Realization of the Betrayal

I"m an early riser.

No matter how tired I was on the previous day, or if there was a request to be done that day, I always got up at 5 am and started my training. Even if today was the day I"m meeting Lloyd for lunch, my routine didn"t change.

While carrying the weight of approximately three men, I run three laps around the city walls, which totaled around 45 kilometers, within two hours. After returning to my inn and eating breakfast, two more hours of fingertip push-ups, sit-ups and barbell workouts.

One of Grandfather"s teachings was to always train my body, even if I was a Buffer. When you were in a tight spot, you could always fall back on your physical strength.

Talker Skills did not consume magical power as their power resided in the words themselves but I"ll still get tired if I use them continuously. Especially when exploring Abysses or dealing with Beasts, I get tired so much easier than usual.

Also, while my skills strengthened my party, they didn"t work on me at all. In other words, I couldn"t use my skills to help myself recover my stamina. If my skills failed during a critical moment or if I got too tired to think properly, I"ll become a burden to the party.

During explorations, we bring potions that recover stamina and heal wounds but they weren"t enough. If you brought too many potions, they"ll get in the way when you were fighting and if they broke then they became useless. That"s why I had to keep training to increase my base stamina.

That"s it for my morning training. I"ll continue the rest of my training at night. I took a warm shower to wash off my sweat, then gulped down a potion I took from the cooler.

「…Disgusting」

It tasted as terrible as ever. It tasted like eating raw fish and apples at the same time.

But I just had to endure it. Taking a potion after training was necessary to hasten the recovery of the muscles. That way, you could continue to train your body without needing to have rest days.

I stayed shirtless to cool off my flushed body as I did my stretches but I began to hear noisy footsteps coming from the corridor outside.

「Noel, bad news!!」

The one that entered my room without knocking, was my ally Walter.

He looked extremely shaken, with bloodshot eyes, messy hair, sweat all over and his body heaving with every breath. It was as if his world had just ended.

I gave a cough, and crossed my hands across my chest.

「Big brother, you pervert! I told you to knock before you enter the room!」

「What kind of joke is that!? Don"t say such disgusting things!」

I"ve made him angry. Even though I was only trying to calm him down. But it seemed like my Talk Skill, Peer Support had worked. Walter became less stressed and he took a deep breath, looking a lot calmer than before.

「…Anyway, we"ve got a serious problem. Read this」

What Walter handed me was a letter. He had held it in his hand so it was soaked with sweat and wrinkled. I spread it carefully so it wouldn"t tear.

I recognized the handwriting of the person who had written those words. They were by our leader, Lloyd. Well, he did sign it but I wanted to verify the handwriting anyway. It was unmistakably not a forgery. It was an authentic letter written by Lloyd.
　
The words written over the four pages of the letter were long and rambling, and several parts were unnecessary. But the content itself was fairly simple.

I carefully folded up the letter after I had finished reading.

「Hmm, hmm, I see, I see. In short, Lloyd lost money in bad investments and had a lot of debt. So, in order to repay those debts, he embezzled the 12.8 million Fil of party funds. But I pushed to create the clan, so he fled the imperial capital with Tania before things came to light. Ahaha, that guy is an idiot」

From start to end, the letter only talked about the circ.u.mstances in a roundabout manner, and the only things that stood out were the defense of his actions and his apologies, which were all talk.

This was the reason for that disconcerting feeling I had back at the celebration. It"s a story so stupid that you can"t even laugh. When I did fall over laughing, Walter yelled angrily.

「What"s so funny!? Those two betrayed us!」

「That"s why I"m laughing. No way, that respectable Lloyd made bad investments, embezzled and in the end, ran off in the middle of the night. Hahaha, you laugh too, Walter」

「As if I could laugh, you idiot!!」

After that spit-spewing shout, Walter crossed his arms as he leaned on the wall.

「…d.a.m.n, what can we do, what should we do?」

「By the way, when and where did you get the letter?」

「What? …Just a while ago. I heard of a good request last night at the bar. I wanted to accept it before others could get to it. So first thing this morning, I went to find Lloyd at his lodgings and the boss of the inn gave it to me…」

「Did the boss of the inn say when Lloyd left his room?」

「Just before 8 pm last night, he said」

The city doors were closed from 8 pm to 5 am. In other words, they fled the imperial capital under the cover of night just before the doors closed. As the saying goes, they made a break for it.

「It"s 9:30 am now, so half a day has already pa.s.sed. Considering the time he left, he shouldn"t have been able to hire a carriage and he also won"t have escaped by horse for fear of being tracked. Even walking through the night, they couldn"t have made much distance by foot. If we rent some fast horses, we should easily catch them by evening」

「T, that may be the case, but you don"t know which direction they ran, do you?」

「We can just ask the gate officials. As long as we know which gate they left by, it will be easy to determine their destination. That"s because it"s dangerous to leave the roads when traveling at night. After walking for half a day, they should have reached a village and I bet they are resting there right now, if you take into account the limits of their stamina」

It"s a different story if they had hired a fugitive-runner to help them but considering the time it would take for Lloyd to decide to run and then put it into action, it was unlikely that he had time to find one.

In the first place, unlike Walter and me, for someone like him who was choosy over who he interacted with, there"s no way he was acquainted with any Yakuza that would hear his sudden request.
　
Hearing my words, Walter cracked his knuckles.

「That"s it! Let"s go find the gate officials now!」

「Wait, hang on a minute, what are you going to do after that?」

「Huh? Are you an idiot? Didn"t you just tell me how to find them? I"m going to find Lloyd and beat him up! I won"t be satisfied until I do that!」

This guy, he didn"t understand the situation at all.

