Sometimes, when I think about it, I realize that time does not flow fairly.
In boring daily life, it passes so quickly that you wonder if today was yesterday, but on a battlefield where survival is at stake, an instant can feel like eternity.
Five years have already passed since I was carried like luggage on Barkas's shoulder from that rainy village.
Perhaps that is why the memory of when the village was massacred by bandits remains more vividly in my mind now than the past five years.
My age, which I had lied about being five, has now become ten, and my once-pathetic body is now covered in fairly solid muscle.
Of course, the price was harsh.
With the single determination to survive, I repeatedly hammered training meant for adults into my body.
That's why the nickname attached to me was 'Cockroach Danel.'
A synthesis of a cockroach and a weed….
Even if you're tenacious, you can't be more tenacious than this.
However, that desperate tenacity did not betray me.
"Take just one hit!! You brat!!"
Shing—!
A heavy claymore rushed horizontally right in front of my eyes.
The sharp wind from the sword grazed my cheek, leaving a chilling sensation.
The one swinging was 'Jack,' the heavy armored swordsman of the 'Acies' Mercenary Corps.
The brute strength exploding from forearms the size of an adult male's thighs seemed ready to crush even a rock.
But to my eyes, the 'path' of that ignorant attack was all too clear.
'The movement of the right arm muscles is different. He's trying to use a feint.'
That is Jack's chronic habit.
The habit of putting strength into the opposite elbow to change direction when making a large swing.
Well, is it not a habit but obvious?
Of course, only I would be able to see it.
I slightly lowered my head to dodge the blade and simultaneously dug into his guard.
Thwack—!
"Keuhuk?!"
My fist struck precisely below Jack's solar plexus, hitting the diaphragm.
It was an extremely efficient counter that combined the centrifugal force of Jack's swinging body with my own recoil.
In the first place, for a ten-year-old to knock down a fully grown adult, a counter is the only answer.
Jack's giant frame fell flat on the floor, getting covered in dust.
"Ugh…. This monster-like brat…. How is this a ten-year-old…."
Jack clutched his chest and groaned.
The fellow mercenaries watching the training from the side clicked their tongues.
"Wow… Even Jack is down. Now who's left to beat Danel in a spar?"
"Shut up! Does this kid look normal to you guys?"
Leaving the mercenaries' whispers behind, I reached out my hand to Jack.
Jack grumbled but tried to take my hand to stand up. It was at that moment.
Grab—!
"Didn't see this coming, you brat!!"
Jack pinned me down with his weight and started tickling my armpits.
"Kyahahahaha!! Stop it, Jack!!"
"Say you surrender!"
"Surrender! I surrender!!"
"That's more like it. This makes it my win. I didn't lose. Because I didn't declare defeat either."
Damn it, I am extremely vulnerable to tickling.
"Wow… the personality."
"Childish to death."
Even while calling me a monster, they didn't stop teaching me techniques.
No, to be precise, they were addicted to 'testing' me.
Status window? Skill window? There's still nothing like that.
But I had something more certain than that.
At first, I thought I just had good eyes.
But I had another talent derived from my eyes.
The sensation of engraving a movement seen once into every single brain cell, copying the muscle movements to fit me, and forcibly transplanting them.
I named it 'Trace' on my own.
The mercenary members each had their own secret techniques.
Jack's heavy swordsmanship, Spio's invisible dagger throwing, Barkas's bone-crushing axe skills, Asher's precise archery.
At first, they mocked me for being young and showed off their skills.
Like adults boasting about toys to a child.
"Look, Danel. Daggers aren't thrown with the wrist. The power comes from the waist. And you snatch the trajectory with the sensation at your fingertips."
Spio acted all high and mighty, throwing a dagger into the air.
I saw the movement of his entire body the moment he released the dagger.
The rotation of the waist leading from the ankles, calves, and thighs, the degree of the arm swing, the muscles of the fingers.
And exactly one minute later.
Whoosh—! Thud—!
The dagger I threw hit the center of the target Spio had hit, striking exactly the tail of the blade he had thrown and embedding itself.
"Like this?"
Spio stared blankly at the target, then looked at me with an absurd expression.
"Crazy… Were you an assassin in your past life or something?"
Past life?
Well, I wasn't an assassin, but I have plenty of experience assassinating in the canyon inside a computer monitor.
They say there's magic and monsters in this world, but the laws of physics were still valid.
Acceleration, leverage, body weight, vital points of the human body.
Their techniques were things that fully utilized these elements.
The mercenaries' techniques shown by these bizarre 'eyes' were like a test paper with the answer key written on it for me.
Just then,
Barkas, who was sitting on a large rock in the corner of the training ground, called me.
"Danel. Come here."
With a beard even bushier than five years ago, he was still like a giant mountain.
He tapped the spot next to him.
"Have you finally surpassed Jack?"
I feigned modesty.
"If we fought to the death, I would lose."
"Right, you would. Still, Jack is a Silver-rank mercenary recognized around here."
Silver-rank mercenary.
The measure of martial power for mercenaries in this world.
Iron, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Mithril, Orichalcum.
"A little less than halfway…."
"Hmph, don't look down on it. In reality, it's right below the maximum rank ordinary people like us can reach."
