Chapter 64: A Single Clash
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 64: A Single Clash
The door swung open, and Rem was the first to step inside.
"Which—"
He barely started to speak before he was interrupted. Something plummeted from the ceiling directly toward his head.
As if he had expected the ambush, Rem swung his axe in a sharp vertical arc.
A flash of steel sliced through the darkness. The moment his axe connected, Rem threw himself to the side in one fluid motion. The entire sequence was as seamless as a choreographed dance.
Thud.
The heavy sound of a corpse hitting the floor was the only testament to what had just occurred.
"What the..." Krais muttered, poking his head in, startled.
An assassin had been clinging to the ceiling, clutching short knives in both hands. Rem’s axe had split him open from chest to groin, spilling his entrails and blood across the floor. The metallic stench of gore and the chill of death immediately filled the room.
"I thought they were just some run-of-the-mill criminal guild," Krais whispered.
"These bastards," Rem said, a twisted, manic smile spreading across his face. "Aren't they adorable?"
He strode further into the building. The interior was surprisingly spacious, with walls constructed of neatly squared bricks, mud, and straw. A passage ahead veered off to the right.
Rem didn't hesitate.
"Is it you?" he blurted out, his axe whistling through the air.
A merciless strike claimed a second life. An ambusher had been hiding in the shadows of the passage, waiting to strike with a skewer-like weapon. It was a futile effort; Rem’s axe was faster.
The opponents were a criminal guild—thugs who specialized in pickpocketing and extortion. On the other hand, the men entering their lair were professional soldiers whose entire lives revolved around the art of killing.
Encrid was a Senior Soldier, and the rest of his squad were even more formidable than he was.
‘I knew we had the upper hand, but...’
Seeing it in person was a different matter entirely. The gang members were stealthy, lunging from the dark with practiced cruelty, but Rem shattered every ambush with ease. It wasn't a mindless, berserk frenzy; rather, a quiet madness radiated from him—a promise to cleave anyone who dared stand in his way.
Rem kept moving, his voice never trailing off.
"Or is it you?" he asked every time he took a life.
"It’s you, isn't it?"
Crack!
He only asked the fifth ambusher the question after splitting the man's skull wide open.
"Dead men don't talk," Encrid remarked from behind.
Rem raised his dripping, blood-stained axe and scratched his head with the handle. "I know that, but the living ones aren't answering either. Not a peep."
Well, someone would eventually have the answers.
They followed the passage as it bent right, leading to a layout consisting of a parlor, two side rooms, a pantry, and a kitchen. It was simple and functional.
And now, it was littered with five corpses. None of them had provided any information.
"This is a bit too much preparation for a mere street gang. It really looks like these guys were the ones targeting you, Squad Leader," Krais said, examining the bodies. He stared at one man's face for a long moment before looking up. "I don't recognize him."
Encrid nodded. He agreed with the assessment—these weren't random thugs.
‘Is this good luck or bad luck?’
To be honest, coming here had been a convenient excuse to avoid the Devil's Dung Powder. He knew a criminal guild was the perfect place to forge identification tags or hire assassins, but...
‘Against a professional soldier of the Border Guard?’
Attacking a soldier was a death sentence for anyone trying to make a living in this territory. Yet, they had done it. They must have had a reason. Of course, their reasons didn't matter to Encrid.
He had essentially taken a wild guess, like firing an arrow into the dark and hitting a wild boar right between the eyes.
"Huh? Is that all of them?" Rem asked, rummaging through the rooms. There was no one left to answer, only the five who had tried to kill them.
"No way. Not with this level of preparation, and not if Sachsen got his facts straight," Krais said. He stepped forward into the center of the dark parlor. He pulled a flint from his breast pocket, gathered some stray straw from the floor, and struck a spark.
With a sharp click-clack, the straw caught fire. Light bloomed in the chilly room. Using the makeshift torch, Krais searched the floor until he stomped his heel hard on a specific spot.
Thump.
A hollow echo rang out.
"Allow me," Audin said, stepping up. A cheap fur rug lay on the floor with a chair atop it. He flung the rug aside, sending the chair tumbling with a heavy thud.
Then, Audin delivered a "knock" of his own.
Slam!
Dropping into a crouch, he punched his fist straight through the wooden trapdoor. He reached through the hole and unlatched the bolt from the inside.
"Where do you think this leads?"
"Their real headquarters," Sachsen replied to Krais’s question. His tone was casual, as if he had expected the hidden floor all along.
Rem looked at Encrid. In the flickering light of the straw torch, Rem’s gray eyes gleamed a predatory red.
"We keep going," Encrid said before Rem could even ask.
They had started this; they were going to finish it. This wasn't just about wiping out a petty gang; they were dismantling an organization large enough to call itself a guild. If they were the ones who had targeted him, he had to settle the score. No sane man would let an assassin's employer walk free. Fortunately, Encrid was far from an idiot.
"Damn right!"
Rem took the lead again. The tunnel was short, and in less than half an hour, they reached a passage leading upward. It was freezing underground, and Rem—who had given his blanket to a beggar earlier—was shivering, yet a palpable sense of rage radiated from his back.
"Someone's up there," Sachsen whispered from behind Rem. Guards.
"So they're expecting us," Krais added from the rear.
"We cannot allow bandits to run rampant in the territory like this," Audin said. He seemed to have a genuine talent for breaking down doors—perhaps it was a hobby.
Taking the crude dirt steps two at a time, he twisted his body and slammed his shoulder and back into the door above.
Boom!
The impact sounded like a cannonball or a fire spell detonating. The door panel was blown clean off its hinges, flying upward into the room above.
"Whoa!"
Startled cries erupted from the men waiting above.
Then, it was Rem’s stage once more.
