Gangs of Roma (8): Sleep Gas and the Tenth Floor Carnage
The mafia had prepared thoroughly, exactly as expected from men who had anticipated an assault. They stationed personnel on every floor and rigged the stairwells with traps. Magic traps, mechanical devices—it was a veritable exhibition of humanity’s most malicious technological ingenuity, a parade of deadly surprises.
Enjoy it infinitely~
Kaiser Phoenix~♬
Aaaaaaaaagh!!
But why the hell should I play along? I had only come to stir up some proper aggro. I wasn’t about to climb from the first floor like some hero in a classic RPG.
Kwaaaaaaaaang—!
“Fuck! This bastard’s a mage!”
“Get downstairs! They’re attacking from below!”
The mafia made a racket upstairs while the clatter of footsteps rushing down the stairs echoed through the building. Yet every last one of them was nothing more than prey for the sleeping gas, dancing exactly as I willed.
The plan I had explained to Larilura before we stormed in was simple.
“Break into the first floor, put the standby personnel to sleep with gas, then smash through the ceiling from below and flood the next level with more sleeping gas.”
A battle that began with sleeping gas and ended with sleeping gas. Even a poorly designed character in a K-RPG who only had one skill would probably show more variety than this.
Well, it works. That’s good enough.
Formations and tactics only matter when the enemy is actually in front of you.
Suddenly the spot right beside me exploded, and the dream-inducing gas poured out. The mafia men couldn’t even react before they were swept away.
“Up we go.”
I climbed through the hole I had blown in the second-floor ceiling. Larilura followed down the rope I had lowered, and we repeated the same pattern all the way to the fourth floor before slipping into what looked like a storage room.
Larilura shook the smell of blood from her clothes and asked, “Senior, shouldn’t we cause more of a commotion?”
“If they’re not complete idiots, they’ll realize staying in position is pointless. Some will run to report, and the ones on the nearby floors will come rushing down.”
We couldn’t possibly draw every small fry to us. Roughly seventy percent would come hunting for us, while the remaining thirty percent would stay behind to guard the boss.
Of course, that part is for Primor and her friends to handle.
They outnumbered us two to one. If they couldn’t manage at least that much, we were in trouble. There were things to worry about, but if my guess was right, the situation wouldn’t turn dangerous too quickly.
I hid inside the room and roughly manipulated the sleeping gas. The mafia, unaware of my exact location, came down holding their breath to search for me and fainted one by one. I didn’t see it myself, but the sounds told the story clearly enough.
“Ah. They’re here.”
The rune I had engraved on Hans had entered my detection range. This was exactly why I had climbed all the way to the fourth floor. It was the perfect spot to confirm Hans’s position before launching a surprise attack on the boss’s room on the tenth floor.
“Shall we move beneath the boss’s room? If we don’t want to be late—”
Ta-ta-ta-tat!
The moment I started to tell Larilura it was time to move—
Thud!
A man burst through the sleeping gas, smashed the door apart, and charged us. Sharp-eyed and vicious. He took a huge breath he had been holding back and grinned.
“Why are you hiding? Come to steal something?”
“If there’s anything worth money, I was planning to take it.”
So not all of them were idiots after all.
I let out a small laugh. The man roared with laughter at my answer, then his eyes flashed as he brought his halberd crashing down.
I stretched the flames into a long blade to block the strike. Sparks exploded between us.
“Using a weapon that long indoors. Impressive.”
“You get used to it if you keep at it!”
“Fair enough.”
As a fellow polearm user, I could relate. I adjusted my footwork, recalibrating the unique sense of distance only long-weapon fighters truly understand, and slipped away from his reach.
“Risa-su!”
“Hup!”
Clang!
Sparks flew again, obscuring vision. The moment the man’s sight was blocked, ice spikes rained down from behind him. The target was Larilura.
She kicked over a nearby shelf to obstruct his line of sight and leaped sideways. Our junior couldn’t use her marionettes or my buffs right now, but I wasn’t worried. I had prepared a weapon just for her.
“Yah!”
Swoosh!
Larilura transformed her bracelet into a mithril spear and hurled it with her own strength and Puppetry.
“A spear?!”
“Eyes on me, buddy.”
The halberd-wielding mafia tried to intercept it, but with me standing right there, he never stood a chance. The shaft meant to block the spear hurriedly spun back to defend against my attack instead.
“Gaaah!”
The enemy mage must have deployed a shield, but it was useless. The thrown spear had once pierced even that monstrous blacksmith from another world. The mithril spear twisted like a living snake and punched straight through the mage hiding in the smoke.
“Damn it! I told you to follow me inside!”
“Did you really think you could protect anything from in here?”
I delivered the sharp rebuke and swung the flame sword extending from the back of my hand. Like the Ruyi Jingu Bang, the blade stretched outward, rendering the halberd’s superior reach meaningless. For all his confident charge, the mafia thug couldn’t keep up the momentum.
Now that I think about it, it’s been a while since I used a sword.
A nostalgic feeling washed over me as I naturally shifted my stance.
The flames scattered and danced in a perfect circle.
The continuous attack techniques I had trained with the spear translated perfectly to the sword.
The room filled with blazing flowers of flame. The halberd flew from the man’s grip.
