WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Order

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◈ Paladin of a Ruined Order

Chapter 47

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Request

The next morning, Elbridge and Marcus headed to the Mercenary Guild.

There were three mercenaries who had arrived before them, along with the three clients they'd seen yesterday.

"Only five people today···."

When the mage complained, the knight beside them answered.

"You've turned people away for days in a row. What else did you expect?"

"Who said I didn't know that? I'm just annoyed."

With the same black hair, similar eyes, and the same bickering tone, the knight and the mage were clearly brother and sister to anyone who looked at them.

The brown-haired knight beside them said, "Numbers don't matter. If there's even one useful person, that's enough. Everyone, this way."

The trio of employers led the five mercenaries into the Mercenary Guild.

The Mercenary Guild was made up of three rooms, and in the tiny room in the far corner sat a table and a metal box.

The metal box was nearly identical in shape to the mana battery they'd seen the day before, except for the needle attached to its top that showed the reading.

As soon as one mercenary saw the box, he slowly backed away.

"I don't have any mana built up···."

The first mercenary walked away.

Then the second mercenary put his hand on the box.

The needle on top twitched and moved. The mage and the two knights studied the number closely.

"28···. 29?"

Then the mercenary said proudly, "Look closely. It just barely hit 30."

"29 or 30, you're still disqualified. Out."

The second mercenary muttered a few curses under his breath and left.

The third mercenary put his hand on the box.

This time, the needle shot past 60 and jumped to 70 or more.

"72 or 73, maybe."

The third mercenary seemed fairly confident in his own ability, wearing a proud look on his face.

But the employers stayed cold this time too.

"We admit you're quite skilled among mercenaries, but you don't meet our standard. Sorry to say you've been eliminated."

"Damn. I doubt there are many mercenaries better than me, though···. Tch. Forget it."

Now only Elbridge and Marcus were left.

But neither of them knew exactly what the box was for. They only had a vague guess.

"Is this that mana battery thing?"

At Marcus's question, the mage let out a long sigh.

"So today's another bust, huh. Are you from another region, old man?"

"We came from Holy City Solenion the day before yesterday. Both of us."

"Ugh."

The mage made as if to leave right away, then sighed and answered.

"This is a mana gauge. The principle is similar to the mana battery you just mentioned, but it isn't something used to store mana. You could say it uses pressure to measure the total amount of mana you have."

"How do you use it? Just put your hand on it? No need to force anything?"

"Yeah. Just do it normally. If you want to take requests in Middlemarch from now on, nine times out of ten you'll have to tell the client what the gauge reads. You might as well check it now."

The mage sounded grumbly, but she still seemed to be looking out for Marcus. Whether she was nosy or just kind was hard to tell.

Marcus, on the other hand, looked completely unsure of himself. That made sense. He had never built up a single grain of mana in his entire life.

"Can't you just lie about the number?"

"You could, I guess. It would be embarrassing if clients like us insisted on measuring it ourselves, though."

"Hmm···."

Marcus opened and closed his hands a few times, then placed his sweaty palm on the black iron plate on top of the metal box.

Elbridge could tell from Marcus's expression alone what he was thinking.

He looked like he wanted to leave before embarrassing himself, just like the first mercenary who had walked out without even touching the gauge.

But the moment Marcus touched it, something unexpected happened. The needle jerked upward. It rose much higher than when the third mercenary had tested it.

"···Huh?"

Marcus was surprised, but the clients were just as shocked.

"Huh? Wait. I must have seen that wrong."

"I think it went past 120."

"Could you take your hand off and try again? We need to check more accurately."

When Marcus put his hand on it again, the needle shot up just as forcefully.

"···160?"

The knight who looked like the mage's older brother cried out in surprise.

"About 163. Wow, a rare guest has come from the east. I heard mercenaries over there don't build mana, so I wasn't expecting anything. An honored guest, an honored guest···."

The siblings, who had sounded a little sharp before, became warm in an instant. They didn't seem to be arrogant by nature after all.

The brown-haired knight, who had been watching silently, added a comment.

"Milia. The important thing isn't the number. This one has divinity, not mana."

"Divinity?"

The siblings' eyes shifted to the side of the needle.

From the small hole that had been faintly glowing blue when other people touched it, a pale white light was now leaking out.

