Fortunately, the mercenary only wanted to escape and had no intention of killing Alex. After knocking aside Alex's sword, he glanced at Rore , who was now dangerously close, and quickly jabbed his spurs into his horse, hoping to flee northward.
Unfortunately for him, his duel with Alex had slowed his horse just enough. He never regained full speed, and within seconds, Rore caught up and drove his sword straight through the man's back.
Seeing this, Alex finally let out a sigh of relief—but the lingering fear still clung to his heart.
He couldn't believe what he had just done. The calm, calculated person he believed himself to be had completely lost his cool, charging recklessly at an enemy like a hot-headed fool. As his horse galloped at full speed, all rational thought vanished. It was as if his entire body was running on adrenaline alone.
He was reminded of a saying that described the state of a cavalry charge: A drunk man riding a runaway horse.
Shaking his head, Alex resolved never to take such a foolish risk again. Then, he began reflecting on what had just been his first true battle since entering the world of Ice and Fire.
He couldn't say his performance had been anything to be proud of—in fact, it was downright embarrassing.
His mind had gone completely blank during the fight. Even though he'd received the riding and swordsmanship skills of a hired knight from the system, those memories hadn't synced with his body at all. There was no muscle memory to rely on, and he had no idea what his next move should be.
While inexperience was certainly a factor, it also pointed to another issue: System stats weren't nearly as reliable as they seemed.
He was already considering asking Rore to give him a complete, systematic retraining during their downtime.
Looking back, Rore had returned, leading the runaway horse and helping Kess gather the spoils from the battle.
But Alex's attention wasn't on the loot—it was on the gear the two knights were wearing.
For once, he didn't feel the urge to curse the dev team. The reward this time was genuinely generous.
It was clear now that S-rank NPCs from the system came fully equipped with top-tier gear. Their armor alone was impressive. Alex had nearly panicked when he saw Karmel's spear strike Kess—but to his surprise, the blow hadn't even pierced the armor.
Granted, Kess had partially dodged, and the spear only hit the thickest part of his left pauldron, but still—for it to hold up against that kind of charge, the plate armor had to be of outstanding quality.
Then there were the horses. Rore and Kess had been in full armor, yet they'd still caught up to him just seconds after he'd been bested. That meant their warhorses were a class above even his own well-bred mount!
Given how stingy the developers usually were, this was practically a miracle.
Soon, Rore and Kess finished gathering the loot: two horses, a finely crafted longsword, a dozen gold dragons, a large pouch of miscellaneous coins, and a set of plate-and-mail armor.
Well, "plate-and-mail" might be a bit of an exaggeration. The armor was basically a chainmail shirt with a metal plate stitched over the chest—much like the one Stannis Baratheon wore in the TV show.
That, Alex never understood.
Stannis was a king, for crying out loud. Couldn't the costume designers have given the man some decent armor? If they had to go with plate-and-mail, at least give him something like what Cris wore in the movie Red Cliff.
Still reeling from his own poor performance, Alex looked down at his own ornate but impractical outfit and felt uneasy. Without hesitation, he stripped off his fine clothes and pulled the bloodied armor from Karmel's corpse, slipping it on without complaint.
With Rore 's help, he donned the newly acquired armor. Luckily, Karmel had a similar build to him, and the fit was surprisingly snug.
Once they were all geared up, Alex gave the order to return—to the salt mine near Halloway Town.
By the time they arrived, the battle there was still ongoing. The remaining mercenaries had split into two groups—three on one side, four on the other—locked in a tense standoff, both sides looking exhausted.
It was obvious that things had spiraled out of control after Karmel's departure. The mercenaries had likely grouped up based on their existing friendships and were now fighting over the gold.
Three of them were severely injured. Even if their group won, it was unlikely they'd live long enough to see any of the spoils.
Alex's arrival with Rore and Kess broke the deadlock.
The mercenaries looked at the two bloodied knights and seemed to realize what had happened. In that instant, a thousand thoughts must have raced through their minds—
Should they fight to the death? Run? Fall to their knees and beg for mercy?
It didn't matter. Alex had already given the command to attack.
And by then, it was far too late.
The battle ended in under a minute. The two knights cut through the resisting mercenaries like farmers harvesting wheat. Then they dismounted and swiftly executed the gravely wounded.
Once they confirmed that no one had survived, they began sifting through the corpses for valuables.
Alex, however, had his gaze fixed elsewhere the entire time.
There, beyond the battlefield, the last rays of the sun were being devoured by night. A starry tapestry slowly lit up across the dark sky.
Somewhere in that starfield, perhaps, there was a distant blue planet—a world without merciless killers, without mercenaries begging for their lives, and without victims crying out in terror.
A world with a harmonious society, a stable legal system, and a game developer named Alex.. long dead.
Alex and his group quickly finished looting the second batch of spoils.
Most of it he ordered discarded. What he chose to keep were Karmel's ancestral sword—a high-quality hand-and-a-half blade—two finely crafted daggers, three adult Riverland horses, and the plate-and-mail armor Karmel had worn.
And, of course, the most important thing: money.
Karmel and the mercenaries hadn't brought much with them. The real prize was reclaiming the two payments Alex had given them—plus the 80 gold dragons Harui had left behind.
Alex stashed all the gold bars in his auxiliary system backpack, while the remaining 500+ gold dragons were put in Rore 's coin pouch.
After that, they left the mine and made their way to the nearby Green Fork River to wash off the blood.
As Alex scrubbed his clothes, Rore suddenly asked, "Can you tell me why you were so confident you could turn Karmel's men to our side?"