Episode 17
Translator: RaidenTL
Episode 17
She quietly looked down at the revolver in her hand.
Bullets: 3
Her inventory was packed to the brim with weapons, so she wasn't worried about running out of ammunition. If she ran low, she could just pull out more. With a tense expression, she took a step forward.
Frowning at the sound of sloppy kissing, she turned her head to see a man and woman panting in a corner. The man, whose eyes met hers, shouted with a dazed look.
“What, you here for a show?! Fuck off, now!”
“Your mouth.”
“What?”
“Shut it. You’re loud.”
A groan, as if someone were writhing in pain, could be heard from somewhere nearby.
Detecting it amidst the surrounding noise, Elysia quickened her pace.
Just then, the woman, who had gestured for the man to shut up, walked toward Elysia with a smile, not even bothering to fix her disheveled clothes.
“Oh my, honey. You’re so handsome.”
“Shouldn’t you get back to what you were doing?”
“I’ve lost interest in him now. You’re much more handsome.”
Handsome, my ass. This was no time to be worrying about that.
A pained whimper, too faint for others to hear but crystal clear to Elysia, was now turning into a desperate gasp, as if a final breath was near.
I’m sure of it. The sound is coming from where the smell of blood is thickest. But where?
Elysia tore the woman’s fingers from her clothes with a shudder of disgust and growled.
“Fucking ridiculous…”
“And I happen to have a thing for shitty tempers.”
“Ah, Alma! You promised me—”
“You? You can get lost now.”
Alma? Elysia froze, stunned by the woman’s name.
I didn’t plan on meeting this person now. I was just going to check out the atmosphere and slip away, but I’ve run into the final boss right off the bat.
The man, now kneeling on the floor, began to beg.
“You said you’d clear my debt if I obeyed you well tonight. I’ll do anything you say—”
“Ah, so boring.”
As she lifted the hem of her long, flowing dress, her pale, bare legs were revealed. While the man’s gaze was momentarily stolen, she drew a pistol strapped to her thigh, aimed it at him, and smiled coldly.
“Get lost. I’ll be collecting every last bit of your debt, interest included.”
“What the hell… You promised!!!”
“Mmm… Blah, blah, blah. So noisy.”
As the woman pulled the trigger without hesitation, Elysia lunged, grabbing her hand and forcing it toward the floor. With a thud, the bullet ricocheted off the ground and grazed the man’s leg. Elysia stared at her, horrified.
She just fired a live round without any warning? Is she insane?
Alma, tearing her gaze away from the man who had collapsed screaming, cupped Elysia’s cheek and asked.
“Honey, how old are you?”
“…”
“By the way, why were you heading up the stairs? Does our innocent young master not know the upper floor is off-limits?”
A cold sweat trickled down her back.
How can a situation be this hopeless? I don’t know a single thing, so I can’t even improvise, and the criminal in front of me is a boss-level character.
Elysia maintained a stoic expression and asked, “You’re Alma?”
“Yep, as you’ve heard. Our young master doesn’t look like he belongs in a place like this… What brings you here?”
“Isn’t it obvious why people come looking for you?”
The woman smirked and snapped her fingers. A group of men swarmed out, handing her a pipe and a light. Another man rushed to her side and whispered something in her ear.
Listening with an amused expression, she took a long drag from the pipe and blew the smoke right into Elysia’s face.
“Cough, cough! Sh, fuck, seriously!!!”
♥ System: Alma Heron's Favorability +10 ♥
Her favorability went up because I cursed? Is she out of her goddamn mind?
“Ahaha, you can’t even handle a little smoke, and you came to buy drugs? After knocking out two guards at the entrance? Our young master may look pretty, but it seems he’s got some muscle, huh?”
“Even a chain-smoker would, cough! puke from that smoke. Cough!”
For someone who looked so delicate, the tobacco she smoked was incredibly harsh. But the acrid smoke sharpened her mind.
What do I do? I need an excuse.
Elysia waved her hand, clearing the smoke from her face, and muttered, “And who said I was here to buy drugs?”
“Oh?”
“I came all this way, even dealing with your guards, because I have something to tell you. Something you won’t regret hearing.”
Her lips were moving faster than her brain.
What am I saying? What kind of plan am I making right now?
The lies spilling from her mouth were almost instinctual. Her mind raced to catch up with the lie her instincts had chosen. The words she’d heard in the greenhouse.
“Ha, it was tough to get. Alma raised the price, I almost couldn’t buy it. So, is it ‘Crea’? Or ‘Voluet’? It’s 6,088 Gold per bag.”
The moment she heard 6,088 Gold per bag, her first thought was:
‘What a fucking rip-off.’
The cost price of Voluet and Crea, as she knew it, was about 378 Gold for a bag smaller than her palm. That included the cost of raw materials and the labor to process them.
It was a price more than three times a month’s rent, but compared to the market rate, it was a steal.
The market price she knew fluctuated between 2,800 and 3,300 Gold. Swallowing hard, Elysia thought.
Considering what I paid at the clothing store earlier, the cost of living here seems similar to my world.
