Chapter 36
There was a chill in the air. The fact that Pahell was a member of the royal family didn’t change a thing, and the mercenaries were prepared to kill both him and his loyal men at any moment.
“Just kill them all. Things could get messy if we get involved with the royal family. Let’s get it over with and cross the border as quickly as we can,” Donovan suggested, and Phillion anxiously opened his mouth.
“A-after this job is done, there is a huge reward waiting for you! Our master is the heir of the Porcana Kingdom—you’re basically escorting the future king!” Phillion desperately exclaimed.
“I don’t give a shit if he’s a royalty or not, you’ve already tricked us once. Besides, you’re just a small-time royalty. Maybe things would be different if you were an Imperial.”
The mercenaries chuckled. They knew that even a king of a small kingdom wasn’t to be messed with, and if they were standing before a real, official king, they would be on the ground right now bowing for mercy. However, the mercenaries were the ones in the right and with power at that moment.
‘We’re not breaking our integrity even if we kill Phillion and Pahell right here. They’re the ones who violated it first.’
Lou, the Sun God, wouldn’t punish the mercenaries for that very reason. Phillion lied in the name of Lou on top of violating the promise of integrity. There was nothing tripping the conscience of the mercenaries with Lou on their side.
“You have to pay for what you’ve done with your integrity, Sir Phillion,” Urich said, calling Phillion by his title Sir for the first time. Pillion’s eyes were trembling in fear.
Step, step.
Urich walked up to Phillion and squatted down in front of him. His yellow eyes gazed at Phillion.
“Please, Urich, take our prince to the capital of Hamel,” Phillion said in a low voice. Urich replied in a whisper that was quiet enough that the other mercenaries couldn’t hear him.
“At this rate, my brothers are going to riot. Since you were the one who broke the promise first, they’re going to want to kill you and your little prince. Also, just take all your belongings—your money and your pearls. If you really want to protect your young master, then you have to pay for what you’ve done with something that’s worthy of the forgiveness of my brothers.”
Pillion’s eyes widened at Urich’s words as it wasn’t what he had expected to hear. His voice was friendly, quite far from the anger he expected him to be feeling.
‘This man wants to carry on with the job. But if that’s the case, why did he expose my secret to the other mercenaries?’
Urich’s actions were contradictory, but Phillion didn’t care about understanding his intentions right now.
“Whatever is fine, as long as you can bring Prince Varca...”
Phillion dropped his head. He knew that he had already lied using his soul as the consequence.
“Sir Phillion, I don’t understand it at all. Why do you go so far to protect this immature kid?”
“He is of royalty and the heir of the kingdom. That alone is worthy of my loyalty, Urich.”
“Nope, as far as I’m concerned, this is all just a joke. Bachman, how many brothers did we lose?” Urich turned around to ask Bachman as he showed a bitter grin.
“We have three dead. Wait, no, four. Another went just now.”
After hearing their casualty, Urich turned to look at Phillion again.
“Are you left-handed, or right-handed?”
Phillion knew what was coming. He took the glove off his right hand and put it out in front of him.
“Right.”
Urich’s axe spun in his hand as Phillion anticipated the pain with his eyes closed.
Crush!
The fingers of Phillion’s right hand were severed one by one.
“Hmph,”
Phillion withheld his groan with all his strength as his fingers fell to the ground.
“S-sir Phillion...”
Pahell, who was watching the scene unfold in terror, released a stream of tears as he collapsed to the ground.
“It’s alright, my prince, stay right there,” Phillion managed to show a smile even though sweat was pouring down his face. His right hand now only had a single thumb left. It was a grotesque sight.
“I-is, is that everything? Are we good now?” Phillion shook violently as he tried to stop the bleeding in his hand. Urich turned to Bachman again and asked.
“Bachman, how many wounded? The ones who are clearly bleeding.”
“Hmm, we have five with a bunch of bandages around them.”
Phillion’s face turned pale as he saw Urich’s look screaming ‘I need more blood.’
“You have to spill just as much blood as my brothers have spilled, don’t you think?” Urich said as if he was finding amusement out of this. A shiver went down Phillion’s spine after seeing Urich’s creepy smile.
Rip—
Urich cut into Phillion’s back. As the tip of his blade slowly made its way down the fleshy board of skin, the clear and sharp pain struck Phillion. Five lines of bloody marks ran down the length of his back.
“Sir Phillion!”
The guards from Caracan rushed to his aid. His face was pale.
“Please, continue to escort our prince,” Phillion said as he practically slammed his face down onto the ground. His persistence was enough to make even the mercenaries stand in awe and disbelief.
