Chapter 18
I’m translating the chapter into publication-style HTML, and I’m preserving the dialogue breaks and any in-universe special content as styled blocks where needed.CHAPTER_TITLE: The King in the Well and an Unexpected Gift (1)
Valentia was a vast city.
So vast, in fact, that it was split east to west, with gangs and markets each ruling their own territory in entirely different ways.
Of course, many factions had sunk roots into the city’s black shadows.
Vultures like the Hooks of the Southwest or the Witches of the North-Northwest, for example.
And yet, if one were to name the ruler of western Valentia’s filthy, dark business, every last person would point to Cyclops.
That was because the gang had established branches called the Eye all across the city, watching, eavesdropping on, and inspecting the whole western district.
Late that night, the group Raul had taken a hand in belonged to exactly those bastards.
“G-g-go to hell!”
Raul blocked the slashing blade flying straight at him from the front with his dagger.
He should have let it slide and countered, but the gangsters were weaker than expected, so he met it head-on instead.
Muscles swollen beyond anything ordinary were useful in moments like this, too.
“Y-you—! You insane bastard!!”
Raul answered the gangster’s scream with a blade as cold as frost.
He simply drove his dagger forward with all his strength, shoved the longsword aside, and stabbed cleanly into the man’s neck as the imbalance made him stumble.
And of course, he had no reason to feel even a shred of pity for these bastards.
Cyclops had seized western Valentia through periodic massacres and a brutal reign of terror.
That was all there was to say. There was no reason to dwell on the details.
Slash!
Raul flicked his dagger through the air and shook the blood from it.
When he looked ahead, he saw a man at least a head taller than the gangsters from moments ago step out through the door of the Eye.
Calm eyes. An easy composure.
Without question, he was the officer in charge of this branch.
The man spoke to Raul without so much as a flicker of panic, even as he looked at the thugs sprawled on the ground, groaning and dripping blood.
“Who sent you?”
“I’m the sword of the Red Magic Tower.”
Raul lied without the slightest hesitation.
But the giant in front of him didn’t even pretend to listen.
“If that’s your idea of a bluff, you’re sick in the head. What kind of lunatic sends just one man at this hour to declare war?”
As expected, the man had seen through Raul’s provocation at a glance.
But whether he understood that or not made no difference to Raul.
He had been planning this since the moment he let the young lady escape.
“What if that one man isn’t ordinary?”
The man’s brows twitched.
“Ha! Not ordinary? What, you alone are going to take on all of Cyclops? Know your limits before you start acting big, asshole.”
“The great Magic Tower is with me.”
“Hah! I said enough with the bullshit!”
The officer, who had been grinning with gold teeth bared at Raul’s words, vanished in an instant.
Raul reflexively scattered divine power, and felt a large fist coming at him from behind, along with a sharp, chilling intent to kill.
Without turning, Raul wrapped faint holiness around his arm and twisted his body, striking back with an elbow.
“Huh?!”
Then, with a startled cry, the man came into view, backflipping away.
So he really was an officer.
He was fast enough that Raul’s Agility stat couldn’t catch up.
Still, the fight had already been decided the instant the man evaded Raul’s attack.
Once he had properly locked onto his prey, Raul gripped the dagger in reverse and charged.
The man caught Raul’s blade with the gauntlet on his hand.
Clang, clack-clack-clack!
However, Raul’s strength, amplified by holiness, was enough to shove the giant’s body straight back.
“Ghk! You crazy, crazy bastard!”
Like the other gangsters, the man spat curses between gasps.
But Raul poured every ounce of his transcendental strength, far beyond Rank A, into the attack and gave him no opening.
A rough stone clipped the gangster’s ankle as he was driven back in a skid.
His balance wavered, just a little.
At the same time, Raul let go of the dagger and slipped into the man’s guard as he raised his fists in a boxer’s stance.
Whoosh!
An uppercut loaded with heavy, crushing strength flew out in a single breath.
Raul was certain of victory when he heard something awful crumble from the man’s jaw.
“I told you. That one man wasn’t ordinary.”
Soon after, more brutes began crawling out from inside the Eye building in search of their officer, who wasn’t coming back.
Their expressions shifted in sequence from confusion to caution to shock, and then they all stared wide-eyed at the unconscious officer sprawled on the ground.
Raul lazily pulled his dagger free from the man’s gauntlet and said to the gangsters, who were now at a complete loss for what to do, “This district belongs to our great Red Magic Tower from now on. If you understand, grab these and get the hell out!”
That should be enough provocation.
Normally, Cyclops didn’t care what happened to the underlings, but if someone laid a hand on an officer, they wouldn’t let it slide.
No, more than that, the officer himself would probably refuse to report back upstairs right away.
A single branch was completely wiped out by one man who appeared out of nowhere?
How could an officer say something like that and be taken seriously?
So the man would surely move exactly as Raul wanted.
