Double Play
“Oh, for crying out loud. She acted so high and mighty, and in the end she was just another bitch who goes for looks and power.”
“Tell me about it. How long has she even known him before she’s spreading her legs?”
“Guess she found out how good spirit-realm dick tastes. Stuck-up little slut.”
Not every heart in a crowd beats the same way.
As the cheers of celebration and relief gradually died down, spiteful voices of condemnation began to surface one by one.
Most of them were aimed at Rebecca—
“Grit!”
“I’ll kill her, kill her, kill her, kill her…”
“He leaves me behind and takes in some dark elf like that?!”
—but the voices directed at Jun were not entirely absent either.
In fact, if one measured only the sheer malice packed into those words, the latter far outstripped the former.
“Ugh! Uuugh! They’re all so mean! Jun, you’re not just going to sit there and take it, right? Come on, let’s teach them a lesson.”
“My lord husband, this humble one shares Elder Sister’s thoughts. Those people must not be left alone.”
“Leave trash like that alone and they’ll never shut up. I understand you prefer to avoid a scene, but if you let this stand, a far greater one will find you.”
Fortuna, grinding her teeth in fury with her wings standing stiff, finally lost her patience and pressed herself against Jun’s cheek, urging him to punish them. Dohwa and Rebecca, equally seething, piled on right after her.
“I know. I wasn’t planning on sitting still either.”
“Then—”
“No. That is still way over the top.”
Jun shook his head and stopped Rebecca, who had already pulled out a bomb with a sunny smile. She drooped her head in disappointment.
“I’ll handle this side. You three take care of that side.”
Jun claimed the people who had insulted Rebecca for himself and left those who had insulted him to his wives.
In matters like this, justification mattered. Ideally the person who had been insulted should settle it themselves—
If I do that, I might end up with a knife in my gut.
Jun rubbed his strangely throbbing stomach and surveyed the faces of those currently bad-mouthing him.
Every last one of them was a woman.
And every last one of them had seen his bare face at least once.
There were three men mixed in as well, but Jun desperately looked away. He had no desire to see the faces of men wreathed in the gloomy yin energy of discarded women.
They fought so hard before… why are they stuck together now?
At the center of that group stood the three women he had most recently partied with—the noble second daughter, the female mage, and the elven archer. Their eyes were so full of venom that they looked ready to stab him in the stomach that very second.
They said a woman scorned could bring frost in midsummer; looking into their eyes, Jun finally understood where the saying came from.
Leave them alone and something ugly was going to happen—no doubt about it.
Fortuna and the other wives seemed to feel the same; their expressions turned grave as they nodded, accepting the task.
Having entrusted that group to his wives, Jun set off toward the people who had hurled the most crude and blatant insults at Rebecca.
Even as he approached, they sat at their table without the slightest concern, casually raising their cups.
When he finally stopped right in front of them, they offered no apology. Instead they lifted their glasses higher and began to sneer.
“Looks like the monster who put a leash on that bomb maniac has business with us.”
“Don’t tell me you came over just because we cracked a few pumpkin seeds? Pretty thin-skinned for someone with your power. Disappointing, oppa.”
“Heh heh heh. Hey, monster-boy. Why don’t you take a good look at your wife? She looks like she’s got a nice, open heart. Oh—have you not seen them yet? Want me to check them out for you?”
The bald barbarian warrior who spoke last spread both hands wide and made a crude squeezing gesture, clearly mocking Jun.
No one needed to ask what the gesture meant.
Hahaha!
The rest of the table erupted in laughter. So did the surrounding adventurers. Birds of a feather—every one of them had been bad-mouthing Rebecca as well.
Standing in the middle of that ridicule, Jun said nothing. He simply looked them over.
Slowly. Extremely carefully. In a way that made it obvious he was burning every face into his memory.
Before long his eyes had taken on a cold, merciless blue light.
A shiver ran through them—the instinctive dread of prey standing before an irresistible predator.
The laughter died of its own accord, replaced by a heavy silence.
Only then did Jun speak.
“People like you never stop amazing me.”
“Talking shit behind someone’s back is fine. You can dislike a person. But why do you have to say it to their face?”
“Hm? Why, exactly? Did you think I’d just sit here and take it like some idiot?”
“If that’s what you thought, answer me. Why? Why did you think I’d do that?”
