Chapter 278 Independence -7
Chapter 278 Independence -7
Sharp stares from women who didn't recognize Jiha bored into him.
Ignoring them, Jiha examined the women's undergarments on display.
"Come to think of it..."
He'd noticed this before, but the bras and panties were remarkably modern in style.
Warsland's society and civilization felt medieval, yet its clothing had developed in strange ways.
As Jiha casually picked up a bra, checking the fabric and feel, he sensed eyes on him from even closer.
Three human women among the customers were openly glaring at him.
Jiha grinned back at them.
"Quite the stares you've got there. Is this a lingerie shop or an optometrist's?"
"...You're way too conspicuous."
Barjet, who had just stepped up beside him, whispered in a mosquito-like voice.
She was on edge, sensing the volatile atmosphere.
Jiha held the bra he'd grabbed against Barjet's chest.
She recoiled in alarm, stepping back.
"Wh-What are you doing?!"
"Measuring. This is an E cup, and it's not even close. What size are you, anyway?"
"One..."
Barjet almost answered reflexively before clamping her mouth shut in horror.
Jiha took a fresh look at her breasts.
With perfect candor.
"Over a meter, huh? You've got a majestic mountain range forming there."
"...N-No, I do not! Seriously, people are watching."
Barjet covered her chest with her arms, grabbed Jiha's arm, and pulled.
She wanted to leave.
Jiha turned to her, incredulous.
"And then what?"
"...You must not have known. Fine, listen up. I just realized this myself, but men aren't supposed to come into places like this."
"No men allowed? Since when?"
He was the only man in the shop, that much was true.
"Oh, come on. Do I have to spell it out? Right, you were a Common, weren't you? That explains why you don't know."
Barjet looked at Jiha as if he were uneducated.
Jiha, finding her attitude absurd, simply watched to see how far she'd push it.
Barjet spoke in a measured tone.
"Look at the lingerie in this shop. High-end at a glance, right? Each piece costs a hundred thousand rel, two hundred thousand rel."
"So?"
"The women who shop in expensive places like this have that level of wealth. Even those women glaring at you with utter disdain are all Rare Grade. There's no law against a man entering the shop, but they find it deeply offensive."
"...So?"
"What do you mean, 'so'? Let's leave. If we don't, there'll be trouble."
Barjet tugged on his arm.
She hadn't wanted to come in the first place, and now she had the perfect excuse.
"...."
Jiha stared at the ceiling for a moment.
He'd seen all kinds of nonsense since arriving in Warsland...
"I honestly don't know where to start fixing this dumbass. Do oversized tits come with oversized stupidity?"
"...Excuse me?"
"Never mind."
Jiha crooked his finger at the human women glaring at him from nearby.
"Cut the shitty glares. If you've got something to say, come over here and say it."
"What?"
"That male bastard's insane."
"Does he have any idea where he is, causing a scene?"
The human women—one gaunt, one tall, one fat—bristled.
The trio swaggered up to Jiha, all looking to be in their mid-to-late thirties.
Their faces weren't much to look at either.
"A man, acting up in here?"
"A face we haven't seen before. A Normal Grade, aren't you?"
"Crawled out of some gutter with no manners, making trouble!"
"...."
Jiha had suspected as much and laughed in sheer disbelief.
These women truly had no idea he was the de facto ruler of Waris and the chairman of the Regulatory Committee.
"Ah, right, you don't know. You're acting like this because you don't know who I am?"
"What kind of bastard runs his mouth so much? We ought to sew it shut."
"Hey, hold back. Waris has been chaotic lately. No point causing trouble and paying damages for it."
"Just apologize politely and get out. Do that, and we'll pretend this never happened."
Jiha was about to open his mouth when Barjet stepped forward and offered a quick bow beside him.
"Ah, I'm so sorry. He's a little unfamiliar with how things work. I'll take him out right away."
"What's this? You brought him in?"
"Why drag a lowly man into a lingerie shop? It's uncomfortable for people trying to browse."
"A witch? From Purple? Is that how they teach you in Purple?"
The Rare Grade women scolded her, failing to recognize that Barjet was a Unique.
