Chapter 82: Dominating the Market - 9
Chapter 82: Dominating the Market - 9
After changing into a bathrobe, Jiha scooped Enril up by the waist and carried her out. She was too drained to move.
Enril's eyelids drooped as though she might slip into sleep at any moment, her breathing shallow and faint.
When he brought her into the main room, the owner of the house, Iroha, stared at them in disbelief.
Her face said it all: What kind of lunatic is this?
Who in the world brings a woman into a stranger's house on the first visit and fucks her right there?
"Good bath."
Jiha smiled with satisfaction and sat down, steadying Enril so she wouldn't collapse.
'Now she'll misjudge me as someone she can manipulate through sex.'
He was planting false information in Iroha's mind, just in case it proved useful later.
The one-eyed elf sprawled nearby shook the liquor bottle in her hand.
"Seems you're at that age where you've been starving for women."
"Men are always like that. So, what's your business?"
Completely drained, Enril couldn't even open her eyes. She rested her head against Jiha's chest, dozing lightly.
Stroking her hair, Jiha asked again.
"What did you put in the drink?"
"...Hm?"
"Enril's way too loose."
Enril was a fierce predator—a leopard.
And this was unfamiliar, dangerous territory. Iroha's intentions were equally unclear.
Jiha being exhausted and cradled in his arms was one thing, but this kind of collapse wasn't like her at all.
Jiha glanced meaningfully at the glass she'd drunk from before they went into the bathroom.
The liquor Iroha had served—Jiha hadn't touched it. Only Enril had.
'There's a drug that works even on a Unique? No—she could've purged it the instant she channeled Mana. But Enril didn't even realize she'd been drugged. So this is no ordinary substance.'
Iroha smiled as she smoked.
"You two make a far better pair than I expected. I never imagined that Enril, of all people, would let a man into her heart."
"She'll slit your throat when she wakes up."
Once Enril learned someone had tampered with her drink, there was no way she'd let it slide.
The warning was clear—watch your step. Iroha brushed it off.
"It was only meant to ease tension. I didn't think it would work this well on a Unique. Perhaps that's because you were beside her, Jiha-gun?"
"..."
Jiha-gun.
The way she said it was perfectly natural, like an old professor addressing a junior with archaic formality.
Iroha looked like a beautiful woman in her twenties, but the gray elves were a race long thought extinct.
Her true age was unfathomable.
Iroha watched Enril resting her head against Jiha's chest, as though observing an amusing spectacle.
"A woman tends to be on edge beside a man she's given her heart to. Did you treat her tenderly in the bath?"
"If you're curious, you could've stripped and joined us."
"..."
Jiha parried the playful tease with a light riposte.
Iroha blinked in surprise, then laughed.
"Well now. With a lover right beside you and you're already casting lines my way. You're a terrible man."
"And that terrible man is exactly who you want a favor from, isn't he? What do you want?"
A gray elf who'd hidden the very fact that she was living in Waris.
Iroha had deliberately emerged from the shadows to make contact with Jiha.
There had to be a significant reason.
Iroha began.
"Protect our side of things."
"You hardly need my protection."
The Iroha before him was publicly known as a Normal Grade, but she could use Mana without question.
She was no easy opponent.
'In Warsland, people equate grade with strength. That's far too simplistic a judgment...'
Victory depended on circumstances.
Jiha had beaten opponents he could never defeat head-on by engineering situations where winning was possible.
The Iroha in front of him might have lower combat specs than Enril or other Unique Grades.
But this woman was also someone who crafted situations to her advantage.
In some ways, she was the most dangerous enemy he'd faced yet.
"Not me. The ones beneath me—the kids who sell their bodies to survive. Protect all of them. The entire Pleasure District of Waris."
"..."
Jiha took a moment to think as Iroha spoke, idly waving her long bamboo pipe.
He knew there were brothels in Waris, but he'd never used one.
During his losing streak, he'd had no money. After gaining his abilities, he'd had no time.
"It varies by race and grade, but Blue Seal generally doesn't tolerate prostitution. Purple, on the other hand, mostly leaves it unregulated. The elves, of course, hold it in particular contempt."
Iroha laid out the back-alley landscape.
"Some pretend not to see it. Some try to stamp it out entirely. Some look the other way as long as they're paid. The Pleasure District in Waris, where both factions tangle together, is far more complicated."
