Episode 15 – The Knight Holds a Banquet (3)
Hans Schmidt, instructor of the metallurgy faculty. Dorothy, lecturer of the art faculty. Kam of the statistics faculty. Den of the architecture faculty. Allen de Wagner, professor of the history faculty.
They were renowned even within the Academy — outstanding talents, and a few of them already stood in the ranks of true masters. And yet here they were, of all places, in Parasite Narak, a slum beyond the reach of the law.
It was a street even elite soldiers shrank from entering. These people had walked in as if they had every right? Names of that weight?
That alone was an open confession that something stank.
And yet.
"W-wait! Th-this is a misunderstanding! There seems to be some misunderstanding, so let us talk...!"
"Th-that's right, Sir Turtle! L-let's settle this with words! Th-there's a terrible misunderstanding between us!"
"Ahem. Impatient fellow, isn't he. We all have our reasons—"
Thuk.
"Ah..."
Den, the master of architecture, dropped to his knees. A throwing needle — a concealed weapon assassins favored — had buried itself dead in his chest, and he vomited blood as he went down.
"Coated it in goblin filth-poison. You know how nasty that stuff is to purge, all the junk mixed in? Bet it hurts like hell."
"Wh-what have you done...!"
A hidden weapon, thrown without a word of parley. Was there any outrage in the world to match it? They burned with genuine fury—
"—Ha. How in the world did he know?"
Wooong.
A sneering laugh, and mana flared. It was nothing like the beautiful rippling light of Irene Windler's magic. This was the color of ditchwater, foul past describing. Even so, he knew it for mana.
...It was also the color shown by illegal mages, the ones who had thrown human decency away.
Fwoosh!
The needle melted and vanished without a trace. Den had already burned the poison out with mana.
"Khk. Vicious stuff!"
Goblin filth-poison lived up to its name. He had purged it, yes, but the brew was laced with the toxins of countless filths, and even keeping his feet was a struggle. Without mana, he would never have endured.
"You lowborn knight. How dare you...!"
The good-natured smiles were gone. All five of them looked at him now with nothing but contempt. Their eyes were full of rage, and Lee Han met them without a flicker.
No. If anything, he was so cold the air itself turned murderous.
Hans flinched, sensing the wrongness of it, but he clenched his teeth and refused to let it show.
"You. How did you know?"
"Know what."
"How you saw through what we are, I said!"
"That's what you're curious about? Right now?"
"It is a mage's passion for learning."
"Passion for learning, my ass. Plague-spreading vermin like you."
"......"
There was still no laugh on him, but a heat smoldered somewhere behind his eyes, and Lee Han snapped back as if he could not believe what he was hearing.
"Brainless pests. You made it obvious you meant to use people, and you thought nobody would notice? Was it fun, watching that idiot Odewal dance the way you wanted? Morons who think they're clever. Ah — was that rude of me? Actual imbeciles are smarter than you, and kinder. You're less use than maggots and filthier than rapists. There isn't a comparison in the world low enough to fit you. Not one."
"...We will never let you live."
"You're not gnolls, and you're not kobolds. So why do you keep barking like dogs?"
"!!"
Whoosh!
Further talk was pointless. They drew the staves from their robes and raised them high, ready to punish the insolent insect that had insulted them.
But—
Shhk.
"Who the hell are you pointing at, you son of a bitch."
Spurt!
"Gyaaaah!"
Hans, the spell-slinger who did not know the first rule of manners, lost his wrist to the axe.
If anyone asked when he had noticed how wrong they were, he would have answered like this: from the very start.
They were that stupid.
"Blow, blood-wind of the north wind!"
⟨ Blood Wind of the North ⟩
Dorothy — no. This woman had only stolen Dorothy's skin. There was no scent of paint or graphite on her fingertips, nothing of what belonged to a painter. A famous painter ought to carry the smell of her own atelier. All that came off her was the stink of a rotting corpse.
