Walter couldn’t believe his ears when he heard what the captain’s ‘token of thanks’ was.

“Absolving my debt? But why? Wouldn’t the others be unhappy when they hear about this?”

Johnathan nodded affirmatively to answer Walter’s question before he explained himself.

“Perhaps, my lord... But you helped their lives. The cultists wouldn’t have routed if you didn’t shoot their sniper out of the trees.”

“But why would that warrant absolving my debt?.. There must be at least some that would want to get paid for their efforts… Unless... ”

Walter fell silent for a moment as a revelation flashed across his mind. Glancing at the surviving men who were performing the ‘clean up,’ he quickly realised that while some of them were still counting the bodies of their dearly departed, a majority of them were actually looting the enemies’ dead bodies.

“The battle spoils… is that really going to pay off my debt?”

Walter pretended to be unsure when he voiced out his suspicions, prompting Johnathan to reply enthusiastically.

“Yeah. All we need to d o is make a quick ‘detour’ and then we can sell the loot for around thirty years worth of our salary. Even if you receive an entire tenth of the spoils, there will still be enough to pay off your debts.”

In the face of Johnathan’s goodwill, Walter could only smile and nod his head in acceptance.

This person really is good at heart isn’t he?

It was lucky by itself that Walter conveniently came across the caravan when he did. It’s an even larger stroke of luck that the captain of the caravan’s guard escort and the de-facto leader of the caravan would turn out to be such a good natured man.

Naturally, he should exploit Johnathan's good nature as much as possible.

Putting on a warm smile that Walter was used to wearing in his previous life, he soon responded to Johnathan in a friendly manner.

“Then I will take your word for it. I’ll take one tenth and leave the rest for you to split up amongst your men. Just one condition though...”

“Hmm? What condition?”

Johnathan raised his right eyebrow in slight surprise as he questioned Walter about his condition.

“Nothing that demands too much of you. I just want to lead the price negotiation. You can still participate in the negotiation and even choose the buyer, but leave the talking to me. After all…”

Walter paused for a few seconds to let what he said sink in before he slowly and clearly voiced out his next words.

“Fighting is not my specialty, it’s yours and your men’s. Likewise, I don’t believe that any you or any of your men particularly specialise in the art of merchant trade. Therefore, such an arrangement will be beneficial for the two of us, will it not?”

He once again paused, except this time, it’s so that he can chuckle in a jovial manner before he concluded his explanation.

“Like the saying goes. While you can always cut a bigger slice of the cake for yourself, it’s always preferable to get a bigger cake. That way, all parties are satisfied and you still get a bigger slice.”

“Guahahaha!”

Johnathan laughed heartily as he gave his response.

“Just from your words alone I can already tell that I should follow your suggestion, my lord. To not only make such a complicated analogy, but to make one towards cake of all things, only a master merchant would do such a thing...”

His face froze and his eyes widened halfway through his sentence, as if suddenly realised that he may have made a mistake. After clearing his throat once, he started to make an apology.

“Oh uh… I apologise. I didn’t mean to offend you by calling you a mere merchant, my lord, you are still an honourable noble man after all.”

Much to Johnathan’s apparent shock, Walter bluntly dismissed the former’s ‘offence’ to the latter on the spot.

“Oh it’s fine. It wouldn’t be false to call me a ‘master merchant’ and if I’m being honest with you, I don’t think that I have the right to be called ‘honourable’ anymore.”

Walter sighed in a dejected manner as he spoke. He didn’t exactly know why this man was such a ‘good’ person. Perhaps that’s just the way he was, or perhaps it was something that he experienced that motivates him to be such a person. Either way, that meant that sympathy was all Walter needed to manipulate Johnathan.

“First I lost my entire caravan with nothing to show for it. And then I forced myself and my family into debt just to get to safety. This isn’t exactly what the other nobles would exactly call very… ‘noble’.”

“...”

While Johnathan seemed to be at a loss of words a few moments, he was able to muster up a short sentence as his reply.

“That is true…”

Walter cut him off.

“Oh, and I do apologise if I sound a little too pretentious. I know that I already live a life that is beyond anything that commoners such as yourself could dream of.”

Like before, Johnathan again appeared speechless. This time, it took him a bit longer before he was able to find his voice.

“I… never thought that I would have heard a member of the nobility apologise to a commoner, let alone apologise to me, someone who is a stranger to you. In my years, I have known many philanthropistic nobles but not a single one of them would have put themselves at the same level of a commoner and apologise.”

Johnathan shook his head in what seemed to be a joking manner while he spoke.

“I have to admit it, my lord Walter, you are a rather eccentric nobleman.”

Walter only responded with a ‘slight’ understatement.

“Well, I guess that you can just say that I’m not from around here.”

