I'm Not a Knight-Errant. Not Even a Knight (5)
Lee Han was shaking with rage, but he was not so crooked a man as to take that anger out on someone else.
"…Thanks, for now. At least I know why bad luck found me everywhere I stopped."
"Ah, not at all. I'm glad I could be of help."
To look at the man, he was no better than a wastrel, and yet he had recognized a Sacred Relic at a glance and even put the right name to it. People, it seemed, really were not to be judged by their faces.
"No, what's wrong with how I look…"
"Hm? Did I say that out loud?"
"Clear as day."
"…Honestly, treating a piece of trash who sweet-talked a married woman and wrecked a home like an actual person already feels like a fairly generous read of his character…"
"No! I told you I didn't seduce her! She was the one who came on to me! This is driving me insane…!"
He looked genuinely wronged, but lies did not work on Lee Han. Not that the claim was a lie from end to end. He'd taken a liking to that married woman. He had. It simply had not been sincere all the way down, either.
Lee Han decided the man's tastes were peculiar, took one discreet step back, and changed the subject.
"More to the point. Isn't there some way to fiddle with this compass? I'd like to stop getting tangled up with demons everywhere I go. Me too."
"…That would be difficult. To manipulate a Sacred Relic at will, one must be able to use Holy Law at the level of a high priest. Neither I nor my master is anything but passable at it."
"Shame."
"Still, my master may know another way. He's a man with ten times as much in his head as I have."
"……."
"What is that look?"
"The look of a man watching a wastrel who at least knows how to show respect for someone else?"
"…Is that a compliment, or an insult?"
He did not look like a man who would follow anyone, and yet the respect was plain to see. The master in question had to be someone extraordinary. Which, of course, was why Giovanni had brought him all this way.
"…We've come this far. I would like to see him once."
"Then I'll wear out some shoe leather and look for him, sir. The city is large, but if I put people on it, we should find him soon enough."
"Don't, Chief. If you can help it, stay quiet. No—stay safe."
"Sir?"
Giovanni tilted his head at words that sounded like advice. Safe? It had come out of nowhere.
"You heard it just now too, Chief. What this compass is."
"I understood as far as it being a compass that finds demons."
"Then you've heard enough."
"…?"
"Mm. You're the one who brought me to this city today, but even if I hadn't met you, I would have come here anyway."
"…Sir?"
"The needle was pointing at this city."
"………Huh?"
"Sharp, as expected. A merchant's gift."
The praise did nothing but drain the color from Giovanni's face.
"W-wait! The needle said what?!"
Corin's face was paling along with his. Corin was the one who had delivered the long lecture on exactly what the Pilgrim's Compass was, so the reaction was only natural, and Lee Han nodded as if to confirm the grim picture taking shape in their minds.
"There seems to be a demon in this city."
So run.
"……."
"…This is the place, right?"
More than thirty grown men turned into a silent alley overflowing with the poor and the homeless. Every one of them was built like a beam, with a rough edge that said he had thrown his share of punches.
Steel whispered.
Their hands were full of blades, ugly past all decency—cleavers, iron skewers, and the like. The air alone made it plain they had not brought them to cook.
"Hik…"
"!!"
The vagrants sprawled in the alley saw them and fled in a panic. The men had no wish to raise a pointless commotion, so they did not give chase. They only quickened their steps toward the destination.
"…This is it, right."
"I told you it is."
A thoroughly rotten abandoned house. It could have collapsed at any moment and no one would have had a word of complaint—and yet this was the only temple and church of the Light of Radiance left in Florentia.
To see the greatest religious body in the South, only last year, fall this fast… the world really was a place where no one could say what would happen next. The men, however, had no interest in such trifles. They would do, in silence, only the work they had come to do.
And so they did.
Flame leapt.
They splashed oil about and struck a flint. Fire surged up over the last church remaining in the city. Whether the oil had soaked in better than expected, or the ruin was simply eager to burn, the blaze roared high and hungry, as if it meant to leave nothing but ash.
"…Get ready."
A rasp of steel. Blades honed to a razor's edge breathed their keenness, ready to stab whoever came running from the heat.
"You've got to be kidding me."
Crack.
"??"
…The blade folded.
Folded on what?
"Bring something sturdier. Cut meat with this twice and it'll snap."
On a finger.
More precisely, it had been caught between a thumb and a forefinger and folded shut as lightly as paper. The sight had no reality in it. What in the—
CRACK!
"AAAAAGH!"
…But before they could accept what they were seeing, they had to scream. A comrade's leg had snapped like a cookie, and he was howling.
