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◈ Paladin of a Ruined Order

Chapter 41

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Liar

Like the paladins before him, Elbridge had never asked for money for any job tied to demons or demonic beasts.

He had never once talked about money, so whenever the subject came up, he turned tongue-tied and awkward.

Still, Elbridge had enough sense to keep quiet while Marcus bargained over the pay on his behalf.

Marcus said to Village Chief Tibo.

"What are you giving us as payment? You can't seriously think a night's lodging is enough."

"Not just one day. You can stay as long as you want and leave whenever you like..."

"Hey!"

Marcus frowned like some thug who had come to collect a fee.

"If you're a mage, shouldn't you have money? I've heard enchanted armor costs several times more."

"There are specialist mages for enchantments. I wasn't one of them..."

"Or that other thing, where you take money from knights and build up mana for them. I heard that was the real cash cow."

Village Chief Tibo answered awkwardly.

"I did do that, but... I left the Magic Tower more than twenty years ago. I already spent the money I made back then."

"Well, I still can't work for free. If a mercenary of my caliber handled jobs for free, it would make it even harder for ordinary mercenaries to ask for payment."

Marcus subtly showed off his sword. The decorations on the scabbard and hilt were so flashy that Tibo had no choice but to believe the bluff.

"If you don't have money, I'll take goods in kind. Better if it's something easy to sell."

"Goods in kind..."

When Tibo failed to offer a proper reward, Marcus asked Elbridge.

"Sir Elbridge. Is that staff expensive?"

"It probably is. I've heard staves that have been in the hands of experienced mages become even more expensive."

Tibo hurriedly hid the staff behind his back, then suddenly said, as if he had just remembered.

"Ah! Please wait a moment."

He went into the inner room and came back with a small glass bottle.

It was only a little bigger than a thumb. Inside the bottle, a red liquid sloshed around.

"What is that?"

The answer came from Elbridge, not Tibo.

"That would be an elixir."

"An elixir? This?"

An elixir was a potion that healed wounds. In terms of raw effect, it even surpassed the Healing Authority manifested by paladins of the Order of Spring Rain and Moss.

You could almost call an elixir an extra life.

Unlike Healing Authority, it could be used whenever desired, so well-off churches would often hand them to high-ranking paladins for emergencies.

The problem was that elixirs were extremely expensive to produce, and the number made was limited.

Even Marcus, an experienced mercenary, was seeing one in person for the first time.

"Is it genuine?"

When Marcus asked, Rombel held out his hand to Tibo.

"Let me see it."

Rombel took the glass bottle, tilted it this way and that, and checked the seal between the cap and the glass. Then he said in a confident voice.

"It's genuine."

An elixir was more than enough as payment for the request. No, at this point, it was actually too much.

They should have added something on top of the request now, but there was nothing suitable to give.

'I can't hand over the gear I got in the Red Mountains... huh?'

As Marcus thought that, he noticed something interesting.

Tibo still looked a little tense.

Even after offering an elixir as payment, he still wasn't sure whether Elbridge's group would actually accept the request.

'There's no way a mage wouldn't know what an elixir is worth. Is that plant-type demonic beast more troublesome than I thought?'

Still, the exact danger of the plant-type demonic beast did not matter much. Elbridge had reacted as if he already had a method.

From Marcus's experience, if Elbridge thought something was possible, then it was possible.

In the end, Marcus held out his right hand to Tibo.

"We can't just ignore people in trouble. We'll take the request."

Tibo took Marcus's hand.

"Thank you."

The next morning, Elbridge's group and Tibo left the village.

They wore light clothes instead of armor. Marcus, though, had a leather sack slung over his back that was almost as big as he was.

Marcus asked Elbridge.

"Sir Elbridge. What are you planning to use that sack for?"

"You'll know soon."

"Oh, yes..."

The four of them arrived at the stream beside the village.

Elbridge compared the spots where moss had grown on the rocks with where the water was currently flowing.

"The flow has dropped a lot. It already seems to be less than half what it was."

"That's right. If this goes on for another month or two, it wouldn't be strange for the stream to dry up completely. If that happens, the village won't have any drinking water."

