And so, the story about the big bandit gang causing trouble at one corner of the Wargenburg Kingdom came to an end.
Loren reported to the Adventurer Guild that the bandits had been dealt with. In his report, the bandits were annihilated by an outburst of the undead. Even though they had also fought some of the bandits themselves, there was no one else around by the time they finished with them, and so the party assumed all other bandits had either died or ran away.
This report would sound rather dubious coming from the party contracted to wipe out the bandits, but Loren’s party hadn’t sign up for such a quest. They were contracted to explore the ruin, so there were no issues. On the contrary, they actually complained to the Guild instead. After all, the Guild hadn’t informed them about such a large bandit base being near the ruin. They had received some money as an apology.
As for their original purpose in this adventure: the ruin had turned out to be just a disappointment to Tizona.
When they entered the ruin, Loren and Lapis thought that it must had been a holiday house of some noble or rich person from ancient times. There seemed to be several other constructions in the surrounding, but only the main house was left standing after all this time. In short, it was a rarely used building, and nothing of much value was left inside. Moreover, the bandits had carried most of them out, selling some for cash and storing the rest at their depots. The magic-infused items they had found before were a part of these.
If the story ended on this, Tizona wouldn’t get the amount she needed and would have to become some noble’s property. But luckily they successfully found some amounts of bandits’ treasure.
This treasure included a large number of goods the bandits had gathered before getting big, and things they had plundered after, all stored inside the ruin. They gave a part of it to the citizens that had suffered because of the bandits, but were still left with a rather large sum of money.
“Well, no matter how much we have left, it’s all Tizona’s.”
“Is it alright like that? I feel like she required a lot of rescuing. Nevertheless…”
“We don’t need to sell ourselves if we don’t have money. But if Tizona doesn’t have money, she’ll have to sell herself, right? So for it to not end up like that, we’ll only take our remuneration. The rest is yours, Tizona.”
“I’m sorry. I’m indebted to you. And… about what I saw back then.”
Tizona looked hesitant, and Loren scratched his head in trouble. Aside from Gula and Mammon being Evil Gods, there was also Lapis sending an Evil God flying with a kick. Furthermore, Tizona had seen Loren’s fighting style when he was battling the Evil God. Of course, it was impossible to regard these matters as nothing, but it also didn’t mean that they had to honestly explain everything to her.
While Loren was wondering what should be done, Tizona told him:
“If it’s not something you want to be asked about, then let’s decide that I haven’t seen anything at all. I swear on my pride as a mercenary that if you don’t want to talk about this, I will bring this story to my grave.”
“We appreciate that, but… Is that alright?”
“To be honest, I have the feeling that even if you tell me the truth, I won’t know how to deal with it. So it’s easier and simpler to decide that I haven’t seen anything.”
“That’s quite smart of you.”
Tizona wasn’t sure how much she could believe in their story, and she thought that such a story would be too absurd for a third party to believe in should she try to tell them. And so, they parted ways without Loren having to do anything in particular to muzzle her. Tizona, feeling grateful for their help this time, also promised that if they needed her, they only needed to contact her, and she would come to their aids. But Loren didn’t care much about this promise, since Tizona was returning to the wandering life of a mercenary, and it would be difficult to contact her.
It ended here for Loren, but not for others. As if afraid that the runaway bandits would rise up again, the Kingdom belatedly dispatched a team to chase and subjugate them. They wouldn’t find any, but it wasn’t Loren’s duty to tell them that. Aside from the base and the depot they had destroyed, there were several other depots. According to Lapis, things would come back to normal once those depots were discovered and destroyed.
“On the other hand, is it really alright to leave Mammon to you?”
Mammon, who had the mentality of a kid but the power of an Evil God, was especially troublesome. He was put under Gula’s custody, and she had led him somewhere no one knew. Loren found it a bit questionable, and he stated this to Gula as such. She just looked at him meekly and bowed deeply:
“At least he can’t do mischief at a place I don’t know.”
“Why does it sound like you think it’s ok for him to do bad things as long as it’s at a place you know?”
“It’s alright, I make Lust watch him.”
