Chapter 9
Uninvited Guest (2)
* * *
“Hey, you set your flame too. You should get your money’s worth out of that expensive battle gear.”
While I mocked my opponent with my mouth, my body kept moving without pause, matching the trajectories of the swords and the impact created by weapon colliding against weapon.
It didn’t end with simply trading blows. My movements were aimed at sustaining the wind that now surged through the room.
I had to endure it. If I got caught in it, I would die.
The enemy facing Kairus also moved desperately, every nerve on edge.
The moment one lost balance in the wind, the gale turned into a vortex that shredded flesh, grinding the target to minced meat along with the blades.
It was the most basic sequence that followed from the Gale Blade. But even with such a basic sequence, the number of people who had died from it would be enough to fill an entire cemetery and still spill over.
“This is just great. I wasn’t supposed to deal with this in such a messy way.”
The opponent stepped back and let out a long whistle. The sharp, high-pitched note spread across the room.
The moment the whistle stopped, the restaurant door shattered, and armed men stormed in wildly. I scratched my head with an awkward expression when I saw that sight.
“Ah, shit, I thought you came alone, but turns out you were part of a whole group.”
I belatedly regretted having assumed this bastard would be acting alone without even realizing it myself.
But honestly, imagining it the other way around was harder. It was difficult to think someone who walked in so confidently would have his buddies waiting outside like a coward.
The one who had called his comrades struck the claws in both hands together, sending up a burst of sparks, and grinned.
“The rule was to handle this quietly if possible. But well, it can’t be helped now. Complain if you want.”
“There’s no need to complain. But like this, you won’t achieve what you came here for, will you?”
Originally, this guy’s purpose must have been an ambush. But Jonathan wasn’t blind. Now that the restaurant door had been smashed to bits, of course Jonathan would realize something was happening in his place.
“It doesn’t matter. If I fail the mission, I won’t get paid, but if I die here, it’s all over anyway.”
About twenty men who looked to be in their twenties surrounded me, putting me at the center.
“That’s true.”
If you died, everything was over. But if you kept breathing, maybe someday you’d get another chance.
After all, it was because I managed to survive without dying that I could escape that horrific labor correctional facility and make it to Bennett City.
“So, since you realized you can’t handle this with skill, you’re trying to see if you can make something work by piling on numbers?”
At my question, one of them snickered and replied.
“I heard the punks who learned swordplay from the House Featherwing are weak at indoor brawls.”
In indoor combat where there was no external wind to draw in, and in many-on-one battles that required constant movement to sustain the currents, one indeed became vulnerable.
It was quite a well-known weakness of the Swift Blade.
“Don’t believe every rumor you hear.”
With that firm declaration, Kairus raised his sword slightly and then swung it wide along a diagonal line.
The wind that had been wavering aimlessly lost its direction and surged toward Kairus as if exploding.
This was on a completely different level from the Gale Blade that had merely interfered with movement a moment before. They tried to resist, but it was pointless. The gale shoved them forward, dragging them helplessly toward Kairus.
“Most of what people call weaknesses are just the excuses of losers who were weaker than the ones who beat them.”
Kairus grabbed the man who had been pulled all the way to his nose and drove the sword straight into his neck.
“Like you.”
With a crunching noise, the tip of the blade smashed through the skull and burrowed in. The point churned through the brain. Blood mixed with brain matter gushed out from the man’s eyes, nose, and ears.
The man died without even managing a scream.
Kairus severed the corpse’s head and casually kicked it forward so it rolled to the enemy’s feet.
….
Everyone held their breath, staring at the head tumbling across the floor.
The head rolled and came to a stop right in front of them. One of them spoke in a slightly trembling voice.
“You crazy bastard. What the hell did you cut off a dead man’s head for?”
“Crazy bastard? Who the hell smashed down a restaurant door in broad daylight to come kill someone, and now dares to call me crazy?”
It wasn’t Kairus who started this lunacy. And there was a reason he had done this.
A single wolf could slaughter a hundred sheep not because the wolf was strong enough to withstand the counterattack of a hundred sheep.
It was because the wolf could instill such terror that none of the hundred sheep could even conceive of the word ‘resistance.’
If you entered already winning in momentum, you could seize the advantage no matter how many enemies there were. That was why he’d deliberately cut off the man’s head and bowled it across the floor.
“Come at me, or else….”
Kairus lifted his sword and pointed it toward the door. The wind he had drawn in coiled around him, vibrating in a low hum.
“Get out.”
While speaking, Kairus occasionally swung his sword at the wind. It was an action to keep the current locked around him and to make sure it wouldn’t lose strength.
Repeating the motions, Kairus continued in a calm voice.
“I’m in the middle of saying my piece right now, and if any of you are still here when I’m finished, some of you will end up regretting it.”
The moment I finished speaking, the sword I had been swinging leisurely suddenly gained force and speed.
There was a soft thud of something dropping to the floor.
“M-my arm!”
Blood gushed from the severed end of the arm he clutched desperately. And he wasn’t the only one in that state. The one screaming now was actually one of the lucky ones.
The other three had lost the heads they would have used to scream, and those heads were rolling across the floor.
“I told you. You’d regret it. This is your last chance. Keep relying on your numbers and stubbornness, and you’ll end up with your heads cut off…”
I said that, then thrust my right thumb up with a snap.
“Or you can surrender obediently and leave this restaurant alive on your own two feet, in exchange for giving up the thumb on your dominant hand.”
Give me your thumbs.
