The Underworld
“What are you staring at?! Get the hell out of here!”
At the head of the pack, a scar-covered man spat a scrap of meat from between his teeth and bellowed. Behind him trailed a gang of thugs, leather armor thrown on in haste, rusty daggers and iron pipes clutched in their fists.
“You deaf? I said get lost, you worthless maggots!”
They kicked at the tables inside the tavern, driving their threat home.
“Not them again…”
The young waiter who had been rambling to Evan about the state of the world crumpled his face. Clutching his tray to his chest, the boy bolted for the kitchen.
The other patrons, too, treated it like something long familiar. Leaving their half-eaten meals behind, they scrambled to flee. Even as people were driven out around them, Evan’s party remained seated in perfect calm, as if they occupied some other world entirely.
“Huh? And who the hell are these bastards?”
The scar-faced man who looked to be the gang’s boss swaggered up to Evan’s table. Evan dipped a piece of rye bread into his stew and chewed it slowly. To his left and right, Marquis Gregory and Duke Waldstein merely watched the thug with cold, settled eyes.
The man looked Evan up and down, taking in his clothes, and sneered.
“Judging by the getup, some two-bit noble crawled up from the sticks.”
He slammed his iron pipe down on the table again and again. The vibration set Evan’s bowl of stew rocking.
“Might’ve worked in your backwater village. Around here, a mutt like you can vanish without a whisper. So stop stuffing your face and get out.”
At the thug’s escalating insolence, Gareth’s hand closed around the hilt of the sword hidden beneath the table. He was a heartbeat from drawing the moment Evan gave the word—
“That’s enough, you sons of bitches.”
A rough voice cracked out from the depths of the tavern. The man who pushed aside the cloth hanging over the kitchen entrance was Max, the owner. His beard grew thick and wild, his age impossible to guess, but the solid build of his body did not belong to a man who simply cooked and ran a tavern. He leveled a grease-stained cast-iron ladle at the gang boss and glared.
“What’s this nonsense you’re pulling on my customers in my place?”
The boss crooked his neck and laughed nastily.
“Nonsense? That stings. We’re the ones keeping the peace in this district. Without us, a dog like you wouldn’t even get to breathe and cook.”
“Spare me the garbage and state your business.”
“Fine by me. We’d rather wrap this up and go rest ourselves. Hand over the protection money.”
Max’s brow twitched.
“Didn’t you take that last week? It’s been less than seven days since you collected a full month’s tax.”
“Ah, that was then. Prices went up, so the fee went up. Be smart and put more on the table.”
At the boss’s shameless demand, Max clenched his teeth.
“Oho. That face says you don’t feel like doing business anymore.”
At the boss’s words, the thugs raised their weapons and started toward Evan’s party. Max spoke in a rush.
“All right! I’ll pay—just leave the customers alone.”
With a look of pure resignation, Max turned to Evan.
“Sorry about this, gentlemen. As you can see, I think we’ll have to close for the day. Best you leave. I won’t charge you for the meal.”
It was consideration—an attempt to keep an innocent out-of-town noble from coming to harm.
“You heard him. The owner says go. And a free tip: strut around this neighborhood flashing a title and you might wash up in the river tomorrow morning. So—”
The boss’s monologue cut off mid-sentence. Evan had slowly lifted his head and met the man’s eyes.
Razor-Sharp Intimidation
“...!”
Those were not human eyes. It was like staring into a bottomless abyss of unknowable depth. The man’s survival instinct screamed without pause. Danger. Run now. This one is a monster you do not touch.
But the gang boss could not take a single step. Like a frog before a snake, every muscle in his body locked solid with terror; he could not so much as twitch a finger.
Evan regarded the sweating boss with the indifference of a man looking at an insect. Then, in a flat, dry voice, he gave the order.
“That foul stench is spoiling my meal. Remove it.”
The words had barely left his mouth when Gareth’s sword flashed free from under the table, and a storm tore through the tavern.
Shuaak!
Kwaaaang!
To the thugs it was nothing short of a natural disaster. The swaggering brutes with weapons in hand never even understood why they were dying. Their level was that of third-rate alley trash. To Gareth, a knight of the Phanelia Kingdom, they were nothing more than wooden dummies standing still in place.
Puhk! Kwadjik!
The sounds of flesh tearing and bone shattering erupted on every side. He heard his own men being swept down like fallen leaves and dying—yet the boss, soul bound by Evan’s presence, could not move a finger.
Behind him came the footsteps of death.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
But Evan’s next command spared the boss’s life.
“Gareth, stop. I still have questions for him.”
“As you command.”
Gareth sheathed his blade, seized the boss by the shoulder with a rough hand, and slammed him to the floor.
Kuuung!
“Ghk—!”
In an instant the tavern had arranged itself around Evan’s seat: Marquis Gregory to the left, Duke Waldstein to the right, and Walter at his back. Watching Evan’s party clean up the thugs in a blink, Max sensed that whatever was unfolding was no ordinary matter.
