Chapter 11
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 11
Ilay and I entered the visitation room.
Lillian Ramones was wearing a black dress embroidered with purple patterns. The moment she saw me, she spat out thorny words.
"Luka, why have you been avoiding me?"
It seemed her pride was wounded. After all, she had probably never been rejected by anyone in her entire life.
"...Because I'm not interested."
I spoke coldly, not even bothering to sit down. I intended to draw a clear line before things became any more troublesome.
"Luka, still..."
Ilay tried to mediate with a smile on his face. I didn't even look at him.
"Shut up, Ilay. This situation is annoying enough as it is."
At my words, Lillian's eyes widened in shock.
The Kartika family ranked higher than the Ramones family, and I had just spoken rudely to a young master of that very family in front of her. It certainly wasn't a normal sight.
"Did I do something wrong to you? Or is there something about me you don't like?"
Lillian stood up and walked over to stand in front of me.
"I don't have the luxury of dating. As you know, I grew up in an orphanage. Unlike you, if I slip up even once, I'll never be able to climb back up."
"Then wouldn't it be even better for you to get close to me?"
"You don't understand what I'm saying, Lillian Ramones. If I rely on you to achieve success and climb up... everything I have could crumble at a single whim of yours. But a tower built with one's own strength doesn't collapse so easily."
"Are you saying you won't benefit from a noble family while being close friends with Ilay Kartika? That's a contradiction."
Lillian glanced at Ilay as she spoke. She might think that way, but it wasn't something she should have said right in front of him.
Ilay wore an awkward expression. It seemed he, too, was looked down upon by Lillian to some extent. Then again, he wasn't the type to be harsh with a girl who was practically his younger sister's age.
"I don't associate with Ilay because he's a Kartika. I do so because he's a comrade and a friend whom I can trust with my life. I'm sure Ilay feels the same way. What protects your life on the battlefield isn't a family's prestige or reputation—it's only yourself and the comrade standing beside you."
I spoke without even looking at Ilay. I didn't want to see him grinning like an idiot.
Speechless, Lillian could only glare at me with a resentful expression. It would actually have made me feel better if she'd just cursed at me and stormed out.
I even braced myself to be slapped, suppressing my combat reflexes.
"...You don't intend to give me even the slightest chance, do you?"
Lillian spoke as if suppressing her emotions. She looked up at me, then lowered her head.
I felt a pang of guilt, but I didn't want to leave even a shred of hope.
"If you have nothing else to say, I'll be going."
Saying that, I turned around and left the visitation room. Ilay didn't follow me out; he stayed behind to talk to Lillian.
It was a difficult situation for Ilay, who had acted as the mediator. But he'd brought it on himself.
I sat on a bench some distance from the room and waited for him. Before long, Ilay walked out and plopped down next to me.
"Luka."
"What?"
"That was too harsh. You didn't have to be that cold."
Ilay sighed. He seemed exhausted from trying to comfort Lillian.
"If I hadn't gone that far, she wouldn't have given up."
"Well, that's true. But why do you reject her so vehemently? You could at least try seeing her casually."
I couldn't answer right away. Even I couldn't immediately think of a reason. It was just an intuitive judgment—I simply felt that rejecting her was the right thing to do.
I retraced my train of thought. To me, Lillian was an unknown variable.
"...Because I don't know why she's clinging to me. I can understand why the late Claude tried to introduce her to me. He saw me up close, recognized my potential, and wanted to tie us together as relatives. But Lillian doesn't know anything about me. Yet, she's approaching someone like me, who has nothing to show for himself. There must be a reason."
If that reason was mere curiosity, I had all the more reason to keep her away. Curiosity is an emotion that evaporates easily. Even slum children throw their toys into the trash the moment they get bored, as if they'd never cherished them at all.
"Simply put, you're rejecting her just because you don't know her. Keep that up and you'll die a lonely bachelor."
Ilay jabbed playfully. I was about to snap back but held my tongue.
I didn't know Lillian. I couldn't understand her motives for approaching me. Her identity and intentions were entirely unknown.
"No matter what you say, my decision remains the same. Don't bring up Lillian again."
The unknown is dangerous. I had no desire to be the first person to taste a strange fruit without knowing whether it was poisonous.
* * *
It was about a month after I began learning the Akies Combat Style under Kinuan. Kinuan took me and headed toward the Lower District.
We took the elevator down and passed through the checkpoint that served as the boundary between the Upper and Lower Districts.
"A familiar place for both you and me," Kinuan said as we entered the Lower District.
The Upper District was at the center of the city, while the Lower District lay on the outskirts. The further out one went, the closer public security got to a total vacuum, and the streets were filthy with trash that hadn't been cleared in decades.
To be honest, I had forgotten my roots for a while—that sticky, filthy life at the bottom.
Returning here felt strange.
"Hey, get out of the way."
"You were the one standing there like an idiot, you bastard."
Harsh words flew back and forth on the streets. Walking down the main road, I witnessed two brawls between vagrants and almost had my pocket picked four times.
The acrid, lukewarm air.
Memories of the past kept resurfacing. My mind drifted back in time.
Beneath the capital, Akbaran, lay a volcanic zone. The geothermal energy drawn from there sustained the entire city. Pollutants and heat unfiltered by the power plants drifted through the Lower District, where the poor resided.
"Luka, this way."
Kinuan, his hood pulled low, looked back at me and pointed down an alleyway.
He knows the geography of the Lower District better than I do.
He had likely frequented this place.
Even if he was originally from the Lower District, would someone who'd been an Imperial Guardsman for decades still be so knowledgeable about it, with reason to visit so often? A seed of doubt planted itself in my mind.
Step, step.
