Chapter 125
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 125
"This looks like some kind of virtual simulation program. It's going to be tricky," Gilda said, projecting the restored data onto a hologram.
A waterfall of complex, incomprehensible characters cascaded down.
"Can you run it?"
"I'd genuinely love to help, but... this is beyond what I can do. We either convert the data to work with current-generation devices, or we track down a virtual reality device from that era. The latter's practically impossible, so the former is our only real option."
Gilda was a technician and mechanic—not a hacker, not a programmer.
And Giselle's field is engineering too.
I was now convinced Agatha Custoria had gone senile.
If she was going to hand me the chip, the least she could've done was make it readable!
Irritation prickled at me. I had no idea how much this data would actually help. For all I knew, it might do more harm than good.
"What level of skill would it take to convert this kind of data? Skip the jargon and put it in terms I'll understand."
Gilda propped her chin on her hand, thought for a moment, and gave me a short answer.
"First-rate."
She raised a single index finger. Very easy to understand indeed.
There were only two people I knew in this field who could be called first-rate.
Director Jin Gau... and Barbara the witch.
The problem was that neither of them could be trusted.
"I'll figure out the rest somehow," I said, sliding a credit chip across the table.
Gilda's eyes widened when she saw the number.
"This is way too much, but I won't say no."
I took both Agatha's chip and the chip holding the restored data.
"Watch yourself for a while, Gilda. They say a storm's coming."
"You too, Luka."
We said our goodbyes, and I left the workshop. Outside, the air was dark and cool.
Click, click.
I pressed the electronic mask to the lower half of my face. It expanded and molded itself over my jaw and mouth.
The Lower District was a labyrinth of tangled buildings and alleyways. Easy for an outsider to lose their way—especially on a dark night.
Against my usual habit, I kept to the busy streets and main avenues. Taking the long way seemed the smarter choice. Right now, getting tangled up in some incident or drawing attention would do me no favors.
"Bang! Bang! I'm Luka, the Noble Hunter!"
"You idiot! Lord Luka uses a sword, not a gun!"
"You're both wrong! He's a hunter, so he'd use a bow! Take that!"
Since it was a crowded area, children were tearing around playing. I watched them as I passed.
The kids wore combat suits cobbled together from plastic and cardboard. Because the rumors about me ran so wild and contradictory, each of them clutched whatever weapon struck their fancy, running around screaming, "I'm Luka!"
To be clear—until recently, this kind of atmosphere would never have been tolerated in Akbaran.
Just because it was the Lower District didn't mean nobles were absent. A person could be killed for nothing more than offending one.
Right now was a very peculiar exception.
Akbaran is on the verge of the Storm Era.
From what I'd heard, riots and unrest tended to break out in certain areas during the Storm Era. Seizing on the chaos, the people of the Lower District would sometimes strike out at the residents of the Upper District. It was a time when even the high-and-mighty nobles had to keep their heads down.
...And ever since the street parade, a fierce anti-noble sentiment has sunk its roots in.
A crowd swept up in madness was bound to act irrationally.
If a noble scolded those children now, they might well get beaten to death by the Lower District mob. Though in the current climate, surely no noble would be fool enough to try...
"What? A noble hunter? You shouldn't be throwing around phrases like 'hunting nobles' so casually! You understand me?!"
And right there stood a textbook example of exactly such a fool.
"Hmm..."
I pressed my lips together and swallowed a sigh.
A familiar young noble. At this point I had to wonder if some twisted thread of fate bound the two of us together.
Enrico Lagan.
Enrico was picking a fight with the street kids.
Snap!
He snatched their weapons and smashed them. A plastic sword shattered pitifully against his knee.
You really are petty down to the marrow, Enrico. It's almost impressive.
I marveled at just how small-minded Enrico could be.
"Darling, s-stop! They're only children playing."
A pretty woman clung to Enrico's side. On the surface she looked like a middle-class lady, but I knew exactly where she came from.
A Doll from La Vie en Rose.
"Doll" was the term for the working women of La Vie en Rose.
After the Kartika Building incident, I'd reached out to La Vie en Rose and set Enrico up with them. Martina Diva must have jumped at the opportunity and assigned him a suitable woman.
