The Regression Of A Grand Mercenary - 82 - Pig in a Person's Clothes - Part 2

Ever since the first time I saw her, I couldn’t help but stare. Her amber eyes were like cut gems, her hair was as golden as if it was caught against the sun—she was everything a man should worship.

I wanted to prove myself. I wanted to be the one who stood beside her, the one the world looked at and said, that man is worthy. Like a foolish child with a crush, I acted without thinking.

In our first encounter, I swung the wooden sword harder than I should have, and this caused things to awaken something in me.

When I struck her—when the blow landed and she bled—I didn’t immediately understand the shame or the guilt. Instead my father told me men prove themselves with steel. He told me bravery and scars meant respect. So I believed him. I still believe him.

Yet my actions caused our family’s reputation to be torn farther apart…

I didn’t understand. I followed my father’s words to the letter. I showed to the world that I was strong. And my love for her only ever grew so far since we separated, that in my efforts, I tried showing her my love in secret against her father’s will.

I tried to make her laugh, I gave her gifts. I wrote her a song—how quaint, how perfect. I did everything the way my father taught me: show strength, show value, show you can protect.

I thought my efforts meant something. I thought the gifts, the little shows of bravado, the songs—those were bridges. She never told me “no.” She never pushed me away outright. That made me think she misunderstood me. That made me think we were close.

Then I found the courage to do what every man dreams: to kiss her and seal it with my truth. I leaned in, heart pounding, confident. The world narrowed to that moment… and she struck me. The blow knocked me out. Cold. Pain. Darkness.

I woke alone. Abandoned. Rejected.

I could not understand it. I replay the scene a thousand times and every time the answer slides away. Was it my fault? My fault, I keep telling myself—no. I did everything right. I followed the rules my father set. I proved I could handle a sword. Why should a woman punish a man for showing worth?

Why does she hate me?

That question burned and burned until the edges of my love crumbled into something else. Love curdled into anger. Anger fed into contempt. I told myself I wasn’t wrong—how could I be wrong? I only ever tried to be better for her. If she won’t accept me, then the world has been unfair. If the world is unfair, why shouldn’t I take what I deserve?

When spring came I could not sit still. I rode to her domain with my chest full of words and my mind full of plans. At the gate the butler blinked in surprise—and then the memory of that day, the blood, the look of disgust in her eyes, crashed back into me. For a second I imagined strangling her with my own hands. The image made something in me quicken. It was violent and clean and satisfying in ways I did not want to admit.

And yet—when she appeared again, all those old idols rewired. The sight of her still sent my breath shallow. My heart betrayed me by stuttering at the curve of her cheek. I loved her. I hated her. The two were braided tight, and neither made sense alone anymore.

So I stood there, between two impulses: the polite suitor who offers presents, and the darker man who imagines retribution. My thoughts spun excuses like armor—my father’s voice, the rules of men, the rightness of proving oneself. Behind every excuse, the same aching question: Why won’t she see me?

Maybe, I thought, if I could show her how much I’d changed—how much strength I had—she’d finally look at me with the right eyes. Maybe that was worth everything. Maybe I deserved more than scorn.

When the chance came to see her again, I took it. I told myself I would speak gently, that I would win her back. I told myself I would be the hero she needed.

The rest—what I would do if she refused—was a future I wrapped in silence.

But before I could even try, she rejected me.

Not with hesitation. Not with doubt. With scorn.

She told me she had hated me since the very first day we met.

And in that moment, I could not understand.

How? How could she hate me? After everything I had done?

“Rhoads,” she said, her voice as sharp as a blade. “Whenever I look at you, you’re nothing but a pig in a person’s clothes.”

That was the last straw.

The words burrowed into my skull, tearing reason to pieces. My body moved before I even thought—I remember only my hand reaching for my sword. I remember only rage.

Then the thrust. My blade cutting the air toward her face.

For a fleeting instant, regret crawled through me like ice. What a waste, I thought. What a waste of such a pretty face.

But even that regret was denied me.

Before steel could kiss skin, a storm erupted inside the room. Windows shattered, papers tore free from the desk, and the air itself howled like a beast.

And then—he appeared.

A man I knew too well.

He caught my blade with his hand, stopping it cold, as if it were nothing but a stick of wood.

“Y-you!?” The word clawed out of my throat.

“…Yeah. Me,” he answered, calm as death itself.

Thill Cicial.

His eyes glowed with the quiet rage of a monster who showed no sense of mercy.

This person truly was a monster as how the report goes…

His height eclipsed mine as I looked up to his gaze, that alone intimidated me.

