Storm of Lightning (1)
…Goddamn it. This is insane.
Zoid muttered, his face twisting in disgust. It wasn’t the majestic sight of the wall sliding aside to reveal a hidden staircase that had him cursing. What filled him with bitter resentment was the very existence of this passage—it confirmed the Trustas Merchant Group’s hidden crimes and corruption.
—Rumble.
—Thud.
We swallowed hard as we stared at the secret staircase that had appeared in the wall.
“…This must be where they keep the ledgers, right?”
“We won’t know until we check. Could be a storage room or an escape route.”
Dana glanced toward the entrance and answered through telepathy. Even though she knew the sound wouldn’t leak out, that heavy noise still set her nerves on edge.
“I’ll investigate.”
Franc spoke curtly before heading into the passage, carefully checking for traps along the way. The stairs ended quickly. It felt like descending slightly below ground level. There were no traps worth mentioning, so reaching the end of the corridor was easy.
When a dead-end room appeared, Larilura peered inside and murmured.
“Bingo.”
“Yeah.”
The small underground room was packed with densely filled bookshelves and a table. I waited for Franc’s all-clear signal before grabbing a stack of documents. They were written in code. But the spreadsheet-like format made it obvious these were ledgers.
“Sloppier than I expected.”
A mechanical secret passage that didn’t use mana. It made sense that intruders relying only on intuition or detection abilities would miss it.
Larilura flipped through a few pages and said, “It’s all in code. Looks like it’s the captain’s turn.”
…Captain? She must have changed the title because Zoid was here. Still, it felt a little strange. Then again, it was probably better than being called “you” or “hey.”
While my mind wandered with such pointless thoughts, I tapped my forehead over the mask.
‘Get it together. This isn’t the time.’
I began reading the documents in earnest. Zoid, meanwhile, fidgeted like a salaryman with only twenty minutes left of his lunch break.
“Mister. You’re not seriously planning to decipher the code right here, are you? There’s a ton of ledgers. Just grab the most recent ones, the oldest ones, and a few in between—”
Zoid’s words cut off mid-sentence. I had started sorting the documents I had translated using my ability.
“…Ah, I see. So you investigated the cipher method too, huh?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
Zoid was thinking logically. My head was already busy enough, so I gave a vague reply and sent another telepathic message.
“There are records starting from experiments on the mixing ratio of the soot powder that produces immediate effects, all the way to transactions with the underworld. This is a bit strange.”
“Strange? What part?”
“The security is way too lax. If they’re keeping all records of their crimes here, they should have at least installed traps or alarms in the passage.”
“…Yeah. This place isn’t just a simple storage room.”
Franc, who had seemed to be only half-listening to our conversation, spoke up. Our Franc had been thoroughly investigating the small underground room the entire time.
“This is probably—an emergency escape route.”
—Click.
Her astonishing sleight of hand—which made calling her a mere thief feel insulting—had apparently discovered something again. Veronica once more laid out the rune stones she had retrieved.
“I have set up a soundproof barrier. You may open it.”
—Clack.
Franc answered with action rather than words. But this time, it wasn’t a grand entrance that opened. Only a small passage appeared in the corner—so narrow that even I would feel cramped if I had to bend over. It looked tight even for Franc, the smallest among us!
The passage curved sharply multiple times, designed to prevent anyone from shooting magic or arrows from behind. I muttered,
“It’s dwarf-sized, so it fits perfectly. Right, Mister Zoid?”
“…My brother could probably get through.”
So he says. A seventy-five percent dwarf mixed-blood really is something else.
‘…They placed the escape route and the ledgers in the same spot?’
It was an arrangement that reeked of arrogant confidence. A thief who stole the ledgers could easily slip away through it. Which meant they must believe no one could actually escape through that passage.
Just by looking, the escape route had many curves. That meant plenty of space to install traps along the walls. It couldn’t guarantee safety and could make noise, so fleeing through it would be a poor choice.
