Chapter 36 : Days in the Free City of Loren (12)

Chapter 36: Days in the Free City of Loren (12)

“What are we supposed to do about this?”

“Orlando, seriously? Why would that guy come after us?”

“Aren’t we screwed? Hey, Hudson. Do you know anything, even a rumor?”

“How would a grunt like me know! Ask something I can actually answer.”

Orlando.

The exclusive chief merchant of Count Bellua.

As the chief merchant who supplied the count’s army, his capital, his influence, and his connections couldn’t be ignored.

Supplying Count Bellua alone meant he had deep ties with the count.

If a man like that targeted them, it was serious.

“Hm…?”

But Shatien felt something was off.

Why would someone that big aim at them?

Just as Hudson said, they were small fry. For a chief merchant like Orlando, singling them out and putting a hit on them didn’t make sense.

A merchant who treated money like his life wouldn’t gain enough by naming them specifically, not when he moved ten soldiers for the job.

As soon as his thoughts reached that point, his body reacted.

-Crunch!

“Aaagh! Why, why!”

“Talk. Tell the truth.”

Shatien said it while looking down at the struggling bandit.

If it came to it, he was ready to do things far worse than breaking fingers.

“It’s true that Orlando hired us. It’s true!”

The bandit bawled as if screaming, snot and tears running.

He sounded so desperate that even Miles and Hudson, watching nearby, nodded and whispered that it felt true.

But Shatien wasn’t convinced.

-Press.

He pressed his boot down on the man’s throat and growled coldly.

“You’d better speak straight. I’m not that patient.”

“Ghk, kuhk.”

Only then did the bandit realize he’d picked the wrong target.

This young mercenary.

Despite his looks, he was truly insane.

In the mercenary world, age was just a number. The younger the officer, the more terrifying and ruthless they tended to be, and he had forgotten that.

“Kugh, kgh! I’ll talk. My neck. My neck, please!”

“Good. Looks like you’re finally ready for a real conversation. Now talk.”

“Kgh, kh…”

Catching his uneven breath, the bandit cautiously told the real truth.

Their crew had indeed taken a job from Orlando, but they hadn’t been told to target those three specifically.

The order was only to disrupt the chief merchant’s business.

Shatien’s party had just had the bad luck, whoever’s bad luck it was, to become the very first target they ran into.

As soon as the truth came out, the tension seemed to drain away.

“What, that’s all this was?”

“No wonder something felt off. Heh heh.”

“I thought we’d made a huge name for ourselves without noticing.”

Miles and Hudson joked to lighten the mood.

There was nothing good about getting tied to a big shot like that on bad terms.

“Then we should just take this guy out and be done.”

“Yeah. No reason to fuss, right? If he dies here, who’s going to know. Accidents happen all the time in the Arhen Mountains.”

Hudson drew his sword as if ready to lop the bandit’s head off right away.

With no witness, who would know.

Clean it up and the matter would pass quietly.

Publicizing it would bring them no benefit anyway.

To be honest, Shatien had been thinking the same.

“H-Hgh. No! Spare me. Please.”

Of course, he wasn’t actually planning to kill the man immediately.

“Hold up, Hudson. Stop.”

“Hmm? Why? Don’t tell me… you’re going to make it public.”

If the young mercenary tried, Hudson meant to stop him with everything he had.

From the look of it, this was just bad luck.

If Orlando had it out for them, that would be different, but this was a scuffle inside the merchant network.

If Shatien dragged the man in as a witness and went public, he would be throwing himself naked into the feud between Orlando and the merchant guild.

New grudges would be born, and if the trouble grew, the guild involved would definitely stand back.

They had no reason to shed blood for some mercenary.

So publicizing it would have been the worst possible choice.

As always, Shatien went beyond what they imagined.

“What are you talking about? Public, you said?”

“Huh? Was that not what this was about? You know, I thought you were going to get a shot back at Orlando…”

“Oh... Why would I bother with that? He wasn’t even targeting us, right? And why do you think this bastard lied to me at first? He’s trying to goad me into hauling him to the guild as a witness. He made it up to save his own neck.”

Shatien was already three steps ahead.

“I don’t care how Orlando and the guild fight. They’ll fight just fine without me. The reason I’m keeping him alive is different.”

“Uh… oh. So you've got another plan?”

“Yeah. We need to go hunt the yeti you know. You could say something useful just fell into our laps.”

“...?”

Hudson realized what he meant and stared, appalled.

Miles beside him caught on and burst out laughing.

“Ahahaha. That’s right. We were on a yeti hunt huh?”

“And right now he’s giving off the yeti’s favorite scent, isn’t he? Metal and blood. And human.”

“Man. I didn’t know, but you’re a real lunatic too.”

“Life for a life. That’s a pretty obvious rule, don’t you think.”

“Yeah, sure, if you say so.”

Hudson could only click his tongue at Shatien’s breezy tone.

* * *

“Grrr.”

The yeti growled low.

It had been starving for four days, its belly nearly stuck to its spine.

The harsh Arhen Mountains.

In this part where it snowed year-round, finding prey wasn’t easy.