To be sure, I told him one method of finding Lloyd, but I was just trying to teach him that even if we didn"t rush, there were many options available to us. I had no intention of using that method as it was inadequate by itself and would not solve anything.

「Are you going to beat him up, quarrel, then reconcile? Or are you going to forgive Lloyd if he comes to you in tears and apologizes? And we"ll go back to being a close party like before? Haaa… That sounds like a scenario that a muscle fairy living in a flower garden would come up with. Holding hands and singing songs is not the only job your brain has, you fairy-tale idiot」
　
「Wha, what did you say!?」　

「Are you listening? We"ve got idiots on both sides but those idiots are desperate. If we catch up to them, it"s not going to end simply. If things go wrong, rather than just quarreling, we may end up killing each other, you know?」

Otherwise, they won"t have run away from us.

The 12.8 million that Lloyd embezzled and used was already lost. As things were, the whereabouts of the reward from the Lesser Vampire was suspicious. The individual shares were already distributed but the money that was for the party was all managed by Lloyd.

That means the total amount was 16.8 million Fil. Walter and my contribution came to 8.4 million Fil, which would be the actual amount stolen from us.

While it was a large sum, it was an amount that excellent Seekers, like Lloyd and Tania, could repay. In spite of that, both of them chose to run.

This was a definite betrayal, a cutting of ties.　

Seeing that they had abandoned the option of apologizing, they must have had a fitting level of resolve. If we pursued them, they"ll undoubtedly see us, not as allies, but as enemies.
　
「Walter, are you sure you can defeat Lloyd?」

While Walter and Lloyd both have vanguard Jobs, in a one-on-one, Lloyd is stronger. And the margin was not slim, but rather clear.

「…If I have your buffs, then I"m certain I can win」

What an optimistic opinion. According to my prediction, the two of us had a 60 percent chance of winning against Lloyd. Even when we won, it"ll be close. We would probably receive heavy damage.

Above all, Lloyd wasn"t alone. He was with Tania, the Healer.

「Then can you fight Tania? Incapacitating the Healer first is the basic rule of anti-personnel fights」

Walter looked away and did not answer. Looks like he had finally understood the situation.

Tania was the one Walter loved. There"s no way he could turn his blade against her. With that weakness, even with my buffs, it"s impossible for him to defeat Lloyd.

Even if he could harden his heart, rather than the duo of Walter and me, the duo of Lloyd and Tania was stronger. In a two-on-two fight, I predicted our chances of winning at around 20 percent.

A Swordsman with strong attack abilities, together with a Healer who could heal during combat, it"s a simple formation yet strong because of its simplicity. Unless there was a large difference in ability, it"s unlikely for a combination of a Warrior and a Talker to win against that.

「In the unlikely event that we succeeded and won, we"re not going to get the money back. Even if we caught them, we"ll get absolutely nothing in return. It"s just wasted effort. They know that as well and think that the chances of us pursuing them are low. That"s why they ran」
　
「Dammit! Then are we supposed to just take it on the chin?!」

「Take it on the chin? Don"t say idiotic things」

There"s absolutely no way I was going to take this lying down.

The two of them judged that it was better to making a break for it. They had gauged that we would not unreasonably choose to pursue them. They also saw through the fact that Walter couldn"t hurt Tania.

I couldn"t give a fig about Walter"s pure love but I can"t stomach them looking down on me.

「My motto is: pay back a thousandfold. I"ll have my revenge on the two of them」

As I made my proclamation, a knock on the door could be heard.

「Mister Noel~! I"m going to do the laundry so please give me your dirty laundry~!」

The owner of that lisping voice was the poster girl of this Stardrop inn, Mary.

When I opened the door, a short girl wearing a cute, frilly servant outfit was standing there with a basket.

「Wow, wow! As ever, Mister Noel is such a great slender-macho!」

Looking at the red-faced Mary, I remembered that I was still shirtless.

This brat, even though she"s only ten, had a keen interest in male nudity. According to the inn"s boss, she had a mountain of drawings depicting her favorite handsome models in her room. What"s more, each drawing didn"t just have one guy in it, they were all showing men in various states of entanglement with one another.

Good grief, to have such a refined hobby even though she"s just a kid.

「Laundry right? I"ll bring it right now so just wait–」

「Ohhh, could it be you were in the middle of something!?」

「Huh?」

With a brilliant shine in her eyes, Mary looked back and forth at Walter and me.

「A half naked prince-type dreamboat, and a muscular big-brother-type beefcake… Two of them alone in a closed room, there"s no way nothing will happen…」

「Miss Mary, what are you talking about? Didn"t you come to take the laundry?」　

「Haaa~~~! Priceless~~~~~~!!」

Mary, who was having a whirl in her delusions, ignored my question and ran away with a strange, fanatical cry.

「INSPIRATION~~!!!!」
　
I don"t want to imagine or want to know what kind of inspiration that was, but Marie seemed to be tripping in a happy dream world.
　
Sincerely and from the bottom of my heart, I wished that she would stay there forever and not come back.

「W, wh, what is that kid?」

There was probably no one who could answer Walter"s question. So I"ll just tell it as it is.

「It"s as you can see, just a strange kid」

TN Afterword:
Did you notice that Noel runs faster than the world record pace for a marathon every day? (O_O) Carrying the weight of 3 men too. (ｰ ｰ;)

Ilyr, if you"re reading this, know that I fear you.
I"m just kidding. ( ^ω^ ) But now you know why I didn"t reply to THAT comment in the last chapter. d(￣ ￣)