His presence and along with his shadow drowned me.

And a face that I loathe. Despite being a simple looking man, his presence carried a certain charm that would woo any woman. His masculinity was far greater than my own.

***

Thill’s POV:

I’d had a bad feeling all morning. When Desmond’s warning reached me, I went straight to the house—and I was right to hurry.

The man in the room was Rhoads Cyptol.

I’d done work for the Cyptol family back when I was a mercenary. Their name had meant profits, not sentiment. Back then the family still had clout. Later, rot showed up under the gilding: rumors of smuggling, slave trades, drugs—the kind of filth that drags a house down. By the time Rhoads took the reins, the Cyptols were already half-collapsed under their own corruption. It didn’t take long for the hangman’s rope and the kingdom’s court to finish the job.

And yet here he was, fat and greasy as ever, crawling back into people’s lives like a bad memory. If he clawed his way back to being head of the family—if he regained even a shred of influence—this place would sour again. I’d seen it before. I’d stop it if I had to.

When I saw him lean toward Evelyn, blade in hand, the anger that flares hot and fast in me came to life. My first reflex was to kill. Right then, with my own bare hands, I would have remove him from the world. But If I killed him here—if Rhoads was found dead in Amber territory—it would be a political mess. The Ambers and Cyptols were old rivals; a corpse would be a spark that could set the wrong kind of fire. Families, law, reputation—these ran deeper than my temper. Evelyn’s name and safety mattered more than my satisfaction.

So I didn’t kill him.

Instead, I moved in light and precise. Before he could think to pierce through Evelyn with his sword, I had already made the decision to stop this fight entirely with nothing but my own hands.

As I caught his attack, I quickly flinched my grip and his sword broke between my palm and forearm like twig under a boot. With his weapon gone, I closed the gap, grabbed him by the throat, and used both halves of his ruined blade to turn his own men into corpses before they could react. They died before they could scream.

“Put me down!” Rhoads spat, eyes bulging. He tried to struggle and only did himself more harm. Looking at his reaction, he didn’t care for those two men dying…truly, what a piece of shit.

I tightened my grip until his words smacked into silence. Spit flecked his lips; his bravado curdled into panic.

“Quiet,” I said, my voice low. “You’re getting on my nerves.”

He gagged and thrashed weakly. Then, when he realized brute strength wasn’t going to free him, he switched back to bluster—because cowards with titles always try noise when force fails.

I loosened my hold just enough for him to breathe. “Why did you come here?” I asked.

He tried to wriggle, to find a campy boast to hide behind, but his face betrayed him.

“D-Do you know who I am?” he blurted.

“Rhoads.” My fingers tightened. “I know your family. I know your reputation.”

He sneered into the gag. “Then put me down or I’ll have you executed Thill Cicial!! Yes, that’s right! I know who you are! You bastard!” as if calling my name made me flinch, in fact, I didn’t really cared at all. All I was thinking about at that moment was the fact that I wanted to snap his neck then and there.

But I knew better than to do that. So using my calm, I turned to Evelyn.

“Should I?” I asked, slow and flat.

He spat a string of threats. Taunting me with his knowledge about my existence, but I simply answered back with logic. The most calm thing I could do at that moment was use my head.

“You tried to kill the youngest daughter of the Amber family without reason. If you fall here, your death won’t be a private thing. Her father will demand answers. That raises questions. Questions breed investigation. Do you think you understood that when you came?”

He puffed, suddenly smug. “You don’t understand. Not long from now, the crown will grant my house a noble title. After our service to the kingdom in winter—after what we did on the road—this spring festival, they will call us noble. We’ll be untouchable then.”

Evelyn’s face went cold. “You were invited?”

Rhoads blinked. “Judging by you, I assumed you received an invitation as well. Surely—”

She said nothing, and I didn’t let him finish.

“What should we do with him?” I asked, turning to Evelyn.

“Send him to the cells,” she said without hesitation. “For treason and for attacking me. He’ll be punished properly. ”

I wanted to teach him pain until he remembered humility, but Evelyn’s voice was the law in this house. I obeyed.

Rhoads was no novice: he’d developed a core, but only to the second stage. He was dangerous in a fight, a threat to a seasoned fighter. For a man of his caliber, he can also escape shackles and bolt for the road. I had to make sure he couldn’t get up and run.

I lifted him with one hand like he weighed nothing and hit him with a sequence of strikes aimed to shut down movement—precise blows to the core channels that control flow. The strikes were clinical, not cruel: immobilize, not maim. He collapsed, gasping.

