Chapter 82

#82 Chapter: Tin Knight and the City of Struggle (1)

After the funeral of the two ladies, the party couldn’t leave the garden right away.

This was because two horses had neatly met their end in the battle against the tree.

Even the exceptional horses that had achieved the feat of using the wagon as a booster found themselves helpless against the overwhelming scent of the hyper-converged warp-evolved poppies, which disregarded the common sense of their species. The party had to bid them a gentle farewell.

Naturally, this left them in need of another means to transport the load that the horses were originally supposed to carry.

Dorothea suggested, “It’s not like we need a proper wagon, but can’t we make at least a simple cart?”

Wood for materials was scattered all around, and wagon parts had risen with the lakebed.

Cutting something was mostly possible with Sword Mastery, and whenever the Tin Knight slapped something with his palm, it became a hammer.

The party immediately set to work.

*Bang! Bang! Bang! Snap!*

And soon, it was a total failure.

“Hey! You tin can! Can’t you control your strength!?”

[‘Tin Knight’ claims he slipped!]

[‘Tin Knight’ insists that his skill proficiency increases by failing repeatedly!]

[‘Tin Knight’ boasts that since he knows the trick now, failure shall elude him next time!]

“Do you even know how many times you’ve messed up now!? You’ve shattered three wheels! Just stop!”

The Tin Knight’s crafting skills were nothing short of catastrophic.

His reckless handiness, which had once prepared camping meals with the leftover meat from the bandits he had clobbered, was now showcased without restraint once more.

Along with the relatively usable wagon parts, Dorothea’s plan was brutally shattered to pieces.

Adel then made a suggestion.

“In a novel I read, the protagonists tame animals in the forest to befriend them. Isn’t this place wide enough to find a suitable creature to replace our horses?”

But questioning whether it would be better to have the undead carry the load instead was pointless. The witch fervently opposed that idea, as moving through the city with such antics would instantly label them as minions of evil.

Considering how the party’s nature was already bordering on chaos, that resistance seemed utterly futile. However, the witch was the one with the loudest voice in the party, and Adel’s ‘alternative plan’ was accepted smoothly.

The party quickly dove into the recruitment of new companions.

“Ah, over there. Can we try feeding this—”

*Kreeeeek!*

They bolted away!

And once again, failure struck.

[‘Tin Knight’ marvels at the quick escape abilities of the deer!]

[‘Tin Knight’ commends the unfamiliar creature for not following someone offering food, as it shows it was raised properly!]

“Ha, ha. Ahaha. Reality is different from novels, huh? Yes… No, even so, it’s a bit much to act like encountering otherworldly beings would scare you half to death…”

Adel had an empty, doll-like gaze.

Although she looked like a soggy piece of seaweed, this was partly her own fault.

After all, even a mad dog that went berserk and looked down on others would tremble in front of a dog butcher.

While she wasn’t as over the top as the Tin Knight, there was no way wild animals would approach her with friendliness after she’d been slashing hordes of beasts in the garden.

With the Tin Knight right next to her, the few animals that survived would see that as akin to facing the Demon Lord and one of his generals side-by-side.

Sophia offered her help.

“Adel, could you lend me a hand for a moment? Ah, yes. Tin Knight, you can supervise from the side. You don’t need to touch the items. Please don’t.”

The Tin Knight, who would plummet productivity into the negatives if involved in any task, was promptly excluded. After all, there was a capable woman on his shoulders.

Sophia asked Adel to gather two Y-shaped twigs of appropriate thickness and similar shapes, and then combined them with some other branches and tough vines into a single unit.

[‘Tin Knight’ exclaims: “There’s a carry pack! There’s a carry pack!”]

Luckily, the third plan didn’t fail. The party was still struggling to move even one load.

The smaller gathered materials from the forest went into Dorothea’s pouch, while the larger, heavier ones were stacked methodically onto the carry pack borne by the Tin Knight.

The most eye-catching among them were the wooden materials emanating powerful magical energy.

“Can we really take those with us?”

“Of course we should. They’re trees that have absorbed magical power and vitality for over a hundred years while serving as the core of the garden. They’d be perfect for making staffs, and usable for crafting other tools, too.”

While the wood had been a deep green during the fight, its color was gradually turning black after the battle ended.

The previously mushy texture was solidifying, giving it a quality more akin to metal than to a living entity.

Without Sword Mastery, even processing it into an appropriate size would be awfully difficult.

“Well then, we’ve gathered everything we need, so let’s go.”

At Dorothea’s declaration, the party set off.

***

In the northern region of the Lydia Empire, a mercenary Hindler grumbled.

“Damn it, I’m starving to death. Hey, don’t you have any food?”