And she wanted him to believe she was a painter?
Laughable.
Whoosh!
Wind truly sharp as a blade poured down on Lee Han. He did not care. He charged.
It was wind magic that could split living skin easily enough.
Thud!
"Urp!"
"Brush your teeth. You stink."
Crack!
As if a blade could so much as scratch him. He did not have a mark on him. He seized the mage's jaw and crushed it on the spot.
No more chants for her. Rice gruel, for whatever life she had left — and that was assuming she survived.
"R-Reni!"
"That her name? Then where's the real Dorothy?"
"You bastard! Let go of her!"
"Sure. Letting go."
The mage's body spun through the air and was flung at the others. They reached with telekinesis to catch her, but unfortunately—
Thuk!
"!!?"
"Y-you lunatic!"
Lee Han's sword ran her through the belly, and the blade, still buried in her, pierced another mage's throat dead on.
"Krgh...!?"
Blood fountained.
Den, of the architecture faculty. For a man rumored to be a great master, there was no master's dignity on him at all. His hands were far too soft and pretty for a craftsman.
If you mean to wear a disguise, wear it properly.
"Pierce! Sharper — crueler!"
⟨ Pierce ⟩
"Spread, fire! Burn hot, blaze up, like magma...!"
⟨ Fire ⟩
Chants that were little different from screams.
But these bastards were fools. What idiot in the world cast magic with a knight already this close?
Whoom!
Crack!
Lee Han's hand axe punched through the exact center of Kam's chest.
A talent of the statistics faculty, one even the royal house had coveted — and all that came off him was the reek of drugs, his eyes hollow as empty jars. Nothing in the skull. That was what it meant.
"Fi—"
⟨ Chant Broken ⟩
The last of them tried, somehow, to finish a chant anyway.
"Shut up!"
A roar greater than a lion's — no, greater than a great tiger's — crashed down, and the chant canceled at once. Lee Han's great shout, heavy with spirit, rang through the whole street hard enough to crack the old buildings.
It was not a roar that could even be set beside the Lion's Roar he had shown the students the day before.
And a roar in which killing intent and spirit were mixed was, by itself, a powerful—
"M-my ears!? I-I can't hear...!"
"Aaaagh...!"
—blow.
Mid-chant, the mages' spells snarled, and agony wrung their bodies inside out. But the greatest harm, and the greatest pain, came from Lee Han's roar. Blood ran from ears, eyes, and noses, and one of them fainted where he stood.
Allen.
A lecher fit him better than any legendary historian — a man who gave off nothing but the scent of women's powder and blood.
"Not even trying to hide it, you fucking bastards."
Parasite Narak. People called this street a cancer on the kingdom, its parasite, did they?
Wrong.
The parasites with truly no use at all were those things. They pulled other people's skins over themselves and lived by parasitizing other people's lives. That was Lee Han's honest judgment.
"H-how..."
Hans, the only mage still on his feet, shook from head to toe. In a breath, four comrades had vomited blood and either fainted or died.
Overwhelming. Yes. Overwhelming.
Just as a man crushes vermin, he was grinding the race called mage under his heel like pests.
"S-Sir Turtle..."
"Real convenient. A minute ago it was this bastard and that bastard, and now it's a title? Pick one."
Step by step, he was closing in.
Hans thought the fear would drive him mad. What kind of monster was this? They had said the man was nothing but a demoted knight. That was not the skill of a man who gets demoted.
"Y-you — what are you, really! Wh-why did you come to the Academy, I'm asking!"
"......"
"A-are you after it too!? Th-the musket schematic the great alchemist left behind — did you sneak in to take it!? I-I'll give it to you! I'll hand it over, so please, just my life—"
"You make me sick. Shut your mouth."
Crack!
"Gyaaaah!"
He stomped the ankle flat. There was no mercy in it. He went a step further and seized the jaw with brutal force.