The board is set.
Raul let out a thin, sly smile.
***
The inn was in an uproar the moment the sun came up.
Raul had been sitting on the edge of the bed, waiting for a while, when he heard a knock.
Knock-knock.
He gave a brief reply and opened the door to find the innkeeper he’d thanked the day before standing there with worried eyes.
“Um, there are people here looking for the guest...”
“Yes. I know.”
The moment he stepped out, he met the eyes of the innkeeper’s pretty little daughter as well.
The child looked at him with a face on the verge of tears.
She must have thought this was her fault, that Raul had been put in danger because he’d helped her.
But Raul paid it no mind and walked past her, stepping out of the inn.
The moment he was outside, he saw four knights in full plate armor.
Beyond them were armed mercenaries and three carriages moving in formation.
Ah.
The crest stamped on the carriages made everything clear.
So that’s House Devrick.
Devrick was the old-guard noble house of Valentia.
That was why the mages of the tower had pampered the young lady so thoroughly, and why the Red Magic Tower had such influence in this city.
The whole situation took shape in Raul’s head at once.
“Get in.”
When Raul stood before them without hesitation, the knight hiding his face beneath a helm pointed at the carriage with its door already open.
They had boldly skipped any tedious step like questioning whether he was the right man.
If a knight of Devrick told him to get in, he got in. If he showed the slightest hint of resistance, he’d get a blade through him.
That was the arrogant, overbearing method reserved for a city’s entrenched power.
That was House Devrick’s way.
Raul had known it for a long time, so he climbed into the carriage without the slightest trace of tension.
As the carriage set off, the scenery outside the window changed in a blur.
How long had they traveled?
Devrick’s great mansion came into view almost immediately.
Not because Devrick’s estate was close.
It was just that the damned noble house’s mansion was absurdly large.
When Raul got out of the carriage, even more armed men were waiting to greet him than before.
Anyone who didn’t know better might have thought they were escorting some honored guest, but the truth was the opposite.
Every last one of them was there to cut off Raul’s escape.
They really do go overboard.
The large reception room they reached in such lavish style, under the protection of about thirty guards, held the Red Mages Raul knew, the young lady, and a man with a thick, imposing beard.
“Him! Father! That’s him! He’s the one who—”
As soon as she saw Raul, the young lady screamed.
She had apparently used an expensive potion, because her hand was now completely healed, not a scar in sight, as she pointed at Raul.
“Lorian, be quiet.”
“But Father! He put his hands on me! With a fork he’d been using to jab at food—”
Thunk!
House Devrick’s patriarch drove his staff into the floor, silencing the unruly young lady.
The loud crack made her tremble all over.
She must have been hit with that staff before.
Like father, like daughter.
Raul accepted it silently.
“Sit.”
Soon the nobleman from Devrick pointed at an empty chair with his staff and spoke.
Raul complied, and the man gave a faint snort.
“From your bearing, you’re not from Valentia. Where are you from?”
“The east.”
“If you mean a city in the east, there are only Ludbill and Zern. Which is it?”
“Further east.”
“Hah. Yes. Sometimes a person who can’t reveal his identity comes to this city.”
Tap.
The nobleman set his staff against the sofa and said, “I am Ohad Devrick, head of the Devrick family.”
“Raul.”
“No family?”
“Oddly enough?”
“Not backed by a house, then. What about an affiliation?”
“Not really.”
“Is that something you don’t want to say, or can’t say?”
“Both are true.”
Despite Raul’s cold sarcasm, Ohad Devrick’s face didn’t waver at all.
“I’ve heard you laid hands on my daughter’s body?”
“That’s an odd way to put it. We just traded blows.”
“I heard my daughter first touched the innkeeper, and you got involved while helping the inn employee, and things turned out that way.”
Raul narrowed his brow at the nobleman’s calm tone.
The noble bastard in front of him knew the full story far better than Raul had expected.
Can I talk to him?
A faint doubt passed through his head.
Well, there had been knights like Lergal, after all.
Maybe there really were exceptions among nobles, unexpectedly enough.
“Right?”
But as expected, that hope didn’t last long...
With the same expressionless face, Ohad delivered something not even remotely amusing.
“Then I suppose you understand exactly what crime you’ve committed?”
“A crime?”
“Yes. A crime. On the surface, your actions might look like those of a knight who cannot ignore injustice. Am I wrong?”
“What in the world does ‘might look like actions’ even mean? I just acted that way.”
When Raul spoke as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing, Ohad’s mouth curled slightly.
“Yes. That is your crime. You weren’t even defending the innkeeper’s daughter; you stained my daughter’s hands with blood just to protect a mere strand of her hair.”
“So what?”
“Still don’t understand? You laid hands on a noble for the sake of people who are little more than commoners. Do you truly believe that kind of thing is acceptable?”
The damned class system.
That was why Ohad Devrick could stand there so confidently.
