Ch.209The Navigator’s City. Vecarium (3)

After finishing our tour of the famous sites, we entered a nearby cafeteria to grab a quick bite and ordered some snacks and drinks.

The elves ordered coffee, Simon ordered tea, and the dwarves, after contemplating what to drink, ordered parfaits.

Raisha and I ordered sweet iced chocolate, when suddenly Lucia initiated a conversation.

“Heeh~ Even Sir Knight drinks such sweet things?”

“What would you prefer I drink?”

“Well… bitter espresso? It’s more mature and cool.”

“I’m still underage.”

“Your height says otherwise now.”

“You’re still a kid among elves too, you know. A child criticizing another child has no impact.”

“Hmph. You act all cool in front of your subordinates, but show your true face to us, huh?”

“I only show my true face to my wife. You all are my comrades, so I can be straightforward with you.”

“Right. Being straightforward is why you smashed my face too.”

“So you thought you could casually ask the party leader’s wife if she enjoys living as an accomplice to a murderer and get away with it? That’s truly some straightforward thinking.”

“Eeeek…!”

Lucia trembled with frustration when she didn’t get the response she wanted.

This is why I don’t dismiss Lucia. She’s quite entertaining to keep around.

If she occasionally crosses the line, I can just break her face again.

“Besides, why should I spend my money on something bitter? When there’s something sweet available, why bother?”

I mocked her while stirring the whipped cream into my freshly served iced chocolate.

*Slurp*

“Wow. So sweet.”

“I hope you get diabetes!”

“Did you know? Aura users don’t get diabetes.”

“Argh!!”

As Lucia rose from her seat in frustration, Casia quickly snapped her sister’s neck.

Crack!

“Urk.”

She sat back down in her chair, and the customers in the cafeteria looked at us with terrified expressions.

Well… she’s an Aura user, so she won’t die.

If she does die, we can just resurrect her.

*

After quickly finishing our refreshments under the watchful eyes of the staff, we returned to the street. Lucia, who had somehow fixed her broken neck, still seemed to have something to say to me.

“By the way, boss. You grew up in a port city too, right?”

“Well… yes.”

I answered.

In truth, although I was born in Parcival, I had never set foot inland, so I wasn’t exactly in a position to boast about my hometown.

“So what’s in Parcival?”

“…Parcival people.”

Lucia glared at me with a vicious expression, clearly dissatisfied with my answer, but what could I do when I didn’t know much myself?

Killing people, working, eating, studying, sleeping… with such a repetitive daily life, I never had the opportunity to visit famous restaurants or tourist attractions.

“Forget it. It’s my fault for asking a murderer.”

“Have you never considered that speaking like that in front of a murderer might get you killed?”

“Even if you kill me, Simon would resurrect me.”

“…”

Damn. I have nothing to say because it’s true.

Damn you, Simon! You’re a sage who can even use resurrection magic?!

“Then… even if my master were to die tragically…!”

“Don’t use resurrection magic for such things! Young people these days…!”

As Raisha began to say something truly terrifying, fortunately, Simon helped her close her mouth before she could finish.

If Raisha were to bribe Simon and privatize resurrection magic, I’d be trapped between life and death, forever subject to her obsession.

That’s why I generously gave Simon a bonus of 10,000 gold coins.

A skilled spell caster was always worth a substantial investment.

“But I’m genuinely curious. How could you go so berserk? They say you killed tens of thousands. I couldn’t do that even if I tried.”

“Well… it’s easy. Poisoning, assassination, making tanghulu with spears and heads and displaying them at bases…”

“Tanghulu…?”

“Yes, real tanghulu. The mixture of sugar and blood attracts a lot of insects. Eventually, they’d have to clean it up, but they couldn’t do it sober. In the end, they’d either tremble inside their base until they got bitten by insects, contracted diseases and died, or they’d drink a bottle of alcohol, step outside, and get killed by me… one of the two.”

“…”

“Well… sometimes I had to infiltrate enemy territory and stir things up. I had methods for that too. I’d gut the strongest-looking one and strangle him with his own intestines. Whether they died from blood loss, shock, or suffocation, it was one of the three. Then the rest of the rabble would piss themselves and run away. I’d chase them down and kill them all, and that was that.”