The maximum rank a normal person can reach is Gold.
That was Captain Barkas's rank.
I slyly asked Barkas.
"Captain. Is learning Aura really impossible?"
To become a Mithril or Orichalcum-rank mercenary, one must know how to wield Aura.
And that was truly rare.
At my question, Barkas's eyes narrowed.
He tapped his smoking pipe against the rock and murmured low.
"Are you still on about that?"
"Because it's a pity. I could become stronger, so why shouldn't I learn it."
"Kid, in a world where bottom-feeders like us die without anyone knowing just by rolling our eyes the wrong way. Aura? Don't be ridiculous."
Barkas gripped my shoulder tight.
I could feel hot heat from his palm embedded with thick calluses.
"A caterpillar should eat pine needles. Don't be greedy for no reason. Even learning the Aura cultivation method is a felony."
'A caterpillar….'
Those words stuck deep in my chest.
"Just prepare yourself thoroughly for today. Tomorrow is your first request, isn't it."
At Barkas's words, my heart beat unpleasantly.
Is it tension? No, this is exhilaration.
"Is it finally actual combat?"
"Yeah. It seems the small territories near the border are trying to play land grab. It might look like playing house to call it a war, but the smell of blood will be much stronger than what you saw in the village. Scared?"
I slightly raised the corners of my mouth.
"No way."
Barkas laughed heartily and slapped my back hard.
Keuhuk, it was a shock strong enough to make a sound involuntarily, but I stood my ground.
'Finally….'
That night. I couldn't sleep, so I was swinging my sword alone in the training hall.
Whoosh—
Whoosh—
"Hah, hah…."
Flop–
As I stopped swinging the sword and lay down flat,
Only then did I see the cold moonlight settling down.
'It's pretty.'
Why is it that while I can see muscles or enemy movements well, things like this are hard to notice easily?
Over the past five years, I had copied dozens of techniques.
Swordsmanship, spearmanship, axe skills, hidden weapon throwing, and even bare-handed combat.
I was mixing them into one in my head.
A mercenary's fight is not elegant.
There is no honor either.
The one who wins is justice, and the one who survives is the king.
Blocking with a sword, stabbing with a dagger, and sometimes even biting.
To me, this wasn't so much a technique as….
It was just a struggle for survival.
'I need to become stronger. I need to learn real techniques. So that….'
I clenched my hand toward the sky.
Even a caterpillar can fly in the sky if it grows.
Even if it's just a humble pine moth, not a flashy butterfly.
Late-night sword swinging was a ritual to calm such impatience of mine.
Next morning.
The base of the Acies Mercenary Corps was busy with preparations for departure.
Even so, it was just a few small and flimsy buildings built next to a small village, but the sounds of horses neighing and the mercenaries' rough curses filled the air.
I put on leather armor tailored to fit my body perfectly and strapped a dagger pouch to my thigh.
And finally, I slung a small one-handed sword on my back.
This was the weapon that fit my hand best.
Barkas shouted from the front, riding a horse.
"Let's go! Acies!! We're coming back with our pockets full!!"
"Waaaaah—!!"
Amidst the mercenaries' shouts, I silently moved my steps.
Truly, it was the start of a damnably long journey.
It took five years to stand here. There was also a feeling of anticipation about how the things to come would change my life.
'I won't die on the first day, right.'
Now… let's start this.
It was the moment 'Cockroach Weed' took his first step.
"Gasp…!"
"Huuhk…!"
"Gasp!!"
"Hah…!"
Breaths were involuntarily drawn in irregular gasps due to the fear of death.
Barkas, who used to pat my head, was kneeling with his shoulder split in half,
Crunch—
And Jack's head, which was cracking a joke, had just been crushed into the mud under a horse's hoof.
Spio, who always talked about money, was also missing everything below his waist.
"Damn it…! Damn it!!"
Tears flowed endlessly.
I pretended not to, but it seems I had already grown quite fond of them.
Even amidst the tears pouring down like rain, my 'eyes' split the instant my comrades' lives were extinguished like flames into tens of thousands of frames.
And forcibly engraved them onto my retina like an indelible brand.
In the silence where everything had vanished,
Smelling the same fishy scent of metal as that day five years ago, unable to do anything, I was just blankly blinking my eyes.
The only difference from then was whether what flowed from my eyes was rain or tears.
'Just... why, why did it turn out like this?'
It was then.
"Hiiiiiing!!!"
Even the sound of an ordinary horse snorting felt like a hell-horse from hell screaming right now.
The cause of all this appeared with that sound.
'Knight.'
Just then, a faint voice carried on the wind could be heard.
"R... Run... Danel... R... Run away...."
It was Barkas, on the brink of death.
However,
Clank—
As if my whole body had frozen at the sound of metal armored footsteps, I didn't move an inch.
All I could do was glare at the bastard as if to chew him up.
Metal armor and helmet shining brilliantly in silver,
That bizarrely clean appearance, without a single bloodstain despite committing so much slaughter,
Felt too alien against this bloody hellscape.
His low voice resonating in the helmet quietly struck my ears.
"Was there still a survivor."
Grip—
I looked up at him and adjusted my grip on the sword with my small hand.