Jun’s question rang out low but clear.
No one present could fail to hear it. Anyone in the guild hall had no choice but to hear it.
Yet neither the group he was addressing nor the adventurers watching with eager interest gave any answer.
They couldn’t.
His question felt like he was deciding which prey to take first; open your mouth and you would become the first meal.
So every one of them clamped their jaws shut.
Even their breathing went silent, just to avoid becoming prey.
“I-if you’re not going to just take it… what are you planning to do? Crack pumpkin seeds like us?”
After a moment the hunter who had first opened his mouth—apparently the leader—broke the silence. His expression was grim, as if he refused to lose face.
“Crack pumpkin seeds? Why the hell would I waste time doing that when I’ve got a perfectly good body?”
“You’re going to use force? Sorry, but I know my place. I have zero interest in dueling a monster like you.”
“Well then, I’ll just have to make you.”
“You’re going to start a fight just like that? Aren’t you afraid of the guild’s sanctions?”
The hunter lifted his unusually prominent jaw as if daring Jun to try.
It would not have been strange for a fist to fly into that jaw at any second, yet the man felt no worry at all.
Even a guy like you has to fear the guild’s sanctions.
Guild sanctions were harsher than those of almost any other organization, and especially so when it came to fights between adventurers.
Most adventurers possessed powerful abilities; once a fight broke out, minor injuries almost never resulted.
A guild whose purpose was labyrinth conquest could not afford to lose fighting strength over such stupid reasons. After much deliberation they had chosen to raise the penalties so high that no one would even dare start a brawl.
For that reason, even when feelings ran high, adventurers settled things with words or with a formal duel under guild staff supervision—never with fists.
Even the bomb maniac herself had always been extremely careful whenever she used explosives for revenge, precisely to avoid those sanctions.
So neither the hunter nor anyone around him ever imagined what came next.
Thud!
“Urgh!”
No one expected Jun to actually drive his fist into the hunter’s jaw.
Thud! Roll, roll—
The hunter, catching the blow clean, was launched backward and tumbled across the floor.
Everyone inside the guild hall stared with open mouths at the man twitching intermittently on the ground.
“Y-you!”
“Me what?!”
Crack!
“Guek!”
“O-oppa! Wait a second!”
“Since when am I your oppa?!”
Thud!
“Keheuk!”
The barbarian warrior and the dancer who looked at least twice Jun’s age finally realized what was happening and rose from their seats—only to receive equally fair death-punches.
The barbarian, who apparently possessed a physical-type ability, merely dropped to his knees without losing consciousness. The dancer, like the hunter, could not withstand the superhuman punching power and blacked out on the spot.
“Fuck. Hey, you crazy bastard! You actually hit us just because we told you to?!”
“Of course I hit you. That’s what I trained this power for.”
Five years earlier, on the day he had nearly drowned in a lake, Jun had sworn an oath.
He would grow strong enough that no one could ever control him at will, strong enough that no one would ever look down on him again.
To keep that oath he had trained his body without missing a single day, swallowed elixirs, and dragged imagination into reality.
It had been grueling work, but because of it he now possessed power.
It still fell short of the level he desired, yet it was already stronger than anything the people in front of him possessed.
So he had to use it. That was why he had obtained it in the first place.
Even if a larger organization decided to sanction him for it.
Fortunately—or unfortunately—he was not the only one who thought that way.
BOOM!
“Kyaaaaah!”
“She actually set them off!”
“That crazy dark elf! Argh! Argh! Somebody stop this fairy and the spirit! Hurry!”
Apparently it was not only him.
“I told you not to use the bombs…”
At Jun’s muttered complaint, the people who had been staring blankly toward the explosion turned to look at him as if he were the mad one.
The barbarian warrior voiced what they were all thinking.
“…That’s what you’re going to criticize right now? You people are completely insane. Now I see it—like really does attract like.”
“Is that a compliment?”
“Yeah. Perfect match made in heaven, you son of a bitch.”
“Thanks. And good night.”
Jun gifted another death-punch to the barbarian who kept running his mouth even while on his knees.
As the man finally joined the other two in unconsciousness, Jun poked him a few times to make sure he wasn’t faking it. The onlookers all thought the same thing:
The barbarian hadn’t been wrong.
“All of you were talking shit about me just now, weren’t you?”
“““We weren’t!”””