Chapter 28: Talents Only I Can Recognize. Hidden gems (11)

Zint has been living as a pickpocket in a city of the Narja Kingdom. As an orphan abandoned on the side of the road, there was no other way for him to survive.

And so the years went by.

Zint, who had shown a talent for fighting since childhood, had easily taken control of the pickpocket group.

He was a pickpocket, but he was just a subordinate who paid a part of his earnings to a gang of thugs in the city.

Such was his life, but Zint was not alone.

He had a girl, Mirine, who had been with him since he was a child. He was happy because he had her.

Above all, Mirine’s smile was the only thing that made his life worth living.

“Welcome back, Zint.”

“Yeah.”

“If you’re going to pick pockets, pick the right people to do it.”

Such an ordinary life.

“Oh, my God, there are grains on your rice.”

This was the driving force behind Zint life.

Of course, Mirine thought the same thing, she and Zint had supported each other throughout their lives.

However such a peaceful life did not last, the root of the disaster was the beauty of Mirine.

Fifteen-year-old Zint and 15-year-old Mirine. One day, calamity struck the young couple.

“Zint! Oh, my God! They’ve taken Mirine!”

He returns to his home after working all day. When Zint arrived, his friends gathered and made a lot of noise.

Mirine was taken away. She was taken away by the gangsters of the organization that he was paying.

At that moment, Zint lost his reason and immediately went straight to their hangout with his weapon.

“Mirine! Mirine!”

The thugs sneered at Zint as he kicked the door open and walked in.

“Mirine? Hahaha. She was pretty good, huh? A virgin, too. Well, the organization needed money, so I sold her off to a slaver. It’s a lot of money for a woman like that. But it would have been a shame to just sell her off, wouldn’t it? So I gave her a taste. Sorry, I should’ve included you in the mix. Pfft!”

This is a very insane thing to hear.

Zint pulled out his knife, tears streamed from his eyes, blood flowed from his clenched lips. He didn’t want to think about the humiliation Mirine had suffered, her smile, her compassionate heart.

She was such a kind woman.

“Little shit. Put it away. You’re getting carried away.”

The ten men kicked their chairs and stood up. But Zint cut off the head of the man in front of him with a single blow.

Zint was born with the gift of mana. His abilities were abnormally developed even though he only had experience in mere fights.

Fifteen years old. He was a young man, but he was not at the level that the average person would be able to deal with. He didn’t realize it at all.

“Kill him!”

The startled thugs crowded around Zint, but his movements were several times faster than those of the men. A sword striked with frightening speed and unbelievable power.

“Damn it, don’t come……!”

The remaining thug knelt in fear in the pool of blood where nine of his friends had died horribly. Zint lunges forward and begins a ruthless attack on the man’s face.

“Where is she? Where did you take Mirine?”

“Spare me.”

“Then tell me!”

“The Hiruone Merchant Company….”

Spang!

When Zint saw the head flying in the air, he clenched his fist tightly. It was the first time he had killed someone, but he felt no emotion. The only thing on his mind was to get Mirine back.

For the boy, the girl was everything in his life. If only she were safe, as long as she was alive.

He didn’t care about anything else, as long as she smiled at him again.

From that day on, Zint wandered around looking for the slavers. After almost three years, he finally succeeded in tracking down the slavers. It was an obsession that ordinary people could not even imagine.

The slavers he found were beaten to death on the spot. Zint, who had fought many battles over the past three years, without regard for his life.

He was willing to do whatever it took to get information. A dark organization had hired him, bloody battles and assassinations. His life was like that of a war demon.

Perhaps because of this, Zint’s martial force was already above the B-grade at the time.

However, he could not find Mirine. The slavers had already sold her off to a local baron. Zint immediately went to the city.

Without a second thought, Zint attacked the baron’s residence that the merchant had told him about.

Many soldiers blocked his way.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Zint just waved his knife around and didn’t say anything. Thirty soldiers were guarding the mansion.

“Call for backup now!”

The time it would take for the Territorial Army to arrive. Zint did not have the ability to calculate it, but he was confident that his speed was second to none.

Destroying everything, Zint broke into the house and finally found Mirine. It had been a long time, but he recognized her at a glance.

The moment he found Mirine, a single tear spilled from his eye. He didn’t care what happened to him.

