Chapter 132: The Coastal City Alliance
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 132: The Coastal City Alliance
“Suven—!”
The men who cried out their dead comrade’s name wore looks of sheer horror. It seemed that despite being the first to draw their swords, they never imagined they would be the ones to fall.
Those in power were all the same. They’d drive commoners to their deaths with excuses about the greater good or unavoidable sacrifices, but the moment their own lives were on the line, they’d start preaching about the sanctity of life.
This is what you call a double standard, isn't it? The strange, modern term felt fitting.
“Kill him! No, protect us!”
Finally realizing this was no time to be taking me alive, Mayor Marco pointed a shaking finger at me. All the while, his eyes darted around like a cornered rat, searching for an escape. Just then, his gaze fell upon a window.
He immediately rushed to lift it. The problem was that men of power tended to have a fondness for high floors.
The administrative building, where the city’s affairs were discussed, was five stories tall, and this conference room was at the very top.
If he just jumped, he’d be lucky to escape with his body intact. If he landed headfirst, it would be suicide.
Gulp.
He clearly didn’t have the courage to take such a risk. After a brief glance out the window, he turned back to the guards.
“Lay down your lives and open a path! I swear on my name, I will not forget your sacrifice! Your families will gain enough wealth to live in luxury for three generations!”
Mayor Marco had the fortune to back up his words. Knowing this, the guards’ expressions hardened. They began to close in on me, their swords leveled.
I wiped the blood from my blade on the dead councilman’s clothes and turned to face them.
“A man’s heart is fickle. Right now, with your lives on the line, you might think his entire fortune is worth it. But what happens once you’re out of this situation? Do you really believe a notorious merchant like the mayor will keep his promise?”
The guards froze, turning to look at the mayor. Their eyes were filled with distrust.
It was just a shot in the dark, but it seemed he had less credibility than I thought.
“How dare you doubt me!”
Mayor Marco’s face flushed, but for a different reason this time. Forgetting the situation, he erupted in anger, oblivious to the fact that the guards’ gazes were growing heavier with every word.
I didn’t miss the opening. As the guards’ attention shifted to the mayor, I swung the sword resting on my shoulder. The blade carved a half-moon through the air and sliced through a guard’s chest. Caught by surprise, he collapsed without so much as a scream.
Startled, the remaining guards refocused on me, the tips of their swords trembling.
“You coward—!”
“Isn’t pointing your sword at an envoy cowardly?”
I’d intended to kill them all from the start. The longer their deaths went unnoticed, the easier it would be to retake the city.
“…Die!”
Realizing he’d been played, a guard’s face turned purple with rage. Unable to restrain himself any longer, he lunged, thrusting his sword toward an opening in my stance.
I swung my lowered sword upward, deflecting his blade, and in an instant, our positions were reversed. I wouldn’t miss an opening like he had. My sword pierced through his torso and jutted out from his back.
“You son of a bitch—!”
Just then, another man aimed for my back. I took a step forward, pulling my sword from the corpse in that split second. Then, I raised it diagonally above my head to block the enemy’s downward strike.
Sparks flew as his sword slid down toward my shoulder, its wielder straining to cut deeper, but my superhuman strength sent his blade flying outward.
With power to spare, I immediately shifted my stance and launched a counterattack—another high, horizontal slash. One more guard lost his head.
Bodies were already piling up around me. As the situation spiraled, the remaining guards exchanged nervous glances. Then, one of them turned to run.
Wanting to maintain perfect control of information, I snatched a sword from a dead guard and threw it.
It didn't hit blade-first as I’d hoped, but the hilt struck the deserter with such monstrous force that it caved in the back of his skull like a rock. The guard collapsed on the spot.
“The one who runs will be the first to die.”
Gulp.
The guards had only one option left: to fight me with their lives on the line. They did. And they all died. The councilmen soon followed.
“N-No! I’ll give you a thousand gold coins! Please, spare me! Le-Let’s negotiate! Negotiate! With all the councilmen dead, I now hold absolute authority! I’ll give you the city! The city! Please…!”
Left all alone, the mayor begged, wringing his hands. But when I continued to advance, he glanced around frantically before flinging himself at the window.
“Aaaahhh—!”