‘Besides, we still haven’t smashed that merchant boss’s skull in.’
Taking the ledgers was only for cleanup. Our ultimate goal was to beat the shit out of that bastard. Retreating now would be like going to a grilled meat restaurant, ignoring the marinated ribs, downing only the dongchimi, and asking for the bill.
“I’ll set up traps inside the passage. If the merchant boss tries to escape this way, he’ll be walking straight into a tiger’s den full of traps he doesn’t know about.”
—Glance.
Veronica gave me a meaningful look as she spoke. I confirmed that the ledgers were genuine and pointed toward the entrance.
“Mister Zoid. We’ll head out and keep watch outside. Since this is an underground room, it would be bad if enemies notice us and pump in poison gas or something.”
“Understood.”
Zoid, Larilura, and I returned to the room where the secret staircase had been. Of course, what I had just said was an excuse. The real reason was that I didn’t want to show him the scene of storing the ledgers in a slate engraved with spatial magic. I had brought him this far out of consideration, but thinking about the future, it would benefit both parties if he remained appropriately ignorant.
“…Sigh.”
In the now-empty room, the blonde-tanned half-dwarf let out a heavy breath.
“Mister Jade?”
“No, it’s nothing. It’s just… I suddenly felt doubtful whether this building is really the one I knew.”
Zoid scratched under his chin, as if the mask felt awkward.
“I probably shouldn’t say this to you folks, but when I left this place, my brother really seemed like a decent guy. Sure, he was greedy for money, but I thought it was because he wanted to give proper compensation to the craftsmen.”
His eyes filled with regret as he looked around the room’s walls.
“But that same brother has been selling poison to other people’s families ever since I was too young to understand the ways of the world. And with that money, he even dug a rat hole just to protect his own safety.”
Zoid continued in a low voice. The fact that he had spoken aloud probably meant he had been thinking about it deeply. I crossed my arms.
“I do think it’s pitiful, but I won’t offer you comfort.”
“Do as you please. I’m an outsider anyway. …If only I had been a complete bastard too, maybe I wouldn’t feel this shitty.”
“That’s just a hypothesis that only leaves regret no matter how much you think about it.”
After muttering that, I gathered mana and began constructing a spell formula.
“More importantly, we have guests. Get ready to fight.”
“—What?”
Whether Zoid was startled or not, I aimed at the presence caught by my senses and fired Lightning Arrow.
—Crackle!
—Ping ping ping!
Exactly one second later, Larilura pulled her mana threads as well. The moment I activated the magic, she had fired supporting shots without question or hesitation. It was nice to be trusted that much, but this time it seemed to have been a mistake.
“Mirror! Reflect the illusion!”
The magic and lightning arrows shot forward like lightning toward the entrance, only to fly straight back at us at the same speed. Just like they had been reflected by a mirror.
‘Fuck.’
Since I didn’t have a spear, I had no choice but to extend the claws of Beast Regression.
—Clang clang clang!
I deflected the incoming sparks of electricity to protect myself. The electric orbs disappeared the moment I cut off the mana, so that was fine. Zoid and Larilura seemed to have dodged or blocked on their own.
But Zoid cried out in even greater agony than if he had been hit by the arrows.
“B-Brother!!”
“—Whether you call me brother or outsider, you sure have the nerve to spout such shameless words, Zoid.”
The dwarf who had been hiding in the shadows revealed himself with the clank of armor.
“Since you’ve shown up with rats in tow, you can no longer claim to be an outsider to this matter. And since you have betrayed me, you are no longer even my brother.”
The dwarf was a man clad in pitch-black armor. It was an impressive-looking suit. Still, if someone had introduced that guy to me as a small golem, I probably would have believed it—the armor was that thick. In contrast to the armor, the hammer and large shield were polished to a ridiculous silver sheen.
That mirror-like shield must have been what reflected our magic earlier.
“Kuhahaha!! The old man sure knows how to talk shit!!”