"···It really is. Mercenary sir, were you a paladin?"

"I'm a mercenary. I just happened to have built up a little divinity."

"A little? 162 or so? That's nonsense! I heard divinity is much harder to build up than mana."

Marcus's situation was a little unusual.

Until he had met Elbridge, Marcus had barely had any divinity at all.

Of course, he had not built mana at the Magic Tower either. Back then, Marcus's physical ability had only been decent for an ordinary person.

But Marcus had had to follow Elbridge and Rombel around, and he had been half-forced to hunt demonic beasts.

Through that process, Marcus had absorbed a considerable amount of the evil god fragments carried by the demonic beasts, in other words, divinity, and he had surpassed the level of an ordinary person.

Marcus had made another leap when he received an oracle from the God of Fox Rain in Mountain City Barquntol.

That day, Marcus had felt as if the limit he had only vaguely sensed had been pushed far upward.

The mage asked excitedly, "Anyway, that's great. We've been looking for someone with 120 or more, whether mana or divinity. You'll take the request, right?"

Feeling better now, Marcus nodded.

"Of course. If they're paying well, what can't a mercenary do?"

"Great! What's your name?"

"Marcus."

The siblings seemed to have forgotten Elbridge halfway.

But fortunately, the brown-haired knight was different.

"Milia. There's still one more person."

"Oh, right. Since he's with Marcus, this one is worth expecting too."

Elbridge stepped toward the gauge.

Then a sudden oracle from the goddess came down.

- Elbridge. Would your goddess like to lend you a hand once?

"···No, thank you, Goddess."

Elbridge whispered softly and firmly refused the goddess's offer.

At that moment, the mage's flustered voice rang out.

"What is that? No one touched it, but the gauge's needle shot all the way up on its own."

"Didn't you see it wrong? You've been shut in a room all day, so maybe you're getting farsighted at a young age···."

"What are you talking about? That's not it, so stop saying weird things."

"But the number is coming out perfectly fine now."

"It's probably the old machine, not my eyes. If it gets weird again, let's measure it again then."

While the knight and mage were whispering, Elbridge put his hand on the machine.

This time too, the needle shot up. Even more strongly than when Marcus had touched it.

The mage gasped in shock.

"···350? Isn't it broken? That's almost at my brother Michel's level."

"Almost? There's still a pretty big difference."

It seemed hard for them to believe Marcus's number, but Elbridge's was impossible to accept. The brown-haired knight politely asked Elbridge, "The machine seems a little strange···. Could you please take your hand off for a moment?"

When Elbridge removed his hand, the brown-haired knight tried it.

The needle didn't quite reach 360 and slipped back down. But the brown-haired knight shouted proudly, "See! 360! I'm higher."

"I think it was a little lower than that···. Anyway, that means it isn't broken, right? You there, mercenary, what's your name?"

"El."

"Mr. El. Please measure once more."

Elbridge placed his hand on the machine again. The number on the needle was 350 again.

"Wow."

The mage did not hide her admiration.

But that wasn't all. The quiet knight added one more point.

"Milia. The important thing isn't the number. This one has divinity too, not mana."

"What?"

The mage and the two knights looked toward the side of the gauge. Just like when Marcus had tested it, white light was leaking out of the machine.

"I've never seen anything like this···. No, I heard divinity barely accumulates once it gets past a certain point. And his amount of divinity is more than the mana of a decent knight. Does that even make sense?"

"How should I know···."

A knight strengthened the body with mana, and a paladin strengthened the body with divinity.

Mana and divinity both enhanced physical ability, but the way they were built up was very different.

A knight drew on mana to raise physical ability. In other words, if they had enough money, they could go to the Magic Tower and fill their mana to their limit.

Of course, breaking past that limit and taking in even more mana required separate training. But a knight could still do their share alongside a paladin without ever fighting a battle.

A paladin, on the other hand, had only two ways to build divinity.

Faith, and battles against demonic beasts and demons.

There was no shortcut. If anything, building divinity only got harder.

That meant a wealthy knight could become stronger much faster than a paladin.

But a large amount of mana alone did not make a knight superior to a paladin.

Paladins could be granted much more powerful divine authority.

In other words, each had their own strengths.

Knights and paladins each had a competitive edge, in the form of lots of mana and powerful divine authority, so even two hundred years ago, a knight could still do their share alongside a paladin.

