Polymath Redux – Chapter 4

Polymath Redux – Starting off the adventure by saving a village under siege!
Chapter IV

As Mordred walked through the forest, Mordred felt a sort of tranquil calm, a kind that he could never have felt in that busy world he lived in. The best he could remember was a short walk in the park with his parents from long ago. This was like that, just many times better. A leisurely stroll as he heard the sounds of the forests.

Yet that tranquil calm came to an abrupt end, for he noticed smoke rising from the distance. This was both a good and bad thing. Smoke indicated that there was some sort of intelligent civilization but at the same time a smoke that big probably meant that it was also the sign of some sort of incident having occurred.

“I’m going to run, so keep up.”

Mordred ordered Irina.

“Understood.”

She answered without objections.

‘Speeding up’ was no joke. For Mordred this meant employing various movement oriented skills together, the result was that he sped faster than a bullet train. Yet despite this, Irina showed no inclination to lag behind, in fact she was right on his tail without breaking a sweat. Feeling impressed Mordred showed a small grin, a grin which did not escape Irina’s detection. She felt exhilarated about being acknowledged by her one and only master.

Drawing near the smoke Mordred and Irina slowed down their pace.

“… ?!”

Mordred’s [intuition] passive skill was alerting him that several entities would be coming out of the nearby bushes. He was poised to strike whatever was going to come out but once he saw actually running out he relaxed himself a little. Yet he wasn’t any less weary from what he saw.

A young girl no older than perhaps 7, she was heavily injured and bleeding. She ran straight into him without looking and fell over. She was extremely scared as evident by the clear signs of horror in her expression and subtle trembling.

“Ah…!”

Upon meeting Mordred’s gaze she started to crawl backwards feeling cornered. Once again Mordred’s [Intuition] skill alerted him that another person was approaching. This time the need to be cautious was warranted. A knight; a knight adorned in metal plating from head to toe, with a red emblem on the chest plate came out. A sword in one hand and a shield on the other.

“You guys, how did you escape?”

The knight had mistook Mordred and Irina for villagers who had escaped. Between the two, perhaps Mordred looked much less intimidating and more approachable as the little girl scrawled to him and begged.

“P… please, save…”

She wasn’t able to finish the sentence as she fell unconscious. Mordred crouched down to pick her up and started to cure her with some light [cleric] magic. Small glows of light surrounded him and the wounds on the small girl were instantly recovered. Seeing this the knight grew impatient and drew his sword to slash them down, but that was impossible.

A few seconds later the knight noticed that he was looking at the sky for some reason. Then everything went black in his vision. He had been instantly decapitated by Irina’s searing red blade, for approaching her master with insolent intentions she could not forgive the knight.

“Disgusting fool…”

She muttered under her breath.

Mordred never had any sense of strong sentiments of justice, even as a kid when he saw others enjoying hero shows about justice and whatnot, he could only look down at them for their naiveté. At the same time however, he was not so cold hearted as one would initially think, after all he was also a thinking, feeling human being. Perhaps if it was only at a level where someone was asking for help, he might have simply ignored it.

However if it was a small girl, bruised and injured, grovelling on the floor and begging for her life to be spared then perhaps even his unmoving heart could be warmed. Even the most cold hearted killer might not have said no to this situation.

Now then, the problem was what to do next. Most likely the village that this girl belonged to was being under sieged by those same knights. If he were to help them he had to kill more people, even though he had already killed one by proxy of his subordinate, this time he had to make a conscious decision to go through with actual murder.

Murder… he would have to commit more in the future so it may be necessary for him to take the first step here. After all, from the looks of it this was that kind of world. No, the hardest part wasn’t killing people, he could easily accomplish that from his myriads of skills and spells.

But it was just exactly that which frightened him; the thought that he could crush people like insects, living, breathing, sentient people, like they were ants. As they say: power corrupts but absolute power corrupts, absolutely. He could slaughter all the knights in the village but he didn’t have confidence that he would be able to stay true to himself afterwards.

Perhaps it was possible that if it was only today then he would manage but if it was after a thousand times could he still say so? Could he gracefully accept the title of killer? Most likely eventually down the line he would lose track of himself, but was that a risk he had to take?

If he ignored this girl’s pleas, was that worse than losing himself to violence? Such an innocent plea for life, he didn’t have the heart to say no. nothing was ever just black and white, one can’t expect to help someone every time and expect a good outcome each time, but this one time, was it justified to help them?

… Out of time.

Mordred could hear the voices of panic resounding from just beyond the trees. He decided to at least scout out the situation first. He took the girl in his arms and dashed to the sound of suffering.

