Bear School Astartes

The local Knight and his attendants watched everyone board the boat, not a single Mercenary tried to run off.

Only after the river barge cast off the mooring ropes tied to the stakes at the ferry and began moving along the current did they finally breathe a sigh of relief, counting their job as truly done.

This Knight, whose leather straps on his armor were about to burst, tugged at his horse’s reins and turned to leave, but still looked rather reluctantly at Sachia, who was standing at the bow, gazing into the distance.

The boat should also have been hired out in full by Seward; a group of Mercenaries and Warriors, all clad in armor that clinked and clanged and looking fierce as devils, walked aboard, yet the captain didn’t even lift an eyelid.

He’d spent his adult life running boats up and down the Ponta River; he’d seen far too much of the world for this number of people to rattle him.

A few Mercenaries wanted to chat with the captain, see if they could pry some extra information out of him.

But the captain just focused wholly on steering, chewing on a strip of dried fish, as if he hadn’t noticed there was anyone beside him at all.

So the Mercenaries, who couldn’t get anything out of him, were annoyed, but there wasn’t anything they could do to the captain on his own boat. All they could do was spit to the side, curse under their breath, and walk off.

The Ember Knights, unlike the slovenly Mercenaries, all ten of them stood with hands resting on their Long Blades, positioned around their warhorses and their own supplies.

They were noticeably different from the Mercenaries nearby, and the Mercenaries seemed to sense this incompatible atmosphere as well, so most of them gave the Ember Knights a wide berth.

The Qilin didn’t want to be squeezed together with a bunch of horses, so back at the ferry, it simply tossed its hooves and ran off on its own.

The Qilin taking off on its own, and Rong Buqiu jumping down from its mane to run over to Lann, did give this whole crowd a bit of a scare.

But it was just that—a brief scare.

There are plenty of strange things and unseen species in this world; people say that back in Hidaris, they even discovered a Mermaid Kingdom that had built a palace on the seabed in the coastal shallows.

A certain Knight in Hidaris had even married a mermaid from there who’d shed her fish tail.

Pragmatic Mercenaries and Warriors accept these things quickly, just like Geralt and Belengar. Or like the romantic Dandelion, who also takes to them right away.

The ones who insist on getting to the bottom of everything are mostly scholars or professors.

"I have to say," Rong Buqiu stood beside Lann and helplessly spread its two little cat paws, "they really don’t look very friendly, meow."

"I clearly even took the initiative to greet them, meow~"

In fact, just after the little cat jumped out from the Qilin’s mane and ran over to Lann, it had enthusiastically greeted the others.

But the vast majority of people merely flinched when they saw a large calico cat in armor and a Longsword, who could even talk.

Right after that, they didn’t respond, just frowned and backed away from the section of the deck where Lann and Rong Buqiu were.

It clearly showed they had no intention of getting entangled.

For Rong Buqiu, who had been so eager to greet them, this was a bit of a blow.

The triangular ears on the little cat’s head drooped down.

"They’re here to make money, or to build a name," Lann lowered his head and explained to Rong Buqiu. "They’ve got clear goals, and along the way they’ll try to avoid getting tangled up with unknown factors as much as possible."

Whether Rong Buqiu simply didn’t care, or Lann’s explanation had been accepted, in any case its mood quickly brightened again.

"So we’re going to ride the boat all the way into the River Valley, meow?"

Rong Buqiu leapt up onto the railing at the bow of the barge, tail hanging down as it crouched, looking ahead.

It asked the question, but that little head wasn’t turned toward Lann behind it.

Instead, it looked to the side, at that one Mercenary who was the only one not showing rejection.

Sachia had already been standing at the bow, holding the railing and staring forward.

Rong Buqiu suddenly jumping up beside her didn’t startle her; instead, she turned to look at the Elu Cat, a slightly surprised expression on her face.

It seemed her acceptance of new things was even higher than that of the Mercenaries.

"That’s right." Facing an obviously non-human race, Sachia spoke very naturally, treating it as an equal. "I think that Duke Seward should have set up camp somewhere near a ferry outside the River Valley."

"We’re the manpower he’s waiting for now. Once everyone’s gathered, we’ll be heading in to solve the problem."

She seemed to genuinely like Rong Buqiu.

The dark-golden-haired Female Warrior stretched out her arm toward the front of the barge. "We’ve been sailing for about two hours; not far ahead is the next ferry. But I don’t think we’ll be stopping like a regular barge would."

On the right bank ahead, at a ferry with a small wooden guard booth and a layer of planks laid over the damp riverbank, a scattered group of people could be seen moving around.

"If we go straight through without stopping," Sachia thought for a moment, "I remember Knight Samarish said we’d arrive before dinner."

Hearing this, Rong Buqiu’s tail hanging off the railing swished even more happily.

The brave little cat had always been impatient for adventure.

But at this moment Lann also walked up to the bow of the barge, standing on Rong Buqiu’s other side, his tall frame craning forward to look ahead.

"But now it’s hard to say, Rong Buqiu, Sachia."

