Earth's SSS Pornstar to SSS Combat God in Another World-Chapter 13: Carried and Treated Like a Whole Roasted Pig

Alaric smiled, eyes closing into a crescent squint toward where the cook had squealed.

"Don’t. Don’t come any closer!" the cook yelled in panic.

Joji watched the cook with cold eyes, but his attention had already slipped elsewhere.

His senses fixed on the dark beyond the shrubs and trees in the distance.

Then the air itself seemed to whistle too loud, too sharp.

"Get down. Shields up," Joji roared suddenly.

Walter had barely started to rise when Joji grabbed him by the collar and shoved him into the dirt.

An arrow hissed past the merchant’s head, shearing a few strands of hair.

Overhead, a net of arrows rained down. Most guards were quick enough to take cover.

Some were too slow. Two guards dropped with shafts in their throats.

Blood spurted across the ground. They took deep, ragged gasps and died on the spot.

Others were lucky, only scraped, only bleeding. It was only the start.

The remaining guards drew their swords, but not to protect. They turned the steel inward.

They swung hard. Ten men went down in the first decisive slashes.

Some were quick enough to raise wooden shields and block on instinct, confusion wide in their eyes as they tried to understand who the enemy was.

Then the head guard saw the man they kept looking to. Simon.

And the traitors’ eyes kept flicking his way like dogs checking their master before they bite.

"What’s the meaning of this, Simon? What in seven hells are you lot about?" the head guard roared, blood running down his shoulders.

Simon flinched, but when he saw the men around him looking like lackeys, his confidence swelled and his expression turned to a sneer.

"What do you mean, what? A man swore I’d be dubbed a knight. Can you grant that, Captain, can you truly?"

"Madman," the head guard snapped. "Look at the years on you. Can’t you see they’re making a fool of you, using you for their own?"

Simon did not answer. He only stepped into formation with the traitors.

"What right you got, talking like that?" Simon blurted. "I’ve had me hundred gold already, I have. And... and... this new sword, ain’t you seen it? Deal’s half-done, it is? Already half a knight, I say."

Joji did not pay attention to this brewing drama. His hands grabbed Walter up and lifted the fat man like a maiden.

Lightness of the Wind Art sped his feet, turning the ground into a blur.

"F-friend. If you please, more gently," Walter said, trying for composure as his stomach lurched with every jolt, his grip pinching Joji’s biceps.

"Hey, hey. Don’t pinch me like that. Just hold on," Joji said. "I got you."

Arrows chased them, whispering past. Alaric ran right behind, using the cook’s plump body as a human shield.

The man jerked each time a shaft found flesh. When enough arrows had punched through to make the human shield, Alaric tossed the cook aside.

The cook’s eyes stayed open as he died, indignation and regret trapped in them.

Alaric reached out and grabbed Joji’s shoulder.

"Joji," the knight said softly, "let me help you carry him."

He first looked at the large man, thinking how to proceed, when an idea sparked into Alaric’s mind.

Carry Walter like a pig from spitfire. He grabbed Walter’s large legs and pinned them against his thin waist.

Joji followed and took Walter by the arms, pulling them up onto his neck.

Walter’s voice cracked with concern even in panic.

"What about the head guard? Can we do anything about him?" he asked.

Joji could hear the familiarity in Walter’s tone, the way a man who treated those who served them like real family.

Joji shook his head. He did not want to break the merchant’s heart.

"All we can do is pray on it, Merchant Walter," he said.

After fifteen minutes, Alaric and Joji saw the arrows’ accuracy drop fast. Some found their way in their direction.

After half an hour, only distant shouting rang in Alaric and Joji’s ears.

Still, they ran for a little over an hour total. When they finally slowed, Joji and Alaric were panting hard, lungs burning.

Walter sat in mud and leaf rot, shaken to the core, and stared at Alaric and Joji like they were heroes who’d stepped out of a storybook.

"Who are you, truly?" he asked, cautious as a man counting out coin.

His mind raced through accusations, through the fear that they were part of the scheme.

Alaric’s mouth was about to open on a flamboyant tirade, but Joji raised a hand and stopped him.

He reached under his clothing and produced his Everhart knight badge.

Walter saw it and went rigid. He bowed at once, forehead to the ground.

"Honored sirs? Ah, I’ve been a trouble to the both of you. Pray tell this humble soul how I might make amends."

"Stand up, Walter," Joji said. "We’re just on a mission, and honestly, you’re the perfect cover."

Joji had dealt with powerful men in his past life. Tycoons and owners who could drop hundreds of millions on a yacht and call it an itch they needed to scratch.

Walter had that same air. Joji could feel it in him even now, in his disheveled state.

He had learned two rules to avoid trouble with these people.

Do not lie. And if you do not want to say something, say nothing at all.

Alaric was stunned. Joji sounded too blunt, too raw for merchant games, but Alaric swallowed his words.

He remembered Joji had been the one who warned him about Walter’s brother in the first place.