“Kuhuhu!”
Yet the man didn’t seem to care at all. He abandoned the halberd and yanked a chain from his sleeve.
Clatter!
The chain wrapped around his unburning arm, halting my attack. He stepped on the chain and yanked, forcing my upper body forward. The magic circle engraved on his gauntlet glowed brightly—an attack spell stored in a magic item.
“Die!”
Dududududu!!
Stone shards sprayed out like gunfire from a gatling gun. They were called fragments, but at that velocity they could punch through steel plating. Might as well call it a shotgun that fired rocks.
Even the mafia are using guns now.
I covered only my face with my arm. The shards hammered my body. The mana maintaining my magic resistance was slightly depleted, but it was far better than wasting it on a sluggish close-quarters slog like before.
“What the hell?! You tanked that?!”
“It does hurt. My heart, that is.”
It carried roughly the power of one and a half Kaiser Phoenix rounds. Some damage had leaked through even my maximum resistance. If I hadn’t noticed the mana hidden in those gloves, I might have lost my eyes.
Clatter!
I wrapped the chain around my own arm. Over ninety percent of metals reject mana, but they can’t stop heat. Electricity was the same story.
The current raced down the chain into the man’s body.
“Grrrrk!! Agaaaagh!!”
Crackle!
The man froze as the lightning traveled through the chain into his hand. The spinning spear blade whipped around and smashed into the side of his head. His eyes rolled back showing only the whites, but he still refused to faint. I grabbed his collar and slammed him down with a throw.
Thud!
“Keuk!”
I mounted him and held the flames gathered on my fingertip right in front of his eyeball. There was no time for leisurely interrogation while killing him. As the moisture in his eyeballs began to dry, the man—who had been on the verge of passing out—broke into a cold sweat.
“Our friend here is quite skilled. I won’t kill you, so let me ask just one thing.”
“...I can’t tell you the boss’s location.”
“Not interested in that. Has your boss been acting differently lately?”
I asked the question that had been bothering me. A man with this level of skill would have been executive rank even if stationed on the middle floors. That was why I had chosen him.
The man sucked in a sharp breath.
“What? How could you possibly—”
“So I was right. You never looked into it?”
“...The power balance in Lucregens has shifted. The boss simply adapted flexibly to the change.”
“In other words, he was himself except for his actions. Then has your boss ever been injured? When he needed treatment, did he ever refuse potions or healers?”
“...What exactly are you implying?”
The man ground his teeth. It looked like he was ready to stay silent even if I burned his eyes with a cigarette butt, but the nerves fried by electricity apparently hadn’t gotten the message yet.
I chuckled.
“From what I heard downstairs, he hasn’t visited the newly opened brothel either. You really didn’t notice anything? No strange smell?”
“—You son of a bitch!”
The furious mafia thug threw a punch. I blocked it easily and drove a one-punch straight into his nose bridge while he was still lying down.
Kooong!
But the vibration that followed wasn’t caused by me.
The entire building shook from the impact. Both Larilura and I looked up.
“Senior. Looks like Aunt Primor’s fight has started.”
“...So it seems. Before more of these bastards come pouring in, let’s get out of here fast.”
I sprayed water vapor to create a smoke screen and stepped into my inner world. Veronica was waiting with staff in hand. She gave me a meaningful look.
“...My dear. This is my first attempt at connecting arbitrary coordinates, so I am somewhat anxious. The rune you engraved on the knight should serve in place of a magic circle, so transmission failure is unlikely, yet…”
“It’s less than twenty meters. What’s there to worry about? I trust you.”
When I grinned, Veronica let out a sigh that said what can I do with this man? and smiled along with me.
“Very well. If my master insists, how could I possibly make a mistake? Return to reality and prepare for the transfer.”
“Thanks.”
I immediately left the inner world, took Larilura’s hand, and waited. A magic circle spread beneath my feet as the spatial teleportation spell finished preparing. I summoned water vapor to wrap around us.
Flash!
Light burst forth, bringing the familiar sensation of teleportation. I dispersed the vapor immediately, wary of an ambush.
But there was no need for concern.
The place was already a sea of blood. Not a single person remained alive. It seemed Primor’s group had arrived first and swept everything clean.
Kooong!
Another heavy impact erupted from the floor above. I clicked my tongue at the dark, negative mana I felt coming from there.
“Larilura. Get the marionettes ready in case things turn dangerous.”
“Yes.”
The situation was serious, so her answer was equally grave. We raced up the staircase that looked like it had been bombed and emerged into a vast open space that encompassed the entire tenth floor.
“Kwooooooo—!!”
“Krrghk!”
The tenth floor had become a living hell. The paladin Henry and the black mage in a robe were canceling out each other’s curse and purification spells. Every time the man who appeared to be Matei Rossi threw a punch, the knights were driven back.
Kwaaang!
A man who looked more like an assault captain than a mafia boss slammed a gauntleted fist into a shield. The shield was already badly dented everywhere, but the female knight I had fought earlier gritted her teeth and held her ground. In that opening, other escorts attacked the boss while Primor fired arrows at the black mage.
Primor, in the middle of nocking another arrow to her composite bow, spotted me. Her face lit up with joy.
“Yesugei-nim!”