Chapter 4: The Knight
“Tch… Seriously, this isn’t worth the pay!”
“Stop whining! Just run!”
Several men, their soles stained with blood, panted heavily but showed no sign of stopping.
In the leather bags each of them carried were numerous stolen goods, stuffed to the point of bursting.
“Over here!”
“Oh! Saved at last!”
At the edge of the outskirts of the Sleepless Kingdom, a single carriage waited.
The one waving from the driver’s seat was one of their comrades, who had positioned the carriage exactly as planned.
This wasn’t a crime of passion; it was a calculated heist.
Their goal wasn’t the immense value attached to the auction items.
Having escaped without losing a single man, they all piled into the back of the carriage and continued their flight, the sound of the wheels rattling behind them.
“Haa… huff… phew…”
“For real… I can’t believe… we actually got away… huff…”
“Hehehe…” They looked at each other with cramped smiles and began to pull open the mouths of their leather bags all at once.
Inside the carriage, which was forcing its way through a narrow path between fields, they began to carefully appraise the goods to ensure no damage had been done.
“Intermediate Demon materials… the quality is insane…!”
“Wait, so everything except the target item is our cut, right!?”
“Relax, that was the contract.”
The one calming the excited lackeys was their leader.
In the leather bag he held was a Natural Relics (Treasure) that had been scheduled for auction.
These are objects formed when the dense magical power within a hidden realm solidifies into a physical form due to external stimuli.
For some reason, they often take shapes that align with human civilization—the embodiment of “Over-Technology” possessing power that humanity could never hope to replicate.
Everyone desired them to the point of desperation, but these items chose their users.
To make matters worse, one wouldn’t know if they were compatible until they actually held the item.
Beyond that, the effects were often a mystery—a truly troublesome class of items. While high-level Appraisal Magic could confirm the effects, as stolen goods, no state authorization would ever be granted. For men like them without connections, such items were like ticking time bombs.
“I don’t know if this is what the client wants, but if it’s not, they said we can have this too.”
“Are you serious!? So generous!”
“Just what is this ‘Helheim’ group trying to do by going this far…?”
“Who knows, and I don’t want to know. Poking your nose into things that don’t concern you never ends well.”
“Ain’t that the truth. We did the job, so anything beyond that is out of our jurisdiction.”
“Yeah. Some eccentric weirdos who go out of their way to make us use their name can’t be sane. This is a one-time thing. Once the job is done, we’ll sell these on the black market and leave no trace.”
The group let out sighs of relief, laughing as if to harmonize with the man who had scoffed.
“Ho, well isn’t that nice.”
────!?
The men’s smiles froze in an instant.
The pressure was so immense that moving even a facial muscle felt like a monumental task. The only thing permeating the carriage was the sound of pebbles being kicked up by the wheels.
A large man was sitting there as if he owned the place. Stroking his chin with a grim expression, the man’s eyes burned with a vivid, piercing light that was clear even in the darkness of the night. His gaze alone possessed enough heat to crush the men’s will to fight.
The first to regain his sense of time was the leader.
“!? You—you bastards—”
“Oops, I didn’t give you permission to move.”
“Ha──── guah!”
The man was kicked squarely in the side of the face, rolling across the floor of the carriage and taking his comrades down with him.
The youth, who had a faint smirk as he pulled back his leg, tapped the floor of the carriage with his toe.
“H-Hey—”
“Who the hell are—”
“Hmph!”
The other men who started to move in response to the noise were struck in the torso by Gurba’s horizontal swing and sent flying out of the carriage.
Amidst the battered cargo bed, the carriage continued its progress, leaving only the mysterious group, the leader, and the driver as the night wind blew through.
Given the speed of the carriage, the survival of those thrown out was doubtful at best.
The man in the driver’s seat was so overwhelmed by the intimidation radiating from the wolf-eared girl sitting next to him—an aura unimaginable given her innocent appearance—that he couldn’t even flee.
“Keep going! You mustn’t miss the destination!”
“Hiiee, hieee…!”
Watching the man with sharp eyes was Nifl, who was perched on the pillar of the tattered hood covering the back.
If he so much as veered from the path to the destination, her punishment surely awaited. Even if she didn’t act, the small dragon on her shoulder was flapping its tiny wings with great enthusiasm, waiting for the signal to attack.
There was no retreat.