"Why pick me for protection? There must be plenty of bastards drooling at the chance."
Sex meant money.
Prostitution was one of the oldest professions on Earth.
Warsland was no different.
The era of female dominance had been forged centuries ago, after the Thousand-Year War ended.
People had been selling their bodies to earn a living long before that, and they still did now.
'And any business that makes money draws flies.'
Thugs with a bit of muscle routinely extorted protection fees. The authorities had to be paid off too.
"Because the real power holders in Waris are women."
Iroha's answer was unexpected.
She pointed at Enril with her long bamboo pipe—Enril, who had fallen asleep leaning against Jiha's shoulder.
"Do you think she'd spare a thought for lives spent in squalid, filthy places like this? To her, they're nothing but unpleasant, unclean dust."
"..."
Compared to Enril, that was a benign reaction.
If he'd brought Leticia here, she'd have overturned everything in disgust.
Iroha smiled coldly.
"An age of female superiority? The Uniques and Legends are all women, so the world got better? Powerless women have always been trampled. That hasn't changed. Countless women have to sell their bodies today just to survive until tomorrow."
She set down the bottle and shook her head.
"The people up in the clouds have no interest in those who have to swallow the mud on the ground to stay alive. We're lucky if they don't decide to burn the whole place down."
Her words carried the weight of experience. Jiha shook his head.
"That's emotion talking. Both factions aren't completely deaf to reason. Push money forward and there are bound to be people willing to talk."
"There were, once. But I decided tying my rope to you was the better play now."
"..."
She'd investigated him thoroughly and reached her own conclusion.
"If I protect this place, what do I get?"
"Money and information."
Iroha spoke coolly.
"Twenty percent of the profits. And I'll dig up whatever information you want and provide it to the best of my ability."
"An information network..."
Jiha sank into thought.
He'd seen it on the way here—the brothels in Waris operated on a considerable scale.
The women selling their bodies numbered in the thousands, and the one at the apex of it all was the gray elf sitting before him now.
"As an advance payment, tell me who this Unique from Blue Seal is—the one who's about to arrive—and what their objective is."
"..."
She knew things even Enril didn't.
If that was true, Iroha's intelligence network was remarkably sharp.
"Forty percent."
"...That's outright banditry. Are you that desperate for money?"
Iroha shook her head.
"Twenty-five percent. It's not my greed—the kids have to eat and live too."
"Didn't you say business is booming? Thirty percent."
Jiha said it and then looked straight at Iroha.
"You approached me with this offer. That means there's a troublesome new element you're having a hard time dealing with, isn't there?"
"...Fine. Thirty percent."
Once Iroha accepted, Jiha inwardly cheered.
Future money mattered, but seizing the initiative right now was more important.
Iroha had gathered information on him and made her approach, but this was their first face-to-face meeting.
A picture was worth a thousand words. Meeting in person always changed things.
In direct negotiation, Iroha had been forced to concede ground.
Jiha pressed his advantage.
"One more condition. My people don't pay when they use this place."
"That's not possible."
Iroha's expression hardened and she shook her head firmly.
"It's not about the money. The service will suffer—no woman welcomes a free customer. The men won't be satisfied, and the women will be thoroughly displeased. Discord is guaranteed."
"..."
She had a point.
Iroha continued.
"I'll tally the usage fees afterward and add them to the tribute payment separately. But I can't agree to free service."
"Fine. In exchange, make sure your people treat my people especially well."
The Commons must have built up all sorts of pent-up needs.
They needed a proper outlet from time to time.
Iroha waved her long bamboo pipe.
"They'll do that without being told. Women naturally treat the men who protect them well."
She was already treating Jiha's protection of the brothels as a settled matter.
Jiha had already half made up his mind, so he didn't object.
"So, what's the problem that drove you to seek me out?"
"Recently, gnolls from outside have been rapidly expanding their influence in the back streets."
Gnolls were a race with hyena-like heads.
The reason they were called by their species name, unlike other beastmen, was because their biology differed.
Beastmen had both males and females.
Take cat beastmen as an example: the males had cat-like heads, tails, and fur-covered bodies. The females looked completely human, except for cat ears on their heads and a cat tail near their hips.
But gnolls had only males.
They had to produce offspring through the women of other races, which inevitably led to friction between species.
