Valentia’s Horrible Chimera (2)
Hah.
He couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed. It had been a long time since he’d been in such a good mood.
Still, it seemed the Saint’s uneasy premonitions were rarely wrong.
Even after being shown to their table, the thugs from the Red Tower kept spitting out filthy remarks.
“This chair wasn’t used as a beer barrel, was it?”
“Did you really expect our lady to sit in some dump like this?”
“A-ah, I’ll replace it at once!”
They were clearly determined to score points with the noblewoman, and the young mages from the Red Tower were barking at the innkeeper without pause.
How dare you serve this to a lady.
How dare you place a lady in a place like this.
How dare you make a lady use something like this.
They were the ones who had come here, and yet they had endless complaints.
Before long, the noisy dining hall had gone quiet.
It seemed the other patrons had recognized them and were carefully watching their every move. Apparently, these people were rather well known in Valentia.
The Red Tower?
The question rose in Raul’s mind almost automatically.
The Red Tower wasn’t exactly a force that commanded much respect in Exeria.
Among factions associated with fire, there was the Ella Church, one of the Three Churches, so who were they to act high and mighty?
The reason their robes lacked the red naturally associated with flames was that they had once been formally defeated by the Ella Church.
An inferior offshoot in every respect.
That was the world’s assessment of the Red Tower.
At least, as far as Raul knew.
Did something change in the last thirty years?
Raul lifted the glass of water to his lips and quietly scanned the other mages’ bodies as well.
“T-then I have to cook! I’ll bring out the dishes you ordered right away!”
At last, the innkeeper, who had been taking all the mages’ abuse in stride, fled toward the kitchen.
He had kept smiling all the while, but a faint vein was pulsing at his temple.
The atmosphere had grown so tense that the other guests began to leave one by one, until only the drunken mages and the noblewoman remained in the center of the dining hall.
Fortunately, only that single lady was harboring a Desecration Bug in her body.
So it’s not the worst-case scenario.
He had wondered whether every one of those bastards was a host, but that wasn’t the case.
This was still within the range he’d expected.
After all, hadn’t the mature ones on Tetra Mountain been selling primarily to nobles?
Then there was no chance that woman—a noble and a mage—hadn’t touched that so-called medicine.
And at a glance, her natural magical aptitude is awful.
Poor mana, subpar talent, the pressure of a noble house, and the anxiety that would have come with it.
Raul didn’t need to ask any further to guess how that lady had come to seek out the Devil’s Egg.
The problem is…
How far was he supposed to get involved?
Unlike on Tetra Mountain, where his identity as a cleric had been exposed from the start, Raul was supposed to be nothing more than an ordinary wealthy traveler here.
If he suddenly announced, “I’m a crusader,” the whole plan would go down the drain from beginning to end.
Well, roughly speaking, I get the situation. She’s acting like a menace, but if she doesn’t go too far…
Raul decided, like most people here, to let the noblewoman’s bad behavior slide to a reasonable extent.
Of course, he would leave a message for “her” when she came to this city in the future.
Just then, as he was about to go back to enjoying the delicious food and refined liquor, something shattered.
Turning his head, he saw the sign girl sprawled over on a tray, her skirt smeared with scraps, while one of the Red Tower mages grinned with a sneering smile.
The bastard didn’t even bother hiding it as he slowly drew his foot back.
He’d tripped her.
“Cu-customer…”
The girl got to her feet, speaking in a lower voice than usual.
The emotion burning in her eyes was unmistakably rage.
But before she could properly protest, the noblewoman, who had been silent the entire time, suddenly shrieked.
“Hey!”
The startled girl looked over, and Raul could see bits of the leftovers she’d been carrying had splashed onto the hem of the noblewoman’s white robe as well.
“Lady, this is—!”
The girl’s face drained of color in an instant, and she began to stammer in panic. Then the noblewoman sprang to her feet and slapped a hand up into the air.
Smack!
The ugly sound rang out through the nearly silent dining hall.
The girl stared in shock, clutching her reddening cheek, but the noblewoman apparently wasn’t satisfied with that alone and actually grabbed her by the hair.