Crouching beside the man who couldn’t even lift his body from the floor, the Corpse King (Shiou) wore his usual frivolous expression.
“So, ‘Helheim’?”
“……”
“Can you tell me your objective? You understand why I left only you alive… right?”
READ THE ORIGINAL TRANSLATION AT LOCALIZERMEERKAT.GITHUB.IO
Behind his narrowed eyes was a business-like coldness that lacked even a hint of mercy.
It wasn’t hard to imagine that if the man tried to fake an answer, death would follow immediately.
Swallowing the small amount of saliva that had pooled in his mouth, the man steeled his resolve.
“……If… if I tell you… will you let me go…?”
“I wonder. Depends on your sincerity, doesn’t it?”
At the Corpse King’s unreadable words, the man saw a small ray of hope.
The act of prompting a confession rather than forcing it was the habit of a fundamentally soft-hearted person—or so he thought.
The man pointed at several leather bags that Gurba had collected to keep them from falling out.
“Inside… inside there, there’s a Natural Relics! That was our goal! Everything else is just a bonus! If you want it, it’s yours!”
“I was going to take it all even if you didn’t say anything. That’s not what I want to hear.”
“I-I know! We were just hired! By someone claiming to be an executive of Helheim!”
“Ugh, again…?”
The man jumped as the Corpse King let out a fed-up sigh, and he began to spill everything he knew.
“The client said that Natural Relics might be… the Otherworld Summoning Orb (Gate)!!”
“──!”
“A-Also, they told us to kill people in a way that would attract as much attention as possible! It’s not like we actually wanted to kill people, it’s just—”
The Corpse King, who had been listening to the confession with a bored expression, visibly raised an eyebrow.
Seeing this reaction as a sign of success, the man tried to press further—
“That’s enough.”
“──Eh?”
“Sorry, sorry. There was never going to be ‘sincerity’ from someone who can easily kill innocent people. Good work.”
“W-Wait—”
Snap!
The man’s neck was kicked with a clean strike, and he collapsed lifelessly into the carriage.
Tossing the headless corpse out of the carriage, the Corpse King took a seat in a spot not stained by blood.
“Garm, Nifl, thanks. You were a big help.”
“Your words are more than I deserve.”
“It was nothing! But this carriage was so slow, it wasn’t very satisfying…”
The method they used to suddenly appear in the carriage was extremely simple.
Garm, the fastest in Helheim, caught up to the carriage on foot, and then Nifl used the coordinates she had set on Garm to Teleport everyone inside.
That was all.
With this much blood around, there was no way Garm’s nose would miss the scent.
It was a parade of world-class, out-of-spec feats performed with casual ease.
The Corpse King took a breath as he looked at his subordinates. However, his expression clouded over as if something were stuck in his throat.
“Otherworld Summoning Orb (Gate)…”
As the Corpse King spat out the words with clear loathing, the members of the Eight Precepts looked at each other.
All of them tilted their heads in confusion. But for him, who had been summoned to this world as a hero from another world, the name was very familiar.
Though the impression it left was by no means a good one.
The Level 10 Natural Relics: Otherworld Summoning Orb (Gate).
At first glance, it appears to be nothing more than a colorless sphere, but it is the world’s greatest rarity, possessing infinite possibilities.
A phantom jewel that opens the door to another world and summons “Strangers.”
Hidden within that jewel is Summoning Magic that responds to the user’s wishes.
Like other Natural Relics, its nature of choosing its user can lead to the worst-case scenarios.
For example, an item that had become a national treasure because no one could use it since its discovery might suddenly be activated by a foolish Crown Prince.
The being summoned by the Gate becomes linked to the summoner’s life; the summoner’s death inevitably means the death of the summoned being.
He opened the bags filled with stolen goods and rummaged through them. There were several spherical Natural Relics, but they were all similar yet different things. For the Corpse King, who had seen the real thing, the distinction was easy.
The Corpse King shook his head at the anger that welled up just from remembering it.
“Giltums… If only I could kill you now.”
While lost in thought about what lay ahead, the carriage continued toward whoever was calling themselves “Helheim.”
■
Visit the request page If there’s a Japanese Light Novel (LN) or Web Novel (WN) you’d like me to translate
When the donation goal progress bar above hit 100% one novel will be chosen for translation
| Table of Contents | Next* |
Support the Author by Buying the Original Books!
