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Translator/Editor: Order

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◈ Paladin of a Ruined Order

Chapter 81

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Golden Tray

The dry, straw-blond man looked a little uneasy at Marcus's approach.

"Who're you? Never seen you before."

"Name's Marcus. Not much of a fighter, but I've been a mercenary a long time."

There was an edge to Marcus's voice, carrying more feeling than usual.

Mercenaries hated hearing a client's sob story.

Once you heard the story, you lost your composure. And once you lost your composure, the odds of making a stupid choice went up.

And clearly, Marcus was in a less composed state than usual.

"Hey, you. You know the innkeeper's son, right?"

"I know him, but..."

"What job did you connect him to? No, first tell me how many people took the job together with him."

Instead of answering, the blond man glanced around.

The mercenaries with him also looked uncomfortable with Marcus's presence.

"Marcus, what's your problem with Deter?"

"I just need to ask him something, hold on. This guy might've pulled something stupid."

Rombel, watching the scene unfold, couldn't quite follow what was happening.

"Elbridge. This Deter guy connected the client with the innkeeper's son, right?"

"That's right."

"Even if something happened to the innkeeper's son, it doesn't seem fair to blame this guy for it. The client caused the problem, not him."

"No. This guy might share the blame."

Unlike Rombel, Elbridge knew a little about how mercenaries operated, so he could roughly guess why Marcus was angry.

Eventually Deter answered Marcus's question.

"The innkeeper's son, Ned. And two friends of his, three in total. He kept begging me every day to find him work, so I connected him to a simple job. That's all there was to it."

"Right. Do you know this client well?"

"He didn't seem like a strange person. Looked important, like someone with status."

"Who asked that? I asked if you know who the client is. How many times have you dealt with him?"

"..."

Marcus kept pressing.

"You must've known the innkeeper's son had no experience at all. And there's an unspoken rule: you only connect a beginner to a client you can trust. Don't try telling me you didn't know that."

The world liked to think mercenaries were bad people. But there was something people overlooked. Bad clients were far more common than bad mercenaries.

Ordinary people had no reason to seek out a mercenary. The best kind of client looking for one was, at most, a merchant in urgent need of an escort.

Most other clients sought mercenaries for reasons they couldn't reveal to the public.

And those kinds of people often tried to silence the mercenaries afterward, either to protect a secret or to save on payment.

A seasoned mercenary would weigh the risk against the reward even in a situation like that. But a green mercenary, someone new to the trade, didn't know how to pick and choose jobs.

Countless rookie mercenaries had taken jobs without realizing the danger, and lost their lives for nothing.

That was why brokers and mercenary guilds never connected an unfamiliar client with an inexperienced mercenary.

It was the bare minimum of decency, a rule of the trade, an unspoken law. One the Mercenary King had established long ago.

Marcus kept pressing.

"Other mercenaries turned the job down, but you wanted the fee, so you sweet-talked a few clueless kids into taking it off your hands. Isn't that right?"

Deter's eyes darted around wildly.

"No. It wasn't like that. If nobody took the job, I would've been the one to suffer for it. That client's whole mood was..."

Marcus snorted.

"If you're going to act as a broker, that's the kind of risk you're supposed to take on yourself. Did you think only kind, generous clients would come knocking? You think the Mercenary Guild exists for no reason? You were scared of getting hurt yourself, so you pushed three clueless kids down a dangerous road instead. You piece of shit."

"Did... something happen to Ned?"

So the innkeeper's son's name had been Ned.

Marcus answered that question with action instead of words.

Crack.

Marcus bent two of Deter's fingers backward.

"...!"

Deter clenched his jaw and endured the pain.

If he screamed, it would draw the attention of everyone in the inn. And if that happened, the crowd might beat him to death.

In fact, the mercenaries nearby were already looking at Deter with disgust. The Mercenary King's unspoken law carried that much weight.

Deter clutched his broken fingers and looked toward the innkeeper and his wife. They still looked like they knew nothing.

Marcus hoped the couple's peaceful ignorance would stay unbroken. And thanks to that, Deter's life was spared.

Elbridge and Rombel came over to stand beside Deter.

The other mercenaries quietly stepped aside. It was obvious from the situation that Deter had done something wrong, and Elbridge's armor looked expensive.

Elbridge asked.

"Hey, Deter. Do you remember what the person who gave that job looked like?"

Deter clearly didn't want to talk about the client, but he didn't have a choice.

"Can we talk outside?"

"Sure."

Elbridge and the others took Deter to the boundary between the village and the forest.

Deter checked around to make sure no one was near, then let out a deep sigh.

"...It was a priest."

"A priest from which church?"

"He was wearing the priest robes of the Order of the Golden Tray. Probably not a fake. Didn't talk like one of us common folk..."

An unexpected piece came out.

"Did you see the priest's face?"

"Couldn't, because of the hood. I'm telling the truth."

He didn't look like he was lying.

Deter wasn't the type who could calmly spin lies even in a situation like this.

"Anything else you know?"

"No... ah, he had a pretty solid build. That's it."

"...Fine. Go on."

Rombel jerked his chin, and Deter shuffled back toward the village, clutching his broken fingers.

If someone spread word of what Deter had done, he could lose his life over it. Within a few days, he'd probably leave the village.

The three of them started talking again.

Rombel spoke first.

"A priest of the Order of the Golden Tray broke the seal. You buying that?"

