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I asked why he was willingly coming along, and he answered, “It’s an opportunity to have someone in my debt.”

“I’m going to beat you up again if you try and make a deal for points.”

Charon’s mouth snapped shut.

In any case, we moved quickly toward the origin of the scream.

While on the way, we saw some disturbing scenes...

The corpses of other young heroes.

“...”

“...”

Hector approached one such cold corpse and checked their face.

In a low voice, he said, “It’s Nasil, the eldest son of House Pallom.”

With a quiet voice, Evan added, “...His sister was beautiful. I always joked about having him introduce her to me.”

The mood instantly became heavy.

Only Charon seemed to be fine.

“You don’t seem affected,” he said to me, echoing my own thoughts about him.

“I’m just not showing it.”

It was true.

Right now, my heart was boiling like magma.

Bednicker.

In my past life, I had always wanted to be a part of that title, but now I could only feel a sense of loathing toward it.

I didn’t know what right the family had to kill the people here as they were.

No matter how tiring, hurtful, dirty, or trash one’s life was...

If you just lived...

If you could just live another day, a good day could come.

Many young heroes who attended the training camp probably held that belief.

By completing the infamous training camp of House Bednicker and producing results, they could try to turn their lives around.

I pulled out the map.

After I figured out our approximate location, I placed a mark on the map.

Charon noticed and questioned me, “What are you doing?”

“I’m marking the map.”

“I’m asking why you’re marking the map.”

“We’ll need to come back later to bury them.”

We didn’t have the time right now.

The best we could do was hide them in the trees so the demons and beasts didn’t damage their corpses any further.

Seeing my actions, Charon gave a sarcastic smile.

“You’re doing something useless.”

“Why is it useless?”

“They’re already dead. Even if you recover their corpses and bury them in good soil, they won’t feel anything.”

I agreed with the sentiment, but it seemed Charon’s thoughts only stopped there.

Funerals were a ceremony for the living.

“That’s true for the people who are dead, but we need to think about the hearts of their families who’ll see them later. How do you think their parents will feel if their children’s corpses were mauled by beasts?”

I had learned this during my life as a mercenary.

It was a dangerous occupation where, every day, lots of people died for no reason...

But due to those deaths, I had met the friends, families, and lovers of those who had died.

Their kin would crumple on the spot when they saw the bodies of their loved ones ripped to pieces. Even I had had a hard time looking at them.

Unexpectedly, corpses could tell quite a story.

How they had died, what they’d felt right at the moment of their death...

Personally, it was an unnecessary truth we had to face.

“...”

Charon flinched for a moment before snorting.

Although he was acting fine on the outside, I could tell he’d been caught off guard.

He was like a kid who’d been told off because of something he hadn’t thought about.

What a funny guy.

I didn’t know what education he had received that had made him so twisted.

The Strongest Ranger in The Empire, Hyde Woodjack...

He was so famous that even I knew of him. His name was known widely within The Empire...

But as I thought about the way Charon acted, something felt a little off.

Regardless, there were a few more corpses around us still.

And every time we found another one, we discovered something.

“They were scared to death.”

“Yeah. Just like Pam,” Evan replied with a heavy voice.

“It’s not a beast. If a beast had killed them, it wouldn’t have left a corpse.”

“Then was it a banshee like you said?”

“Who knows...”

We continued on a little longer.

Soon, we finally found young heroes who were still alive.

“...Hmm.”

There were seven of them in total, and their conditions didn’t look good.

They were surrounded by about a dozen demons, but one of them looked quite different from any demon I had seen before.

“...What is that?”

It wasn’t a beast or a banshee.

The one who answered Evan’s desperate mumbling was again Hector.

“It’s a grim reaper.”

“A grim reaper?”

The monster’s robes floated menacingly like seaweed, and it carried a huge scythe that didn’t look real.

The name definitely checked out.

“It’s a demon that feeds on people’s fear. I hear that they capture souls with their scythe.”

“It doesn’t look like a small fry. Didn’t you say that the ritual only summons low-ranking demons?”

“Its rank isn’t that high,” Hector replied. “They’re only at the position to command beasts and banshees. If we’re going to fight it, we’ll need to risk our lives.”

“...”

That was to be expected.

Just looking at it sent chills down my spine.

However...

“...”

There were seven young heroes still alive.

Among them, I could see someone with white hair.

“We’ll save them, right?” Evan asked as he looked at me.

* * * * *

* * * * *

I nodded.

“We will save them.”

At that, Evan smiled and Hector let out a sigh.

“...It can’t be helped. I can’t sit by and let any more young heroes die within Bednicker territory.”

I turned to Charon.

“That’s what he says. What about you?”

With a dissatisfied tone, he replied, “You’re going to force me to help you anyway.”

“I won’t demand you put your life on the line.”

“Hmph...” Charon snorted before replying, “...If any are alive, we need to save them.”

I snickered openly.

I hadn’t expected him to say something so nice.

“Then is everyone in agreement? I think we’ll be a better team than expected.”