“Kyyaaaah!”
“Are you insane? You filthy thing, you dirtied my robe?”
From the noblewoman’s mouth came a voice as unpleasant as the rustle of broken glass.
“I-I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”
Even while being dragged around by the hair, the girl did nothing but apologize again and again.
But then the noblewoman’s twisted face smoothed out all at once, and she smiled a slimy little smile.
“What are you going to do about this, huh? This robe is something trash like you wouldn’t even get to see after crawling through a brothel for a whole year. You know that?”
Seeing the strangely lifted corners of her mouth, Raul became certain.
That woman had never cared about the robe in the first place.
She just wanted an excuse to bully someone.
Come to think of it, she wasn’t even looking at the mage who had caused the whole mess by tripping the girl.
Raul got the feeling she might have ordered it from the beginning.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”
“What are you going to do? Huh? I asked what you’re going to do!”
Now she was gripping the girl’s hair with both hands and shaking it as if it were a toy.
And the mages around them laughed like they were watching a circus act.
To those bastards, the cries and screams of a little girl were nothing more than entertainment.
“Jesus…”
Raul instinctively closed his hand around a thin metal dish.
Crack!
The dull sound burst out.
As expected, everyone’s attention turned here at once.
Sensing there was no turning back now, Raul decided to make his move with complete confidence.
“Is it really that hard to just drink quietly?”
He rose to his feet and strode over without the slightest hesitation, standing directly in front of the noblewoman.
Had his body grown larger by that much?
Her head, which had already seemed small, now looked downright tiny.
“Quiet? What the hell?”
The hot-blooded mages shot to their feet as well, looking as if they couldn’t believe what they were hearing.
They tried to wedge themselves between Raul and the noblewoman like they were some kind of dark knights, but Raul simply shoved them aside and glared at the noblewoman.
“Let go.”
He meant the girl’s brown hair, which the noblewoman still had clenched in her fist.
But the only thing that filled the lady’s eyes was arrogant contempt.
Realizing he was dealing with someone who wouldn’t understand words, Raul immediately seized her wrist.
“What, ah, aaaaaagh!”
Now that Raul had reached the realm of the superhuman, his grip was strong enough to twist her wrist cleanly out of position.
With just a gentle squeeze, her hand sprang open like a fan, and Raul met the tearful, flustered eyes of the girl before speaking.
“Get inside.”
The girl still looked as if she had no idea what was happening, but she staggered away and quickly fled into the kitchen.
“Let go.”
Only then did the noblewoman recover her composure and glare straight up at Raul.
“I said let go! Are you deaf?!”
“Yeah. Doesn’t sound much like a command to me.”
Raul answered with a calm nod.
Then a chair flew in from his side.
“You tall bastard!!”
The mage shouted with confidence, but Raul’s strength had changed too much for a chair strike to do anything more than make him sway.
He didn’t budge at all and simply stared at the noblewoman as if nothing had happened.
“I’ll ask again. Is it really that hard to just drink quietly?”
“I-It is. It’s even harder because of scum like you.”
“Bullshit.”
“What?”
“You’re the ones who made this mess, so why are you blaming me now? Is that the Red Tower’s teaching?”
In an instant, all the Red Tower mages, including the noblewoman whose wrist he still held, widened their eyes.
“Are you saying you want to shame the entire tower? Who the hell do you think you are? You think you can back that up?”
“If your teachings are this pathetic, no wonder your disciples all look like this.”
“You wanna die?”
“Would you be the one to try?”
As Raul coolly parried every word, the noblewoman’s face slowly turned redder and redder.
“You’ve crossed the line.”
“There you go again. You were the one who crossed it first, you Ella Church knockoffs.”
“What?!”
“Shit! What are you all standing around for? Burn him already!”
At her furious shout, all five mages raised their palms.
Their hands reddened at once, like charcoal heating to a glow.
Before long, round fireballs appeared above their palms, but Raul merely picked up the fork lying on the table.
“I thought you were some big shot, and all you’ve got is a fork?”
Pfft.
A filthy sneer curled at the noblewoman’s mouth.
“Fireball!”
“Burning!”