…

It only took less than half an hour for the guards to clean up the battlefield and tally up the casualties. A total of seventeen were slain, even with the best efforts of the surviving clerics. By the time they set off again, all of the clerics have exhausted all of their ‘light energy’ as they called it.

With Karmen, the most potent cleric of the group, now being a decomposing body on the floor amongst the others, the remaining clerics were hard pressed to heal as many injured people as possible. Nevertheless, the clerics still did their duty as men and women who followed in the ways of ‘Hyperia’ the so-called goddess of light of the ‘Pantheon’ and the clerics’ patron goddess.

Walter learnt that much from the ‘small talk’ he had with Johnathan as they rode in the back carriage. Since only a few horses didn’t run away during the ambush, Johnathan sat inside the carriage with Walter rather than riding on his horse.

And their conversation hasn’t ended yet.

“So tell me, before you became an escort captain here, what did you use to be? I could tell just from looking at your eyes that you’re no mere guard.”

Johnathan sighed upon hearing Walter’s request. However, that sigh didn’t appear to be done out of exasperation at a rude request or a sense of forlornness from dredging out unwanted memories. Instead, it seemed as if he was reminiscing about some bittersweet memories.

“Since there’s no harm in telling you, let me give you the answer to your question.”

Johnathan turned to face out of the carriage’s window as he spoke.

“I used to be a captain of a men-at-arms platoon in the Franko Kingdom. By the Gods I was strong then… but… what’s the saying again? ‘Shit happens.” Now, I’m just the captain of a common guard escort within the Principality of Valha.”

“Wow, from the sound of it, I believe that you have your fair share of stories to tell. We still have an hour left before we reach the city, why don’t you tell me the more entertaining ones.”

Walter saw a little ‘sparkle’ in Johnathan’s eyes in response to his request. Soon enough, Johnathan obliged.

“B-but of course, my lord.”

Before long he told tales of his achievements as a brave captain of the Franko Kingdom. He told Walter about his epic conquests and battles. Whether these were tales were true or were just tall tales, Walter didn’t really mind. In the end, he was still getting the information he sought.

The longer Johnathan told his stories, the more his voice slowed down. Not because he was actually slowing down, but because Walter’s perception of time was slowing down. While he was still listening to Johnathan’s words, Walter’s mind was actually going overdrive as he processed information within his mind at a fast rate.

Within ‘seconds,’ Johnathan’s mouth was only moving at a centimeter per second. Even Walter was surprised by his ability, in his previous life he could only slow down his perception of time by no more than 10%. Since when did he improve so much? Could this be the doing of Her?

The first time he felt his perception of time slow down after his resurrection was when the cultists raid started. It was almost as if time was frozen when those hooded maniacs came out of the woods. The second time was when he tracked down the source of the red arrows and noticed that they all came from the same spot within the tree line.

It couldn’t possibly be because of the intensity of the situation that Walter unlocked some sort secret ability within him could it? Such a notion would be utterly ridiculous.

Regardless of what the cause actually was, there was no use in trying to figure it now. It’s better for him to make use of his ‘time’ while he still can. This was already his fourth or so time time slowed down like this and he was gradually getting used to it.

Instead he focused on the other information. He already knew about the ‘Franko Kingdom’ and the ‘Principality of Valha,’ having already asked around the guard escort before the ambush by the cultists.

Of course, he didn’t make it evident that he was learning this information for the first time, doing so would raise the suspicion of others. After all, what kind of noble would be ignorant enough to know absolutely nothing around him, especially to not know about the Franko Kingdom, which was gargantuan in scale.

Doing so wasn’t that difficult for him. All he had to do was pretend that he already knew the information that he just learnt and to ‘lead them on’ into speaking more. Then he just had to pick up key sentences and phrases and put them together like how one puts together a jigsaw puzzle.

This was a skill that required keen perception, charisma and tact but with a literal lifetime of experience under his belt, such a feat wasn’t much trouble for Walter.

So far, he had learnt that he was currently within the territory of the ‘Principality of Valha,’ a moderately powerful nation that was also a protectorate under the Franko Kingdom. He also learnt that this caravan was among others, responsible for facilitating transport of noble-controlled goods between Valha’s cities, including Belmud.

While he got surface level information on both nations from the guards, they were annoyingly ignorant on the other nations save for a few hearsays and rumours. However, this was already enough for now, he can always find out more later.

As for Johnathan’s war stories of military expeditions against inhuman forces, these only confirmed Walter’s suspicions of this fantasy world. He even learnt about more races and factions in the meantime, but Johnathan’s war stories were very likely to be biased so Walter could only take them with a grain of salt.

Now he focused on two particular words that Johnathan said. ‘Shit happens,’ a phrase that shouldn’t belong to this era. The only way that this was possible was if something, or perhaps someone who doesn’t belong to this era introduced the saying.

Walter mentally laughed at this thought.

It would seem that he wasn’t the only one after all.