The one who spoke was a young man the dwarf had brought along. A bastard wearing a steel mask and a robe. His features were so indistinct it was hard to make out any clear characteristics, but judging by his outfit alone, he looked like he could join our party.
—Of course, he’d first have to clarify whether that outfit was his personal taste or his workplace uniform.
“Ugh. So, old man. What are you gonna do? He’s still your little brother, right? Can I just kill him?”
The masked man picked a box and squatted on it. At that casual question, Zoid froze solid. But the armored dwarf—Merchant Master Jade Trustas—lifted his hammer as if the answer was obvious.
So I asked instead.
“I have a question too. How did you know we were coming?”
“I’ve got good senses. You guys hid your noise pretty well, but I felt the movement of ancient… rune mana, you know?”
The masked man answered in 0.1 seconds and scratched the back of his neck.
“Especially from the warehouse the old man declared absolutely off-limits. Not to mention the idiots I sent on the job already failed. So I came to see what kind of rat it was—”
The steel mask turned to look at me. The gaze peeking through the slits was anything but ordinary.
“—But for a rat, you’re pretty damn big, aren’t you? If I catch you and you bite back, one or two fingers probably won’t be enough.”
I snorted through my nose. In truth, the oppressive aura we felt from each other had kept us staring each other down from a distance, exchanging only glares and wariness.
“…Jade Trustas!! If you refuse to see me as your brother, then so be it!! But answer my question!!”
While we were doing that, the dwarf mixed-blood brothers were also shouting at each other, exchanging intense emotions. I accidentally glanced their way for a moment and realized my mistake, quickly raising my guard again. But that bastard had even turned his head fully, showing clear interest in their conversation.
“Is what they said true!! Did you really disguise deadly poison as dye and use it as a money-making scheme?! Did you truly sell your conscience to the devil for money?!”
“Yes. What’s the problem?”
At the indifferent answer, Zoid’s face twisted. It cycled through regret, rage, and sorrow before settling into a complex expression mixing all three.
“Why!! Why would you do something like that!! Was it for that measly amount of money?! Was that what you meant when I stormed out of this building?! Even on the day you let me leave, were you still selling poison to people?!”
“…Zoid. You are now my only blood relative left. I, Jade Trustas, learned how to use an abacus before I was even weaned off the bottle.”
Jade, who was more than ten years older than Zoid, raised his weapon high.
“Behold. This is a relic from the Golden Age. The weapons and armor of our Nidavellir, crafted by the artisans of that era! But what about the dwarves of today? They chase only money and comfort and don’t even bother refining their skills.”
“So you’re going to destroy everything?! Turn Nidavellir into a nation consumed by rage?!”
“It’s the opposite. Furnace Oak Soot is a selection process.”
He thrust forward a shield large enough to cover his entire body.
“The oak—the oak dust that carries on the lineage of the new era—turns people back into beasts. Only those who can maintain their convictions and reason even amid that primitive rage are true artisans and genuine dwarves!”
Crazy bastard.
I thought, struggling hard to keep my tension from loosening at how absurd it all was. I had no idea whether that dogshit philosophy had any basis in this world’s science. But it was definitely not ordinary madness.
I sensed the quiet insanity in his eyes.
‘This lunatic… he’s been taking the drug himself.’
A soot-addicted dwarf junkie. What a fucking lunatic.
The masked man, who had been cackling while watching the speechless Zoid, turned to me.
“Ah, don’t get any weird ideas. I don’t agree with the old man’s story. I just think it’s an interesting idea.”
“Then why are you cooperating?”
The way this bastard talked felt exactly like someone striking up a conversation with the friend sitting next to them in a movie theater. It was disgustingly irritating.
At my question, the masked man pulled back his hood and scratched his head.
“Well, even if our intentions don’t match, our goals do?”
“I see. Got it. That guy’s just a crazy bastard, and you’re just a piece of shit.”
I summoned a sun in my palm and crushed it. The masked man clutched his stomach and laughed as if it was the funniest thing in the world.
