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“…Pfft.”
The soldiers listening burst into laughter.
“I heard you were using undead labor in the mine?”
“That sounds quite admirable. Isn’t it better for undead to work than for people to toil in the cinnabar mine, inhale poison, and die?”
“If you touched necromancy with that kind of thinking, I’ll be disappointed, Sir Azadine. To be honest, as an enemy, I respect you quite a bit.”
That was Sir Ject’s unvarnished sincerity.
As he pursued Azadine’s trail, Ject knew better than anyone how many overwhelmingly powerful foes Azadine had faced, and what extraordinary feats he had achieved.
“If you respect me that much, could you stop harassing me?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m only fulfilling my duty. Guide me to the mine.”
“It’s over there.”
Azadine pointed to an adit beside the village. What Sir Ject saw were diligent miners at work. There were no undead anywhere.
“…….”
He sent soldiers and Holy Knights inside, and after a while they came back out, shaking their heads.
“There’s nothing!”
“Damn it!”
They glared at Comek, who had been hiding behind Ject.
“I’m sorry you came all this way in person, only to get such an unsatisfying result….”
“W-wait! Hippogriff! A hippogriff!”
With his life on the line, Comek shouted that.
No matter who you were, to travel from Fireglyph to Vermilion Fortress, even Sir Ject had to ride a horse.
But Azadine’s group had a means of travel far faster than “horse”—a hippogriff.
By the time Comek reported him, and Ject assembled an investigation party and arrived, Azadine’s group must have reached the mine first and destroyed the evidence.
Comek shouted desperately, but the Holy Knights who had gone inside only shook their heads.
“…There’s no way he used undead.”
“What do you mean?”
“Root-vine spirits were digging the ground and cracking rock to mine cinnabar.”
“In other words, my work.”
A figure stepped out from among the Vermilion Fortress laborers.
Wild Druid Sedrin. The elf woman had appeared.
“Root-vine spirits dig well and smash bedrock well. There’s no reason to use undead when you’ve got spirits optimized for mining, right?”
“…….”
“Th-this is a trap!”
Comek screamed.
Ject realized Comek had been telling the truth—but it didn’t matter now.
“Tch. A wasted trip.”
“Don’t just leave—why not rest a bit before you go?”
Azadine offered, but Sir Ject withdrew with a bitter smile.
His subordinates all left as well, and only Comek remained behind, standing alone and not knowing what to do.
“Alright then, Comek. Shall we have a little talk?”
Just as Comek said, this had been Azadine’s trap.
After Sedrin joined Azadine’s group, Azadine no longer needed undead to run the mine.
Sedrin cast magic on potatoes or sweet potatoes, used them as catalysts to summon root-vine spirits, and the spirits pulverized bedrock with their vines.
The work speed was overwhelmingly faster than undead who dug with picks and shovels until their limbs broke and had to be bound back together with bandages.
And on top of that, the potatoes and sweet potatoes bore fruit by drawing nutrients from the soil.
‘Of course, don’t eat them. They’re addicted to cinnabar.’
Sedrin warned those eyeing the plump potatoes and sweet potatoes growing thickly on the root-vine spirits’ bodies.
Even though this was more efficient than undead in every respect, Azadine kept the undead around anyway—because he wanted to sift out the traitor.
The moment Comek took the bait and began his betrayal, Azadine used the hippogriff to return to the mine first and dispose of the undead.
“Comek. Why did you betray me?”
“Don’t make me laugh! Azadine! You never trusted me in the first place! If you didn’t even believe in me, then betrayal doesn’t mean anything!”
“So. What about me bothered you that much?”
“Everything bothered me! To someone like you, we probably look like trash—trash that squeezes women dry with threats and money, right?! You see us as trash, don’t you?”
To Comek, Azadine was a man who had been born handsome and overwhelmingly strong—someone blessed from birth.
How fun and comfortable must his life have been? Just thinking that made Comek’s guts twist until he couldn’t stand it.
“…….”
“What?”
“Well, come to think of it, women have been treating me pretty well lately.”
Ever since he took off his mask, following Camilla’s advice, Azadine had been personally experiencing the sudden spike in women’s favorability toward him.
Before, women threw garbage at him or fled in fear when they saw him. Now their reactions were completely different.
“Are you kidding me?! And that’s not my only problem! I don’t know what you’re thinking!”
“You don’t know?”
“If you have power, beating people up and chasing money and women is just basic human nature, isn’t it? What the hell do you even want?!”
“Virtue.”
“Bullshit! That’s obviously hypocrisy!”
Comek couldn’t believe that goodness, justice, virtue, or conscience truly existed in this world.
His mother was the kind of person who filled her own belly even when her child cried from hunger, and his father had been a pirate.
