Jensen's brilliant decision was that Torwin and Velik would escort the mercenaries back to King's Crossroad for imprisonment and trial, which was promptly shot down by all the more experienced members of the team. Velik wasn't particularly interested in doing it in the first place, but it was nice to have some solid reasons backing up the decision he'd already made.
"Splitting the group after we were just attacked is a terrible idea," Torwin said immediately.
"Not to mention sending the two guys who spend all their time out in the woods by themselves to deal with bureaucracy isn't going to work out in their favor. Good odds they both end up arrested as well 'just until we can sort everything out' or some garbage like that," Giller added. "Instead of saving time, we'll either be mounting a legal defense or a rescue mission to break them out of prison."
"Why would that happen?" Sildra asked. "They attacked us."
"And it's our word against theirs. Eventually, some truth sniffer would get to the bottom of things, whether by skills or by following the facts. We probably won't hang for this, but why take the risk in the first place?"
"We can't just kill them, and we can't let them go," Jensen argued. "So what are we supposed to do?"
"We'll all have to go back together," Aria said. "Giller has connections with the rich and influential. She can work with the Crossroad marshals or whoever to turn over the mercenary company without being implicated and arrested herself."
Scowling, the other woman reluctantly nodded. "That's the best course of action other than killing them all here. Unless you low levels are looking for a bit of a leg up to your next level, there's no real gain other than a day's time. That's a pretty cheap reward for the lives of forty humans."
"Forty humans who agreed to murder people for money," Velik pointed out. "Hardly better than monsters, really. Worse in some ways. They were even working with one."
"We weren't," one of the mercs said, a burly man with a long scar running down the side of his face and onto his neck. "We aren't murderers. We were hired to find a monster pretending to be a man."
"What?" Velik asked.
"That's part of what makes this complicated," Torwin explained. "I didn't get to that part yet. They weren't hired to act as bandits. Someone convinced them that Velik is actually a monster."
"They probably talked to that hydra he killed," Aria muttered. "Kid kind of is a monster."
"Not helping," Torwin told her sharply. "But no, I think this has something to do with those corrupted seed bearers from a few months ago." He turned to the prisoner. "Tell them what you told me."
"This man comes to us a few weeks ago, said he was the mayor of some town up north, this place that had been devastated by some monster horde that could impersonate people. He tells us that one of the monsters had come south, that it was a danger. He gave us this guy's description and the name he was using, and told us to be watching for him."
"That doesn't make sense," Velik said. It wasn't that someone from back home would hire a bunch of mercenaries to try to kill him. That part he could see happening, though where they'd come up with the funds was a question he'd need an answer for before he believed the story. "How would anyone from the frontier even know where I was? It's not like I told them."
"And I was only there a bit over a week ago to fetch Sildra," Jensen said. "I certainly didn't tell anyone you would be part of this group."
They both looked at Sildra, who shook her head. "I told my mom I was going to follow a lead on the quest Morgus gave me. But the timing doesn't work. Mayor Jaryll was still there when I left, and besides, he'd have needed to leave weeks before me for this story to be true."
"So, not the mayor," Aria said. "Someone impersonating him who looks close enough to match a casual description, perhaps. Does this Jaryll look like anybody else you know?"
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Velik thought back to everyone he'd met at the guild, the coliseum, or Melon and Peach. "Not… really, no."
"So this isn't a misunderstanding," Torwin said. "Someone fed these mercenaries a lie laced with just enough truth to draw them to a false conclusion that had the benefit of being possible."
"The best kind of lie," Giller added. "The one that could be true, if you only know some of the facts." Discover more stories at Freewebnovel
"Keep going," Torwin told the merc.
"Right, well, this mayor showed us these berries that he said were actually monsters. We squished a few of them and got the system notifications proving it. From there, it was just a matter of the standard contract, the retainer, proof of funds, and the like. Then we were out to find the monster pretending to be human."
