Chapter 232 — Those Who Cannot Stop
The rain did not last long.
As the heavy downpour subsided, all that remained was damp air and dying embers. The firewood atop the hearth had gone cold and wet, and the flames could not be rekindled. Instead, smoke spread thick and low, drifting slowly through the village.
Groans rose here and there. Someone clutched their leg; someone else no longer moved at all.
At the center of it all stood Calix.
The bandits had not disappeared. A few lay sprawled on the ground; others had scattered into the darkness. From the direction of the forest, footsteps still sounded at intervals.
Gajit stared blankly at the scene.
Is that… some kind of magic?
It couldn't be.
He had witnessed a different kind of miracle. What rested in his benefactor's hand was a single thin iron poker—a simple stick used to stoke fires. With that crude tool alone, Calix had subdued the bandits.
To outward appearances, his movements had been light.
The moment a bandit brought his blade down, Calix had stepped a single pace to the side. The sword cut through empty air, and the tip of the iron poker found the man's wrist. The sound of the blade clattering to the ground came a beat later.
When one fell, three or four bandits rushed him at once.
Calix dealt with them in sequence. He drove the poker into the first man's hip. Before the man could even draw breath, the second lunged with a dagger. Calix bent backward to avoid it, then thrust the poker beneath his opponent's collarbone.
No blood was drawn. Instead, the body simply refused to obey.
It was strange.
Calix was neither fast nor slow. He did not appear to exert any particular force. And yet the bandits crumpled—one after another.
Right. Whatever the case, he drove out those bandit bastards, so it might as well be magic.
Gajit forced the existence of the Neural Accelerator from his mind. His benefactor's nape was clean—not even a scar from removal remained.
That was likely the source of his unease.
A man without a Neural Accelerator had defeated men who wore them.
"Unh……"
Shortly after, the bandits lying on the ground began to stir. They came to their senses, looked around, and upon realizing their companions were gone, fled in a hurry.
No one gave chase.
Instead, the villagers gathered the spilled grain. They hauled wet sacks, checked on those who had fallen. Some shook them; others shook their heads. Few words were spoken.
"This one… somehow made it."
A short exchange passed between them.
Nothing more than that.
No one approached Calix to speak to him. Gratitude was a matter for later. Right now, hands had to move first. Shake the wet mud loose, prop up the broken door, wash away the scent of blood so the beasts would not come.
Gajit clicked his tongue at the sight and drew near to Calix.
"Are you all right, Mr. Calix?"
Calix did not answer. He simply gazed quietly toward the forest. The flow of mana was stirring again. The strands of mana he had disrupted were slowly returning to their original form—they had not been stopped, only briefly delayed.
"……They will come back."
Gajit said quietly.
It was closer to a report than anything else. He stated the fact without warmth or worry. The bandits would think of revenge sooner than they would rejoice at having survived.
Calix nodded.
He knew as much.
But tonight had been survived. The villagers were still moving. To keep living. And among those villagers, Calix was not included.
In a single day, this place had become somewhere he could no longer remain.
Even after dawn, the smoke did not clear easily.
The smell rising from the rain-soaked earth mingled with the soot of half-burned logs and blanketed the whole village. And amid it all, gazes drifted.
Toward Calix.
Gajit sensed the undercurrent first. Gratitude and resentment, unseparated, were aimed in the same direction. He stepped forward as if to block the way.
"Those men won't have gone far. In their current state, they'll be catching their breath somewhere in the forest."
Calix nodded without a word.
But that response pricked someone's nerves.
"Why—"
It was a short voice. The man who had lost his mother. His hands were still trembling.
"Why didn't you kill them?"
It was a question, but not asked to receive an answer.
"Those men will come back. So what are we supposed to do?" "Hey, watch what you say."
Gajit's brow twitched as he cut in, but the words kept coming.
"You stopped them this time—can you do it again next time?"
The held breath around them broke loose as well.
"He's got a point. You're not going to keep protecting us." "After you leave……"
Gratitude came only after that.
"Even so, is that any way to speak to someone who helped us?" "Well, we did make it through yesterday."
But that thankfulness did not linger. The villagers' mouths shut again quickly. Instead of relief at having survived, fear of the coming tomorrow rose first.
Then an old woman spoke, her expression blank.
"Do not take it to heart."
She paused in her sorting of wet sacks, her bent back straightening just slightly. She looked directly at Calix and offered something that was comfort without being comfort.
"They are people without room to spare—they speak carelessly."
Calix nodded, though he understood her words were a courtesy rather than genuine gratitude. The villagers were not wrong.
For a single day, someone with great power had come. He would leave the next day, and responsibility would belong to those who remained. A familiar sense of déjà vu washed over him.