Upon arrival the situation was more dire than what he had originally anticipated. Around 30 ~ 40 armed knights, all in plate metal armor were indiscriminately slaughtering villagers. There were resistance, that was to be expected; armed militia, if they could be called as such. They were just ordinary village men with makeshift weapons and armor.

Still, it was fated for the village to fall, if Mordred did nothing that is.

It was no contest. They couldn’t even scratch the plated metal on the knights much less make any sort of resistance. It was a small inconvenience at most. Upon the extravagantly dressed knights, there was one that sat upon his literal high horse and issued orders.

“Kill them, slaughter them all, like the cattle they are.”

A line befitting of a villain.

Mordred wasn’t a coward, he had the courage to stand up to these knights. That wasn’t the problem, no, the real problem was whether he should help. He knew nothing of the situation that was going on. Sure, it may have looked like a great act of evil on the armed knights, but what if they had a legitimate reason for executing the village.

From the looks of it the culture and technology of this world hasn’t even passed the medieval ages of Earth. It could be that there was a plague going on, or perhaps even worse.

Magic existed in this world, what if it was something relating to that. Mordred couldn’t be too sure.

That wasn’t the only problem either. If Mordred was to stay in this world, even if it was for a brief moment, he had to make sure he didn’t make the wrong enemies. One must not underestimate the power of the unknown. He may have seemed powerful from his perspective but that was just against a few knights. The knights here may have been weak but that might not be true for the entire world.

Mordred now stood at a crossroad of major decisions. This was a battle; a skirmish from two different countries, he could either stay passive and not get on the wrong end of either country. Or conversely he could help the villagers and gain some notoriety from the attack country but gain points on the defending country.

This wasn’t an easy decision to make, especially not for someone who was barely 18 and hardly ever had to make life altering decisions in mere moments. It wasn’t indecision, it was the consequences that he was pondering over. But every moment he spent thinking about what decision to make, more and more villagers would be killed.

Irina took no action, in fact she didn’t particularly think anything of this situation. Her sense of justice was attuned to whatever her master’s was. She was just his sword, she would follow him to hell and back if he wanted. Outside of that she didn’t really make judgments on her own.

In fact it didn’t exactly seem like she looked too highly of humans, with the exception of Mordred himself. So for her, a few humans dying here and there were just like watching ants fight it out. He wished he could take this situation as easily as Irina was, but he wasn’t some demon, he was human after all.

Justice and murder, at times they were the same thing. Mordred took a deep breath.

“Irina can you hide your horns?”

Mordred asked.

She nodded and used some magic to make the disappear. The reason for this was because it was currently unknown what kind of reactions humans would have towards demons or dragons. That’s why when she hid her horns she looked like a normal human warrior.

“Your orders? My master.”

She asked.

“Irina, clear out all of the attacking knights. Leave the captain alive since I want to speak with him but as for everyone else you can kill them all.”

“By your word.”

Dashing out from the forest was a lone female knight. Irina drew her great sword and started to charge at all of the attacking knights. They didn’t even have enough time to register her presence before she hacked them away at great speeds. In fact to the knights all they saw was a blur of red and black moving closer to them and killing their comrades.

Irina didn’t use any sort of magic aside from [acceleration movement], which was a skill that allowed her to move faster and nothing more.

It took no more than a few minutes for Irina to finish off all of the knights, with the only remaining one being the knight captain that her master ordered her to leave alone.

The knight captain was surrounded by village militia and with all his subordinates killed he was alone. A clear expression of terror etched across his face, ‘this cannot be happening’ he thought to himself. All of the villagers were also wary of Irina’s sudden appearance but since she was attacking the enemy knights they took her for an ally and didn’t get in her way.

“W- what?! What is this?!”

The knight captain shouted out on his horse.

“This… knight captain, is ‘game over’.”

A bone chilling voice, filled with maliciousness rang through the captain’s ears. The voice came from a young man in a lavishing white overcoat. ‘A noble?’ thought the captain but that wasn’t the case, he knew from his way of speaking and that dreadful presence that he was something far more.

It was as though horror itself had took on a physical form and was approaching him carefully. With each sound of steps, ‘tack, tack, tack’, cold sweat ran through the captain’s back. An audible gulp, he paid attention to the young man who had a devious grin on his face.

Irina walked up to the captain and placed her blood stained red great sword in convenient decapitation range. Fearing his head about to roll the captained soiled himself in fear. It was a disgraceful sight to see a grown man wet himself, especially on the battlefield.

She had no intentions of killing him until commanded to do so but it didn’t hurt to be prepared. Well, there was also the fact that she did take some pleasure in tearing apart puny humans and scaring them shitless. Thus a devilish grin crossed Irina’s face.