“Uh… that…”

“And what else was there… Ah. Sometimes there were guys who acted all high and mighty, claiming to be nobles or rich. For them, I’d cut off the heads of their guards or knight escorts once a day and place them on their beds, and they loved it. A count, was it? I don’t remember clearly, but he hired a knight-errant as a guard, and I had a hard time killing him. I had to flay the bones and flesh of everyone from his family to his friends and send them as packages before he finally came at me.”

“That…”

“I was losing throughout the fight, but as a last resort, I threw his daughter’s and wife’s brooches and lockets, and his eyes went wild. I seized that opportunity and barely managed to kill him. It was really annoying. Even with his head cut off, his brain kept regenerating stubbornly. In the end, I had to frantically hack at the corpse for five hours before he finally died.”

“Th-that’s enough…”

“Still, the most troublesome wasn’t dealing with a large number of nobodies, but rather a small number of strong individuals. There are many on the streets who might not be able to use Aura but aren’t lacking in skill. Those guys were actually the most dangerous by my standards. They had similar skills to mine but were greater in number, making them hard to predict. So I assassinated them one by one. Since they had good intuition, poisons and hidden weapons didn’t work, so I’d just approach them pretending to be a kid and split their heads in half, which worked wonderfully.”

“…”

“As I kept killing, strangely, people kept picking fights with me. I thought it was because I had become famous, but that wasn’t it. I killed them before rumors could spread, so the void was filled with people who thought I was just a powerless kid. So they kept picking fights… and I kept killing… and repeating that cycle, I ended up killing around 30,000? 50,000? Anyway, roughly that many.”

I finished speaking and stared blankly at my companions who were looking at me as if I were a demon.

Why are they looking at me like that?

I’m not a bad person. I wasn’t a knight back then.

“Don’t you… feel any guilt?”

“Not particularly? What’s the big deal about killing people? It’s not like my acquaintances died, or my friends died. I’m not weak enough to feel heartache over annihilating opponents who decided to be hostile to me.”

“What about killing their families?”

“Well… it’s the same whether they’re women or men. If a man, his dependents are his possessions, so they deserve to die with him. If a woman, her husband deserves to die for failing to protect his woman. As for children… I killed them if they picked up weapons, spared them if they didn’t. But even when spared, they’d freeze or starve to death on the streets. It seemed too pitiful, so later I just killed them all.”

“What about their friends?”

“Similar reasoning. If they truly considered those deserving of death as friends, then dying alongside them would be the duty of friendship, so I killed them. If not, then it was just pretense, so it didn’t matter if they died. And if they had poor judgment in people, they died due to their own incompetence.”

“…You killed them to prevent a chain of revenge, right?”

“No?”

“Then why?”

“Why? I tell those who pick fights with me: if you don’t want your entire extended family to die, don’t mess with me. But strangely, people don’t give a damn. They all throw punches at me, saying I’m an arrogant brat. Not knowing their wrists would be the first to fly off.”

“…”

“And… chain of revenge, you said? Well, I killed some with that thought in mind, but most I killed simply because they stood in my way. Those who disrespect and despise me all deserve to die. Everyone has thought at least once, ‘Why hasn’t someone taken that guy down?’ I just acted instead of merely thinking.”

I have nothing to be guilty about in my conscience.

Whether the dead deserved to die or not is none of my concern.

Simply because they didn’t respect me, they and their families and acquaintances all had to die.

“You weren’t fighting battles; you were waging war.”

“Well, think what you will. Whether it’s a battle or a war, what difference does it make? Justification? Don’t make me laugh. Most wars start for trivial reasons. Jealousy, envy, greed… Compared to those, don’t you think my slaughter was more transparent?”

As I said that, I could see Simon’s expression harden.

The same went for the elf twins and the dwarf brothers.

“They say women like strong men… I hope Raisha doesn’t reject you.”

“Human children can be cruel because they’re pure. I can’t understand it, but I can accept it. After all, we’re in the same boat.”

It doesn’t seem like they’ve accepted it at all… but let’s leave it at that.

Touching the hearts and consciences of party members is not only impossible but also… too troublesome.

With that, we returned to the hotel and met a messenger who was waiting for me.