“I-I don’t need an escort of animals like these men, Sir Phillion! We can do this on our own, you can protect me!” Pahell exclaimed. He despised Urich and the mercenaries. After seeing what they had done to his loyal liege, he wanted to kill them right there and then.
After making it through the hefty punishment, Phillion stumbled toward Pahell. He raised his hand in the air.
“Forgive my insolence, my prince.”
Slap!
Blood spouted from Pahells’ mouth as Phillion spent the last bit of his strength slapping his young master across his face.
“S-sir Phillion, you’ve hit me! How dare you hit me?”
Slap!
Phillion laid his hand on Pahell once again. His cheek soon swelled red.
“You must face the reality, my prince! Do you really think we can escape this kingdom on our own? Even if I were to give up all of my fingers—no, my head, that would be impossible.”
Phillion cried out as he shoved his bloody right hand into Pahell’s face. Blood was still dripping from the severed cross-section where the pale bone was showing and the pink muscles were twitching.
“Ugh!” Pahell dropped his chin as he gagged. His vomit was a mix of his tears and snot.
‘It was by Lou’s grace that we ran into this mercenary squad. If we hadn’t hired them, we would have been finished off by the chase party a long time ago,’ Phillion thought to himself as he endured the pain. Even after the suffering that he had to go through, he believed that his decision was correct. Porcana was a small, quiet kingdom where mercenaries were rarely seen. The fact that they were able to meet a squad strong enough to fend off the chase party was already a miracle, so he had to tell whatever lie that was going to convince them to work for him.
“I want to carry on with the job. If anyone objects, speak up now, or we could go with our tradition and vote on it,” Urich said as he looked around his mercenaries. The mercenaries became busy chatting among themselves.
“We killed off the chase party anyway. The reward for escorting a royalty is going to be insane.”
“We should at least know all the details if we’re going to do this. Why is a prince being chased out of his own kingdom?”
“Just kill them and take their money. Then we can happily be on our way.”
A lot of different opinions made their way around the mercenaries. Still, the consensus was to kill their employer and take whatever they had.
Pahell felt dizzy. He could hear the mercenaries’ voices in between, and the sound of metal clashing made his heart tremble in fear.
‘I am going to die at this rate.’
The cheek that had been obliterated by Phillion tingled. He had never been slapped before, not even by the king. Nothing felt real.
Click.
Something was caught in Pahell’s mouth.
Spit.
He spat out a tooth onto the ground.
‘You slapped a royalty to the point of breaking their tooth. You really are a loyal liege, Sir Phillion,’ his thought brought a smile to his own face, and Pahell wiped the blood around his mouth.
“...my name is Varca Aneu Porcana.”
After vomiting profusely, Pahell picked up his chin, then clenched his teeth and fists. The mercenaries turned their attention to the prince.
“I am the sole and rightful heir to the Porcana Kingdom. However, Duke Harmatti, my uncle and the regent of the kingdom, is eyeing the throne. My father, the king, has not awakened from his coma for a year, so the throne will fall to me when I reach the age of sixteen. The regent, Duke Harmatti, wants to kill me before that because without the blood heir, the throne will naturally fall to him, the current regent and the brother of the king.
The context of the job wasn’t that different, except for the fact that it had escalated from involving a single noble family to a royal dispute.
“If I undergo my sixteen-year-old coming-of-age ceremony in the Empire and return to Porcana with the escort of the Imperial troops, Duke Harmatti won’t be able to lay a finger on me. I am the sole rightful heir to the throne of Porcana, so when I take the throne...”
Pahell glanced at Phillion, then back at the mercenaries.
“...you will be rewarded and treated accordingly to my position as King of Porcana. That, I swear in the name of Lou, the God of Sun.” Pahell took out his sun pendant and kissed it. Whoever broke their oath with a god was punished with eternal suffering in the afterlife. Phillion, who had already done so, now had a tainted soul.
‘Oh, merciful and generous Lou, please consider the loyalty that Sir Phillion has shown and forgive his sin.’
Pahell came to a sobering realization. He learned the magnitude of the sacrifice Phillion had made for him, and that the loss of one’s body is nothing compared to the pain that he would have to endure in the afterlife. His soul was now destined to become an evil spirit that wanders the world of the living without salvation.
“Did you hear that? The next king promises a reward in Lou’s name,” Urich grinned. The idea of killing and plundering the employer was slowly fading.
‘This is a life-changing opportunity.’
Opportunities like this were not easy to come by. Humans were destined to spend their lives rolling in the dirt until they died. That was the way it went.
“The royal highness himself promised it, so I want to finish the job.”
“Same here.”
“Who knows? Maybe he’ll give us some farmland for us to settle down on. A king can do that much, right?”
