Chapter 52

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A headless man stood with his head tucked under his left arm. Ricard was looking at him from behind.

The man slowly turned to face him. It was none other than Steiner.

The head, severed from where it belonged, opened its mouth and spoke as though it were still alive.

"What difference is there between you and me?"

"..."

"You're far worse. Compared to you, I'm nothing more than the Demon King's lackey. Aren't I?"

"..."

"I simply never had those things. A happy family. Decent friends. God, the world, never allowed me those things. Is that my fault?"

"..."

Ricard wanted to open his mouth and say something, but the words would not come. The frustration was driving him mad.

Steiner snorted, then offered a final remark before walking away into the abyss.

"Life is suffering, and reality is hell, my friend. I understand what that means."

Ricard wanted to run after Steiner, grab him, and shout that they were different. But his limbs would not move, and the words remained trapped in his throat.

Straining desperately in frustration, he shot upright with a scream, waking from the nightmare.

But the moment he awoke, he felt someone resting their head against his chest.

"Aaagh!"

"Ah! You startled me!"

Ricard moved on reflex before he knew what he was doing. He grabbed the unidentified person's hair and jerked their head back, drawing the dagger beside his pillow and thrusting it forward.

No—the dagger's point stopped just beneath Marie's chin.

Ricard stared at Marie, his eyes wide with shock. Her head tilted back, she was staring at him with equally startled eyes.

Their faces were close enough to kiss. Each could feel the other's startled breaths.

Ricard flinched, hastily releasing her hair and withdrawing the dagger.

"S-sorry."

"I-it's all right."

Collecting himself, Ricard looked around. They were inside a tent, and Boribori was fast asleep beneath a blanket in one corner. Two of his fingers were swathed in bandages.

A wet towel lay on the ground nearby. It seemed to have been resting on Ricard's forehead.

"You were groaning, so I thought you might have a fever..."

Marie smoothed her hair as she spoke.

"I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. I had a bad dream. I've never done that before. Sorry."

"..."

An awkward silence settled over them. Ricard touched his forehead for no particular reason, then picked up the wet towel.

"Thank you."

"It's nothing. We're just helping each other."

"Did you get any sleep?"

"Yes..."

"You couldn't sleep properly because of me."

"No, that's not..."

Still somewhat dazed, Ricard suddenly realized that the front of his clothes was open. Wait, hadn't someone been resting their head against his chest?

"I! I! Your heart—I needed to listen to your heartbeat. That's what you do with patients."

Marie sounded flustered.

Ricard tilted his head. Was that really a thing?

"Really? Well, thanks. Get some sleep. I think I'm wide awake now."

"I-I've slept enough too. I'm fine."

Ricard still felt both apologetic and grateful. Since he was fully awake anyway, he fastened his clothes and stepped outside the tent. Dawn was already breaking.

Several members of the Widowmakers clan were standing watch. Volka and Delphi were sleeping in each other's arms in a tent that did not even have an entrance flap.

Surprisingly, none of their allies had died the previous night. Enemy losses were smaller than expected, too. A cursory survey of the heights revealed only a dozen or so bodies.

Even among those, most had died from being shoved or mistakenly stabbed or cut down by their own side. One man had tumbled down the heights and smashed his head against a rock.

The flames that had burned all night were now sending up cooling wisps of smoke. Yet surprisingly, the enemies had not fled far. They were still sleeping or loitering around Kaitz.

It was baffling. Ordinary soldiers would have run all the way home, but perhaps because these were adventurers, they did not seem particularly shaken by the defeat.

In fact, most of them considered it the guild's defeat, not their own. That was how lower-grade adventurers thought.

Only adventurers of at least middle grade had positions that were directly affected by whether their guild prospered or fell.

As the sky grew brighter, Ricard turned to look toward the eastern horizon.

The sun had yet to appear, but it was already making its presence felt in a bluish glow from beneath the distant horizon.

Ricard sat down to wait for the sunrise. Marie sat beside him, looking in the same direction.

Then he felt something settle lightly against his shoulder.

"If you're going to lean on me, make yourself comfortable. You look exhausted."

"H-huh? I-is that all right?"

"What's the point of asking when you're already doing it?"

With an amused chuckle, Ricard gently slipped an arm around Marie's waist and drew her closer.