“Kuhahaha!! Exactly!! Doing crazy shit while completely sane makes me a piece of shit, huh?! This uncle’s got pretty good humor!!”
Humor my ass. The only thing I wanted to hear from a criminal was his last words.
Zoid, who had been stunned into silence by the nonsense just like me, spoke.
“Are you serious, Jade? You’ve genuinely been carrying out that kind of thinking for twenty years?”
“That’s your flaw, Zoid. You have the intuition to sense danger, but you have no eye for people. If you couldn’t accept the direction of the merchant group and left, you should have never come back.”
The helmeted dwarf spoke to Zoid before turning to look at me.
“Running away from home and all you can do is play at being a wanderer, running errands for idiots in the guild? And now you’ve even brought these pathetic fools who only believe in their meager strength all the way here.”
I narrowed my eyes. I didn’t know when the squatting piece of shit would bare his fangs—and I also had to explain the situation to Larilura, who didn’t understand Germania, through telepathy—so I had kept my words short until now. But this was something I had to ask.
Once the Trustas brothers finished their little reunion, I posed the question.
“Jade Trustas. According to your logic, what about the citizens of Nidavellir whose lives were ruined by the dye you spread? Are you saying you don’t care either way?”
The black helmet dyed with Furnace Oak Soot turned to face me.
“That’s right. How could someone who cannot even control their own rage pass on superior skill and superior bloodline to the future?”
“What about the human race or other species? At the very least, animals? They have nothing to do with your logic.”
“You’re the one asking that? You, who carries such horrifying rage in your gut yet can speak to the target of that rage without even twitching an eyebrow?”
So he had noticed after all. Well, I had realized it myself, so it was only natural they would too. It seemed Zoid really didn’t have an eye for people, despite what he thought of himself.
Similar to Enlir and me? What bullshit. I wasn’t even remotely like that abominable son of a bitch. If we were talking about similarity in mana, then Jade, Enlir, and I would all have to be called “pretty much the same.”
“Yeah, you drug-addicted bourgeois piece of shit.”
I answered while sensing the ancient mana from those two bastards—Jade Trustas and Enlir.
“The guests have come to file a complaint, you parentless gay couple bastards!!!”
—BOOM!!
I stomped the ground, exploding my mana. I converted the reaction force into dash energy and charged forward. My fist blazed with ferocious flames.
My target was Enlir, but Jade, overwhelmed by the momentum, reflexively turned his shield toward me. We had been waiting for exactly that opening.
—Shiiing!
A knife thrown from below the secret staircase flew straight at Jade’s head. The merchant boss realized he had no time to turn his shield and dodged his head, but the knife changed trajectory as if connected by a thread and lodged precisely into the gap in his helmet.
“Grrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaagh──!!!”
Jade screamed. It was only natural. He had made so much noise earlier. If Franc had her exceptional senses, she would have heard it, come up, and hidden herself. That was exactly why I had drawn their attention.
We were a married couple who could communicate without words, so I had confidently set up a feint to ensure our Franc’s attack would succeed.
“Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!”
“Dogshit philosophy gets better when you take a hit, you son of a bitch!!”
Violence doesn’t fix beliefs that refuse to change—they’re a disease. Instead of the merchant boss who was enjoying the pain, I slammed my fist into Enlir’s face, who had closed in right in front of me. The bastard didn’t seem to care whether the merchant boss became Xiahou Dun or Nick Fury; he was completely focused on my attack.
Even with the mask on, I could feel the ecstasy radiating from him at the impending fight.
Ah. So that’s the kind of personality and relationship they have.
I roughly grasped the personalities and relationship between these two pieces of shit and shouted.
“Flame Punch!!”
A blazing fist empowered by condensed mana and Beast Regression. The flames burn with ferocious heat.
“──Thor’s Belt (Þunras Gjörð)!!”
—KRRRRRRR!!
The moment Enlir chanted the spell, lightning enveloped his entire body.