At my words, the thugs all looked at me with expressions of disbelief. Every finger was important, but if there was one that mattered the most, it was the thumb.
There were too many things you simply couldn’t do without it. Without a thumb, you lost the ability to perform much of what hands could do.
And yet here I was, someone who looked like a mere restaurant worker, making this absurd demand that these thugs cut off their own most important finger.
“What’s with those faces? You’d rather go into a coffin without a head than live without a thumb on one hand?”
I had already taken the lives of several of them as easily as a starving beggar devouring a cold stew. Sadly, the gap between my skill and theirs was obvious.
If there was anyone here who could even slow me down for a moment, it was probably that long-armed monkey with claws strapped to both hands.
If that one risked his life to buy time, maybe seventy percent of the rest could escape alive. But would that clawed bastard really choose to sacrifice himself?
“Goddammit, what the hell is all this racket!”
But the moment Jonathan’s shout rang out beyond the restaurant door that had been smashed long ago, even that faint possibility shattered.
Judging from how he already had metal knuckles gleaming on both hands, Jonathan must have figured something out the moment he saw the door in pieces.
Jonathan spat his rolled cigarette stub onto the floor, then knocked the knuckles together with a metallic clink.
“Boss, if I’m going to start from the beginning, it’s a bit of a long story.”
“Just the main point.”
At Jonathan’s prompt, I obediently stated the most important fact.
“It’s not my fault.”
The way I swiftly shifted the blame made me look less like a restaurant worker and more like some lazy, incompetent bureaucrat.
Jonathan looked at me with an expression that said he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“That’s all you have to say?”
“So please don’t fire me.”
I still hadn’t fully adapted to Bennett City.
Someday, when the time came, I planned to leave without owing anyone anything. But for me, that time wasn’t now.
“If I fire you, who’s going to clean up all this blood and these corpses? You think I’m going to do it myself, at my age?”
Jonathan spoke while standing firmly in the doorway, his rugged muscles twitching under his shirt.
“Sir, you’re a bit too muscular to be calling yourself old.”
Even if a whole group of young punks charged in, Jonathan would probably just laugh while swinging his knuckles and knock all their teeth out before turning them into popcorn.
Maybe the toxic stuff in that chewing tobacco he never stopped biting down on didn’t dare cause any trouble in his body because it was scared of those muscles.
“G-get out of the way!”
A foolish idiot, sadly, raised his weapon and rushed at Jonathan. To think he’d dare to charge in even after seeing those massive, solid muscles.
“Look at this.”
The gleaming metal knuckle smashed into the side of the attacker in an instant, and there was a crunch like a rotten branch snapping.
As the man opened his mouth to scream in agony, an uppercut crashed into his jaw right after. He spewed blood and teeth into the air like a fountain.
“Wow. You’re even more skilled than I expected.”
I admired the combination of strikes. It was truly a clean attack. Just because someone was skilled didn’t mean their technique was flashy, and flashy technique didn’t always mean they were skilled.
“That so?”
“It was like a piece of military ration hardtack solid and dependable.”
“Brat, don’t butter me up.”
Simple, but you could feel the depth of skill. At my comment, Jonathan let out a thoughtful noise.
“Speaking of bread, how much is left?”
I swung my sword at the men trying to rush me while answering.
“Should be enough for a couple of days without a problem.”
At my reply, Jonathan said,
“Once we’re done dealing with these bastards, go fetch some more bread.”
“Huh? It should be plenty.”
Jonathan replied to me.
“Tomorrow is Saint Petes’ Grand Festival.”
A man who’d charged in screamed with a pitiful expression, staring at the wrist that had just been severed.
In the meantime, I was thinking, What was Saint Petes’ Grand Festival again? Then I dug up an old memory and let out an Ah.
“Now that you mention it, that day does exist.”
There was a legend that, during a famine that lasted two years, a priest who could no longer bear to see people suffer filled an entire lake with bread through prayer. The day commemorating that miracle was called Saint Petes’ Grand Festival.
“I always thought it sounded like a story some bakers made up to sell more bread.”
At my words, Jonathan snorted.
“What does it matter? People eat piles of bread on that day, and we make money. That’s what counts.”
That was how everything worked in this world.
“Anyway, whether I go fetch bread or whatever else, the first priority is dealing with this trash right now. I’d like to believe you have a good idea, sir.”
Jonathan nodded at what I said.
“Of course. I know a damn brilliant method.”
Jonathan lunged at one of them, grabbed him with both hands, lifted him high, and then brought him crashing down across his knee.
With a grotesque noise of bones shattering and slipping out of place, the man’s spine could no longer hold him upright.
Watching that scene, I let out a small groan and turned to address the other men.
“If you want to surrender, it’s still not too late. I already told you how.”
All they had to do was offer up a thumb. And now that one more head had effectively been taken out of the count, there was no chance they’d all survive even if they bolted at once.
With the situation like this, the idea of giving up a thumb and walking out alive started to sound very appealing to them.
“Aaaaagh!”
The first to throw down his weapon and slice off his right thumb was, interestingly enough, the long-armed bastard with the claws I’d fought first.
“Well, that’s unexpected. I didn’t think you’d be the first.”
“Unexpected? Don’t give me that. I… I want to live.”
He held out the freshly severed thumb toward me.
“Here. That’s my thumb, just like you wanted. Now let me go.”
“Wait a moment. Hold out your hand.”
I checked the thumb, then confirmed that it really had been cut clean off, watching the blood drip steadily from his hand.