Then two different first-circle spells shot toward Raul.
The noblewoman drew up her own reddish mana to raise her resistance to heat, and the scene that unfolded looked as if Raul alone were about to be engulfed and reduced to charcoal by the surging flames.
But Raul merely wrapped a sliver of divinity around the fork in his hand and swung it vertically.
The incoming fireball split cleanly in half as if it had been cut by a blade, scorching the air for a moment before vanishing without a trace.
“What?”
“The fork—?”
Stupid voices spilled out of the mages’ mouths.
At the same time, Raul drove the noblewoman’s arm down against the table, then stabbed the back of her hand with the fork.
“Kyyaaaagh!”
A scream as if her skin were being torn apart burst out.
But Raul didn’t stop. He grabbed another fork from the table and hurled it into the shoulder of one of the mages who had been gathering flames.
“Aaaagh!”
When the spell collapsed in a ridiculous puff, the mages immediately began drawing mana even more wildly.
But trying to cast slowly in front of Raul was a terrible idea.
He slapped a hand down on the table, caught the two spoons that bounced up into the air, and then slashed his arm sideways.
The two silver utensils shot out like throwing knives and struck the mages square in the forehead.
Crunch—!
The sound of a walnut shell cracking burst out from human skulls.
“B-bur—”
At last, the female mage went pale and began chanting with trembling hands.
Raul looked at her for a moment, his brow furrowing, then tapped the crown of her head with the spoon he’d picked up again.
The six mages only stopped their disgusting behavior once they’d been knocked to the floor, bleeding, crying, or pinned like grotesque trophies by forks.
Raul turned back to the noblewoman, who was groaning and crying at the same time.
The fork was fixed in her hand like a skewer on a sandwich.
“Ahhk…”
Raul rested his hand on the fork and said, “The world’s a big place. Go somewhere else and try this crap again. A hole in your palm won’t be the end of it.”
The noblewoman, her veins bulging under her skin, glared up at him and said, “I’ll kill you. Do you even know who you just touched? You think you can lay a hand on me and survive in this city?”
Even after failing to cast a single respectable spell, her eyes still hadn’t died.
Hah.
So she really was a noble, after all.
Still, she certainly had more backbone than those bastards lying face down over there with their eyes closed, pretending to be unconscious.
But Raul openly sneered at her and said, “You’ll kill me?”
“Yes. I’ll tell my father, my professor too, and our entire house and the whole tower will—”
“Then why shouldn’t I kill you right now?”
Raul crushed her words underfoot with a single sentence.
The hot-headed woman, who had been rattling on endlessly until now, finally clamped her mouth shut.
“Think before you act. The world is wide, and there are plenty of people who don’t give a damn about your family’s status.”
Riiip—!
“Kyyaaaahhh!”
As he said that, Raul pulled the fork out of the noblewoman’s hand, where it had been pinned to the table.
Of course she screamed as if she were being torn apart, but Raul only fixed her with a hard stare and said, “Get lost.”
At Raul’s eviction order, the startled mages turned ashen and fled the inn in a panic.
Only the noblewoman remained for a moment, glaring at Raul with eyes blazing for revenge before disappearing as well. No matter how you looked at it, it was not the face of someone whose rage had cooled.
She’s going to do something.
As early as dawn, or at the latest tomorrow morning, Raul figured a carriage bearing the family crest—or a professor-level mage—might come looking for him.
And yet he still returned to the table where he’d first taken his seat, calmly picked up the remains of the White Louis beneath it, and lifted it to his lips.
He wet the corner of his mouth and took a bite of the once-soft meat.
Hah.
He really should have finished it while it was still warm.
The flavor wasn’t quite as good as it had been a moment ago.
He clicked his tongue in disappointment, and someone soon set a steaming plate of meat and a brimming cup of silver liquor, White Louis, down on his table.
Turning his head, he saw the innkeeper.
When their eyes met, the man trembled for a moment, apparently afraid even of Raul, before saying, “For helping my daughter… thank you, sir.”
“Don’t mention it. Is this on the house?”
Raul smiled softly and spoke in a round, gentle tone that was the opposite of how he’d sounded just now.