Then something twitching entered the yeti’s sight.

“Screech. Skreek, skreek!”

A monkey.

Wearing some weird fluttering thing, the monkey wagged its tail and chattered right in front of the yeti as if to tempt it.

“Grrr.”

Impudent, monkey.

That was the thought in the yeti’s mind.

It would hunt that little thing, fill its hunger, and regain its pride.

“Kee kee keek! Kee.”

As if it knew what the yeti wanted, the monkey suddenly slapped its bright red rear and started mocking it.

The shimmying motion stoked the yeti’s anger.

“Graaaah!”

With a roar, the yeti lunged in long strides.

The snow that sank with every step didn’t hinder it at all.

It sprinted across the snow as if it were flat ground.

The distance to the taunting monkey closed in an instant.

“Kee, keek?!”

As the nervous little shape drew close, the yeti let out a satisfied rumble.

It felt like it could grab the pest, thrash it, and fill its empty belly.

“Krumbaba, baba.”

-Vrooom!

“Keek!”

“Graaah!”

“Eeeek, keek!”

But the monkey was quick.

Speed and strength meant nothing if the blows didn’t land.

Dodging here and there with its small body, it slipped past each attack, and the yeti could only rage.

At this point, it barely had the strength to catch even a monkey.

Then the yeti’s eyes suddenly went wide.

“Grk, grrk?!”

Somehow, following the monkey had brought it down to a place where the snow was gone.

And there, an incredibly delicious smell reached it.

Fresh meat, the scent of metal and human all mixed together, its favorite smell.

-Growl.

Its belly roared again.

The yeti glanced around quickly, hunting for the source.

Then, right beside the monkey that was still teasing it, it saw a strange fruit hanging from a tree, a fruit that smelled like meat.

“Uup. Oooooh!”

“Grrrk?”

“Ungh, uunph! Mmmmmph!”

The meat-scented fruit was a bandit, trussed and hanging upside down from the branches.

When the bandit saw the yeti approach, he writhed and squirmed, which only made him look fresher and livelier to the yeti.

“Slurp.”

Saliva ran down its lips as the yeti clicked its teeth.

Humans tasted ten times better than deer. This one reeked of metal to boot.

The taunting monkey had long vanished from its mind. All its focus locked onto the twitching human.

“Rooaaaar!”

In a single bound the yeti sprang.

Meat. That delicious human meat.

It wanted to eat it this instant.

Suspicion might have been wise with something so suspiciously placed, but the yeti’s mind was half gone. The single thought of devouring a human had taken over.

And that carelessness cost it.

As there were only a few paces left,

-Thump!

A crude trap set under a mat of weeds triggered.

The ground fell away and the yeti dropped.

“Grrk?!”

-Rumble.

With a boom it hit bottom and staggered, looking up.

The rim was higher than its head by far.

“Screech, skreek!”

Annoyingly, the monkey stuck its head out and chittered down at it.

Voices of humans chirped above.

“This monkey’s doing better than I expected huh?”

“Ahahaha. Didn’t I tell you? He’s my little partner now. Partner. The little guy’s real sly.”

“Kee keek, keek!”

“Yeah, yeah. Alright, you. From now on stick with this big brother. I’ll feed you the good stuff.”

Realizing the situation, the yeti burned with rage.

It had been toyed with by pathetic humans and a monkey.

“Grrrooooar!”

Its roar thundered inside the pit.

The humans leaned their faces in.

“Looks mad, doesn’t it?”

“Looks like it went hungry for a long time. Hungry and then it fell into a trap, no wonder it’s even angrier. Heh heh.”

“So how do we kill it? If we stab it with spears we’ll damage the hide, won’t we?”

“Let’s just bury it alive. It’ll die if it can’t breathe.”

“Not a bad idea. Let’s do that.”

-Rrrr.

Listening to them, the yeti bared its claws.

It would teach them a lesson and take their flesh.

-Thunk, thunk!

Fueled by rage, it began digging its claws into the wall to climb.

Claws as hard as steel bit into the dirt and held, but only for a moment.

As it climbed, it toppled back down.

The weak dirt wall couldn’t bear its weight and crumbled.

“Khahaha. Look at that. It keeps scrambling up. Die nicely, why don’t you.”

“Kee keek, keek. Keek, keek!”

“Quit teasing and cover it with dirt with Hudson. If this keeps up the yeti’s going to get out.”

“Hm? No way. Look, it keeps slipping every time it tries. Ahahaha.”

Miles snickered, watching it struggle up and fall.

But Shatien felt uneasy.

The wall was made of dirt, which meant it was weak.

And sure enough,

-Rumble, rumble.

Maybe because the yeti kept gouging at the wall, the ground under their feet began to shift.

“H-Huhh? Ahhhhh!”

“Damn it!”

The earth split and slid down into the pit in a long sheet. There was no time to get away.

The yeti’s head swam as the dirt pounded its body.

Then,

“Rooaar!”

It pushed through, bursting out of the mound.

A sloped path appeared right in front of it.

“Grrrrrr.”

And at the end of that path stood the humans.

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