HH Chapter 5

Its appearance was so grotesque that I unconsciously took a step back.

“Why aren’t you following me?”

“…….”

I stammered, unable to respond, and Ryzen followed my gaze and also looked at the monster, then asked with a puzzled expression.

“What’s wrong?”

“……What is that?”

“It’s an A-rank monster called Trazenta.”

“What’s a monster?”

Ryzen raised an eyebrow at my question and said,

“Don’t tell me you’ve never seen a monster before?”

“…….”

I haven’t seen one before? 

As I looked at him nervously and nodded, the wrinkles between Ryzen’s eyebrows deepened.

“You’re so naive.”

Ryzen clicked his tongue, seemingly displeased with me. He led me to a clothing store, explaining what it was in detail.

Monster, a creature that uses mana as an energy source. Literally, it’s short for “magical beast.”

And it’s also the main source of income for the mercenary group, he added. They often go on monster subjugations. I almost fainted when I heard that.

‘So you mean we have to beat up monsters like that to earn money?’

As I walked down the street listening to Ryzen, I saw weapons normally being sold everywhere, confirming my suspicions.

‘I won’t be of any help to the mercenary group.’

Because I’m practically weak physically. I’m a decent runner, but I’m terrible at sports involving physical or anything requiring good coordination.

Me, in combat? No way.

‘Cleaning it is…!’

I resolved to earn my keep by polishing every corner of the building until it was glittering as soon as I recovered.

“By the way, what’s your name?”

Ryzen asked.

‘Name?’

I hesitated for a moment. The Guidebook wasn’t reacting, so it seemed I didn’t have a separate name given to me.

It was strange. I’m possessed by the player in this game, but my face in the mirror was exactly the same.

I was still me, even here.

“Please call me Chahyun.”

Ryzen stared blankly at me for a moment, then nodded. It seemed like everyone only used their first names, so I tried that, and thankfully it didn’t sound strange.

“What’s your rank?”

“Rank?”

Is he talking about… League of Legends? That can’t be it….

Ryzen, seeing me blinking blankly, asked again,

“Yeah. You know how to use magic, right?”

“Huh?”

What magic…? I was confused, wondering why Ryzen was misunderstanding something like that.

“You said you know how to handle numbers.”

“……? Yes.”

“You said they made you calculate distances where you were confined.”

“So?”

“That’s magic.”

Huh, what does that have to do with magic? That’s math, mister.

In the first place, I’ve only ever seen magic in movies and webtoons. You know, the kind where you swing a wand and fire and ice shoot out.

“This f*cking… so you’ve never had a proper assessment. How much did they use this kid like a tool… ! And I’m not talking about you.”

Ryzen muttered to himself, then stopped awkwardly when he made eye contact with me. I avoided his gaze and focused on keeping up with him.

For some reason, Ryzen seemed angry, but since he said with his own mouth that he wasn’t angry at me, I just let it go.

“Um…, mister?”

“Call me Ryzen.”

“Ryzen, I think we took the wrong path….”

I cautiously voiced my opinion. Now that we bought all the clothes, shouldn’t we go back the way we came? Because Ryzen suddenly changed direction, we were now walking down a narrow alley.

But Ryzen, as if unwilling to admit we were lost, ignored me, kept his mouth shut, and just kept walking.

‘Ah, is this a shortcut?’

We came out to the main street again. Well, Ryzen knows this area better than I do, so it’s fine, right? And even if we took a detour, the air is nice, so it feels like a walk, which is pleasant.

I trotted after him, and we arrived in front of a huge temple….

“Oh my, brother…! This child is a prodigy of holy magic! Hey, what’s your name? You possess a talent that demands you to serve God!”

Somehow, I was dragged into a temple and mistaken for a magic prodigy. What kind of magic is this? I just filled in some answers in the blank spaces on the floor because I was bored.

The priest’s breath on my cheek was a bit unpleasant. I retreated slightly, using Ryzen, whom I at least the person I knew, as a shield, and thankfully, he faithfully fulfilled his role.

“Hands off, he’s our kid.”

“Oh, God!”