Strictly speaking, the ranking system required wearing rank epaulets, but that wasn't always followed to the letter.
More people went without them than with them, and Barjet was among the latter, so they didn't realize.
Barjet kept her head bowed.
"I'm sorry. I'll take him out right away and..."
"Honestly, some tramp drifts in from who knows where and brings a man with her."
"Ruining everyone's mood. This bastard was eyeing me up earlier. Should I just report him?"
"Hold back. It's probably his first time seeing a beautiful woman. Hey, keep your man under control. You're embarrassing all women."
The three women chattered among themselves while directing their venom at Jiha.
They didn't stop there, snapping at Barjet too.
"Tits disgustingly huge, and that cheap makeup. Men don't actually like that."
"Huh? M-Makeup? I barely wore any..."
"Your bare face looks like that? Birds of a feather flocking together to annoy the rest of us."
As the women piled on insults, Jiha cut straight to the point.
"So basically, seeing a woman younger, prettier, and with a better body than you walk in with a man to pick out lingerie is an eyesore. Is that it? You three are too ugly—inside and out—to land a man, so you want to teach the sly little tart a lesson for showing off?"
"Wh-What?"
"Why, you..."
The women's faces flushed scarlet as his words hit home, and they looked ready to lunge at him.
Jiha ignored them and turned to Barjet.
"And you. Apologizing and bowing your head? Who told you to do that? Did I give you permission?"
"...Huh?"
"What?"
Barjet, who'd been trying to smooth things over, and the three women about to attack Jiha all stared in disbelief.
Jiha laid into Barjet.
"What is this, some third-rate comedy? Did you think if you acted like that, I'd pretend to back down and quietly leave the shop? You thought I'd just nod along when told to hold back?"
"Wh-What are..."
"This bastard's lost it!"
The gaunt woman stepped forward and abruptly swung a slap at Jiha's face.
But Jiha, already seething, drove his fist straight into her face instead.
Thwack!
The sound of a nose bone breaking.
He hadn't infused the punch with Mana, but it was such a clean, straight hit that it connected perfectly.
"Kyaaak!"
"In a world where people die over nothing, all you do is slap?"
Jiha grabbed the staggering woman's head and hammered it with a flurry of punches.
Pop-pop-pop-pop!
Clean form. In an instant, the woman's face was mangled and her teeth flew out.
"Hey!"
"You son of a bitch!!"
The tall woman finally summoned her Mana, but Jiha grabbed the one he'd been hitting and hurled her.
The tall woman instinctively caught her comrade—and just then, Jiha's high kick whipped into her neck.
Unable to defend or evade, the woman crumpled with a choked yelp.
She was lucky she'd been reinforcing herself with Mana; a clean hit would have snapped her neck and killed her outright.
Having downed two in rapid succession, Jiha fixed his glare on the remaining fat woman.
"Y-You crazy bastard! Some gutter man nobody knows!"
"Hey, Barjet. You deal with that bitch."
"Wh-What?! That's absurd..."
"You bowing and apologizing is what started this mess, and now you're going to pretend you didn't see it?"
Jiha looked back at Barjet.
"In that case, she dies because of you."
As Jiha moved to step forward, Barjet panicked and grabbed his arm.
She knew Jiha would kill these three without a second thought.
She could feel it.
"I'll do it! I said I'll do it!!"
"...B-Barjet? That violet hair. Barjet Dark?"
Having finally recognized her, the remaining fat woman's eyes went wide as she made a fuss.
She seemed to know the Witch Unique's name, Barjet.
The woman quickly clasped both hands in front of her chest and bowed her head.
"I-I'm so sorry for not recognizing a Unique! Please forgive me just this once!"
"...."
Barjet, who had just gripped her staff, glanced back.
Jiha simply smiled.
"'Forgive you'?"
"...."
If Barjet forgave her, something even worse would happen.
Realizing this, Barjet summoned her Mana, and the begging woman recoiled in terror.
"N-No! I'm apologizing! I said I didn't know! We're both women here, why go this far?"
"Ah, well..."
"If we're talking about who's at fault, huh? You're the one who brought a man into a lingerie shop, aren't you? Huh? It's not solely our fault, you also..."