Add to that their violent temperament, and there was hardly any race that welcomed them.
Yet the gnolls hadn't gone extinct because they were physically superior and moved in packs.
"Being a brutal species, they cause a lot of trouble in the brothels. They refuse to leave when their time is up, rough up the women, and beat the pimps who try to stop them."
"What about the security officers?"
"They don't have much real authority. And the gnoll leader knows how to use his head—he bribes them to get his men released, then sends thugs to harass the shops that filed the reports."
"Troublesome bastards."
Jiha said it and looked squarely at Iroha.
As if her explanation was complete, Iroha silently smoked her long bamboo pipe.
The sight of the one-eyed elf with skin as smooth as gray marble, sitting with one knee drawn up and quietly smoking, had a serene, almost tranquil air about it.
"Why don't you step in yourself?"
This was a problem she could handle personally if she chose to.
The fact that this woman wasn't a Normal Grade—that she was hiding her real strength—was beyond doubt.
"Because stepping forward would cause even bigger problems."
"..."
Iroha was also hiding her identity.
No one would ever imagine that a gray elf, a race long thought extinct, was living such a shabby existence deep in the brothel district.
"Why trust me?"
A flicker of something crossed Iroha's face.
Jiha had only learned about the existence of gray elves today, but this was immensely valuable information.
He could sell it to someone searching for elves, dark elves, or gray elves.
The very fact that Iroha had revealed herself meant she'd taken a risk.
'So that's why she investigated me so thoroughly before making her approach...'
Jiha now had a complete picture of the situation.
Iroha answered calmly.
"I don't trust you. I trust the sight of a man who was trampled at the very bottom, bleeding out his vow to change the world."
"..."
"I heard the elves' stories. And about the Common's death. The way you handled it... it moved me."
Deubang's death.
Iroha had learned of it and made her decision.
"I don't know if the world you'll build will be any better than this one, but it doesn't seem like it could get much worse."
"Is that so?"
"And I like the way you managed to sweet-talk the famously fierce and venomous Miss Enril into your arms."
Enril was currently dozing against Jiha's chest.
Iroha smiled coolly and waved her long bamboo pipe.
As the smoke dispersed through the silence, Jiha nodded.
"All right. Spill it."
He'd take the deal. So tell him the name of the Unique heading for Blue Seal—that was the demand.
Iroha didn't answer right away. She looked out the open window.
"We've got a problem."
It was beyond Jiha's hearing, but elven ears had caught something amiss.
Jiha carefully laid the deeply sleeping Enril down so she wouldn't wake, then rose and walked to the window.
At the far end of the twisting alley, beneath the red lanterns lighting the street, a gray-furred hyena head was pummeling someone on the ground.
The crowd around them could only watch, not daring to intervene.
"So those are the gnolls."
"There are more groups nearby. Can you handle this now?"
Iroha's voice was cool. Jiha smiled.
It was a small thing, but he needed to run one more scheme.
"Come to think of it, I forgot to add one more condition. If I want any woman on this street—any of them—I'm taking her."
"That's freedom. As long as you pay, no woman would refuse. And even without pay, no woman would reject a man who keeps her safe."
At Iroha's reply, Jiha turned and asked.
"Does that include you?"
"..."
The one-eyed elf looked momentarily blank, then let out a wry smile.
"You're a nasty lecher, aren't you? Does a strange woman like me really tempt your appetite?"
"The more women, the better."
He was driving the wedge in deeper, reinforcing the false information meant to mislead her.
Women who sold their bodies were predisposed to believe that men could be controlled simply by giving them access to flesh.
Their leader Iroha was unlikely to fall outside that assumption.
Most men would protest—insist they weren't the kind of wolves who only wanted sex—and scramble to prove it.
Jiha, in contrast, was doing the opposite: pretending to be exactly that kind of man, a run-of-the-mill fool, to deceive Iroha.
He couldn't fully trust this woman.
If she believed she held Jiha's weakness, she'd be far more useful when the time came.
"That's... not something I'd ever expected to hear. Could you give me some time?"
Iroha's answer was vague, but Jiha paid it no mind.
Her response didn't matter. The goal was making her think he was an idiot obsessed with sex.
"Don't make me wait too long."
With that, Jiha launched himself out the window.
Time for a light warm-up—and a demonstration.
That the ownership of this street had just changed hands.