“Kaz! Get inside—now!”
He shouted at the young waiter peeking through a gap in the kitchen doorway. At Max’s cry the boy called Kaz flinched. Even so, his eyes remained fixed on Evan’s party, as if under a spell.
The swordsman who had cut down the villains in a heartbeat, and at the center of it all, Evan seated in lofty calm—it looked just like the heroes from the books Kaz loved.
“But, Uncle…”
“I said get inside!”
At Max’s roar, Kaz finally grumbled his way into the kitchen. Once he was sure the boy was gone, Max carefully addressed Evan.
“Gentlemen… from the look of it, you come from a house of some renown. Please—don’t do anything more reckless. Leave this place at once.”
His voice was shaking. Evan studied Max’s expression. It was strange. The man before him was not afraid of the people who had just butchered the thugs in moments—he was afraid of the thugs still sprawled on the floor.
Evan propped his chin on his hand, intrigued.
“Why fear those worms crawling on the floor more than us?”
Max let out a long breath and flicked a glance at the boss face-down on the boards.
“These men aren’t ordinary street thugs. They are the dogs of a vast organization that rules the underworld of this district—no, of the entire capital of Phanelia. The Night Shadow.”
“Night Shadow?”
“Yes. The one who leads them is a man named Victor. If he learns that his hunting dogs died here… no matter how great a noble you may be, you will not survive.”
At that, Marquis Gregory’s brow twisted where he stood at Evan’s left.
“A commoner taking a noble’s life? What kind of absurdity is that?”
In most nations, a commoner who murdered a noble faced the most extreme punishment. Max, however, looked at the angry Gregory as if to say that the ignorant should keep quiet.
“Absurd, you say, old man? In this place, that is common sense.”
He lowered his voice, careful of who might overhear.
“The reason he can do it… is that a high-ranking noble stands behind him.”
“......!”
At those words, Marquis Gregory’s and Duke Waldstein’s faces hardened as one. A power broker shielding a crime syndicate in the very heart of the royal capital was not a mere matter of public order—it was proof that the discipline of the royal house itself had collapsed.
Unlike the two frozen ministers, Evan’s expression shifted toward interest.
Useful information, and from a place I never expected.
He already knew a doomed kingdom rotted from the bottom up. What mattered was where those rotten roots connected.
Then the boss, mistaking the party’s silence for fear after hearing Max, decided it was his chance and cried out.
“If you let me go now, I’ll pretend none of this happened. So please—”
“Gareth. Take his right arm.”
“As you command.”
Shuaak.
Gareth’s sword carved through the boss’s right arm without mercy. Blood fountained up and painted the wooden floor red. The man clutched the stump of his shoulder, thrashing on the ground, and screamed in raw agony.
“Aaaargh!!”
At the brutality of it, Max’s face went pale and he stumbled backward. Evan did not so much as blink at the spraying blood. He looked down at the boss and spoke.
“What I want is your mouth. Nothing else.”
Eyes as cold as ice. The young man seated before him was a devil wearing human skin. The boss felt a terror of death so complete it almost drowned the pain in his shoulder.
“So until I permit it, do not make another sound.”
At Evan’s quiet command, the man clapped his remaining hand over his mouth and swallowed his cries. Evan turned his head and looked at Max again.
“Continue. Do you know who that noble is?”
Max shook his head. His hands were trembling faintly.
“I—I don’t know… No one knows anything about the noble. I’ve only heard rumors.”
Evan’s blue eyes sank deep.
To learn the noble’s identity, I’ll have to meet this Victor myself.
To get the answer, he would have to face the man said to rule the underworld. Evan spoke to the boss shivering on the floor.
“Lead the way.”
“Y-yes…? Where…?”
“To wherever your master is.”
At that, not only the boss but Max as well could not hide their shock.
“Sir! Please, calm yourself! That place is a death trap! No matter how formidable that big bodyguard of yours may be, there are hundreds of syndicate members there!”
At Max’s sincere attempt to stop him, Evan let out a soft laugh. Hundreds of syndicate members? He had Waldstein, the kingdom’s commander-in-chief, and Gareth, commander of the Lily Knights. And above all, Walter—the one called the Master of Masters—stood with him. An elite army might be another matter; a few hundred alley rats were nothing but meat.
Evan rose from his seat and gave Walter a look. From Walter’s coat came a soft clink of gleaming silver coins.
Clink.
The clear ring of silver striking silver broke the silence. Max’s eyes went wide. The pile of coins on the table was a fortune that far outstripped a month’s earnings for this shabby tavern.
“Payment for the meal—and for the excellent information.”
Evan gave a small nod toward Gareth, who still held the boss by the scruff of the neck.
“Drag him.”
“As you command.”
Gareth seized the boss by the hair and hauled him away. Where the man passed, a path of red blood unspooled across the floor—and that path was the first sign of the storm of blood about to descend upon the underworld of Phanelia.