Still, there were exceptional cases.

If a paladin survived countless battles and won them all, there were cases where the paladin's divinity caught up to the knight's mana, and sometimes even surpassed it.

People like Leonhardt and Elbridge two hundred years ago were examples of that.

"Milia. I'm not lacking. This man is just unusual. Don't misunderstand."

"Who said anything? Anyway, this is even better. The fact that these two have built up divinity means they have nothing to do with the Magic Tower, right? In a way, they're the ideal mercenaries."

"Well, that's true···. Right. Now I suppose we should introduce ourselves. I'm Michel, a knight of the Magic Tower. This one is my younger sister, the mage Milia. And over there is my younger sister's friend, Patrick, also a knight of the Magic Tower."

Unlike the arrogant attitude he had shown at the tavern yesterday, Michel readily held out his right hand to Elbridge and asked to shake hands.

Elbridge took the hand and replied, "As I said, my name is El. By the way, didn't you say yesterday at the tavern that this was a request from the Magic Tower? Why is it a plus that we're unrelated to the Magic Tower?"

Milia answered, "Actually, it's not a real request from the Magic Tower. We just used that as a cover because it was easier to find people willing to help."

"···."

"If it were really a Magic Tower request, we wouldn't have gone to the Mercenary Guild, would we? We would have asked a knight from the Magic Tower for help."

Marcus, who was listening, felt a little uneasy.

Hiding the client like that. No matter how you looked at it, it was suspicious.

But Elbridge was even more intrigued.

If the mage was giving out a request that she could not ask a Magic Tower contact to help with, then there was a high chance it was tied to the Magic Tower's dirty secrets or internal matters.

'This doesn't seem like a simple odd job. It might have something to do with the Master of the Central Magic Tower. I'm glad I didn't ignore my instincts.'

It didn't matter if things got messy. Both Elbridge and Marcus were capable of taking care of themselves.

But Marcus still could not shake off his unease.

"You said it was a search mission. If it's some weird request, I'll refuse."

"Don't worry about that. It really is a search mission. And the search site is the underground sewer, just like I said yesterday."

"If that's the case, then I guess..."

"So you'll accept the request?"

Marcus glanced at Elbridge, then nodded.

"Sure. What are we supposed to find?"

The mage Milia lowered her voice and whispered, "A fellow mage of mine at the Magic Tower went missing while conducting important research."

"In the sewer?"

"I don't know."

"Then why are you going into the sewer?"

"The mages who were researching together with my colleague keep dying one after another. They aren't even reporting the deaths outside. They just quietly carry the bodies out through the Magic Tower sewer in the middle of the night. The deaths I've confirmed already are over ten."

Marcus made a face like he had bitten into a bug.

"···Wait. I don't want this request anymore."

"Mr. Marcus. I'll tell you this in advance, our family has a lot of money. Enough to make someone like my older brother Michel into a knight. Knights who've built up as much mana as Michel are rare even in the Magic Tower, you know?"

This time, Michel made a face like he had bitten into a bug.

But wanting rich clients nearby was a mercenary's instinct. That greedy little story moved Marcus.

"···Let's hear a little more."

"Mages do sometimes die or get injured while researching, but it's rare for that many people to keep dying in a row. Something huge is definitely happening beneath the Magic Tower."

"What kind of research is it?"

"My colleague gave me a little hint before going to research. They said it was research on an enormous demonic beast. Not the early or middle stage kind you sometimes see, but a truly powerful demonic beast. We're going with you to find out what that research is, and whether my colleague is still alive. How does that sound?"

"Hmm."

Marcus looked somewhat tempted.

But Elbridge's thoughts were different from Milia's.

'There are plenty of dangerous late-stage demonic beasts, but the Central Magic Tower isn't weak either.'

If a Magic Tower like that had lost so many mages during research, and kept hiding the casualties while continuing anyway...

'This doesn't feel like demonic-beast research. It feels like something related to demons. No, was it even really research to begin with?'

But it seemed that not even Marcus, let alone the clients, had reached that conclusion.

After finishing his thoughts, Elbridge said, "Marcus, brother."

"Hm?"

"Go back to the tavern right now and collect the pot."

Elbridge hated demons more than anyone else.

But right then, Elbridge's chest was full of a strange anticipation.

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