Chapter 44: Just Take One Hit, You Little Punk (4)

The Pumpkin Leaf Inn was famous for its terrible food. True to its reputation, there were more staff than customers.

Keter walked in and sat at the secluded table hidden in the shadows of a pillar.

The middle-aged man sitting opposite him, who had already been there, stirred his now cold soup and said, “You acted like you wouldn't come. Did you change your mind?”

“'I did. I'm going to expose everything.”

“...”

The middle-aged man, who had his head lowered, looked up and stared at Keter. If Luke were here, he would have been shocked. The man wasn't a villager but one of Sefira's knights: a three-star knight of the Order of the Galaxy who wasn’t even from the fourth division that guarded the archives. It wasn’t just one division of the order that supported Reganon.

“I plan to return to the family and reveal everything about what Elder Reganon has been doing,” Keter said.

“Do you think the patriarch would believe that?” responded the middle-aged man.

'I’ll tell them that Elder Reganon is hiding something in this village. They won’t believe it at first. But they’ll start looking into it more. Don’t you think?”

“...”

“Hey, if you stare at me like that, it looks like you're confessing. You should’ve pretended not to know.”

“You have quite the imagination, like the lord mentioned.”

“One hundred thousand gold.”

“...?”

“I’ve been thinking. I don’t want to fight with the elder. But I also don’t want to let this opportunity go for just a small amount of money.”

“So you came to Sefira out of pure self-interest, after all.”

“What, should I be a dutiful son instead? For the father who abandoned me?”

“Typical thinking from someone from the lawless city of Absinthe.”

“I’ll return to the family by lunchtime. Tell them to have one hundred thousand gold ready by then. If you are short of even one gold, the deal is off.”

Keter unilaterally delivered his terms and stood up. The middle-aged man could only glare at Keter’s back as he left.

Meanwhile, Luke, who had been waiting outside, overheard their entire conversation through a crack in the window.

“Keter, was it true that Lord Reganon called you yesterday and actually told you to leave the family?”

“Now you get it? I never lie.”

“Why would Lord Reganon... Ah, actually, thinking about it, it makes sense.”

Luke began to understand Reganon's reasoning for asking Keter to leave the family, considering Keter’s actions. However, he still couldn’t figure out how Keter’s current behavior and his search for the beastfolk were related.

Luke was about to ask Keter directly, but then stopped himself, remembering Keter’s comment about thinking things through on his own.

“Is there a connection between Lord Reganon and the beastfolk?”

It was an absurd idea, but it was the only thing that came to mind at the moment.

Keter glanced back at Luke and gave him a nudge with his elbow.

“Just keep doing that.”

“Huh? Was I right?”

“Whether you're right or wrong, you’re useless if you can't even come up with a prediction.”

“So, was I right or wrong?”

“I don’t know.”

“Huh?”

“I’m just guessing too. I think it might be the case, but I’m not sure. That’s what I’m trying to verify now.”

“Verify? Do you think Lord Reganon will really give you the one hundred thousand gold? I don’t think he has that kind of money.”

“He’ll manage somehow if he sells everything down to his underwear. But I doubt he’d want to give it to me. So, what do you think he’ll do?”

“Um... negotiate?”

“It’d be easier to just kill me and get rid of the problem.”

“Lord Reganon isn’t the type to do that.”

“How could a fish understand a bird's mind?”[1]

“What if you’re wrong? What will you do then?”

“If I’m wrong, I’m wrong.”

Luke stopped abruptly at Keter's answer. Keter, on the other hand, kept walking. Luke felt a bit hurt, but he didn’t bother to catch up. He already knew where Keter was headed.

Can something like that really be taken so lightly?

Luke couldn’t take it lightly.

One day, the pudding Luke had saved to eat later disappeared, and he suspected his dorm roommate. They got along well, but based on the circumstances, there was no one else who could have taken it.

He immediately confronted his roommate, accusing him of eating the pudding without permission. The roommate denied it, but their relationship deteriorated to the point where it couldn’t get any worse. In the end, Luke changed rooms and deliberately avoided crossing paths with his former roommate.

