Chapter 135: Stepping into the Light - 7
Chapter 135: Stepping into the Light - 7
"What the hell is wrong with this crazy bastard?"
The seven men seated around the round table shouted, appalled.
The force Jiha had just used to smash the table was Mana.
As Rare Grade individuals, they were physically capable of breaking a round table with their bodies, but the thought had never even occurred to them.
The seven men glared at Jiha, their eyes darting between each other, Leticia, and the growing crowd of onlookers.
'A bunch of nervous little schemers...'
Jiha had come here today to discipline and control these seven.
One look told him they were all equally pathetic.
They were the dregs who had filled the seats left vacant when Jiha wiped out the elven prospects.
'They don't know who I am or what I can do. They want to stand up and punish me, but they'd rather die than lose face in front of Leticia and a crowd, so they're hoping the guy next to them handles it. And nobody wants to open his mouth and become the lightning rod.'
Seeing straight through their psychology, Jiha introduced himself.
"I am Jiha."
"Who?"
"Ah, that Common who stopped the Summoning War..."
"A Common?"
A murmur rippled through the onlookers and the seven men.
The stares directed at Jiha were thick with dismissal, contempt, and the condescension reserved for lowlifes.
Smiling, Jiha picked up a fragment of the round table he had just shattered and casually tossed it toward the men.
The men flinched and scrambled out of the way, drawing a sneer from Jiha.
"What are you so jumpy about? Think you'll get cursed if it touches you?"
Realizing belatedly that they had just humiliated themselves in front of Leticia and the crowd, the men clenched their teeth.
A brown-haired elf stepped forward.
Judging by the reactions of the others—a mix of acquiescence and visible relief—he was the eldest.
"You crazy human bastard..."
"Pretty sure you're the crazy one, Quority Rosen."
The man flinched when he heard his own name.
Before coming here, Jiha had done his homework on the players through Uben and Iroha.
Flustered, Quority turned on the seated Leticia and started badgering her.
"Yormun! What in the world are you doing letting this human stay instead of throwing him out?"
"Don't you have hands? If you're that offended, do it yourself."
Jiha crossed his legs arrogantly and delivered the line.
Leticia, who had been watching the situation spiral, finally spoke.
If these elves threw themselves at him without understanding their place, Jiha would sweep them all away.
"...I called for a mediator."
"You allowed a human into an elf council meeting without prior notice? And what is that dark elf beside him? Where did you even find something so filthy..."
"Have you lost your mind, Rare?"
Enril's voice sliced through the air like ice.
She fixed Quority Rosen with her naturally imperious glare and haughty bearing.
She might have been tamed by Jiha, but that didn't mean she had gone soft for anyone else.
"You're in a different faction, but are you so blind you can't recognize a Unique? Shall I teach you who I am?"
"A m-mere dark elf..."
"Without power, you cannot protect your honor. Or your life."
Enril rose calmly from her seat.
"Now, let's find out what you can protect, shall we?"
"..."
The cold fury radiating off Enril froze the male elves in their seats.
Dark elf or not, if she decided to, she could slaughter every man in this clearing.
"That's enough, dark elf."
"..."
Enril turned a savage glare on Leticia, who had intervened.
The two of them usually traded insults the moment they met, but right now Enril was genuinely furious, and Leticia was uncharacteristically subdued.
"For my kinsman's rudeness, I will apologize in his stead. I am sorry."
When Leticia even bowed her head, Enril scowled deeply and sat back down.
Having weathered the crisis, the men exhaled—and immediately started hounding Leticia again.
"What did you just do? Apologize to a dark elf?"
"Have you lost your mind? You've dragged the honor of the elves through the mud!"
"This is why females are..."
Leticia bit her lip and said nothing.
No, the truth was that her face was practically boiling with rage, and her expression was screaming that she wanted to act on her temper. The problem was the huge crowd of onlookers.
Jiha asked flatly,
"Where's the bathroom around here?"
The male elves, who had been puffing themselves up, and especially Quority, stared at Jiha in disbelief.
The looks on their faces said they couldn't fathom a human interrupting their conversation.
"I mean, these guys have been spouting shit this whole time. Plop. Plop. Maybe they should close the door when they go?"
"..."
Every single elf's jaw dropped.
Even Leticia looked dumbstruck; only Enril let out an audible snicker.
Watching elves get humiliated was clearly an entertainment she enjoyed.
The seven men, Quority in particular, flushed a furious red.
"This insult cannot be overlooked! Let us depart! The Yormun Family had best brace itself for the consequences at the next council..."