As far as Velik was concerned, that didn't vindicate them. They'd fully planned on killing him on the word of some stranger who'd had a stack of decarmas to show around. Some time in the stocks or a jail cell was exactly what the mercenaries needed. Maybe they'd be a bit smarter about blindly accepting murder contracts in a few years when they got out.
The problem was that he had absolutely no faith in human justice systems. Having spent the majority of his life being persecuted by a town full of people for something he'd had no control over, it wouldn't surprise him to learn that the mercs were set free the very next day. It wasn't like anyone else who'd ever gone after him had been punished for it, and he didn't see any reason things would be different here.
Suddenly, Velik was very, very tired. He was the better part of a thousand miles from home, and his problems were still following him. Even if this wasn't actually someone from Deshir or wherever trying to kill him, it was somebody else. Maybe it was some rich asshole who'd bet against him at the coliseum and lost a bunch of money, or someone from the guild whose toes he'd stepped on.
It didn't matter who it was. All that mattered was that, despite his best efforts, nothing had really changed. They'd failed to get the job done this time, but whoever it was would just try again. It wasn't like they were facing any repercussions for their actions.
The whole incident served to underscore the message he'd been getting hammered with for months. He didn't belong here. He didn't belong anywhere. The only way he'd ever be safe was to just disappear into the wilderness. At least the monsters were honest in their desire to eat him. He didn't have to wonder who was plotting murder behind a fake smile out there.
"Hey," Sildra said softly. "I know what you're thinking. Stop it."
Blinking, Velik came out of his thoughts to see his old friend from childhood looking at him with so much sadness in her eyes that he felt weirdly guilty for worrying her. "I'm fine," he said roughly. "Just… Just wondering who's trying to kill me this time."
"Whoever it was, they were trying to be thorough," Aria said. "A full mercenary company and a [Beast Tamer] who specializes in ambush tactics and was good enough to get away from two gold-ranked hunter type classes."
"We don't know that the unknown assailant was a [Beast Tamer]," Torwin pointed out.
"Does it matter what their exact class was?" Giller argued. "The point is, if we believe these men, they aren't associated with whoever sent the monster. Which, by the way, I thought the whole point of bringing this girl along was that she could detect monsters. What happened there?"
"I have to actively be using the skill," Sildra said.
That wasn't true, as far as Velik understood things. Based on the look on Jensen's face, he'd caught on to the lie as well, but neither of them wanted to call her out on it. Whether she was trying to keep how it worked hidden from the mercs, the rest of the team, or someone she thought was spying, he agreed that no good could come from giving anyone clues as to how they could defeat the skill.
"We can discuss the rest of this later," Torwin said, taking control of the conversation. "Right now, we've got forty prisoners, some of which are in fairly serious need of medical attention. They need to be marched back to King's Crossroad, and we all need to go. Let's get the camp packed up and get moving."
"And when we get there, I'm finding a bed and not getting out of it until noon tomorrow," Aria announced.
Velik watched Jensen gnash his teeth—I thought he loved sleeping in?—but in the end, he had no choice but to give in. They agreed to let Giller take the lead in explaining things once they got to town with the hopes that her knowledge of the legal system and political connections would insulate her from any blowback. It probably helped that the merc leader promised to explain what they'd been told, though that was a double-edged sword since it opened up the possibility of them wanting to jail Velik until they could prove he wasn't a monster if the mercs were believed.
Torwin and Jensen both assured Velik separately while they were walking that they weren't letting him go to jail, though in Jensen's case he seemed to be motivated purely by self-interest. Either way, Velik just nodded along and thanked them. He wasn't going to jail because he wouldn't let himself be arrested. If that meant abandoning the team and fleeing into the wilderness, that was what he'd do.
Maybe I'll do it anyway. It might be better to take my chances with a mountain crossing by myself. I'll just hold off on a decision until we see what happens with the marshals in town. But if this doesn't go my way, I'm out of here. I've had enough of other people.