Ch.89Combat Pilgrim (4)

Hans Schleger, a man with a name as common and unremarkable as they come in the Holy Empire… was a “mercenary,” a profession often despised as “sword fodder.”

While adventurers, a similar profession, enjoyed relatively better treatment due to certain standards they maintained…

Mercenary work was a profession that accepted “anyone” without qualification requirements as long as they had a strong body—even criminals could join.

Therefore, it might have been inevitable fate for Hans, who had learned no skills by the age of 16 and had caused trouble due to his unfortunate family background, resulting in his rejection from regular adventurer recruitment.

Adventurers and mercenaries. While both sell their combat abilities as a kind of day labor, there’s no doubt that adventurers hold a superior social position and better reputation.

If adventurers primarily take on legitimate requests specializing in monster (hostile life forms) subjugation, mercenaries mostly handle various shady requests centered around combat against other humans.

Furthermore, adventurers have a worldwide unified guild system with proper administration and transferable career records, maintaining some quality control. Mercenaries, on the other hand, are truly lawless—no joke, they’re essentially thugs with badges.

It can be stated unequivocally that mercenaries of this era are a collection of rock-bottom lives who couldn’t even become day laborers or adventurers.

Despite mercenaries being looked down upon for these reasons, Hans steadily built his own position.

After surviving tenaciously through several regional mercenary groups and building experience, he joined an elite mercenary corps used by the Prince-Elector as a quasi-regular army and even awakened as an Aura user.

At this level, he could have gathered connections to establish a startup-like mercenary group, or even laundered his identity to join a knightly order.

He could have been knighted, formed a vassal contract with a nation to receive a small estate as territory, or even established his own village in some undeveloped land and strutted around as a lord.

The overwhelming spec of being an Aura awakener alone was enough to elevate one’s position. The common assessment that awakening meant a successful life wasn’t far from the truth.

However… Hans Schleger, a man who had spent nearly half his life on battlefields, had long since distanced himself from normal thinking patterns.

Having been continuously treated as society’s garbage throughout his mercenary life, his pride was wounded… or perhaps scarred.

In any case, as a result of some kind of scratch etched into his heart, he developed a complex about his low status and began to crave social success.

Of course, in a normal situation, he might have sought “success” by receiving knighthood somewhere—becoming a noble, albeit with a non-hereditary title—or by improving his own specs to proudly return to his hometown.

But… the thought process of this unhinged mercenary ran on a completely different track from ordinary people.

While the common desire might be to rise to a high social position or “succeed” to gain recognition from the public, this guy, surprisingly, was a super-lunatic who just wanted to have power to lord over others.

In short, he was someone who sought to satisfy his twisted preferences by using his position to oppress others. What could such a person possibly achieve by advancing through normal means?

Therefore, the method Hans chose was impersonating an Inquisitor.

This act was essentially the behavior of a madman guaranteed a place in hell after death, but how could that possibly deter the mind of a deranged dopamine-addicted lunatic?

He even went so far as to gather battle pilgrims after hearing rumors that some Inquisitors “requisitioned” them as attendants, and planned to target rural territories or villages located in remote areas with little outside contact.

Thus, he moved according to some unique thought process inconceivable to ordinary people… but he couldn’t possibly have predicted this situation.

‘…Why, why?’

Of all places, in a village in the Frankish Kingdom where he had intended to “enjoy himself” as he had done many times before, who would have thought that an official priest and a proper knight would suddenly appear?

In an era where even traveling to a neighboring village was life-threatening, despite the active exchanges between countries in the Western Continent, foreign countries in this age had a sense of distance akin to “different worlds” by modern standards.

This incident occurred due to his inevitable ignorance about the circumstances of a foreign country, let alone a single baronial territory. But Hans, who suddenly found himself in conflict with these people, couldn’t afford to worry about such trivial matters.

‘…Win and run!’

His only thought was to somehow defeat the knight before his eyes, abandon these battle pilgrims, steal a horse if possible, and flee.

