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◈ Paladin of a Ruined Order

Chapter 76

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Missionary of Love

"A guide? Oh, that's the least I can do."

Just as naturally as ever, Masa promised that once the job was finished, she would guide them out of the Great Forest.

So Elbridge's group rested a full day, and starting the next morning began their real search of the Great Forest.

Or rather, they tried to.

"...The wild boars seem even more numerous than yesterday."

The three of them felt daunted before they'd even climbed over the palisade.

The Great Forest was already packed with towering trees, and now the space between the trunks was crammed with plump, swollen wild boars. The sight stirred up some primal feeling that was hard to put into words.

Elbridge sighed and said, "Still, we have a job to do..."

The three of them steeled themselves and stepped outside the palisade. Thankfully, the wild boars were docile again today.

The problem was that they were only docile.

"The merchants probably didn't avoid this village because they were scared of the wild boars. They avoided it because they couldn't move through them."

"That's what I think too."

"If it were just their numbers, fine. But why are they so huge?"

The wild boars were much bigger than ordinary boars. Their shoulders came up to about Elbridge's and Marcus's chests.

They could sort of see their surroundings, but more than half their field of view was blocked, which made things uncomfortable.

To Rombel, though, that sounded like a luxury complaint.

"Marcus. You and Elbridge can at least see something around you. Since I left the village, all I've seen is wild boar armpits and crotches."

Rombel grumbled for a moment, then looked around as if something had occurred to him.

Then he began climbing up onto the back of the wild boar in front of him.

Elbridge was horrified.

"Careful. If something goes wrong..."

"Don't worry. I won't fall off."

"That's not what I'm worried about. I'm worried the wild boars might go berserk."

Rombel glared at Elbridge for a moment before speaking.

"...I know. Anyway, these things don't seem to care much, do they?"

Sure enough, the wild boar showed no particular reaction even with Rombel perched on its back.

Rombel's expression brightened now that he had his sight back.

"Since we're at it, let's just split up and search separately."

"That's dangerous."

"Sure it is. But if these things start rampaging, it won't matter whether we're together or alone."

That wasn't wrong, so Elbridge and Marcus nodded.

Rombel continued, "Besides, right now we're not even getting inside, just circling the edges. How are we supposed to find anything this way?"

Rombel stood up on the wild boar's back, then skillfully hopped from boar to boar, heading deeper into the Great Forest.

"I'll go look around and come back. Wait here."

Soon Rombel's figure disappeared from view.

Toward evening that day, Masa asked, "Where did that dwarf go off to?"

"...Good question."

Rombel hadn't returned to the village by dinnertime.

Marcus's expression turned grim.

"There's no way Rombel would miss a meal. Something must have happened to him."

"Let's go look for him first."

Elbridge and Marcus set out on a night search without even eating.

Rombel had headed toward the center of the wild boar herd, so Elbridge and Marcus aimed for the densest concentration of wild boars as well.

"Careful not to touch the young ones..."

Some time passed. Marcus waved urgently at Elbridge.

Elbridge pushed through the wild boars and reached Marcus, then asked, "Find something?"

"Just now, I think someone rode past on a wild boar."

"...Wasn't that Rombel?"

"That person was too tall to be Rombel."

Rombel's silhouette was easy to distinguish, so it wasn't likely Marcus had mistaken him.

"And the face on that person looked strange. I only caught the outline, but..."

"Did they have a scar?"

"No. Their ears looked long."

Elbridge's expression turned serious.

Masa's story about the elf had come to mind.

"How long, roughly, were the ears?"

"About this long? Maybe twice as long as an ordinary person's. I almost mistook them for horns."

Elbridge's expression turned serious.

"That really might be an elf."

Marcus grew a little excited at that.

"An elf? Wow, I've only seen a few elves so far."

"Marcus. Getting tangled up with elves isn't a good situation."

"All the elves I saw in Solenion were wonderful. Pretty or handsome, graceful in speech and manner, refined..."

Elbridge's voice dropped a little.

