I studied myself in the full length mirror. Despite my misgivings about the job, even I had to admit that I looked the part of a noble scion. A black and blue outfit made of the finest materials and trimmed with silver adorned my tall and toned frame, tailored to show off my physique. I kept the accessories and ornaments to a minimum, since I preferred a simple and elegant style, but it was still the most expensive thing I had worn in years. My black hair was cut short and combed back. Combined with my sharp and aristocratic features, I looked every inch the noble that I pretended to be.
After spending the past three years working as a mercenary, I thought I wouldn’t be able to pull it off again. I thought that this old mask of mine wouldn’t fit anymore. However, I was wrong. Putting it back on felt like putting on an old jacket, comforting and familiar. It felt like I had been born for it.
And that was the problem. I hadn’t been born for it. I wasn’t a noble. My blood was as common as mud. I was a fraud, a fake playing a role. Three years ago I thought I put that part of my life behind me, yet here I was once more.
I sighed and closed my eyes while pressing my forehead against the mirror. The glass felt cool against my skin. What was I doing here? Just a week ago, I had been a common mercenary killing demonic beasts for a living. Now here I was, in a noble’s estate, pretending to be something I wasn’t. Again.
How had it come to this?
I thought back to last week and the series of events that led to this moment.
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I studied the opponent in front of me, waiting for it to attack. It was a dog, or rather a dog-shaped beast, whose head came up to my waist. It had coarse black fur dotted with patches of mangy, diseased-looking skin. The beast glared at me, its pus-yellow eyes filled with hatred. Drool and foam coated its wicked looking maw. The wind picked up, carrying the beast’s stench towards me.
It smelled…wrong.
That was the only way to describe it. It didn’t smell rotten, though that was the closest word I could think of that would fit the beast. However, rotten didn’t convey the sheer wrongness the creature emanated. It was something that shouldn’t exist but did, an anathema to all living beings. It was a demonic beast, corruption made manifest and given physical form.
Specifically, it was a Mad Dog, one of the more common types of demonic beasts and a weak one at that. They were Rank One, the lowest rank there was. However, despite that, Mad Dogs were still very dangerous. All demonic beasts were, no matter how weak. In the case of Mad Dogs, it was because they hunted in packs. On their own, they weren’t much of a threat. However, a pack of Mad Dogs was a different case altogether. Even a small pack could wipe out an average-sized village with ease. Not only that, but as their name implied, they were aggressive to the point that they disregarded their own safety.
Mad Dogs weren’t completely stupid, however. They understood when they were outmatched, as this one did, though I had to kill most of its comrades to get the point across. The two of us stood in a field, near the edge of a forest. In the distance stood the wooden huts that made up a small hunting village. The corpses of the Mad Dog’s slain pack mates surrounded us. Each of the corpses oozed viscous, black blood that filled the air around us with the stench of wrongness typical to all demonic beasts.
It was early afternoon. The sun had just passed its zenith. Despite that, it was freezing out. Every time I exhaled, my breath came out as a little cloud. It was always cold this far north, out here in the Barrens. The only time it ever warmed up was during the summer, which was still several months away. Right now, it was early spring. The tree branches remained bare and a thin layer of snow coated the ground.
The last remaining Mad Dog started to circle me, looking for an opening. I mimicked its movements with my sword pointed right at it, waiting for it to attack. Watching me slaughter all of its pack mates had curbed the Mad Dog’s aggression. However, that wouldn’t last for long. Sooner or later it would lose patience and rush me.
The two of us circled one another, each of us waiting for the other to make the first move. The Mad Dog grew more and more impatient with each passing second. I saw it in the beast’s eyes. It wanted nothing more than to kill me and tear me to pieces. My mere existence was enough to enrage the creature.
Moments later, my patience paid off as the Mad Dog snarled and charged right at me. I stood still and waited for it. Normal people would have had trouble following the demonic beast’s movements, let alone react to them. Not me. As an Aura Master, my strength, speed, and perception surpassed that of the average human by a significant margin. Keeping track of a mere Mad Dog was child’s play for me.
