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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 14
Chapter Title: Corruption
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Please take good care of me.
[Warning: This chapter may contain some cruelty and sensuality.]
The expedition's journey proceeded smoothly for the next five days.
There were several more attacks from magic beasts, but aside from a few squires suffering minor scratches, there were no real casualties.
The most dangerous moment came when they were ambushed by a two-headed wolf shrouded in lightning-like energy across its entire body. Even that was handled without issue by a coordinated strike from three knights.
Thanks to that, two massive wolf heads were now added to the back of the cart.
As the journey neared its end, Arsen found himself passing through the same area where he had set out from the fortress for the first time.
The desperate, agonizing, fearful moments ahead of an unseen future.
The path he had carved out swinging the sword taken from the raiders showed no trace at all anymore.
"The fortress is finally in sight."
"Here?"
Arsen still couldn't even make out the faint outline of the fortress, but Palato spoke as if it were right before his eyes.
"It looks like no one's there. The walls are crumbling too. We could probably just go in."
Only after walking quite a bit further did the fortress come into view.
The charred and shattered remnants of the palisade evoked the image of a massive beast's corpse left after death.
A few crows perched on the debris, cawing out an ominous song.
Most common wild animals in this world had been pushed out by magic beasts in the survival competition, becoming rare sights, but some winged ones could still be spotted frequently.
Crows were one of them.
As they entered the fortress grounds, small cheers and sighs of relief rose from the squires and soldiers.
The knights felt the same, but for them, the outside air must have been even more uncomfortable, so it was a natural reaction.
"Now I can breathe easy!"
"Staying out there too long really wears you down."
Passing through the broken gate revealed more ruins of burned and collapsed buildings, just like the palisade.
There were no signs of bodies.
Rain and wind, insects and magic beasts had probably given them a funeral of sorts.
"It's been twenty years since I last came, and seeing the fortress like this weighs on my heart."
Palato said in a somber voice.
Surprised by his words, Arsen asked,
"Were you from Kratas Fortress?"
"No, there was a group migration to Kratas Fortress back then, and I was assigned as escort. I was still a squire at the time."
One thing Arsen had learned since arriving at the estate was that not accumulating mana in the body through physical training didn't mean certain death from inhaling external poison.
The dubious method he'd heard before—overcoming poison by eating a Sheep Horn Wolf's heart—was surprisingly close to the truth. More precisely, it involved drinking a decoction made by steeping the heart in water.
However, even drinking the decoction didn't allow ordinary people to operate freely outside. Combatants who could function properly had to carry semi-comatose civilians on carts, periodically trickling the solution into their mouths to keep them alive.
This method was used when relocating ordinary people between estates and fortresses—or vice versa—but it was labor-intensive and risky, so it wasn't done lightly.
Palato spoke in a low, melancholic voice.
"The people who migrated to the fortress back then... they're all gone now. Completely vanished."
Walking a bit further revealed the lord's mansion.
The entrance was smashed, but its framework remained unscathed, true to its status as a relic from the ancient magic era.
Palato called over his chief squire and gave orders.
"For now, the knights and chief squires will stay in the lord's mansion. The rest of the squires and soldiers will pitch tents outside and camp."
"Understood."
As Palato's chief squire relayed the command, the soldiers hurriedly unloaded and set up the tents from the cargo lizards.
Just as the knights and chief squires gathered to enter the lord's mansion, Zenovia called out to Palato.
"Sir Palato."
"What is it?"
"There's something inside the lord's mansion."
At Zenovia's words, the chief squires all reached for their swords in unison.
"Can you tell exactly what it is?"
"It's a person. Breathing sounds like a man... and he's extremely tense."
Palato furrowed his brow for a moment before issuing another order to his chief squire.
"Call a few squires to go in first and scout."
"Yes, Sir Palato."
Following Palato's command, a few squires entered the lord's mansion holding torches.
Moments later, a horrified scream echoed out.
It sounded like a young boy's voice.
Arsen recognized the face of the boy being dragged out, arms held by two squires, and called out his name without thinking.
"Raf Ram?"
"P-please spare me! Please... Ah, Arsen? Is that Arsen?"
"Do you know him?"
At Palato's question, Arsen nodded.
"He's my half-brother. I thought he was dead since he wasn't in the lord's mansion, but I never imagined he survived..."
Raf Ram's appearance as he was dragged out was horrific.
His eyes and cheeks were deeply sunken from starvation, and his gaunt body looked like nothing but bones and skin.
Scars and burn marks dotted his body.
The smug, relaxed expression he always wore was gone, replaced by the pitiful, trembling face of a drowned rat.
"Then he's Knight Lenoc's son. Release him for now."
At Palato's instruction, the two squires let go of his arms, and Raf Ram staggered before collapsing in place.
"What happened? I searched the entire lord's mansion before, so was there a hidden secret passage?"
Back then, Arsen had spent considerable time scouring the lord's mansion for anything that might aid survival.
The raiders had already smashed furniture and looted goods, leaving no suitable hiding spots inside.
Raf Ram shook his head lightly at his words.
"Th-that..."
Raf Ram hesitated in answering, glancing around desperately.
His frantic scheming was plain to see.