"Marcus. I'm not someone who discriminates against other races. But there's one thing I'm sure of. No race has as much individual variation as elves."

"What do you mean, individual variation?"

"Do you know anyone whose personality got stranger and stranger as they aged?"

"Plenty."

Steady, upright people didn't become mercenaries.

Even if such people became mercenaries out of financial desperation, they left the trade quickly once they'd saved up the amount they were after. In the end, the ones who stuck around were the ones who weren't steady or upright to begin with.

That was why most old mercenaries were eccentric.

"A guy who seemed fine when he first became a mercenary, you meet him again five years later and he's completely gone to seed. Drunkards, guys who've picked up thieving, guys who lie the moment they open their mouths, guys obsessed with gambling..."

"Do they come back to normal a few years after that?"

"Mostly they get worse. That's assuming they survive that long. Even someone like me, who's stayed sane through over ten years as a mercenary, that's rare."

"Marcus. Elves live over a thousand years."

"..."

Quick on the uptake, Marcus grasped Elbridge's meaning at once.

A person's life was something like drawing a line on dirt with your eyes closed.

At the start of the line, in childhood, all the lines looked more or less the same.

But the longer you drew the line, the more it inevitably began to bend and drift.

That difference only grew the longer the line stretched. And when you finally opened your eyes, you found yourself looking at a crooked, wandering line.

Among those, the ones that drifted especially far became what people called "eccentric old folks."

If that was true even for humans, who could barely manage a hundred years, what would it be like for elves who lived over a thousand?

But while Marcus understood the point, he didn't agree with Elbridge's conclusion.

"Still, every elf I've seen has been wonderful. Looks aside, they were more refined than most nobles."

"Elves are a closed-off race. They don't send out any elf who'd embarrass the race's reputation."

"By that logic... isn't the elf here also one of the good ones? An elf who left the north and came all the way to the other side of the continent?"

Marcus still hadn't shaken the preconception that elves were noble and wonderful.

But Elbridge was different.

Fighting together on a battlefield tended to strip away people's masks, whether they liked it or not.

From what Elbridge had seen so far, elves sometimes revealed uglier depths than ordinary people did.

Elbridge shrugged.

"Well, I'm not saying it's definitely a bad or strange elf. Just that not every elf is refined. That's all I mean."

Marcus's point wasn't wrong either.

Elves who were noticeably strange were rare.

Even a somewhat odd elf might only show their true colors in extreme situations like a battlefield, appearing perfectly composed and refined the rest of the time.

Living over a thousand years meant having socialized with others for over a thousand years, after all.

"Anyway, which way did that person, or elf, go?"

"That way."

Elbridge and Marcus pushed through the wild boars, sometimes leaping over them, and moved forward.

At one point Marcus nearly kicked a young wild boar by accident, but Elbridge reacted quickly enough to prevent it.

After moving for some time, the two of them spotted a faint light leaking out from deep in the forest.

"Is that a cabin?"

"Looks like it."

The cabin surrounded by the massive herd of wild boars stirred up an odd feeling in Elbridge and Marcus. It felt a little unreal, somehow.

The two of them crept closer, meaning to see who was inside.

But before they could even peer into the cabin, a cheerful voice rang out.

"Well, more guests. These must be the friends you mentioned?"

"Are they?"

The first voice was unfamiliar, but the second was one they knew well.

Sure enough, the cabin door creaked open and Rombel appeared.

"You made it?"

Elbridge frowned almost on reflex.

"Night fell and you never came back. What are you doing here?"

"I figured heading back would take too long. Thought I'd spend the night."

"...If you vanish without a word, how are we supposed to know if you're alive or dead?"

"I can't be anything but alive. I'm not dying until I become a god!"

Rombel said that with a hearty laugh.

And Elbridge caught the oddly sweet smell of fruit wine on Rombel's breath.

'This guy. Drinking leisurely the whole time.'

While Elbridge was still deciding what to do about Rombel, someone stepped out from behind him.