“What did you do to me? I can’t move!” he screamed.

“You won’t die,” I said. “I only blocked certain pathways of your core flow. You can’t mobilize properly. You’ll lie still until someone with my skills free you.”

He used profanity, thrashed and spat. I let him exhaust himself against his limits and then asked the question that mattered.

“Were you behind the Silverfish?” I said. The lie on his face was the answer.

His eyes flicked. He swallowed. He lied, then stuttered. I could see it: guilt, then calculation. “W-what? No—”

“Your expression tells the story.” I tightened my grip on the broken sword-hilt in my hand, the metal cold and familiar. “You hired them to pick a quarrel. You bought muscle to make a spectacle. Why?”

He stammered about influence and titles and opportunity, but the truth is always simpler: men who are weak or desperate buy certainty with coin. Rhoads had both weakness and desperation in spades.

I left him bound and breathing, gagged and caged in chains that would not loosen while deputies were sent. For his sake, and for everyone else’s, that was the cleanest mercy I could offer.

Above it all, I thought one thing as I turned away: if the Cyptols were moving to claim noble rank, their rot would seep into the court. That had to be stopped—and quietly. If they had the ambition to buy influence, they had the means to pay the kind of mercenary groups that stir trouble in a region. If Silverfish were theirs, this was no petty feud. It was a first strike.

In the past, their influence never grew because even to their efforts of claiming that they stopped a thousand bandits, it was not enough to have them invited to the kingdom. The only reason why they were invited now was because of a certain someone…

I clenched my jaw. The festival tomorrow just got a lot more dangerous.

Knowing this…I had to do something.

***

After locking Rhoads in the cell beneath Evelyn’s home, I turned my attention to the Silverfish. Loose ends irritate me—and they were a dangerous loose end. If their employer was rotting in chains, I needed to see how far their loyalty went.

So I told them the truth. I expected outrage, maybe a rescue attempt. But their response was… indifference.

Surprisingly, they didn’t care.

“What do you mean?” I asked, facing their leader—a blond-haired man with eyes like worn steel.

He smirked. “Take it as you will. After seeing how polished your group is, I see potential in this place.”

I studied him. “And you’re willing to throw your life away over that?”

His grin widened, almost wistful. “Surely, as a man, you’ve dreamed of leaving behind a legacy. This village, these people… I see the makings of something lasting. All it needs is a man bold enough to build it.”

He really believed his own words.

“So you’re serious,” I pressed, wanting to make certain.

“Of course.”

I exhaled softly, more amused than anything. “I see now why you’ll never leave behind a legacy.”

His brow furrowed. “Hmm?”

“Legacies are built by great men—men of clarity and right minds. You couldn’t even weigh your chances properly. To fight when there’s no path to victory? That’s not boldness. That’s stupidity. A fool’s ambition dies before it can become legacy.”

The blond man chuckled, though his eyes hardened. “Harsh. But I’ve evaluated your core. I wouldn’t be confident otherwise. You’ve only reached the fourth stage—and at such a young age, no less. Impressive, but not enough. I’ve walked the same path, and experience will carry me to success.”

So that was it.

He was in his thirties, worn by years of battle. He looked at me—barely past twenty—and saw a boy still green, someone who had not yet tasted enough blood or failure. To him, I was young and therefore weak.

How laughable.

The training grounds had never felt so heavy.

Dust lingered in the air, the soil trembling under our boots even before blades had crossed. The nine adventurers stood off to the side with the boys, all eyes locked on us, their breaths held as though the very air had grown sharp with anticipation.

The blonde-haired man raised his weapon with a confident smirk, his stance radiating the calm of someone who believed experience outweighed youth.

“Don’t blink,” he warned.

I simply leveled my sword. “Show me.”

And then—

First Exchange.

His blade screamed through the air, and when our swords collided, the ground beneath us caved in, dust erupting upward. The people gasped as a shockwave rippled across the training field. He had strength enough to shatter stone—but my stance didn’t falter an inch.

Second Exchange.

He pulled back and swung wide, his sword glowing faintly with energy. The arc of light tore across the ground, slicing a training dummy clean in two. I sidestepped lightly and countered, sparks bursting as our blades clashed again.

Third Exchange.

Seeing as how he failed, he roared, stomping hard enough that cracks spidered through the dirt. He thrust forward, the sheer force of the strike leaving a trail like a spear of light. I caught it at the last instant, my sword humming as the impact split a nearby boulder in half.

Fourth Exchange.