The wooden lattice window shattered. A moment later, the sound of a heavy body hitting the ground followed. It seemed the layers of fat encasing his body had helped, as the mayor was still alive, though his ankle dangled as if the bone had snapped.
“I-I’m alive! I’m ali—Gack!”
The joy of survival seemed to outweigh the pain. Just as the mayor was about to raise his arms in triumph, something shot through the air and struck him in the back of the head.
His skull caved in, and he collapsed, never to rise again. Beside him, a golden pig statue, its mouth stained with blood, seemed to be grinning.
“My throwing arm hasn’t gotten rusty.”
I dusted off my hands and turned away from the golden pig statue I had thrown from the tabletop. In a corner of the gruesome scene, Mollak and Vincenzio were trembling uncontrollably.
“Y-You think you’ll get away with this!?”
Our eyes met, and Vincenzio raised his voice. I wiped my bloody sword on a corpse’s clothes and replied.
“Is there any reason I shouldn’t?”
“You ask because you don’t know? You’re a rat in a trap, Baron! A trap surrounded by men itching to kill that rat!”
“It’s fine. They won’t escape death either.”
“You think you can do that alone?”
The man, who had survived only through his connection to Mollak, spoke with surprising boldness. He clearly didn’t understand his own predicament. Or perhaps he didn’t want to.
“Have you not seen the fate of those who thought as you do?”
He didn’t back down, even at my warning.
“Even if you get lucky and take the city, it will all be for nothing once the Coastal City Alliance gets involved! Count Dresden will find himself in a very difficult position!”
“Unlikely. The more people have, the more conservative they become. And people only help others when they can afford to. When they hear that Bochum fell to a single man, they’ll be too busy worrying about the fire spreading to their own cities to do anything but watch me.”
A group united by mutual interest is bound to collapse the moment one party can no longer represent that interest. I had already seen it happen in the game.
“Nonsense! What could you possibly know to doubt the solidarity of our Alliance! We have always presented a united front against any enemy who infringes upon the Alliance’s interests!”
“That’s only because you’ve never faced an enemy powerful enough to truly challenge the Alliance. If the war for the throne hadn’t dragged on for five years, do you really think the great lords would have left the incredibly wealthy Coastal City Alliance alone?”
“Hmph! Do you think our Alliance would just stand by and watch such a powerful figure rise!”
I was about to leave the room, but Vincenzio’s words stopped me in my tracks. They were strange.
“And if you didn’t just stand by?”
Our eyes met. Vincenzio flinched and looked away. It didn’t seem to be just because I was the man who had brutally murdered his colleagues.
“I see. The Coastal City Alliance was the one ensuring the civil war in the northern continent never ended. No wonder. I always thought the successive deaths of the most promising heirs were strange.”
The Alliance had been constantly checking the rise of any enemy that could threaten them. In the game, this was just background lore, so I never knew the details.
“Don’t make baseless accusations! That was the Pope’s doing!”
As Vincenzio belatedly tried to feign ignorance, I asked in a calm, passing tone.
“And you didn’t cooperate with the Pope?”
“…”
Vincenzio fell silent. But his body was honest. It flinched as if to say, That’s right.
I shrugged.
“So, what will it be? Will you meet your end with your colleagues? Or will you help me and survive?”
“…If you guarantee the city’s autonomy, I will cooperate.”
“Tsk, merchants…”
Mollak had warned me that running the city would be difficult without the help of its magnates. That must have been why Vincenzio judged that I couldn’t kill him.
And that’s why he felt he could offer my mercy as a bargaining chip. Should I call this being a true merchant?
Vincenzio’s eyes trembled. He seemed to have noticed the change in my expression.
“W-Wait…”
He tried to retract his offer, but before he could, my sword struck his neck. His head, wearing an expression of disbelief, rolled across the floor and stopped at my feet. Without hesitation, I stomped on it, crushing his skull.
“I just wiped it clean, and now it’s bloody again.”
“L-Lord Baron…!”
Mollak finally came to his senses and looked up at me. I wiped the blood from my sword and said:
“I was going to spare him for your sake, but how can I entrust the city’s administration to a fool who doesn’t know his place? And remember this: what I need are trustworthy vassals, not merchants.”
