Chapter 55

“Hey, Donovan, you still alive?”

Urich walked into the tent and saw Donovan, who was lying on the ground. His face was puffy and swollen. There wasn’t a part of his body that was normal, and he was even wearing a splint to set his broken arm.

“Get lost. I don’t care whether you leave me here or take me. Do whatever you want, ptui.” Donovan said as he spat out a stream of blood. Even in this condition, his eyes, which were half-closed from the swelling, still had venom in them.

‘He won’t back down because of this.’

Urich knew Donovan very well. He was a man that would always get back up unless he was killed.

“Did you see the faces of the people who did this to you?” Urich asked as he sat beside Donovan.

“They got me from behind. They ran away after putting a bag on my head and beating the shit out of me. God dammit, this was probably by...”

“I know, it was probably that gate captain’s doing. Even just now, he was busy insulting you the whole dinner.”

“Auber, that son of a bitch! I should have killed him a long time ago. I can’t believe I let him live just because I felt pity at the fact that he was my superior who was begging for his life.”

“That son of a bitch is now the captain of the gateway here, and we have to bring Pahell to the capital. Or should we fight the gate captain right here? Kill all the garrisons and just run away?”

Urich cackled. Donovan joined him, but only until he groaned in pain.

“Take your bullshit elsewhere and just focus on getting the job done. I’ve risked my life on this job, and I have no intention to let something like this ruin everything.”

Donovan barely managed to sit up. He was against the idea of getting involved in a job that had something to do with the royal family, but he had already come so far. It would have been a waste to ruin it now.

‘A reward from the king.’

It was enough to change the life of an average mercenary.

“I put some guys on guard, just in case. You just focus on getting better, because if you can’t keep up, I’m leaving you behind,” Urich said as he left the tent.

Donovan was not going to be able to move for a while, so he had to be carried in a wagon.

“The vice leader of our mercenary squad had been attacked. I can’t just sit here and let that happen,” Urich muttered as he left the mercenary camp.

Phillion, who had arrived one moment too late, desperately looked for Urich, but the other mercenaries did not know where he had gone.

‘Please don’t do anything bad, Urich, please!’ Phillion prayed, stomping his feet.

In the front of the gate was a small tent village. Its residents were the caravans and travelers waiting for their turn at the gate inspection, the prostitutes who made their money off them, and the small-time thieves who targeted those men. There were enough reasons for one to be extra cautious in front of the gate.

Urich walked into the deeper part of the tent village.

“Hey, you barbarian over there, how about for half a gold coin?” A woman with a decent face said to Urich as she lustfully glared at him.

“Come here, I’ll do it for ten thousand cils,” It was the words of the woman who had just started to develop wrinkles in her face.

“Don’t even bother with those women. Come here, one gold coin,” the wandering dancer of the tent village said to Urich with an alluring smile.

“Fuck off, I’m not in the mood.”

The prostitutes laid out their curses at Urich’s aggressive tone.

“What an idiot. If you’re not going to do us, why are you here?”

Urich stared at the prostitutes without answering their questions.

“I’m sure you know about a guy getting beat up here earlier. Does anyone know anything about it?”

The prostitutes only laughed among themselves. Urich rummaged through his inner pocket and took out a handful of gold coins.

“Oops, the gold coins that got away from my hand are looking for a new owner.”

Urich flicked one of the gold coins into his other hand. The prostitutes let out a soft moan as if they were people possessed by the shiny gold coin.

“I know the woman who served him,” the woman with the wrinkly face said. It seemed like despite her old body, she still had some customers looking for her service.

“Oh yeah? If you bring me to her, this gold coin just might fall out of my hand.”

Urich followed the old woman’s lead to go deeper into the prostitute village. It was quite far from the gate, and it had an ominous atmosphere. In one corner, there was a group of men who were quite obviously criminals by their faces and vibe. They were gathered around a campfire.

“Keke, this man has a ton of gold coins!”

The women scurried behind the men as they exposed Urich. The tough-looking men got up with a blunt weapon in each of their hands.”

“Hey, mister. Just leave what you have here and go. We’ll let you walk on by with no issues, then.”