Crunch.
"!!!"
He broke the jaw. Crushed it with strength alone.
And then—
Thuk.
...he drove a throwing needle into the heart.
"Mages don't die easy, even with a needle in the heart. Maybe because it's a core organ of mana, but they're definitely tougher than an ordinary person. Flip side is, pin the heart like this and they can't use mana either."
"!!"
Jaw shattered, mana sealed, Hans — no, the vermin who only used Hans's name — thrashed and clawed in the pain. Useless flailing. Getting free of Lee Han's hand was the same as a monkey with its fist stuck in a crocodile's mouth telling itself it could still run.
Lee Han let out a breath, planted a foot on him, and looked up at the sky.
Honestly.
"These damn mosquitoes. I catch them and catch them, so why do they keep coming?"
He grumbled like a man swatting mosquitoes that refused to quit even after the height of summer was over. As if what he had caught were not people at all.
Meanwhile, as if to prove that Parasite Narak had more visitors than usual today, there were those secretly watching the fight between the mages and Lee Han.
"Astonishing. They were no ordinary men, and he beat them that easily."
"Not just raw strength. There's experience in it, too? He keeps pulling out something new."
Jack had it right.
These were not the half-baked rabble the students had beaten today. Every one of them was a Rank 2 illegal mage who did not hesitate at murder or at crime. And Rank 2 was, in every case, a matter that required a Senior Knight to step in personally — a high knight, if not that. From Rank 2 on, their force and their killing power were nothing to take lightly.
And yet the time it took to put men like that down had not even been a minute.
It had looked like a man playing with a child. Anyone with a wide eye for battle, though, would have known. His way of fighting was specialized for subduing mages and killing them, and it was a considerably clever, hardened tactic.
"He's learned how to fight mages. No — how to kill them. Properly. Honed it across fight after real fight."
"Does he eat, and then go kill nothing but mages?"
"Might be."
"......"
Truly, he might have done nothing but kill mages. Otherwise the skill made no sense. Some private grudge, perhaps?
Then—
"—How long are you going to stand there and watch?"
"......"
"Come out. You arrogant little lord."
"......"
Roen, youngest lord of the North, gave a bitter smile.
So he noticed after all.
He had guessed those eyes could not be deceived, but being found out felt wretchedly empty.
"My lord..."
"Let's go."
"If we go, I have a feeling we're going to be beaten."
"Today, I suppose I have to take it."
Roen admitted it readily. Even if the man beat him bloody, he had decided to accept it — today, of all days.
And with reason.
"You're here, you arrogant bastard."
"...I apologize."
"Damn right you should. I left some of them alive on purpose, because of you."
Tok.
"......"
A crumpled sheet of paper struck Roen's chest and fell.
It was the paper Lee Han had found inside the scarecrow the day before. He had not known who had given it to him, but the instant Roen stood in front of him, he knew.
"Right. I didn't kill them. Just like you said."
Knew that this was the one who had seen straight through him.
Roen nodded, as if simply granting the fact, and looked around.
"Three of them appear to be dead."
"I killed exactly two. The woman — I missed the organs and put it through her belly. So she's still breathing. She could bleed out any time, and that wouldn't be strange. Not my problem."
"...I see."
Even so, the only ones he had kept alive were the ones who ought not to die comfortably. Did he have some knack for reading the weight of a crime?
...Well. Knack or not.
"Splendid."
It was nothing short of the result he had wanted so badly. At that word of praise, Lee Han—
"Splendid, am I? Then let's keep it light. One hit."
"...Ah."
The moment the prediction became real, cold sweat broke on Roen. He had steeled himself well enough, but looking around now, he felt it. A street sprayed thick with blood. Strength that could mash a man's jaw like jelly.
If he took one light hit, he could not swear he would see tomorrow's sun.
Should I have left the message more politely?
The regressor learned all over again that regret, however early it comes, always comes too late.