She nearly froze in surprise, but he guided her head onto his shoulder. Marie was afraid he would hear her pounding heart.

Ricard watched the sun rise in silence. It rose and set every day, yet the grandeur of the sight stirred something beyond words.

The sun peeked over the horizon, then slowly climbed, reaching across the whole world with fingers of light in an instant. Who could possibly imitate such a thing?

Humbled despite himself, Ricard watched the sunrise with Marie.

"Riki."

"Hmm?"

"Do you... Never mind."

"What is it?"

"Just that it's nice being together."

"I feel the same."

The words they exchanged were neither flippant nor weighty. Yet their feelings seemed slightly at odds. Marie sensed that subtle difference. And so she thought that things were fine just as they were.

As time passed, people began waking one by one. Reinhart started his morning by pissing over the rocky cliff. Having drunk so much, he kept up an unbroken stream for quite some time.

"Ahh, that's a relief."

Volka, Delphi, and finally Boribori woke, and the five of them lit a campfire and gathered around it for breakfast. As always, the meal consisted of potatoes, sweet potatoes, smoked ham, and the like.

"Man, last night felt good. Honestly, I was a little scared, you know? But they weren't much after all."

Volka handed Delphi a sweet potato before taking his own. Ricard, however, shook his head.

"I don't think this is going to work."

"Huh? Why? Didn't you say we could manage?"

"The enemy isn't running away like I expected. That doesn't bode well in the long run."

"Can't we fight like we did yesterday?"

"No. That's just leaving the fight to luck. It wasn't planned. We can't just keep reacting to things as they happen. It might turn out well once or twice. But keep doing it, and one mistake will get us all killed."

With two poorly controlled groups fighting each other, even Ricard could not predict what would happen.

He interpreted and processed the situation through the experience of his previous life, but he did not let that experience bind him. This was certainly his first guild war, too, and he was still observing it.

For a start, no one knew what unexpected situation might arise. There were no proper commanders, and even if there were, the adventurers wouldn't fucking listen. There really was no telling what might happen.

That meant they had to make decisions and act to seize whatever advantages they could as each situation unfolded. But if things continued this way, the smaller side would ultimately be at a disadvantage.

"Then what do we do? I don't think we can reason with that pig."

Volka pointed toward the defensive tower. Ricard sighed through his nose before answering.

"We should be all right for a while. The enemy took a beating too. But in the long run, we'll need support from headquarters. Or at least we need to know how things are going on their end."

Ricard wanted to understand the overall picture, but for now he had no way of knowing how the war was progressing, or whether they truly had no allies at all.

"Who should go?"

"You're the one who knows where headquarters is, Volka. Go with Delphi."

"Will you be all right?"

One might wonder how much difference losing two people could make to their fighting strength, but it was greater than expected. Their numbers were already small, and the Viola clan had only five members. On top of that, Boribori had injured his fingers.

"Bori, are you all right?"

Ricard looked at Boribori's fingers as he asked.

"Yeah."

"Don't just say it. Are you really all right?"

"I used a potion. Feels like a waste, though."

"Even so, don't do anything careless with those fingers for three days."

"All right."

Ricard turned back to Volka.

"Let's do this. We'll watch how things go for a few days, and if it looks safe enough, you two can head to headquarters."

"That sounds good."

With that, the Viola clan settled on a course of action. It would have been nice to coordinate with the Widowmakers as well, but there was some doubt whether they could be reasoned with.

When Ricard approached Reinhart and asked what he intended to do, the man seemed hesitant rather than speaking in his usual booming manner. Perhaps it was because he had seen Ricard the day before.

"I'm just going to guard this place..."

"But you charged out recklessly yesterday."

"That was because those bastards fought dirty."

"Then who was supposed to guard the tower?"

"We held it in the end, didn't we?"

Ricard was speechless. Wow. How did that man's mind work?

Still, he had learned one thing for certain: the very idea that he could make adventurers do as he wished was mistaken. Adventurers were not soldiers, and guilds and clans were not armies.

In the end, the Viola clan had no choice but to follow its own policy and coordinate with the Widowmakers as best it could on a case-by-case basis.

Ricard surveyed the enemy from the heights. They showed no signs of being a defeated force. And they were just as prone to acting independently.

