Chapter 188

Translator: Willia

There had been one attack, but it did nothing to slow Ricardt and Roy down. If anything, lunch took longer.

The two of them set out again.

Whenever the wind blew, the scents of earth, grass, and flowers mingled together and brushed past their noses. It was similar to the scent of fields in other regions, but mixed in was something unique to Esck.

Perhaps it should be called the scent of Esck. It was sweet yet dangerous, and once the first impression of the fragrance passed, a bitter note seemed to rise from somewhere deep within. It lingered faintly inside the nose for a long while.

Neither Ricardt nor Roy cared much about fragrances the way Bori did. Not that they disliked them. Anyway.

They alternated between walking and resting, taking the journey at a leisurely pace, and by late afternoon they reached a fairly large mountain village. It was big enough to look like a small town.

The village stood on terrain that rose abruptly out of a broad plain. The shrubs sparsely covering the mountain were much shorter than the trees of the north, only a little taller than a person.

Earth and rock, shrubs and thickets, and the flowers blooming among them adorned the mountainside. There were no gates or walls, so Ricardt and Roy followed the uphill road into the village.

Houses and buildings resembling temples had been built along the gentle slope, while a manor like a castle stood at the summit.

Then they saw the villagers. Ricardt had not expected much, but sure enough, they regarded the two with wary eyes. When he approached to ask for directions, they hurried away as though fleeing from him.

“So these are the people.”

“What people?”

“The ones who attacked us.”

“How do you know?”

“Unlike the first village we stopped at, there’s fear mixed into their wariness. Those people weren’t afraid of me. Anyway, Roy, you need to get better at reading people.”

Ricardt simply happened to possess exceptional powers of observation and insight, yet he expected Roy to perform at the same level. Telling someone to become more perceptive did not make it happen.

“Sorry.”

“There’s nothing to apologize for.”

Ricardt looked around. A woman was watching Ricardt and Roy from inside a house. As soon as their eyes met, she shut the window cover.

“What a strange place.”

If no one would even speak to them, they could not conduct so much as the most basic questioning. Were they supposed to blindly follow the road until they reached the place where the sunlight shattered?

For the moment, Ricardt headed toward the manor at the top of the mountain, where the village’s leading figure presumably lived. If he had to rough someone up, it was better to grab the one in charge than drag innocent people off and threaten them.

But when they reached the manor, something strange seemed to be happening. The large iron gate stood half open, and no one was guarding it.

People had gathered in the manor courtyard. It certainly was not a banquet, and the atmosphere looked rather serious.

“Things aren’t what they used to be, sir. The Thieves’ Guild doesn’t jump just because we tell them what to do anymore. Our ties with several cities were severed long ago, and even people from our own hometown keep complaining that times are hard.”

“Since when did we run our business by worrying about those bastards’ circumstances?”

“No... We need money if we’re going to spread more informants around, and if the villagers are going to have more children, raise them, and arm them afterward, don’t we? But our profits have been declining for more than ten years now. Of course things aren’t what they used to be.”

“So what are you trying to say?”

“The problem we need to deal with right now isn’t Benzinen. It’s the price of olive oil. The Benicio Trading Company recently started selling olive oil, and now no one buys ours. Theirs is more concentrated and cheaper. Why would anyone buy from us? Please, sir. You have to make a decision.”

The words Benicio Trading Company caught Ricardt’s attention. Naturally, he began listening more closely.

“Don’t talk like a weakling, Raphael. Since when have we ever done business like that? If someone gets in our way, we crush them. If someone blocks us, we shove them aside and sell our goods. What are those reeking southerners that you’re so afraid of them?”

Raphael looked utterly dumbfounded by the words of an old boss who no longer understood how the world worked.

No matter how much influence Esca wielded over cities throughout the Empire from the shadows, if the Benicio Trading Company was an elephant, Esca was, at best, a cat.

They could not even begin to compete in sheer scale. And the Benicio Trading Company was not merely large. It was professional and systematic, cunning and relentless.

With Ricardt behind them, they were flooding the market with high-quality goods at low prices. Small and midsized merchants had no way to withstand it.

Submit to them or destroy themselves. Those were the only two choices.

Competition between trading companies had traditionally involved genuinely bloody struggles for control of the market, but the Benicio Trading Company was on another level. Force and price competition. Those were its weapons.

Seen in that light, all the money the company poured into Ricardt was itself a form of investment. After all, it was making that much profit elsewhere.

Still, hearing the name of the Benicio Trading Company in such an unexpected place made Ricardt realize that what he was doing was affecting the world far more than he had thought.

“Do you truly have no intention of lowering the price?”

Raphael’s expression hardened again as he asked. The crowd around him made it difficult to see him clearly, but the eyes visible between them gleamed with murderous intent.

Perhaps the boss had survived as long as he had for a reason. He glared back at Raphael with wide eyes and answered firmly.

“No.”

“Even when all of us want you to?”

“If I’d known you were conspiring among yourselves, I would have killed every last one of you.”

“How? Everyone has already turned against you.”

