The Knight Holds an Interview (5)
"—Raid! We're under attack!!"
The alarm pealed through the whole building. Anywhere else, a sound like that had only one proper result: people losing their heads entirely.
"Again?"
"Attacks have been awfully frequent this month."
"Who'd they say hit us this time?"
"A knight, I heard."
"Hmm. Think an alchemist would pay decent coin for a knight's carcass?"
Most of them only went on with a lazy game of poker, faces that showed not a scrap of alarm—as if this were something they had already lived through until they were sick of it. And that was true enough. They were the most hated organization in the kingdom.
The Guild Union. The body that stood for every guild gathered in the Royal Capital.
"Hmm. Don't give it too much attention. Let's get back to work."
Simon, the man who served as branch master of the Pendragon Guild Union, set no particular store by the word raid. To him it was the trivial sort of thing that simply happened, not worth so much as a glance.
"It's some noble with a grudge, sending a man after us. Could be that viscount's knight—the one who lost his land to us the other day."
"We've no shortage of people to send. Hmm... whom should I send?"
"Send some of the boys. He's a knight, so he'll be decently strong."
"Understood, Simon."
It was an attitude that edged into arrogance. A knight had come charging in himself, and they only thought, so it goes. But it wasn't empty arrogance. It was confidence.
Only those who knew understood it, but the guild kept a great many strong hands. Its principle was to take people in without much picking and choosing. So long as a man wasn't the utter dregs of humanity, the guild would more or less scout him. Quietly diverting a life that far gone did sometimes require an awkward bargain with the nobility—but if a little coin bought a strong arm, it was nothing but profit. And thanks to that principle, the strength arrayed inside the guild was considerable. Some of them could stand beside a respectable knight-captain, so the notion that a raider ought to make them tense was almost funny.
Even if a pack of assassins came storming in, they would have had no cause to panic. They simply did their work, the way other men passed an ordinary day.
"The production guilds asked us to look for someone who's gone missing, didn't they?"
"A man named Hans. A blacksmith of fairly high grade. There's concern he was taken by an Illegal Mage, and the time he's been missing... they say it may be ten years at the least."
"Then he's already dead. We won't find that one."
"But..."
"Yes, yes, I know. We still have to make a show of looking."
Simon was the head who bore responsibility for the guilds of the Pendragon Kingdom. Among the hundred and one guilds spread across the continent, he ran an association whose scale ranked third. A man operating a guild that large did not let sentiment botch the work. He preferred things handled efficiently, and fast. Quick, swift, and efficient—that process was as good as Simon's creed.
"Haah. Understood. I'll pass it along in the vein of 'we did our very best, but the result was poor.'"
"You always catch on. Next item, then. This business with Marquis Jenimia—how are we..."
THOOM!
THOOOOM!
"...If it's the matter of Marquis Jenimia, I understand it's already being handled. So you needn't concern yourself..."
KRAAANG!
"That may be so, but looking through these papers, there's something that keeps nagging at me..."
KWA-RAAAAANG!
"...Why is it so loud?"
"Eugh. Do you suppose the raider is actually skilled?"
"Not a sign it's going to quiet down. Tch."
"I'll step out."
"Hmm. Then I'll trouble you with this, Rem."
"I'll be back before this black tea cools."
Rail-thin, yet spoken of within the guild as Simon's left hand, Rem stepped outside. He was formerly of a renowned knight order, and his skill stood at the level of a vice-captain. Simon reckoned that with him gone out, the noise would die soon enough.
And sure enough—
"...There. It's finally quiet."
The outside fell silent with startling speed. A satisfied smile touched Simon's mouth, and he took up the meeting with his secretary once more—
KRAAANG—!!
"!?!"
Simon and the secretary's eyes blew wide as saucers. If the door had simply burst and something come through it, they would not have been this shocked....
"R-Rem?"
Rem appeared by smashing through the wall. More precisely—
"Ghhhkk...!"
Whether he had been used as the instrument for breaking that wall, there was not a sound place left on him. Not thirty seconds after he had walked out, the figure that returned was a wreck. The tidy swordsman of a moment before was gone. What streamed blood in a steady line was a swordsman beaten into the shape of a beggar.
"You insane—!"
His judgment was quick, and his instincts were first-rate. The instant he confirmed that Rem had been taken down, he hurled himself toward the window. Get through that window, and he could drop straight into the emergency escape. He had already laid plans for every contingency all through the place, and he fully expected the escape itself to be no trouble—
"—You the union master?"
KRA-AAAAANG!!
—right up until he got hit.
"—!!"
Blood slid. Simon stared at the sharp dagger that had skimmed his earlobe. It stood rigid, buried in the wall, and that alone declared how vicious its force had been. He felt it, solid as certainty: the thrower had missed on purpose.
And just as Simon began, slowly, to turn—
"UWOOOOOOH!!"
A barbarian mercenary burst in, using the shattered wall for a door!
Bent!!
A champion of the mystery-race barbarians. His skill was already famous even in the Royal Capital—a slaughterer who had single-handedly harvested the heads of two hundred vicious bandits. Not guild personnel, but a top-grade mercenary bought with vast sums and a long negotiation.
Good!
Seeing Bent unharmed, he realized the man had come late, as on any other day, after soaking himself in drink. That hardly mattered now. The priority was Bent removing the raider.
Simon looked at him with expectant eyes, and Bent, as if to answer that expectation, swung his fist with everything he had. A blow that could crumple even a shield of iron.
And the raider—
CLANG!
"...?"
"You done?"
...He had struck the man in the face. Why did it sound like hitting plate armor?
The raider hadn't even dodged Bent's fist. He took it, and he didn't yield an inch. He was simply calm.
"...Steel Rock?"