There were six men. They tensed up their shoulders in their attempt to threaten Urich.

“Take it.”

Urich scratched his head, then dropped his gold coin pouch on the ground. One of the men sneaked forward and reached for the pouch.

Crunch.

Urich stomped on the man’s arm. The arm folded backward.

“U-uaaargh!!”

The man held his folded arm and screamed. Urich looked at the remaining men again and flicked his hand.

“Come on, just take it quick. The gold coins are right here on the ground.”

The men surrounded Urich with blunt weapons in their hands. It was a typical weapon for human traffickers.

“If you had just handed over the coins without a fuss, you would have made it home without a single wound; what a shame. You brought this onto yourself, barbarian.”

Urich laughed out loud at the man’s words.

“Hmph!”

One of the men darted toward Urich. Urich simply snatched his blunt weapon away.

“Ah?”

The man who was stripped of his weapon stared at Urich with a puzzled look. Urich’s fist buried itself into the man’s face, and his face caved in with his eyes popping out.

“Ohh!”

The other man who had grabbed Urich from behind raised his blunt weapon high.

Woosh.

Urich spun on his right foot and slammed his kick into the side of the man with the momentum of his spin.

Crush!

It was an amazing noise. The man who had been hit in the side of his body rolled around the ground with a screech.

“E-ehem, hmm.”

The men crept backward. Two of them had been taken out in the blink of an eye. Their intuition was telling them that the barbarian who was standing in front of them wasn’t a normal barbarian.

“You still want this? The gold coins?

Urich said as he flicked up the pouch from the ground with the tip of his foot.

“W-we’re good!”

The remaining men shook their heads as they retrieved the wounded. They had tucked their tails in between their legs.

“No, no. You guys like gold coins, don’t you? You should have what you like.”

Urich said to the men as he walked toward them, patting himself on the back. The men were terrified, and they looked at Urich with that exact expression on their faces.

“W-we’re sorry, Sir Warrior! Please forgive us just this one time.”

“I’m telling you that I’ll give you these gold coins. Why are you so scared?” Urich said with a smile as he lightly patted the cheeks of the men. He took out a few gold coins from his pouch and handed one to each of the men.

“W-why are you doing this?”

The men couldn’t understand why Urich was doing this. Urich just tilted his head and smiled.

“You guys like gold coins, right? So do I.”

Urich gripped the shoulders of the men so that they couldn’t run away. There were blue bruises left on their shoulders.

‘Who the hell is this crazy barbarian bastard?’ The men were trembling in fear.

“I’ll give you these gold coins—something that everyone loves—so just find me this person.”

Urich shook his jingling gold coin pouch.

“...find a person for you?”

The sound of the gold coins grabbed the men’s attention.

“If you can find me the person I’m looking for, these coins are yours. You guys like the sun god, too, right? I swear to the Sun God Lou, that if you men find me the person that I’m looking for, I will pay a satisfactory amount of gold coins to you.

The men glanced at each other’s faces and nodded collectively.

“Who are you looking for?”

“I’m looking for the sons of bitches who dared to beat up my ‘brother.’”

Urich gritted his teeth. His personal relationship with Donovan didn’t matter to him. What mattered was the fact that Donovan was a part of Urich’s Brotherhood, and he was their vice leader appointed by Urich himself. His brother Donovan had just been beaten to near death, and Urich had no intention of using Pahell’s job as an excuse to just turn a blind eye to the violation.

‘This is my way.’

The men brought the information to Urich in no time and took his gold coins.

* * *

“Dammit, I think my ribs are broken. He fought back pretty damn hard.”

The four vagrants whispered somewhere on the outskirts of the tent village. Their bodies were covered in bruises.

“If we had let him fight us properly, we would’ve been the ones to get beat up. He got into his fighting mode as soon as we barged in, even when he was doing that shit with the whore.”

“But we beat him until he was just barely alive. He’ll probably die today or tomorrow, anyway.”

The vagrants cackled. They were men who lived day to day with their begging and doing small robberies around the gates.

“Well, they did tell us not to kill him. Do you think we went too far?”

“Eh, whatever.”

