Infinite Mana - Chapter 188: Five Silver and a War (Thank you for your support, Reginald Gage!) (Patreon)

Sieghart considered asking for more than his usual rate. Following armed strangers underground involved considerably more risk than treating bruised miners beside his carriage, and the polished armor suggested their employers could afford the difference.

Then he looked at the hammers secured across their backs. The money was useful, but watching trained Aura users fight together interested him more than squeezing another handful of coins from their captain.

“Five silver per healing cast. Same as everyone else.”

Aldren glanced toward the folded counter, where Sieghart had left a clean cloth beside his engraving tools. He seemed to consider the offer rather than accepting immediately, which Sieghart found considerably more reassuring than careless generosity.

“Per injury?”

“Per cast. Sometimes one does the job. Sometimes it doesn’t.”

“And you’ll tell me when it won’t?”

“I’ll tell you before I try something I can’t fix.”

The captain nodded, accepting the distinction without demanding a guarantee. Sieghart appreciated that. First Aid was useful, but agreeing to restore anything someone dragged in front of him would eventually produce a problem he could not solve.

“We keep a count, then. You get paid when we return.”

That settled the payment more easily than Sieghart expected. Aldren neither tried lowering the price because of his age nor offered vague promises about future favors replacing actual silver. Sieghart covered the unfinished shield and returned it to storage. He had intended to continue his own exploration anyway, so accompanying the soldiers would change his role more than his destination.

Before closing the compartment, he collected his water flask and checked the small pouch carrying his supplies. The rest remained locked inside, including the detached steering wheel. Nobody in the camp needed an opportunity to test his engine.

“How deep?”

“As deep as we can manage.”

Sieghart stopped with one hand on the door latch. That answer sounded reasonable only until somebody decided managing included crawling back without enough blood to complain about the journey. Aldren noticed the pause and added the qualification before Sieghart needed to ask. His gaze moved toward the soldiers, particularly one younger man testing the balance of his hammer beside the lead carriage.

“With enough left to get out. This is an endurance exercise, not a race to see who collapses first.”

“And finding a healer changed that?”

“It gives us room to make a proper attempt.”

Their original plan had apparently involved a more cautious descent, withdrawing once injuries began affecting the formation. A damaged shoulder could remove a hammer wielder from the front, while a twisted knee could slow everyone accompanying him.

Sieghart’s presence changed that calculation. Minor injuries would no longer end the exercise immediately, allowing the captain to observe how his men performed after the first uncomfortable encounters rather than merely through them. It did not mean they could ignore danger, although Sieghart suspected some soldiers would hear the word healer and immediately become less careful. He intended to correct that misunderstanding before anyone offered a golem their face.

“If they start taking hits because I’m there, I’ll tell you.”

“Please do.”

Aldren stepped away while Sieghart checked the final lock. The captain’s answer sounded sincere, which was inconvenient. Sieghart had been preparing to dislike the arrangement, and the man kept refusing to provide an easy reason. The soldiers had finished unloading by the time he approached. Spare equipment remained beside their carriages, while the men gathered near the road with hammers loosened from their carrying straps.

Up close, the matching armor concealed less individuality than Sieghart expected. One man kept shifting a stiff shoulder, another checked his gloves repeatedly, and a broad soldier with a flattened nose watched the dungeon entrance without speaking.

“This is Sieg. He’ll be accompanying us as our healer.”

Several eyes moved toward Sieghart, then toward the carriage behind him. He kept his expression neutral and his hands away from his coat, allowing them to look without providing anything particularly interesting.

“Sieg?”

The question came from a young soldier whose helmet still rested beneath one arm. His gaze lingered on Sieghart’s face before dropping toward the small supply pouch at his waist.

“The merchant?”

“The healer,” Aldren said. “Try to remember which job he’s doing.”

Nobody looked especially pleased. One soldier nodded politely, but another glanced toward his companions with an expression Sieghart recognized from people discovering that their afternoon had just become longer than expected. Perhaps they disliked relying upon a mage. Their own strength came from Aura, and Sieghart had encountered enough people who considered that distinction important before they learned anything else about someone.

Or perhaps prejudice had nothing to do with it. An available healer removed several convenient reasons to shorten the exercise, which might explain why the man nursing his shoulder suddenly stopped moving it.

“I thought we were checking the upper galleries first,” someone muttered.

“We are,” Aldren answered. “Then we keep going if the formation is holding.”

Sieghart almost smiled. Apparently, at least part of their disappointment came from discovering that the captain had found a way to make the training session considerably more thorough. That was their problem. His own problem was avoiding unnecessary attention while learning as much as possible about how different Aura users handled enemies that resisted ordinary weapons.

Aldren assigned positions without making a speech. Two men took the front, the others arranged themselves behind them, and one checked the route with a local explorer before returning to the group. The captain remained at the rear beside Sieghart as they approached the entrance. That placed him where he could observe his soldiers rather than solve every problem before they encountered it.

“Stay behind the second pair unless I tell you the passage is clear. If someone falls, wait until we bring him back.”

“I wasn’t planning to run underneath a golem.”

Sieghart kept the rest of his answer to himself. He had already fought these constructs alone, but announcing that would encourage questions about his offense, which would eventually lead toward questions about everything else. The dungeon swallowed the camp’s noise within several turns. Pale lantern light replaced sunlight, boots scraped against stone, and the soldiers’ equipment produced a restrained clatter that carried farther than ordinary conversation.

