By Zephyria =======
After two days of climbing the cave walls, Wolf finally reached the hole. Red Eagle could not hide his astonishment.
“It’s not that hard, Prince. You just have to avoid imagining things like, ‘If I fall from here, my head will crack like a watermelon.’”
“It’s hard even without imagining that. My whole body felt stiff before I could even take five steps.”
“That’s because you usually only do breathing exercises, Prince.”
Wolf dusted off his palms and checked the clock. The components and casing of the clock were a single worn-out boot (judging by the size, it belonged to Black Weasel) and the neck of a broken water bottle, both found in the cave. It had all started last night when Red Eagle picked up the boot and remarked, “If we poke a hole in this and fill it with dirt, we could use it as a makeshift hourglass, couldn’t we?”
That one sentence ignited a boyhood instinct—the destructive engineering urge to dismantle a father’s pocket watch, a sister’s music box, or a teacher’s telescope just to see the inside, and then feel satisfied only after reassembling them haphazardly.
‘That’s it! Let’s try making a clock with this, Prince.’
The problem was the dirt. This was a rocky cave, and the floor was coated in lime, so fine soil was nowhere to be seen. Wolf quickly came up with a solution.
‘Let’s use the ash left over from the campfire instead of sand.’
He poked a hole in the toe of the boot with a fire poker, jammed the neck of the broken water bottle into it, and wrapped it tightly with string. After filling the boot with gray ash and hanging it upside down, it was complete. In his excitement, he even gave it the cool name: ‘The Cursed Giant’s Foot.’ The invention(?) was a grand success!
Silver watched in silence as his master’s boot was transformed into a clock. Wolf thought he might have seen Silver’s fingers twitch a few times, but he wasn’t entirely sure.
“We should go up one more time.”
Wolf flipped the boot clock and looked back at Red Eagle.
“Prince, do push-ups until all the ash in the clock has fallen. Even if it’s hard, you must do them without resting.”
“Okay.”
Without a word of complaint, Red Eagle began his push-ups.
On the second day after Black Weasel left the cave, Wolf and Red Eagle realized something. Survival had a grace period of a month, but the immediate problem was time. Killing time in a cave where the only toy was a single die was a task more agonizing than a complex math problem.
The day after the boot clock was made, Red Eagle followed Wolf in climbing the cave walls. They tried all sorts of things. A contest to see who could spit the farthest. Racing two spiders. A breath-holding competition.
In a way, the cave felt like a wonderland specially gifted to the boys by the grandmother fairy. There was no one to nag them about table manners. There was no need to go to school every morning. There was no risk of having the back of one’s hand struck with a ruler by a teacher for not doing homework.
Of course, there were no combs, either. But there were also no girls to impress. Within two days, Wolf and Red Eagle’s hair had transformed into the look of beggars who had just woken up under a plaza statue on a stormy day. At first, it felt miserable, but after a few days, their eyes seemed to adjust, and it looked strangely stylish. It was also practical, as there was no need to comb their hair every morning.
“Prince, you look so wild like this. I bet noble antelopes would compete to offer you their handkerchiefs.”
“You look great too, Wolf. Your bedhead is quite impressive. I guess natural neglect brings out true beauty better than artificial grooming.”
They slept whenever they wanted and woke up whenever they pleased. In the evenings, they splashed around in the hot springs. In bed, they engaged in trivial debates, such as, ‘What if it rained high-grade sausages from the sky?’ The Prince and the attendant’s strategy was working.
“Hey. Let’s play together.”
After six days, Silver finally approached Wolf and Red Eagle. Even the assistant to a contract killer was, after all, a seventeen-year-old boy. Before a Wolf who was struggling to hide his excitement, Silver spoke.
“If we’re going to play, let’s do it properly. Not boring splashing or chatting, but a game that makes a man’s heart race.”
The game Silver proposed was role-playing.
“There are three roles: the ‘Infamous Captain,’ the ‘Cunning Strategist,’ and the ‘Handsome Assault Captain.’ The Captain is just loud-mouthed and dim-witted. The Strategist is sly and only thinks of ways to embezzle treasure. The Assault Captain is a handsome man with a rough personality who is skilled with a blade. I’ll be the Assault Captain.”
“No way! The Assault Captain is the coolest role!”
