Spectre of the Sinner - Chapter 3 part 3: A wanderer becomes the hero
POV: Freida von Wagner, tertia hora matutina, Nebioso Wald, Mellanphalia Kingdom
Sitting idly on a roadside rock, I watched the stranger busily hauling the deceased toward a pit. Armed with only a short shovel, the knight painstakingly dug a funeral pit after performing first aid treatment for my broken arm, which he insisted on. Even though I understood his words clearly, I was desperately quelling my disagreeing knightly pride to let the wound rest.
And as for the treatment, he secured my broken right arm with a padded splint and left it comfortably resting on my chest thanks to a sling. The pain subsided thanks to a candy-like substance, which the man called fentanyl, allowing me to reduce the amount of [Mana] I had to expend to control the pain.
“Such splendidly made splinters,” a musing dripped in admiration leaked from my lips, “and the way he gently held me… Wait a moment, I didn’t mean that!”
Frantically shaking my head at the misconstrued words, I found my face heating up rapidly.
“Miss, could you please perform the last rites for your friends?”
Acknowledging his request, I walked over to the row of my deceased friends and comrades, now neatly laid in the pit. After cooling my face, I looked at them for the last time. Then I tottered toward a dear friend of mine, whose body was at the leftmost of the row. There, I squatted down and gently combed through her light copper locks, unaware that tears had been rolling down my cheeks.
“Dearest [Annie]… I’m so sorry… So sorry for not being… Strong enough to… Save you…”
As I bid farewell to my friend, I gently put the broken spear on her bosom. Using my left hand to wipe away the tears, I climbed up the pit with his help. As the man started to fill the ditch with dirt, I filled the silent forest with a funeral ritual while holding in my weeping. After a while, as I recited the last words of the service, the 7 corpses were finally becoming one with the earth.
The gentleman wordlessly patted my shoulder, calming my sobbing after a while. Just as my composure returned, the man abruptly brought forward his weapon and aimed at the forest, startling me considerably. Not wanting to be left behind, I also clumsily unsheathed my longsword and readied my barely recovered [Mana] reserves.
“False alarm, I repeat, false alarm,” after a moment of nail-biting silence, the man then lowered his weapon, allowing me to relax my stance.
Afterward, as the soldier walked toward me, I recalled his earlier words about him being a foreigner. Yet, as much as I tried to recollect the armies of the surrounding countries and the faraway Eastern countries, the soldier’s equipment was in another realm. Naturally, it occurred to me that securing his cooperation would go a long way in dealing with the much dreaded [Große Todesparade]. Besides, with my still wounded sword hand, it would be impossible for me to get through this section of the forest alive.
“Miss, the temporary funeral’s over now. How’s your arm doing now?”
I briefly glanced down at my broken arm, heaving a relieved sigh as the pain had subsided completely.
“Thank you, mister, for treating it. I’ll need to see a doctor to have it fixed properly,” I mustered the courage to squeeze out an invitation, “Besides, traveling alone in this section of the forest is too dangerous, especially in my sorry state. So… Could you please escort me to the nearest city, [Vest Schëld]? I’ll pay…”
“No need to pay me,” the man interrupted me just before I could finish my proposal, “I will escort you to the nearest town as well. The only thing I want is an update on the current affairs of your country. And if needed, maybe a trip to the library in your place. It’s my hobby to learn about the history of unknown lands.”
Stunned by the man’s counterproposal, dry, self-deprecating chuckles soon leaked from my lips.
“About the library, hahahaha… My apologies, haha… Mister, kuhahaha… I am afraid that… I don’t have the… clearance to do that. I’m sure that there’ll be someone else who can handle that.”
“I see… I’ll take you on that offer then. So please lead the way, Miss…?”
A realization dawned upon me belatedly as I sensed his hesitation. Thus far, none of us had been introduced to each other, creating this awkwardness.
“First name [An], last name [Nguyễn], spelled as N-G-U-Y-E-N,” the man helpfully broke the tension as he lightly bowed, placing his right hand at his heart, “In my place, we use our first name to call each other. What about yours?”
Somehow his last name rang something, yet I couldn’t figure that out. Thinking that it would be rude to keep on being flustered by this mysterious tugging, I properly introduced myself as well.
“I’m [Frieda von Wagner], currently 18 years old, chevalier of the [Western Command] of the [Order of Kuckucknidum] of the [Mellaphalia Kingdom]. You can call me [Frieda] as well.”
Mister [An] offered his right hand before catching himself in the act, then offered his left hand as if to initiate a greeting gesture. Sensing his regret for unintentionally reminding me of my wound, I presented him with my left hand with a light smile to help ease his guilt. Then, his left hand firmly grabbed mine and shook lightly, giving me a mixed sense of security and uncanniness, which puzzled me greatly.
“By the way, I have a question,” the man snapped me out of my thoughts as he posed the most natural question to come to his mind, “what’re the circumstances that led to you and your companies getting attacked by those things in the first place?”