Long platinum-blond hair, a strikingly handsome face, and long ears. An elf, sure enough.

The elf held out a right hand toward Elbridge and Marcus with a bright expression.

"Hey there! Um... what were your names again? Rombel told me. Elby? Elcus?"

Offering a handshake right off the bat?

An elf that sociable was rare. The worry that had settled in Elbridge's chest eased a little.

Elbridge took the elf's hand and answered, "Elbridge."

"Right. Nice to meet you, Elbridge. Mind if I ask which church you belong to?"

"A paladin of the Order of the Rusted Shield."

"Great. Pass."

"...?"

Elbridge had no idea what "pass" meant, but there wasn't even a trace of hostility in the elf's voice.

Elbridge let himself be pulled into the cabin. Inside, the air was thick with the rich, savory smell of cooking food.

The elf held out a hand to Marcus as well.

"If that's Elbridge, then you must be Marcus?"

"Uh... yeah."

"Can you tell me which church you belong to too?"

"Order of the God of Fox Rain. Not a paladin, though. A mercenary."

"Great. Marcus passes too. Lots of nice guests today. I'm Niserath."

Niserath brought over two more tree-stump chairs and set them beside the table, then laughed cheerfully.

"First time I've had three guests since I built this cabin. Not that it's an old cabin, mind you. Elbridge, Marcus, have you two eaten dinner?"

The tone was as familiar as an old friend's.

Marcus shook his head.

"Haven't eaten yet."

"No? Give me a moment. And I don't like formality, so talk casually with me. I'm sick of being treated like some elder."

Niserath said that, then set butter in a small pan and started frying meat.

It wasn't unusual. Contrary to common belief, less than half of elves were vegetarian. And an elf as sturdy-looking as Niserath was even less likely to be one.

Once Elbridge and Marcus sat at the table, Rombel brought over two wooden cups and set them down in front of them.

Then Rombel poured fruit wine into their cups, and a sweet fragrance rose into the air.

Marcus tensed a little.

Of all the countless kinds of alcohol in the world, elf-made fruit wine was widely considered the finest.

This wine would certainly sell for more than its weight in gold.

While Marcus cautiously sipped and marveled at the wine, Elbridge rounded on Rombel.

"Rombel. If someone vanished without a word and then you found them drinking leisurely, how do you think that would feel?"

"Thinking about it from the perspective of a bold dwarf like me... I'd probably think, good thing my friend's being treated well. That's the kind of thought I'd have."

While Elbridge was debating whether to give the narrow-minded man a taste of his fist, Rombel lowered his voice and said, "Elbridge. I'm not here for no reason. Do you know how well Niserath handles wild boars? And Niserath said that once the sun rises tomorrow, he'll send the wild boars somewhere else. That would wrap up the job in one shot."

Come to think of it, Marcus had said he'd seen the elf riding past on a wild boar.

Elbridge murmured quietly, "So Niserath's a druid."

Some elves possessed special abilities.

Druids, who could easily tame and communicate with animals, were one such example.

Bireone's words suddenly came to mind.

The wild boars were presumed to be hybrids between demonic beasts and ordinary boars.

"...I thought even druids couldn't tame demonic beasts. I suppose since wild boars are half animal, communication is possible."

When Elbridge finished saying that, Niserath, still frying the meat, answered.

"Hm? Ha ha. I'm not a druid."

The person most startled by that wasn't Elbridge, but Rombel.

"What? Niserath. You're not a druid?"

"Of course not. Not every elf who avoids meat is a druid, but every druid avoids meat."

Thinking about it, that made sense.

It would be strange to eat animals while claiming to communicate with them.

"But the wild boars followed you so well."

"That's true. But it's not like other animals follow me the same way."

So was Niserath some kind of wild-boar-only druid?

No. There was no way such a thing existed.

Rombel asked, "Then why do the wild boars follow you?"

"Because I made them, that's why."

"...?"

Niserath raised a thumb proudly and said, "I was the first one to pair up a boar with a demonic beast."

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