When the beast reached me, it opened its maw and tried to clamp down on my leg. I didn’t give it the opportunity and avoided the Mad Dog’s bite with ease. Its jaws snapped shut with an audible click. Before it could recover, I swung my sword and took off its head. The Mad Dog’s body remained upright for a few seconds, before it slumped to the ground. Black blood spurted from the stump that was its neck.
I waited a few seconds, sword at the ready, just in case there were any other demonic beasts nearby. Demonic beast blood acted as a lure to other demonic beasts. Killing one beast attracted the attention of others. When it became clear that the pack of Mad Dogs had been the only demonic beasts in the area, I relaxed a little.
Holding my sword in one hand, I pulled out a bottle filled with holy water with my free hand. The holy water, blessed by the priests of the Goddess of Light, gave off a faint golden glow. When clearing out demonic beasts from an area, simply killing them wasn’t enough. One needed to purify their corpses as well. Otherwise, they would corrupt the land around them.
If left alone, that corruption would grow in strength over time until it became a demon nest: a nexus of demonic energy that would spawn new demonic beasts until it was cleared out and cleansed. It was far easier to do a good job the first time around and prevent a demon nest from forming in the first place.
There were a number of ways to purify demonic beast corpses. Those with divine power could do so with ease. However, only priests and those from families blessed by the gods had divine power. As a common mercenary, I had to resort to other methods. Fire and holy water were the cheapest and most common.
I cleaned my sword using the holy water. The moment it came into contact with the demonic beast blood, the latter sizzled before evaporating into nothing. I would have to give it a proper cleaning later on, but this would do for now. Afterwards, I sheathed my sword and turned my attention to the Mad Dog bodies strewn about. There were about half a dozen of them; a mid-sized pack as far as these things went. If left unchecked, they could have caused a lot of death and destruction before someone put them down.
I didn’t have enough holy water to purify all of them, so I put away the bottle of holy water before pulling out a bottle filled with viscous golden liquid: holy oil. I sprayed the Mad Dog bodies with the holy oil, making sure not to miss even the smallest bit, before putting the bottle away and setting the oil on fire. The flames from the holy oil burned hot and fierce. However, they only burned the Mad Dog corpses and left everything else untouched. The flames didn’t even melt the nearby snow. Within mere minutes, nothing remained of the Mad Dogs. It was as if they had never existed in the first place.
After taking a quick look around, making sure I didn’t miss anything, I nodded in satisfaction and headed back towards Warrior’s Rest so I could get paid.
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I walked into Ewald’s tavern an hour before sunset. It was a one-story wooden building that looked shabby and worn down. A large public room filled with rickety wooden furniture took up most of the building. A wooden bar lined the back wall, opposite the front door. A door behind the bar led to the back areas. Glass lanterns containing glowing mana crystals illuminated the room and chased away the cold; an unthinkable luxury for a tavern like this, at least anywhere else in the Reichwald Empire. For the Barrens, it was rather common.
Despite the tavern’s appearance, the place was packed. A crowd of rough looking folks filled the public room. Every single one of them was a mercenary like me. Most of them bore a mana signature, meaning that they could use Aura. Most were Aura Novices, the lowest level of Aura user, but there were a few Aura Warriors, which was the level above Aura Novice. Two barmaids wove their way around the crowd, taking orders and serving food. Rosaline and Maria, a pair of twins who worked for Ewald.
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The smell of stale beer, greasy food, and unwashed bodies lingered in the air. Even after all this time I found it unpleasant. However, I preferred it over the stench of demonic beasts. The sound of conversation and raucous laughter filled my ears. I winced. As an Aura Master, my senses were much sharper compared to the average person. While this was useful in a number of ways, it came with a few downsides. Thankfully, there were ways to mitigate that.
I used mana to protect my ears, and my nose, before making my way deeper into the tavern. Several of the other mercenaries nodded at me as I passed them by, but they otherwise left me alone. That didn’t stop them from watching me with wary eyes.
