"The next battle will begin shortly! Everyone, inspect your gear!"
The stalemate between the Kingdom of Israpan and the Empire was dragging on far longer than Ian had expected.
The Empire kept dispatching more elite soldiers, while the Kingdom of Israpan, unwilling to be outdone, hired more mercenaries than before.
Of the wandering mercenaries who had survived the first battle, only Ian and Porit remained, and even the Shark Tooth Mercenary Company was beginning to suffer losses.
The advantage in the war still lay with the Kingdom of Israpan, but the Empire showed no signs of losing momentum. In the end, the only ones gradually wearing down were Israpan’s mercenaries.
The quality of the imperial army had risen to the point where the mercenaries newly hired by the Kingdom could no longer even properly serve as meat shields. Even the mercenary company members who, at the start of the war, had clamored to charge straight onto the battlefield now seemed reluctant to fight.
"...Porit, could you tell me another story about your daughters?"
"Again? Don’t you like them a little too much?"
"Shut up..."
Of all the conversations he had shared with Porit since they began talking, Ian liked the stories Porit told about his daughters the most.
Every time he heard them, something deep inside him stirred.
Porit called that tenderness, but Ian strongly denied it.
The reason was that it did not seem fitting for someone who had spent twenty-one years of his life amid slaughter to possess tenderness.
Ian had lived a life far removed from anything normal, but after meeting Porit, he came to truly understand that killing was a sin. Having lived by piling up mountains of corpses, he believed he had already committed countless sins.
And to Ian, tenderness... was something like a symbol of goodness.
For an evil man to harbor a feeling that was a symbol of goodness—it was too ridiculous for words.
"My eldest should be around ten by now, I suppose. And my wife back home is carrying our second child."
"You became a mercenary after leaving kids like that behind?"
"I had to make money..."
As far as Ian knew, Porit had one daughter and another child still in his wife’s womb.
But the more he heard those stories, the less Ian understood why Porit had become a mercenary.
No matter how desperate he was for money, he had left behind a young daughter and a wife pregnant with a child to come to the battlefield?
At the very least, among all the people Ian had met while working as a mercenary, he had never seen anyone so unreasonable.
"No matter how much I think about it, I don’t understand..."
"Sorry to be the sort of man you can’t understand."
After their brief chat ended, the sound of horn calls once more filled the battlefield.
Then, as always, valiant battle cries rang out, and the forces of the two camps crashed into one another.
Fresh blood splattered everywhere, and screams echoed all around them.
It was a sight he could never get used to seeing, but Ian thought he was handling it better than he had at first.
When he had first witnessed the horrors of a battlefield, even Ian—who had observed many forms of death while living as a mercenary—had been somewhat intimidated. It was the first time he had seen life valued so cheaply.
At least those thoughts no longer came to mind. He must be gradually getting better.
Having finished that thought, Ian swung his sword again.
He freed an imperial soldier writhing in agony from a severed arm by piercing his face, then instantly got behind another soldier rushing at him with a sword and cut his body in half.
Ian’s stamina was no longer poor enough for a prolonged battle to exhaust him.
It was quite a positive sign, and Ian liked it very much.
Once again realizing how good growth felt, Ian blunted the Empire’s momentum considerably.
"It’s the Blood Mist Mercenary!"
"Kill him! If we kill that bastard, we’ll have a chance to counterattack again...!"
"Idiot. You think you can?"
He stabbed the shouting imperial soldier through the neck, then roughly yanked out his sword, grabbed the tip of the blade, and swung it with all his strength.
The handguard came rushing down like a hammer and crushed the imperial soldier’s head.
"This is definitely effective against heavy armor. Good thing I learned it."
Ian muttered as he looked down at the imperial soldier collapsing with blood pouring from the gaps in his helmet.
The sword technique Porit had taught him some time ago worked effectively against enemies clad in heavy armor.
Ian remembered a mercenary who had said that blunt weapons were more effective against armor than edged weapons.
Not long after saying that, the mercenary had been found with his head crushed in, which may have made his words lodge all the more strongly in Ian’s mind.
If things had continued this way, the battle would have ended in another usual victory for Israpan. But today’s battle unfolded in an entirely different manner from before.
"Monsters! Those imperial bastards unleashed monsters!"
"Damn it, everyone bunch together! At least three men per monster!"
Five monsters appeared, shaking the very earth beneath them.
Their overall forms resembled humans, but neither their skin color nor their massive builds could possibly have belonged to humans.
"What... are those fat bastards?"
"Orcs. Good heavens, those imperial bastards... did they really unleash orcs on the battlefield?"
They’re out of their minds.
Just as Porit lamented, the monsters called orcs attacked anything in their path, regardless of whether it was an imperial soldier or a mercenary.
Their actions seemed focused not so much on winning the war as on the single goal of slaughtering humans.
They’re disgustingly ugly.
Thinking that, Ian tightened his grip on his sword and charged at an orc.
Noticing Ian rapidly approaching, the orc swung the club in its hand in a wide arc.
The blow had enough power to sweep away an ordinary person before they could even react, but to Ian, tempered by countless battles, it was merely an attack relying on brute strength—nothing more.
Ian ducked beneath the attack and severed the orc’s ankle.
Its hide is tougher than I thought.
He had swung with the intention of cutting it clean off, but Ian’s sword only gouged away part of the orc’s bone as it passed through. It was hard to expect any greater effect.
"Kuaaargh...!"
"Tch, what a pain."
The orc’s massive body fell to the ground, its ankle severed.
Instinctively sensing that it was not dead, Ian leaped atop the orc and brought down his sword in a powerful strike.
The ugly monster’s skull split helplessly in two as it met the blade.
He could see its insides spilling out through the split in its head.
Looking at the orc’s body, which no longer twitched at all, Ian wore a bloodthirsty smile.
"Wow, that’s the face of a villain."
"Be quiet."
He was happy.
Ian was feeling a thrill unlike anything he had ever experienced before.
The appearance of monsters—unknown life-forms that even his current self could not carve up as he pleased—was like proof of his potential for growth.
At least, that was how it felt to him.
"Porit, there are... more monsters like these in this world, right?"
"...There are. I’ve hunted a few myself, long ago. There are plenty that are stronger than these, too."
"Stronger than these..."
Nice.
Turning the thought over in his mind, Ian charged at the orcs again.
If he moved nimbly, he thought he could hunt another two or so.
One had already been pinned beneath the Shark Tooth Mercenary Company’s captain and squashed flat like a pancake with an especially loud crunch, so Ian also redoubled his efforts to slice the orcs into sashimi.
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