“There is. Look, herbs are down there. Why not just eat those?”

“Should I feed them to you?”

With a heavy sigh, Hindler thought, ‘How the hell did my situation end up like this?’

It had been three long years since he had aimlessly left his hometown, fed up with the endless farming routine.

His ambition to become a famous adventurer had come to a crashing halt the moment he was outdone by a plump little mouse that feasted well in the city, and after being caught meddling as a pack mule in another adventurer party, his situation had deteriorated even further.

After being kicked out of the guild and drifting about, he found a job with a mercenary group about a year ago.

If he couldn’t become an esteemed adventurer, then he’d dream of making a name for himself as a battlefield veteran mercenary, but that dream was dashed in the first assignment he had.

House burglary. Extorting money from merchants. Living off the town while claiming to be handling monsters.

Yes, the mercenary outfit he joined was, in practice, no different from a band of thieves.

The captain of the mercenary group had read Hindler the riot act, saying the chances of legitimate work were scarce, so they had no choice but to make ends meet with side hustles, yet Hindler could see that this was their main gig.

The reason? It was far less likely to annoy the Empire’s sensibilities pretending to be mercenaries than it would be to openly operate as bandits.

The Empire was a military powerhouse.

In the eastern part of the continent, where the power and influence of the state was weak, bandits could seize cities and plunder land, but if such acts were committed within the Empire, one would find themselves split in half and displayed on a pike the next day.

However, the Empire didn’t have an infinite supply of human and material resources either, so while they would handle matters that seemed promising, they were lukewarm towards petty issues that kept surfacing, muttering, ‘Geez, these pests keep showing up no matter how many we send away.’

It was a survival strategy to receive fewer beatings from a fearsome overlord and to stay out of sight.

“Hey, hey, everyone stay alert! We’ve got ‘visitors’ coming!”

At the mercenary captain’s words, the ragtag group lying about haphazardly sprang to their feet.

The place they were waiting at was known as the Lampe No. 4 valley.

A key location necessary for moving from the north of the Empire to the west… or rather, it wasn’t.

Properly fortified gateways existed for that, and places where rogue types like them could set up camp were not to be found.

Still, there was a path suitable for a wagon, and although rare, passersby occasionally strolled through.

And those passersby were the primary clientele of the mercenary group.

As they spotted the approaching figures in the distance, the members began to whisper among themselves.

“Three women and one man, huh?”

“Isn’t that a porter rather than a knight? What’s he carrying so much for?”

“He’s in armor, though.”

“Whoa, damn. That black woman in the middle—what a figure.”

Hindler squinted as he scrutinized the travelers.

Each member of the party was strikingly unique. The most noticeable, and fitting the descriptor of ‘beauty,’ was the woman clad in black, though the other two were no slouches in the looks department either. Depending on individual taste, evaluations might vary.

It was puzzling why such beauties were wandering around without even a wagon.

But what truly caught Hindler’s attention wasn’t the women, but rather the knight.

It wasn’t because he had a peculiar taste.

It was the heavy load the knight carried.

‘…That’s not a weight a normal person should be able to handle, right?’

Though it was hard to pin down his exact height due to the armor, he looked to be at least over six feet tall.

And the height of the load the knight was carrying was at least double that of the knight’s stature. It appeared to be stacked with chunks of wood or something equally hefty.

“Hmm.”

The mercenary captain sensed that their opponent was unusual and let out a low murmur.

Feeling a foreboding sense of doom, Hindler wished for the captain to call for an ‘off-duty’ right away, but the other members seemed to have different ideas.

“Captain.”

The members collectively shot intense looks at the captain.

They were all filthy and in dire need of food, looking just about ready to drop.

The whole facade of working in a pleasant side job without offending the Empire was a tall tale to tell when such ‘ideal opportunities’ hardly came by.

Only the day before yesterday, they had let a trading company guarded by a escort unit slip through, and the day prior, they had to pretend to overlook a knight and wizard pair dressed in fine clothing, and just a day before that, they had failed to even start a conversation with a lunatic trying to do business because the man had moved far too quickly.

If it weren’t for the small size of the mercenary group, they would have been barely scraping by hunting or gathering. They were on the verge of exploding with discontent if they didn’t show some ‘results’ soon.

In the end, the captain made a decision that Hindler dreaded.

“Hey! You there, ladies!”

“Hmm?”

The mercenary band blocked the way of the travelers.

Though they were just shy of ten in number, there would be no issue surrounding them, considering they outweighed the four in front of them.

The mercenary captain spoke with a cheeky smile.

“This path ahead is rife with thieves and monsters, making it a dangerous route. If you don’t mind, we could offer you our escort service. What do you say?”