Having never experienced human warmth, the world to him was a realm of beasts.
A hell where nothing was given to you unless you seized it with strength.
So to him, Azadine was an incomprehensible thing—an alien monster he could never understand.
He had betrayed Azadine because he felt that if he didn’t eliminate a man like that, it would be dangerous.
Of course, it had all been in the palm of Azadine’s hand.
“So you’ve got the brain to understand hypocrisy. Fine—let’s call it that.”
“What?”
“My sincerity can never be proven by words alone. So it’s fine if you think it’s hypocrisy. I want to earn fame through hypocrisy and leave behind an immortal achievement in this world.”
“What?”
“It’s simple. No matter how delicious a feast is, there comes a moment when you’re so full that eating becomes a chore. Holding a beauty is the same. Someone who’s forever ruled by lust might not understand, but a person for whom satisfying lust isn’t difficult will inevitably pursue values beyond lust.”
“Ghk!”
Comek flew into a rage at Azadine’s arrogant words that stabbed at his inferiority complex. And precisely because of that, he understood what Azadine meant.
Someone pathetic like you, too busy stuffing your own belly, wouldn’t get it—but if you’re too full, you start pursuing values you can’t even imagine.
“If you live and die just like an animal, filling lust and leaving nothing behind, only to be forgotten—doesn’t that feel sad? Even you can imagine wanting your existence to have some value worth being remembered by others, can’t you?”
“…….”
Comek felt confused by Azadine’s words.
Why was this bastard explaining that to him?
No one would complain if a traitor were executed on the spot. So why was Azadine explaining himself?
“Are you going to spare me?”
“You contacted Chashan, didn’t you? Guide me to their hideout.”
“But….”
“I can get back faster than Sir Ject. You know that, don’t you?”
“…….”
He was right. If they returned quickly using the hippogriff, they could raid Chashan’s hideout before Sir Ject got back—before word spread that the accusation against Azadine had come to nothing.
‘But can I really do that? If Chashan is removed…’
Even Comek wasn’t stupid enough to miss what that meant: his usefulness would vanish.
By defeating the Chadra Five Ogres and bringing them under him, Azadine had become a magnate who absorbed every talent on the Chadra Plateau.
Compared to those talents, Comek was nothing but a worthless thief. And after betraying them, there was no way Rijen and Kallan would ever forgive him, even if Azadine did.
“Promise you won’t harm me. Then I’ll guide you.”
“It’s not my place to step in, but no. Azadine.”
Sedrin yawned as she spoke.
“If you forgive even traitors, the others will think it’s fine to betray you, too. Just kill him and pull the information out of his corpse. Isn’t that easier?”
“!!!”
Having seen Azadine’s necromancy up close, Sedrin had realized he was a formidable practitioner.
Extracting information from a corpse wasn’t difficult. It was a horrific necromancy that tortured a dead soul—but it would make a good example out of a traitor like this.
Comek seemed to know how terrifying it was, too, because he was trembling with fear.
“You called me a hypocrite—so can you trust my promise?”
“If you break it, your hypocrisy will be stained.”
“Will it? Everyone wants you punished. If I punish you, would my reputation really be stained?”
“Th-that’s….”
Comek was thrown off by Azadine’s words.
He was right. Even if Comek were a bystander, he’d still badmouth Azadine for sparing a traitor.
A stupid captain who didn’t care about hierarchy and handed out forgiveness on impulse. Even a hypocrite had to weigh what mattered!
…But now that he was the one to be punished, his knees went weak.
“Say you believe me.”
“What?”
“Say you believe I’ll keep my promise. Then I’ll let you live.”
“W-what are you—”
“You said I’m a hypocrite. And you said if I make a promise with you, I’ll keep it because I won’t want to break that hypocrisy… so then believe it. Even if it’s hypocrisy, believe I’ll keep my promise to the end. Then you’ll at least know one thing about me—that I won’t easily break this hypocrisy.”
“…….”
Comek couldn’t understand Azadine.
He mocked goodwill, justice, convictions—so he couldn’t understand people who moved for those reasons.
He still couldn’t understand Azadine now, but he could at least understand that there was something in Azadine he could trust.
“I… I believe you.”
“Good. Then I’ll spare you. Guide me to Chashan.”
“…….”
Behind them, Sedrin let out a sigh.
“Azadine. Why make promises with trash like this? How about valuing yourself a little more?”
“Is this really such a big deal that I need to value my body?”
“I’m telling you to be angry for your own sake. If you don’t, the people who love you will get angry in your place.”
“Is that you getting angry for me right now?”
Sedrin clicked her tongue.
“Yes, you idiot.”
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