Black Badger

What in the world was this guy talking about?

I stared blankly at the person right in front of me, completely dumbfounded.

Maybe my expression looked ridiculous, because the man let out a scoffing laugh.

He gave my shoulder a rough smack.

“Look at that country bumpkin vibe dripping off you.”

The man was incredibly tall.

A massive axe was slung diagonally across his back. A mercenary, maybe? I thought as I glanced at the calluses on his hand.

Doesn’t look like a carpenter.

Judging by the weapon and his hands, he’s not a knight either.

The people standing behind him don’t look like they do ordinary work, either.

People entering and leaving the Imperial Capital glanced our way.

Some of them even hurried to leave the area. Rei had stepped back and was watching the situation unfold.

Now that he was used to my presence, he didn’t seem inclined to move.

It wasn’t really a situation that needed help anyway...

So I spoke calmly.

“I’m sorry for blocking the way. And I believe there may be some misunderstanding—”

“You must’ve picked up one of those storytellers’ rumors about how the Children of the World Tree get special treatment.”

Doesn’t seem like he plans to listen.

“That’s why everyone swarmed around the World Tree, wasn’t it? Chop off a Sacred Branch from a holy tree nearby and—”

“Who would cut a Sacred Branch for a reason like that?”

His words made something surge up inside me.

Still staring at the one clutching my collar, I frowned.

“That is not why one cuts a Sacred Branch.”

“But you cut one.”

The other man suddenly raised his voice.

“You cut it, you! That’s why you got cursed by the Sacred Branch, isn’t it? Then you crawled all the way to the World Tree to undo it!”

“Hey.”

“I didn’t want to cut it either.”

Rei threw in a short remark, but both the man and I pretended not to hear him.

Trying to force down the anger rising in my chest, I muttered,

“But there was no other choice. If you’re angry that I cut the Sacred Branch, then I apologize. I know full well that I committed a grave sin.”

“Excuses after cutting it.”

He snorted.

“When all you wanted was to get stronger the easy way.”

The man’s gaze dropped to the sword hanging at my waist.

“You a knight?”

he asked.

“A wandering knight?”

“I’m not.”

I gave the same answer I had when I first met Rei.

“I just know how to use a sword a little.”

“You’re not even a knight?”

The mockery in his voice deepened.

“So you’ve never even been knighted?”

Rei had asked me the same thing.

He’d even said that, if I wanted, he could grant me knighthood himself. Of course, he had taken those words back almost immediately.

After sparring with me beside the valley, he had gotten excited and asked if I was a knight, then looked stunned when I said no, demanded to know why not, and said he could knight me himself if I wished. Then, after staring at me blinking in confusion, he changed his words.

And then he told me we should go to the Imperial Capital.

That I should become a knight of the Empire.

I had answered that I didn’t particularly want to...

But in the end, I got swept up in his pressure and came all the way here.

“So this nobody who used to be nothing can absorb power now, huh? Must feel great, getting a sword that can cut through anything too.”

I was dragged out of my thoughts by the man’s voice.

Without warning, he suddenly reached for my sword.

“For a country hick, that’s way too fine a blade for you—”

“Hilde, wait!”

BAAAM!

I reflexively smashed my fist into the man’s face.

The impact traveled cleanly through my knuckles.

Thud!

His huge body crashed heavily to the ground.

The passersby who had been sneaking glances while quickening their pace widened their eyes.

“You bastard!”

The men behind him all drew their weapons at once.

“Do you even know who you just hit?!”

Instead of answering, I sprang forward and instantly closed the distance.

Then, the moment they panicked at how suddenly the gap vanished, I didn’t miss it.

I swung.

BAM! WHAM!

After dropping two of them in quick succession, I bolted.

“Hey, Hilde!”

Rei shouted as he chased after me.

“Take me with you!”

“Run.”

I glanced back at Rei, then reached out and shoved his hood lower over his face.

“With this many people around, it’ll be hard for them to identify us!”

If I had been alone, I wouldn’t have needed to run like this.

But I sprinted as hard as I could, worried that what I had just done might drag Rei into unnecessary trouble.

Since I didn’t know how cities worked, running seemed like the safest choice.

My master taught me that. Even in situations where I couldn’t hide my sixth sense, if I still needed to disappear, I should dive into crowded places.