As he listened to Elbridge and the village chief talk, Marcus's expression turned serious.

'If one demonic beast is sucking up this much water, then its size must be beyond what I imagined. Did we accept the request too quickly? No. Sir Elbridge planned to take it from the start. I only got extra payment out of it...'

The four of them followed the stream upstream.

After a while, a huge flower came into view far ahead.

"Just looking at it, I can tell that's the one. But that size is ridiculous. It's unbelievable..."

"It got even bigger in just a few days, even after we burned it recently."

The flower itself did not look much different from the wildflowers often seen around them. A stem, leaves, and five simple blossoms.

But its size was the problem.

The stem supporting the flower was bigger and thicker than most logs, and the flower itself was literally the size of a house.

That enormous flower had bloomed at a height not much different from the top of a tree some distance away.

The plant-type demonic beast was clearly aware of the group too. The direction its flowers were facing slowly shifted toward Elbridge's group. The same thing happened whenever the group moved.

"I thought it was just a plant-type and let my guard down, but it's nastier than I expected."

To Marcus's assessment, Tibo said, "What's even more troublesome isn't the flower. It's the roots. That thing's roots reach almost all the way here."

"Here?"

The distance between the group and the flower was nearly the length of the whole village. Still, if the roots had spread that far, it made sense that the stream had been dried up.

Marcus's expression grew grave.

'Did we take this request for no reason? Even Sir Elbridge will probably have a hard time with this. Maybe I should return the elixir and back out now...'

Rombel, like Marcus, also looked uncertain.

"Elbridge. Can you handle it? Even if you and I cut down the stem and flower, there's no way to deal with the roots."

"Let's walk a little farther."

Elbridge looked around as if he was searching for something, then kept going upstream along the creek.

Then he stopped.

"There it is."

Where Elbridge pointed, a patch of weeds had grown together.

The weeds were about waist-high. At the tips of their stems bloomed white, round flowers, but since they had bloomed in summer, they were now a little dried out and drooping.

Marcus and Tibo had seen the weed a few times before.

Tibo asked, "What is it?"

"It's called water hemlock. It grows a lot around water."

Elbridge grabbed a stem of the water hemlock and pulled it out.

White sap seeped from the torn end of the roots.

"The roots of this water hemlock contain a powerful poison. It can kill animals, people, and even plants. If you want to kill animals or people, you dry it out and grind it into powder. If you want to kill plants, you use the sap as it is."

Elbridge looked at Marcus and Rombel, then pointed at the weed with his hand.

"Pull it out carefully so the roots don't get damaged, wash the dirt off in running water, and put it in the sack."

Rombel and Marcus looked upstream along the creek.

The water hemlock patch stretched on and on. If they dug up all the roots, they could probably fill the sack dozens of times over.

The problem was that pulling out the water hemlock and gathering the roots was not going to be easy. Marcus and Rombel both felt a little lightheaded.

Elbridge crossed his arms with a smug look and nodded.

"Start."

Marcus let out a long sigh, then got to work.

Rombel was different. He was not a mercenary who did anything for money. He was a warrior with pride.

"Elbridge. Why are you just standing there with your arms folded?"

"I'm being considerate. I'm giving you and Marcus something to do too."

Rombel raised a fist in reply.

"So I have to get beaten before I move, huh?"

Elbridge clenched both fists and took his stance too.

"Come on."

But Elbridge and Rombel never ended up fighting. Tibo solved the problem with magic.

"I think I can handle this. You only need the roots, right?"

Tibo waved his staff, and a sharp wind rose up, skimming along the ground and cutting down every water hemlock stem.

He swung the staff again. A strong gust swept across the ground and blew away the water hemlock stems scattered there.

Then Tibo flicked the staff one more time, and the earth along the creek flipped over, exposing the roots of the water hemlock patch aboveground.

He had done all that with just three motions of the staff.

Elbridge silently looked at Tibo.

It had already been obvious the first time he saw him, but Tibo was no ordinary mage. He was the kind of person who could even have held an important post in the Magic Tower.

