battle was so anticlimactic that the members who’d fought said things like that.

“You’ve gotten stronger.”

I nodded in agreement with Lee Hyo-ju’s observation.

Indeed, the members were bewildered, but they had grown stronger.

Of course, in a Monster Wave there are lords and chieftains that make it feel tougher, and the overwhelming numbers as well.

But the main reason the first fight of the expedition was so easy was that the members themselves had gotten stronger.

At the legion house, everyone’s benchmark is comrades who grow alongside them or faster than them, so they don’t realize how strong they’ve actually become.

“Move out.”

I led the dazed group out the north gate, set our direction to northwest, and crossed the Monster Belt.

Maybe because our party was larger than expected, or because Violentia, who had left west earlier, had caused a ruckus, or because the representatives who rushed out the north gate had cleared things up—I don’t know—but it was unusually hard to spot monsters in the Monster Belt.

We continued the expedition for two days, and on the third day when we were settling down to prepare lunch, it happened.

“Lee Hyo-ju, Hazel, Proy Rium, nine o’clock.”

Hazel took watch, manifested her power, and began the first line of defense.

In Lee Hyo-ju’s hand was already a blue amulet, a Blue Dragon Scale.

Proy Rium checked the gauntlet I had made for him and watched the direction I had indicated.

Unlike before, Proy Rium was taking the frontline role responsible for the party’s forward watch.

There were complicated and absurd reasons for that,

‘The legion commander leading a charge is dangerous this, that… This isn’t some Three Kingdoms-era war…’

I’m still dissatisfied. Proy Rium had been doing well so far, and so I trail at the back of the group like an old man in the back room.

Nine o’clock from where I spoke. Since we’re heading northwest, relative to Exorsus a group is approaching from the west—directly toward us.

A sinister feeling that their gait and speed weren’t those of monsters passed through me, and about two hundred well-equipped people appeared before us.

“Oh?!”

“Huh?”

The arriving people looked at us with wide eyes—either surprised at seeing us or at how prepared we were—and blurted out foolish sounds.

“What is this?”

At Proy Rium’s offhand question, a flash of hostility passed over the faces of what looked like a crowd of more than two hundred representatives.

We could only see the back of Proy Rium’s head, but judging by his usual temperament, there was probably a faint sneer at his mouth.

“Eek!!”

“Need to poop? Why is your face red and acting tough? I’m asking what’s going on!”

As expected, Proy Rium—who mostly ignores everyone except our members—snapped and radiated force.

At that display, the more than two hundred representatives flinched back a step.

But maybe angered that they had retreated, they began to wield divine power. It became a tense, ready-to-explode situation.

Then one of them stepped forward to restrain his group and addressed us.

“Might the person standing in the back be Kim Han?”

Proy Rium, who had been speaking so plainly until then, fell silent and turned his gaze to me.

Proy Rium, who had first pledged loyalty to me, had signed the Contract of Divine Words—a document written by the gods full of clauses, graver than any insurance contract—and since then he had always been unusually cautious about issues concerning me.

“…And?”

“Ah! Hello! We are the scout unit of the Gunrim Legion. Haha.”

“Gunrim Legion?”

The word ‘Gunrim’ made me involuntarily oppose it. Lee Hyo-ju beside me also flinched.

Gunrim—that name makes your chest ache.

“Haha, yes. It’s a legion formed by Violentia. Of course, it hasn’t been officially sanctioned yet, but since Violentia said she’d do it, it’s as good as sanctioned. Hahaha.”

He laughed exaggeratedly in bursts. I smiled at him.

The Gunrim Legion… it was a name that brought back memories I had briefly forgotten.

“Haha. Come on, let’s drop the hostile posturing—since fate has us meet like this, could we rest together for a bit?”

Did he take my smile as a sign to lower their guard? The representative walked calmly toward our members.

The smiling face seemed sincere, and his actions felt entirely unforced. Above all, the representative walked with both palms up to show he was unarmed.