Walter stayed seated on the ground, mind racing. He did not believe in luck.

He had his own network, and he knew enough about knightly arts to recognize signs even without practicing any himself.

In the moonlight he saw it again. Small dark green flickers, almost imperceptible, flickering around Joji as he moved.

He had caught the same glint more than a dozen times while being carried like a potato sack.

The Everhart badge was only assurance at this point. Still, Walter felt shame.

He had been too quick to judge Joji earlier, too biased by appearances.

He wanted to make amends, but he knew this was not the hour for it, so he asked what mattered.

"Er... Sir Desmond. If I may, what’s your plan from here?"

Alaric watched from the side, eyes narrowing, then turned to Joji. Both grown men looked at him, waiting.

Joji took the responsibility without flinching.

"We got another job in a town not far from here. You’re coming with us, under a new name, as our porter. We’ll call you White Pig."

Alaric’s nostrils flared at how Joji addressed the merchant. Caught off guard by such callous words, he stole a peek at the man, and Walter did look like a cute mustached pig.

Walter did not complain. What’s more, he looked at Joji with something like admiration.

Like he was cheap labor bought for a few coins. That was more realistic than that.

For Walter, realistic was a survival right now.

There was another problem. Walter was not handsome like Alaric, but the smooth skin and uncalloused hands would betray him the moment anyone looked closely.

Joji read the thought on Alaric’s face. He scooped a handful of mud and slapped it onto Walter’s cheeks and forehead.

"So here’s the deal," Joji said. "You either die looking clean... or you live to see another day with a little filth on you."

Walter did not care about the method. He cared about getting back to their mansion alive, limbs intact.

So he let Joji handle it as he pleased.

Back at the camp, the two bandit groups, already allied, huddled with the traitorous guards around the fire.

They had tied up the guard captain and seven others who had survived.

The acting leader, his mask wrapped in black cloth, nodded at the bound men.

"What’s the point of keeping them nobodies, then? Aren’t they just extra mouths for us to feed?"

Another man in a dark green cloak slipped a needle from his sleeve and cackled, a sound too pleased.

"We’ll send their bodies back whole," he said, tapping his own temple. "But we’ll have their heads set a different way, made into spies for us. How’s that sound?"

Heads nodded. They knew each other. They were not small time. They were pretending.

This was an assassination mission with a large payout, and they were treating it like routine.

While the plotting continued, Joji and Alaric stopped by a river.

Joji had seen enough five minutes craft online in his past life to know how to ruin luxury without destroying it.

On rocks near the water, Joji took Walter’s clothes and dipped them in the river.

He scraped the fabric slowly against rough stone, then dried it with a controlled wash of aura.

Alaric watched and stored the lesson away.

He had thought of such things before, but seeing Joji use aura for mundane work made it feel permitted.

Walter’s mouth hung open. A knight doing chores like this felt wrong to him, like disrespect to the art and the title itself.

Joji saw the expressions and only shook his head.

In their silence, both Walter and Alaric reached the same conclusion.

Joji was the kind of man who valued efficiency over pride.

When they moved on, Walter no longer looked glamorous. His fur coat had been tied into a makeshift bag.

His clothes, once gilded and finely sewn, now looked only a tier above what slum dwellers wore every day.

"You look the part of an adventurer, if you ask me," Alaric said from the side.

Walter had never done work like this before, but he had dealt with enough hired hands to know how they carried themselves.

As they followed the riverbank, a deep grumble broke the quiet.

Joji and Alaric tensed at once, hands shifting closer to weapons.

Walter lifted both hands quickly.

"It was I," Walter said evenly. "I was the one doing the grumbling."

They both knew Walter wasn’t able to take a bite earlier.

What’s more, Walter was a normal man by the end of it, no aura to lean on, no hardening of the body.

"Hold up," Joji said. "Lemme check the river."

He stepped to the water, planted his palm, and executed Emerald Blade Wind Art.

Wind cut across the surface. Water surged up in a sheet and fish tumbled into the air.

Alaric reacted fast, loosing arrows tied with rope.

Three fish were snagged and hauled in. He pulled them to shore and handed them over.

Joji stared for a beat, recognition flickering. Salmon.

"Knife," he said.

The work was quick. Gutted. Filleted. Sliced thin. Joji took a handful and chewed, and an ecstatic look crossed his face before he could stop it.

Alaric, not fussy about hygiene, still found this a step too far. "Desmond, wouldn’t it be better if we cook it on a fire?"

Joji looked into the dark around them and shook his head.

"Too conspicuous." He took another bite. "Try it. I swear this is one of the fish you can eat raw."

They needed energy. Walter and Alaric pinched their noses and swallowed.

Then both men blinked, surprised.

"Not so bad," Walter said, testing the words as though he did not quite trust his own tongue.

Alaric nodded, agreement reluctant but real.

When they finished, they moved on to the next problem. Finding a place to stay the night.