As far as everyone else knew, I was an Aura Expert, which was the third level of Aura user and the one right below Aura Master. That alone was enough to inspire caution in others since people feared and respected the strong, especially mercenaries. If they ever found out that I was an Aura Master, they would pass out from fright.
I kept my true strength hidden most of the time in order to avoid unwanted attention. Aura Masters were rare. There were only ever a handful of them in existence at a time throughout the entire continent. If word got out that I was an Aura Master, I’d draw attention from all kinds of people, including the imperial family and the ducal families that ruled the Reichwald Empire. I wanted to avoid this at all costs.
A middle-aged man with tanned, leathery skin and black hair streaked with white stood behind the bar. He wore an outfit made from coarse brown wool. A jagged scar ran down the right side of his face, missing his eyes by a hair’s width. He bore the mana signature of an Aura Expert. Ewald.
He owned the tavern and worked as a broker for independent mercenaries. People came to him with problems that needed solving and Ewald found the right people to solve said problems; in exchange for a commission fee of course. Most of the time, but not always, these problems involved demonic beasts.
Ewald used to work as a mercenary himself, but retired after he earned enough to open up this tavern. The place didn’t even have a name, as far as I knew. Everyone just called it Ewald’s. I started working with the man a little after I arrived in Warrior’s Rest, the city we both lived in. It was located near the Barrens’ southern border and acted as a trade hub between the Barrens and the rest of the Reichwald Empire. It also served as a gathering spot for mercenaries looking for work and many mercenary companies made the city their home. There were so many in fact that the city’s nickname was Mercenary’s Roost.
One of the reasons why I chose to work with Ewald was because he had a reputation for fairness and honesty, a rarity in this line of work. Most brokers tried to rip off either their clients or the mercenaries they worked with, but not Ewald. That didn’t mean he was a pushover, however. Despite his retirement, he was still an Aura Expert and didn’t hesitate to deal with mercenaries who got uppity and caused trouble.
When we first met, Ewald had been reluctant to work with me since I looked and acted like a runaway noble scion at the time. However, after he realized that I was an Aura Expert, which I was at the time, he changed his tune. Now I was his top mercenary and had earned myself something of a reputation. If someone came to Ewald with a job that no one else could handle, he gave it to me. It was an arrangement that worked for everyone involved. I got paid well for my work, the clients’ problems went away, and Ewald took a hefty fee for making it happen.
“Wulfe,” Ewald said when he caught sight of me. “Back from your charity job I see.”
I shrugged and sat on one of the stools at the bar.
“Just shut up and give me my money,” I said. “I’ll also take an ale while you’re at it.”
Ewald didn’t even bother confirming if I had completed the job or not. The two of us had worked together long enough that he knew I wouldn’t lie about something like this. He grunted before tossing a small pouch filled with a handful of silver coins at me. I caught the pouch, opened it up to make sure nothing was amiss, before putting it away. While I trusted Ewald, I always checked to make sure he paid me the correct amount. It didn’t hurt to be prudent.
“It’s all there, as always,” Ewald said. “Even if I wanted to rip you off, I wouldn’t bother with a payout this small.” He sighed. “I just don’t understand why you keep picking these jobs when they barely pay anything. Considering how expensive holy water and holy oil are, you break even at best and take a loss at worst.”
Even as he scolded me, Ewald poured ale into a wooden mug and handed it to me. I shook my head as I took the ale from him. Explaining myself would be a waste of time. Ewald was a mercenary through and through. If a job didn’t pay enough, he wouldn’t take it, no matter how much the other person pleaded and begged. I wasn’t like that, however. Every once in a while someone came in with a dangerous job but couldn’t afford to post an appropriate reward for it.
Most mercenaries avoided jobs like that since they were high risk and low reward. However, if the person’s need was great, and they were truly desperate, I went out of my way to help them. Since the expenses incurred from doing these jobs equaled or were greater than the reward I earned from them, Ewald called them “charity jobs”.
Dealing with the pack of Mad Dogs from earlier was a prime example of that. The handful of silver I earned was barely enough to cover the cost of the holy water and the holy oil I used to purify the Mad Dogs. Still, I thought it was worth it. If I hadn’t taken that job, who knows how many people those Mad Dogs would have killed? Besides, the money I made from all the other jobs Ewald sent my way was more than enough for me.