He spun, kicking up a whirlwind of dust with his movement. His slash came from above like lightning. I raised my blade, meeting him head-on, and the clash sent both of us sliding back, our boots digging trenches into the earth.

Fifth Exchange.

With a sharp cry, he channeled his aura into his blade, slashing down with such force that the ground exploded where I stood. Pebbles and shards of stone flew everywhere. But I had already moved, gliding through the haze, my sword grazing his side just enough to remind him I was holding back.

Sixth Exchange.

Snarling, he swung horizontally, and the pressure of the strike alone blasted the dust away. The shockwave crashed against the training grounds’ stone walls, leaving cracks. I tilted my blade, catching his strike and letting the shockwave roll harmlessly past me.

Seventh Exchange.

He grinned and feinted, his sword suddenly turning into a blur. Three strikes in less than a breath—each powerful enough to carve through iron. The ground shook beneath each one, but my sword caught them all, sparks showering like falling stars.

Eighth Exchange.

With a roar, he slammed his blade into the ground, splitting it open, fissures racing outward. From the broken earth he surged forward, swinging upward with enough force to send a boulder-sized chunk of stone flying. I cut the stone in half without even looking, my eyes fixed only on him.

Ninth Exchange.

The adventurer’s aura flared brighter, golden light racing along his sword’s edge. He moved with speed now, each strike carrying both weight and skill. Our blades collided again and again, each clash shaking the ground as though two beasts were wrestling for dominance. To the crowd, it must have looked like the earth itself would tear apart.

Tenth Exchange.

He gathered everything into one final strike, his blade glowing with the full force of his aura. He leapt high, descending like a meteor, sword angled to cleave through me, through the ground, through anything in his path.

The world seemed to hold its breath.

I raised my sword slowly.

When our blades met—

BOOM!

The training grounds erupted. A shockwave thundered out, knocking men off their feet, tearing tiles from rooftops. The adventurer howled as his blade sparked against mine, his strength pouring out in one desperate surge.

But in that instant, I saw everything. His experience, his tricks, his strength—all laid bare in ten exchanges. His so-called legacy was nothing more than brute force refined by years of repetition.

I had seen enough.

The dust swirled around us. His sword trembled. And then—

I moved once. A simple, clean slash.

The glow on his blade shattered. The steel snapped in two. He froze, eyes wide, as my sword stopped just short of his throat.

The silence after was deafening.

He dropped his broken weapon, falling to his knees as the ground settled beneath us.

The crowd stared in awe, breathless.

I sheathed my sword with one slow motion, the metal sliding home like a full stop. The training ground still smoked where our blades had torn it; dust hung in the air, falling like exhausted ash. The boys stood in a ragged line, faces wide, every one of them feeling the quake of what they’d just watched. The nine adventurers clustered behind their leader—pride broken, jaw slack. Silence pressed like a hand over the field.

“I’ll give you mercy,” I said, voice even, almost… easy. “You will live. But mark me—set foot near this place again, or so much as draw blade for this company, and I will cut every head from your shoulders. No bargaining. No pleading. A clean end. Do you understand?”

The blonde’s mouth opened and closed like a fish. “N-no! It’s not over yet!” he screamed, trying to snatch back the dignity his pupils had already bled away.

I didn’t raise my voice. I didn’t need to. I stepped forward until my shadow fell across him and the air around us seemed to narrow. Then I let something simple and absolute flow toward him—filtered rage, honed and silent. It wasn’t madness. It was the cold clarity of someone who would do what had to be done without the theatrics.

It hit him like a wave.

His color left in an instant. His knees weakened. The bravado evaporated from his face, replaced with the honest, white-faced calculation of a man who had just realized the coin in his hand wouldn’t buy his life.

You could watch the math play across his eyes: options ticking down to nothing. Mercy, he understood now, was an offer I could withdraw without thought.

And with those exchange of words, the fight was over.

Despite all his efforts…it was useless against me who barely bore a sweat in the fight.

Seeing their defeat, one of them tried to act and attack me from behind but before  he could, I turned my eyes towards him and expressed that despite his intentions, I could kill him then and there.

Seeing the difference in skill…

They all accepted defeat.

And in their loss, I told the boys to push them out of the village because they were being a hindrance.

Surely with this win, our reputation will only grow stronger…but with it comes other rising hurdles.

The boys realized it too…

Their pride…their weakness…

They were starting to see just how big the world was…and how weak they were.

Even without me saying anything, their pride in realizing that they have to protect this place on their own two hands made them act to be better.