Only then, with the tension finally easing from his shoulders, did the innkeeper reply, “Yes. We can give you as much as you’d like, if you need more.”
“Uh…”
Only then did the sign girl, who had apparently approached without him noticing, peek out from behind the innkeeper’s back.
Hesitant and fidgety, she still came up to Raul, bowed deeply, and thanked him.
“Th-thank you so much. Thank you for saving me.”
When she lifted her head, there were still tear tracks on her face, but she was smiling.
It was the kind of smile that made him think of “her” again.
And just like that, Raul no longer felt the slightest regret that the plan he’d prepared halfway had fallen apart completely.
So what?
If an underhanded plan had gone to pieces, all he had to do was change direction and move openly instead.
There was no point clinging to one small variable. Raul knew too much about Valentia for that.
He was, after all, an expert who had written five volumes of strategy guides for this city.
He probably knew more about Valentia than most of its native residents did.
“Don’t mention it.”
Raul accepted their goodwill and drank deeply of the White Louis.
The burn of it going down and the rich fragrance that followed bloomed softly in his chest.
It was the kind of taste that made a smile come naturally.
Late that night, Raul once again burned off the alcohol in his system with holy power and stepped out of the inn.
Thanks to the city’s sheer size, many buildings were still lit even after dark.
This was the time of those who lived the night, not those who lived the day.
Raul was walking these streets now for one reason only: to bury tomorrow’s “tragedy” beneath an even bigger catastrophe.
From early evening, he had locked himself in his room and, stitch by stitch, personally embroidered symbols into a robe before slipping his arms into it.
By the time he pulled the hood low over his face, he had reached the front of a building where a few rough-looking brutes stood guard at the door.
The name of the windowless wooden building was One-Eye.
It was one of the branches of Cyclops, the gang that controlled western Valentia.
“Hey, who the hell are you?”
“Yo, isn’t that robe emblem the one those guys have been running around with lately?”
“Ah, those Red Tower shorties?”
The brutes chatted among themselves, then suddenly glared at him.
What they were glaring at was Raul, who had shown up dressed in the attire of an enemy faction without any permission or prior warning.
Raul really did seem to have quite the knack for handiwork.
What he was wearing now was a white robe with the symbol of the Red Tower emblazoned on it in huge letters.
“Hey, didn’t your professor tell you? If you step into our Cyclops territory without permission, we’re allowed to kill you.”
“If you don’t want to die, get lost! This isn’t a place for some proper little bookworm to wander around.”
“No, no. Let’s not waste this. We should beat the hell out of him and send the corpse to those tower bastards as a warning! What do you think? Their faces would be priceless, huh? Hahahahaha!”
The men spat out terrifying threats as if they meant to intimidate him, but Raul simply stared back in silence.
Then, little by little, the three of them began to scowl for real.
“Hey, you deaf or something?”
“Didn’t you hear me? I said get lost.”
“See? I told you we should just kill him.”
Once he was met with genuine hostility, Raul let a winning smile slip out from beneath the hood’s shadow.
Even so, his voice remained as dry as dust.
“Trash of society.”
At that one line, all three clenched their fists and started marching toward him, but Raul didn’t stop.
“As a member of the Red Tower, I can’t just stand by and watch trash like you pollute society.”
He drew a dagger from his robes and, without hesitation, cut down the arm of the brute rushing at him.
Whoosh—!
With a chilling sound of flesh being torn, Raul’s second plan began.
There were two main ways to achieve a goal “secretly” in Valentia.
One was the same as his first, now-broken plan: keep quiet, exploit the city’s secrets, take what you came for, and vanish like the wind.
And the other was this.
Raul sliced through another brute’s hamstring and shouted with all the force he could muster, “Let truth abide in the Red Tower!”
If he couldn’t conceal himself alone, then the second way to remain “hidden” was to cause so much bigger a commotion that the tower bastards would lose their minds trying to contain it.
“I’ll take your lives as payment for insulting the tower!”
In this very moment, Raul was the Red Tower’s most valiant blade.
Of course, he fully intended to dump the aftermath onto the noblewoman.