Raul felt a stab of revulsion and lowered his voice in a threatening tone. “Noble or commoner, a life is still a life.”
But the nobleman didn’t back down, answering with the same expressionless face.
“The weight of a neck. And the weight of a head. They are not the same. Just as a kingdom is peaceful only when law and order stand upright, the city’s order is set right only when nobles and commoners understand each other’s weight.”
“So?”
“You pierced my daughter’s palm, so I will cut off your arm and hang it in front of the inn. Only then will the commoners who see it truly understand the weight of nobility, and only then will you yourself grasp the lesson I am teaching you about how to live in this world.”
“A lesson...?”
Ha.
Raul could no longer hold back a laugh as he looked at the nobleman spinning utter bullshit so plausibly.
“You know, a close friend of mine once said something about situations like this. He said that if this isn’t a bumper crop of bullshit, nothing is.”
Snikt!
Snrrk!
At Raul’s insult, the knights and mercenaries had been waiting for just such a moment to draw their swords.
Their number exceeded thirty, and it was obvious that some among them could use aura.
The killing intent they sent toward Raul was real.
“A bumper crop of bullshit, you say. Hah. Yes. Good. Fine. Since you have insulted me, the head of House Devrick, one of your legs is gone as of this very moment. Now then. Anything else you wish to say?”
Ohad Devrick’s face still overflowed with ease.
That was because there were not many in this city who could defy him.
It was no wonder he thought everything that left his mouth was law.
He was the king of this well called Valentia.
But Raul was a man who could smash that well to pieces.
“There’s one thing you’re mistaken about, Ohad Devrick.”
“Oh? Interesting. Let’s hear it. What exactly is it that Devrick does not know?”
“My crime is not something you, a mere noble, can place on a scale.”
“Is that so? If not Devrick, then who in this city can judge your crime?”
There was no noble house in this city with the same influence as Devrick.
Here, they held power equal to, if not greater than, the market itself.
And the right to judge the wrongdoing of commoners belonged to nobles.
Within Valentia, Ohad Devrick’s claim came very close to the truth.
But to Raul, it was nothing but bullshit that didn’t apply to him in the slightest.
Still seated in his relaxed posture, Raul lifted his hand and drew a vertical line and then a horizontal one in the air before him.
Then he said, small but hard as iron, “Motala.”
Whoomph!
At the same time, white light gathered and flowed over his entire body.
It blazed like fire and streamed like water, an utterly unmistakable divine power.
“The only judge who can judge me is Motala, goddess of justice.”
At Raul’s words, the young lady’s eyes flew wide open.
She wasn’t the only one.
Shock spread across the faces of the knights and mercenaries standing guard around him, too.
The only ones who didn’t react much were two people.
Raul himself and Ohad Devrick.
To Raul’s surprise, Ohad merely stroked his chin a few times and showed no other reaction.
“And so?”
He even asked it.
Calmly, composedly, with an arrogant smile hanging from the corner of his mouth.
“If you are one of Motala’s holy crusaders, does that change anything? You’re not a noble, after all. If anything, you’re sullying the sanctity of the crusaders while wearing the filthy skin of a commoner.”
Not understand?
Ohad let the words hang there, then gave a small laugh and continued, “Your very existence insults Motala’s crusaders. Don’t you think Devrick should correct the stain on Motala’s church that you represent?”
But Raul was no easy prey, either.
As though he had expected even this reaction, he answered with the same thin, vicious smile.
“One word from me and Valentia will be a sea of fire.”
“Pfft! A sea of fire? That’s funny. Very funny. Does Valentia look like some insignificant backwater where one crusader can make all the difference?”
“Don’t believe me?”
“Would you believe yourself? You’re an outsider who’s never shown his face in Valentia before, claiming he can do something even Devrick cannot?”
“You’d be wise to listen while I’m still speaking.”
“Ha! Then good. Fine! Go on, then. Do it. Right now!”
Ohad Devrick wore a thick sneer and spread both hands out again and again, mocking Raul.
“Why can’t you do anything? Why is nothing happening? Wasn’t one word supposed to turn this city into a sea of fire?”
He laughed.
Raul’s bluff was simply too absurd.
And yet Raul laughed too.
His obsidian eyes looked as though he had been waiting for this very moment.
For a fleeting instant, Ohad Devrick wondered whether Raul had truly gone mad, but he couldn’t voice the thought.
Bang!
“T-this is bad, my lord!”
A middle-aged mage shoved through the door to the reception room as if he meant to break it down and shouted at the top of his lungs.
“The b-bastards! The Cyclops bastards are swarming the mansion!”
“...W-what?”
At that ghostly timing, cracks appeared in Ohad Devrick’s face for the first time.
Then the crusader of Motala, wearing a cold smile, said, “Satisfied?”
Ohad Devrick felt as if he had just been struck in the head with a sledgehammer.