Surviving The Game As A Barbarian Episode 837

Ups and Downs 4

I had already made up my mind about the verdict.

But before I could speak, the special mage spoke up.

“What do you mean, what should we do? Miss Eloyd, what kind of ridiculous question is that? These people dared to attack Baron Jandel’s companions over a personal grudge! And in a disaster where everyone should be working together!”

“I wasn’t asking you.”

“Execution! The only answer is to execute every last one of them on the spot!”

The Sawtooth clan members, who had been watching the situation while restrained by the special mage’s pressure, turned pale.

“Execute all of them? What kind of barbaric nonsense is that? My lord! I have no intention of defending the captain, but there is an old saying—when a ship goes astray, you punish the helmsman. Please show mercy!”

“Heh, pfft… This is exactly why religious fanatics are—”

“…What did you just say? If you intend to insult Lord Heinmel—”

“It was just me talking to myself! Talking to myself!”

Those two were at it again.

The special mage had seemed fairly respectful towards the priestess at first, but now they were acting like sworn enemies.

“This discussion doesn’t concern either of us. The viscount will decide for himself, and I’m certain his judgment will be fair.” Maria said firmly

“Heh. We’ll see about that.”

I suppressed a sigh.

I really didn’t like how this had developed. No matter what verdict I gave now, it would look as though I had chosen one side over the other.

“Tsk.”

Clicking my tongue, I turned my attention back to the captain of the Sawtooth Clan.

“Anything you want to say before I pass judgment?”

“Hehehe…”

“Fine. I’ll assume that’s a no—”

“If you make it back to the city alive, could you deliver a message to my children?”

“…Fine. I’ll tell them.”

The moment I agreed, he stared at me with bloodshot eyes and spoke in a voice filled with hatred.

“My beloved children. The man who killed your father is Viscount Jandel. Never forget this grudge. It doesn’t matter if you can’t do anything now. Be patient and wait. Your chance will come eventually. Even if you can’t kill him, that’s fine. His companions, his family, the children he might have someday. Anyone will do. As long as you can return the same pain to him, kill them. Finish your father’s revenge.”

“That’s all I have to say. Will you deliver the message?”

After finishing his will, he curled his bloodied lips into a smile.

The temporary companions nearby immediately exploded.

“This crazy bastard…!!”

“My lord! Just ignore that nonsense!”

Well…

The malice contained in those words was too intense to simply ignore.

In the end, I couldn’t help but ask.

“Do you really mean that?”

“Does it look like I’m lying?”

No.

It didn’t.

And that was exactly why I couldn’t understand it.

He wanted his children to hear something like that?

“You beast! You’re the one who committed the crime in the first place!”

One of my temporary allies shouted, but the clan leader cut him off.

“The moment you stain your hands with blood, you’ve already stepped onto the judge’s scales, you fools!”

“Kill me here, Bjorn Jandel! Then return to the city and kill my children, my wife, and my brothers too! Because if you don’t, someday you—”

Like a candle flaring brightly just before it went out, he burned with madness until the very end.

But he never got to finish.

Crunch!

I brought my hammer down, and his final words ended along with his life.

The sudden end to his madness left behind a frozen silence.

Swoosh.

I shook the blood from my hammer and walked toward the vice-captain.

He already knew what awaited him.

“I have no final words,” he said first. “No… Rather, I have one request. Please don’t let my children or my family learn how I died.”

“…Why?”

“I don’t want them to live in that hell.”

At his answer, my arm went numb for a moment.

The hammer in my hand suddenly felt heavy.

No.

It wasn’t the hammer.

Drip. Drop.

The blood sliding down from its head felt heavier than usual.

“…I see.”

For some reason, I remembered a picture I had seen long ago.

The portrait inside Hans A’s bag.

In it was a young wife and a little girl, maybe three years old.

That girl…

She must have grown by now.

Old enough to wonder why she had no father.

Maybe one day, she would start searching for the reason he disappeared.

And by some twist of fate, she might eventually learn the truth.

That the man who killed her father was the hero of the city.

Would she simply accept it?

Would she tell herself, Explorers die to plunderers all the time. That’s just how the labyrinth works?

“How the hell am I supposed to know?”

“…Pardon?”

“Get up, bastard.”

I pulled the vice-captain to his feet.

It wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision.

“I have no intention of killing you. So stand up.”

“A-Ah…?”

As I pulled him up by the shoulder, he stared at me in disbelief.

Then I turned toward the rest of the detained Sawtooth Clan members.

“Even if I executed every one of you right here, nobody would question it. That’s the unwritten law of the labyrinth.”

Those who tried to kill others had no right to complain if the same happened to them.

“But…”

I raised my voice.

“I’m giving you a chance.”

I continued.

“From this moment on, you’ll move with us and obey my orders. You’ll take care of every unpleasant and troublesome task. And whenever there’s danger, you’ll be the first ones sent in.”

In short, their lives were about to become hell.

“However, if you promise to endure that unfair treatment, then even after we return to the city, I will never hold today’s incident against you. I swear it upon my warrior’s honor and my name.”

There wasn’t even a moment’s pause after I finished speaking.

“W-We’ll do it…”

“Please give us the chance!”

I couldn’t even say I saw it coming.

This was simply the only outcome that made sense.

Putting aside the fact that it was their only way to survive, they were still trapped in the middle of a dimensional collapse.

Even if they were treated like slaves, sticking close to our group gave them the highest chance of making it out alive.

“You have made the right choice. Surely Lord Heinmel would also be pleased by the baron’s mercy.”