Several groups seemed to be withdrawing from the war altogether, while others appeared to be going in search of food.

Of the roughly eighty people, around forty split off and headed elsewhere.

Some people who appeared to be clan leaders or higher had gathered for a discussion, but judging by their dismissive waves and shaking heads, they were having considerable trouble reaching an agreement too.

Around noon, a group suddenly came up the heights. They were not following orders; they were acting entirely on their own.

"Hey! Red Cloak Riki! Let's fight!"

A lanky, towering man with a bare torso shouted with a two-handed sword resting against his shoulder.

In sword classifications, a "two-handed sword" referred to a weapon even larger than a greatsword. The sword Ricard had used in his previous life was a greatsword.

From pommel to point, his opponent's sword was longer than Ricard was tall. It certainly looked intimidating.

But Ricard sprang forward as though he had been waiting for this. In truth, he was just as guilty of acting on his own.

He was stepping forward, however, because he judged that killing a capable enemy whenever he had a clear opportunity outside the chaos of battle would help them. He was not dueling to show off or prove himself.

Unlike the day before, his friends and the Widowmakers followed him down. They searched their surroundings thoroughly, keeping watch for anyone who might attempt another ambush.

Perhaps understanding the reason for this, the enemies chose one of the relatively flat stretches of the heights as the dueling ground.

Perhaps hoping to intimidate him, Ricard's opponent spread his long arms wide, making himself look even taller.

"I am Folk 'Iron Horn' of Tanburg!"

Ricard was not about to be cowed by that. He simply drew his sword and tossed the scabbard toward his allies.

"Riki. Viola clan."

And so the duel began. The man wielding the greatsword swung it in broad, whistling circles, carefully gauging the distance.

Holding his longsword in one hand with the flat resting against his shoulder, Ricard adopted no particular stance. He simply began walking calmly around Folk.

He circled along the outside, subtly closing the distance. His opponent was no ordinary fighter: he turned his circling sword into a powerful swing at Ricard.

WHOOOSH!

The sword was so large that its passage stirred a palpable gust. Its reach was beyond imagination, and its destructive power tremendous.

But Ricard bent so low that his torso nearly touched the ground and drove toward his opponent instead. His sword still rested against one shoulder, while his free hand braced against the ground.

Folk knew his attack had missed. With his considerable reach, he retreated quickly enough in his own way. But when Ricard kept relentlessly closing in, he lashed out with one huge foot.

At that moment, Ricard planted his foot and swung hard.

WHOOSH!

THWACK!

Folk's leg was severed at the knee. His eyes squeezed shut.

His body tipped sideways, but before his head could hit the ground—before he could even let out a scream—his neck was severed.

The instant Ricard cut through the leg, he had brought his sword upward. How else could one describe it? His skill with a sword was uncanny.

SWISH!

THWACK!

THUD.

The huge man collapsed, missing a leg and his head, blood pumping from his wounds. Ricard rested his sword against his shoulder again and surveyed the enemy. His breathing had not even quickened; each breath in and out was steady.

Surprisingly, almost no one looked frightened. Most wore expressions of appreciation, as though they had just seen something worth applauding. Interesting to see them in daylight.

Just as nobles had no concept of dying for their country, adventurers cared little whether other people lived or died unless they belonged to the same clan. They simply watched with genuine admiration and interest.

A select few, however, studied Ricard closely, their eyes gleaming.

Folk's companions approached to recover his body.

Ricard paced around, looking over the enemy as though asking whether anyone else wanted to challenge him. Since no one seemed ready to step forward yet, he headed back up to the tower.

It was not until the next day that someone else requested a duel, and another came the day after that. They seemed to be putting their heads together to analyze Ricard's fighting style before challenging him.

But every challenger died. Ricard had no set pattern for them to counter in the first place.

In fact, most fought awkwardly in their attempts to counter his swordsmanship and died without even managing to show their true abilities.

Then, as the days passed, something absurd happened. Civilians suddenly began flocking to Kaitz—and stayed.

They had come for one reason alone: to watch the duels.

In an age when even public executions were a form of entertainment, a duel to the death was a rare spectacle.

Ricard could not even begin to understand what was happening. So this was a guild war?