"Is it you?!"
Hurling his cryptic question again, Rem leaped into the fray. He used the stairs for his first stride and Audin’s massive thigh for his second, flying through the opening while swinging his hand axe. From below, Encrid could only see Rem’s back, but the results were immediate. Heavy thuds echoed as bodies hit the floor, and blood began to trickle down the edges of the trapdoor.
"That brother has some bad habits. Stepping on another man's thigh like that," Audin grumbled, dusting off his leg before climbing up. Sachsen and Ragna followed, with Encrid and Krais bringing up the rear.
Whoosh.
As they emerged, they found themselves surrounded by a ring of torches.
"I wondered what kind of crazy bastards you were," a voice drifted over the crowd.
Encrid scanned the room. There were at least thirty able-bodied men, all armed. Spiked clubs, shortswords, spears, and blackjacks—leather pouches filled with sand. Their equipment was varied but lethal.
Krais tossed his burnt-out straw torch into the hole and whistled. "Wow, that's a lot of targets."
Encrid agreed.
"You're soldiers, aren't you?"
Standing in the center of the thirty men was a figure dressed in a fine silk shirt and trousers, topped with a coat made of demonic beast hide. He leaned on a cane—not because of a limp, but because it was a status symbol, encrusted with jewels to flaunt his wealth.
"Are you the Gilpin gang?" Encrid asked.
The man scowled, his irritation evident. "I don't know why everyone is so eager to die today."
"I came to ask about the ambush that took place within the Border Guard," Encrid stated.
Before he could finish, Rem cut in. "Is it you?"
Encrid finally understood what Rem was asking. He was looking for the one who had ordered the hit. It was a blunt, simplistic method, but it suited Rem perfectly.
‘Even I wouldn't answer that.’
"I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about," the leader replied. He was entirely too confident, which only made him more suspicious.
For the members of the Troublemaker Squad, suspicion was all the evidence they needed.
"It's that bastard," Sachsen muttered.
"Hmm, must be him," Ragna added, glaring at the man with the cane. Usually, Ragna walked around with his eyes half-closed, but now they were wide and focused.
"Brother, did you really target our squad leader?" Audin asked, taking a step forward.
The men nearest to him flinched. In the torchlight, Audin’s two-meter frame looked monstrous. He was pure muscle, his forearms thicker than most people's thighs. While the rest of the squad was lean and fit, Audin was a titan.
"Is it true, Brother?"
"What kind of bullshit is this? Squad leader or not, why would I bother sending an assassin to kill a mere soldier?" the leader spat.
Encrid narrowed his eyes. "I never said you sent an assassin."
He had mentioned an "ambush," but never specified an "assassin."
The leader’s expression shifted, growing eerily calm. "So?"
He didn't care. He had thirty armed men and the home-field advantage. He clearly had a source of information that had warned him they were coming. To him, it didn't matter if he had slipped up.
It didn't matter to Encrid either. He didn't need a confession to wipe out a criminal organization.
However, Encrid looked at the men surrounding them. Some were likely just thugs who had picked up a club because they were told to. He decided to give them one chance.
Clang.
Encrid drew his longsword and dragged the tip across the dirt floor. A few men flinched, but none attacked. He carved a line into the frozen earth.
"Anyone who has never killed the weak, anyone willing to go quietly to prison, and anyone who doesn't want to die—drop your weapons and cross this line."
This wasn't a battlefield. From this moment on, it would be a slaughterhouse. The gang didn't realize it, but Encrid did.
"Choose carefully. Otherwise, you all die today."
He spoke of slaughter with a heavy heart. It was an era of death, but taking a life was never a light matter. If this were for survival on the front lines, he wouldn't hesitate, but here, he offered a way out.
"What's he babbling about?"
"Who's dying? Him?"
"Did he lose his mind because he's scared?"
"Hey, pal. You didn't piss your pants, did you?"
The gang members mocked him, laughing and jeering. Not a single man crossed the line.
"What are you doing?" Rem asked, bored.
Encrid felt no shame. He had fulfilled his moral obligation.
"Brother, a demon has blinded them. They will not believe until they see," Audin whispered.
Killing everyone was a messy solution. Encrid decided on a demonstration.
"Who's your best swordsman?"
He would show them the gap in their strength. He was confident now—confident he could best almost anyone in this room.
"Humor him," the guild leader said with a smirk, as if watching a child play-act.
A man stepped forward to face Encrid. He looked like a former mercenary, with a long beard and a weathered face.
"You're acting pretty cocky, kid. You're gonna get yourself killed. While I'm still being nice, just—"
The man used a classic Valen-style mercenary tactic: attacking mid-sentence. He lunged forward, thrusting his spear with a sharp whoosh.
It was a move Encrid had seen a thousand times in his past lives. The thrust was decent, but it was nothing compared to the "stabbing freak" he had faced, and it was leagues below the skill of Mitch Hurier.
Encrid stepped inside the spear’s reach, his sword moving in a blur. He delivered a rising thrust from low to high.
Thuck!
A single blow. The fight was over in an instant.
The opponent’s skill level was exactly where Encrid’s had been in his previous lives. Because of that, Encrid could truly feel how much he had grown.
‘This is nothing.’
He didn't even need his regressions to read this man. He had known the outcome the moment the mercenary stepped forward.
The man gurgled, blood bubbling from his throat. Encrid pushed him aside with brute force, sliding his blade out of the dying man's flesh. The body collapsed onto the cold floor, twitching as steam rose from the hot blood pooling on the ground.
Silence fell over the room. The mockery vanished, replaced by a chilling realization. A single clash had redefined the situation.
Encrid looked at the crowd again, his voice cold.
"Anyone else want to cross the line?"