The vagrants of the gates were people without confirmed identities. Most of them were criminals or those who were on the run. The tent village outside of the gate was made up of highly mobile people, meaning that even the soldiers couldn’t get good control over each of them.

The vagrants touched the gold coins they received as the down payment for their job. It was enough money to bed a bunch of women and drink their days away for a while.

“Are you sure no one’s following us? I can feel it in the back of my head,” the vagrant with a good sense said to his group. They pressed their hoods down and parted ways with a plan to meet at the promised point.

“Arghhhhh!”

The scattered vagrants flinched at the screech coming from the village. It was a familiar voice.

‘Someone did follow us, after all. The others must have been caught.’

The vagrant moved anxiously. The screech of his colleague sent shivers down his spine. Of course, he had no intention of going to their rescue.

‘I’m going to get the rest of the payment and get out of here.’

The vagrant hastened his steps to the meeting place.

‘Am I the first one here? Or did the others get caught...?’

The vagrant shuffled his feet anxiously inside a messy barn that was once used as a stage station but now abandoned. Dried horse dung rolled around the ground.

Creak.

The barn doors opened, and the vagrant, who was on high alert, pulled out his dull dagger.

“Did you come by yourself? I guess it’s fair that you don’t trust me. Here you go, here’s the rest of your payment. I swore on Lou’s name, so of course I have to give it to you. I don’t want to wander this world after I die.”

Thankfully, it was just the client. He walked over and handed the vagrant the money.

“Haha, it was nice working with you, good sir.” The vagrant smiled as if he was never scared. The thought of taking all the money for himself overwhelmed him with joy.

‘Hmph, I never want to see these men again.’

After finishing the job, the client tried to leave the scene as quickly as possible. He reached for the door to leave the barn.

Crush!

The plank door shattered as a large hand burst through the boards and grabbed the throat of the client. A barbarian covered in someone else’s blood strode into the barn with his eyes glaring ferociously.

“U-ugh!”

The client anxiously scratched the arm of the barbarian. The barbarian chucked the client into the wall and glared at the vagrant.

“Eeeek!”

The vagrant screamed in terror. He unfortunately saw the things that were hanging from the belt of the barbarian.

‘H-heads!’

The severed heads of his colleagues were tied around the barbarian’s waist. He had used their hair as ropes and secured them around his waist.

“Ughhh.”

The barbarian dragged another vagrant, who was half dead at this point, into the barn. He was the one who had spilled everything about the meeting place with their client.

“You damned idiot! You told him where we were meeting!”

The shuddering vagrant yelled at his colleague, but his colleague who had been captured by the barbarian couldn’t reply as his head was cut off right after the question.

“Now I found all of you,” Urich the barbarian said as he beheaded the vagrant who led him to the barn. He tied the newly severed head around his waist to join the other ones.

“Y-you barbarian!”

The vagrant exclaimed. Urich laughed with his face drenched in blood as he swung his axe.

“You’ll join them soon, so don’t be too harsh.”

The vagrant tried to run away, but Urich’s axe that was launched toward him shredded his ankle.

“Keugh, kaagh!”

The vagrant tried to limp away to safety. Urich, however, grabbed his other leg and snapped it ruthlessly.

Crack.

“Ahhhhhh!”

The vagrant excreted all types of waste. Urich punted away the disabled vagrant and turned his head to the client who had requested everything.

“You! Do you know who I am! Get out of my sight this instant!” The client yelled as he drew his sword. Urich swiftly drew his imperial steel sword and parried the client’s away. The sword ripped out of the palm of the employer and got stuck in the barn ceiling.

The client, who had been disarmed in the blink of an eye, looked up at Urich with a dumbfounded face.

“I don’t know, and I’m not interested. All I need are your mouths, so I’ll break everything else,” Urich said as he grabbed the limbs of the client and snapped them with force. The vagrant was trembling in the corner of the barn.

Crunch, crunch.

A terrifying sound echoed through the barn. The vagrant wished that he would just pass out. He couldn’t believe what he was witnessing with his eyes. A live human was being folded like a wooden figurine.

‘Barbarian...’

The vagrant muttered. He prayed to the God of the Sun as he gave up on everything.