I really couldn’t understand what was going on.

─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───

Ryzen, the vice-captain of the Red Lion, had been here since the founding of the mercenary group. Time-wise, it must have been over 10 years.

Since he started working as a mercenary, he had welcomed and seen off countless comrades and experienced numerous changes in the group’s atmosphere depending on the members. But….

‘Now… it’s no different from an orphanage.’

He couldn’t deny that a child who had recently joined had completely changed the atmosphere of the mercenary group.

Lately, he felt like he was raising a child.

The boy named Chahyun was enthusiastic about everything. He woke up earlier than anyone else in the morning and polished the stairs sparkling clean with a rag. If you took the rag away, saying it wasn’t necessary, he’d quickly go into the kitchen and help peel potatoes.

No one had ever told him to work, yet the boy would busily look for things to do whenever you weren’t looking.

“Hello, you’re up early!”

The boy was extremely polite and greeted people with an almost awkwardly bright smile whenever he made eye contact. And until the other person returned the greeting, he would tremble nervously.

‘He’s overly cautious.’

His circumstances must have made him that way.

The boy, who appeared knocking at their door early in the morning, was a mangled mess. His head was bleeding from a wound, his clothes were tattered, and his entire body was covered in cuts and bruises. The boy, who should have sought treatment at a temple, collapsed after asking to be accepted as a member of the mercenary group.

After barely clinging to life for two days, the boy finally opened his eyes. They were able to hear the story from the boy who had woken up.

“No, a relative I had lost contact with suddenly showed up……”

‘Are you saying your estranged relatives stole your parents’ inheritance and left you in this state?’

Such things were very common. Bastards who pretend to be guardians for orphaned children after their parents die, then steal their inheritance and run off!

But the boy, with wide eyes, insisted that definitely wasn’t the case and defended them.

‘He defended them so vehemently that I almost believed he was telling the truth.’

Ryzen gritted his teeth.

“So, to summarize it, someone locked you up and made you solve problems all day. And there’s someone else who hurt you like this after you messed up the test?”

The men present couldn’t help but sigh at the Captain’s words.

Sure enough, those who claimed to be his relatives stole his inheritance and sold the boy off somewhere. There, the boy was forced to solve ‘problems’ without rest from morning till night.

“How long were you there?”

“A little over 10 years?”

Ryzen ground his teeth again. The boy confessed with difficulty that he had been imprisoned for over 10 years, and it seemed he had ended up in this state while escaping.

‘Doesn’t that sound like that incident that happened last year?’

‘The Mage Sigard case.’

His comrades all murmured in agreement. Hearing the boy’s story, they all recalled the incident from a year ago.

A year ago, the mage Sigard was caught and arrested for exploiting orphaned children with nowhere to go and and had a talent for magic, making them work to publish a thesis on ancient magic. The suspicion started when the formulas in the thesis were so disorganized that it seemed like they weren’t written by a single person.

The investigation of Sigard’s residence revealed that his atrocities didn’t end there. He also used the orphans as test subjects for his research on unknown magic, often resulting in the deaths of the children in the process.

Children whose body parts had crystallized and hardened due to the curse of the ancient magic circle he was researching were rescued from his residence. The children, exploited as parts of his thesis and test subjects, were taken in by the Magic Tower.

After that, under the leadership of the Imperial family, a widespread random investigation of mages was conducted. In the process, it was revealed that numerous mages were often using unidentified individuals for similar reasons, and the prestige of the magic society plummeted.

Those people didn’t even have a sense of wrongdoing, considering such acts as perfectly normal.

‘But the food was good.’

The child, defending the person who abused him, chuckled… 

Ah, it was so heartbreaking.

His whole bruised body and awkward smile seemed so, so happy. Even in such extreme circumstances, the child found his own small happiness and held on his life.

‘I’ll do everything you ask, so can you please at least let me stay here for a while?’

The hand that tightly gripped the Captain’s sleeve was also now bruised in blue. No matter how positive the child was, the child wouldn’t want to return to the person who beat and abused him. And they also couldn’t just send him back to the relatives who abandoned him.