Unlike the roadside bandit, these fighters did not need to cover twenty meters before their opponent reacted. Their challenge was delivering enough force while leaving room for somebody else to move. The first golem appeared beyond an abandoned ore cart, its amber slit turning toward the formation. The two leading soldiers separated slightly without retreating, placing themselves on opposite sides of the passage.

One stepped forward just far enough to provoke a swing. He withdrew his shoulder as the stone fist passed, while his companion drove a hammer into the exposed knee. The impact cracked stone and made the construct drop unevenly. Before it recovered, the first soldier struck its elbow, preventing the raised arm from becoming a second attack.

Sieghart watched their feet rather than the hammerheads. Neither committed farther than necessary, and each movement left the other enough space to swing without risking an ally. The golem collapsed after another pair of blows. Its core remained intact inside the damaged chest, although the soldiers left extracting it until their companions had checked the next stretch of passage.

Aldren said nothing until the younger hammer wielder stepped around the fallen construct too quickly. One quiet instruction stopped him before he moved beyond the distance his partner could cover.

“Together.”

The soldier returned without arguing. Sieghart stored the exchange alongside everything else he had observed, finding the correction more informative than a long explanation about discipline would have been. He had expected individual techniques worth studying. Instead, the first useful lesson involved how much danger disappeared when two people knew exactly where the other intended to stand.

That did not make him suddenly want permanent companions. It merely gave him another advantage to remember when an enemy group tried using the same arrangement against him. Aldren walked beside him while the soldiers resumed their advance. Sieghart did not ask about their employer, their emblem, or the reason a coordinated unit needed an endurance test inside this particular dungeon.

Aldren apparently read something in his silence, because he began speaking without a question. His voice stayed low enough that Sieghart could hear him clearly without distracting the soldiers ahead.

“This isn’t only about golems.”

Sieghart looked toward him, then back at the next junction. A faint tremor passed through the floor, and the soldiers ahead slowed while listening for another step.

“We’re preparing for an operation at the border.”

That made the matching equipment and guarded supply carriages more understandable. Sieghart had assumed these men served somebody wealthy, but preparing for a campaign suggested their visit involved more than keeping idle retainers occupied.

“Long movements. Repeated engagements. Working while tired,” Aldren continued. “I need to know where their discipline starts slipping before we’re somewhere that won’t let us turn around.”

Sieghart glanced toward the soldier who had nursed his shoulder outside. The man was watching his partner now instead of his own weapon, apparently aware that the captain remained behind him.

“If your healing holds up, there could be work for you there too.”

There it was. Sieghart had barely agreed to one dungeon expedition, and someone was already discussing the possibility of transporting him toward another border problem. He did not refuse immediately. Refusing might end the explanation, and information about an approaching campaign was worth considerably more than the effort required to keep his mouth shut.

Aldren took his silence for permission to continue, though he offered no date, marching route, or destination. Whatever else he was willing to discuss, the details remained with him.

“Good healers are difficult to replace. Especially ones who keep their heads when people start getting hurt.”

Sieghart wondered how much the explorers had told him. Treating broken ribs beside a carriage hardly proved battlefield composure, but the captain could presumably judge that for himself during their descent. Ahead, another heavy footfall disturbed the dust. The soldiers tightened their formation, and Aldren watched until the front pair acknowledged each other before returning his attention to Sieghart.

“This time, we won’t be waiting for them to cross into our territory.”

Sieghart’s interest sharpened despite himself. The borders he had seen were places where humans prepared defenses, endured attacks, and hoped enough people survived to keep the next settlement standing.

The Firian campaign had threatened the people around his grandparents. The northern army had retreated behind town walls. Chimerian territory had expanded through abandoned villages that human maps still pretended belonged to somebody else. A planned invasion was different. Somebody had decided the human forces could afford to leave their defenses, cross disputed ground, and keep moving after they reached the enemy.

“For the first time in decades, we’re going into the lost lands with the intention of staying,” Aldren said. “Not a raid. Not another expedition that pulls back once the enemy gathers.”

Sieghart watched the captain’s face. There was no excited grin accompanying the words, only the same practical expression he had worn while agreeing to five silver per healing cast. That made the statement harder to dismiss as boasting. Aldren spoke like someone who had already begun calculating supplies, injuries, and how many tired men he could still trust to hold formation.

“Our objective is an entire tribe of the Fallen.”

The name settled uncomfortably between them while another golem stepped into the lantern light ahead. The soldiers raised their hammers, but Sieghart’s attention remained on the captain.

“We’re going to eliminate it.”

Sieghart had joined for payment, useful training, and a closer look at different Aura techniques. Now he was walking beside someone preparing those techniques for a campaign much larger than anything happening inside this dungeon.

He knew too little about the target to decide what that promise actually meant. Aldren had named a tribe and an objective, not explained who lived there or what opposition awaited them.

The first hammer struck stone ahead, followed by a second impact as the formation advanced. Sieghart listened more carefully now, watching the men whose performance would determine whether their captain considered them ready.

Five silver per cast had seemed like an ordinary agreement. Though, the information included with it was going to be considerably more interesting.