That "suitable woman" was the lady currently at Enrico's side.
"Children playing? Does talking about killing nobles sound like a joke to you? The mood lately is downright bizarre! Bizarre! And I know Lucaus very well. We're close friends! A man like him would never side with lowlifes like you!"
Since when had I been Enrico's close friend? I'd just learned a fact about myself I never knew.
Either way, Enrico was doing nothing but digging his own grave. The crowd's attention had swung toward him, and some of the stares were sharp with open hostility.
Are you gunning for the Idiot of the Year award or something...?
The woman beside Enrico tugged frantically at his arm.
"I said let's just go. We're going to end up in real trouble!"
She stamped her feet, unable to stay still.
"I may be no Saint, but I am still a man of the Lagan family. I can't just let these rebellious brats run their mouths. They need to be taught a proper lesson. That is a noble's duty—though a commoner like you wouldn't understand."
It was genuinely astonishing how he managed to say the exact wrong thing every single time. If there were a course on "How to Be a Despicable Noble," he had the talent to make a fortune off it.
I watched the farce unfold, fighting the urge to applaud.
Enrico, I saved your life from an armed helicopter last time. Not that you'd remember.
This time, even if things went sideways, I had no intention of stepping in. Maybe someone like Enrico would finally wake up after getting mobbed and beaten here. Or, if his luck was bad enough, he'd simply die.
"Ah! You're a young master of the Lagan family! My lord, my lord! I've long held the deepest respect for the nobles of House Lagan."
A swaggering man shoved his way through the crowd. At a glance he looked like a common thug, but the perfect balance of his stride betrayed real training.
"Who are you?"
Enrico frowned. The thug planted himself behind the children, wearing a grotesque grin—as if deliberately playing the villain.
"Just think of me as someone who isn't too pleased with the mood around here. Say what you like, but it's the noble lords who've steered the Akresia Empire this far. Watching a noble lord get disrespected on the street was more than I could stomach, so I stepped in. Now, now—you said you were Lord Enrico, yes?"
It was Enrico's woman who first caught the sinister aura rolling off the thug.
"Darling, let's go, now. I'll do whatever you want later! You said there was something you wanted to try last time—ah!"
The thug slapped the woman across the face without a shred of hesitation.
"Don't butt in, whore. A noble lord doesn't stir himself for such base appetites. Isn't that right, Young Master?"
The thug grinned, baring pointed teeth. A violent, suffocating aura poured off of him.
"Y-yes, of course. You—you! Who do you think you are, speaking to me like that?!"
Cowed by the thug, Enrico turned on his own woman and berated her instead. I could hardly believe such a pathetic excuse for a man existed in this world.
"Lord Enrico Lagan. You've got a gun, don't you? Ah, there it is. Grip it tight, both hands. Let's put down just one of them, as an example. So none of them ever dares mouth off about being a noble hunter again."
The situation was tilting somewhere dangerous. The thug was goading Enrico toward murder.
"Huh? What? No, th-there's no need to go that far."
"Oh, come now, of course there is. Brats like these grow up into rebels who start riots. Snuffing one out now, nipping it in the bud—that's how you serve the Empire. That is a noble's duty."
It was pure raving madness. The surrounding crowd began to murmur. Someone tried to step forward to stop Enrico and the thug.
Click!
The thug drew a pistol in a blink and aimed it at the man stepping forward. The would-be rescuer raised his hands and backed away.
"Hey. Don't butt in unless you want to die. I'm a vassal hired as bodyguard for a noble house. You know what that means, don't you? It means even if every last one of you rushed me at once, you'd be no match."
The thug snarled the threat at them. But the people of the Lower District were no pushovers either. A big man, aiming for the thug's blind spot, began to creep up behind him.
Bang!
Without even turning his head, the thug aimed behind him and fired. The big man took a bullet to the knee and dropped where he stood.
The bastard had skills. No back-alley amateur.
At the sound of the gunshot, Enrico's lips and hands trembled violently. The thug stepped in closer.
"Y-you, which house do you serve? If it's a family I happen to know—"
"Does that matter right now? Young Master, pull the trigger. Hurry."