"Hm?"

"Meow?"

Person and cat both looked at Lann in puzzlement.

The Demon Hunter spoke calmly: "That ferry up ahead looks like something’s happened to it."

Lann’s observation was accurate.

As their barge drew closer and closer, the situation at the ferry not far ahead became increasingly clear.

When they got close, the people on their boat finally realized that the ones walking back and forth on the planks laid across the ferry crossing were not peddling commoners with goods.

They were soldiers wearing uniforms emblazoned with the coat of arms of the Elrand Duchy.

"Don’t come any closer! Slow down! You’ve got to slow down and stop the boat!"

A soldier on horseback ran out from the ferry, came up as close as he could to the barge, and shouted up at the deck.

The Mercenaries immediately frowned; some of the more jumpy ones had already gripped their weapons.

But when it came to things on the river or on the boat, it still had to be the captain who stepped forward.

With a strip of dried fish between his teeth, the captain frowned, left the helm, and walked to the side to shout back at the soldier on the bank.

"Hey! What’s going on? Didn’t you get the memo? This is a boat chartered by Duke Seward himself! We’re not supposed to stop at all along the way!"

The wind and waves on the river were not exactly quiet, so the captain had gotten into the habit of bellowing whenever he talked.

Before he shouted, he even took the dried fish out and held it in his hand so he wouldn’t spit it out while speaking.

The mounted soldier on the bank, however, gave a reason that was perfectly reasonable and very convincing.

Once he heard that, the captain, who had a chit personally signed by Duke Seward, started slowing down without another word.

He only shouted one line.

"There’s a sunken ship up ahead in the river! You planning to plow right into it and feed the fish?"

In the end, under the captain’s hurried, flustered emergency braking, the inland river barge still managed to come to a stop just ahead of the ferry.

A small boat rowed out from the direction of the ferry and came alongside the barge in the middle of the Ponta River.

The captain lowered a rope ladder and hauled the man aboard.

He was a soldier too.

But Lann took one look at his heaving chest and the bandages wrapped around his body, and confirmed that these injuries could not have come from a shipwreck.

Those wounds could only have come from a fight.

The first thing he did after boarding was to ask the captain for manpower.

"We know this is a ship chartered by the Duke, supposed to sail straight through. We got the notice, but... hoo~"

He caught his breath and went on.

"But if you want to get through quickly, you’ll have to send people to help us clear the river. The more hands we have, the faster it goes. Makes sense, right?"

The captain who had pulled him up, and the Mercenaries on board, all looked grim.

If they couldn’t reach the agreed drop-off point on time, they could forget about collecting full pay. They might not get paid at all and have come all this way for nothing.

"Tch." The captain cocked his head and spat out the scraps of dried fish in his mouth. "Clearing out a sunken wreck blocking the river? That’s at least a two-day job, no matter how you slice it."

"Yeah, our contract’s already screwed."

The captain lamented, but the soldier didn’t sound nearly that pessimistic.

"Won’t take two days. The ship only just went down, and it’s not that big to begin with. If we all pitch in, we’ll have it cleared in no time."

But as soon as the soldier finished speaking, Lann walked over from the bow and asked:

"Just went down, and not that big?"

His looming, tall figure closed in, making the others unconsciously back away.

"Then why would a ship like that sink right at the ferry? The water here should be pretty calm, shouldn’t it?"

"Wait... who are you? Meretelli! And what’s with that armored cat?"

The soldier’s eyes went wide, his face full of astonishment.

But the captain, standing beside him, pressed impatiently, "Forget about unimportant stuff. It’s just a cat in armor; I’ve seen mermaids before! Answer the question! What’s going on at the ferry? Our pay for dozens of people depends on this!"

The soldier scratched his head, looked at the fierce Mercenaries and the captain crowding around him, then glanced at Rong Buqiu, who was standing by Lann’s leg and lifting one little armored paw in greeting.

"Fine, business first... It was the Squirrel Faction. They charged out of the forest and attacked the ferry. The ship was sabotaged and sunk on purpose. Fortunately, there was only this one small boat moored at the ferry at the time—otherwise it’d really be completely blocked."

After he finished, he swept his gaze around.

"So, are you sending people or not? You’re the ones who should be the most anxious about this."

The soldier wasn’t wrong; that really was how it was.

So, in order to make the Duke’s run on time and collect their pay—

After a few of the Mercenaries muttered a couple of curse-filled comments about the Squirrel Faction under their breath, they boarded the soldier’s small boat and were ferried to shore to help clear the river.

The little boat went back and forth several times, taking quite a few people up.

Lann and his companions went ashore as well.

"If you ask me, the Squirrel Faction around here is getting way too bold. Almost as bad as in Codwin!"

Once on land, on the way toward the ferry, the Mercenaries muttered to each other in low voices.

"But Temeria actually treats those non-human bastards pretty decently, doesn’t it?"

"So what? Non-humans are all a pack of untrustworthy ingrates. This is just one more proof of that. Should’ve wiped them out long ago."