The next day, a friend from the room next door handed Luke a pudding. He explained that he saw the pudding through the open refrigerator door while passing by and ate it without thinking. He even gave Luke two in return, telling him not to feel bad.

The roommate hadn’t been the culprit, but Luke couldn’t even apologize. His roommate no longer wanted to see him.

“What would Keter have done?”

Luke chuckled to himself as he asked the question.

“He probably would’ve grabbed the roommate by the collar right away.”

Up to that point, they weren't so different. But what about after the real culprit was revealed? Luke wondered how Keter would have repaired the already broken relationship.

Money? A heartfelt apology?

“That’s something I’ll have to see for myself.”

There’s still a lot Luke didn’t know about Keter, and he could learn a lot from Keter.

Luke suddenly realized something: becoming Keter’s partner didn’t mean that he was supposed to teach Keter.

You are the one who should learn from Keter.

Luke believed that was the true intention behind the patriarch's assignment.

* * *

Before leaving the basement of the village hall, Keter asked the village chief if there was a quiet place to hide in the village.

The village chief, who owed his life to Keter, thought for a moment and gave an answer.

“On your way here, you probably saw a soybean field. If you go deeper inside, there’s a fairly large barn. The harvest is over, and since insects are swarming around the field, the villagers avoid the area entirely.”

The chief's words were true. The soybean field was deserted, and bugs were crawling all over. Upon arriving at the barn, Luke, who clearly disliked bugs, shuddered and shook his body in disgust.

“No one would come to a place like this.”

Keter, who had arrived first, was lying down, using his arm as a pillow.

“Keter, are you seriously sleeping?”

“I’m waiting. Don’t know when they’ll come.”

“Who would come here? No one knows we're here.”

“I already let them know that I’m here.”

“That can’t be. I heard everything you said at the inn, and you didn’t mention anything like that.”

“Lesson one. What did I tell you?”

“There are no such things as coincidences in this world. I know, but...”

Luke suddenly felt a chill run down his spine. Now that he thought about it, Keter didn’t just say “Lesson one”; he had said it while pointing at the village chief. At the time, Luke thought it was just a random gesture, but if it wasn’t...

“The village chief... is in on it, too?”

Keter didn’t bother to confirm or deny it with any gestures, so Luke went over the situation again in his mind.

Back then, the chief had been listening to the entire conversation from the second floor. Even that was strange. It made no sense that he, an ordinary person, would stay and listen in on such an important discussion.

The knights weren’t blocking the exits, and the hall didn’t only have a front entrance. The chief could have come down from the second floor and left through the front or back door at any time. He could have also moved to a corner of the second floor, trying not to hear anything. There were countless choices he could have made. Yet, the chief deliberately stayed to listen to the entire conversation between Keter and Arbold.

My god.

Luke got goosebumps, but it wasn’t because of the village chief’s actions that he hadn’t noticed before; it was because Keter, who had noticed all of that even while engaged in such an intense conversation, seemed like a monster to Luke.

“Are you really just eighteen? Your appearance... It’s fake, isn’t it?”

Luke tried to pinch Keter's face, but Keter smacked his hand away.

“Don’t reach for my face. If it were anyone else, I would’ve cut that hand off.”

“Friends can...”

Strictly speaking, Luke was three years older than Keter, but that no longer mattered.

Keter chuckled at how Luke called him a friend.

“There are three criteria to be my friend. You don’t meet any of them.”

“I think I know what they are. You’re either rich, strong, or... the last one, maybe being beautiful or a high noble?”

“You got half of it right.”

Keter stood up and reached out his hand. Luke thought it was for a handshake and extended his hand as well.

Smack.

Keter slapped Luke's palm and said, “The bow. Give me the bow.”

“Oh.”

Luke, who had been faithfully carrying the bow Keter was going to use, finally handed it over. After taking the bow, Keter also grabbed six arrows from the quiver on Luke's back.

“Do you even know how to shoot a bow?” Luke asked.

It was truly an innocent question with no intent to be condescending.