It sounded good, but it was just running away. They had no desire to challenge Enril or Jiha, who had come with her, so they wanted to retreat.
"Sure you want to leave?"
As the male elves turned to go, Jiha dangled the bait.
"We're about to settle the matter of Leticia's fiancé. Anyone who isn't here forfeits their claim. Agreed?"
"W-What..."
The male elves were visibly shaken.
Every single one of the seven had secretly been eyeing the position of Leticia's fiancé.
Damod Galak was dead, and Leticia herself had rejected the council's recommended suitor.
If someone became her fiancé now, it would count as succeeding where the council itself had failed.
To the unmarried male elves, there was no prize more coveted than the spot beside Leticia.
Jiha glanced over at the onlookers watching from a distance.
It was a gesture that said, 'Would I say nonsense when everyone is watching?'
"R-Rosen. Let's hear him out!"
"For now!"
The round table was smashed, but the chairs remained.
The men scrambled to sit down.
Even Quority Rosen, who had resisted to the very end, took his seat without managing to hide his displeasure.
Jiha swept his gaze across the gathering.
"You've all got your eyes spinning, dying to get engaged to Leticia, huh?"
"..."
Leticia herself, apparently unwilling to look at any of the seven men, turned sharply in her seat and folded her arms.
A complete and total rejection.
"Since you all seem too busy trying to read each other, I'll simplify the issue. If you want to get engaged to Leticia, beat me."
"...And what exactly are you that we should have to?"
"Why would we need to defeat you?"
The male elves couldn't grasp the situation right away.
Jiha was male and Leticia was female, but they couldn't connect the dots between the two.
With extremely rare exceptions, female elves married male elves.
There was no formal clause exiling an elf for bonding with another species... but they would find any excuse to force that person out of their society.
None of them suspected that Leticia might be involved with a mere human.
"Because... I'm the one who killed Galak."
"..."
Every face went blank.
The onlookers couldn't even draw a breath.
Jiha waved a hand at the silent majority.
"Damod Galak. You know him, right? The idiot from your side who charged into the Blue Seal barracks and got himself killed."
"...So you two are from Blue Seal. That explains it!"
Quority ground his teeth in agitation.
They might not have known Jiha's name, but every elf knew that Galak had arbitrarily entered the Blue Seal barracks with his comrades and been annihilated.
Jiha asked with feigned curiosity.
"What's with the outrage? Did you crawl out of your dad's ass instead of your mom's belly or something?"
"Y-You crazy son of a bitch? How dare you say such a..."
"I'm just saying, you were acting like the most obvious fact in the world was some kind of classified intel."
The fact that a dark elf belonged to Blue Seal was entirely normal; the opposite would have been strange.
Having shut Quority up, Jiha summed things up.
"It's a simple picture, right? Whoever steps up and beats me avenges Galak and becomes Leticia's fiancé."
"And what do you get out of it?"
The speaker was the man sitting at the lowest seat.
He was the youngest-looking of the group, with a boyish face and glasses.
"It doesn't seem like you'd just hand out an opportunity like that for free."
"Your challenge will be limited to the format of the Summoning War."
"The Summoning War?"
"...You mean that thing where Commons fight each other?"
The elves shifted in visible agitation.
Jiha nodded.
"I've been feeling sluggish myself with no matches lately. I could use the workout. The armistice has been long, after all."
"Are you telling us to become a spectacle there?"
"What do you take us for?!"
When the elves predictably got worked up, Jiha nodded again.
"Anyone who doesn't want to can drop out. No one's forcing you. Ah, Leticia's beautiful, even among elves, but maybe one of you isn't into her type. So I'll throw in one more prize."
Jiha detonated the next bomb in quick succession.
"If you beat me, Leticia will promote that man to Super Rare."
"..."
Longing and greed flickered in the men's eyes.
Leticia had been compelled to get engaged to Pamin, but she had left him at Rare Grade.
It had been hundreds of years since a male elf had become a Super Rare.
But what if someone did become a Super Rare?
He wouldn't just be a fiancé in name only.
He'd be marked as the representative of the younger male elves, and beyond that, the next-generation leader of the elves.
"What is this nonsense."
While everyone else was practically swallowing their own saliva, only Quority voiced his objection.
He possessed the least Mana among the seven.
The Rosen family held strong influence in the council, and he was deferred to only because he was the oldest.
The terms were obviously unfavorable to him, so his discontent was inevitable.
"...Yormun. Are you truly in favor of this absurd proposal? That if someone defeats that human, you'll actually make him your fiancé and recognize him as a Super Rare?"
"..."