Loren imagined the Evil God of Greed being watched over by the Evil God of Lust, and hurriedly stopped his train of thoughts. Even though this reeked of crime, both of them were beings beyond humans age-wise, and maybe humans’ ways of thinking and standards shouldn’t be applied to them. It was better for Loren’s mental health to think that way, so he hurriedly stopped elaboration on this matter.
“But what do you want to do, gathering other Evil Gods like this? Or should I say, why do Evil Gods keep resurrecting here and there?”
“Don’t ask me why. Probably our seals had loosened, or someone had deliberately untied them. I asked Mammon, but couldn’t really find out anything either. The reason why I’m gathering them because it’s easier that way? Do you want to leave them unchecked?”
Gula’s reasoning was quite persuasive. If left alone, no one knew what kind of havoc they would wreck. And rounding them up was definitely not something humans could do. In that case, having Gula, one of the Evil Gods, set out to gather them was much better than other alternatives. There seemed to be no reason to stop her.
“How many more are there?”
“Well, we’ve had Gluttony, Sloth, Lust, and Greed, so there are 3 left. Envy, Pride, and Rage.”
“Just hearing the names makes me not want to meet them. Why do you all haunt Wargenburg and its vicinity to begin with?”
“Well, because the ancient kingdom’s capital is around here. Unless someone looks into this thoroughly, I think appearing here is more probable?”
Just as the actual name of the ancient kingdom wasn’t known, there were no records about the location of its cities, or what they were like. Lapis added that it wasn’t even known if its capital was on the continent or not.
“Do you know the exact location?”
“The topography has changed a bit, so I can’t say for sure where it is. But I know it’s somewhere around here.”
“If we can excavate it, we’ll discover unimaginable things.”
“Talking about unimaginable things, isn’t that ‘thing’ of Loren one of them?”
Gula pointed at the sword on Loren’s back. The black greatsword had been broken during the fight with Mammon, revealing a white greatsword inside it. Being able to cut through the protection of an Evil God like Mammon and injured him, the sword was definitely not an average magic-infused weapon, but its true character was still unknown. Its sharpness was far beyond common knowledge, and if it was dropped down point-first, its weight was heavy enough to break stone and make it sink into the earth. It would even sink deeper before halting due to its sharpness. The strange thing was, if it was wrapped in cloth, the sharpness seemed to ‘lay low’: if Loren used it to slash at something in this state, the cloth wouldn’t be cut. This was why Loren could carry it around on his back. It would have been too dangerous to walk with otherwise.
“It’s too sharp for a greatsword.”
“I think so too. Its sharpness was too dangerous, so it was wrapped in magic-infused iron to be concealed.”
“Greed’s power didn’t work probably because the magic-infused iron layer acted as its scabbard. He acknowledged the scabbard as the sword, so his power didn’t work.”
“In short, I’ve been fighting with a sword’s scabbard up until now? I’ve never heard of a scabbard with an edge before though.”
“Probably because this sword is something meant to be hidden.”
If the outer layer hadn’t been broken, Loren was sure he would have never noticed it. Lapis guessed that the outer blade had probably been used to hide the inner blade, but as it had been shattered, there was no way to confirm her guess now.
“It seems to be a rather valuable item, doesn’t it?”
“It is. Is it alright to give it to me?”
Loren knew that magic-infused iron blade was very rare. If it was used as just a cover, there was no question about how valuable the inner blade was. He wondered if it was alright for him to possess such a valuable item, but Lapis looked at him blankly:
“Hah? What do you mean? Isn’t it something you bought at a store?”
“Yeah, but it seems like only you know of its true character, Lapis.”
“Are you relying on me?”
Lapis looked at Loren with some kind of expectations in her eyes. Loren wondered for a moment what the correct answer to her question would be, but in the end he decided to tell her what he felt safe to say. Lapis was looking up at him, as Loren patted her head and said:
“I am, and always will.”
“I’m very happy to hear that.”
Lapis looked a bit shy, but she smiled happily just as she had said she was.
“Yeah, he really relies on you a lot, financially… Ah, no, nothing.”
Gula blurted out one word too many, and received a freezing glance that was totally opposite of the one she was giving Loren.
Loren watched them with some shock and reached into his trousers’ pocket. He fiddled with the two gold coins he had received from Tizona as remuneration, and thought that this job could be considered as a successful one.