If you keep running without stopping, whether it’s humans or monsters, you’ll lose them eventually.

If you keep running around like that, I’ll come find you and take care of the rest, so just make sure you keep your head attached. It’s not like you’re lacking skill, so you should be able to run from most things.

Gale’s words, the ones I had kept replaying while I was captured.

Remembering them, I ran with all my strength.

If you want to hide a tree, put it in the forest.

Together with Rei, I ran into the Imperial Capital through the crowd.

***

“Question.”

Sophia spoke.

I had been smiling at Ami, who was pumping her fist and cheering like I’d done well, but I turned my head toward my senior.

“Yes.”

“If it’s too sensitive, just say so. I really don’t know much about this.”

“Of course. Ask whatever you’d like.”

“You said you people have a sixth sense. Then how is it even possible to run away?”

Her brows lifted.

“When I look at Jack Black, it feels like he can detect things on a planetary scale.”

“Jack has a sixth sense on the level of a mutant. You should assume ordinary people don’t even have a quarter of a quarter of that.”

I explained with a faint smile.

“You could even say a quarter of a quarter of a quarter. So you really shouldn’t use Jack as the standard. In my case, my sixth sense is much duller than Jack’s, but even so, mine was still vastly sharper than that of ordinary people. Like how Badgers are more perceptive than normal humans.”

“So most people usually can’t recognize things from far away?”

“Mm, it’s less that and more that the precision is lower.”

I smiled wider as I looked at the seniors listening closely to my words.

As the conversation continued, even Ricardo, Yun, and Kai, who had been doing their own things while half-listening, lifted their heads and stared straight at me.

It must seem fascinating, since it’s a sense humans don’t possess.

How should I explain this so it feels intuitive?

“Maybe think of it like opening an online map, but the search radius is way too broad.”

“But they still know you’re somewhere inside that range, right?”

Sophia asked.

“Then doesn’t that make hiding impossible?”

“Yes, but ordinary people can’t clearly memorize the presence of someone they’ve only just met.”

I chose my words carefully.

“So while they can distinguish things like the presence of a human or the presence of some kind of monster, identifying the exact presence of a specific human requires spending a certain amount of time with that person first. Usually.”

“Ahh.”

“So in the end, I didn’t get caught that time. After that brief little clash, most people wouldn’t be able to memorize and isolate someone’s presence that specifically. It’s not a sense with fixed data values like vision.”

“Jack really is incredible!”

Ami gasped in admiration.

I nodded.

“Yes. And usually, people whose sixth sense is excessively sharp tend to die young.”

“Gasp.”

“The world would just be too noisy...”

Ami, sitting across from me, sucked in a breath, while Ricardo—half buried in his sleeping bag beside me—remained calm.

“Wouldn’t you also notice every time a presence disappears~?”

“Yes.”

“It’s honestly amazing the Driver can stay sane...”

“In reality, quite a lot of handlers did fall into depression. Those with strong sixth senses usually ended up becoming handlers.”

“I asked Jack about that once.”

Huh?

I looked at Ami in surprise.

The others blinked too and turned toward her.

Ami, who had been sitting cross-legged chewing on cheese jerky while listening intently to my story, adjusted her posture.

“I asked him how he endures feeling lives get cut off.”

This time, I stared at Ami.

“What did he say?”

“He gave one of those answers that somehow made no sense and perfect sense at the same time. He said it gets easier when you realize everything keeps circling back.”

She looked up at the ceiling, as if trying to recall Kairos’s exact words.

“He said humans, monsters, and plants are all ultimately part of the world. Every life has an end, and that end seems to give birth to new life again. The deaths of those close to you are unbearably sad, but whether you grieve or not, the world keeps going, and sometimes he finds comfort in that fact. He said, ‘Both you, Senior, and I are only living brief moments within a much greater cycle.’”

“He’s a philosopher.”

Sophia let out a small laugh.

Kai stretched the corner of his mouth into a long grin and added,

“That’s a good conviction. ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) I feel like I finally understand why he sometimes charges in like he’s thrown his life away.”

“Does that even count as conviction?”

Yun asked, sounding puzzled.

“Isn’t that just a list of facts?”

“Oppa, you’re such an idiot!”