“We were escorting the Prime Minister back from a visit to the [Holy Empire] when we got attacked. At least I hope that our efforts to stall those [Ogres] were worth it…”
“Once again, my condolences for your loss,” Mister [An] offered his sincere sympathy before gesturing toward the gigantic corpse of the slain monster, “And what should we do with that thing? Surely it’s not our turn to cut it up in pieces to bring the trophy back to your home, no?”
Inadvertently giggled at the man’s remarks, my composure took a short while to be regained. It was only then that I had a good look at the gigantic remains of the monster that an idea became apparent to me. With my mood now brightened, I beckoned Mister [An] over, offering him what I considered a sweet deal for a lost foreigner.
“Assuming that the [Magic stone] inside the corpse is intact, the price it can fetch is unimaginable. Besides, before you insist on having me take a share of it,” I preemptively shut the soldier up before he could utter any words, “you’re the one who ultimately killed the brute. So, letting the best part go to the finisher is natural. Moreover, it’s not like knights like us have to live in poverty at all.”
While I felt a twang of guilt at seeing him confused with the details of the deal, my sense of mischief was tickled pink. After he shook his head to recompose his thoughts, the man stowed away his instrument of war on his back and took off his helmet, revealing that he was wearing a black full-face mask underneath. The wraps itself sported a creepy artwork of a white skull with an eerily toothy jaw, which managed to briefly frighten me. Yet, above all else, an irresistible draw emanated from his pair of dark brown eyes, which was common for the Eastern people, and made me want to drown in them.
What came next could be described as a once-in-a-lifetime feeling that nagged one’s soul as the man started to take off his face mask. An unexplained force made my heart race in anticipation of witnessing my savior’s visage, which I desperately tried to quell, fearing that he could hear my increasingly louder heartbeat. But then, what drove my emotions like that?
Underneath the bizarre-looking veil belied the face of a seasoned veteran, which I guessed to be close in age to the late Commander [Schmidt], who would celebrate his 33rd birthday next week had we made it through. Yet he wasn’t just any regular veteran with a scar or two running across his face, although he possessed one such running straight down his right eye side. His left half was heavily disfigured, littered with rough and bumpy patches. If his right brow was quizzically furrowing at my intense gaze, his left brow was permanently locked in that position, giving his gaze a distorted, if stern bird-of-prey scowl.
Flustered at my impolite conduct, I hastily turned my head away to avoid the glare, but I still stole a glance at him, trying to admire his visage for a bit more. Quietly taking a nip from his metallic water container, his expression turned gentle as if he was savoring a moment of peace. The sheer contrast between the two halves of his face, one marred with scars and discolored patches while the other was tanned and weathered, somehow sowed a storm of emotions in my heart, one that I didn’t feel uncomfortable at all.
“Now we should harvest the [Magic stone] from the corpse of the [Ravenous Ogre] and members of its troop and dispose of them accordingly,” I desperately spun words out to cover my embarrassment, “before other monsters flock toward this spot.”
“[Ravenous Ogre]?,” he curiously tilted his head after he closed his helmet, which I found to be strangely endearing, “you mean the one that I made Swiss cheese out of?”
A strange term entered my ears, prompting me to halt my footsteps and looked at the foreigner, hoping to get an explanation.
“[Swiss cheese]? What do you mean by turning something into [Swiss cheese]?”
“In this case, it’s a figure of speech from my place,” the foreign soldier apologetically explained while not forgetting to let out a light chuckle, “[Swiss cheese] is a kind of cheese made in a country called [Switzerland], known for being riddled with holes in it. Well, the phrase to turn something into [Swiss cheese] means to poke holes into something to the point like that poor bastard. By the way, earlier you said that this specimen here is a [Ravenous Ogre] right? How it’s different from its brethren?”
Now that I had realized this, it seemed that his place wasn’t plagued by this variant of the [Ogre], thus, it was natural for him to not know about it. With some difficulty, I managed to unsheathe my sword and pointed it at the gangly corpse.
“This one’s body build is much thinner compared to,” the pointy end of the blade switched over to the nearest cold body of an ordinary [Ogre], “this one’s. If this one could be called a pig, then a [Ravenous Ogre] is the long pig…”
From a suppressed chuckle, the man’s laugh gradually grew louder to the point that he clutched his stomach, bending his body over to stifle it. It took him a long while to finally calm down, during which I had no choice but to remain on the lookout, fearing a potential attack by any lurking predatory monsters.
“My apologies, I didn’t mean to laugh at your lecture,” the black-clad soldier expressed his honest thoughts as he recovered from his laughing fit, “it’s just that the word you used… kuhahaha, to describe the [Ravenous Ogre] was an expression, or slang, from my place to denote…”
Urging him to continue his excuse, the bitter taste of regret washed over me like a flood.
“Human meat.”