Marcus asked Tibo, "Can't you use that magic to pull out the roots of that demonic beast too?"

"Impossible. The scale is at least tens, maybe hundreds of times greater... and the depth of the roots is beyond comparison too."

Tibo staggered and sat down on the spot.

"This is hard. I'll rest for a bit."

Elbridge and Marcus rinsed the water hemlock roots in the stream and gathered them into one pile. Finally, Rombel crushed the roots and packed them into the leather sack Marcus had brought.

After about half a day of work, the large sack held a fair amount of sap.

'...I thought it would take at least five days, no matter how fast we worked.'

The four of them moved closer to the plant-type demonic beast with the sack full of sap.

The last step was to use the water hemlock sap to deal with the plant-type demonic beast.

"I'll finish this."

Elbridge slung the sack, which sloshed with sap, over his left shoulder and faced the flower with a sword in his right hand. The flowers turned to face him too.

Then Elbridge kicked off the ground and started running at the plant-type demonic beast.

Seeing that Elbridge was moving in an unusual way, the plant-type demonic beast responded at once. Tree vines burst up through the ground, trying to wrap around Elbridge's ankles, and sharp tree roots occasionally shot out, trying to pierce his legs and body.

Marcus watched Elbridge run closely.

If it had been one or two attacks like that, Marcus could have dodged them too. The problem was that the attacks came from all sides at once, over a very wide area.

It was on a completely different level from the plant-type demonic beast Marcus had fought himself.

'It's like a giant trap. A trap as big as several villages put together...'

Even so, Elbridge dodged every attack without trouble, even with the heavy sack in hand. Whenever he could not avoid one, he swung his sword and cut the roots down.

At last, when he reached the area close to the stem, Elbridge stepped on a huge leaf beneath it and jumped.

He hopped from leaf to leaf like he was performing a trick, climbing higher and higher.

The moment Elbridge finally leaped to the highest point, his right shoulder flashed white.

Snick.

Three of the five flower stalks were cut off at once.

Elbridge did not stop after one strike. He kept swinging his sword as he fell downward.

Each time the sword flashed in the sunset light, the huge stem, almost as thick as a tree trunk, was sliced away from the top down.

Marcus thought, 'That's incredible skill. Could I ever become like that...'

Elbridge landed and sheathed his sword.

Then he pressed the leather sack against the cut surface of the stem and squeezed. The water hemlock sap that had been collected all day flowed into the cross-section of the plant-type demonic beast.

By now, the water hemlock sap would seep into every root of the plant-type demonic beast.

"···!"

The plant-type demonic beast sensed that something was wrong and writhed violently.

Roots shot up from all over the broad ground at once, and thick pollen sprayed from the flowers that had not been cut, aiming for Elbridge.

"Oops."

Elbridge immediately threw the leather sack away, then covered his nose and mouth with his left arm.

Then he drew his sword again and started running, cutting down every attack aimed at him. It looked almost like he was escaping from a giant net.

Even watching with his own eyes, Marcus still couldn't make sense of Elbridge's movements.

'...How does he know to react to attacks coming from behind him or from under his feet?'

Tibo couldn't understand Elbridge's movements either.

Rombel was the only one who reacted as if it was all perfectly reasonable.

But even if they didn't understand, it didn't matter.

Elbridge finally arrived beside the three of them, lowered the arm covering his nose and mouth, and gasped for air.

"Phew. I almost died from being out of breath."

Elbridge turned around and looked at the plant-type demonic beast with the others.

The plant-type demonic beast was still thrashing. It was a stronger reaction than when Tibo had burned down all the stems and flowers with magic a few days ago.

Tibo asked Elbridge, "Is it definitely finished?"

"It should be. An elf taught me this method."

"An elf?"

"Yes. Elves go on and on about loving nature and forests, but they show no mercy to weeds. Plant-type demonic beasts are no exception."

"I see..."

"Still, we should make sure it's really done, so let's stay in the village for a few days and watch how it goes."

Elbridge stretched, looking relieved, then wandered back toward the village.

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