It was illegal for commoners to even possess long-range weapons like bows or crossbows. Only licensed hunters were allowed to carry bows. It probably wasn’t difficult for Keter to get a bow since he was from the lawless city of Absinthe, but it likely wasn’t something he would have typically used as a weapon; a bow couldn’t unleash even half of its full potential in cramped and complex spaces.

Instead of answering, Keter showed through action.

Thwack, thwack.

Keter casually began firing arrows without even using a finger guard. The arrows he shot embedded themselves in various places around the barn.

Watching this, a thought suddenly popped up in Luke’s head.

What had I—no, what had Keter—been relying on to take all these risks until now?

The archery Keter displayed didn’t seem particularly impressive. He proved he wasn’t a novice by hitting his targets, but that was about it.

“You shoot well, but...”

If Keter hadn’t possessed the Amaranth, Luke would have fled immediately.

𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

Luke sighed as he looked at the arrows Keter had shot.

“Keter, I know it was just a test shot, but shooting them that high makes it difficult to retrieve them. Do you know how expensive each of these arrows is?”

Since bows weren’t standardized weapons, there were no specialized forges to craft them. Arrows on the market were one gold for a bundle of thirty.

On the other hand, arrows produced at Sefira were undeniably of the highest quality. The cost to produce just one arrow easily surpassed one gold. As a result, it was common practice to reuse them as many times as possible unless they were severely damaged.

“Don’t pull them out. Just leave them,” Keter said to Luke.

“Arrows are extremely sensitive to moisture. If you leave them like that, they’ll become useless in no time.”

“I put them there on purpose.”

“Huh? Why?”

“I’m getting ready to greet our guest.”

Just as Luke was about to ask further, the barn door swung open with a loud noise. Luke, who was standing near the door, jumped like a cat and landed beside Keter.

I didn’t sense any presence at all.

Even the curse, which usually protected him from danger, only began to react noisily once the man had already appeared.

The man who entered the barn had an ordinary appearance. Based on his clothing, he could easily be mistaken for a farmer coming to check on the barn. If it weren’t for the way he calmly looked around at Keter and Luke, Luke might have dismissed him as just another villager.

“You have two choices.”

The man abruptly spoke to Keter without any introduction. Without waiting for Keter’s response, he continued speaking.

“You can follow me quietly with this bag tied around your head, or you can be dragged away unconscious.”

The man threw two bags at Keter. Keter glared at them and frowned.

“That isn’t the line I was expecting. Hey, is this right? Are you sure? Didn’t you say something like, ‘I’ll tear you apart and feed you to the crows,’ or, ‘If you leave now, I’ll let you go’? Think carefully.”

“I wasn’t told to listen to what you have to say. I was advised not to give you much time to think.”

“

Tsk

.”

Clicking his tongue, Keter glanced at Luke. He was holding a bow with a determined look in his eyes but wasn’t gripping any arrows.

This is definitely unexpected. They still intend to capture me alive.

Up until now, everything had gone according to Keter’s predictions. But now, for the first time, things had gone off course.

Well, things happen.

That was it. It was only natural; Keter was not a god, and mistakes were common. When things like this happened, he simply moved on to the next path.

“What’s your name?”

After a moment of hesitation in response to Keter's question, the man said, “Hans.”

“Not your human name. Your real name.”

“...”

The man showed hostility toward Keter, who was asking as if he knew the man’s true identity.

Thud, thud.

The man began walking towards them in large strides.

“Keter, use Amaranth!” urgently shouted Luke, who was unable to fight due to the curse.

However, Keter just chuckled.

“Why would I need to use a weapon for slaying dragons to catch goblins?”

Keter pulled three arrows from the quiver at Luke’s waist and immediately nocked one on the bowstring.

“You don’t want to talk, right? You’ll want to soon.”

As Keter released the bowstring, the man's figure vanished from sight.

1. This is a play on the Chinese saying, “How can a small bird understand the ambitions of a great swan?”. It means that a commoner cannot understand the mind and plans of a great fellow. ☜