As the woman tried to turn it into an argument, and Barjet started to entertain it again, Jiha stepped forward and reached out.
Crack-pop!!
"Aaaagh!"
The agony of a shoulder joint wrenched from its socket.
The woman screamed and thrashed on the floor. Jiha tsked.
"I didn't even cut her arm off and she's throwing a fit. Maybe I should just cut her head off..."
Thwack!!
Just then, a staff smashed into the head of the woman rolling on the floor like a pig.
With a sound like a hog being butchered, the flailing woman stretched out her limbs and lost consciousness.
Barjet had finished her off.
"...."
Jiha turned to see Barjet glaring at him, her eyes trembling with fury.
Jiha smiled and asked, "Why glare at me? Want to fight?"
"...L-Let them go!"
"Let what go? Where?"
"These people! Just outside the shop!!"
Jiha asked quietly, "Why should I? They annoyed me. I can just kill them."
"That..."
Human life is precious? That kind of textbook idealism didn't fly in Warsland, least of all with Jiha.
Barjet sensed it and swallowed hard.
"...I'll wear it! I'll buy the lingerie here and wear it for you from now on! Isn't that enough?!"
"That goes without saying. Do you not know why I'm doing this?"
Jiha let out a hollow laugh.
"Do I just look like a bastard to you? Some lunatic who enjoys beating people up and gets off on killing? Is that what you think this is?"
"...."
Barjet almost nodded reflexively but barely stopped herself.
No.
A mere brute of a tyrant couldn't have become a major power in such a short time.
Jiha spoke calmly.
"You could have handled this instead. Explained who I was, or at least spun the situation around and defused it properly."
"How was I supposed to..."
"Throw money at them, or reveal your rank. The moment you said you were a Unique, they recognized it and started groveling, didn't they? And you can't even handle something this minor?"
Barjet hated conflict and had always avoided it.
It wasn't that she lacked combat experience or had never spilled blood.
But given any path that avoided a fight, she'd take it without question.
'So when I push her, she just shrinks back. She has all that power but no mental fortitude.'
Jiha summed it up.
"A problem you could've resolved, you fumbled it so stupidly that I had to step in and smash heads. I can't back down from a petty squabble like this—not when I'm the man holding this city in my grip. My honor and reputation getting publicly trampled leads to a loss of control over the whole city."
"That..."
"Do you understand now why I couldn't do anything else? Go grab any random person on the street and ask. They'll tell you exactly how idiotic you were."
Barjet's face reddened more and more as she listened.
She'd judged Jiha as simply a fearsome man, a terrifying predator, but it was true that he had Waris in his clutches.
A genuine major power.
Barjet could roughly grasp that he couldn't back down for the sake of his dignity, honor, and control.
And that her own dithering had forced him to handle it personally.
"And what, you want me to let them go unharmed? Ha. If my subordinates find out about this, they'll turn these women into sashimi right now."
"...."
If the people loyal to Jiha learned about this?
They'd tear these three women apart, enraged that their leader had been insulted—or just to earn his favor.
Jiha added one last thing.
"Besides, I don't forgive bastards who insult my woman."
"Huh? B-But these people are also women..."
"My woman matters. Why would I care about women who aren't mine?"
Jiha's tone was absolute.
In a world like Warsland, ruled by survival of the fittest and female superiority, showing mercy just because an enemy was female would get you killed by a blade.
Jiha could be soft with his own women, but when it came to enemies, he killed regardless of whether they were women or men.
Now that things had escalated to this point, these three—who started the trouble even if they didn't know who he was—were as good as dead.
Jiha fixed his eyes on Barjet. "So? What's it going to be?"
"I-I'm your woman, aren't I?"
Gathering her courage, Barjet spoke in a trembling voice.
It was the last thing she wanted to admit, a line she was using to escape the current situation.
He could see right through it, but Jiha simply smiled and indulged her.
"So? What of it?"
"...Th-Then you can at least grant a request from me, can't you? Right?"
"Ah, really now? So you're asking me—begging me—to send these three idiots back in one piece, is that it?"
Jiha nodded with a sly look.
"That changes things."
He intended to make sure she understood, in a very physical way, exactly what it meant to become his woman.