There are many orphans in Baern. Since the core workforce of the city consists of mercenaries, their brief lives often leave behind abandoned babies as traces of their existence. Usher was one of those children.
Though it was unknown who his parents were, he was found at the entrance of an ancient ruin near Baern.
From that, a few assumptions could be made. The most plausible one was that Usher was the child of a low-ranking mercenary woman who got pregnant due to a reckless fling.
The woman probably didn’t know who the child’s father was. For those who lived day by day, a transient relationship wasn’t unusual.
Then she must have become pregnant, and even while carrying the child, she had to continue making a living, so she would have gone out to investigate the ruins.
The ecological survey of an already explored ruin was one of the safest tasks a mercenary could do, given their skills.
But something must have gone wrong.
“No matter how much the ruin’s investigation had already ended, there’s always a variable. My biological mother must have gone into labor, and during that time, she likely sensed the anomaly.”
“….”
“There were two things she had to solve. Giving birth to me and escaping. But she couldn’t do either well.”
The woman gave birth to the child. But she had no time to escape, let alone rest. The anomaly was the emergence of a monster.
The woman had to make a choice: should she use her newborn child as bait and flee, or hide the child and lure the creature in?
“My biological mother chose the latter. I can only say that. I was hidden, and the day I was found, I saw a body that had been torn apart by the monster at the entrance of the ruin.”
That’s why the identity of his parents was unknown.
The woman’s body was so mangled that even identifying it as human was barely possible. They tried to find someone through a request for the ruin’s investigation, but that didn’t go well either.
She had hastily taken the request from the wall and started the investigation without looking at it.
It wasn’t an uncommon situation.
Bersia’s expression stiffened. Usher smiled bitterly as he spoke.
“She was a mother I never even knew. I can only guess that she gave her life to save me, and from that, I infer that I must have been a child worth loving.”
How could one remember events before their birth? He had simply been born, and that was why this story was necessary to explain how everything began. Usher continued.
“The mercenaries who found me that day were the ones who raised me.”
“…I was part of the royal lion’s squad.”
“At that time, it wasn’t called the lion’s squad yet.”
It was during the sudden appearance of the monster, and the recruitment of mercenaries to fight it led to the formation of the new mercenary group, ‘Therbion.’
Bersia gasped in amazement. Usher nodded.
“My last name comes from the mercenary group’s name.”
That was why it was a name he couldn’t discard. Despite the years that had passed, it remained his proud legacy.
“Anyway, after I was found, the leader himself decided to raise me. He said, ‘The child will be the place we return to.’”
He didn’t know the full details, but it was this statement that persuaded the mercenaries who were opposed to raising a child.
Mercenaries lived day to day, with no future. They were people who burned brightly like flames before extinguishing, and some of them might have wanted to be different from that.
They might have needed something, or someone, to make them want to survive.
Thus, Usher, the child of Therbion, was raised by the mercenary group.
The burly man with a thick beard soothed him, the assassin who mixed poisons also prepared formula, the thief with bad habits changed his diapers, and the wizard who worked late into the night would hold the crying child and write his magical treatises.
Usher grew up like this.
Though the memories were a bit blurry, he clearly remembered his life from when he was about three or four.
The day he first held a wooden sword, the leader smiling happily, the time he threw his food and the thief deftly caught it with a knife, or the time he read a book out loud and the wizard cried.
There were many such moments.
It was a happy time.
Usher certainly lived a life that would be considered an ideal childhood.
“It was during that time that Therbion was chosen as a candidate for the royal lion’s squad.”
It was five years after the formation of the mercenary group, when Usher was four.
From the moment it was established, Treveon quickly gained prominence, becoming one of the leading mercenary groups in the Big Ten, and was chosen as one of the top candidates for the next royal lion’s squad.
With less than a year left before the succession of the throne, Usher met Gester Quolin for the first time at that time.
Usher chuckled softly.
“At first, we really didn’t get along. It was like we had met our arch-enemies.”
“Was it because your personalities didn’t match?”
“People often think that, but the reason was much simpler.”
Gester and Usher had completely opposite personalities. Many people thought the children’s squabbles were because of their differences in character, but that wasn’t the case.
“It was because we were both children.”
Usher said Therbion was the greatest mercenary group, and Gester said the Quolin royal family was the greatest. So, they fought by insisting that their parents were the greatest.
Bersia frowned at that.
But she didn’t seem to doubt him.
“Children, indeed.”
“We were only five years old at the time.”
Their first fight resulted in both of them having bloody noses and crying. The second time, Gester had a bloody nose, and Usher cried. The third time, Usher completely dominated.
“What?”
“I, well, I have some talent for fighting.”
“Isn’t this story getting strange?”
“Although the outcome tilted in my favor, our relationship improved just as much. We began to understand each other’s roles.”
The royal family rules over Baern.
The Lion’s Guard defends Baern.
This became a natural rule engraved in the children’s minds as the superiority of the battle was determined.
“The royal family adored me, the child of the Lion’s Guard. In our mercenary group, we adored Gester, the heir to the royal family. When we were around seven years old, we stopped fighting. Instead, we became obsessed with playing war games.”
Gester’s role was that of the king.
Usher’s role was that of a general.
Whenever the village children gathered, the two of us were always victorious.
When we ran through the market, merchants would hand us fruits, and when we went to the mercenary office, the children would curse at us to leave, but still give us dried meat.
It was a warm world wherever we went, and in fact, at that time, Baern was experiencing the most peaceful period in its history.
Such a time continued, at least until the year I turned nine.
“…The lust for power sometimes brings about disaster.”
Usher raised his head and looked at the view of Baern.
The grand castle standing in the center, looking at it still reminded him of that day.
“I told you before. Our Therbion Mercenary Group was one of the candidates for the Lion’s Guard. There were other Big Ten groups competing with us.
Among them was a massive mercenary group boasting hundreds of years of history.”
“…They plotted a rebellion. They must have colluded with one of the royal heirs.”
Bersia, who came from royal blood, seemed to immediately recall the connection.
Usher nodded.
“Rebellion… Yes, if we had stopped them that day, it would have certainly been a rebellion.”
It was a peaceful day.
The Lion’s Guard had left for a mission ordered by the royal family to seal off the ruins where the monsters were spawning.
Only Usher remained in the city, and that day, he was deeply engrossed in the war game with Gester in the royal garden.
“Suddenly, we heard screams. From the entrance of the castle, unexpectedly.”
The chilling scream was different from the usual roars of mercenaries.
Even young Usher could sense that it was a harbinger of a great disaster.
“And then the smell of blood spread. Gester’s maidservants, Tuhis, tried to take us and escape through the back door. But the enemies were relentless. The conspirator was Gester’s uncle, Anton Quolin, who had been pushed out of the succession line. He had already planted mercenaries within the castle.”
The maidservants fell.
Usher and Gester were covered in blood and frozen, and then captured.
The planned rebellion took advantage of the absence of the Lion’s Guard and succeeded.
The king was taken to the execution stage on fabricated charges, and Gester, his blood relative, and Usher, the child of the Lion’s Guard, were about to be sold as slaves, branded with the mark of a slave.
Usher took a deep breath.
His heart was racing so fast that it was hard to continue speaking.
But he had to say it.
He squeezed his eyes shut, regained his breath, and continued.
“And then the Lion’s Guard returned.”
The end of all those beautiful moments loomed large.
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