Now then, it was time for Mordred to put on a mask, figuratively. A fake smile that’s what was needed. The villagers were all anxious to see what was going to happen next. Were they to be the Irina’s next targets? That wasn’t going to be the case, but they didn’t know that. It was all up to the whims of Mordred.

The young girl in Mordred’s arms was the tipping point that allowed the villagers room to breathe as it meant that he was on their side. On old man with grey hair came besides him and asked if he could return to girl, to which Mordred obliged.

All the attention was now on Mordred.

“Greetings dear knight captain.”

The knight was still shivering in fear. Now, it also wouldn’t be good if the master was feared less than the servant. For this very scenario Mordred had a special item.

[Amon’s Ear piece]

One of Mordred’s many [Legendary] tier item. It was as sort of like a metal plating that went down his outer ear. It was only his left ear. This item’s in game ability was to cause [fear] into enemy players and monsters. For low level monsters, they would be too scared to attack Mordred.

For players their defenses would be reduced while within Mordred’s effect range. In this world however, everything was real. Even the ‘fear’ that the captain and most likely the villagers were feeling, they were all real.

“W-wha-what… do you want…?”

Good. It looked like the item was working as intended. Of course the item’s effect could be turned off and on whenever Mordred felt like.

“Now, now there’s no need to be afraid.”

As he says, despite knowing the fact that he was projecting fear deliberately. In a negotiation, no, in this case it was more akin to torture. In torture it was important that the victim knew his place.

“I couldn’t help but wonder why such heavily adorned knights were slaughtering innocent villagers. But of course I’ll not be totally unreasonable, there could very well be valid reasons for this slaughter. If that was indeed the case and you can convince me that this attack was justified then as I have done a grave disservice I will take responsibility and take care of the villagers myself.”

At hearing this the villagers got a little weary but stood their ground for they were in the right. They did nothing wrong, it wasn’t some plague, it wasn’t anything. These knights simply barged in and started an unprovoked attack.

“W-We were ordered to… b-by our commander. He told us to raid the fringe villages of the Xagontetia Sun country… to cause trouble.”

Well, that was a load off Mordred’s shoulders. At least they weren’t wiping out these villages for legitimate reasons. ‘Xagontetia Sun country. It was the country that he assisted in this endeavor. Still without knowing how many countries existed in this continents and what their ideology were, it was rather useless.

“So you attacked defenseless villages? Does your country teach such cowardly tactics at school?”

“N-No… the Baliazoural Empire honors fair fighting.”

“Hmm, then it’s rather odd that you chose to attack this place in such a cowardly manner is it not?”

“W-We had no choice! We couldn’t disobey a direct order from the commander! He made us do it! We weren’t at fault!”

At some point the fear that the knight captain was feeling turned into rage. Still, it was some useful information that he was able to obtain.

Xagontetia Sun Country and the Baliazoural Empire.

Without knowing how big the actual continent is, it was useless to find out more names. It would just get confusing. The problem now was that since they weren’t likely to receive reports from this battalion of knights, they would send scouts to find out what happened. If they see that the village is still left standing they would no doubt attack again.

It wasn’t like Mordred could stay here forever and protect the place, but he also couldn’t just leave and expect the villagers to fend for themselves. He had painstakingly saved this village, if it were just going to be destroyed later, it was a waste of time.

No perhaps this was good.

Now he had a legitimate reason to try contacting this nation directly. Perhaps they would send some reinforcements to help this village, and in the process Mordred could gather some more information.

The problem was what to do with the captured knight captain.

“Slaughter them like cattle?”

The captain grew stiff when he heard those words.

“I believe that’s what you said as you killed these villagers.”

In the first place slaughtering cattle wouldn’t be conducive from a business standpoint, but that was besides the point. Whether Mordred should take this as a sign of the education level in this world or not was the question.

Though he decided to put it aside for now. Mordred deactivated his ear piece’s effect, as he did, Irina understanding his intentions lowered her sword. There was a level of sigh within the villagers. They finally understood that everyone was about to be over.

“Who is in charge of the village?”

Mordred called out.

An elderly looking man came out with a cane in hand, he was the elderly man who received the small girl just now.

“I-it is I. What is it you need?”

There was a hint of terror in his voice, but he spoke on behalf of the village with pride.

“I am not a part of this village. Therefore the punishment of this man, I will leave in your hands. I will be waiting over there, once you have finished your business with him I will be waiting.”

Mordred pointed to a small hill that overlooked the village. It wasn’t so high that the village chief couldn’t climb. That being said, Mordred and Irina started to walk to the top.

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