Leticia locked eyes with Jiha, then slowly nodded.
"Yes. Should Jiha lose, I will abide by the council's decision."
Quority shook his head in disbelief.
Since he couldn't accept the situation, he had to find fault with words.
"This is exactly why women shouldn't be allowed outside. To think you'd conspire with a human on something so preposterous. You're telling elf men to put on a fighting show in front of everyone? How deep into the gutter do you have to drag our honor before you're satisfied..."
"If you don't like it, fight me right here."
Silence flooded the clearing at Jiha's declaration.
"I'm offering you time to prepare, and you're still complaining. I'm fine with you attacking now."
The male elves glanced at one another, and eventually all eyes converged on Quority.
Under that wordless pressure, Quority's face stiffened and he made to rise from his seat.
But just before he could, Jiha kicked off the ground in a low leap.
It was a long-range assault that kept a low altitude. Jiha's flying kick buried itself into the chest of Quority, who was just beginning to stand.
CRACK!
Quority's body was launched helplessly, tumbling across the grass.
"What..."
He'd told them to attack, and then immediately ambushed them.
Ignoring the six frozen elves, Jiha grabbed the chair Quority had been sitting in.
"Uh..."
Quority, reeling from the sudden attack and trying to scramble up, blinked when he saw Jiha raise the chair over his head.
In the instant Quority reflexively covered his head with his arms, Jiha brought the chair crashing down.
CRUNCH!!
The wooden chair shattered, sending fragments flying everywhere.
Thwack! Crack!
"Kuaaagh!"
The chair broke apart. Skin tore open. Blood splattered.
"How kind of you to block. Did you think I'd stop hitting you if you did?"
Jiha struck repeatedly, and when the wooden chair was no longer usable, he kicked Quority in the stomach.
Quority, who had been about to lower his arms, rolled across the ground with an agonized scream.
"Gwoooorgh!"
"Is this an elf or a pig?"
Baffled, Jiha kicked him once more.
"Gwaaagh!!"
Quority's body flew five meters with a shriek, rolling over and over across the grass.
He lay splayed out like a frog, limbs twitching, unable to move.
Watching a man get kicked around like a soccer ball, the remaining six elves and the onlookers froze all over again.
"You really are third-rate. This can't even pass as a practice match..."
He could have hit harder with just his fists, but he had used the chair on purpose for intimidation.
Sometimes the method of violence burned itself into memory more deeply than the raw force.
Jiha turned around with a chilling look.
"Who's next?"
"..."
The six remaining men—and all the onlookers—instinctively recoiled.
Jiha smiled cynically.
"These pasty-faced scholars were actually getting cocky with me? You're not even qualified to enter the Summoning War. The match has to be at least somewhat even for it to count as a fight."
"Grrh..."
When the elf man who let out a frustrated groan caught Jiha's gaze, he hurriedly hung his head.
He had no courage to face the man who had just beaten Quority to a pulp in an instant.
If he were alone, he might have steeled himself for a desperate throw of the dice. But there were five other men here.
All of them were eyeing one another, each hoping that Jiha's arrow would land on someone else.
'Well, that was the whole point...'
Depending on the situation, one-against-many is easier to suppress than one-on-one.
People fundamentally hate taking responsibility and want to avoid danger.
Confronting an unpredictable threat like Jiha directly was an option they all wanted to dodge if possible.
'And elves live long lives. If they get beaten to a pulp and humiliated here, the story will follow them for hundreds of years. They'll keep passing the buck to each other because avoiding that is their top priority.'
Jiha had bent them to his will by ensuring they could never even muster the resolve to fight.
"Get up, all of you."
After doing nothing but stealing glances at one another, they flinched and stood when Jiha stepped closer.
"Those big ears of yours better listen carefully. If you don't have the guts to fight me yourself, you can send a proxy. But you only get one challenge attempt. And if you come at me, I'm not guaranteeing your life."
"..."
"In polite society, you answer when someone speaks to you."
When Jiha lowered his voice, the frozen elves nodded one by one.
They had surrendered to Jiha's violence and his words.
"Now that you understand..."
Jiha walked over to Leticia.
Leticia, who had watched his relentless actions from start to finish, stared up at him in a daze.
Smiling, Jiha took her arm and pulled her to her feet.
"I'm taking Leticia with me."
Slipping an arm around Leticia's waist, Jiha flashed a supremely confident grin.
"If you want her back, struggle all you like, you morons."
The morons would flail and struggle in their own ways.
Those fools would run in circles and deliver fresh prey right to him.
Jiha intended to wait and devour every bite that came his way.