After some bickering, they decided via rock-paper-scissors. The dim-witted Captain went to Wolf, the cunning Strategist to Red Eagle, and the handsome Assault Captain to Silver. They added a setting that the three pirates were cold-blooded genius warriors who had already killed 100,000 people by the age of sixteen. Before starting the game, Silver gave a warning.
“This is not a cave. This is the deck of the ‘Black Skull.’ That stream flowing over there is a rough sea swarming with sharks. You must believe everything is real. Can you do it?”
“Of course. Just don’t be surprised when I show you how it’s done.”
True to his confidence, Wolf acted with divine passion. Having grown up in the alley culture of commoner boys, where one had to be as stupid as possible to be recognized as a ‘man,’ playing the fool was not difficult at all. He giggled incessantly and stood with an arrogant, shifted posture. He caught a mouse nibbling on cheese and executed it, claiming it was a ‘spy from an Atania ship.’ He even appointed a captured donkey cart driver as ‘Number Two’ in the hierarchy.
The three boys competitively made up absurd stories. The foolish Captain invaded an enemy fleet, fell in love with the enemy commander’s daughter, defected, and married her. The Strategist, who defected following the Captain, entered into an affair with the enemy commander’s daughter. The Assault Captain, in a drunken stupor, charged into an enemy fleet alone and smashed it, only to realize upon sobering up that it had been their own ship.
By the time they finally plundered a treasure ship (actually occupied a pile of rocks) and finished their victory party (drinking from the stream), the boys were exhausted. As if by agreement, they collapsed onto bundles of straw and fell into a death-like sleep.
The next day, Silver brought up something strange.
“I’m going to call a god tonight.”
Wolf and Red Eagle looked at each other. Red Eagle’s face practically wrote out Wolf’s inner thoughts: ‘What did I just hear?’
“Tonight is the night of the full moon. When the moon is directly overhead, I will offer a sacrifice, circle around it six times, and chant an incantation. In the Stohl language, it’s Leri, Niave, Noier. It means, ‘O God, please come to me.’”
“A-As expected, Stohl is mysterious. But why are you calling a god?”
To Wolf, who was imagining future prophecies, curses, or séances, the answer that came back was:
“What else? To make a wish. To get rid of my moles.”
“Moles…?”
“Yeah. Moles.”
Silver rolled up his sleeve to reveal his forearm. Several small moles were clustered on his elbow.
“I have moles all over my elbows like this. I only have this many because I called a god and managed to get rid of seven of them. Stohl people have a lot of moles. And for some reason, they always cluster grotesquely in specific parts of the body.”
Silver added as he lowered his sleeve.
“The god I’m calling tonight is the ‘Long-Snouted Frog’ god. He’s a lower-tier god, but he’s very revered. I don’t know if he exists in Atania, but in Stohl, he’s very famous as a frog that’s great at hunting insects. Stohl people believe the Long-Snouted Frog God quickly snatches up moles and swallows them.”
It didn’t sound like a joke. Only then did Wolf suddenly recall a phrase: ‘Because their civilization is primitive, the Stohl people adhere to superstitions. Their blind faith overwhelms the ignorance of the Atania Dark Ages, when the world was viewed as a rectangular box.’
It was indeed overwhelming. He had never imagined that superstition would penetrate so deeply into daily life that there was a separate god in charge of skin care.
“Just so you know, we’ll eat dinner after the prayer ritual. I’ll let you join in if you want. I noticed when we were washing that you, the attendant, unusually have no moles, but the Prince has them all over his hands and feet.”
Being civilized people, Red Eagle and Wolf were materialists who believed in reason, but they decided to participate in the ritual for fun. Silver even lent them black robes with purple linings as ritual attire (which were actually Black Weasel’s summer outing clothes). When they put them on, the hems of the robes dragged along the floor. The Prince and the attendant gave each other thumbs-up in admiration.
“Prince, wearing that makes you look like a real demon worshiper. You look very dangerous.”
“You’re incredibly fatal too, Wolf. You look like a dark mage who has ruined several countries. To think that I, a consort of the Levenon royal family, am participating in a foreign séance… I’m already trembling.”
“I guess this is the pleasure one feels when committing a taboo.”
“…You little shits. Shut your mouths right now.”
Silver’s face contorted as he reached for the sword at his waist. Wolf and Red Eagle gasped and took a step back.
24 – Hell Execution Order