Vincenzio’s death was also a warning to Mollak. After all, when you introduce someone, you’re putting your own credibility on the line.
Realizing this too late, Mollak schooled his expression and bowed his head.
“My apologies.”
“We’re going straight to the gate.”
I changed the subject, signaling that I wouldn’t press the matter further. Mollak’s face instantly brightened.
“An excellent idea! Their deaths won’t have been reported yet, so security at the gate should be lax!”
Even though I had already declared my intention to take the city, Mollak mistakenly thought I was trying to escape.
He was in denial.
Then again, an ordinary person would never even imagine conquering a major city single-handedly.
“Let’s go.”
I kept my words short. Our destination was the same, after all.
“He’s dead? The mayor is dead!”
A crowd of citizens had gathered behind the administrative building. Through the gaps, I could just make out the sprawled body of Mayor Marco and the pool of blood spreading across the ground. Some were pointing up at the fifth-floor window from which he had thrown himself, their voices rising.
“I saw him fall from up there!”
The citizens’ reactions were mixed. Some returned home in fear, while others approached the administrative building. It was only a matter of time before the massacre inside was discovered.
“Mollak. If you keep acting like a fool, I’m leaving you behind.”
My prodding brought focus back to Mollak’s half-dazed eyes. Seeing the approaching crowd, he quickly followed me and mounted his horse.
“C-Coming! I’m coming!”
I spurred my horse forward, and Mollak followed close behind. Citizens we passed pointed and cursed at us. Riding horses within the city was forbidden.
“There, the city gate!”
Meanwhile, the gate guards were leaning against the parapet, chatting idly. With their duties suddenly gone, they were just killing time.
Mollak’s face brightened.
“Go and tell Sir Aron to charge immediately.”
“What? Weren’t you coming with me?”
“Someone has to open the gate and guard it, don’t they?”
“How are you going to open the gate by yourself?”
The city gate was a dual-layered structure. On the inside was an iron-reinforced wooden portcullis, and beyond that was another gate made of thick wood.
The portcullis was connected to a pulley, but being made of iron, it was so heavy that it took three or four strong men, just like the wooden gate, to barely open or close it.
“Come to think of it, you still don’t know me very well.”
“Pardon…?”
Leaving the bewildered Mollak behind, I slowly approached the gate. A guard who had been chatting looked up as he noticed my approach.
“Hey, you’re…”
It seemed the shift hadn’t changed yet, as it was the same guard I had seen when passing through the gate earlier.
Realizing something was wrong, he immediately reached for the spear leaning against the wall. Before he could grab it, my sword took his head. The other guard he’d been talking to quickly followed.
“M-Murder—!”
A resident passing by happened to witness it.
I paid him no mind and grabbed the rope connected to the portcullis’s pulley. It resisted with immense weight, but soon, it began to inch upward.
“Crazy! That thing must weigh well over a ton…!”
Mollak, who had approached only after I’d dealt with the guards, stared wide-eyed as the portcullis slowly rose.
Finally pulling it all the way up, I secured the counterweight’s hook to a latch on the parapet. Then, I immediately pushed against the wooden gate with both hands.
Creeeak.
The gate, which required three or four strong men to budge, slowly began to swing open.
“Go. When Aron sees the gate is open, he won’t be able to ignore my order to charge.”
Just then, the voice of an enemy soldier came from atop the parapet.
“The gate is open! It’s the enemy!”
I looked up. Through an arrow slit in the parapet, a pair of eyes stared down at me. They widened slightly, then disappeared. A sense of foreboding washed over me.
Sure enough, I heard the sound of a hammer striking metal. With no time to think, I grabbed Mollak by the scruff of his neck and threw him through the gateway.
“Aaaah—!”
CRASH!
Almost simultaneously, the portcullis plummeted. The force of its weight and gravity drove its iron spikes deep into the earth.
“Hiiik—”
If my judgment had been even a moment slower, Mollak would have been crushed by the one-ton portcullis. His face deathly pale, he fled like a colt with its tail on fire.
“I wonder if he’ll even be able to deliver the message properly.”
What was the point in worrying about something already out of my hands? Instead, I stared at the newly closed portcullis and thought of the enemy soldier I had locked eyes with inside the gatehouse.
How dare you make me do the same job twice?