“Hildebert.”

Ricardo, who had practically been lying down, suddenly raised his upper body.

“Are you crying?”

I quickly wiped away the tears gathering in my eyes.

Then, seeing Ami staring at me stiffly, and the three seniors abruptly turning their heads away, I smiled softly.

“I guess getting older makes a person more sentimental.”

“I think you’re past the age where that line works.”

Yun said dryly, though he still looked at me strangely.

Feeling embarrassed under all my seniors’ gazes, I rubbed the back of my neck.

“It’s fine. It’s not because I’m sad. It’s just... hearing Jack’s words secondhand suddenly made something surge up inside me.”

Everyone kept looking at me in silence.

After hesitating, Ami said,

“Should we sleep...? I still have tons of questions, and I really want to hear the rest too, but it’s night already, so let’s continue tomorrow.”

“Yeah... let’s get into our sleeping bags.”

“I’ll tell you just a little more.”

I answered with a faint smile.

“I was about to stop soon anyway.”

The seniors all looked like they had plenty more to say, but no one interrupted.

I lowered my gaze and checked the time on my phone.

11:55 p.m.

I should finish the story within thirty minutes at the latest.

For a moment, I thought about what Kairos had said to Ami before I continued.

“So... we managed to run well enough to get ourselves a room at an inn.”

***

The moment we stepped into a room so cramped even I was startled, Rei spoke.

“You are absolutely taking the entrance exam.”

I whipped around to face him.

Whether from anger or from running, he was breathing hard.

Looking at him, I asked,

“I’m not really interested... More importantly, thank you for helping make sure they didn’t take my sword. Also, was it really okay to knock those people out like that?”

Rei folded his arms and snorted.

“It doesn’t matter at all.”

He yanked off his hooded cloak roughly and threw it onto the straw bed.

That cloak might look badly worn on the outside, but when you touch it, the fabric is surprisingly good.

As I stared at the ashen cloak thinking that, Rei grumbled,

“From what I could tell, they looked like mercenaries employed by the Imperial Palace.”

“Huh?”

The words Imperial Palace made me freeze stiff.

“The Imperial Palace?”

For someone like me, who had spent most of his life in a temple at the far southern edge of the Empire, the Imperial Palace was a place beyond enormous.

The Emperor himself was something that belonged in stories I couldn’t even properly imagine.

Mercenaries employed by a place like that?

Did I make a terrible mistake?

I stared blankly at Rei, frozen, and he immediately noticed my expression.

He let out a small laugh.

“Even if they’re hired by the Imperial Palace, it’s nothing special. No need to worry.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. It’s not like they go through a knighting ceremony and receive a title the way Imperial Palace knights do. Which means they’re not nobles. And besides, you could’ve beaten all three of them even if they came at you together.”

“That’s true.”

I nodded obediently.

Rei nodded back and added,

“Well, to be honest, if I don’t intervene, things could still get a little bigger.”

“What?”

I shot him a disbelieving look.

Didn’t you just say it was fine?

“But they’re still a mercenary unit hired by the Palace. It’s bad for their image if mercenaries employed by the Empire get flattened by someone who isn’t even a wandering knight.”

“Bad for their image?”

For a moment, I didn’t properly understand what Rei meant.

“That becomes a problem?”

“Quite a bit.”

Seeing my confusion, Rei explained that nobles usually cared deeply about things like dignity and appearances.

Just as rituals and their rules were important in the temple, nobles placed great importance on customs and face. If they felt their dignity had been bruised, they could become furious in an instant. If it hadn’t been three against one, or if fewer people had witnessed the conflict, it might not have mattered. But there had been plenty of witnesses, and the result had been overwhelmingly one-sided, so they might start looking for me.

After giving me this explanation I still didn’t fully understand, he grinned at my blank expression.

“But if you become an Imperial knight, the whole situation changes.”

“...Why do you want to become an Imperial knight so badly?”

I asked as I looked at the man with the same golden eyes as me.

“You already have a title, so you don’t need to become one.”

“I want to join the Imperial Knights and absolutely cross blades with Sir Kysis.”

Rei answered without hesitation.

Once again, I didn’t really understand what he meant.

“Sir Kysis?”

A person’s name?

“Who is Kysis?”

Rei’s face filled with shock.