But that lasted only a moment. When Zenovia, arms crossed behind him, stomped her foot once, he jumped in fright and opened his mouth.
"I-I was hiding in the well. The eastern well."
"I was hiding there."
At Arsen's response, Raf Ram's face flushed with panic.
Now sweating profusely, anyone could tell something was off.
Then Entir stepped forward a few paces, grabbed Raf Ram by the collar, and yanked him up.
"Seeing you clumsily scheming, it's obvious."
Entir clamped Raf Ram's mouth with his large hand and pried his lips apart.
But when Raf Ram clenched his teeth desperately, Entir growled in a menacing voice.
"If you don't want your teeth smashed, open wide, you little shit."
Feeling the sincerity in that voice, Raf Ram finally opened his mouth in terror.
Entir forced Raf Ram's mouth wide with one hand, then shoved the other in to expose his tongue.
The root of Raf Ram's exposed tongue was pitch black.
"As expected, not some human kid, but a raider bastard!"
In the deathly silent lord's mansion, only Entir's mocking voice echoed.
Raiders existed.
Unlike ordinary people living under the blessings of purification in estates and fortresses, they survived in the wild filled with poison and magic beasts.
Even knights and squires would struggle to last years or decades outside—how could raiders manage it?
The origin of raiders stemmed from a primitive faith seeking power by drinking magic beast blood directly.
Drinking it a few times granted temporary resistance to external poison, and long-term consumption mutated the body, granting immunity to poison and weakening magic beasts' hostility toward humans.
While untrained magic beasts always attacked ordinary people on sight, mutated humans weren't attacked unless they blatantly invaded territory or struck first.
Of course, if there were only advantages, everyone would drink it.
Humans who drank magic beast blood gradually lost morality and empathy, becoming impulsive, violent, bloodthirsty aggressors.
They retained intelligence for conversation, but emotionally, they were no different from beasts.
They weren't devoid of emotion, but they couldn't feel or understand ordinary human sentiments like affection, trust, duty, or mercy.
Hunting in packs to kill, toy with, loot, and destroy the uncorrupted humans and their civilization was their nature.
Thus, those who drank magic beast blood were called raiders, becoming one of humanity's greatest threats in the wilds.
There were ways to identify those corrupted by magic beast blood, but the simplest and surest was one.
Check if the tongue root was blackened.
"Tell me honestly, Raf Ram. What happened."
At Palato's firm interrogation, Raf Ram hung his head.
Finally, in resignation, the story Raf Ram spilled was shocking.
After the fortress fell, Raf Ram was kidnapped along with some residents and taken to the raiders' lair.
Because one raider took a liking to his looks.
In that corrupted state from drinking magic beast blood, Raf Ram became a slave.
The fate of the fortress residents dragged to the lair wasn't even worthy of the word "miserable."
They had to craft usable items for the raiders, serve as human shields taking the brunt during magic beast hunts, and during rests, were abused regardless of gender.
Sometimes, they held "festivals," lighting fires to force slaves to walk over coals or dunk them in water for torture and amusement.
And under countless other sadistic acts too vile to speak of, the residents died one by one.
Even then, the raiders thriftily used the corpses of the dead.
Enduring pain, humiliation, and terror, Raf Ram chanced upon an opportunity and escaped the lair.
During a magic beast hunt where he was bait, chaos from accidentally agitating another beast left him straggled behind.
Lost and unsure of his location, he wandered for days before barely making it back to the fortress.
Now just a ruin with no one left.
'Damn it.'
For Arsen, this wasn't a story he could listen to with detached ease.
If he'd been caught in the barn, discovered hiding in the well, frozen in fear and subdued without fighting, captured by raiders while fleeing through the forest to the estate...
If the dice had rolled wrong just once, Arsen could have ended up like Raf Ram—or worse.
"Those bastards."
He heard Zenovia mutter softly beside him.
Looking around, not just her, but everyone else wore deeply uncomfortable expressions.
Only Entir maintained a blank face, perhaps even faintly amused.
"...For food, I ate flowers or grass I found in the forest."
Anyone could see that diet hadn't done wonders for his health.
His bone-rack body wouldn't surprise anyone if he dropped dead tomorrow.
"Where's the raiders' lair?"
"I'm not sure exactly, but if you go that way from here for a good while, there's a valley. There's a small cave inside where they live."
"Hm. That's huge for a raider band. Any Ma-in?"
"...Yes."
"Just one?"
Palato bombarded Raf Ram with endless questions, jotting down every detail on suede paper.
Enemy location, size, tendencies, behavior patterns—even seemingly useless info like individual raider names, all recorded.
When Raf Ram's focus waned under the obsessive questioning, Palato slyly repeated some earlier questions to verify truthfulness.
After investing several dozen minutes, Raf Ram now looked utterly exhausted.
"Good. We've got all the info needed for the attack... Now, time to decide your fate."
Palato's eyes gleamed coldly.
A look utterly different from when facing Arsen, the other fellow knights, or the civilians under protection.
The face he showed only to squires who must risk their lives in obedience or to enemies.
"Will you take your life honorably, or would you prefer to die by another's hand?"
Raf Ram's face twisted in terror.