Marcus answered.

"I doubt Deter was lying. But there's no guarantee he knows the truth either. If I were the one who'd hired that job... I wouldn't have gone to find Deter wearing my own church's priest robes. At the very least."

Elbridge thought the same. Anyone plotting something like this would go to great lengths to hide their identity. If anything, the fact that the man wore the robes of the Order of the Golden Tray made it the least likely the Order of the Golden Tray was actually behind it.

Besides, the Order of the Golden Tray stood to lose everything if demons returned.

The church that had gained the most from demons disappearing was the Golden Tray, and the church that stood to lose the most now that demons had returned was also the Golden Tray, wasn't it?

"Someone who'd gain from breaking the seal. And someone who holds a grudge against the Order of the Golden Tray..."

Elbridge muttered to himself, and Rombel spoke up.

"I'm most suspicious of the combat churches."

"Combat churches?"

"The combat churches gain the most if demons come back. And plenty of combat churches quietly resent the Order of the Golden Tray... Of course, definitely not the Order of the Rusted Shield!"

Rombel quickly tacked that last part on, apparently afraid a lightning bolt might come down.

No lightning fell, this time.

Maybe Rombel's effort had actually paid off.

"Now that I think about it, that client seemed to have killed those three poor young men without much trouble. That raises the odds a bit that the culprit is a paladin of a combat church."

But Elbridge didn't agree with Rombel's theory.

"No. There's no way a paladin broke the seal. If demons come back, the churches would grow, sure, but... paladins of combat churches would be the first to die."

"Elbridge. A paladin's whole reason for existing is to be the enemy of demons. And having that reason for existing denied is a bigger problem than you'd think. I think there's a real chance some paladin of a combat church broke the seal, longing for the glory and power of that old era."

Elbridge shot back immediately.

"That doesn't add up. Paladins of this generation never lived through that era's glory and power. They can't long for something they never experienced."

Rombel burst out laughing at that.

"You think you can't long for something you never experienced? No. That's not true at all. People can feel nostalgia for a time they never lived through."

Rombel crossed his arms.

"Fifty or sixty years after the war against the demons ended. Most of the paladins who'd actually fought demons had retired or died of old age by then, but demons hadn't quite become legend yet. Trust me, the young paladins of that era were the ones who longed for the demon war more than anyone."

"How does that make sense?"

"Of course it makes sense. They vaguely knew about that glorious era, but they never knew the pain and fear that came with it. That's exactly why they could long for it more purely than anyone else."

An idea Elbridge could understand in his head but couldn't quite accept in his gut.

Had a paladin of a combat church really broken the archdemon's seal?

Maybe it was just a wild guess. But there was clearly a possibility.

"Don't believe me?"

"...I don't know."

"Then there's a way to find out for sure."

Rombel shrank back a little and shouted up at the sky.

"Goddess of the Rusted Shield! If I have spoken nonsense with not a shred of truth to it, strike lightning down right there beside me and scold me for it!"

No lightning fell.

And this was a time of day when the goddess wouldn't be asleep.

Gods couldn't pass along heaven's affairs to the mortal world, and mortals didn't know exactly where the boundaries of that rule lay.

But maybe, just now, the Goddess of the Rusted Shield had endorsed Rombel's guess, not through action, but through inaction.

Marcus took Rombel's guess one step further.

"I just had a thought, actually."

"What thought?"

"If it really was a paladin who let the demon loose... whether it was one person acting alone or not. That's what I'm most curious about."

If it was a lone act, then it was just one fool's reckless decision.

It would leave a deep scar on the world, but the problem could be settled by punishing that one person.

But if it wasn't a lone act.

If the whole church, or the god leading the combat churches, had wanted the demon to return, that was a problem on a completely different scale.

And Marcus clearly leaned toward thinking it wasn't a lone act.

Elbridge shook his head.

"No. That's too much of a stretch."

Whether that was wishful thinking or what he genuinely believed, Elbridge himself didn't know.

Marcus didn't push his theory on Elbridge either.

"Well, maybe. Let's wrap it up here. Not like we have any way to dig further."

Elbridge and his companions didn't have much to go on.

The client had worn the priest robes of the Order of the Golden Tray. He had some degree of combat ability. A handful of other circumstantial details...

With no more clues left, their reasoning had reached its end.

At least, that was what Elbridge and Marcus thought.

But Rombel thought differently.

"Why wouldn't there be a way to dig further?"

"What else is there?"

"Plenty. If we can't find it, we just hand the investigation off to someone else."

"To who?"

"The Order of the Golden Tray."

Rombel pointed in the direction Deter had disappeared.

"No need to add our own guesses. We just spread word the way Deter told it, that it sounds like the Order of the Golden Tray broke the seal."

"Rombel. You're not actually suspecting the Order of the Golden Tray, are you?"

"Of course not. Do you think I'm an idiot?"

"...Then what's the point of spreading that rumor? All that does is make an innocent victim."

Rombel answered flatly.

"There's a reason. Obviously."

"What reason?"

"There's no such thing as a perfect secret in this world. And one in every five people out there belongs to the Order of the Golden Tray. Someone's bound to have a clue."

That was when Elbridge and Marcus finally understood what Rombel was getting at.

"Rombel. You..."

Rombel grinned, wicked.

"Watch. The Order of the Golden Tray will hunt down the culprit themselves, if only to clear their own name."

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