Enrico was being backed into a corner. Confused and terrified, he leveled the barrel at the child.
Whatever the reasons behind it, if a noble gunned down a child in the street under the current climate, it could ignite a horrific riot. There were far too many witnesses.
That man's an instigator. A plant. Who hired him?
I accessed the database to check the man's identity. But nothing unusual came up in his record. He was definitely no vassal of any noble house. In other words—a liar.
Drip, drip.
Enrico's pants darkened as his bladder gave out. His legs shook visibly.
"I-I can't..."
"Shut up and shoot, you dumbass."
The thug whispered into Enrico's ear, wrapping his own hand over Enrico's to grip the pistol together. I read the words off the movement of his lips.
Step, step.
I moved forward. Not out of any desire to save Enrico. I was simply curious about who was backing this thug.
"Huh? Who the hell are you? One more step and—"
The thug swung his pistol up and aimed it at my leg. Before he could even finish the warning, I lunged.
Bang!
The thug pulled the trigger. He'd shown no hesitation about shooting people from the very start.
Whoosh!
I twisted my body and slipped the bullet. A shot aimed at my legs instead of my head or chest was laughable. Even a hit wouldn't have done much to my prosthetic leg.
"Tch."
The thug's eyes went wide and he clicked his tongue. Watching me dodge the shot, he must have grasped the gulf between us, because he immediately turned to bolt.
The quickness of that judgment confirmed it—he was a seasoned fighter.
Creak!
I dropped my waist and knees low, ramping up my output. My toes dug into the ground.
Crack!
I burst forward, tearing up the pavement. The twenty-meter gap closed in an instant, and I was on him. My hand reached for the scruff of his neck.
"N-No, please!"
The thug was clearly terrified of me. No—it wasn't me he was afraid of.
Beep, beep-beep! Beep!
The collar around his neck, the one that looked like a neck guard, began to flash. Acrid smoke leaked from its seams.
Sensing the danger, I threw my arms up to shield my head and shoved him away as I let go.
Boom!
The thug's head exploded to no purpose whatsoever. The blast hurled me back several meters.
A bomb collar?
The moment I'd grabbed him, the collar detonated. Someone had been watching this whole scene—and triggered it.
"W-What was that?!"
"He's dead? Why'd he die?"
"Did that guy kill him? He blew up the second his hand touched him!"
The crowd churned with confusion. True to the nature of the Lower District, no one screamed in terror just because a man had died.
I rose, brushing bits of human debris off my clothes. The metallic stink of death was all too familiar.
"Luka?"
Enrico spoke from behind me, staring at my back. A familiar face, apparently, enough to recognize me. I had no idea why his wits only ever sharpened at moments like this.
Enrico went on.
"Lu-Lucaus Custoria! My friend! You've come to save me!"
He scrambled to his feet. A yellowish stain trailed messily down his soaked trousers.
"You really... have absolutely zero sense of the situation."
I glanced around. At Enrico's words, the crowd had begun to buzz.
"Lu-Lucaus Custoria?"
"It's Lord Luka! The Luka who saved the Crimson Crown Prince!"
"Luka! Luka!"
In a single instant, a dozen possibilities raced through my mind.
I could seize those fallen children by their collars and slap them, accusing them of insulting the nobility. I could shatter their illusions by spitting contempt at the commoners. If I made it crystal clear, right here and now, that I stood on the side of the nobles, the false rumors would evaporate.
...But I decided instead to lean into my notorious reputation, gambling that it was the better choice.
"Enrico."
I smiled at him. It was probably a rather chilling smile.
"Y-yes? My friend?"
"Grit your teeth."
I put a measured amount of force into my fist and drove it square into Enrico's face.
Crack!
A deeply satisfying sound.
Enrico toppled backward, and a tooth wrenched free of his gums sailed into the air, trailing a crimson arc of blood.
"Waaaaah!"
"Luuuukaaaa! Hurrah!"
Cheers erupted behind me.
"W-Why? Lu-Luka?"
Enrico looked up at me through a bloodied face, on the verge of tears. He looked as though he'd been utterly, deeply betrayed.