"Jack!"
"You bastard!"
CRACK!
"Same name as one of my students? Special for you. I'll let you off with this."
"GYAAAAAH!"
Another comrade's leg broke. This time it did not merely break. It folded completely, the way a branch snaps and bends shut on itself. Treated or not, that would leave a permanent disability.
A chill crawled over the men, and they shook with terror, and still they did not know what had struck their comrades. An attack they could not see.
No. It couldn't be.
"A-a mage…"
Was someone using magic?
"Who are you slapping 'spell-peddler' onto."
The tone carried a hollow laugh. Irritation climbing, he shook his head and spoke.
"I'm offended, so I'll show you nice and slow. Watch closely."
He settled into his stance without hurry. The men wanted to take the opening and attack, but unfortunately—
CRUNCH!
However kindly, however slowly he moved, it was not a speed their bodies could catch.
"Ghk…"
Shattered.
The very leisure of the blow showed how much care had gone into it, and the chill of that settled over them until they trembled.
"…A-a kick?"
And then they saw it. The attack that had been breaking their legs was not magic at all. It was nothing but a kick.
"Don't call it just a kick. Call it a low kick."
He was kind enough to give the technique its proper name.
Simple to look at, and difficult to use unless the shin has been hardened past reason. Learn it properly, though, and it is another matter entirely.
"I saw somewhere that a proper low kick doesn't just break the body. It breaks the heart, too."
Well.
CRUNCH!
"I only need to break your legs."
The low kick that followed, still unhurried, snapped the men's legs just the same. The blows kept coming beneath a benevolent smile, and as for the men whose legs had broken…
"P-please, spare—"
CRACK!
…their hearts had given out long before their bodies.
It went without saying that Lee Han had known the suspicious men were coming for the church. Killing intent that crude, steaming off them in clouds—who would miss it?
So the attack itself did not surprise him, and crippling them stirred little feeling. The smell of blood at the tip of his nose was enough to tell him what kind of work they had been doing. Thug bastards.
Knife-men, as such gangsters were called. The sort who killed without hesitation, and one of the kinds Lee Han despised.
Which was why he asked who they were.
"So. What are these?"
"I-I don't really…"
"……."
"D-don't look at me like that! I'm truly wronged!!"
Corin, on the receiving end of the question, flung his hands about in a panic. He had known from the look of the man that he was strong, but the martial power to cripple thirty grown men in an instant was astonishing. So he really had been holding back.
What he himself had done at their first meeting came back to him, and he understood it for what it was: mouthing off in front of a brown bear. A chill ran through him at how easily he might have been torn apart, and he hurried to check the men's faces.
And then—
"This is Jack the Blade, isn't it?"
The face of the man Lee Han had let off with a single broken leg was somehow familiar.
"Jack the Blade… doesn't he work under a major loan shark?"
"…And what era's news is that."
"?"
"Well, Giovanni, you've been away trading for quite a while, so you might not know. Recently the underworld organizations of Florentia were folded into one. Most of the underworld bosses died in the process, and whatever power remained was swallowed whole by a newly risen organization."
"!?"
"Well. It was only two months ago."
"I-in only two months?!"
Giovanni was aghast. Florentia's underworld had been potent enough that even the lord's soldiers hesitated to touch it. That such organizations had collapsed and been unified in a mere two months was difficult to believe…
"…Never mind the back-alley gossip. Why did these bastards suddenly start a fire and try to kill you?"
"Ah, that…"
"You look like you've got a rough idea now."
"……Master."
"?"
He had asked for a reason, and Corin was suddenly calling on his master in a low voice. Lee Han tilted his head. Corin muttered to himself for a moment, sorting his thoughts, then looked at him.
"…A-a little while ago, you said it. That there might be a demon in this city."
"Not my idea. The compass told me."
"Same thing. A-anyway. The way I see it, if we assume there is a demon in this city, there's only one place it could have come from."
"The 'there' that seized this city's underworld?"
"Yes. There. And this is also a guess, but Master may already have died at their hands."
"……."
"T-to explain properly, the organization that currently holds the underworld hates those who serve the Light of Radiance. Because they believe such people deny the 'god' they themselves worship."
"…A god?"
Every fresh detail felt ominous. Nothing more, he thought, than a cult—the same breed as those counterfeit blood sects.
……And yet.
"An assassin order that appeared one day and seized Florentia's underworld. Terrible people, who worship a god no one can name."
"……."
The moment the name of his former workplace left the man's mouth, Lee Han's pupils had no choice but to widen.