Of course, his plan was predicated on defeating the knight before him, and Hans actually had considerable experience in such situations.

-…Shing.

Facing a knight wielding a massive zweihander made of white bone, he drew a parrying dagger and an enchanted pistol.

In normal circumstances, “personal firearms” like pistols or rifles are considered weapons ineffective against mid-tier knights in full armor.

The combination of Aura and full plate armor provides defense that cannot be penetrated by personal firearms of this era—to the extent that even shots aimed precisely at the eyes might not penetrate.

However, mid-tier firearms like those used by Hans were an exception.

Just as with arrows, there are ways to enhance the power of firearms with Aura, which is why firearms used by mid-tier fighters are considered effective even against other mid-tier opponents.

Of course, even though they are effective, the difficulty of reloading means such firearms are usually treated as harassment tools rather than primary weapons…

Hans had overcome this drawback by enchanting his firearm.

His flintlock pistol, which normally would require firing one shot at a time, could be reloaded in just 1-2 seconds, and the cooling magic applied to prevent barrel overheating perfectly compensated for the problems that arise during rapid fire.

Additionally, the barrel had “rifling” carved inside to increase power, the bullets used were nearly conical in shape rather than ordinary spheres, and even the gunpowder was alchemical.

Except for the terrible efficiency of burning through one silver coin per shot, Hans held a perfect weapon, which he now aimed at the knight and began firing wildly.

-Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang—!!!

The gunshots tore through the air in all directions as the firearm spewed thunder, and pink smoke from the alchemical gunpowder flowed from the muzzle.

A knight from the frontier (in his opinion), and from the underdeveloped (also his opinion) Frankish Kingdom where firearms were not yet widely distributed, couldn’t possibly have anticipated such a barrage.

With this typical Imperial mindset, he maintained a relaxed demeanor, but…

Unfortunately, there was one thing he had overlooked, or more likely, hadn’t even considered possible.

Namely, that the knight’s “contents” were a reincarnator who had lived in a unique civilization incomparably different from the current era.

While an ordinary knight might have ignored the gun and gotten hit, this one was an exception, with the danger of firearms imprinted in his mind thanks to his past life memories.

The moment he saw the gun barrel pointed at him, he tilted his blade to block it, and then suddenly seemed to pull something like a mass of magical power from his body.

‘Wh-what…?!’

Hans was shocked to see someone who appeared to be just an ordinary knight using what seemed to be magic, but his shock was only beginning.

-Kuung…!!

With a sound both heavy and somehow floating, a monster appeared—a magical beast formed of black smoke that the mercenary Hans could never forget.

“B-basilisk…!!”

The very creature that had destroyed the first mercenary group Hans had joined was now watching him in this worst-case scenario, taking the form of a nightmare.

And…

-Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang—!!!

He fired bullets into the mysterious basilisk form made of undulating black shadows, but the basilisk calmly absorbed them while staring at Hans.

In reality, it was simply taking the hits one-sidedly with parts of its form dissolving, but from outward appearances, it seemed unaffected by the bullets—which was reality enough.

Therefore, Hans gritted his teeth and tried to face this irresistible enemy (the basilisk), when he suddenly realized he had long since lost track of the knight he had originally been facing…

“…Tch.”

But it was already too late.

-Thwack!

With a dull impact sound, Hans felt tremendous pain as if his head was being split open and collapsed to the ground. Yet, still maintaining some consciousness, he tried to move his body to aim his pistol when—

[—Don’t move.]

With an incantation, the chilling and fearsome magical power emanating from those eyes—those cold and frightening eyes—wrapped around Hans’s body and froze him in place.

The petrification curse, which he could have easily deflected with Aura circulation under normal circumstances, was virtually impossible to resist with a clouded consciousness and a cracked skull, especially against a curse empowered by a massive infusion of magical power and an incantation…

And so, the fake Inquisitor Hans Schleger was subdued, the surface of his skin petrified.