“A wise decision. Free slaves can be quite useful if managed properly.”

Strangely enough, both the priestess and the special wizard seemed pleased with my decision.

“Bjorn!”

The moment the issue with the Sawtooth clan was settled, Aynar rushed over.

“We need to find the gray-haired warrior who helped me!”

Ah, right.

We needed to find him too.

The man who had saved Aynar.

“Does anyone know anything about that gray-haired warrior?”

Before searching for the body, I questioned the Sawtooth Clan members, but nothing useful came of it.

Apparently, they didn’t know much about him either. He had joined their group midway through the dimensional collapse.

“Hmm… Hans? I think that was his name…”

“…What?”

There was no way.

There was absolutely no way the person I had saved was a Hans.

If that turned out to be true, it would be an even greater tragedy than Romeo and Juliet.

“Are you sure? Can you take responsibility for that statement?”

“N-No! Not that sure! S-Sorry, I don’t know!”

Hah.

How dare you casually throw out that name when you aren’t even certain?

For some reason, I felt an inexplicable sense of unease.

Still, we had to look.

Even if his real name really was Hans, he’d saved Ainar’s life.

That much was undeniable.

“Elvain Cutter. I’ll be gone for a bit. Keep things organized.”

“Understood. Leave everything to me. I will take responsibility and maintain order.”

Elvain sounded as if I had officially appointed him as my second-in-command, but I didn’t bother correcting him.

He wasn’t completely useless, after all.

“Let’s go, Aynar. It’s this way.”

With that, I took Ainar and split off from the group, heading deeper into the labyrinth.

Finding the way wasn’t difficult.

I had already seen the labyrinth’s structure through the Shortcut, and I had passed through the Larkaz maze once before.

The distance wasn’t too far either.

“T-There! That’s where it happened!”

As we came out of the crossroads, we saw a human man sitting against the wall, motionless.

His right hand still gripped his sword, while his shield had rolled away nearby. His metal breastplate was covered in stab marks, and the dark blood around the wounds had yet to dry.

“If he hadn’t warned me and bought me time, I would’ve died! Bjorn, do you recognize him? He said you helped him before…!”

“Well…”

I still couldn’t recognize him.

He looked familiar, but that was all.

“Let’s check his belongings.”

Thankfully, it didn’t take long to confirm his identity.

“He has an ID badge.”

Like every explorer, he carried one.

When I checked his, I was able to confirm a few basic details.

Rank 5 explorer.

Not especially high, but not low either.

He might not have been strong enough to take on a core role in an expedition, but he could at least look after himself. Most decent-sized guilds only accepted explorers who were rank 5 or above.

He belonged to the Blue Flag Guild.

I had looked into them before this expedition, but they weren’t a particularly famous clan.

He was twenty-eight years old.

And his name was…

“Carlson Anderk.”

At least it wasn’t Hans.

Still, I couldn’t remember him.

“Carlson Anderk… Carlson Anderk…”

I stared at his face and repeated the name over and over.

“Do you remember him?!” Aynar asked.

“Ah…!”

I remembered.

Carlson Anderk.

I had seen him once before in the labyrinth.

“See! If he sacrificed his life to save me, then you must’ve done something incredible for him back then!”

But contrary to what Ainar seemed to think, there had been no great story between us.

I had met him in a rift on the first floor.

The same place where I first met Mr. Bear.

The same place where I committed my first PK.

The Glacier Cave.

Carlson Anderk had been one of the people there.

I didn’t know what rank he had been back then, but his skills were around the middle of the second floor.

He had clearly been a new explorer without much experience.

But I remembered that he had the right mindset.

He did whatever was asked of him without complaint, and he always tried his best to pull his own weight.

When we split the rewards, he hadn’t been greedy at all.

I liked that.

So I’d given him a generous amount of mana stones.

And…

“Mm-hm! So what happened next?”

“…That’s all.”

“Huh?”

That had been my last connection with Carlson Anderk.

We’d never crossed paths again.

In fact, I’d only learned his surname now.

In other words…

“I’m confused. I’ve never shown him enough kindness to justify giving his life for me.”

All I’d done was give him a somewhat larger share of the rewards.

If that counted as a favor, that was the extent of it.

“Hmm… Is that so…”

I truly couldn’t understand.

But perhaps Aynar, who viewed the world more simply and directly than anyone else, saw things differently.

“I think Carlson was just really grateful for what you gave him back then!”

“No, even so, that’s not enough to die for—”

“That’s only what we think! Carlson was a great warrior who understood duty and gratitude!”

“…Though he clearly wasn’t very good at calculations.”

“If the value of a favor is different in his eyes, then we simply repay it according to his measure!”

For a moment, I couldn’t find a response.

I wanted to argue that it made no sense.

Yet somehow, I felt like I was the one who didn’t make sense.

So in the end, I accepted it.

“…Yeah. Maybe you’re right.”

“I’ve decided! When we return to the city, I’ll find Carlson’s family! And I’ll take responsibility for looking after them!”

After saying that, Aynar gathered Carlson’s equipment and hoisted his body onto her back.

“Let’s go home with Warrior Carlson Anderk!”

As I followed behind Aynar carrying his corpse, the feeling was strange.

As if I understood nothing at all

Why is something this simple so hard for me to grasp?

Back then, I had only given him a few extra mana stones.

Looking back, it was barely anything at all.

Some people could receive something like that and carry a debt of gratitude strong enough to give their life for it.

“You interfered with the Riakis raid we prepared for so long!”

And some people could take something like that and carry a grudge strong enough to kill.

It really is hard…

The world I lived in was far too complicated.

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