One by one, the mercenaries raised their hands in favor of completing the job. Pahell promised the rewards that each mercenary asked for—money for those who wanted payment, and land for those who wanted it.
Phillion and the guards breathed a sigh of relief. They had survived.
“That’s what I’m talking about, my prince. Well done,” Phillion soothed the prince as he stroked his head with his left hand. If Pahell hadn’t promised the rewards for the mercenaries out of spite and stubbornness, they would have killed all of them as payback.
“Sir Phillion, your loyalty will certainly be rewarded. When I become the king, I’m going to spend whatever it costs to get the pope to pardon your sin. I will not allow your soul to wander this world. I swear on Lou’s name...”
Phillion stopped Pahell mid-sentence and shook his head.
“Swearing on Lou’s name is something that people without trust do with each other. Your word alone is sufficient for me, prince.”
Pahell clamped his hands over his chest and opened his mouth as tears covered his eyes.
“I, then, swear to you on my own name, not Lou’s.”
* * *
Phillion was being treated by one of the guards. The guard wiped the dried blood from his back and applied an ointment.
“The wound is surprisingly shallow for the amount of bleeding,” the guard said as he dressed the wound. Phillion bent forward and back to feel the severity.
‘He only cut through the skin. The muscles are fine.’
It was just a long tear in his back that looked like a nasty gash. It wasn’t much of an injury.
‘Urich, you clever man.’
Phillion re-evaluated his assessment of Urich. He was much cleverer than he had initially thought.
‘I still don’t understand why he told the other mercenaries about my lie. He wanted to carry out the job regardless, so all he had to do to prevent all that commotion was just keep it to himself.’
Urich’s action was questionable.
Step.
After finishing his meal, Urich walked up to Phillion. Phillion waved the guards away to make room for a private conversation.
“Go get some meat, you lost a lot of blood,” Urich said as if he wasn’t the cause of all the bleeding.
“I know it’s weird for me to say this to the person who tortured me, but thank you, Urich.” Phillion nodded to show his respect.
“I understand why you lied. If you had told us that you were on a royal quest from the beginning, we wouldn’t have taken the job. It was because of your lie that we made it this far. So, in the end, it seems like your judgment was correct,” Urich chuckled. Even Donovan, who was the first to vote in favor of this job in the beginning, wanted out as soon as it was revealed that it involved the royal family. That’s how dangerous and complicated it made things for the mercenaries.
‘I was able to convince my brothers only because we were already doing the job.’
Urich glanced at Phillion’s right hand. After losing four fingers on one hand, his life as a warrior was over.
“Try not to blame me too much. You did violate the integrity. The job not being the same as the description is the same as mercenaries turning on their employer. It would have been fair for me to crack your master’s skull into two right in front of you,” Urich said as he picked his nose. There was blood clotted up inside his nose, which he picked out and flicked into the fire.
“There is no blame. In fact, I think you let me off easy. But can I ask you a question?”
“If I say no, are you not going to ask?”
Urich’s banter made Phillion chuckle despite his sore body.
“If you wanted to keep the job, why did you expose me to the other mercenaries? Again, I’m not blaming you for it, I’m just curious.”
“That’s right, I do want to finish this job because I want to see the capital of the Empire. If I’m going there with a noble, then I’m sure I’ll get to see even more of the capital that you call the center of the world than if the mercenary squad were to visit it on our own. Actually, since you guys are part of the royal family, doesn’t that mean I get to see the emperor himself? Right?” Urich’s words became quicker, and his eyes sparkled like that of a young boy.
“If you wish, I can help you see the emperor from afar in the royal audience.”
“The estates and castles of the nobles that I’ve met were amazing. I can’t imagine how magnificent the emperor’s will be, goddamn. I bet it’s full of incredible things,” Urich laughed as he slammed his own knees. The Imperial steel sword that had become Urich’s treasure was also something that could only be found in the workshop of the emperor.
‘This man...’
Phillion felt the eagerness of Urich. It was the pure desire of a child.
“I really want to go to the capital of the Empire, especially if it’s with a noble. However, I have no intention of lying to or betraying my brothers for my own desire. That’s all. I realized that you violated our trust, and I had the duty to notify my brothers.”
It was simple. Urich was honest. He didn’t lie about his desire to see the capital, nor had he broken his duty to his brothers.
‘Clear and simple.’
Phillion suddenly gained clarity.
‘This man can be trusted. Even though he’s a barbarian, he honors his oaths and duties. He’s probably more loved by Lou than a man like me who lies with impunity in his name.’
Phillion had taken a liking to the man who had cut off his fingers. It was quite ironic.
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