Evan seemed to have loosened up a little if he was trying to joke like that.

“Who’s going to be team captain?”

“Dunno. The one who kills that demon?”

I’d said it as a joke, but I noticed Hector’s and Charon’s eyes flash for a moment.

Mir was the same way. The young boys and girls of this age group were pretty simple.

That was what I thought.

“...”

“...”

But I could see Evan’s and even Charon’s and Hector’s hands subtly shaking.

It was natural to be afraid.

Even if you had a lot of real combat experience, even if you were a young master educated from a young age, it was only natural to be afraid of facing the cursed existences called demons. It was only natural to shake in front of them.

That was why it was heroes who faced those demons head-on...

I guess they were a little off in the head?

At that, I smiled and complimented them.

“You crazy bastards...”

“...”

“...”

Unfortunately, they didn’t react.

***

The grim reaper wasn’t the only problem.

There were more than a dozen beasts around it.

Something I hadn’t expected was that those cursed beings weren’t outright attacking the young heroes.

Honestly, it wouldn’t be odd for those demons to instantly kill seven young heroes...

But as I took a moment to check the situation, the answer came to me.

They were acting on the order of their leader, the grim reaper.

Didn’t Hector say they feed off fear?

There were so many delicious things you could eat in the world, so I didn’t know why it would choose to eat fear.

In any case, this was fortunate for the young heroes. If it didn’t need to harvest their fear, they’d be dead already.

We formed a simple plan.

First, we would ambush the demons and kill as many of them as we could. Once the battle had truly begun, we would fight them head-on.

We were currently moving to our ambush positions.

We also created a signal so we could synchronize our attack.

There were three beasts cornering the young heroes, but evidently they could get tired as well because they sometimes switched with each other as if on shift.

We would aim for that moment.

“...”

I was sitting in the branches of a tree and looking down.

...It’d be nice if we could each kill one beast in the first attack.

Naturally, the point of the ambush was to decrease the total number of enemies we would need to fight before the real battle started.

At least four enemies needed to die for the battle to turn in our favor.

I was confident I could kill two by myself, so if the other three killed two in total, that would be nice...

But something unexpected happened.

The one hiding next to me, Evan, suddenly started signing to me.

What is he saying?

While I was busy wondering what he was doing, Evan suddenly dropped down from the tree.

“...!”

Did he lose his footing? At a moment like this?

Even though I didn’t know what had happened, this called for a change of plans.

I immediately jumped down from the tree as well, and I saw Hector and Charon jump down a moment later.

Boom!

However, because the ambush was mistimed, I ended up only killing one demon, and the others only ended up injuring a few other demons.

This is bad.

The difficulty of this battle had just increased threefold.

Of course, we didn’t have time to whine about our failures.

I quickly dodged the attacks of the demons that charged me.

Since they were so large, it wasn’t difficult to dodge their attacks, but there were so many of them that it was difficult for me to try and land a hit back.

Still, this is manageable.

I now understood why they always moved in groups of two or three.

With so many of them here together, I felt vulnerable while fighting them.

This was going to drag out quite a bit, but at this rate, we might be able to defeat them without any casualties.

It was when I had that optimistic thought...

Raaaaaaaah!

A monstrous sound rang out.

It was the grim reaper who had been standing at the back.

Suddenly, the beasts began to move in a more orderly fashion.

So it’s like this?

Rather than commanding them... it was more like the grim reaper was controlling them.

The beasts’ free will had been hijacked. They were like golems following whatever orders were given to them.

Of course, in a complicated battlefield like this, the one who could fight more simply had the upper hand.

Damn it.

The situation had instantly turned against us.

The most disgusting part was that the grim reaper hadn’t even joined the fight yet.

In moments like this, the slow-starting nature of the Strongest Fire Technique was a bit painful.

The other guys...

Were fighting pretty well.

Hector and Evan in particular had started to even protect the young heroes who were injured.

I also realized why Evan had jumped down early.

Among the injured young heroes, I recognized a familiar face.

Karis.

He had a huge gash across his chest and was coughing up blood.

I understood why he’d acted as he had upon seeing his best friend in such a condition...

But I couldn’t say it was the right decision.

While I was looking around the battlefield and taking our situation into account, an unexpectedly cold wind blew through the area.

Fwoosh!

It wasn’t a simple winter gale.

As soon as I felt the wind gnaw at my skin, I realized that this was either magic or a blessing.

Sellen?

This wind had definitely originated from her.

Sellen was standing there with one of her arms outstretched as the wind ripped apart all the beasts it swept up.

Even the grim reaper standing at the back was assaulted.

Crack!

The grim reaper looked at the cutting winds blowing toward it and fought back with a black energy of its own, but it was destroyed without managing to resist for even a second.

The fight ended just like that.

“What was that...” Hector mumbled with a defeated tone.

The grim reaper and over a dozen beasts had been destroyed all at once.

Thud.

The source of that miracle collapsed to the ground face-first.

“What...” Hector mumbled to himself.

I immediately answered, “Let’s head over first.”