“With that sort of attitude,” Ewald continued. “Why are you working as a mercenary? Why don’t you become a knight instead? Any lord or knight commander with half a brain would love to have someone with your strength and your skill.”
I sipped my ale before responding. Despite his tavern’s shabby appearance, Ewald served good ale. The food on the other hand was another matter. I once made the mistake of ordering some from him. Never again.
“I know,” I said. “However, most noble houses and knightly orders care more about lineage than skill. They only accept nobles. I’m as common as they come.”
The look Ewald gave me said that he didn’t believe me at all. I didn’t blame him. When we first met, I hadn’t shaken off the habits and mannerisms of my old life. He thought I was a runaway from a noble house, and I hadn’t disabused him of that notion. I didn’t, and still don’t, see the point. That part of my life was over now. There wasn’t any point in dwelling on it.
“That’s why I said any lord or knight commander with half a brain,” Ewald said in a dry tone. “Only a complete idiot would turn away an Aura Expert.”
“Besides,” I said, pretending he hadn’t said anything. “I don’t want to serve just any lord. If I ever become a knight, I might as well aim for the top and join the best of the best.”
Ewald narrowed his eyes at me.
“You mean the Coldsteel Knights,” he said after a moment.
I nodded. The Order of the Coldsteel Blade, or the Coldsteel Knights as everyone called them, served Grand Duke Kaltbrand, the lord who ruled over the entirety of the Barrens. They were regarded as some of the best, if not the best, knights in the entire Reichwald Empire. They needed to be, since the Barrens was under threat from demonic beasts. As bad as things were now, they would be a whole lot worse if it weren’t for Grand Duke Kaltbrand and his Coldsteel Knights. They were the shield that kept demonic beasts from flooding the rest of the Reichwald Empire.
The Coldsteel Knights were led by Knight Commander Sofie Bardin, an Aura Master and a childhood hero of mine. She was regarded as one of the three most powerful warriors on the entire continent, alongside Grand Duke Kaltbrand and Gotthard Wendel, a spear warrior of great renown. Not only that, but she was a commoner who earned the title of Countess twenty years ago after she defeated a horde of demonic beasts that had threatened to sweep through the Reichwald Empire. If it hadn’t been for her, countless people would have died.
I wanted to join the Order of the Coldsteel Blade. That was the reason why I was in the Barrens in the first place. Part of it was because I wanted to meet Knight Commander Bardin, whose example I wanted to follow. However, the biggest reason why I wanted to join them was to earn a title.
Defending the Barrens and keeping the rest of the Reichwald Empire safe was dangerous. As a reward, those who served as a Coldsteel Knight for at least five years earned the title of baron. It was one of the few ways a commoner could become a noble. The title didn’t come with any wealth or land, but that was fine by me. All I needed was the title.
However, joining the Order of the Coldsteel Blade was no simple matter. They were invitation only. This was the other reason why started working with Ewald. After I looked into the matter, I found out that a fair number of mercenaries who worked with him had been invited to join the Coldsteel Knights even though they were commoners.
“That would explain a few things,” Ewald muttered, before speaking up. “Speaking of the Coldsteel Knights, that friend of yours is here to see you.”
I gave him a puzzled look.
“You mean Sir Kane?” I asked.
Ewald nodded. I leapt to my feet, almost knocking my stool back.
“Why didn’t you say that earlier?” I demanded. “Where is he?”
Ewald jerked a thumb towards the door leading to the back areas.
“He said he wanted to talk with you in private,” he said. “It seemed important, so I had him wait in the meeting room.”
I started to make my way towards the door, but stopped and gave Ewald a grateful smile.
“Thank you, Ewald,” I said.
He snorted and shook his head, before turning his attention to his other customers. My heart hammered against my ribs as I made my way towards the back areas. Perhaps this was it. Perhaps all my hard work had paid off and my chance had finally come. Perhaps I would finally be able to join the Coldsteel Knights.