All at once Bent remembered the great rock that existed only on the Snake Forest Path, the barbarian homeland. Steel Rock—a stone of supreme hardness, which only a great warrior could break. And the instant he struck this man's body, that rock came to mind. He hadn't hit a person. He had hit a boulder dense with iron ore.
The raider, who might as well have been made of steel—no, who used a peculiar art—answered like this.
His fist shot out and hammered Bent with crushing force.
BOOM—!
The punch landed square in the gut. From Bent's body came a huge rupturing sound, like a drum bursting.
"...!!"
Fortunately, he didn't die. But with a pain that made death the kinder option, Bent dropped to his knees and blacked out. A single blow had brought down one top-grade mercenary. It was hollow enough to be absurd—and yet the mere fact that his belly hadn't split was proof that Bent was the real thing.
Which stood to reason. The raider—no, the knight—
"Hey. Anyone else coming?"
"..."
...was a monster.
"If there's anyone else, bring them quick. Don't save it to be a pain later."
"...Th-there isn't."
"Yeah? Then sit. You and I are going to have an interview."
"..."
"What, you don't want to?"
"O-of course I do!!"
"Hmm."
"..."
He swallowed.
To say it once more: Simon's instincts were good. And so he knew. If that answer had come even a little late—
That man would have killed me.
Without a moment's hesitation. Simon was sure of it. He would have staked his seat as union master.
—CRACK!
He sat in the ruined chair and, smooth as flowing water, drew a hand axe and threw it. Simon flinched, his guts going cold at the thought it might be coming for him—but fortunately, the place the axe was thrown was elsewhere.
"Th-that's an expensive desk..."
"Read the room, you idiot."
"...Yes, sir."
Shooting a glare at the tactless secretary, Simon looked at the hand axe standing dead through the center of the desk. It felt like a warning that the desk's fate could be his at any moment.
And just as he expected—
"I'm going to ask you one question. If the answer comes late, this axe goes into your brow, or your chest—or, if your luck's rotten, your crotch."
"..."
"Answer."
"Y-yes. Understood."
Since the day he had been named Guild Union master, had there ever been anyone who manhandled him like this?
...There had not.
Even those called great nobles, or merchant princes, might speak down to him, but they still showed respect. Some only watched his mood. The man before him now had no respect of any kind. All that came off him, thick enough to choke on, was the killing intent of someone ready to tear him apart whenever he pleased.
Wh-who is he? Wh-when did I ever get on a monster like this's bad side?
Even at a moment when his life might have flashed before his eyes, Simon did not stop thinking. As if to prove he hadn't won his way to this seat on a lucky hand of poker, he refused to quit watching, or calculating.
And to such a man—
"Your eyes are rolling like mad. Curious what I am?"
"...Yes. I am."
Simon asked it straight. If the other man offers you an opening and you don't bite, you're a damn fool. Bow thoroughly—but go out on nothing except a grovel, and the only end is being bitten to death. So he asked, even while the sweat poured off him like madness, and the man said—
"Lee Han. A demoted knight."
"..."
He gave his name far too easily. Simon went blank for a moment, then dragged that name out of a corner of his mind.
Lee Han.
The same name as the knight who had distinguished himself in the monster attack the other day. He didn't waste a fool's suspicion on it being someone else with the same name.
—!!
Instead his brain raced, hauling information up and sorting it over and over, until it even spit out an answer for why the man had come all the way here.
"S-sir! I-I'd like to clear up a misunderstanding first. W-with Lady Levi Fault, we reached an agreement through a legitimate contract. B-but if you charge in like this with no regard for anything, it will only put Lady Levi Fault in a difficult position..."
"...Your head turns fast. Three seconds, and you've got the whole reason I came here?"
"Haha..."
Again: he had not taken the union master's chair on a hand of poker.
Damn it! I knew it would be like this!
The moment he heard the name Lee Han, Simon's mind produced Levi Fault, and he grasped at once why the man had come.
So she was his disciple...
At present, the man called Lee Han was a surveillance target the Guild Union itself had classified as special grade. During the monster attack, a guild member had already observed that absurd martial power of his. So they knew the woman named Levi Fault was one of his disciples, and honestly, Simon had felt the danger even when he took this job. What if they brushed the man's temper the wrong way...
But the guild's leadership had been confident. Even if the noble lady Levi was a knight's disciple, he would not step into a matter between houses. That was overstepping the line by a wide margin. Even a knight with great power could not fail to know the duties he was meant to keep. That was what the leadership thought, and Simon had nodded along.
Which was why, as Guild Union master, he spoke with his head high.
"L-let me be clear. The guild's role is nothing more than that of an intermediary. Of course I know it isn't honorable, but I hardly see why we should be hounded like this. This can only be called oppression of the guild—"
"—And yet I saw that hunk of meat you people sicced on her, trying to toy with my disciple."
"..."
......He should have just shut his mouth. Let that dignity freeze and die!
The color left Simon until his face was past pale, and he heard the mutter tightening around him by degrees.
"Hey. Say you've got a kid who's like a little sister to you. And you see some punk bastard mocking her, messing with her. Does a man get pissed, or does he not?"
"........."
"I'm saying this so you don't go thinking I might be lying. That punk is lying in front of your front gate right now. Well, he's in no state to talk, but if you want, I'll use whatever it takes to make the bastard whole again. Then we can judge whether my words are a misunderstanding or the truth. How about it? Feel like trying?"
"...Th-that is..."
Simon couldn't get the words out properly. No—he didn't have the mind left to finish a sentence. Still, the man was not so bad a human being as to scold him for suddenly playing mute.
...However.
He was, without any doubt, a dangerous man who must never be touched.
"........."
...Simon couldn't even find the nerve to talk back, and so he held his tongue.
A soft shift of cloth—and he drove his head into the floor, skull first, as fast as his body would move.