Chapter 302

“Ah, you two. I don’t recognize your faces. Are you from some other place?”
They said. It was too predictable.

“Eh? Is that a challenge? If you bastards want a fight, you’ll get a fight! With him.”
Juga shouted defiantly as he stood in front of me.

Juga, what the hell are you doing?
Stop trying to be a comedian.

“Oh. You… A Personification?”
One of them stepped forward and looked at me up and down.

“How unusual… Yes, it is a Personification.”
Another said as he too began to inspect me.

Well, they hadn’t attacked us yet. So maybe we could talk it out.

“That’s right. Even crying brats will shut up in front of the one they call the Annihilator of Rebels. He is one to fear. Make no mistake about that!”

Why was Juga acting so important?
And ‘the one they call’? He chose that name himself.

“You. Do you know of this ‘Annihilator of Rebels?’”
“No…I’ve never heard such an embarrassing name.”

There you go. Now they were looking at us as if we were fools.
And ‘embarrassing.’ They were not holding back.

“All of you! Perk up your ears and listen carefully. This Annihilator of Rebels has come to destroy those rotted Dragons, Vargan and Noshe. Now, hurry up and lead us to them!”

No, that’s not what we talked about.
I had no intention of doing that. I just wanted to make it out of the Coast of Everlasting Summer in one piece.

“Wh-what!? This Annihilator of Rebels is going to kill our leaders?”
“Then there’s no time to lose. We’re under attack by the Annihilator of Rebels!”

Hey, wait. Stop calling me that.
No, never mind that. Stop believing everything that Juga says.

“I-I have to tell Lord Vargan at once!”
“And I will go to Lord Noshe.”

“Then we should split up.”
“Aye!”

“Alright, let’s go!”
And then they scattered.

“…Hah! They were just cowards after all, weren’t they, Sir Golan?”

“You. What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Juga was grinning at me, and so I dropped my fist onto his head.

After questioning Juga, I learned that the men we saw earlier were rebel soldiers who were on patrol.
He said that the matching scarves they had around their necks was proof of this.

‘Why scarves?’ I has asked. But he merely said that it was the mark of a rebel.
As for why he had gone out so boldly like that…

He said it was because Redhats had been driven from their homeland and forced to separate from each other. And he hated the rebels for this.

While Juga was currently working under Pojun, he had no idea what the rest of his kin were doing or even where they were.

It was possible that they all died.
Even in the Demon World, it would be difficult for the non-combat races to survive after being driven out of their homes.

Or you could say that it was easy for them to die.
Hard to live. Easy to die. Huh, I do have a way with words.

Regardless, such were the reasons that Juga hated them.
I had sensed it ever since we first met. He really wanted me to fight them.

And since I had an idea that it would happen, I couldn’t be too angry.
But…

“They didn’t seem like they were that hostile to me.”
It wasn’t like they were going to attack us unprovoked.

I couldn’t say for sure that they would let us through without trouble, but it didn’t seem like they saw everyone as an enemy.
That showed that there was some order in this place.

Perhaps they were a proper military organization?

“But they still persecuted us. They are the enemy.”
“I don’t know… Well, maybe they are.”

In general, the non-combat races were employed by people who were strong and could fight.
And so if they were driven out, then there was nothing that they could do.

They could not challenge them.
That being said, it did not mean that their lives were entirely bad.

The strong tended to be simple-minded and could not do basic things that were necessary to live.

Obviously, small things like cooking and throwing away trash…even the strongest could do that.

Not that they would, most of the time.
And it wasn’t because they saw such work as a form of defeat.

This was the way that the high-rankers thought.
It was too much trouble. Someone else would do it.
No one wants to do it? Then we’ll make someone do it.

Something like that.
And so the non-combatants would act as their arms and legs.
Their presence was a necessity.

And so if they were mistreated or harmed, then like Juga, they would often abandon their home and leave.
It was the fighters that would be inconvenienced by this parting of ways.
Because of this, few people truly looked down on the non-combatants. Of course, there were some scum who were the exception.

And so I had been expecting these people to be scum. The rough type.
After all, the non-combatants had run away. Surely there could be no doubt about it?

However, there seemed to be order here. It was quite surprising.

“…Well, let’s continue on then.”

As the soldiers on patrol had all run off somewhere, there was no point in staying here.
We would probably meet them again some time later.

And so we continued along the coastal road.

Next Chapter

Makai Hongi