"Kill them? Should we? They reek."
At Rem's words, Dunbakel suddenly cut in. Her training in the East and the various experiences she had gained there had sharpened her sense of smell into something beyond intuition, a new form of perception altogether. She could scent malice. It was similar to sensing momentum, but she recognized it in the form of odors.
The stench coming off the three was so strong it was giving her a headache.
"Why does it smell worse than the monsters of the East?"
Do they not wash? But here, washing didn't mean pouring water over your body.
"What's the point of washing your body? You must wash your heart."
There were many eccentrics in the East. Among them was one who had sworn never to kill a human in his life, fighting only monsters. They said he was a priest serving the god beneath the earth.
He once said that only by cleansing the heart could one truly be clean. She didn't know how, but one thing was certain.
"Deep-sea stench."
That was what she smelled from them.
"Malice, twisted desire, cravings knotted beyond repair."
There were several similar odors, alike but not mingled. Like the smell of half-siblings with the same father but different mothers.
"Though that's a strange way to put it."
Rather than trying to describe the smell she caught, Dunbakel simply voiced her will.
"Not killing them?"
She asked again. They were filth that needed to be removed. That was her judgment. Had this been the East, she would already have struck first.
But this was the Border Guard. Here, someone else would act before she did. More than that, when she had almost lashed out earlier without realizing it, Rem had quietly held her back. And hadn't he murmured then as well:
"You trying to win yourself the title of Eastern Butcher?"
Restrain yourself. Control yourself.
Rem's gray eyes had spoken those words. Dunbakel had heard a similar reproach once from Anu.
"Overcoming fear doesn't mean it's all over. Beastmen, if anything, cling harder than a Frog Without self-control, you can't rise higher."
That was what Anu had said once, after chewing and spitting out a hunk of monster meat he had steamed. The retainers at his side had laughed uproariously.
At the time, Dunbakel couldn't develop restraint. Life in the East was essentially neglect. You fought on your own, ate on your own, did your tasks on your own. Without that, an Eastern expedition couldn't last.
Always wandering to explore new places, they barely had anything you could call a proper city outside the central camp. The only advantage was that monster raids were rare.
But the land was harsh. Wastelands stretched with not a blade of grass. Not desert, but a place where you could survive only near lakes—an extreme environment.
Children born in the East had to carry their own weight from a young age. They had to forage for food, and if they couldn't prove their worth, survival was hard.
Anu would often gather those children and send them to the continent. His visit to see Enkrid and the letters he kept sending were part of that.
"He is generous."
Anu was that way. He opened paths for those who couldn't settle on his land, guiding them toward the Border Guard so they could make a living.
At any rate, Dunbakel had grown up in that neglect, so she never built restraint.
"What? Should I pluck an eyeball? Golden eyes would fetch a good price from King Eyeball."
But here there was Rem, the embodiment of restraint. This bastard always butted in, poked his nose into everything, and had a sharp mind.
The same Rem who stopped her now turned his gaze to Enkrid. Enkrid said nothing. As always. He only stared forward indifferently. Yet Rem wasn't wondering why.
"Why let them be?"
Curiosity? Perhaps.
Though he didn't smell like Dunbakel's scents, Rem's senses had their own sharp edge.
"Sinister. Ominous."
Not because of curses. In Western terms, they were like "a day without sunrise." Like thunderclouds darkening the sky.
Today's sky was unusually clear, the sunlight warm, and yet the air around them was the opposite.
"And still, I'm curious too."
That was where the enemy had struck precisely. Talk of immortality aside, their very existence was grating. The kind of grating he wasn't used to.
"In Eastern beast terms, they stink to high heaven."
More than anything, he had smelled this before. The stench of the Demon Realm.
He had caught something similar from Balrog. With Balrog it was acrid, like burning smoke, but with these it was the rank stench of rotting fish.
Of course, Rem wasn't literally smelling it. His intuition, honed by sorcerous power, told him so.
They were utterly corrupt.
It was as if one of the Eight Gods was saying it was his turn. A divine general who loathed and despised the wicked whispered that he would lend his power.
Rem suppressed it, leaning on one leg with a swagger, shaking his shoulders, hefting his axe onto his shoulder.
"Amusing bastards, eh? Very amusing."
Rem muttered. As often happened when people looked at him, even the three dubious visitors, whether guest or intruder, felt a sense of dread.
That was a man who might swing his axe into their skulls at any moment. More dangerous than the brute who had swung a sword at them earlier.
The black-hatted mage lowered his arms. If things went badly, he'd have to unleash spells to prove his power against them.
And then, unexpectedly, someone else shouted.
"Anything!"
Was it because he sensed the mood turning strange? Or because he judged he couldn't just be dragged along like this? Likely both.
The man with the fat belly shouted, his jowls shaking.
He was a merchant. A born trader who could not allow himself to be swept up and forced to sell his wares cheap. He had carved out a distinguished record in his field. Otherwise, he wouldn't have been chosen as an envoy to deliver offers.
His instincts as a trader screamed at him now, so he spoke up again.
Enkrid's gaze turned his way. It looked indifferent, but if his eyes moved, it was because he was interested.
His voice, not as commanding as Crang's, still had a persuasive power that drew surrounding attention.
"There's no need to decide in one go. When you buy something valuable, shouldn't you weigh what's good and what profit you'll take?"
The man who'd been squashed to one side by the mood suddenly found strength in his voice. Rather than being swept along, he created a new current. Of course, it was the kind of current Rem could split in two with a single axe stroke—into blood, brain matter, and shattered bone. Even so, the merchant showed courage. If he were the sort who couldn't even say his piece, he'd have had no reason to come this far.