Somewhere, sometime, he had lived through the same thing.
But he said nothing in the end. He did not spout high-sounding words about the will of the world, or the flow of things.
Last night, the man rescued by Calix had said—as if lamenting to his own son:
"We're starting from the beginning again."
There was no kingdom here, no nobility. No one to protect them, so no one to bear responsibility. They simply endured each day, yielding to tragedy.
Calix moved as the sun sank low.
There was little that could be called luggage. He shook out his rain-soaked robe and cinched the pouch tied at his waist. Those who knew gratitude had packed food for him.
He looked down for a moment at the iron poker left beside the hearth, then took it back in hand. He did not wipe it clean, nor tuck it away. He left it as it was.
The village was still quiet.
He walked slowly along the path. Toward the forest. Gajit came rushing after him and then asked carefully:
"Have you finally decided to act?"
He did not say it outright, but vague dissatisfaction seeped through. He believed there was no need to give more to those who did not know how to be grateful.
Calix, for his part, listened to a different voice within him.
"……Let's clear them out before we go."
Gajit did not ask twice.
The two entered the forest.
Calix's steps were not hurried. But his direction was certain. The flow of mana came to him vividly. Footprints left in the earth, traces of body heat from men catching their breath—it all connected into a single line. The bandits had gathered in one place, just as expected.
"A-a monster!!"
And the moment they became aware of Calix's presence, a brief farce unfolded. A short commotion erupted from deeper in the forest. There were no screams or sounds of fighting. Footsteps gathered in one place, then scattered.
The bandits fled without looking back. They chose the deeper forest, gaps between rocks, pathless directions—and dispersed in every direction.
Calix stopped only after a long while. This would be enough to ensure the village would not become a target for revenge. Only then did he turn around.
But he did not return to the village.
Responsibility, the moment it becomes entangled with something, seizes you by the ankle. As he emerged from the forest, Calix glanced back once. A small trail of smoke rose above the huts.
Those who had survived were beginning another day.
Calix turned his feet in the opposite direction.
So that no one would have reason to go back.
And so, he left.
Gajit fumed that the villagers knew no gratitude, but Calix had gained more than he expected. In the moment of confronting the bandits, some forgotten memories had resurfaced.
Hands gripping swords, figures standing back to back. The vivid sensation of charging forward at the same moment, toward the same enemy.
Their faces were blurred, and their names did not come to him. But what was certain was that he had not fought alone.
Calix stopped walking and closed his eyes for a moment. In the wind-swept forest, fragments of memory scattered without falling into place.
Yet a direction had become clear.
There were things he had to reclaim.
"Where are you headed?"
Gajit's question was cautious. He had somehow settled into the position of following Calix—so naturally that neither of them seemed to notice.
"North."
At that, Gajit fell briefly into thought, then added a practical reckoning.
"If it's the northern continent…… the Elvra side has tight border controls. We'd need to cross into Astria first, pass through Niboria, and circle around. Slipping through Elvra or Viale would come after that."
Calix accepted his words as they were. He did not know how the world was turning, and so he had no choice but to trust and leave it to him.
With that, the two headed west.
They did not stop at villages, but they occasionally crossed paths with merchants, and through them gathered various pieces of news drifting along the roads.
A fractured Niboria Empire, Marquis Ashapel declaring independence, and the Astria Kingdom shaking more violently still. The war had ended, they said—but its aftershocks were appearing everywhere.
About a week passed, and then the terrain shifted sharply.
The forest split open, and in an instant the view expanded. A vast plain spread out against the backdrop of a great gorge. Wind slammed into the mountain range and came howling back.
At that moment, a dull, stabbing ache struck somewhere in Calix's chest.
He did not know why. But it was familiar.
As if drawn by something, he moved toward one edge of the plain. A stone stele standing on the smooth flatland caught his eye.
The stele bore no name. Instead, a short sentence was carved into it.
「For the Mountain Rabbit who leapt first.」
"……" "Good heavens…… This is the grave of Royce, the former captain of the Mountain Rabbits."
Calix stood before it for a long while.
The sky cycled between dark, swelling clouds that seemed ready to pour rain at any moment, and sudden clearing—over and over. But nothing came to him.
The stele was not alone. Whether to preserve the traces of a fierce battle, hundreds of large and small stones stood in rows.
He did not know what it was he felt.
"Royce……"
Unfamiliar, yet close. The name did not sit easily on his tongue, but that was not unpleasant.
"The name…… Mountain Rabbits." "Yes. A legendary mercenary company."
And beside him stood someone who knew the reason.
"I heard that you once fought alongside them."
He had found a trace.