“What? Then what exactly are you planning to do?”

“Forgive me, sir.”

Raphael bowed politely as though asking permission, then drew a sharp dagger from his sleeve and plunged it into the seated boss’s bulging belly. Then he ripped the blade diagonally upward.

“Hrrrgh!”

Had he truly not known what was about to happen to him? If so, he had no business being the leader of a secret society like this in the first place.

Raphael wiped his bloody hand on the boss’s white shirt. Then he looked around and said,

“Kill them all. Don’t leave a single asshole alive.”

At once, the others swarmed into the manor. One glance made it obvious that they intended to kill everyone in the boss’s household.

The boss was not quite dead yet. Old and obese, he could do nothing but groan helplessly and gasp for breath.

Raphael looked down at him coldly. He did not grant him the mercy of finishing him off. There seemed to be some deep and bitter resentment between them. Before long, scattered screams began to come from inside the manor.

Eventually, the old boss died. Raphael watched him breathe his last, then looked around. By sheer coincidence, his eyes met Ricardt’s. Ricardt had been watching the entire scene.

Ricardt and Roy did not flinch or panic at being noticed. They simply returned his gaze calmly. So what if he saw them?

“So you’re the one. The swordsman the Benzinen lot hired.”

“Your intelligence network doesn’t seem all that impressive. You’re wrong.”

“Then what are you, Empire’s Swordsman?”

“Master Alliance. Council of Six.”

“What’s that?”

“Let’s just say I’m an adventurer.”

“What are you doing in Esck?”

“Looking for Dunkel.”

“Who’s that?”

“Benzinen Brotherhood?”

“Didn’t you just say they didn’t hire you?”

“I don’t feel like explaining every detail. Give me the information and I’ll leave. Otherwise, I’ll interfere with whatever you’re doing here.”

Raphael stared hard at Ricardt. He could not act rashly because he had heard that Ricardt’s skill bordered on the supernatural.

“Hmph. Fine. I’m busy right now anyway. The village of Benzinen was destroyed twenty years ago. The survivors were the ones who formed the Benzinen Brotherhood.”

“Why was the village destroyed?”

“They got greedy. A quartz mine was discovered, and they tried to keep it all for themselves. So every village in Esck banded together, attacked them, and destroyed the place. Turned out the mine wasn’t profitable, though, so nobody bothered mining it in the end. If you want to see what’s left of the village, go to the mine.”

An innocent village had been destroyed, and no one had gained anything from it. Would it somehow have been less tragic if the quartz mine had actually been worth a fortune? Ricardt could not say.

The desperate screams coming from inside the manor continued throughout their conversation and even now. Not only men, but women and children as well.

Pleas to spare them. Promises to do anything. Those words seemed to claw desperately at Ricardt’s and Roy’s ears.

Having received his answer, Ricardt turned away without further argument. Before leaving, however, he said one thing to Raphael.

“Lowering the price won’t solve it.”

“?”

Raphael did not understand what he meant, and whether he understood or not, Ricardt and Roy headed down the road on the opposite side from the one they had climbed.

Perhaps they had searched every corner and killed everyone, because by the time Ricardt and Roy reached the middle of the mountain, the screams had stopped.

Roy kept glancing back toward the manor on the summit, wondering whether it was really right to simply walk away. Eventually, unable to put it out of his mind, he asked,

“Couldn’t we have saved them? Maybe not the boss, but the others...”

“That’s how those people live. You shouldn’t go around imposing right and wrong on them so casually, Roy. That’s separate from how you feel about it personally.”

“Is that so...”

“Things like that have probably been repeating themselves since ancient times. Unlike Adeloron, nothing an outsider does can change them unless they choose to change themselves. If you can’t bear to see even a single life lost, then you should walk the path of a monk. But I’m certainly no saint.”

“You’re a saint to me, so it’s fine. It just leaves a bit of a bitter taste.”

“You little...”

Ricardt reached out and affectionately stroked his beloved disciple’s head.

“Still, their grudge must run deep.”

“What grudge?”

“The people of Benzinen. The ones who survived.”

“I’m sure it does.”

“If someone I loved married my mortal enemy, I wonder what that would feel like.”

“Where did that come from?”

“Dunkel. Maybe that’s why he killed Sally. You said she used to be his companion.”

“Could be. But we still don’t know for sure.”

“But if that’s what happened, does that mean it was all right to kill her? Just because she married his enemy?”

“Well...”

“Because of Dunkel, that old woman couldn’t even close her eyes in peace until she had passed the message on to you, Master. In the end, grudges just keep circling around.”

“Maybe that’s what keeps people going.”

“What?”

“Maybe people need even a grudge to find the strength to keep living. That might be the most tragic part of all. It’s sad.”

“Yes...”

Ricardt and Roy reached the bottom of the mountain. Then they walked on, deeper and deeper into resentment.

The wind swept across the fields. It carried the scent of Esck. Perhaps that bitter note was the resentment soaked deep into the land of Esck.

Chapter 38 – Untold Stories. End.

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