It was natural for prices to rise as the distribution chain lengthened, but the only link between Alma and the Minerva students was a single male student acting as a middleman. In that case, the price should have been set in the high 3,000s.
Unless the middleman was price-gouging.
But if the market price for Crea and Voluet was different from what she knew, all her deductions were just bullshit.
Still, this was all she had to go on.
“Do you know you’re being stabbed in the back?”
If that was the case, it was do or die. She had to push forward.
Alma’s playful smile vanished, her face turning ice-cold. She blew another puff of smoke into the air and asked, “Stabbed in the back?”
“The guy who sells your stuff at Minerva? He’s selling Crea and Voluet for 6,088 Gold a bag.”
“…”
A direct hit.
Seeing Alma’s face harden, Elysia fought to keep from breaking into a relieved smile and said with a nonchalant expression, “6,088 Gold a bag? Sounds like he’s making more than you are, huh?”
“That bastard was here earlier, wasn’t he?”
Alma irritably took the pipe from her lips and asked one of the brutes surrounding them. A booming “Yes!” came in reply. Wiping the annoyance from her face, the woman beamed at Elysia.
“Such a pretty face, bringing such pretty news. Follow me.”
Before she could answer, the men behind her blocked her path and gave her a hard shove. Grunting, Elysia nearly tumbled up the stairs, forced to ascend against her will.
She tried her best not to look like she was scanning the area as she meticulously observed the upper floor.
As they reached the second floor, the faint smell of blood faded. Not the second floor? Then where in the world is that smell coming from…
She hadn’t smelled blood in the main hall, so it couldn’t have been from the bloody mess downstairs. She was sure she’d smelled it near the staircase.
Before she could finish the thought, she was dragged up another flight. Though they had only climbed two floors, it felt like a completely separate space, shrouded in silence. Elysia fiddled with the revolver in her pocket and bit her lip.
“Did you get him?”
“Yes. When we told him the specific sale price we heard as testimony, he insisted he could just pay it back and is holding out.”
“Noble brats. They really have no fear…”
Alma laughed as if in disbelief, covering half her face with one hand and sighing like she had a headache. As she stomped toward the room in the farthest corner, a huge man naturally opened the door for her.
Elysia was a little surprised to see that the male student standing inside the room was completely unharmed, not even a scratch on his face.
“Alma! You’re here!”
He was even smiling brightly, as if he had no idea what situation he was in.
Is he an idiot?
Alma seemed to be thinking the same thing, her face a mask of disgust. Regardless, the man strode over, took her hand, kissed it, and asked smoothly, “Hey, I’m sorry! My allowance was just a little, a little tight. Why are you glaring at me so scary-like, huh? You’ll ruin that pretty face—”
“Young master, do you not grasp the situation?” Alma asked, her face a sneer. The man’s expression hardened, and he began to argue condescendingly.
“…I said I’d give it back, so what’s the problem? Just because I was nice to you, you lowly bitch, you’ve forgotten your place. You need to know your station, Alma, hmm?”
Ah, now she understood the source of his absurd confidence.
This man was a noble. A member of society’s ruling class, a man of power. Alma, it seemed, was not. It made sense; it would be difficult for a noble to run a drug business this large, where getting caught meant the end.
As if observing him, Alma just stared silently. The man raised a fist, pretending to hit her, and muttered in a drunken voice, “Ah, you fucking… This wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t raised the price in the first place, you bitch.”
He must have been drinking heavily; a foul stench emanated from his mouth every time he opened it. He poked Alma’s forehead repeatedly with his index finger and taunted her with a smirk.
“At first it was 300 Gold, but who was the one who kept sneakily raising the price, huh?”
“And who was it that happily gobbled up that raised price? Young Master Hertz, can you even live without this stuff now?”
Snatching the drugs from the man’s hand, Alma crushed them in her palm, letting the powder fall to the floor before stomping on it with her heel. Her eyes darted to her men as she commanded, “Grab him.”
“What do you think you’re—”
Looking disgusted, Alma took a handkerchief from one of the brutes, wiped her forehead, and threw it violently to the floor. Pointing at the crumpled cloth, she spoke to the man who had been forced to his knees.
“Pick it up. With your mouth.”
“You crazy bitch!!! Why would I—”
Click-clack. The cold sound of steel echoed. Alma, who had been handed a rifle from somewhere, repeated her command in a generous tone. It was a gentle voice, as if soothing a child.
“Fetch.”
“You think you’ll be safe after killing me…”
“Fetch.”
Gripping the barrel of the loaded rifle, she swung the stock and smashed it against the back of Hertz’s head, then finished her sentence.
“I said, come here.”
Gritting his teeth in humiliation, he struggled to shake off the brutes holding his limbs and answered irritably, “Let go of me!!! How am I supposed to pick it up if I can’t stand up?!”
“Who told you to stand?”
Hertz’s eyes widened as if to ask what she meant. Alma’s eyes curved into a smile.
“You have to crawl. A junkie who isn’t even human anymore, how dare you try to walk on two feet. And pick it up with your mouth. Like a dog.”