“Proy Rium, kill him.”

Rumble—

Unlike the other members, Proy Rium, who had watched the man sullenly and kept his guard up, upon hearing the order shattered the man’s head like a popped balloon.

“Wha, what the—!”

“What kind of thing is this!”

Murmurs.

The remaining representatives loudly protested, but their mood didn’t change. They kept their tension like before. They acted flustered, but continued the ‘work’ they’d been doing behind our backs.

“Tch. If you wanted to rest together, you shouldn’t have been fiddling back there setting up barriers.”

“…Time stop. Commander.”

At Lee Hyo-ju’s murmur, a little dragon with blue hair and a white tail shot into the sky.

Lee Hyo-ju hadn’t misidentified the target. The amulet that had been rising diagonally struck something, clanged several times like metal, and finally sprayed a fountain of blood into the air.

“H-Ho… how…?”

This time the representatives were genuinely shocked.

But with the flow of divine power felt in the air behind them like that, it’s harder to imagine they wouldn’t notice. I don’t know about other five-year representatives, but there’s no such member in the Rebound Legion.

After Proy Rium blew the smirking guy’s head off up front, every member drew their weapons and bolstered their momentum.

“I’m disappointed in Violentia, taking around trash like this. How can we properly ‘absorb’ like this?”

“…!!”

“And what the hell are these idiots doing? Wielding divine power openly. Did they expect us not to notice? You should’ve screamed loud—then maybe they’d have pretended not to hear.”

“W-We have more numbers!!”

Was he talking to me, or to himself and his comrades? The man who seemed to be their leader stammered loudly.

“Sweep them away.”

Proy Rium’s new form, which had been twitching like a race car waiting for the signal, reached the representatives first.

A fist swung with powerful, fierce force. Wherever his fist passed, the air trembled.

Every time Proy Rium’s fist, charged with force, was swung, blood flowed, flesh tore, and bones flew.

There was no neat way of killing. In a short time, Proy Rium’s body seemed bathed in blood.

The changed Naruan is concise. In a way, extremely practical.

Using the flame of ‘True Flame’, he made small holes in the heads of distant representatives and slit the throats of those nearby.

Defense? A representative capable of defending against the flame of ‘True Flame’ wouldn’t be foolish enough to ambush us.

The pain as the head was being cooked. Naruan quickly incapacitated enemies while prolonging the suffering.

Like a parasitic worm burrowing through the head or body, the flames targeted only the places of greatest pain; some struck by Naruan’s attack writhed in agony for a long time without dying.

What was peculiar was the woman called Nana Margo.

Although a provisional legion member, she earnestly hoped to join the legion and played the good cop/bad cop game; at the front she, alongside Wigo, blocked all enemy attacks.

Unlike Wigo, who defended the position he stood on, her protective power defended the bodies of members sweeping through the enemy lines.

Because of this uniqueness, Nana Margo wasn’t called something like ‘Shield of XX’ but was known as ‘Suho’s Valkyrie.’

Because she resembled a valkyrie guarding a warrior chosen by the gods.

I watched with satisfaction as the members fought without tangled movement, like warriors sparring according to a prearranged drill despite differing classes.

Soon after the battle began, the enemies all vanished as sacrifices for ‘absorption’, and only the representative—the strongest among the representatives—was spared.

“I left you alive because I was curious. You know me, don’t you?”

“Yes, yes!”

The male representative answered urgently.

“Then why did you attack?”

“Th-that’s…”

“Don’t you know? Violentia and we aren’t allies, but she thinks we are. Or at least even if not all of you, doesn’t your legion leader Violentia really think that?”

“Ah, I know.”

“Then tell me. Why did you attack?”

“…I don’t know either. All I know is that it was an order handed down by the battle commander…”

“Battle commander? Who’s that? What’s the name?”

The man hesitated for a moment, then cautiously spoke the name.

“Mabuda.”

“…That crazy pervert stalker bastard?”

“Yes?”