"That is, frankly, a very good point."
And someone stepped into the training ground to answer that point. A man with glossy brown hair; at his side came his brown-skinned bodyguard and lover; and right behind them, Abnaier—the man who, though not a defector, worked beyond even "his best."
Sunlight poured over them. Abnaier silently took the three into his eyes and met each gaze in turn, and inwardly judged them not to be trifles. It was his habit to gauge an opponent's momentum. Of course, compared to the man ahead named Enkrid, the three's presence was lacking.
"Balrog Slayer."
From what he'd heard through Kraiss, Abnaier's heart had pounded for days. Suppress the Demon Realm, shore up the nation's inner strength, establish the foundation. With roots thus hardened, the country would hold the advantage in future fights with the Demon Realm and would not be shaken by outside powers, empire or otherwise. That was the country Abnaier dreamed of. What lay at the core of that dream?
"Knights."
Or mages. More precisely, force outside the standard—an elite, select few. And not just any knight or mage, but those who fight to the end and prove themselves; who, after clearing out a few colonies, still keep moving, still act.
Fight the Demon of Strife? Win? And come back? He had never even imagined such a thing—and the man who'd done it stood before him. That was why, even though the three ahead gave off a peculiar pressure, he remained unruffled.
Did Kraiss feel the same? Abnaier couldn't be sure. What Kraiss had said upon hearing that Balrog was dead stuck with him like a brand:
"Okay, Ab—say you own a big house. The house next door catches fire. Wouldn't you be curious who lit it? If not that, wouldn't you at least try to find out why it burned? Now, let's say you happen to find the one who struck the match."
"And if I do?"
"What are you going to do with him?"
He might set fire to my house. That possibility stood beside them. Abnaier was a designer of traps upon the battlefield, a mind that reached beyond the ordinary into the exceptional.
"If it were me, I'd have him burn the enemy who threatens my house."
"Sure. Or you could erase the variable entirely. Right?"
Abnaier couldn't guess how far Kraiss's imagination reached. "A house and a fire." He understood that Enkrid was the one who lit it, but beyond that he couldn't tell what Kraiss meant.
Kraiss's voice shattered his drifting thoughts.
"Curious bunch. One of them is a mage, right?"
Kraiss was no knight, not even quasi-knight level, but his perception soared past that of ordinary folk. From attire and atmosphere alone, he took the measure of a foe.
The wide-brimmed hat turned toward Kraiss. Another what-now stare. He'd had his share of absurdities on the way here, and yet he sensed that the big-eyed man was, of all of them, the one with whom rational, proper conversation was possible.
"Right."
Esther answered. In the meantime, the man with the greatsword awkwardly pushed himself upright. He no longer had the nerve to charge. Having been broken in a single blow, there was nothing to say. In a proper fight he still had means to resist, but he had come as an envoy. He could not defy his master's will.
"The shock remains."
Above all, that body-shot had torn part of his innards. A normal man might have died from such a blow. The strike to his core would have been felt by the master he served as well. Perhaps thanks to that, his master's intent—which had been treading the line—now tilted to one side. The scales that had held removal and persuasion tipped. Not toward removal, but the other way.
"Entice him—no matter what."
The other self within him wordlessly delivered his master's will. The greatsword man stood, quietly sheathed his blade. The merchant opened his mouth.
"May I introduce myself formally?"
He looked around the gathering as he spoke, his movements and manner entirely natural—he was used to this. He'd dealt with people a great deal, whether at a stall or on the road. He was a man in charge of one branch of the Rengadis Caravan, proven not by force but by other means.
"I am here at the summons of the master of the Maxim Spells and a devotee of Gold."
He squared his chest as he spoke, and at the same time openly watched everyone's faces—no furtive peeking, but a frank, sweeping gaze. He meant to see whether they understood what he'd said and, if so, how they would react.
The beastman still looked like he wanted to beat someone senseless; the barbarian's eyes said, "And what the hell is that supposed to be?" Enkrid was impassive, and the mage called Esther was murmuring, "People, magic, people, magic," repeating the words under her breath.
At least the brown-haired man and the green-haired man behind him looked like they could be spoken with; a light curiosity rose in their eyes, and the merchant's gaze moved to them. If you aim for longevity in trade, you fire that first shot—go for the bystanders.
"Work the periphery first."
Especially that brown-haired one—at a glance, he felt similar to himself: the sort to ignore conventional wisdom if profit could be taken. In that case, talk would be possible. At the very least, he could convey his master's will. That was why he'd come in person, wasn't it?
"Are you familiar with the Demon Realm?"
The merchant asked. Information is an invisible commodity, and the basics of trade are to offer a piece of your goods to entice the other party. By producing what the other did not know, he raised his own value. The other two settled into the role of spectators. In pure speaking skill, this fellow was the best of them, so let him talk—though if he tried any tricks, they'd shut him down at once. The merchant had no force, but the other two did, and that gave them a certain leisure.
"In the Demon Realm there are many whom you call demons."
"Demon" wasn't an insult, but it wasn't a title of respect, either. The inhabitants of the Demon Realm called themselves differently, but there was no need to get into that now. The merchant knew how to choose his words.
"The Burning Crow, the Promiser of Plenty, the Heat-Bearing Companion, the Pure-White Destroyer, the Outcast of Distrust."
He paused at the right moment, then continued.
"Judging from your faces, all of them are new to you. They are all names for what you would call demons."