I kept my senses sharp as I walked down the alley. I could feel the gazes of vagrants and beggars on me. If I showed even a moment of vulnerability, they'd turn into robbers in an instant.
The alleyways, winding between buildings that had undergone endless illegal expansions, were like a maze. Only a few faint shafts of light reached the ground, like thread passing through the eye of a needle. The deeper we went, the more the stench of rotting organic matter and the metallic tang of rusted iron assaulted my nose.
This is unsettling.
I raised my arm and stared at my prosthetic, which didn't even have artificial skin. The prosthetic arm and leg I was currently wearing were low-output models, barely sufficient for daily life. The sudden drop in performance was terrifying. It felt as though my limbs were shackled.
Kinuan had forced me to equip these low-output prosthetics for this outing. Whatever his purpose, I had to do as he said if I wanted to receive his training.
With a body like this, I can't even dodge bullets. If someone ambushes me from outside my sensory range, I'll be completely helpless.
Because of this, I was more tense than usual.
Though it feels like I haven't really learned much under Kinuan so far...
For a month, I'd visited Kinuan almost every day. Each time, we had five sparring sessions packed into about an hour. There was no actual instruction.
Rather than teaching me directly, Kinuan wanted me to steal his techniques on my own.
"If you don't have the sharp eyes to steal a technique just by watching, you wouldn't be able to learn it even if I taught you."
Kinuan had said that, as if sensing my dissatisfaction. He wasn't wrong. Over time, I'd also grasped the nature of the Akies Combat Style to some extent.
...The Akies Combat Style was starkly different from any combat style I'd learned so far.
If my understanding was correct, Akies was a method of recycling the combat arts I already possessed.
Traditional combat training was a process of learning and mastering specific new techniques. However, the Akies Combat Style analyzed, dismantled, and reassembled my existing abilities. In other words, it was closer to optimizing one's combat system.
To borrow Kinuan's phrasing, he even used the term "Meta Combat Style."
That's why there are so many half-wits running around claiming to use the Akies Combat Style after mastering only its superficial aspects.
True masters of the Akies Combat Style were likely extremely rare.
Before long, the narrow alley began to widen. The crowd grew denser, and the area buzzed with activity.
"The day I became an Imperial Guard Cadet, I thought I'd never have to return to the Lower District. I wanted to live a life where I didn't have to breathe the same air as these dregs."
I spoke as I kicked a pickpocket who was reaching for my pocket. The thief cursed and scurried away. That made five.
"You're the type to succeed. You're highly driven, and you have the talent to back it up."
I couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic or praising me.
Walking a bit further, the alley ended, opening up into a wide clearing and a market. Looking up, precariously expanded structures branched out like spiderwebs, blotting out the sky. Beneath these buildings, which looked ready to collapse at any moment, people were buying and selling goods.
"A black market."
I said, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Kinuan. Even I had never ventured this far.
"The freest place in the Empire," Kinuan said, his eyes gleaming.
"The epicenter of lawless chaos," I muttered grumpily. The reason I'd never visited the black market was simple.
Because it's absurdly dangerous.
More than a few children had vanished after visiting the black market out of curiosity. Even if they did return, they were usually missing an eye or an organ or two.
Still, seeing the black market in person—a place I had only imagined during my childhood—felt strange.
...They're openly selling military-grade gear, even if it's a few generations old.
Military weapons and prosthetic bodies were laid out on stalls for sale. The shopkeepers were armed to a man, and gang members, acting as the local authority, loitered around the streets as if marking their territory.
I stopped in my tracks.
Kinuan, who had been walking ahead, had stopped too. He was staring at a building guarded by gang members.
"The spectator entrance is over there," a gang member on guard duty told Kinuan. A single-bar goggle was grafted where his eyes should have been, and unshielded circuits glowed beneath his artificial skin like a boastful tattoo.
"I have business with the manager here," Kinuan said calmly. His confident attitude made the gang member hesitate.
"What's your relationship with Boss Aleph?"
"Ah, so the current manager's name is Aleph."
The gang member's face contorted the moment he heard those words.
"What a crazy bastard! Get the hell out of here right now!"
The gang member threatened Kinuan, pointing his gun at him. It was a rare sight. How many people in the Empire had ever pointed a gun at an Imperial Guardsman and lived to tell the tale...?
If Kinuan revealed his identity here, that gang member would probably piss himself and collapse.
Tap.
Kinuan tapped his thigh with his finger. It was a signal to me.
Slide.
I lowered my stance and slipped out of the gang member's line of sight. Then I lunged forward in an instant.
Creak!
I approached from his flank, wrapping my arms around his neck and shoulder to lock him in a chokehold. The gun barrel jerked upward, clearing Kinuan from the line of fire.
The gang member trembled violently in my grip. Since I'd locked his joints, he wouldn't be able to break free through sheer physical strength alone.
Kinuan snatched the gun from the gang member's hand, spun it around, and pressed the muzzle against the man's forehead.
"I suggest you bring Aleph out right now. It won't be a bad deal for you either. Nod if you understand."
The gang member nodded frantically. Seeing Kinuan's nod, I released my hold.
"Ugh, cough... You..."
Swallowing his curses, the gang member hurried inside the building. I watched him go, then voiced my suspicion.
"By the way, what kind of place is this?"
"An arena."
I fell silent for a moment, as if my brain had short-circuited. I think I finally understood why Kinuan had brought me here—and why he'd ordered me to equip these weak prosthetics.
"...Is it what I think it is?"
"I like how sharp you are. Saves me the trouble of explaining everything."
Suppressing the urge to punch Kinuan in the face, I let out a deep sigh.
Creak.
I looked down at my hand. I could feel its feeble grip. I would have to fight in an arena with hands that couldn't even crush a pebble. A sigh escaped my lips already.