However, he couldn’t stand the thought of how many hellish days she had spent.

“Zint?”

Tears welled up in Mirine’s eyes at the reunion with Zint that she had dreamed of.

The reason she had endured three years of wanting to die was because she had something she wanted to tell Zint one day. She thought that she no longer had the right to ask for anything more from him.

The words she wanted to say but couldn’t.

I like you…….

I love you.

I’m sure you’ll be happy to hear that. You will find a lot of things that you can do to make your life easier.

“Zint gripped Mirine’s hand tightly.”

“Let’s run, Mirine!” Then he slipped out of the city.

The Territorial Army started to move late, but Zint, with Mirine on his stolen horse, pushed forward without looking behind.

He repeatedly shook off the pursuing troops and fled from the city to the farthest border town. He had heard rumors that there was a town near the border where people who had lost their livelihoods due to the war lived together.

On the way here, Mirine had tried to die many times. But Zint never left her side and kept trying to convince her to live with him.

“I can’t live without you.”

Hearing those words from Zint, Mirine stopped thinking about giving up her life.

A quiet town on the border where people who have lost their livelihoods lived, Zint and Mirine lived quietly there while running a farming business.

They ate only one meal a day but two of them were happy even with such a life. Before long, Mirine regained her old smile.

But once again, they were faced with a challenge, the king has changed.

The king who had maintained the peace policy died, and a young king full of ambition ascended to the throne.

A general mobilization order was issued, and ruthless conscription began in many places. The border towns where the poor lived were naturally not spared from this draft.

“Zint, have a good day, I’ll be here waiting for you. I’ll wait for you no matter what. I know you won’t die in a war, I believe that. Zint is strong. So let’s not run away anymore, okay?”

Eventually, with those words, Zint became a soldier in the Narja Kingdom army. And he soon became a discarded pawn in a scouting party.

The ring was a token of love given to him by Mirine. That ring was the second most important thing in the world to Zint.

* * *

“…….That ring is more important to me than my life. Can you really get it back?”

When he finished telling me what had happened, Zint looked up at me.

“I’m sure there are a lot of guys out there who have had that happen to them, but not all of them have been as close to their loved ones as you were……You’re crazy, or maybe amazing.”

Yes, a crazy guy, that was my honest feeling.

Not in a bad way, it’s just that he has extraordinary willpower. Love is blind, I guess. It made me want Zint even more. It’s not that easy to find someone like him.

At the age of 21, he has 93 martial force, unlimited growth potential

and a straightforward personality.

The more I learned about this guy, the more I wanted to get my hands on him, unlike Randall, who, though strong, had too much ego for me to want him at all.

“Then……. It’s normal to want to live more. I think you should pretend to surrender and run away to her, or somehow come up with a plan to survive. I don’t understand what you are doing right now.”

Yes. If someone is that important to you, it’s natural to struggle to live, but Zint’s reaction was not that way.

“The new king of Narja has declared that we must slay as many of our enemies as possible before we are captured and die. If we are taken prisoners in vain and return alive, our family will die.”

A prisoner of war is a risk of leaking information. Well, before that, the King of Narja is certainly such a person. He was an ambitious king who ran his country with powerful royal authority. He would not allow his soldiers to be taken prisoner.

He hated losing a war so much that he would give their family gold, silver, and treasures if they died in a fierce battle and kill them if they begged for their lives in vain.

Of course, some put their own lives before their families, one of the men I captured was like that. The craving for life is a natural part of being human, but Zint was the complete opposite.

“Of course I was confident, confident that no one could beat me. I was confident that I could fight with impunity and come home victorious. But now you’ve got me. So I can’t go home. I have to die, that way Mirine won’t be affected. Even if I escaped with her, I’d have to live in hiding for the rest of my life. I don’t want Mirine to live in fear any longer.”

The King of Narja manipulated the emotions of his people to make them suspect each other. He had a policy of bestowing people with gold, silver, and treasure if they accused someone of any actions that went against his policies.

In other words, it was a policy to make them watch each other and if someone would definitely make an accusation, there would be no peace.

Zint seemed to be extremely reluctant to let his woman be hunted again, even if it meant his death. Does he really want this Mirine woman to settle down in that town and live in peace?